Read the October 16 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.

We remain standing. Roger Adagon, our police chaplain, is going to give us our invocation.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we gather here tonight for city business. We thank you, Lord. As we conduct city business, we ask for your guidance, your wisdom upon our mayor, our council members, all those that make decisions for this great city that affects the city of Santa Ana. We thank you, Lord, for your wise decisions, your blessings. We thank you, Lord, also, Lord. We pray protection upon our responders, our police officers, Lord, our firemen, all those, Lord, that respond for emergencies. Keep them safe, Lord. Keep the city safe. Lord, it's a wonderful city. A lot of wonderful people live in this community, Lord.

We ask a blessing upon them, their family, Lord, and all those that are involved in this city. We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

You may be seated.

Let's start with Mayor Pro Tem Michelle Martinez, a presentation that she has to make, followed by Council Member David Benavides.

Good evening. If I could have Sylvia Mendes and her family, whoever is here to please join me. The Mendes family, Sylvia. So I'm not sure if my colleagues actually want to join me as well because this is a very special moment as we're honoring the Mendes family. Please come around, Sylvia Mendes.

So I'm asking my colleagues to join me as today we are naming today October 16th Sylvia Mendez a day and dedicating this to her and her family and I think many of you who live in this community and understand you know civil rights and what we've gone through not just here in here in Orange County and this family but in particular the issues that we have incurred in regards to

wanting to make sure that you know our children were integrated and as I look at Sylvia and I look at her family and the legacy of courage of never giving up

and being really leaders today and making sure that we educate our children and communities across the United States. So I want to tell you, Sylvia, you are exceptional for traveling this country and sharing your story and educating the future and understanding why this case was so important before Brown v. Education.

Thank you.

And so with that, let's get a little closer. Let's get closer. So in 1943, students of Mexican descent were required to enroll in segregated schools. Sylvia Mendes, then a third grader, was denied equal education access to white schools in Orange County. The families of Sylvia and other children were denied, fought for equal education opportunities, and in 1946, and again in 1947, an appeal in the infamous Mendez v. Westminster School District of Orange County case.

This case serves a significant role in the NAACP U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. the Board of Education that signed into law the repeal of remaining segregation provisions in the California statute. On November 15, 2007, the Mendez v. Westminster stamp was presented to the Mendez family, and on February 15, 2011, President Barack Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Sylvia Mendez for her many years of work of civil rights activists.

The Santa Ana Unified School District opened its doors to Mendez Fundamental Middle School in 1997. So today here doing our part and as I leave this city council after 12 years this is something that I've always wanted to do. So Sylvia please join me. The city of Santa Ana today recognizes Sylvia Mendes for her courage to end segregation in the public school system and determination to fight for it. And today we are proclaiming

Sylvia Mendez Day. So thank you Sylvia. I want to thank your family for the wonderful work that you all have done in this community and in Orange County, but more importantly, throughout the United States. Because when we see each other on Facebook, you are everywhere speaking to children about this particular case and what you had to go through. And so with that, before we provide this proclamation i know my colleagues in particular those that focus on education like councilman solorio and councilman tinajero would you all like to say a couple words and the rest

of the council you did very well yeah no yes if not so if not then whereas the city of santa ana wants to recognize sylvia mendez for her courage to end segregation in public schools and her determination to fight for it and now therefore the mayor and the entire City Council of Santa Ana to hereby recognize October 16th as Sylvia Mendez Day.

I'm going to ask Sylvia to say a couple words. I know she's a little shy, but definitely I think our residents would love to hear from

you. This is such a big honor. believe it or not I was born in San Yon 82 years ago I went to San Yon high school graduated from Fullerton College became a nurse I traveled back and forth to LA for 33 years and lived in San Yon I love San Yon and thank you so much for this big honor that you give me today I don't want to cry but thank you so much

Thank you.

At this point, for the next item, I'd like to invite members of the Orange County Health Care Agency to join me here. I think we have Jennifer Forrester and Marjorie Kerrigan from the Orange County Health Care Agency. So as they come up, just a couple of points. One of the things that we always want to look at doing is taking this opportunity to provide some very momentous and meaningful recognitions and also provide some public information and education to our community. That's precisely what members of the Orange County Health Care Agency are here to do with us today,

specifically around a topic that oftentimes maybe not talked about a whole lot but yet is important, which is protecting our children's health and specifically around childhood lead poisoning. So actually what I'm going to do is I'm going to invite you to go ahead and maybe share a couple of words and then what we'll do is provide this proclamation on childhood lead poisoning prevention week. Go ahead. Thank you, Council Member Benvenides, and thank you, Mayor Polito and Council members for supporting our health care agency in the County of Orange. Childhood lead poisoning is known as a silent killer.

There's no signs or symptoms associated. However, learning disabilities later do become evident in children that are poisoned. often we find in older housing 1978 and prior and living in in Santa Ana we see a lot of olding old housing stock and so we continue to work and partner with the city through code enforcement efforts community-based organizations and services through public health to educate members of the public and identifying sources not only in the home such as paint lead and dust and

sometimes older plumbing with water but also imported pottery spice imported spices and candies children's jewelry that's imported and other items too that come up across our investigation so it's very important to get children tested at an early age because this affects their neurological systems and we really appreciate all the support that your city continues to get

So we are a very young city here in Santana, so we want to always make sure to do everything we can to inform our parents, our community, about childhood concerns and to definitely protect our children. So we appreciate the work of the Orange County Healthcare Agency.

Ochealthinfo.com is where one can go to seek more information. So on behalf of the city of Santa Ana, I'd like to present this proclamation highlighting childhood-led poisoning prevention week and appreciate all of your work to, again, educate and support our families and the safety of our children. Thank you so much for the work you do. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'll help the mayor out and introduce myself. I'm councilmember Jose Solorio. It's my honor to bring up, so they can start coming up while I continue, Robert Iguia, director of operations for JWC Environmental. I Irene Gloomba, interim director of special projects at Santa Ana College. Roy Jones, president of CINGA Engineering Inc. And Adam Ramirez, production manager and outside sales rep for Tenecore. And if there's anybody else with the group as well, that'd be fantastic. And I actually toured Tenecore some years ago, so I'm pleased that I'm here. You know, we're blessed in our city.

We have a very robust manufacturing base. you know a lot of it is along the 55 corridor along the the harbor corridor for example excellent jobs excellent opportunities many with you know the type of benefits and and salaries that could support a family so we're really pleased to have those facilities those areas in our community we want to protect them we also know that our community really pushes us to have more public-private partnerships as well as relationships with our school districts

and college districts and so this presentation really embodies that because today we're recognizing National Manufacturing Day. It's observed annually on the first Friday of October. It's a celebration of modern manufacturing meant to inspire the next generation of manufacturers and workers. By working together during and after manufacturing day, manufacturers will continue to address the skilled labor shortage that they face, take charge of the public image of manufacturing, and ensure the ongoing prosperity of the entire industry and their

workers for decades to come. This year, our Santa Ana Workforce Development Board worked collectively with the California manufacturing technology consulting group vital link and local colleges to organize a month-long program which included community college tours all over the county over 600 high school students participated and as such received firsthand knowledge of careers and coursework leading to employment in meaningful manufacturing jobs today it's my honor to on behalf of the mayor and council recognize some of our local

businesses in Santa Ana College for their participation in this year's Manufacturing Day and opening their doors to the community and youngsters in our community let's give them a round of applause

and I'd like to have one person from Santa College and one from industry come up and speak maybe a college district rep and then somebody from

Tenant Corps that would be fantastic. On behalf of Santa Ana College I would just like to thank you for this recognition and I'd like to thank you for our

partnership. That was very brief so there's others as well. On behalf on behalf of

Tenant Corps we'd like to thank the City of Santa Ana for this honor and it's great working in partnership with Santa Ana and look forward to doing so in the

future as well thank you so they're also brief so we'll let them come all up by sing engineering rep but then JWC if they are here well thank you very much

and we've called Santa Ana our home since 1979 we've been constantly growing constantly profitable and constantly hiring and we have multiple openings so anybody has any good CNC manufacturing history in their background come talk to

us please last but not least JWC Environmental good evening it was a

pleasure today to host the Santa Ana schools for the tour I will forward for next year and on behalf of JWC we thank the city for the opportunity

thank you all very much and let's give another round of applause

Next we have Councilmember Sal Tinajero presenting to the Warner Industrial Community for their contributions.

May I please have Ms. Gail Fossler and Clarence Turner come on up if they're in the house today? So as they're coming up, I just want to tell you something about this is pretty exciting, what our business community can do when they think outside the box and they take their leadership skills out to others and how they can benefit our community. So today we recognize Gail Fossler and Clarence Turner for their spearheaded efforts in initiating a public-private partnership with the City of Santa Ana

on the Warner Industrial Community Pavement Improvement Project. In 2011, the city was approached regarding the improvement of industrial streets within the Warner Industrial Community Business District. As an active business community leader, Ms. Fossler understood the financial limitations of the city. With her persistence and leadership, she began exploring alternative funding options to repair the streets, including the possibility of property owners sharing the cost. Gail and Clarence gauged interest from property owners

and eventually filed legal petitions for more than 60% of the landowners supporting a special assessment in the area. After securing private funds to match city funds and the City Council's authorization of an issuance of bonds for an assessment district, the full reconstruction of streets were completed. I'd like to call up our city manager as well because he was around back at that time too. So today we recognize Gail Fossler and Clarence Turner for their persistence and tenacity in seeking solutions for the city of Santa Ana.

But I also wanted to call up our city manager to give you a little insight about what they actually did.

Thank you, Council Member Tina Harrow. I'm particularly pleased to be here. I used to serve as your Public Works Director. I had that privilege beginning in 2009. And I really, really am happy to be here with both Ms. Fossler and Ms. Turner here. This is how it started. A business owner, or owner of the business and the property, came to see me, Ms. Gail Fossler. And she said, look, our streets are in horrible shape. what can you do at the time we were resurfacing most of the city streets throughout the city and we're projected to have a little bit of a left of a little surplus right not enough to do all the industrial parks and the

industrial areas are particularly needy because when they were designed you know they get designed based on local streets collector and arterials a local street standard oftentimes back in the day was the same as a residential street local meaning the size of the street. But the industrial streets get a lot more truck traffic, so they get deteriorated much more quickly, and so they require full reconstruction, very expensive. And so I told Ms. Foster, I said, look, I don't have enough money to do all of it, but if you think we can partner, if you can talk to your fellow property owners to raise half the money,

and we can have the other half, we can do something. I thought I'd never see her again. I really did, but she kept coming back. She lives on the east coast somewhere, And so every time she was on the West Coast she check in with me and check in on her progress And I want to tell you I was really really impressed because property owners are all over the place Just like she's on the East Coast some property owners are in Colorado and some other in other states and she tracked them all down And sold them on this and it took several years so think about that several years

So I come back and honored to be your city manager and I see that this project gets completed in March of this year And I was just really really touched so I can't say enough about your leadership and I know Mr. Turner we didn't get a chance to meet but I understand that you were a big part of this as well so your leadership has really set a model for what could be the way forward for a lot of our industrial parks. I want to just thank you for setting a standard that we'll hope to replicate sometime soon.

And like our city manager stated I also thought we'd never see them again but they kept coming back and they kept coming back and we thank you for that. So I want to just give you an opportunity to say a few words and talk about your experience. Well, actually, I never thought I would see them again either. But I cannot emphasize enough, you know, in this time when there is so much, let's just say bad feeling on, it seems, everywhere that we look, this was a really tremendous opportunity and a tremendous partnership between the city and the owners

who really needed desperately to get these streets they didn't have to be just repaved they had to be rebuilt from the ground up and when we came up the question was how are we going to do this the city didn't have the funds after the crisis the city was almost in a state of bankruptcy So we developed this concept of public-private partnership, but I must say that I think this is the only one in the state. I think so, because what we did had no precedent. So, you know, we always think of government as being very resistant and very conservative, and, you know,

it's sort of people don't know where their taxes go and the like. And this team, I see, oh, some of them have just, no, there's William back there. But the, you know, I mean, I know the Public Works Department staff like you wouldn't believe. But this team stuck with us. We essentially made new precedent in terms of what is possible between owners and government to create something that is positive and benefits both sides of the equation.

So we're enormously grateful to the city. We're grateful to you, Councilor Lentinearo, to the council itself, to Mayor Pulido, who came over. We have a manufacturing business, by the way. I don't know if my manufacturing colleagues are still here, but we'll compete for any CNC operator that wants to go to work for them. We'll compete for them in our business. But Mayor Polito came and sat in our conference room and listened to Clarence and me tell him what our needs were, and he also deserves enormous credit because it isn't like somebody wrote a roadmap.

There was no map, and the city helped us find our way to an excellent outcome. So thank you. Thanks to everyone. Thank you.

I think Gail has said it all. She looks like a meek little lady, but she's a tiger, trust me.

But this certainly was a collaborative effort between government and the private sector. And I, too, commend the mayor and the city council because you guys endorsed it. If you hadn't endorsed it, it wouldn't have happened. And you turn now to your staff, your very able staff. I mentioned William and there's Jason. I know Kenny's around here someplace. And then Nicole, whatever. What the citizens should know is they appeared night after night. They made themselves available on their dime to work with us. They provided us with the information. and we went out and got all those people to sign up and make this all happen.

So it really was a collaborative effort, and I thank a lot of people for making it happen.

So thank you very much for everything you've done. You've made Ward 6 a better ward because of it. So we're just going to take a quick picture.

And we'll be on our way. Thank you.

and uh gail and uh clarence uh something i think would be remiss if we didn't thank then mayor antonio viragosa because you sit with him on a board what board is that uh we were on a commission

on personal savings and retirement security.

Retirement security from the National Board in Washington, and he called and said, you guys have to help this lady. So we went out, met with you and Clarence, and that's how the whole thing got started. It was Mayor Villagosa saying, let's help this lady. And everybody helped, and here we are. So we need to thank him as well. Next time you see him, we need to say thank you. Take care.

Now, Council Member Juan Villegas has our next presentation.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. If I can have Executive Director Tai Min and Álvaro Núñez from Code Enforcement and staff.

So today we are celebrating Code Enforcement Officer Appreciation Week. And for many of you who really don't know all the duties of code enforcement, they go out and they inspect a lot of the businesses and homes for quality of life, any kind of environmental problems it might be. And this council has also tasked them with the marijuana dispensaries, going out and checking them and shutting down the illegal ones along with the police department.

And we also added the mobile vending trucks, you know, oversight on them also. So they have many, many different jobs and roles that they play here in the city, and we really want to appreciate them. A lot of folks don't really understand the role of code enforcement, so if we could have the director of time in, please speak about the group, please. Thank you, sir.

Good evening, and I first want to say thank you, Councilman Mayor Ed Mabel Tam and the entire council for bestowing this honor upon us. I've been doing this for over 25 years and never have I worked with such a group of fine individuals. They're not only hardworking, but they're very creative in terms of problem solving. They're dedicated with their jobs. And in terms of what I've experienced, I've never worked with a group of people that receive such high praise. And this is such a great honor.

And I want to say thank you for allowing me to work with you as well. and I hope that we continue to serve the community. To be recognized by our community is a great honor. So at this point, I'd like to introduce our staff, and I'll have our code manager, Alvaro Nunez, to come up and introduce his staff.

Thank you again, Mayor, Mayor Pro Temp, and the City Council for this recognition. We appreciate it very, very much. As my director has said, sometimes code enforcement is not an easy job, but the fact that we do a good job is part of the reason standing behind me our personnel most of our folks here either have been raised in Santa Ana or live in Santa Ana let me introduce Ruben Hernandez who came from Lake Elsinore Alejandro Rodriguez who used to work in Lake Elsinore Armando Chavez from housing background Victor Madrigal were 25 years here in the city used to

be a housing inspector in section 8 now works with us Tony Havajo from City of Fullerton used Fullerton code enforcement and police dispatcher, one of our good workers in City of Santa Ana. Ruth, also one of our code enforcement associates and then our support staff Maria Ventura and Kat Leal who answer the phones and are bilingual. Anytime you call those are the folks that are answering and referencing your calls to the right person or department. Thank you all.

again thank you for your good work I know that we're short staff we used to have about 20 20 30 and we have how many now we have 15 so you can imagine the workload that they have and thank you all for for your hard work and dedication to the city of Santa Ana and on behalf of the mayor and City Council if you could please accept this proclamation for code enforcement officer appreciation your week. Thank you very much gentlemen, ladies and ladies.

applause applause

Thank you.

I'm now going to take our agenda out of order for a moment and go to item 60A first. and I'm gonna I know that councilor Tinajedo requested we spoke earlier I want honor that request so I'm going to take that first and after that we're going to take on I think the rent control item and and then we're going to go to the minutes and the rest of the agenda so with that let me call on it It doesn't have to be a long subject, I don't believe. Item 68, is there a motion? Motion.

We have a motion to approve. Is there a second? Second. We have a second.

I just have a question for clarification. Go ahead. For staff, is this the project, I know this is the project on East First, that is requesting a density bonus. Is this one where it's, from what I recall, an affordable project that provides affordable housing? Yes, this is for seniors. Seniors specifically. Is this one, have they requested funds from the city? I know this is specifically the action tonight is a density bonus request. Right. They have requested, in a side letter to the city, they've requested $60 million, and staff has denied the request. Okay. And it's not included in any action today.

We've never done a study on what that request would, and we've never looked at their books. We've never opened up their financing. Okay. And that's the same one that I remember from way back had indicated that they were not going to be requesting any funds. That's what they represented to, I know, myself, I believe the city and others. So for that reason, it's not something that I can be in support of. There just have been inconsistencies and lack of transparency. So I know, again, this is specific to the density bonus. Also, the other question is whether our need in the city is for seniors at this level versus families.

I know it's within the zone of the city where it's, as I understand by right, the density is discretion to Council. And for that, just wanted to clarify and get an understanding. I will not be supporting that, Mayor. Got it.

I thank Councilman Sarmiento and then Mayor Pro Tem Martinez. Thank you.

Thank you, Stephen. So what I read from the staff report is that this is a non-binding commitment to allow the applicant to go out and seek some financing based upon the density bonus agreement that we would be approving.

Correct. They'll be going to the market for financing.

They've had their TEFRA hearing. They've expressed things during the TEFRA hearing. I think that's what Daveed was talking about, their references. So after they secure their approvals here, they'll be able to actually dig in the ground, and they'll be able to issue their building permits for them to start approvals. This is the last step for the City Council, the last action the City Council will take, before they can actually start pouring foundations into utilities.

But they still would have to come back to us if they needed additional financing besides that?

Should they desire to secure financing, they would have to come back to the city, and the city would have to do the appropriate analysis.

Got it. And I think whoever prepared the staff report was very comprehensive about the comments that were made, I think, at the previous hearing. So not to belabor the point, but the consistency with the housing element and some of the other governing documents that the council has adopted in the past, to give guidance on development, especially for working families and affordable housing developments. It's clear that there's a bit of a disconnect. We certainly need the affordable housing, and I think that none of us dispute that it's the way it's configured.

So my plea to the applicant would be, you know, let's try to work with them, but also maybe in the interim the applicant maybe revisits some of the configuration because I believe the breakdown is some studio, some one-bedroom, and some two-bedroom, the bulk of it being one-bedroom, from what I understand.

You are correct. It's 262 one-bedroom units, 65 two-bedroom units, and 91 studios.

Got it. And, you know, I understand that this being senior housing and senior housing not being the most demanding demographic in the city, it's certainly families. That's our most demanding demographic for housing needs. To the extent that we maybe work with the applicant in the interim, seeing how we can relax some of the other requirements, because I think this maybe is a way to circumvent maybe the parking ratio requirement and dealing with fewer spaces, and I think because it's a senior development, you can do that.

But to the extent maybe we work with them, but see how we can maybe bring it back around to maybe family housing, something to consider in the interim so to the extent staff can work with the applicant on that.

So we will do that.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I'll make my comments brief. I think I still stand true to what I said at the last couple meetings ago when I discussed this project. But I just wanted just to state, you know, a couple of things. that they want to give 60% of the area medium income and obviously they're going to be able to help some Santa Ana residents but 60% of the area medium income for Santa Ana folks. The question that I have is that as we look at our home choice voucher and with our section 8 voucher just period, HUD is not giving us enough money to meet the market needs and the demand of

of what the market rents are today. Right? Our seniors on fixed incomes, more importantly so the seniors in our city. I always ask who are we building for? Santa Ana already has 543 senior housing units. That's what we have on the books. We're going to add a 416 whatever that number is and as you know what the need is are for our families our medium our medium age here in the city of Santa Ana is 30. Orange County is aging in place and it's aging in place more so in

South County and so if we are going to be building this kind of housing and removing a motel and a restaurant that's providing tax revenue, property, and sales tax to put in a 50-year covenant to restrict rent for 55 years and then after that possibly go to market rate and have to pay, you know, market rate rents. What is the benefit to Santa Ana if the need is not senior housing and is really family housing? That's the question that I ask my colleagues up here, that I ask you as

staff and I've said it before what is the research that's going to tell me that we need this housing and yes some of these units are at capacity but they're not from Santa Ana they've come from all over the place to move here because we've made that housing available over the years and so it's not that I don't want to support my seniors I want to support Santa Ana seniors I don't want to support seniors from the rest of this region we have a responsibility and an obligation to help our residents. We are in a housing crisis. We have major problems. And it's not that I don't support housing, but it's how we're building housing.

We're going status quo. We need to do better. You cannot build standalone of senior housing or affordable housing anymore. It does not pencil out for this city. We cannot remove properties off the property tax rolls anymore. Santa Ana has a financial crisis, a housing crisis. We have to be smarter about how we're going to develop and making sure that we're able to capture the revenue that we need to pay for our police officers, our firefighters, and the rest of our staff.

Thank you. Any additional comments?

Council Member Villegas? Mr. Mayor, it's going to be Council Member Solorio on the second on that.

Okay.

So but I thought we had a motion by I make the motion by councilor Tina had earlier Second by Solario, okay, so with that any more comment councilor Solonio. Thank you. Mr. Mayor. I do

Support this item. We do need more affordable housing. We need affordable housing for a variety of folks We have to start somewhere including seniors. I think too as we move forward with projects like this we want to market these kinds of opportunities for our residents so that's one way that we can try to have more residents here benefit and then oftentimes to there's their step-up opportunities where maybe there's seniors living let's say in a bigger home and they don't need a bigger home they want to maybe live in an apartment and that could you know free up a single-family home in Santa Ana and that's another way that Santa Ana

of families could benefit. So I think there are a lot of benefits to this. We have many communities where it's tough to build housing, new housing of any type. So I'm really proud that our city staff has worked with the surrounding communities and the developers to make this opportunity a reality. So I'm very

proud to support this. Thank you. Thank you. I just have one comment. You don't need to stand up there anymore and that is that I'm going to support as well and the reason is I think as you think of seniors they often are the least able to you know defend their situation they might be on Social Security fixed income they can't work anymore you know limited mobility there's all sorts of difficulties that come with extreme age and and I bet you that there's seniors in this town like everybody else that also need assistance.

So with that, those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? No.

No.

So we have three no's. So motion fails. No, passes. You don't need five of those. You need four. Got it.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

And clerk, do you have the no votes? Do you know who they were? Thank you.

All right. so with that our next item I'm going to councilmember Benavides you requested which item that's actually a councilman's mayor put in time thank you mr. mayor yeah we have a lot of speakers let me hear speakers and then we'll bring it back. Matthew Buck please followed by Christina Scha-Shackler. Hi. Go ahead. Good evening council.

Matthew Buck. I'm the vice president of public affairs with the California Apartment Association. We represent the large members and apartment industry. I just want to share with you that like I said back in February on your housing challenges and affordable challenges we're here with the city to help we're doing everything we can I have reached out to staff we're working closely code enforcement the city manager's office we've I've attended several committee meetings I've also attended the budget meetings I'm trying to get as much information out of what's going on in the

city of Santa Ana and learning what what the challenges are from top to bottom and hopefully we can help move forward with that the housing industry is definitely going to be part of the solution for moving forward on this affordable housing challenge and I look forward to working with you guys and continuing on the relationships and making real solutions and being at the table with you guys and staff and continuing those relationships thank you

thank you Christine followed by a bill Christensen

hi members of the City Council Christine Schechter with the Pacific West Association of Realtors. We represent about 12,000 real estate agents here locally along with 200,000 members statewide and about 1.3 million nationwide investing in private property rights as well as home ownership and we want to let you know that we continue to be a partner in providing housing, housing affordability for all along with solutions locally that can contribute to home ownership and improving and increasing number of housing units for all available within Santa Ana. So thank you for your time.

And again, if you need anything from us, do feel free to reach out. Thank you again.

Thank you, Bill, followed by Ariel Cortez.

Thank you very much. My name is Bill Christensen. I'm the Vice President of Government Affairs for the Apartment Association of Orange County. We just wanted to be here this evening because we know that there's a housing crisis and we are Santa Ana residents as well. We have about 3,000 association members, many of them in Santa Ana, which our offices are as well. And we just want to be here this evening to say that we want to be partners with the city, we want to be partners with the staff, and we want to be part of your solution. Thank you.

Jairo Cortez, followed by Azuri Ramos.

Good evening members of the council. The high cost of rents, evictions and displacement in Santana have created a tenuous conditions for our residents. But you have the power to implement concrete policy solutions that protect our residents' right to remain and thrive. As you've seen in the last few days and the last few months, over 9,000 voters in our city gave their signature to support rent control as well as other tenant protections here in Santana. And many more of our residents who are immigrants and who do not have the right to vote express their support.

Along with the high cost of rents, our residents face numerous other challenges, including the threat of lead contamination and the loss of our public resources. But we are Santana and we've come to present a series of concrete policy proposals to protect our residents' right to remain and thrive. Thank you. Great.

Isuri Ramos, followed by Sarai Adebarpo.

Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem and City Council members. My name is Isuri Ramos and I'm here tonight speaking on behalf of the Kennedy Commission. I'm speaking in support of this platform and the demands that we are presenting here tonight so that residents in Santana can remain and thrive. And I'm also here to speak specifically in support of the creation of a tenant-based rental assistance program. So here in Santana, we know that the reality is that we do not have enough affordable housing. We will not have enough affordable housing being built. And this is especially true for families with extremely low incomes.

We need to provide immediate assistance right now to keep more families from becoming homeless. According to the city of Santana's general plan on its housing element, We know that 57% of renters in Santana spend more than 90% of their income towards housing costs. That means that 57% of our renters, of our residents, are rent burdened, leaving them with less money to spend on basic necessities like food, health care, medicine, transportation, school supplies, and the list goes on. So we're here to ask you tonight to really consider this platform and to please invest in renters,

and that's how you're going to prevent homelessness. Thank you.

Great, thank you. Sarai Arpero, followed by Adala Rios.

LGBTQ students, adults mayors, and a thousand sorry if I forget to forget to anyone else. As you know, the coalition of Santana, formed by 14 organizations and thousands of residents, has had the value of working from the weekends to the weekends without any pay, collecting firmas to put a law and control the rent here in Santana. People with papers and without papers, with fear and without fear, we have traveled the streets of Santana day and night to achieve our goal. The day of yesterday was historic for us, we were able to recaud 9,299 firmas, which were not enough. In these six months, we met more than 9,000 people.

Many of them wanted to sign and couldn't. This is a receipt of the 9,299 firmas, without counting the other 1,000 that are being affected by the displacement through the increases in the income of the rent. It's inhumane that more than 73% of our salaries go to pay rent and survive with the rest. One more, we can demonstrate that a democratic process in this situation is not working, where a 40% of the population can't sign a petition for not being voted. Today we are here with our representatives, where we recognize that in these years, many of you have served to this community of Santana and approved laws.

For example, the Santuario is the Santana's law. But it's also incredible that we are protecting our community, where the 56% of residents are inquilinos, living like we can, not like we can. You have to leave us and our next generation a protection with a control of rent, where we ensure that we remain and prosper, where we don't have to worry about the fear of being displaced by an injustice or a injustices of rent, or a injustices of income. We exigify their legacy in favor of the residents of Santa Ana.

The Ley de Control de Rentas only will allow you to increase the rent a year in a maximum of 5% of the rent that they are currently paying. Establecer a directive that ensures the implementation of the ley. This directive will ensure that we are protected by the represalias for a safe living. And nothing else to let you know, the residents who are not here tonight are working to pay their rent at the end of the month. Thank you.

Good evening, my name is Sarai Arpero and I'm part of the coalition for Santa Ana. I'm a resident and I've lived here in this city for over 15 years. Today I'm here on behalf of all the people who are part of this movement, women, boys, girls, men, women, parents, mothers, community, disabled community, LGBT community, students, and many, many others. I'm sorry if I forget to mention some more. As you know, the Coalition for Santa Ana, formed by 14 organizations and thousands of residents,

we've had the courage to work Monday through Sunday with no pay, collecting signatures, in order to put a rent control measure to vote. And for people with papers, without papers, people who are afraid and people who are not afraid, we walked the streets of Santa Ana day and night to achieve our goal. And today was a historic day to today because we collected 9,299 signatures, which were not enough.

In these six months we met over 9,000 people who wanted, and many of them wanted to sign but could not. This is the receipt of the 9,299 signatures and not counting the thousands of others that are affected and being afraid of being displaced because of unjust rent increases. And it's inhumane that over 73% of our salary goes to pay rent and we have to survive with the rest.

Once again, we have to demonstrate the democratic process and the situation does not work where 40% of the population cannot sign just because they are not voters. Today we are here with our elected representatives and we have supported you for many years. We voted for you for many years who have served in this community of Santa Ana. And you have approved laws such as the Sanctuary City that are not protecting our community. And over 56% of the residents, we are renters. We're living how we can, not how we want.

you have the obligation to give us, give our, the next generations a protection with rent control where we are assured to remain and thrive so we don't have to worry of the fear of being displaced because of the high increases in rent, unfair rent and evictions, unjust evictions. we demand a legacy in favor of the residents of Santa Ana. The rent control law would allow rent increase only once a year,

a maximum of 5% over the current rent. To establish a board that is ensuring the implementation of this law, this board will ensure that the tenants are protected and there are no reprisals against them. and finally there are many people who wanted to be here but they cannot because they are working tonight

Adela Rios followed by Juan Carlos Machado

Adela Rios followed by Juan Carlos Machado Oh, Edela. Ah.

apoyo de su parte lo que a mí me preocupa es que al servir como parte de en el distrito nos enteramos que cinco mil novecientos dos niños están en situación de calle y yo bien los que tienen hijos aquí no o sea no sé si se les piensan un poquito en qué pasaría si sus hijos those considerate in their district as homeless. It's something to think that you can remedy it with a single vote. Ayer was a historic moment because we got to collect 9,299 firmas to have a control of rent.

And if we want a control of rent, only we need four votes more.

cada año hay más de 500 desalojos en la ciudad de santana y cuando estoy diciendo 500 desalojos quiere decir que son 500 porque han tenido que el sheriff se ha tenido que involucrar eso estamos diciendo que hay mucha gente muchos residentes en santana que ni siquiera conocen sus derechos y That number can be tripled because they have fear and they can't wait for their three days to be effective. They have to go for the fear. They can't wait for the fear. When we started the campaign, many families started to come to us asking for help.

Tristly, we are volunteers. A duras penas si tenemos para nosotros y ver esa necesidad en nuestra comunidad, el ver esa necesidad en la ciudad, es triste. Es triste porque no está en nuestras manos solucionarlo. So I'm here because I want you to, if you have a heart, I know that you have a heart, and you have a child, I have something for Santa Ana. Santa Ana needs a control of rent. Santa Ana needs to see that they have a heart and really care about their heart. Antes de que se vayan, dejen un legado.

Que ustedes han hecho la diferencia. Que no se han dejado comprar, sino que realmente son seres humanos que tienen piedad de todas estas familias que están siendo desalojadas. Necesitamos cuatro votos y por favor les pido que apoyen esta plataforma. Buenas noches.

my name is Adalia Rios and it's a pleasure to be here thank you for listening to us I am here to ask you to support to support this what we're doing here housing is an issue that affects us all we have we've been to I have not seen the support from some of you lately but we need your support now I was at the DAC meeting yesterday and we found out that 5,902 children are in a homeless situation. So I don't know if you can put this in perspective, if you can think, if you have your own children,

what would you think if your own children were considered homeless? I'm telling you that you can fix this very easily with a vote. We have 9,299 signatures supporting rent control, but we need, it's not enough, and we need four more signatures to make this happen. Last year there were over 500 evictions in Santa Ana that were documented, and I say this because for these 500, the sheriff was involved, and this number, many of the residents in Santa Ana do not know their rights, and this number would have been tripled because people were afraid

and did not have to wait their three days so that the sheriff would get involved so the numbers would be higher the families came to us for support for help we had to help we helped them we're volunteers we are not much better than they are and but there's a great need in the city of Santa Ana and it is very sad I'm here because I want to know that that you have a heart that you have a heart and you have a roof over your head and you have your children think of think of that and Santa Ana needs rent control Santa Ana needs for people to

see that you care about please leave a legacy before you go please let us know that you have not been bought we need the four votes so please support this

platform

Juan Carlos Macedo followed by Reina Artero

Hola buenas noches a todos estoy aquí para hablar y acerca de la ordenanza de oportunidad de vivienda y agregar el 75% que es requisito mínimo de vivienda accessible. When urban designers want to build projects in the city, the most part is not accessible to the community of low resources. The accessible housing that is not for people. When the requisite is based on with an income of 88,000 dollars a year,

it is a medium income, and not in the reality of Santana, when the income is of 54,000 dollars a year. We need a housing accessible to low-income resources. 30% of the population gains less than 35% a year. This means that there are 100,000 people in the city that need housing and are excluded from the policies of housing access.

So, in my experience, I have not been able to apply for these housing because it is very high or it doesn't comply with my income. ingressos. Y también les hacemos la petición de que escuchen todas nuestras demandas y gracias. Que pasen buena noche.

Good evening. I'm here to ask you for the housing opportunity reform and to add that 75% that is a minimum minimum requirement to have accessible housing. When the builders want to develop projects in the city, for affordable housing that is built, it's not really affordable for the people who are the most needy. And when requirements are based on an income of $88,000 as a median income, they ignore the reality of Santa Ana when the median income is $54,000. We need

guarantee of accessible housing for low extremely low income people 30% of the population earns less than $35,000 a year which means that there are over a hundred thousand people in the city that need housing that are being excluded by our by our accessible housing policies so even I myself have applied and I cannot apply for this housing because the numbers are too high for my income so please listen to our demands

Reina Artero

This is a law that has been in the state of Washington DC. For more than 30 years, it allows if a house or apartment wants to sell, it offers first to sell to their own. In this way, the inquilinos have bought apartments in Washington DC. As a property of housing, if this law existed in Santa Ana, quizás mi vida sería muy distinta ahora. Como les he compartido a algunos de ustedes, yo tengo 26 años viviendo en Santa Ana, en la misma casa.

Santa Ana ha sido mi hogar desde que dejé mi país, pero hace unos meses mi situación cambió. Pusieron mi casa de 26 años en venta y no se me avisó. busque ayuda y me puse de acuerdo con mi familia para hacer una oferta de compra pero el dueño ya había recibido demasiadas ofertas antes de la mía vendieron mi casa y el terreno a un lado en efectivo fueron unos inversionistas que pudieron aprovecharse de mi espacio que está en la calle

4 ahora mismo no sé en dónde voy a vivir me preocupo que me echen de santana después de tanto quedado aquí me preocupa que la calle 4 ya no sea de nosotros disculpen

me preocupa la situación que se pone cada vez peor agradezco que varios de ustedes hayan respondido a mi llamado

el personal de la ciudad

me está apoyando a ver cuáles son mis opciones sin embargo mi situación no está aún resuelta no yo no pueda hay cientos de personas concluya por favor en santana esto no es un caso de persona a persona esto es un problema sistemático y ustedes como nuestros elegidos tienen en sus manos de cambiar estas situaciones y ayudarnos por favor aprueben las varias propuestas de la plataforma permanecer y prosperar para que sigamos en santana por muchos años más yo no me quiero ir de santana

quiero vivir permanecer y prosperar aquí gracias por escuchar

Good evening Mayor, Council Members and City staff. My name is Rayn Artero and I have the opportunity to know you and for you to know me. I'm here to ask and to support the platform of Remain and Thrive and to present to you the proposal of Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act. This is a law that has been enacted in Washington, D.C. for more than 30 years, which allows the owner of a home or apartment complex, if they want to sell, to offer it for sale first to the tenants.

In this way, tenants have purchased entire apartment complexes in Washington, D.C. as a housing cooperative. If this law was in existence in Santa Ana, my life today would be very different. As I've shared with some of you, I've been living in Santa Ana for 26 years in the same house. Santa Ana has been my home since I left my country, but a few months ago, they put my house for sale, the house that I've had for 26 years for sale, and nobody told me. I sought help and I agreed with my family to make an

offer a purchase offer but the owner had already received too many offers before mine they sold the house from under me and the the land next to it for cash it was some investors who could take advantage of my space which is on 4th Street right now I don't know where I'm going to live I am concerned I that they kick me out of Santa Ana after everything I've given here I'm concerned that 4th Street will not be ours any longer. I'm concerned about the situation that is worse every time, every day. I thank you that you have responded to my calls. The city staff has supported me to see

what my options are. However, my situation is not resolved yet and I, just like the hundreds of people in Santa Ana, this is not a case that's person to person or individual case. This is a systemic problem and you as our elected officials have it in your hands to change these situations to help us so please approve the proposal of the the platform thrive to remain and thrive so that we can continue in Santa Ana for many more years I do not want to live leave Santa Ana I want to live to remain and thrive here thank you for listening

Karen Rodriguez followed by Enrique Valencia.

Hello, good evening. My name is Karen Rodriguez. I'm a resident here in Santana. And I'm going to be speaking on item 85A, the People's Platform, in regards to public lands. but I do want to start off by saying those who support the people's platform in public lands. Ellos a quien apoyan la plataforma. Se pueden levantar conmigo.

I just want to make sure you all notice who is here to speak to you today. These are all people being affected by your decisions. by your decision to make these public lands on tax roll instead of community development these people will be directly directly sorry it will be directly affected I oppose and urge the council to stop the sale of public land without a process that allows the community to directly benefit from the development of the lots and that allows residents early meaningful and direct decision-making for the use of the lands a responsible development in Santana has

been fatal to our community. Santa Ana residents are seeing that their city no longer serves them. Instead of continuously prioritizing profit-driven projects such as luxury apartments, expensive grocery stores, clothing stores, and businesses, the city has the opportunity to provide the residents with affordable housing, parks, community centers, and spaces for micro businesses. Over 90 open lots in Santa Ana can be made available for responsible transparent and community-oriented development the process needs to include retaining publicly owned land and making them

serve our community needs and including direct residential participation and input in any established decision-making process development without transparency and accountability betrays every resident here and is dirty politics the proposed policy on tonight's agenda the real property disposition policy item agenda item 19 e does not include these crucial and essential requirements to ensure that living conditions of low-income working class families are enhanced and prioritized tonight the real property disposition policy cannot be received and filed I urge you to support the

people's platform the residents of Santa Ana deserve more the City Council should not receive and file the real property disposition disposition tonight not not now and not ever we deserve our community lands wrap up your community hands again we deserve our community lands in community hands and an actual process that requires residential input and decision-making power thank you

Enrique Valencia

followed by Moises Vasquez good evening everyone my name is Enrique Valencia I'm resident of Santa Ana and I am a part of Orange County environmental justice and I'm here in full support of the people's platform to remain and prosper I'm actually here to speak more in depth about one of the demands which is lead soil mitigation so some of you may be aware that back in 2017 Think Progress published a report showing that there's quite quite a bit of lead contamination across the city of Santa Ana. And so lead is something that's invisible,

but we know that it is extremely toxic. It's something that's really harmful to the health of all residents, particularly the children of Santa Ana. And we know that it creates neurological difficulties as well as child development issues. So we in our organization, we actually are building on that work that was done back in 2017 and we're doing a comprehensive study of the soil of Santa Ana to provide more evidence of what's going on here in the city and so we're here to urge you to ask to ensure that no area in Santa Ana has more than

80 parts per million of lead in the soil and that's actually the figure that was presented by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment that's the number that they came up with as the maximum amount that is safe and we know that some some soils in Santa Ana exceed that amount so so please support the platform and please stand with us and ensure that we have a standard of maximum lead contamination here in Santa Ana thank you thank you

Moises followed by Emily Perraza. Good evening my name is Moises Vasquez. When I was a youth here in Santana many many years ago my parents both worked two jobs and it was still hard to pay rent at the end of the month. My parents had to rent one of our rooms in our apartment to someone else to be able to make ends meet at the end of the month. Today many of the youth that I work with live in the same conditions living in crowded spaces with not a space for their own to do their homework to their studies and this cannot go on for too

long more you need to invest in youth and support this platform and investing our youth and rent control now. Rent control! Thank you guys.

Emily, followed by Araceli Robles.

Hello, good evening. My name is Emily Peraza and I'm here in support of the policies being proposed today. Investing in youth does not mean having uncontrolled rent here in the city of Santana. Investing in youth means having affordable housing for our youth and their families here. Because the rent is too high, many of our youth and our family are being left displaced or living in overcrowded spaces all throughout the city. Youth are being left to worry and stress, which is negatively impacting their development. This can be positively changed with the rent control being implemented.

Not only has this affected my peers, but it has personally affected my family members as well. This isn't something that a youth should be worrying about, knowing whether the place that they're living in is going to be the place that they're living in next month even. I seriously urge all of you to please be thoughtful of all the youth and the family here and pass the rent control. Thank you. Thank you.

ah selling for a baird on isaac abriere

buenas noches a todos las de la mesa directiva de aquí de la ciudad mi nombre es araceli robles yo vivo por la calle ross y la calle 10 este yo vengo a apoyar la plataforma que estamos trayendo esta noche nuestros compañeros y yo porque eso es lo que necesitamos en nuestra ciudad nosotros venimos a hablar por todas las personas que no están teniendo la oportunidad de estar presentes si ahorita todos en esta sala sacáramos un billete de dólar tiene el mismo valor entonces porque nosotros las personas que a veces por cualquier condición no podemos ejercer nuestro voto en estos momentos no tenemos el derecho de

permanecer y prosperar porque la salud mental de nuestros niños se ve tan afectada cuando somos desalojados yo hace dos años fui desalojada de mi casa that I have three days of being here, and that's not a person in this world, I think. Because we are human beings, we pay taxes, like all the people, residents, citizens, all the people, we pay the same taxes, our money has the same value that everyone. I ask that because they take a little bit of their time and really support the control of rentals, that they don't sell our city because Santana no se vende,

se ama y se defiende y nosotros vamos a estar defendiendo la mientras sigamos en nuestra ciudad porque nosotros tenemos que permanecer y prosperar porque amor a nuestros hijos y confiamos en que ustedes realmente nos escuchen y no nomás nos digan aunque ya tu tiempo terminó que te vaya bien para cumplir una agenda

dionisa gabriel

good evening council members of the council my name is Araceli Robles and live on Ross and 10th and I'm here to support the platform that we are here that we bring you here we need this in this is well needed in our city especially for all the people who can't be here who can't be here if we all had took out one dollar here today we don't we'll have it we will have the same value so why as people who can't vote, don't have the same value. They don't have the opportunity to remain and thrive. Two years ago, I myself was evicted and it's a very hard and difficult

situation. No one deserves to be treated like that. We all pay taxes. We're all the same. Residents and everybody else is the same. So please take the time to support the rent control. Santa Ana is not for sale. Santa Ana is here for us to love it and defend so that we can all remain and and and thrive so and we want you to listen to us not only to tell us that our time is up

and then Alma Leyva

good evening my name is Dionisia Gabriel I belong to the for increasing protection of the inquilinos, especially those of the immigrant community.

The city has declared a sanctuary for undocumented residents who live in Santa Ana, as well as the city has taken a position to help with deportations of residents, also we want to do the same for preventing the unemployment and displacement

and the development of the community and please I want to ask you to put a moment in our place our community is suffering a lot of unemployment and we want to support you, you have children and I suppose you will feel that your children are like homeless and we want to help us please. And we are the most vulnerable, our children are suffering more the consequences of being without a home. Please, support us. Thank you.

I'm here to ask you to support this Remain and Thrive. We are here in Santa Ana, the residents and all, to remain and thrive. That's where the residents of Santa Ana, we demand that the City Council approves the reforms in this Remain and Thrive platform to increase protections for tenants, especially for the migrant community because the city declared itself a sanctuary city for undocumented residents that live in Santa Ana and the city took the position not to help out ICE with deportations of residents. We also want you to do the

same to avoid evictions, displacements, and the sale of community lands. So please, we ask you to please support our platform to remain and thrive and to avoid the eviction of people. People suffer a lot when they're evicted and you have children, you wouldn't want them to be to be homeless. They're the most vulnerable they suffer a lot with with homelessness

yeah I mean Daniel

sorry I good evening my name is Alma Leila and I work here in Santana I would like to express my support for the people's platform brought to you tonight. Through my work with Santana residents I have seen firsthand the amount of stress and hardship that the increasingly high rents have on families. Santana tenants are fighting a lonely uphill battle to remain and provide stable homes for their families. We need counsel to support and leadership to create a level playing field for folks that live here in Santana. High rents are not the only thing that residents have to worry about.

Many of the folks I work with have faced unjust evictions and live in fear of speaking up because anything can get them evicted. We need you to pass the platform that includes rent control and just cause eviction protection citywide. The residents of Santana deserve to remain and prosper here in their city and this is an opportunity for you all to leave a legacy of equity and to stand up for the thousands of residents in Santana whose life can be positively impacted by this platform. Thank you.

Thank you, Sylvia.

followed by adela montañas

buenas noches yo soy silvia bendano viví 17 años en la ciudad de santana fui desalojada del 305 de la main lágrimas ya no tengo ya lloré lloré bastante sentí mucho el trauma de ser desalojada después 17 years and now what I ask is that in your hands and that we are here, we are asking that we are going to be here, how? Approval of the rent control, the high of the unemployment and that we allow

to remain and prosper in Santana. I can't say anymore, it's a trauma to be de ser desalojado que tu familia se fracture que los niños se traumen que mi mascota se pierda yo no tuve hijos se me perdió en el traslado no la encuentro la busco por las calles todos los días yo solo les pido que nos ayuden y que pasen a la historia como una una organización que hizo mucho por toda la gente que estamos sufriendo gracias

good evening my name is Silvia Avedano and I lived in Santana for 17 years I say lived because I was evicted from 305 Main Street and I've cried all my tears there's no more tears to cry it's a very traumatic process to be evicted after 17 years and now this this thing is in your hands we're asking you to make history here to here to approve by approving rent control and to avoid evictions from people it was a traumatic experience to be evicted the eviction history is traumatic it

fractures families it loses pets I lost my pet a pet that I love and I keep looking for my pet on the streets every day so please help us tonight and make history by helping the people who are suffering

buenas noches mi nombre es Adela Montañez y yo trabajo en la ciudad de Santana por 22 años con la comunidad. Y recuerdo en mis años de juventud, cuando fui a la escuela, un autor español, Salvador Allende, que dijo estas palabras,

Escuchadme, soberanos y vasallos, nadie tiene derecho a lo superfluo mientras alguien carezca de lo estricto. And this is very profound, a very profound philosophy, because every day I go to that community and listen to children with trauma because they are living in the car, children who are living in the car, children who are living with problems of learning in the schools, for lack of a home because they don't know if they live in the 5th or 4th and I also listen to that community say what we can do

the organization where I work says the participation has the difference but the participation of who? the community, the people that represent us like you, like the Council of the City. Unirnos all, organizations non-lucrative, companies, people who have money and power to make change in the community. Sometimes we don't see it, but the day of tomorrow we don't know if some of our children or our family needs that we can provide in the power and quality that we have as human beings.

I ask you to please, that the prayer that we have in the beginning of this meeting, that prayer that we have the wisdom of being able to choose the right decision. Because most of the people who are here are the need, we need, we need to do that. And we want to make that difference. please think that this platform is something that is important for us to be able to continue

in this city and make it big, make it big as we are supporting, because the people who make a difference are here and you are part of that difference. Thank you.

good evening my mother lamenting I said I've been working for the Santa Ana community for 22 years when I was young and I went to school I had a visit from a Spanish poet Salvador Allende and he said listen rulers and and the commoners people do not have the right to the superfluous when others are lacking the basics. So children are suffering trauma by living in cars. Children, their learning is troubled because they don't know if they'll have housing. They don't know whether they'll be living in 4th Street tonight or 5th Street tonight. They don't know.

My organization has a motto that participation makes a difference, but participation from whom? From the representatives, from all of us together, from you who are here in the front, from the non-profits, from the businesses, from the people who have the money in the community. We don't know if in the future your own children will have this need, my children will have this need in the future. So think, I would like you to think about this situation. And also we had the invocation at the beginning of the meeting and he asked for wisdom. so I ask you for the wisdom to make the right decision here tonight.

The people here need you to make a difference. This platform is important for us to help this city prosper. And how? By supporting it. People who make a difference are here, and you are part of those people who can make a difference.

Elizabeth Martinez, followed by Jonathan Hernandez. Elizabeth Martinez.

Thank you.

platform, I'm going to be able to support this platform because it also affects me, right? And as a volunteer of some schools, I've been aware that there are many people who are living in carros. Many young people have had problems for that. I support what she said, my colleague Adela, that sometimes, for example, they don't know what day they are going to live in what street, right? They are going to sleep in what street. entonces este con el temor de que la policía los vaya a pues les vayan a dar un ticket entonces este

yo creo que ese es un problema muy grande que tenemos ahorita quien santana y yo creo que todos podemos estar hablando mucho del tema este pero lo que queremos es una solución a este problema y que ustedes como miembros del concilio que nos apoyen en esto con las organizaciones este no look at the bus in a community much other assets

good evening members of the council I'm here to as a resident of Santa Ana and a renter so I'm here to support this platform because I am directly affected by it as a school volunteer I see many people who have this problem who have children who are living in cars and as Adela said there are many children who don't know where on which street they will be sleeping tonight and they're afraid that the police might see them and ticket them it's a big problem here in Santa Ana so we can talk a lot but we want solutions instead the city we want

you to support this and to support this situation and thank you. Jonathan

Hernandez followed by Nancy Mejia. Jonathan Hernandez followed by Nancy Mejia.

Good afternoon council my name is Jonathan Hernandez I'm a resident and homeowner in the city of Santa Ana and I'm here today to support the policy put forth by the people. Many of you claim to have public safety as a top priority as elected officials. There will be no public safety without housing security. The City of Santa Ana claims to be education first. There will be no one to educate as you continue to eradicate families from their homes. Without supporting housing stability, you are directly harming the seniors that live within our city of Santa Ana.

You are dismantling public education by not supporting this housing ordinance and you are contributing to the homeless crisis that we are facing in the city of Santa Ana. I ask that you each take yourselves outside of these seats and remember that these people elected you to serve these residents here. what you guys are doing is harming the families that trusted you to make decisions for for the betterment of our city this is irresponsible if there are council members here that are not going to be supportive of this policy and shame on you if you vote no on this

Nancy Mejia followed by Gemma Juarez

Hi everyone, I'm actually going to join my comment with Andrew and Camila, so he's going to go first. Hello, my name is Andrew. And my name is Camila.

We are students at Garfield Gator Elementary School and we both love math.

The reason why we're here is because there's nearly 6,000 kids that don't have homes. And I want you, the city government, to make clean neighborhoods and homes where they can play there. Thank you. You want to say something else? Stay here, stay here, stay here. Hi, everyone. So my name is Nancy Mejia. I work with Latino Health Access and we're part of the coalition that is coming before you today and we strongly support this platform and we're urging you to

approve these policies. Over the years we've come time and time again asking for you to adopt policies and you have told us that these issues need comprehensive solutions. Today we are bringing a package of comprehensive solutions and just like Andrew and Camila I just want to share three statistics that have been on my mind the last few days. One is that 40% of the population in Santana cannot vote. 30% of the population makes less than $35,000 in household income. And 30% of the population spends more than 60% of their income on rent. So that's about 100,000 people in this city that have the right to remain and prosper.

So there are 100,000 more Camilas and Andrews in this city that deserve the right for you to stand up. And instead of having us collect 10,000 signatures to put this on the ballot, we know that we only need four. And they're all sitting here today. So you have the option of adopting these policies. And I really want you to think about, do you have the political will? We have families that have put a lot on the line the last few years. They have put on the line their apartments, their housing. Some of them have been threatened with evictions. Their rents have been raised.

ICE has been called on them. You have heard some of their testimonies today. I'm gonna ask you what are you putting on the line? Are you willing to put as much on the line as they have? And so we urge you today to really consider this platform and to support the families that are here today and that are all working and can't be here. Thank you.

Gemma Juarez. Daniela Garcia Después.

Hello, good evening. I'm Gemma Suarez, with an S. And I've been a volunteer of El Centro Cultural de Mexico. One thing that I learned there was the importance of participatory democracy, and that is something that here like it should be practice and well right today it's a really good opportunity for you to just adopt the how do you call it in English remain and

prosper platform instead of 9,000 signatures that were already collected from renters or voters in Santana. We just need four signatures or four people to approve this, right? And just pass it. It seems very easy. So en español, yo soy voluntaria del Centro Cultural de México ya por unos 10 años. Algo que aprendí ahí es la participación democrática y la importancia de que eso se ponga en práctica, that it seems to be happening here in the city.

But today is a very good day to adopt that platform to remain and prosper. And it's... Only need four votes of you to make this happen. And it's very easy. No, no, no. Lo pueden hacer hoy. Si se puede y si lo pueden. Y eso es lo que se exige. And that's what it's being demanded.

it thank you thank you Vainera Garcia called by Isabel Lopez good evening it

It would be a better evening if we passed rent control today.

My name is Daniel Garcia, and I'm an organizer with Tu Santa Ana, and I'm an adamant supporter of the platform to remain and prosper.

For the last five months, we have canvassed across the city and gathered thousands of signatures to protect the livelihoods of thousands of people who are struggling to pay rent. We have seen everything from one-bedroom apartments crammed with five, six, seven people, to recently evicted single mothers of four kids with disabilities with nowhere to go and little money to spare.

Families who have had to compromise food for rent several times a week, who are living off cup noodles and quesadillas for breakfast and dinner, children living with strangers because they have no other place to live, children living in cars. I have met trans women, trans women of color, undocumented trans women, many disowned by their families who already struggle to find a job, struggling the hardest to not be evicted. Trans women are among the most vulnerable as they do not only deal with unstable working and living conditions, but also fear harassment and violence every time we walk on the streets.

High rents affect trans women of color first. Push into the streets, many of us go missing, and no one gives a damn. Rent control and rent assistance programs are a matter of life or death. I have been that person. forced to share a room with several people due to rising rents, family unable to keep up with rising rents and forced back to Mexico. I have been that child struggling in school due to unstable living conditions. I have been that kid and that trans woman. Tu Santana and tenants have put their livelihoods and housing on the line for change. It is the people with the least who have

put in the most work, who have sacrificed the most to help the community survive. And it's ironic that you all with the most to give cannot even spare a vote for this bill for this initiative so shame on y'all and I hope you reconsider. Thank you. Isabel Lopez. Marco Moreno. Good evening I thank you all for listening for our testimonies and you guys do an awesome job. I just want to ask for you guys to listen carefully what I'm about to say. I'm speaking as a mother, a

daughter, kids. I've been all my life in Santa Monica. I'm already a third generation that's heading homeless. My grandkids are right now. Are they sleeping in the van and I can't have them with me because I live in affordable housing and I'll get a big day. But what really really hurted me is that made me get up and speak is that I got cancer you know I don't want to live for me from here and knowing that my grandkids are homeless and I can't help them I'm supposed to be there for my grandkids I'm supposed to be there for

my daughter I'm supposed to help them and I can't and and and then making fun of them you know because they're living in a my daughter Jennifer Perdoza David were told a set of back their president football team and cheerleaders my two grandkid my kids grandkids are not thugs they don't they're gonna scope because they're selling drugs or because they want to be gangbangers they're out because they can't afford housing because they don't have enough money they're working all my kids have ever worked but you know what really hurted

me my grandson told me that he wasn't be a criminal because at least he'll have a roof over his head in jail I mean if that doesn't hurt what will you know I understand we all gotta do what we gotta do for our families but I'm from Santana been from that son but I'm gonna be from Santana I mean you guys do what you guys gotta do you know then you we all have families but just please I just want to say you know what I'm gonna I'm a diaper person but my kids have a home I really do I'm asking I'm asking them I'm clean I'm begging if you guys

want me to go up there it's on my knees I would that's all I ask how much and then for so many years we're helping out for what my grandkids tell me for we could be homeless so a lot of people don't want to volunteer anymore because everyone at this wall should end up getting the bad end of the stick. To me, it's life. No? Well, school, you know? But... Thank you. Okay, you're welcome. Thank you.

Marco Moreno, called by Marta Sanchez.

Good evening. My name is Marco Moreno, and my work is here in Santa Ana. And I would like to express my support for the proposals brought to you tonight. I hope that much like the collaborative effort that was highlighted and praised between the Santa Ana government and the private sector of Santa Ana, that the city council can collaborate on the needs this coalition of Santa Ana organizations have critically considered. You guys have praised this collaborative effort. We don't have the mayor of Los Angeles calling for you guys to listen.

But

I'd like to express my support for rent control and to review the eviction protections citywide, to help alleviate the high costs of rents on Santa Ana's low-income residents.

And much like you, we want to ensure that our communities do not fall deeper and deeper into poverty and homelessness that's it thank you thank you Martha Sanchez well

followed by Alexis Nava

hi my name is Marla Sanchez and my family has lived in Santana for four generations. I am a single low-income mother. My two daughters are here with me and we live in a house with my grandmother who I caretake for and I remember as a child my grandparents telling me that they were worried about being displaced by high-income luxury apartments by Disney encroaching in and we live over by Willowick golf course and right now we're seeing that they're trying to develop and I'm asking you to support community land trusts because my My kids would like to have a place that they can go. The park by our house is not up kept well.

There's no skate parks. There's no place for our families to go and be and hang out that's not commodified. My kids would like to go and have a place where we can afford to eat, a grocery store within walking distance. I think that our families deserve that. We deserve rent control. We all deserve to stay in the city where we grew up, in the city where our families are, in the cities where our communities are here to support us. I feel like with these people behind me, they're part of my family. I don't want to move to another city. I don't want them to move to another city.

I want us all to be able to stay and continue to support each other and to support our youth to fulfill their dreams. They're our future. They deserve that. And I hope that you make the right choice here in support of the People's Platform.

Alexis Nava and then Deborah Castro.

good evening good night council so my name is Alexis Teodoro and I work for Santana building health communities I'm also a tenant here in Santana graduated from the school district here and I'm here to support the Remain and Thrive platform for many reasons but more than anything I there's two things that I really want to get across because for some of us it's not the first time that we're here the one thing that I think I would really like to point out to the Council is that we have made policy together collectively that has created positive results

in the city. When we do it collectively, we win because we address our needs when we get to know each other from our one-on-one basis. I know that you know our situation, so we don't need you just to hear us. We really need you to be bold and brave. You know, we're getting closer to the end of the year, there's holidays coming up, we cannot afford to have kids being homeless in the city. That's a multi-generational issue. It happened to us when we were younger, it continues to happen. When will that bold leadership come through in Santana that stops the cycle of poverty? That's the first point that I want to get across.

The second point is regarding the simple fact that people have repeated that we have collected over 9,000 expenditures for rent control, but yet we know that we only need four tonight. So I really, I really want you to think about how can we take the policy making in the city to be bold and brave, because that's what we need in these times. That's what we absolutely need to survive. The lack of investment costs lives, and I'm not making this up. I know you all know how it is in your words. People die every day on the streets over violence,

violence, gang violence, the lack of investment on the youth that's multi-generational. Honestly, that needs to stop. We need that bold leadership that you have taken before because we know that you can do it and we need you to bring that back because we need it. Thank you.

Thank you. Deborah Castro followed by David Carvajal.

Hello. Hi. I'm really nervous this is my first time doing this. So I'm Debra Castro. I'm a local teacher and I did some of the collecting of signatures for rent control and for Prop 10 in California right before that. I'm here to ask you guys to pass rent control and just cause eviction protections. My background is probably a lot different from everyone else's

in the room. It usually is. Short story, in 2016 I moved to Mountain View in Silicon Valley and I took a job as a Spanish teacher for a very high income community. I quickly learned as I tend to do because I'm very interested in politics about the history of the city and if you want to know what the end project of not having rent control looks like you can go to Silicon Valley and find lots of people that are exactly the same in terms of social economic background, in

terms of ethnic background, and it was a really big wake-up call to me that pretty serious things were happening happening in California. I really would like Santa Ana and Orange County not to look like that. I like social economic diversity. I like ethnic diversity. I'm from Peru. I was raised here. I've always had friends of many backgrounds. The last thing that I will leave you with is that I am a lifelong student of economics. Right now we have very large disruptions in the retail

sector due to Amazon. We are losing thousands and thousands of jobs. And I really think that for the people who feel that they right now don't need rent control, if this is not enacted they soon will and I really believe that we really need social security nets right now because things are changing really quickly so that's all

thank you thank you David followed by Alma Lebron good evening I'm gonna keep

it pretty brief. My name is David Carvajal and I am a resident of Santana, born and raised in the community, proud product of the Santa Ana Unified School District, and I'm a community health worker working day in and day out with community members living at the intersections of economic injustice and a broken immigration system, and I see this every day. But I'm not here to speak on the experiences of other people. I'm here to speak also on the experience of my family. In the last nine months, rent at home has increased about 25 percent. I did the math. About

25 percent in less than a year. And this is what we're seeing, that our communities are not being able to afford rent. They're having to choose over doctor's visits and food. But I just want to echo the sentiments, right? The sentiments of community members here fighting for rent stabilization because housing justice is a migrant justice issue, right? It is a racial justice issue and it is also a public health issue. Some of you were elected and sit here today with the support of community members

here that are in the front lines of this work. The people of Santana deserve humane living conditions. What we don't deserve is a backpedaling, flip-flopping city council playing with the livelihoods of our communities. Stop lining the pockets of developers and investors. Listen to us. We need rent control. We need just cause evictions. Do it. Do it for the people you serve. Do it for the people you take pictures with every day out in the community, you know, running elections. Do it. Thank you.

Alana, followed by Citele Ruiz.

Good evening. My name is Alana LeBron. I'm an assistant professor of public health and Chicano Latino studies at the University of California at Irvine, and I work here in Santana. I'm here in solidarity with the coalition and the people's platform to remain and prosper. As was mentioned earlier this evening, a recent investigative report found that several areas in Santana had soil lead levels that were three to ten times higher than the Environmental Protection Agency's cut point for lead toxicity. That is three to ten

times higher than the cut point of 400 parts per million of lead in the soil. And we know that Latina, Latino, Latinx, and black children are at greatest risk for having high blood lead levels. In Santana, children are 64% more likely than children across California to have elevated blood lead levels. And there are important health consequences. Evidence shows that early life lead exposures are linked with adverse neurological and cognitive outcomes. They affect school performance and educational attainment and also

cardiovascular risk and cognitive function later in the life course. And these health consequences of lead exposure are exacerbated under stressful life conditions. Lead never leaves our bodies, it deposits in our bones and is re-expressed in our blood when we are stressed. So the current data from this investigative report show a need to take action. And this report has activated questions about the distribution of soil lead throughout the city, about who is at greater risk for exposure to soil lead, and what the sources are of soil lead and how it got here, and why in particular children in Santana are more

likely than children across California to have elevated blood lead levels. Since 2017 I've worked with Orange County Environmental Justice and Jovenes Escultivando Cambio to design and implement a soil lead study here in Santana. We're finishing up our process of sampling 500 locations throughout the city and we'll be looking at the total lead levels and we'll be tracing the sources of lead to the historical and current sources. Our expectation is that this work will enhance our understanding of these environmental justice concerns as we work to create a healthier environment and we ask that you support

the platform of remediating soil lead in Santana. Thank you. Thank you.

Titali Ruiz followed by Paul Gonzalez.

Miss Ruiz. Paul why don't you come on down. Paul Gonzalez.

Good evening, Council. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen this evening. And thank you to all the residents who came out today to share their stories. I don't have much more to add other than my voice in support of our residents and in support of the health of our community. We can't have a healthy community if we have a community that is suffering from housing insecurity. So I ask you to take action tonight and move forward in a bold direction and bring our residents the relief that they need to feel safe in their homes. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. And I believe, Madam Clerk, do we have more speakers or is that it? Go ahead.

Anna Torres.

Good evening, my name is Anna Torres and I serve as a fiduciary during the courthouse of Orange County. I am a byproduct of the Sanana City. I was born and raised. I was a teen mom. The issue was that at home my mother was often displaced from homes due not having jobs, not having enough money for rent, not having a safe place to be. At 17, 18 years old, I moved out of my house with my boyfriend. I became a teen, pregnant young lady. I struggled a lot with domestic violence. I overcome. I'm still currently

studying to become a lawyer. I think that you need to support these people, and we need to remain in the city of Santana because we have gone through so much we have generations my great-great-grandparents lived here worked here and went back to Mexico just perfectly fine I believe that we put in so much into this this community in the city that we be we belong here and this is the place where we need to raise our children I'm very proud to be from Santana and I would like for you to support this please um it would only create more teen women to be out there

obviously having children at a very teenage dropping out of high schools not going to college it will not create a very healthy environment for our youth and our futures so I hope that you can support this platform thank you Anna

that was our last speaker so let me bring it to council for a discussion who Who would like to go first?

Go ahead. Juan Villegas.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. A while back, was it in February, Mr. Villegas, yeah, that we met and we talked about this issue. You know, I still believe that rent control isn't the answer for a lot of things. Have you talked, you had your time, I'm going to talk now. And I did meet with a group and they came out and I told them, hey, you need to come back with a list of apartment owners that were not taking care of the apartments. They weren't, you know, there was low quality of life. They weren't keeping up with the cleanliness or any of the zoning or anything that, you

know, everyone deserves a clean and safe place to live and to report them. And no one ever came back to me. Instead, I believe the movement got started and they started collecting signatures. But I don't believe that rent control is the issue because we still need housing. If you got rent control, there still wouldn't be housing. I'd rather concentrate on workforce housing. I know today, earlier, we voted on some senior citizen housing, but we do have quite a bit. And if we create some more, we're going to invite people from outside, senior citizens, and come here and live in those facilities or in those housing units

when we could have some workforce housing. And that's where I want to concentrate. I'm still open for discussion with all the groups because they never came back. And there's one thing that I don't stand for is the slumlords. I don't believe in that. The people need to have a safe, clean environment. Our code enforcement people that we had here earlier at the beginning of the meeting, those are the folks that go out and ticket and look into all the complaints that have to do with the buildings and the zones and so forth. So that is my comment, and I am open for discussion.

By the way, there is nothing to vote on tonight. There's no policy in front of us. If you read the item, it says we're here for discussion. That's brought forth by our Mayor Pro Tem. who I had a very long conversation with, and we see eye to eye on a lot of things, and we need to have a discussion, but nobody came back, and that was back in February. So, thank you, Mr. Mayor, that is my comment.

Thank you. Additional comments? Councillor Benavides?

Thank you, Mayor. I do want to thank all of the speakers who came and addressed us tonight. Clearly this is a very sensitive issue and one that can, and very personal, I think personal to a lot of people. The idea of having instability or insecurity in one's home, one's housing situation, is something that is unsettling for families, parents, for kids.

I've seen situations firsthand with people I know having lost their home, a close family friend who lost their home and was living in their car with their two little ones, ages one and three. Now, family, we had a couple of children, foster children, that ended up in our home out of being out of lack of housing, out of being homeless. You know it's something that can affect any of us at any given time a number of years back. Personally

I went through a very difficult time, went through a divorce and went from a double income home to a single income home. Went, came close to losing my own home and close to within living basically month to month trying to figure out whether I was going to be able to stay my own home or whether I was going to have to figure something else out, potentially go to a family or see where else I could end up going with my own

kids so I know that from a personal experience that this is, having a stable home is important and it can affect us, any of us, and any of us can be in a situation of insecurity and instability. It was back in February when we started talking about potential solutions or ideas. And we had folks both from members of the community, folks from property owners and apartment owners who came and addressed us. And I was hoping that we would be able to continue that conversation, figure out how can we come

together. And I understand and I respect the efforts that were made to gather signatures and so that that point then the conversation stopped. And I recognize that at this point we have, at least with this council that has been working through and working with the community, there will be some changes here. A couple of us have just a couple meetings after tonight, two or three meetings left. And so we have very limited time.

I do think that there are alternatives, things that we might be able to do. I know Mayor Pro Tem has been gathering some information and providing us some information and so what I want to communicate tonight is that there there are I want to ask us as my colleagues to keep an open mind see if there's something we might be able to do and for cap for for staff as well to see what tools we might have currently within our available to us whether it's housing

Opportunity Ordinance, housing funds, or other mechanisms that we might be able to introduce by which to be able to provide support to the families of Santana. Santana is a beautiful city and a lot of people have been working very hard to make this a very strong, vibrant and diverse community, socioeconomically, culturally. The example of Silicon Valley was presented earlier by one of the speakers. and frankly there's a lot that Central Northern California has to offer. One of those things that it doesn't have to offer is accessible housing to families in a lot of ways.

I love San Francisco but I don't necessarily want Santana to become an outpriced city as is San Francisco. So we need to come up with some creative solutions. I believe we can, and I implore us to look through that in an expeditious fashion to see if we can address some solutions. So keeping an open mind and want to ask other colleagues to address.

Thank you for your comments.

Councilor Regis Armiento.

Thank you, and thank you to all the speakers who spoke, and especially Mayor Pro Tem Martinez for bringing this before us so we can have it as a discussion point. You know, somebody mentioned a quote from Salvador Allende earlier, There's another quote that says the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. So this has been a long discussion. This has been a long road and a long path. But I do recall in February that there was an opportunity for us to sit down and talk about this. And I think that people on both sides were open-minded about it.

And I think that those in the industry, in the apartment industry, certainly were willing to sit down. And that's one of the hopes that we had was just being able to sit down and being able to discuss what are the issues, what can we do, short of capping rents, short of being really dogmatic in our approach, but problem-solving this issue. And to me, what I see is that many other cities have been able to achieve this. Maybe not capping, but making sure that tenants, because more than 50% of our residents are renters.

So we can't ignore the fact that a very large segment of our population don't own their homes and are living sometimes month to month in a very uncertain situation. So we have to find a way to address those concerns and to create a better environment for them to live in. so you know my hope is that we can take give some direction to staff tonight and be more constructive with this and have them come back with some data for us and see what we can do again as councilman benaviva said in a very short order these aren't issues that are new we've been

dealing with this for a long time and i think that the the industry as they committed to doing and working with us back in February, I'm sure committed to doing the same now. But one of the things I think that we need to look at are retaliatory evictions. I think we have a lot of property owners and landlords that unfortunately will retaliate by evicting tenants or residents, renters who object to exorbitant rent increases, and I don't think anybody wants that. I'm sure that the apartment industry doesn't want that.

They don't want people living in uninhabitable conditions, deplorable conditions, and spiking rents 10 to 20 percent within a year. So to the extent that we can come up with some reasonable recommendations to this council on how we can find a good model, and I know Mayor Pro Temp provided us with some examples of different cities in Sacramento has come to mind. and Sacramento's done a very good job of getting buy-in from the BIA there and the Apartment Association to reconcile those challenges because those of you in the industry have to recognize folks have gathered more than 9,000 signatures.

They can gather them again, and next time they'll meet that threshold. And so we're going to be back here, so why not come up with a good solution? Let's just come up with something that works.

So a few of the things that I would suggest is that we also look at allocating some of the housing opportunity monies towards rental assistance for those who qualify. Because the whole premise behind the housing opportunity ordinance was to help address housing needs, to create more affordable housing. but we also have to realize that for rental assistance that's also a way to assist folks from not losing their their residency not losing their home and so I think that that's a good way to to look at that CDBG monies should be looked at

assisting and these are all things that were itemized by mayor pro temp so you know these are the things I can get behind because CDBG monies those are call community development block grants we use them for different nonprofits but look what's more important than helping people stay in their homes and help people and prevent people from becoming homeless we see homelessness everywhere it's rampant we're just going to create another layer of homeless families if we don't do anything now so I would certainly support that as well as using our Section 8 vouchers to address this as well.

To our staff, I know we have a lot on the books already through our prep program, and we recognize our code enforcement team tonight. To the extent we can revisit that and see what we can do to be more effective in the way that we go after some of our property owners and landlords who are absentee landlords who let other properties fall into decay. My concern is that these apartment homes, these complexes that are maybe older and older stock and older inventory are purchased up.

And those aren't affordable housing complexes, but to the extent that they're older inventory, they are lower in cost and they are affordable to many of our families. To the extent that those get purchased and gobbled up, those are no longer an option for folks. and we push those folks out and we displace them to other communities. And I think we've heard a number of residents talk about there being generational ties to our city. And so that's something we don't want to disrupt because that will change our identity. That will change who we are as a city.

So I'm not going to say any more because there's another long list of items that I think Mayor Pro Tem could go ahead and cover, but those I'm very, very supportive of, and I would give direction to staff to please come back with some suggestions and recommendations on those. Thank you.

Thank you. Mayor Potan-Martinez.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and please bear with me. You know, I've been very emotional these past couple days. You know, I've been spending a lot of time out there in our community with the homeless population. And Friday, we all experienced heavy rains. and you know I was out there and just to see that population and if you weren't near the Civic Center and when you saw that heavy rain coming down and how they were all just trying to gather under one place for shelter it broke my heart

because it's our children as well that are experiencing this and our families

And you know, I come from humble beginnings. I know what it is to sleep in a car. I know what it is to sleep in a garage conversion. I know what it is to sleep in a shack. I know how it feels not to have stability. It's been my entire life. And I get emotional because it has an impact on the child's life. And when you don't have a secure home, you can't get a good education. You can't even think about getting a good education. You can't expect

parents who are working three jobs to go out and vote or to get involved in their community because they're purely making ends meet. This is the life of the majority of the residents in this community. And I'll tell you as I've done the research I'm ashamed, I'm ashamed of this city government and that the neglect it's had for over 30 years

of not building the appropriate housing, not updating its general plan, a comprehensive update of its general plan for over 30 years, and not updating its zoning code for 60 years. This is not by accident. This is by design.

Look, history does not crawl. It jumps. And let me repeat that. History does not crawl. It jumps. And it has jumped time and time again from council to council.

we can't allow this to happen anymore but I will tell you that rent control is not the answer just like not updating a general

plan and thinking that you can build market rate housing at the levels that we had that we were going to stabilize our market here no, those things have not worked because we have not done a comprehensive housing solutions plan that is going to help every single resident. And I just want to read this to you because it took me hours in doing this research. And just let me just start and read this, Mayor. Just give me some patience. So last Wednesday, our city clerk informed us that the advocates for rent control would be submitting signatures to qualify for the ballot in 2020.

They did not get enough signatures, but this is a sign that our residents are seeking relief from rental increases and lack of attainable housing supply in this city. I personally do not support rent control in our city because it has unintended consequences, such as displacement and development of new housing. But I do believe in my heart that we have to do something today and provide our residents with some relief until we have a sound strategy to stabilize rents and provide attainable housing for all Santa Ana residents at all incomes, but especially the extremely and very low income residents.

It is estimated by our city staff, and it was done in a report not too long ago, that we need about 5,000 low-income units and about 1,200 units of homeless housing. I'm going to tell you, based on the trends that we see here today, that homeless population is only going to increase. As I look at these trends, and I'm not going to go over all of them, but what I really want to do read, and these are regional trends from the Orange County Indicators Report.

In 2016-2017, there were 27,119K pre-K through 12 grade students who were identified as homeless or living in unstable housing arrangements in Orange County. The majority of those residents and those homeless population live in Central Orange County. Where do you think Central Orange County is at? Right here. These are real numbers. This is not Michelle Martinez making this up. This is an Orange County Indicators Report where the Orange County Business Council supports these numbers,

where many organizations have supported this Indicators Report year after year. And these numbers have not changed. They are increasing. And that's what this report said in 2018. And lastly, you know, when we look at all the affordable housing that we've had in this city from 1988 to 2018, and you break it all the way down between the rehab apartments, affordable housing units, special needs housing,

senior housing, shelter for homeless, single family home ownerships. There's no more than 2,000 units out of the 78,000 units of housing we have in this city. And I wanted to share this other number. When you look at the current amount of people who are on the waiting list in Santa Ana for Section 8 housing, 16,000 on the waiting list. We only have 2,700 tenant-based vouchers. And the current affordable housing developments that we have in place we have 5,386 people

wanting to rent one of those units and are on the waiting list. That's a total of 21,386 people waiting in this city to find affordable

housing. Santa Ana is in a housing crisis. I think we all know that and we need a plan yesterday. It is lagging on building the needed housing for Santa Ana residents. The most common housing type for Santa Ana is detached single-family homes. Approximately 53% of housing is single-family homes and 42% is multifamily apartments. Furthermore, as I look at the city's current housing stock, 52% was built before 1970, while 48% of that housing stock was built after 1970. And I repeat this again. History does not crawl. It jumps. We repeat ourselves.

It repeats over and over again. And so as I look at the city's housing stock, the way we've built, and how we've built affordable housing, ladies and gentlemen, we're never going to get to where we need to get and sustain this city economically if we do not find ways and to leverage opportunities in working together. because I'll tell you right now, Santa Ana has 1,200 properties off the tax rolls. And if you don't believe that that doesn't matter, it matters.

If you don't believe that this city is in a financial crisis, you're mistaken.

And the only way this city generates its revenue is from two major sources. That's property tax and sales tax. And we all know what's happening with sales tax. We all know that most people are starting to shop online and the impact it's having to sales tax. And now in California and more so here in this community, you have more renters than you have property owners. So how do you think this city is going to generate revenue? We don't control the purse strings. We don't control the formula. The state of California does.

And so how do you think that we're going to be able to pay for our police services, our fire service, our code enforcement, our planning? Let me tell you, we don't have a blank check that we just could write overnight and tell you that we're going to be able to pay for all of that if we don't figure out our housing solutions. And so I just want to encourage my colleagues. I put together, I did research and looking across this country, the best approaches to how to help mitigate some of these issues. Because I'll tell you that we're never going to be able to say we're going to find a solution to end homelessness.

or we're going to be able to build the amount of affordable housing in three years or five years, because here from 2008 to the present, we were only able to build really 258 units of new affordable housing. That's 10 years.

We are nowhere near going to be able to meet the amount, what they're saying, of very low-income 5,000 units. Not going to happen. What we have in the pipeline, I could show those numbers, but I'm going to conclude with the end, is that I believe that there are strategies here in place that this city council can adopt that are middle of the road, that can get us to building that housing and working with the right developers who are not going to be greedy, who are going to come into this community to do the right thing. I'm not against the development community.

I'm not against organizations, but what I want to make very clear is the following. That when we have these groups continuing to support the same people over and over and expecting a different result, that's called insanity. And that's what's happened not only in this county, but across this country. That we elect people who really don't support housing or don't want to make the tough decisions because they want to get reelected again. They want to play it safe.

Well, we don't have time to play it safe anymore. I've always said that I'm going to make decisions that some people are not going to support, whether it's the community, and guess what? There were times where the community went against me, my colleagues went against me, others went against me. But what I've always said, that if I'm not doing the job, recall me, get rid of me, don't vote for me. I've always said that. I've always been independent.

I've always been true to what I believe, and I really believe that this is the moment in time that this city council needs to step up and do what's right for this community before we have bigger problems. And they are coming. And with that, Mr. Mayor, I want to make sure that I put this into the record, the Sacramento middle-of-the-road concept that I want to give credit to, that I believe that this is something that we can work with and the strategies that I put forward for long-term strategies to build the housing that we need in this community. Thank you.

Thank you.

I agree with some of the things that Mayor Pro Temp spoke about. You know, she did say that rent control is not the answer. And let me tell you why I believe that. I believe that cities that I'm familiar with that have rent control basically freeze in time. Those renters that are in those places never move out. Housing starts to decay, and nobody wants to come into those communities and build. And we need to replenish our housing stock. We're currently the fourth densest city in the country.

There's a lot of people living here. I think it's a great city to live in. It's a city that people travel to want to come and visit. They travel, and when they get here, they want to stay here. And there's a lot of beautiful people here making their lives here in the city. And so I am willing to talk about, you know, some of these strategies and what Sacramento is doing and how we leverage and what we do. but I think you know unintended consequences is something that we should be very concerned about I think part of the answer and it and many people are

living it I believe is education a lot of folks are having better lives because of the better education that they've received and the ability to have better jobs and through those better jobs are able to rise above where they've you previously have been. And as we look at where the city is, you know, we're in constant competition. We're in competition with Irvine, with Anaheim, with every city around us and what they're doing. So I think we have to emulate the good things that those cities are doing, and we have to make

sure that we don't make some of the mistakes that are being made around us. So I'm not certain what the what the motion is I'm not sure what the motion is but again I'm not for rent control but I'm willing to explore other strategies

councilor Solario thank you mr. mayor a few things lie has been said and I might try to squeeze in a little bit of Spanish as well I think councilmember Benavidez you know mentioned we don't want to be like San Francisco you know they have very high rents but another reason why we don't maybe want to be like San Francisco is they have rent control. And that's an example of one community, and there are many, followed by Santa Monica and others, where they have rent control and they have some of the highest rents in the state and, in fact, the country and the world.

What I've also seen, in part based on some research from Stanford, and I know on my Facebook I posted and there was some back and forth, oftentimes rent control doesn't benefit the folks that we think it will benefit. So for example, in those two communities that I mentioned, but any others, it's been rare to find how rent control has benefited immigrant Latino communities. And if there are those type of examples, I'd like to see, and I'll go visit the community and try to learn that. But from what I've gathered, rent control is an old idea. Maybe it works for some, maybe it worked in some areas, but on the whole, I believe it

does not. another more recent example of that is you know prop 10 is on the ballot in November and it is related to rent control and the most recent polling and it was mentioned in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle today I believe is that rent control is doing worse in the Bay Area in places like Berkeley and San Francisco and other areas they have rent control it's doing worse there than in communities that don't have it and it's because we know what it is and it's not perfect. Rent control 2 doesn't make your rent stay flat or go down. It just says it needs to be capped usually at about 5% but it could be 5% a year and

if the landlord maybe skips a year or two, guess what in year two or three they can make it a 15% rent increase as an example. So it's it's definitely not perfect. I'm much more support affordable housing. You know tonight we had a senior affordable housing project hundreds of units some of us on this dais supported that some of us did it there's other affordable housing units that we have in the works in Santa Ana and I plan to support them because they're drastically needed especially in big numbers also the rehabs that we've done in the mini street area and other areas in the council member Benavides area those have

been very successful their public-private partnerships we actually do in those cases reduce families rents and for long periods of time and we make you know the places better more habitable we need to do things like that I do from the list of items because you know there was a list of various items I know that may not mention that the idea of you know first right of refusal if you know the landlord wants to sell I think it's a grand idea that the tenants there have an opportunity to try to buy that. You know I want to read that and see how we can make that work but but I like that idea. Rent assistance and I think you

know Section 8 vouchers and other things were considered. I'm interested in looking at that. I've also seen other communities that they've begun to tax or put a tax on vacant homes, vacant properties because oftentimes you have out of town landlords, out of state landlords, and they just let the homes or the land sit and rot, and that does not do anybody any good. So there are some communities that have begun to assess a fee that they could go into housing or other services. I support innovative ideas like that. Just in conclusion, I don't

want to say we don't have an issue. We do, like every other community in California, I think the biggest answer is building more housing. We have to make that easier and more economical. Also, when we do do affordable housing projects, we've got to market them to people in our town so that they can benefit. So there is a lot that we can do, but on the core issue of grant control, I think it's an old idea and it does not work.

Thank you. So with that, Mayor Pro Town. Yes, Mr. Mayor, I would like to direct the city staff to bring back some recommendations at the next council meeting or I think we're having a special meeting on October 30th is that a true statement yes or no yes

we are planning to have a special meeting for the word rebondering process on

October 30th okay great thank you to bring back recommendations for rental census rental assistance stabilization strategies and I did want us to also look into in regards to the options for the vouchers. I know that one-third of these vouchers are not being used by our city residents. One of the main reasons is that property owners request renters to earn more than 50% of the area medium income. Obviously, that's way out of whack for our residents. The second issue is that HUD is not providing the vouchers and it's not keeping, it's not really keeping up with market rents. So the amount that they're providing, it's not keeping

up with today market rents and so I would like to know what that gap is and how can we actually utilize those vouchers and the rental assistance that we may need to help those folks actually be able to use the vouchers and not just sit there because I'm being told that if you use one voucher you either use it or lose it and the reality is that folks are not going to get into something that they know that their rents are it's going to increase there's not going to be enough for them to pay the rent and so they're not utilizing that. So I want our staff to bring back some of that research and then finally for us to look at the seven

the other strategies to increase attainable housing supply for all incomes. I provided 15 policies and and also to look at the Sacramento Tenant Protection and Relief Act that they put together and figuring out ways what makes the most sense for us here in Santa Ana and I know that I think some of the residents out here have some kind of proposal that they want to share with this council I'm not sure if it's been brought to us that our staff can also review that and provide some recommendations to us as well and that's

my motion mr. mayor small second with comment go ahead and comment just a quick question and I saw the city clerk's face kind of distort as the motion was being made because madam city attorney I think if we adjourn tonight's meeting to the 30th which is what we were expected to do so we could take up the ward elections issue, then we're bound by the agenda that we have tonight. So I don't know if the staff will be able to bring back recommendations based upon the directive that we're trying to give. So would it be more prudent maybe to just adjourn tonight's meeting and then have the

30th be a special meeting so we could bring back both the ward elections and this matter as well?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

And thank you, Council Member. That's exactly what you would have to do. You could adjourn some other items, but with respect to this item, you would need to ask the clerk to post it as a special meeting item. If you wanted to have the motion, if that motion passes, that would need to be posted as a special meeting. We would not be able to adjourn because this agenda description is not broad enough to cover the motion that's been made. Understood.

So that would be my friendly amendment.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

I accept that friendly amendment.

All right, so we have a motion to second. Additional comments? Councilor Salonio?

I'm open to the idea, but I do feel like it's not entirely fair to the staff or to the community to say that in a week or so that we want a comprehensive evaluation of literally like 30 to 40 ideas. And it's one of those things where you force all that work, you're going to get something back that is not helpful, that is really pushing it, you know, quite honestly, especially if it's with recommendations.

I could see how if it's a list of items that you've provided and from the community and them to provide a description and for us to kind of discuss those or key ones, that's one thing. But to say to the staff, hey, evaluate these 30 ideas and come up with stuff better and give us case studies and everything else and costs and timelines, that's a lot. Cal Senator Villegas.

Mr. Mayor, I agree with Councilmember Solorio. It does seem a little rushed. It is a lot of information and I wanted to participate, not just have the staff do it. I would like to be there to see how this work study goes to see what we can come up with. So I think we should postpone it just a bit. I don't know if there's anything else.

All right. Well, we have a motion and a second. Why don't we just, I think we've had a lot of comment. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? I'm a no. I'm a no. So it's a 3-3, so motion fails.

Mr. Mayor, can we, yes, go ahead, reconsider maybe another motion. Perhaps what I'd like is my colleagues that were not in favor of the matter to maybe propose a recommendation that would be more reasonable. Perhaps it is, because I understand there's an extensive list, and perhaps we, at least to keep the conversation going and see what is reasonable for us to discuss. Maybe it is, you know, four or five, the top four or five options, or four or five options that might be able to be analyzed or discussed, even if it is at an introductory level,

but that there is an opportunity to have a continued discussion.

I think that the middle ground would be the issues the community has raised, the description and they've actually done most of the work on that piece. I don't know how long Michelle's list is, but it could be a description of those. I also mentioned the tax on vacant properties and maybe via our city manager they can ask other council members if they want other things reviewed. But I see it more as a review rather than as an exhaustive analysis with recommendations. But even for something like that, I would say, you know, be brought back in a month.

You know, and if it needs to be a special meeting, I'm open to it. I think it's on a big issue. It's important to get it right rather than to force it. So that's the type of suggestion that I would provide. But I do also want to be, you know, sympathetic to my other colleagues.

could could we perhaps somewhat middle of the road there are at least a couple of

items that were that do have some some initial draft language one is example of the Sacramento policy that's already there that's a one that the city has already adopted that maybe our staff can analyze the the recommendation some of the draft language at that and recommendation that members of the community address tonight and perhaps maybe as you mentioned suggested a couple of others the the other the suggestion you that you reference with regard to fees on vacant properties and maybe there might be a couple of others but maybe those those three and if staff is able to add another couple yeah

maybe staff can figure out like that 10 to 15 that are relevant to this community and and descriptions and again maybe it's another study session or a workshop but that one something like that I think it begins to make sense the other thing too I want to be careful about is we don't want to set ourselves up in the community for failure we need answers and so I don't want us to you know have staff research 50 things and that's not like any of them we should look at those 50 things see what see what what items may be relevant which ones might work which ones might be affordable which ones are

doable in in Santa Ana would you be open to I'd like to maybe propose a motion that would for the October 30th meeting to address to at least have a preliminary update from staff so that we don't lose a whole month to address to analyze the look at at least at preliminary and provide some some feedback on the the Sacramento policy policy that the community members have brought forth and and then again maybe give staff another opportunity to look

at another two three or whatever staff feels that is that is that they can do and is reasonable for us to hear an initial presentation discussion

On the 30th, that's 10 working days.

Yeah, and that's why it would be Mr. Brown out there, Judson Brown, our housing manager, would have a good workload here over the next few days. But maybe that's a question for city management, if that's something that would be reasonable. Again, a first presentation to Council to discuss.

Mr. Mayor and Council Member Benavides, I was just consulting with my director of CDA. And since this is going to be a special meeting, I would suggest that we look, give us ourselves a little bit more time to do a work study session. Maybe the week of the 12th through the 15th of November. So it's a standalone session. We can spend a little bit of time in a work study. We're not going to bring ordinances and resolutions, but a work study session. Gives us a little bit of time to at least do some preliminary analysis and vet through some of these issues and present some and have an enable a

conversation a discussion to happen at your level and not be part of a crowded agenda that we expect on the 20th so it's gonna be a special meeting I'm thinking it doesn't have to be rushed we can at least allow ourselves a few more weeks to try to pull this together because as you know we're working on

some other issues right we don't want to rush anything we want we we want to we we need results yes but we also have to look at it and there's going to be a lot of you know this is this is a lot i was looking at it and i appreciate uh if we would have had this earlier

you know but it is what it is what i suggest is keep thinking we can bring it back here throughout the meeting maybe there's a different approach but uh we've heard from city count i mean City Manager. We've had a 3-3 vote. We still haven't even gotten to the consent calendar. So why don't we start with a regular meeting and let's continue from that. So Madam City Attorney, any items to report out? I believe the answer is no. No reportable action, Mayor. Okay. Okay, consent calendar 19D, I'm gonna call on the speakers first.

Luis Maria Martinez and Rosalia Vargas, and Ana Urusa, all on 19D. Come on down, Luis Maria Martinez.

Is Rosalia Vargas here?

Ana Urusa, Urusua, Rosalia Vargas. Okay, come on down.

Muy buena noche, mi nombre es Rosalia Vargas, soy residente de Santa Ana por más de 10 años y soy una nueva emprendedora o cooperativista que colabora con el mercadito El Carrusero. here I am to express the support for the program of cooperatives of the workers of the city. We want to thank the personnel of the city, especially the Mr. Mark Morley and Silvia Vázquez, for their work in elaborating this proposal, and to you, Consejales, for their support in making the reality. My experience as a entrepreneur has been very agradable. After a long time of so long with having a business,

al fin estoy haciéndolo realidad junto con mis compañeros miembros del mercadito el carrusel juntos nos estamos apoyando en poder tener un espacio agradable para las familias donde puedan disfrutar de alumnos alimentos saludables productos culturales entretenimiento y un lugar sano para la familia yo he soñado tener esto desde hace mucho tiempo me encantaría encontrar un lugar estable permanente un lugar que la ciudad nos apoyen para tenerlo sin tener que andar buscando un lugar u otro lugar para poder hacerlo también hago conexión de todo esto con la póliza

que nos da la oportunidad de mejorar nuestras condiciones económicas y la varias propuestas de plataforma de permanecer y prosperar de la cual hemos estado hablando si no tenemos un lugar digno y al alcance de nuestros bolsillos no podremos aprovechar de estas pólizas en apoyo a las cooperativas de trabajadores y trabajadoras una de nuestras compañeras como ya lo escucharon miembro de la cooperativa muca reina como saben está en riesgo de ser desalojada eso ya es un hecho y está muy preocupada y ocupa su apoyo necesitamos que además de aprobar esta póliza esta noche también den seguimiento a la plataforma la plataforma porque no

surgen permanecer y prosperar como familia en esta ciudad muchas gracias

gracias

good evening my name is a salvia vargas number resident of santa ana for ten years and I am a new business owner a cooper cooperativist to that works with el Mercadito Carousel. I'm here to express my support for the program of worker cooperatives in the city. We'd like to thank the city staff, Mark Morley and Silvia Vasquez for their work in putting together this proposal for you council members and for your support in making this a reality. My experience as a business person is the following. I've got together with members of the Mercadito

and I've been able to sell my jewelry. I've dreamt of having an established store that is stable and I've found the support with this initiative for San Ana building healthy communities. We also make the connection in the policies for the opportunity to improve our economic conditions and the different platforms proposed, the platform of Remain and Thrive. And if we do not have a dignified home that is accessible,

we would not be able to take advantage of this policy to support the cooperative for the workers. And one of the persons that talked about the cooperative, Muka, she mentioned that she is at risk of being evicted from Santa Ana. we also need to approve this policy tonight and give the follow up for this platform because it is essential for us to remain and thrive

Anna

good evening mayor council members and city staff my name is Anna Urzua I work with the Santa Ana Building Healthy Communities. I'm here also to speak in support and really congratulate and thank the staff on the work and the council and Mayor Patel Martinez for bringing this forward. The worker cooperative resolution was a historic moment for the for Orange County to be for Santa Ana to be the first in Orange County to bring it forward and we definitely applaud and thank the support of city staff Mark Morley and Sylvia Vasquez, and you for your support in approving a worker cooperative program tonight.

I do want to say that this is one component of the various needs and comprehensive strategies needed for our communities. Worker cooperatives talks about and makes possible prosperity for people for whom it's often out of reach. becoming owners as you know is also increasing stability is increasing protection in the future for families but that is currently still at stake it was interesting to hear your conversation up here today and I want to say that that

development for increasing housing development also increases cost of living and so we must have side by side protections so that the cost of living doesn't end up pushing people out that it was intended to support. And so I am hopeful and expecting that there will be continued conversation and that the platform to remain and prosper in Santana does bring bold solutions, not middle of the road, because that's not what we need right now. We need strong, comprehensive policies. We need solutions now. It's been 30 years too late in coming, and we cannot wait any longer.

Thank you for your support on this policy, and we hope to keep working with you and bringing better solutions.

Thank you. On 25E, I have Joyce Noche and Cynthia Felix.

Good evening, counsel. My name is Joyce Noche, and I'm co-legal director of Immigrant Defenders Law Center. We are the state's largest nonprofit providing pro bono removal defense in the state of California. We assist approximately 1,000 clients across all of our programs in removal defense. The Santa Ana Universal Project does not screen for eligibility. What this means is we accept cases up to our capacity, anyone facing removal proceedings. Our view is that no one should ever have to face removal proceedings alone. Through this project we have represented Santa Ana's most vulnerable residents, including

the homeless, the elderly, youth, single mothers and fathers, and those suffering from mental illness. I want to take this time to thank the Council and the City of Santa Ana for its support of the Universal Representation Progress. And at this time I'd like to turn it over to my colleague, Staff Attorney Cynthia Felix.

Good evening, Council. My name is Cynthia Felix. I'm a staff attorney at Immigrant Defenders Law Center and I'm a resident of Santa Ana. I spoke before you all a few months ago. I do just want to say thank you again for supporting this project in the last few months. We've had quite a few successes in representing our residents. I have a 21-year-old client who initially lost his removal case and I appealed that case to the BIA. I won and now he has a second chance of remaining here. He has been detained for two years and he has schizophrenia.

So hopefully everything works out for him and his family. And then also I just retained a client. She's a mom. She's been here for two years with four kids under the age of 18. Instead of choosing a private attorney who would have charged her $13,000 to represent her and her kids, she was able to choose our services to represent her in her proceedings. Again, as a resident of Santa Ana, I am so happy that this is my job and that I get to work on this project that you have

all supported. Thank you. Just a quick question. The young man that was detained for two years,

was that here in Southern California? Yes, he's at the Theo Lacy Detention Center.

Got it. Down the street. Got it. So that's probably good for him and his family, correct?

no it's absolutely horrible your honor I'm sorry yes he has schizophrenia and he's not receiving any sort of medical treatment and if you were like far away and some other place oh yeah if they were to put him say for example in Adelanto that's two hours away right yes it would have put higher burden on the family but having him here it's not an option that we have got you but thank

Thank you. Thank you. So with that, let me now come Mayor Pro Tem, what items do you want to pull?

19D was already pulled. Just keep it short. I'm in support. I just want to thank staff for moving it forward and bringing the information so that it's here. It's long overdue, but it's here. I'd like to pull 19E and 25B.

All right. Any other items, council members? Council Member Sarmiento? How about a motion to move the balance?

I'm a motion to move the balance with the exception of a 25E. I'm a no on that.

Okay. So do we have a second? Mr. Mayor, I'd just like to point out that on item 25E, there's a revised amount. Instead of 85, it should be $80,000. That is what staff is recommending.

So, Madam Clerk, can you please note that for the record? So, duly noted. I would entertain a second. Second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, the motion carries. Mayor Pro Tem.

Yeah, 19D is a real property disposition, administrative policy. So the city council asked staff to come back with a comprehensive plan to move forward on what we were going to do with the disposition of property. I do want to thank staff for putting this together and wanting to create a comprehensive strategy to moving forward, not just with the current surplus properties that we currently have, which everyone keeps talking about is the 90. And it's beyond me that the city of Santa Ana just doesn't own 90 assets.

Yes, for disposition because they're on Bristol, certainly so. but the city owns a lot of property and there's property that's underutilized, that's under lease, that is a surface parking lot that we just allow people to park in and so we we have land and you know the state of California says that if there is certain certain we haven't we have no policies it took us a while to even put together this list of properties this to tell you that we haven't been managing our assets and and and I say this not to be disrespectful

to our staff because many of you are new so I can't blame you but this is neglect of this city government not doing its job and I've been on this for many years asking for asset management not just only of our public right-of-way but of all our facilities and all the land that we own so that we can be good stewards and understand what we currently have so that we can make determinations and decisions

to ensuring that we're doing right by the property that we own. Instead, what we've done for 30 plus years is give our property away. You know, give our way of property and then we end up giving up a parking structure and then we have to return and pay $25,000 a month to the person that we gave the property to. How does that work? work. But that's what we deal with here in Santa Ana and we've continued to deal with it. We just give our land away for a dollar or we just give it to a developer because they're our friend and in return we end up paying $25,000 for our employees to go and

park. When that was our parking structure in the first place. So as we look at properties that we own, that has to be a comprehensive strategy as we figure out what are we going to want to do to build the appropriate housing but more importantly how are we going to address and and ensure that we are being good stewards with the land that we own and so I just want to encourage my colleagues I know there are members out there in the community they are so focused on these 90 properties let me tell you those 90 properties there's like maybe eight you can do something with you should be looking at these other properties where

they really matter. So I want to encourage, I want to thank our staff and I see our Public Works Director over there and I see I see Steven here and I want thank you all and I believe that this is a comprehensive strategy that this is giving us a first step, second step and moving forward so that we can get it right and moving forward be transparent and and and and that's what I ask for the spirit of the law let's be transparent let's be open and put what's out there and manage these assets appropriately, not just give them away just to give them away because someone's getting something back in the back end.

So with that, Mr. Mayor, I support this item.

Thank you for the comments.

I'll second the comments. Go ahead. So, Stephen, I also wanted to thank you and your staff for putting this together. I know that it's, I don't know how many times this has come back to us, I think way before your time. But I do know that you invested a lot of time in trying to address the concerns and the comments that we've made up here so thank you for doing that it's no it's no small task and I think mayor pro tem is correct of though that number 90 keeps coming back but if you look at probably 80 of those 90 they're small slivers and remnant parcels that I guess we need to define those 90 parcels as viable 90 parcels

and of those you know viable but parcels within that 90 number I think we're looking at maybe eight or nine at best so it really is a small number but it just sounds like we have all this property and you know we're a built-out city and we just have sort of slivers that are left over after things or things are developed so maybe if we could get some additional clarity on that maybe we could just whittle that number down and because it seems to create an expectation on behalf of the public that we're holding all you know this vast inventory of property. And also just the fact that some of them are just deed controlled.

We can't do much with them because they were acquired through other agencies, whether it's the transit authority or something else, and we're bound by those deed covenants on those.

And I know that one of the requests was for you to include some members of the community in the board, I guess, and there was an effort to include, I think, three chairs of commissions, one from planning, one from community redevelopment and housing, and the other one from the Board of Rec and Parks. So, you know, the only adjustment I would make is that to the extent that, you know, a chair may not be available to lend their time to come do this, maybe a member of that commission, maybe the chair appoints or the majority of that commission designates somebody who has the ability and the time

because we know that everybody's busy, and our members of commissions do this on a volunteer basis, and I certainly don't want to impose on anybody's limited time that they may have, so just to have some discretion on who from the board represents the entire commission.

If that's the will of the council, we can certainly adjust this policy to have the chair or her designee.

That would be my amendment to that.

Thank you. So with that, I think we have a motion to second. Are those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, the motion carries. Madam Clerk, that takes us through the consent calendar. Now we're on item.

Mr. Mayor, I just wanted to clarify for the record that I'm a no on 25B.

All right, let's note that for the record. 50A, this is a 45-day temporary moratorium on basically cyber cafes, internet access businesses within the city. Do I have a motion on this? Mr.

Mayor I make a motion to approve a brief comment. Okay is there a second? Second. Go ahead brief comment. I'm glad that this is a 45 temporary date of temporary moratorium. I just hope that our staff that after these 45 days that we're going to come back with a comprehensive plan to how are we going to mitigate these issues and what are the next steps for us. I know this has come up in by many of our residents, it's coming to public safety. I have yet to receive an update from anybody from public safety. I'm not sure if they've had one recently, but I don't sit on that committee.

And so if we can make sure that if it does go back after this 45 day moratorium back to public safety, that it's brought back to the council with some recommendation in ensuring that we're able to mitigate and help resolve as much as we possibly can with this issue. Yes, thank you.

Got it. So we have a motion, second by Benavides, with comment.

Sure.

My comment, actually, I don't know that I was really too, more than anything I just had a comment. Go ahead.

I understand that there have been some concerns and some presented by members of the community, that there have been some cyber cafes that have been problematic. The overall, the additional comments here with regard to Internet access businesses in the city, I just want to make sure that we're very thoughtful on how we proceed on whatever longer-term ordinance or proposals presented by the city, because in a number of communities, particularly when you travel internationally, these locations where there's Internet access businesses,

where there is a legitimate coffee house that offers access to Internet, it's actually a very positive you know not only a positive gathering place but an actual necessity in certain communities ours being one of those potentially so I want to make sure that we're not just you know throwing out the the baby with the with the bathwater as they say but that it is reasonable that we look at what's what makes sense addressing whatever concerns that are issues that are that are illegitimate types of uses in businesses but that we still leave open opportunities for these types of positive businesses to

continue to exist within the city that that's my comment and I'll go ahead then

comment well taken thank you for that so those in favor please say aye I dispose motion carries 68 we've already dealt with 65 a I would know we dealt with 60A so we need 65A. Yeah 65A that's what I said. 65A we have a speaker Jeff

Snow. Good evening Mayor Polito and honorable council members my name is Jeff Snow with CRNR Environmental Services. We're here to express our full support for item 65A, establishing a green policy and expanding environmental programs to assure a more sustainable Santa Ana and a more sustainable planet. We applaud the forward thinking and vision of city leaders, stakeholders in the community in developing this policy and important

initiative and we encourage your approval of item 65A tonight to provide a more sustainable and green City of Santa Ana. Thank you. Thank you Jeff. Staff?

Good evening this is Fouad Swayes, Public Works Director. Before you is a staff staff report on the proposed City of Santa Ana green policy, along with recommendations for the request for proposal which will go out early next year seeking new provider for the solid waste program. So over the last six months, staff has worked closely with our consultant, HFNH on drafting this policy. They held meetings with council members, community meetings, and they

conducted a survey and they came up with a report. I'd like to turn this over to our consultant to give a brief presentation on the work that they've done so far.

Thank you, Fouan.

We have to do something with this.

While Christy is getting the machine up, do you need... Yeah. Julie?

My name is Leith Ezzett with HF&H Consultants, and it's good to see you all. Good evening, Mayor and Council members.

HFNH has helped more than 300 cities with their trash and recycling programs. I've had the opportunity to negotiate more than a billion dollars worth of trash contracts, and I look forward to talking a little trash with you this evening.

I know you've had a long night, so I'll be brief in my comments. What I want to do today is describe the regulatory framework and some of the challenges that Santa Ana and its residents and its businesses are going to be facing, and some of the options that you have before you in structuring the RFP for the new trash contract.

So by way of background, you have a contract with Waste Management. They collect all the residential and commercial trash in the city except for construction and demolition waste. That material is collected by two different companies, Waste Management and Ware Disposal, that compete for customers. And then all that material gets taken to Ware's Madison Materials Facility. All of those contracts expire at the same time in June of 2020.

So the schedule for the RFP process is shown here on this slide. We hope to get some direction from you today that will allow me to craft the RFP and the contract and then bring it back to Council for your detailed review and approval. Some other key dates in March, we'll have the RFP package before you. Proposal will be submitted in June, and you'll award next December for new services to start in July of 2020.

There have been a number of new laws and recent laws that are increasing the cost of providing trash and recycling services. I'm not going to go through all of them in detail, but the thrust of it is that every business is supposed to have a recycling program under AB 341, and the city is still working towards those goals.

all of the businesses that generate organic waste are going to need to have an organic waste program in the future for food waste and restaurants and things like that even residents after 2022 will be required to have a program to recycle their food waste these are all mandates that have been placed on jurisdictions by the state of California so what we want to do is try to help you comply that minimum cost with those with those mandates. SB 1383 is another one that's in the rule finalization stage right now but it's going to have huge impacts on

the amount of recycling and organic waste that needs to be dealt with. So pricing pressures. I want to make you aware upfront that with all of this regulatory compliance there's going to be more cost to those programs, more services to be provided. There have been some things that have happened in the industry that are not favorable. Prices of recyclables have plunged for a number of reasons. Mixed paper, as an example, the price has gone down by over 90%. The recyclable commodities, the prices for those materials offset the haulers' operating costs, so that's going to have a negative impact

on customer rates. Labor costs have been increasing much more quickly than they had in the past. All of these organics regulations are creating demand for facilities that have to be developed and have to be paid for. So all of these things combined are going to put pressure on rates. So we want to be aware as we go through this process to look for opportunities where we can look for savings or other things that can help offset some of these increases. We've done a lot of community outreach and I've enjoyed meeting with the residents and businesses and these five meetings that I have up here we started in August

and we did the last one in October. We also have an online survey that is still available for anyone that would like to participate. It's in English and Spanish and Vietnamese. There's one for single-family homes, there's one for multifamily, there's one for businesses. And when we come back with the full RFP we'll bring you the detailed results of those so when you're considering the RFP you'll be able to see the community support for those programs that we're

including the green policy there was a document you've been provided that gives some additional details I'm just going to summarize here kind of the framework for the you know some of the greening we'd like to do in the RFP and in the city of Santa Ana it came loud and clear both from the residents that were surveyed as well the council members that I've talked to that we want to support green initiatives and a greening of the city, but we want to be very mindful of customer rates in doing so and minimizing impacts on customers. So we're gonna choose programs that allow us to achieve compliance with state mandates.

You don't have a lot of options there. Different ways you can go about it, but you do have to comply with the state law. So these four items here, a future residential food waste program, We're not going to do that initially, but we're going to get proposals for it during this process so that when you have to implement it in 2022, you'll know what the costs are going to be. We're going to get detailed proposals for commercial organics programs, for your commercial generators because that's required under law. Food donation and food rescue is a new part of the law. By 2025, the state has a goal of 20% recovery of edible food.

So that's an admiral goal. And then a number of mandatory commercial recycling programs as well. So those are all things to comply with law. On page 8, and I've just got two more slides, there are some additional environmental programs that we would like to get proposals for. And these are items that will provide community benefits but not hammer customer rates. We tried to choose things that would give you a lot of bang for the buck, and that would be popular, but that wouldn't have big, big customer rate increases.

If you want, I can go through them one by one, or I just got them here on the slide for you.

Go ahead and read them through. So the annual household hazardous waste drop-off event, once a year they would bring equipment and containers onto a site in the city so residents can bring their paints and their oils and household hazardous material you know from their garages or wherever they may be storing them have them properly disposed of. They'll be promoting medication disposal practices that are safe for the environment, largely drop-off locations, either at pharmacies or at possibly

at fire stations or at the sheriff's stations. Sometimes that's been done. This will be, the waste hauler will be promoting the availability of where these facilities are. The state is also now passing a law requiring some take back on medication disposal. A shredding event In the survey, that was a real popular event. Got a lot of support from folks once a year. They can bring their tax papers or other sensitive papers out on a Saturday and have that material shredded and no additional charge. Compost giveaway, also something we asked about in the survey. It was very popular. People can come up and have a few bags of compost.

All they have to do is show up and take the material away. And that kind of completes the loop. You know, you take your green material and it gets composted and then it's brought back to the community, can be used in gardens and the like. So those first four programs are kind of specialized waste streams that we're dealing with, and those programs can be done at very modest cost. The next items, five, six, and seven, are the cleanup and the greening of city public spaces that have been littered or with abandoned items or illegally dumped items or bulky items so providing multifamily dwelling units with an opportunity to

have their bulky items taken away in a cost-effective manner will be part of the program enhancing the cleanup of abandoned items having the waste hauler do additional sweeps for those items to help clean up the city and then continuing to provide containers for the encampment cleanups which are a big big challenge for all sorts of communities across California now. And then the last two items are items to recognize the great efforts of businesses and residents that are doing a super job of recycling or running their business in a sustainable way to get them some recognition

for the good work they're doing in helping the city achieve their goals. An annual recycling block party is one example would be done in an area that has really good recycling results. And then the Environmental Ambassador Program would be recognition for businesses that have really good green policies in the city of Santa Ana. And then lastly, although it's not on this list, we'll also be asking proposers to develop for us a very targeted set of outreach programs that are specific to the demographics here in Santa Ana and the different languages that we have.

Mayor Proton Martinez brought this up during some of our discussions San And is not like every other city Waste haulers need to do something to connect with the different folks that live and work here So we'll be asking them to address that in their proposals

One important thing that I need from you folks today Is some direction back about how I should structure the construction and demolition waste stream either in or out of this RFP process. Currently, your construction demolition waste is not part of your exclusive franchise agreement. You have the separate agreements with two other haulers, with Ace Management and WARE, to compete to provide that. If you want to keep that outside of this process, you can't. Alternatively, if you want to fold those services into this exclusive agreement, so the hauler that's collecting all the residential

and commercial waste, but also be collecting the C&D, you can do that. There's no right or wrong answer. I just need to know how you want to structure the documents. The cities that choose to fold it in, and a majority of the cities have chosen to fold it in, have usually done so for the efficiency of administration and just having one contract have to have oversight and monitoring of the performance of the contractor makes reporting to the state easier.

If the goal is to allow additional companies an opportunity to provide service in Santa Ana, so you could have more than one service provider, then leaving it out would be the way to do it. And you can contract for those services separately and with two or three or some other number of companies. So I'm going to be looking for direction from you today, which way you think you want me to head with that and crafting the documents.

I was asked by one of the council members I apologize I don't remember which one about what the rest of Orange County is doing with respect to its contracting arrangements for franchises so 85% of the cities are contracting with a single contractor for residential commercial service there are three cities that the more the commercial is a is non-exclusive there's multiple haulers competing for commercial bin service in Costa Mesa Newport the city of Irvine and then my last slide the term of the agreement

we're proposing 10 years the trucks are depreciated typically over 10 years the carts come with guarantees usually of 10 years so 10 years is a really good based term it aligns a contract with the equipment allows the companies to depreciate and amortize their equipment so over the full useful life so your ratepayers will get a good deal we'll also include some options at the city's option to extend I'll bring those specifics back to you when I bring the full RFP and we're assuming you want to continue with the existing structure that

you have for residential and commercial that that piece which is all part of one agreement would continue to be so in the new contract so those are my prepared remarks that I can can take your question all right let me see what the comments

and thoughts council members have Councillor Solario yes just I mean

this show feedback number one I want to compliment the new contractor and and and the staff including Fouad, you all have done the staff report what I was asking for two years, which was talk to our residents and groups about what needs they may have so that could be incorporated to the proposal, as well as looking at what are comparable new programs being offered in other communities. So that's fantastic. I think the timeline generally looks pretty good as well.

Well, the green policy, that's probably a big item in and of itself. Conceptually, I'm sure it's fine and we can always revise it in the future if we need to, but I kind of see that secondary to the other items that you have here in the actions. with respect to the C&D, I'm open to either way, but another thought may be to include it, but as an optional program, so that vendors can decide whether they want to do that or not, but just to give everybody an option.

Because the reality is, even if it's separate, we end up discussing it anyway, and so I think there's some merit to figuring out how to have those discussions at the same time, rather than at different times, and then I think there'll be more streamlined cooperation between the haulers and the C&D facilities. So those are my feedback points. Thank you very much. Mayor Pro Town.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Quick question for you. How many trash haulers do we have just besides here in the city of Santa Ana? We have federal government, we have state government, we have county government, we have school district, hospitals. So we have a lot of trucks coming through our roads. Time, week after week, disturbing our residents because some have to go through. Obviously, we have 29 elementary schools. We have eight high schools, all these charter schools. And so as I look and, you know, as I look at this and we are trying to be green, we're trying to reduce our carbon footprint.

And we have people up here that value, supposedly we value the climate, right? But we have to think outside the box. And as we look at waste and we look at reducing our carbon footprint, and this is our city, right? We manage the land use and zoning. and why haven't we communicated with these folks and figure out a way to work together on how to pick up our trash, in particular with the school district. They're in our neighborhoods

and I would love to know how many times we're coming to pick up trash, how many times they're coming to pick up trash to these schools and it's sometimes the same trash haulers, right? But they're not always coming on the same days. And so I would pose, like I had no idea until I did research, like, oh, the school district has its own trash hauler.

And the college?

Wow, the college, like, wow, what's going on here? That has massive impacts to our roads. And we all know that Proposition 6 may be repealed. And if it's repealed, there's problems for Santa Ana. we actually bonded our future gas tax to fix our roads because they were disrepair for 20 years. So in 2008, we chose to take that risk. So if that's repealed, expect, because the city's not going to have much money to repair beyond what Bristol and other streets that we receive money from OCTA.

And so we're going to have to figure out ways of how do we reduce that impact on our roads if that measure gets repealed. Because the last thing that we want again is to have our streets what they were prior to 2006. And I think us as residents, we understood what we were facing prior to 2006 and what our roads looked like. It was awful, horrible, horrific. And so I would ask of you since you know you're in the trash business and you've dealt with a lot of this what is it that we can do to figure out a way if we can't partner with them but partner in a way where we're making sure that if we all are

using the same trash haulers that they're picking up the same day right that they're not picking up three or four days a week because that has a massive impact on our roads and as we move forward we need to deal with that one for reducing greenhouse gas emissions but more importantly and a lot of them are continuing to you know use technology have CNG and so I understand that they're moving towards that but still the the impact on our roads are tremendous and so I'm not sure if you know this off the top of your hand you probably don't but if you do that'd be great I think you'll be a genius if you

do but if not I just would like for us to go back and explore how can we mitigate and minimize those impacts to our roads. The second thing that I would ask is that if we look at the C&D, you know, the return and the same thing it goes for you know our schools and our community colleges is that you know we're getting a lot of that stuff and you look at Madison and where and and they've been doing this work for us, and it's in a residential neighborhood, and so they're collecting all that stuff,

and there's negative impacts, right? We have new state laws in place, right, with environmental justice that's gonna take place January of 2019, and so we have to start thinking about all these things. These are mandates from the state, and we're gonna have to comply with all of this, and we have to connect the dots. And so as I look at C&E, we have to also look at how do we repurpose? We all know what's happening with recyclables and China no longer picking up and that's creating problems for us here in the state. And so as we continue to look

at C and D, again, how can we be strategic, be innovative and figure out ways of how we can work, whether it's with Wear Disposal, Madison or whoever else is out there in the business to come back with some creative solutions to help us and at the same time how do we repurpose and provide jobs for you know folks here in our community. San Diego has an amazing program, others across this country have these programs and we have to figure out how can we utilize and support things like that. And so those are my comments at this point but just want

to thank our staff and in particular thank you sir for the amazing work that you've done this is what the kind of work we wanted to see come before us I

appreciate it thank you councilor me at any comments yeah I was just listening

but I'll go ahead and just a couple of brief comments I think that I agree with a lot of what was said by mayor pro tem you know I think one of the one of the reasons why the CND was carved out for Madison and Ware was because they're a locally held company and we place at least there's been an effort in the past by the council to place a lot of value in trying to support local businesses because there's a multiplier effect to using our own vendors that are in town so just something to keep in mind as we go through the whole exercise and go

through the discussion. The other point I think that I mentioned when we spoke earlier was, you know, we're a large enough community that we could maybe support two vendors and it doesn't necessarily have to be one provider but it could be two contractors and maybe we use that to leverage a better price. Anytime you give a contract the size of ours to one company it's subject to not being as efficient as you can by having two companies compete. So I think, you know, this contract being as old as it is, we haven't visited it for, I don't know how many years, but I'd hate to fall in that situation again.

Again, understanding a way to have efficiencies, economies of scale that will prevent the wear and tear on our roads, the duplicative services by the different agencies within town to find a way where we can coordinate a better level of service delivery to our residents and to our businesses, that would be something. But again, I don't want to close that off because I know other cities much larger than ours and cities our size have gone to multiple vendors. And just to look at that and see how we can garner a better deal for ourselves. I think it's certainly an option for us,

and we can look at that as we go through a single vendor system or a multiple vendors.

Thank you. David Benavides.

Thank you, Mayor.

Two items. One is on the CMD. I think I would agree with comments previously by Councilman Salorio that it would be prudent to provide both options. One is for a vendor to choose to submit in their RFP, including those services, or also to allow us to do an independent RFP. I believe that both contracts have the same expiration, right? Correct.

So we would be going through the same process if we were to keep it independent. it so in my mind it seems like that would be a good option however I also am interested in you know we we have been studying this and discussing this for last about a year or so but you are the ones that are in the business and and do quite a bit of work both our internal staff manager that have been managing the contractor for a number of years but then also is a consultant who've done work for multiple municipalities throughout the state so

I'd be curious to hear what your recommendation is even on that idea on three things both the C&D the the exclusive residential and non-exclusive commercial I know that there are only nine cities or nine percent three cities in the city in the county but you know I'm wondering if there is a if that is things are trending that direction and those are the first three that have gone out or and if that's something that we should consider for the purposes that Councilman Sarmiento also mentioned with with competition it seems like there would be more potentially more benefit to to the city but I'm curious to whether

that's that is in fact the case and whether you would recommend that we one look at all three of these what C&D included or not the exclusive of residential and commercial or keeping them separate. And then this idea of one hauler versus more than one throughout the city.

Right now, the only one that you're asking us for feedback on specifically is the C&D. And I think you mentioned that we can go either way. But I'm curious to whether there would be some recommendations or trends or best practices that have been seen throughout the state. Maybe after I hear all the comments, I'll kind of try to respond to them as a group.

But I can jump in here, Councilman Benavides, having a little bit of knowledge of this.

The trend or the recommendation is to go with one vendor for commercial. Cities that have had open markets for commercial, you have a host of different vendors, and it's really hard. This is a heavily regulated industry. from a reporting point of view, and when you have it open-ended, it's hard to gather the data for the commercial sector. That's one. The other thing is you have more trucks, like the Mayor Pro Tem was mentioning, more trucks running through your city, and so it's harder to regulate. So that would be the recommendation is to keep it together.

The reason we're mentioning the CND is because we understand it's a local vendor, and currently that's the structure. But again, the staff recommendation in the report is to go for a combined service, whether it's a subrelationship and all of that. We're not going to get into that. But again, for coordination purposes, we recommend that it be one vendor having a master contract. But we can explore the option that Council Member Slorio mentioned to have that option for you as a carve-out to maintain the status quo in that department. But on the commercial, we clearly recommend having one vendor.

All right. Councilman, do you guys have any thoughts or questions?

Just thinking about keeping option three on the demolition and construction separate. Is that one of the options correct?

I can call for the question in such fashion that we can vote separately on that.

I would like that.

All right. I've got some comments. One is that this is all a little bit awkward because you're asking for input. there's going to be three new council members one way or another sitting up here in a few days and they're going to have different ideas and so you know we give you all the ideas but there'll be other ideas I am certain so I don't know how else to put it but you know it's the reality of the world we live in you know there are elections and people leave people come and so I would just be prepared I mean maybe they'll have all the same comments but maybe not maybe

they'll be different ideas a couple things I want to mention is that I know under new tax laws depreciation is different and so somehow whoever the companies are they're going to benefit from that as they buy equipment they'll be able to depreciate quicker and I just want to make sure we pass those savings onto the residents and businesses of the city. And maybe that will be naturally occurring through the competitive process, but we ought to be aware of that because I know in the old days it was a different tax structure and we had to deal with that and support the

companies, you know, to be able to meet with their, you know, their requirements. But at least for now, maybe tax law will change again in the future, but at least for now, it's much, much more beneficial to corporations is they buy equipment and they depreciate it in their books. The other thing I want to mention is I think tenure, maybe give it more thought, but it seems not to be unreasonable. You talked about lifespan and all that. I know sometimes maybe you can do more with a little bit longer term if they can get better financing or access markets differently.

me again I'm trying to figure out how do we benefit residents the best I know we have a current contract I don't know if it'd be possible but I want to make sure whatever we do that it's not worse than what we have today I'd really hate that we go out to bid and do all the stuff and all these ideas and we come back and tell our residents your rates are going to go up only because we put it out to bit and we had a better contract before than we have now. I don't know if that's possible, but I'd hate for unintended consequences to occur. And I know that the rates at the

county landfills are changing and certain things are getting full and if they have to drive further to go get rid of the trash it costs more. I also know that recycling is changing and as we recycle more and more I want to make sure it benefits our residents and you know trash used to be a negative thing you just had to get rid of it now everything has value you know we live in a world where you know if we can recycle and repurpose and reuse you know we're we're going to be much much better off and I'd like to figure out are there things that we can do maybe

it's not through the contract. Maybe there are separate council actions, but you know, things like plastic. You know, there are cities that are using, you know, paper sometimes and less plastic and, you know, things like straws that, you know, get out in the ocean and now there's some island out there that's bigger than Texas just of plastic that, you know, we're all dumping into the ocean. You know, how can we be more intelligent and try to help our city and maybe help the planet at the same time with with schools I don't know how much we can coordinate with them it sure would be a

good conversation to have but typically we're different legal entities and they've got their contracts and it's not all code terminus so I don't know what realistically we could do there but if we could do something it'd be a great thing. The other thing I want to mention is that I think we all know that in essence the businesses subsidize the residences. You know, at the end of the day, you know, the way you structure any contract, the businesses will pay more, they can afford to pay more, and the residents will end up being subsidized. They'll end up paying less. If we were to

break it all up and they had nothing to do with each other, it's going to be real hard to get low rates for our residents without having the business community involved in the contract. So I just want to make sure we don't again end up with unintended consequences and tell our businesses good news your rates are going down, but then tell our residents bad news your rates are going way up. Not where I think we want to end up without understanding how we got there. The other thing I want to mention is that on the residential area, I mean, I see many of the suggestions and you probably have more

information elsewhere in the contract, but I know

neighborhood pickups are really, really popular. Where we put a bin out there, you got to get out there early because all of a sudden all this junk starts coming out and the bins fill up and I think that's a good thing. It's a good service that we provide our community. And to the extent that we can figure out how to do that even a little bit more often you know I think we're helping you know residents and keeping the city you know generally cleaner the other thing I want to mention is that I think you know construction and demolition is a different animal it's a little bit of a

their nature is a little bit different and I when I call for the question I want to break it up because I'm not sure that approving an inclusion of construction demolition ultimately is going to get us a better contract you know possibly you know councilman or Solario's concept of having an option but I definitely think it's our advantage to have the flexibility or the freedom to say we want to try to benefit from keeping that separate so so with

that let me ask for council members on let me I know you have a whole lot of more stuff you can say but it's 10 o'clock and I'm telling you again get more input in a few days and and so let's just keep working with each other but right now let me just see where the council's at on item number one I would entertain a motion that's to adopt the standard green policy is drafted based on council and community input do I have a motion for that those in favor please say aye aye those opposed motion carries item number two this is approve additional

optional environmental program to include in the solid waste services request for proposal scope of work and you've listed I believe nine items there I would entertain a motion on that mayor I make a motion to approve just with

comment okay can I ask our staff currently now what our current franchise

fee is from our trash haulers yes we have 26.15 percent effective rate getting

26.1%. And is that the total franchise that's from the actual trash hauler?

Yes, from all rates, all fees combined into one.

So all fees combined into one. That includes city administrative fees as well?

Everything.

Everything. Okay, great. So I just want us to make that very clear. That's 26.1%. Thank you.

Thank you and thanks for that question. So I want to, I've got a, I believe a motion to second on item number two. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. Item number three, I would entertain a motion to add or thoughts. Council Member Villegas?

I was just going to say I wanted to strike it from being included. Keep it separate.

So your motion would be to keep it separate? That's my motion. Okay, I'll second that motion. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye.

Could I have a quick comment? Could I ask what the rates are in regards to for each of these? We currently have waste and wear disposal doing both, right? And what are those franchise fees for those two, or is it combined for waste management and then it's a different fee for wear?

With the two C&D contracts, it's 12.8%.

And they're the same for both?

We have maximum rates. They are not allowed to charge more than those maximum rates.

that's what they charge mm-hmm so it's the same great thank you all right so we had a motion a second I said those in favor say aye aye so we have three eyes so motion fails it's three to three oh you're an eye okay I couldn't I'm sorry so it passes 4 to 2. So with that, let's go on to the next item.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Mr. Mayor, let me just make a comment on that. If we are going to separate them, maybe the staff could come separately on a timeline for what that will be like, because again, especially because the contracts go hand-in-hand timeline-wise, we need to figure out what that process is going to be for the standalone C&D contracts.

And they'll come back. They'll come back. Thank you.

Council, may I assist for the record to clarify what the motion exactly was that was approved? I believe it had been modified from number 3.

The motion was not to go with staff recommendation. Thank you. Just to strike it all together. To strike it all together.

It'll be handled separately.

Item 65B as in Boyd. I would entertain, I guess that...

It's a receiving file. It's a receiving file. I do have a comment.

But do you have a presentation, Ms. City Manager?

Mr. Mayor, we have a brief presentation. We can go through a few slides just to give an overview of where we are ending the year.

Our acting finance director, Mr. Sergio Vidal, will guide us through this.

Thank you, Mr. City Manager. Good evening. My name is Sergio Vidal, Acting Executive Director for the City of San Andes Finance Department. And just real briefly, we're going to go ahead and jump into the fiscal year 17-18 preliminary year-end update and comprehensive annual financial report and audit process. Pretty long-winded name for this late of the evening, but we're going to get through it real quick for you guys. A quick agenda, we'll go real quick on the revenue and expenditures for 17-18. Just give a quick update. Also on the report card, year-end balance, we'll provide a quick update of projected deficit for 17-18.

We'll briefly describe the audit process, what it entails to arrive at this point for the city, and quick next steps for not only the year-end update, but some also financial reporting items. Real quick, general fund, as mentioned this evening, sales tax, property tax remains the bulwark for the city. 45 million for the sales tax has been received for 17-18 preliminary at this time. However, it did come in a little shallow, partially as a result of some reporting issues from the state, CDTFA or the former BOE. Property tax continues its strong growth, about 3% in line with projections. Likewise UUT, however, we are seeing some,

some effects as a result of state legislation, cap and trade effects, and conservation efforts as well. Business license, reflection of the city's business, up about 3%, and hotel visitors tax, 9.3 million. In addition to the jail revenue fund, we're reporting about 10.4 million. That's largely attributable to the U.S. Marshall contract approved by the council in August. About 9.4 million, the remaining balance was about a million from Bureau of Prisons. Billing permits and related plan check fees. This is also a strong revenue source, however, it did come in a little shallow, 4.4 million for 17-18 as well.

However, we are optimistic for an upcoming fiscal year, about 6 million in 18-19.

On an additional key revenue source, cannabis. Six months efforts as related to adult use retail. We are seeing, we have reported about 2.5 million, so that's a reflection again of six months of activity. We're anticipating for this fiscal year, obviously a full year value will get a lot better report for the 18-19. However, we are a little short.

Excuse me, real quick on that point. Ms. City Manager, do you have any idea how much we spent on enforcement for cannabis? Because you're reporting the revenue. Hopefully the enforcement goes down and down and down and the net goes up. But do you have a concept of what we might be spending right now?

I don't know if our finance director does, but I would tend to think that yes, it's starting to go down. Because we had 120 before I got here in terms of illegal operators. I think now we're down to one.

But that means a lot of lawsuits and a lot of attorney fees. Yeah, a lot of attorney fees. Mike, you may have some input here.

My deputy city manager says we've got about 11 positions that are involved in this, and so that adds up to about $1.5 million. $1.5 million. Just from a staffing point of view. Just from a staffing point of view. If we've used any outside law firms for any of the abatement work, then that would be extra.

So we still might be pretty close overall to break even, and the numbers would have to go up significantly for there to be net revenue to the city. That is correct. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Keep going. General fund expenditures overall, we're coming in at about $238 million for the general fund, or 98% at budget. Again, this really reflects the city's departments managing expenditures, but also some vacancy savings. There's about 56 police officer funded vacancies and 123 overall for the general fund. Citywide, about 180, so the bulwark of the city's vacancies still reside within the general fund.

Here, an update, how we do, what is the report card at this year, I just want to stress that this is a preliminary at this time, pending final audit review by the auditors. and we'll get in shortly real quick of what that really means. Staff presented in May about a $6.2 to $8.2 million range deficit, so we're falling within line $7.2 million. Obviously adult use has impacted the city's revenue source and has decreased its projected deficit for 17-18. Again, real quick on the CAFRA audit process, the auditors are in the building. Quick question going back to the previous slide. Can you remind us what we projected as deficit

at the time of budget adoption? What we were looking at for the 17-18 year. Is it consistent with the 7.2? Are we slightly higher or lower? For 17-18, the range was 6.2 to 8.2 million. The additional, the reduction would mainly be from 2 million in anticipated revenues from adult use. So right now we're coming in at 7.2, which is about a million over the projection for 17-18. Thank you.

Just as a follow-up to that, so in the budget, you're telling us there was a range that we put in for what those one-time funds were, or was there a discrete, specific amount?

For the one-time value, 6.2 million for 17-18.

6.2 overall of the surplus one-time, okay.

Yes.

as I mentioned the auditors are in the building they should be concluding their portion of the process and issuing a final opinion to the city in December of this year so it's about a two month process from when they begin with the city in October and over to December and really it's a culmination the CAFR is a six month process beginning in spring quarter, April then obviously as we accrue revenues and expenditures through September

Just quickly, real quick next steps. As you mentioned, this is really our presentation that we did present at the council committee that a bit, but also we're looking to finalize a year end update for the city for 17-18 in the second meeting in December. Also we want to go ahead and give a larger financial picture for the city and provide a non-general funds update sometime in January as well. Next steps as well for related to the current fiscal year, first quarter and mid year, we're looking to come in at it a bit next week and also go ahead and provide some additional presentations

and we're looking to come back to the council for first quarter update in the second meeting in November and finally coming back to the council for the mid-year update really to sharpen our pencils, really give you a status of where we are 18-19, what is the projected upset at that time as well and finally we're going to also staff and engage Bartell and Associates to write a little more deeper analysis in terms of the city's pension obligations and upcoming projections with CalPERS as well.

This concludes my portion of the presentation. I'm available for any questions. Thank you.

I think it's getting late, but do we have questions?

Yes, Mr. Chair. Go ahead, Mayor Pro Tem. So thank you for presenting. So I wanted just to ask a couple things. One, in regards to with 180 vacancies and 123 through the general fund. So the revenues based on these vacancies, were they funded or not funded?

These positions, 180 vacancies, they were, we had some vacancy savings. Some of the positions were unfunded. So not all positions were not funded.

Well, what is that number that was funded and not funded? Do you have that number handy?

We can come back and provide that information.

Wow, okay. My second question, and why I get so frustrated, because I've asked time and time again that we should have and understand what we're dealing with with our budget, and when we tell folks that we have these vacancies and we have certain things funded or not funded, and then we have attrition savings, and we don't really know what we have. And it's very frustrating when we ask a question and it can't be presented to us. It's like I'm not the practitioner, you're the practitioner, so I would hope that you would have those numbers available when asked. And they're just not.

And so we keep on wanting to know how many positions are funded and what's not funded so that we can come out to the community and be transparent about that. We just can't say that we have all these positions available. And then they say, well, why aren't you hiring anybody? Why aren't you hiring the police? you know why aren't you hiring these other positions when essentially they're on the books but there's no money to fund them right we got to be honest about that we got to put that down in a way where we can articulate that and be transparent about it not only to this council but to this community but and the

second question is is the surplus funds you know there were monies if you're being utilized to to to you know help with the deficit whether it was you know back in we had revenues from you know this so called we called surplus you know our strategic funds you know that we didn't get to fund certain things where did that money go and how much of it and what's left over you know none of that is documented no one no one is sharing and that's my frustration that there's no transparency that we have a responsibility as this I have a fiduciary

responsibility that when I approve a budget and when I'm looking at this year-end mid-year review that these questions could be answered immediately. Our community deserves to know this, this council deserves this. And the third that I'm going to end with is that this council approved to move forward with a comprehensive audit so we understand where we're at. Where's, you know, where is the RFP? Where is that? Instead we're talking about city pension analysis. I've asked, I asked, you know, a year and a half ago with my colleagues and said they were going to do it. It

put it in the budget for this time around it's in June we're now hitting it we're going into November and nothing has come before us to do this comprehensive audit so that we know where we're at once and for all financially and where is all this money if it's not there what you know we we should know you know you talk about a CAFR we have to know that that's that's in the rears which that's this a year prior this is 20 you know of 18 19 right So we should know. And I get what the CAFRA is for, and I understand we have to comply with state law, and we have to have balanced budgets

when ultimately we really don't have a balanced budget. So I get very frustrated that we can't provide the appropriate factual numbers.

And in particular, that really just irks me is the vacancies. We either have them filled or we do not. And where is that money being utilized? Because at the end of the day, if we're not going to fill these positions, we shouldn't put them there. Let's stop doing that. And if we are doing attrition savings, what is that? Because we give a budget to every department and then you've told, well, you've got to cut 8%, 10%, so I don't know how you're going to deal with it, even though the council approved

your budget. Well, I'm going to ask you to save 8%. And you know, the community has expectations, this council has expectations, come back, well, we didn't get to do X, Y, and Z because we have this 8% attrition savings or 10%. And so, you know, as I leave, I have two more meetings, I'm just going to let it all out. You know, I have nothing to lose here. This community deserves to have transparency in this budget and I'm you know I've literally I'm here I've tried my very best I've been patient since June asking when we were gonna get this comprehensive you know of analysis and

get these people hired so that we know where we at where where are we no one

can tell us even to this day city manager I yes if I may mr. mayor I wanted to to mention that I found the same kind of lack of transparency that the Mayor Pro Tem was speaking about when I first got on board. Understand that this budget that we're reporting on was really a budget that I inherited. You know, one of the things that the current year of budget that I was hoping to do is get away from that attrition savings model that was in place. So I hope that this year's is a little bit more transparent, but we probably need to work on getting it more transparent. But one of the issues that we dealt with is

exactly that issue of what vacancies were actually funded or not, and it was very hard to determine. So I hope we've done a better job with the current year's budget, but in this case we're reporting on the previous year's budget. Regarding the comprehensive

fiscal assessment, it's something that I'm committed to. We're having the new finance director come on board at the end of this month, and I wanted to make sure that I got her input before moving forward, but I think that we need to do this regardless of whether the revenue measure passes or not. We need to know exactly where we are, and also more importantly what the trend is moving forward so that the council can make appropriate policy decisions based on that information so we're still committed to doing that we just had a change in leadership and that's where

we're at with that but I wanted to tell you that the this attrition stuff is not something that I support and we're working to get away from that and it's

and it's not embedded in the 18 19 component as well and I think you had a question as well as a sign fund balance is 16.2 million that was reported at 16 and 17, it's more for your point, what is that $7.00 million for use for 17, 18, and then obviously to address the 18, 19 projected deficit. So that is reported and will be reported, and that's part of our comprehensive review as well, but we'll come back to Council in December as well when we do finalize. So that has been reported, but we will definitely work through providing that information to the Council.

The reason we carved out the unfunded liability analysis is because it's really key to the impacts we're feeling from PERS. So what we hope our town associates will be able to do is actually give us a more accurate projection than we're getting from PERS right now so we can anticipate a little bit better what the impacts of what's going on over there will be on our city. And so we carved that out and started that earlier. So we hope to have that done this fall, basically. That's correct, Mr. Senator Manager.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. So with that, I think it's just a receiving file. But it says we may vote on this.

Just to receive the report.

All right, do we have a second? Those in favor?

Aye.

Solario smiled, so he seconded it. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye, those opposed? motion carries even voted for his own second that's a good thing so now I'm going to take something out of order I know we still have some more items but I've got some speakers that wish to addresses from the Nova Academy Renee Lancaster, Andrea Brombaugh, followed by Patricia Espinosa and Natalie

Battersby. Please go ahead Renee and welcome. Oh thank you so very much. My

name is Renee Lancaster and I'm the CEO of Nova Academy Early College High school a little tired now you guys are amazing I want to start by thanking each of you and the mayor for everything you have done for Nova Academy and for your continued support of our school tonight I am here and I have to report that we had over 150 parents and students here tonight but as you know they have tests tomorrow they're involved in college and so they had to go home and all our teachers had to leave as well but we have some board members and volunteers still here to express concern regarding the proposed route of the new OC Street

car 92% of our students live in Santa Ana and 90% qualify for free and reduced lunches while we recognize the benefits that OC Streetcar will provide we have been trying to speak with OCTA and city officials since early 2017 regarding the projected route traveling right past Nova Academy just steps from our front door. This will greatly impact

the ingress and egress for our campus. In addition to regular foot traffic, seamlessly harmless actions of students such as listening to music through earphones, chatting with friends, attending evening extracurricular events and activities at school, dances, talent shows, walking into or leaving class will suddenly come with risk. Even more troubling in the event of an emergency such as an earthquake, fire,

gas leak, which we experienced, or God forbid a lockdown, the effects could be devastating. The front doors of our building serve as the primary evacuation route for over 450 staff and student members. Navigating the passing of the streetcar and or crossing its tracks during evacuation would only further endanger our students. If construction continues as planned the OC streetcar will travel right through our evacuation path. This is evidenced by the

photos that were taken during our evacuation drill this morning which we brought with us this evening. I'm sorry my students had a late.

I just want you to be able to see so you get a good idea. This is only a portion of students coming in and out. We have 450 of them.

You see the lines where the dots, those lines were put down by a traffic engineer to model the exact streetcar tracks in front of the school.

Can you conclude, Renee? Yes.

We need to proactively plan for the safety of our students and staff. This cannot be done until we receive the answers to basic questions we have asked such as what safety measures are in place to protect our students? How fast will it travel by our campus? Will there be a security guard from OCTA stationed at the platform by our campus? Have there been disclosures to the Federal Transit Administration that there is a public high school entrance and exit within feet of the streetcar? We need information. We need cooperation.

We need to start working together now to ensure that we are not gathered here again under much different and tragic circumstances. Kids will be kids, even good ones. Thank you for listening to us tonight and for your consideration. Our principal had to leave as well.

Thank you. Andrea?

Principal. Dr. President. He's not here.

Andrea's not here. Patricia. Teacher not here. And Natalie.

Good evening, Mayor Polito and distinguished members of the Santa Ana Council. I am Natalie Battersby, the founding principal of Nova Academy Early College High School. I had retired after teaching 41 years when I was asked to come and work with this wonderful new high school that was being proposed. I was asked to partner with Dr. Donald Velour and Renee Lancaster as the principal.

Our goals were, with starting this high school, to provide an outstanding academic education for underrepresented students and to make certain that not only did we have an outstanding education, but that we also had an environment that was safe and nurturing for these students. We have, for 14 years, worked diligently to ensure that we have fulfilled both of these goals, keeping our students safe and providing them with an outstanding education.

My commitment to these goals and objectives for our students has required me to stay involved with Nova Academy.

Until now, this is my 79 years of age and my 55 years as an educator. This is a wonderful school and we have done the things that we were intending to do. Our school stands as a monument of excellence changing the lives of students. I lost my 12 year old daughter to a hit and run accident.

And so for me, I implore you to please work with us to see that our children are safe from anything happening. We ask you to provide for us safety measures so that things continue as they are. We thank you.

Have a good evening.

Thank you. Let me thank you for being here for many, many hours. You saw a little bit some of what we often work with and deal with. Let me tell you that as a member of OCTA, I commit to you to set up meetings, as many as it takes, with appropriate safety experts and officials. I'll tell you we've documented everything to the Federal Transportation Administration, the California Public Utilities Commission, our own OCTA staff as well working with the city.

But we also recognize that when a project is about to become real, everything starts looking differently. differently and so I want to make sure that every child at that school is safe. It's a wonderful school by the way. I know a few years ago this entire council worked with you to help bring that school into reality and you took that old Sun West Bank building and changed the educational code. You know did a lot of seismic work within a very short period of time and then you open the school on time which was amazing and now it's really

beginning to hum it's starting to go I visited a few times and it's a wonderful wonderful institution so I have your numbers what I'd like to do is you know contact you tomorrow and set up appropriate meetings with safety experts and whether we have to you know place people out there or or have a crossing guard i don't know what you know we will we will do it i'll tell you it's going to go in front of a lot of people it's going right down ford street it's not unlike what we have in portland or

in washington dc or many many other places um you know there's street cars in the middle of very active cities so with that let me take other comment councilmember vince armiento thank you

and thank you for your comments and I'm very very sorry for your loss you know I think that your comments really touched a chord with me and I've heard others just a little east of where you are on along 4th Street that was just mentioned because the alignment goes um goes down a very busy and important corridor for us. And a lot of our merchants are very concerned about the impact that they're going to have, not just for safety reasons, but people who've just purchased new businesses and folks who have a lot invested there and the impact it's going to have to have construction

right along the front end of them. So look, I know that we've been talking about this for a long time, but I think with staff and I think it was mentioned earlier we're gonna have a change out of new council members and there may be a difference of opinion on the streetcar I'm certainly starting to listen to some of the folks who aren't real supportive and I'd like to maybe revisit this and talk to the transit authority and see you know what other options they have I know Mayor Tate in Anaheim is very opposed you know he's looked at you know a rubber tire system and going with the bus line.

But, look, I don't want this to be a boondoggle and for this to be a subsidy that we're going to have to be paying because there's no ridership on that. And, you know, is there a benefit to the city? And those are some deeper, more profound questions that we need to ask. But, look, I think right now there's enough opposition along 4th Street, there's enough opposition all over the county on how these monies should be spent that I think the questions need to be asked. And, you know, these are questions that we need to ask ourselves continually because we don't want to be subsidizing a system that we're going to be committed to

that has, you know, a few folks riding it and not being a benefit to the city. So, Mr. City Manager, I just want us to circle back with the Transit Authority. I'd love to meet with some of the staff there to talk about maybe some of the alternatives, But I am starting to listen to some of the merchants and, you know, Nova and others who just, you know, want to figure out is this a wise use of our money and our time. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm just here looking at our complete streets plan, our circulation element plan, you know. And I know that as we've done these studies with our consultants, in particular with our circulation element and our downtown complete streets plans, our downtown is included and we've looked at emphasizing placemaking first and putting pedestrians and cyclists, you know, as our number one priority. And so knowing that NOVA was already coming and there, we had a lot of public engagement through these plans. And many of the community raised the same points that you raised.

And we were able to do these comprehensive plans. I would urge you to take a look at those and see what is it else that we can do to help make you feel safer. safety for pedestrians and bicyclists is very important as we have a ton of students not only through NOVA but you say have our Santa Ana Unified School District you have the elementary school you have the high school you have Willard Intermediate you know have high school of the arts so we have a lot of traffic of young people in our downtown and we want to make sure that not only our patrons of the businesses but also our students feel safe and the parents feel

safe and you know as we look at the street card I really thought construction was supposed to happen in July August I don't know what happened with that but we're coming into November yeah I've heard costs have increased and so we may I'm not sure when we are going to break ground but with that being said we have emphasized placemaking a pedestrian and biking as a huge emphasis in that area and I would encourage you to also meet with our staff that have been working on that and what is it that we can do to help and or apply for grants. I don't believe that as we look at the streetcar that it's going to have some

you know drastic impacts because as the mayor did indicate you know there are you know the streetcar is not going to go as fast as a basic train and it will stop specifically in our downtown at much lower speeds and so again as we we look at this street card if it even happens, I'm not sure. Obviously the cost, I've heard, is it significant?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Mayor Tim, I don't mean to interrupt, but this is public comment. Correct, yes. And we do not have the ability under the Brown Act to have a full blown discussion of the policy issues. Great.

All right, brief comments, Councilman Solano?

Yeah, just a quick point, also just because we received a number of emails. Number one, we're in the pre-construction phase. So there is utility planning and utility related construction work that's happening. Two, some of this is kind of chicken and egg thing, you know, what came first, you know, the router, the school. I know it's a great location and building because our college district was looking at buying it. And so probably as part of the due diligence, maybe the district did know, I mean the school did know, that the train was going to come. I would like to, you know, staff is looking at the timing.

I mean, I would ask that you consider visiting other high schools or comparable schools, like in San Diego, Sacramento, where they have light rail, because it's quieter, slower, and I think at the end of the day, it's going to be an asset for your school and your students. I have no doubt that in five, ten years, it's going to be on your brochures as a benefit to the school for the parents and the kids. But more communication between our staff and the school and OCT would be helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. Any additional comments? Yes, Mr. Mayor, briefly. This affects me a lot, just like the school, even more so, because this goes right past my front door. So I would like to be involved in those meetings. But I know the streetcar is 20 years in the making, and it's going to happen, and we're going to have to work with it. But I would like to be involved in the meeting, sir. You got it. Thank you.

Additional comments, now we'll move on.

Councilman Vanity. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to thank the members of the school who came out and addressed us, and for your patience as well. I know it's been a long night and I had the opportunity to be there at the grand opening of the new Nova Academy at its current site and location and had an opportunity to see and meet some of the students and staff and it is, this school is a great asset to our community, to our students. I appreciate the fact that there has been some thoughts into, as has been stated, the project has been a long time in the planning process.

Various routes were identified, were vetted, and community meetings held in order to provide feedback. And the route here is the route that was finally selected. However, and it's quite far along in the process where it's pre-construction. However, there can be and should be mitigating measures that can be taken to be able to provide, ensure that the safety and security of the students.

So I would ask the City Manager and the City Manager to our Director of Public Works, Mr. Suiz, to ensure that we are following up with the leadership at the school, connecting them with the proper representatives from the Orange County Transportation Authority to ensure that we are, as quickly as we can, incorporating any measures, security measures that we can take. And there was reference of Portland street cars, one example, and I remember visiting that site, and the street car there comes in a very similar type of setting in a very urban environment right outside of I believe it's Portland State

University's educational institution and it's close to retail as well in a pedestrian area very similar pedestrian mall very similar to what is our own Sasser Park here so there have been measures that have been addressed that have been taken there to address pedestrian safety there so it might be a model something we can look at as well just do ask for that continued work with NOVA Academy and the administration. Thank you and and for Renee Lancaster

I'll make sure that the executive director Darrell Johnson calls you tomorrow and sets up that initial meeting thank you for coming down so with that next item is item 75A there's a public hearing to hold third hearing regarding Regarding the award boundaries select a preferred map and adjourn the meeting on October 30th Do we have any public speakers? We do we have several speakers and we also have a presentation by our

Let's take the speakers first

Okay, Theresa Lee

Followed by Carina

Teresa come on down. And after that, Noemi Ruiz. Go ahead.

Good evening. My name is Teresa Lee. I am a San Tana resident. And I am here today because I want to express my support for Plan D. Map D uses the riverbed to outline the Vietnamese community of interest on the West End of the Santa Ana. For many years, this area of Santa Ana

has considered itself a community as evidenced by the Vietnamese stories. With this map, our community will have a strong voice at City Hall. Thank you.

Thank you, Karina. Karina followed by Naomi Reese. Chris Schmidt.

good evening mayor and city council just a point of clarification last week I attended a meeting with all the downtown businesses and city staff was there making a presentation on the ballot initiatives when they spoke about the redrawing of the boundaries and the district elections the city staff member mentioned the current CVRA lawsuit and said the reason we're in it is because they cannot elect a Asian candidate of their preference so I asked for clarification and the city staff member said yes I said I believe it's a candidate of their preference it's not an Asian

candidate so maybe if we can just check and make sure that city staff is providing the right information I'd appreciate it. I believe it was Daisy. All right that was Chris.

Perfect Angelos. Michelle was that or Leticia Regue. Come on down. Maria Cisneros

Alejandra Capistran

good evening my name is Alejandra I am resident of the Santa Ana and leader of the movement of the Obama Parroquia Inmaculado Corazón de María I want to say that I am here to support the plan D but I also want to advocate for the recommendations that OCO and OCO for the city here in the Santa Ana about the Comunities of Interest of Leisy I consider that having a map como plan de la pose la comunidad y como votante será más fuerte gracias por votar sí por el mapa plan de gracias Dios les bendiga

my name is Alejandra Capistrano my resident of Santa Ana leader of vocal and the movement in the Immaculate Heart of Mary and I want to support Plan D. I'd also like to advocate for the recommendations made by OCO and OCO to the City of Santa Ana regarding the community of interest of Lacey. I consider having MAPD as Plan D, the voice of the community and as voters, the voice of the voters will be stronger. Thank you for voting yes for map d god bless you

hola buenas noches mi nombre es leticia roque soy residente de santana y líder de oco en movimiento y magma en la parroquia inmaculada corazón de maria y estoy aquí porque quiero expresar mi apoyo al plan de como la mejor opción que representaría las comunidades de santana este plan propuesto representará mejor a todos en la ciudad. También quiero abogar por la comunidad de interés Lacey que se presenta en la ciudad de Oco y Ocourt. Los residentes comparten mucha similitud como lo de sus ingresos, la renta, idioma, educación, tradiciones, cultura, etc. El mapa D está con estas recomendaciones.

Será un mapa que refleja equidad y democracia para todos, es decir, grupos étnicos, tradiciones, culturas, lenguajes, education and socioeconomic levels. Thank you for voting for the Plan D. God bless you.

This proposed plan will better represent everyone in the city. I'd also like to advocate for the lazy community of interest that presented to the city via OCO and OCO. And the residents share many things such as income, rent, language, education, traditions, culture, etc. Map D with these recommendations will be a map that reflects equality and democracy for all, meaning ethnic groups, traditions, cultures, languages, education, and socioeconomic levels. Thank you for voting yes for MAPD. God bless you.

Thank you, Teodoro Mendoza.

Elizabeth Martinez.

Maria Ramirez.

Rafael Borja.

and the hope of having arrived here and the time.

I am here because I want to express my support to the Plan D as the most option that would represent the community of Santana. This plan proposed will represent better everyone in the city. With the great heart that they have in helping the community, gracias por votar see for inma paul and a Dios let the la fortaleza y la bendición

party a una mejor ciudad gracias gracias Rafael Alejandra Hernández

good evening members of the city council my name is Rafael Borja I'm a resident of Santa Ana the local in a magma movement in the parish of Immaculate Heart of Mary. I'm here because I like to express my support for Plan D as the best option for the city of Santa Ana. This plan would represent everyone in the city, like to advocate for the community of interest of Lacey and represented by OCO and OCCORD. And residents share a lot of similarities such as income, rent, language, education, and traditions, culture. Map D with its recommendations will reflect democracy for all,

ethnic groups, traditions, cultures, languages, education, and socioeconomic levels. Thank you for voting yes on Map D with a big heart that you have to help the community. Yes on Plan D. God bless you.

Alejandra Hernandez, Juan Lopez. this case I think we're done with that so now you had comment mayor pro tem or did somebody our consultant wanted to make a presentation thank you for having

me here again I believe per the agreement we were under we wanted to go through the presentation each of these meetings correct okay so I'm gonna go through the presentation we've seen it before but I'm gonna go through there's a couple extra slides that I've added and even some slides that are responsive to some of the comments that you've heard here tonight because these are the some of the same comments we've heard at the other public meetings ask a quick question for you yeah have there been any modifications to the plan adjustment or to them any of the maps at all so I'm gonna provide to you here today some

potential recommended changes for Plan D that take into account some of the conversations that we're having here they're referring to it as the Lacey drawing the neighborhood and the the map those submitted with that so I'll point it out in this presentation so in redistricting we're following some traditional redistricting principles to try to make sure that we're doing the best process. Starting off, districts will be relatively equal size. There's a lot of Supreme Court case law on this as recent as last year, but essentially what we're talking about is based on the 2010 census, we're going to have each of

these districts be equal in total raw population. The total raw population was 324,000 and each district is going to be around 54,000 residents. Districts are going to be contiguous meaning they're going to be whole parts not going to jump up and go around the city they're going to be entire entities. We're going to work to maintain communities of interest and in doing so we're going to be looking at two types of communities of interest. One is the protected classes Latinos, Asians, any other religious, ethnic, national subgroups.

And in the city of Santa Ana we do find a very dense concentration of citizen voting age population that are either Asian or Latino. And we're looking at 60% Latino based on that calculation and around 17% Asian. When we map this we can actually see these populations and where their densities are greatest. When we look at the Latino density, we see that throughout the center of the city. And we have some very high Latino populations, some even areas with 90% of the adult citizen population being Latino.

The Asian population is a little bit different, and it was actually referenced in some of the earlier testimony, that the Asian population is most densely populated on the eastern side, on the western side of the city. And over there we see populations that aren't as dense as the heavily Latino populations, but we do see populations with, you know, 40 or 50 percent of the adult citizen population being Asian.

Aside from ethnic communities of interest, we also look at other communities of interest. It could be people who work in a certain industry. It could be people who are seniors or young people. and one that came up in a lot of public testimony could be people based on socioeconomics like renters versus homeowners. And we were actually asked to map some of this information around, as an example, income. And when we looked at income, we were able to see some areas in the lightly shaded areas with much lower incomes than the rest of the city. And when we zoom in, we can see there are areas

where the per capita income based on the most recent American Community Survey data from the U.S. Census puts the average at, you know, six, seven, $10,000. And then we also looked at renters versus homeowners. Oh, wait, this is the renters versus homeowners. We looked at renters versus homeowners and we found some areas that have extremely high percentages of rental populations. And I want to draw your attention to a couple sections here, the very top of that blue Santa Ana triangle, and you can see it's adjacent to the freeway where you have 93-97% renters, is also an area that popped in here in terms of the lighter

shade, that triangle up there with lower income. That'll come to bear when we look at potential amendments to the map.

Following city and county local government lines is a way for us to kind of piggyback on existing work. and some of that work we'll go into could be school districts, it could be neighborhoods. Then finally keeping districts compact and that's simply meaning to not have districts that are taking serpentine shapes around the city but more squares and circles. And when we do violate any of these criteria we're going to have a justification. We're going to have a justification that's based on community input.

So as an example, if we were to not follow an existing city boundary that's right there, it might be because the community came and said that their community of interest was not exactly following that boundary.

We've had multiple community meetings around the city, and we've had them in mornings and evenings and weekends and weeknights, and we've had them with you as the council members and also out in community centers around the city. And the top concerns that were voiced were, first off, keeping neighborhoods together. We heard that many times in different ways. Then secondly, considering socioeconomic factors. There were folks asking for additional data that we provided. And then there were also folks asking for some mapping, like the mapping you saw of the rental and the income. And then there were a lot of concerns about the process.

Those were concerns about the fact that we're even doing this or the fact of where is the role in the court process and in the city its own process. So there was a lot of discussion of those things, but what most will impact my job will be those first two.

In terms of the online comments, we received, I'd say, probably around a dozen online comments. And the online comments came oftentimes in the form of drawing of communities of interest using the mapping tool that was provided by Esri. And what we saw was mostly things about how communities should be related by the neighborhoods,

areas that are outside of the neighborhoods that should be considered a part of that area. and then also again using that rental data and specifically using that in Plan D to try to capture more of the population of low-income and renters. And also a comment in there put on top there the Spanish language population as well as income and renters. When we look at the current districts we can see two things that really kind of jump out maybe three things that jump out first off the Asian population on the western side of the city you can see is not unified within one district it's

rather split up secondly we have this district 3 that is essentially a east to west district around the northern top of the the city and then the remainder of the districts are more horizontal or more vertical as I was saying we did look at neighborhoods. We actually used this as probably the primary geography when drawing initial lines was to utilize the neighborhoods as kind of the set pieces of the redistricting. And when we looked at the neighborhoods, we actually saw in some of the populations of heavy Latino and heavy Asian populations

that the neighborhoods did serve as good proxies oftentimes for these other ethnic subgroups.

we looked at geographic boundaries and the most important geographic boundary when looking at what is named district a and most of the and i think all of the plans was the school districts and school districts this garden grove unified school district does overlap the most significant population that is asian and it actually just by happenstance is almost exactly the size of what could be one council district. We also looked at the lines that were drawn for congressional seats, and you can see in the congressional districts there's actually testimony about

the 48th congressional district absorbing a lot of the Asian population in Orange County, and the 46th being a heavily Latino congressional district.

So the current lines in San And, and we were asked by the public to provide some of this data, to look at the current lines and how it might be representative or not representative of this city as a whole right now and how it could or couldn't be considered kind of compliant with the CVRA. And as you can see, in terms of the Asian population, the highest percentage Asian in any of those districts is 32% in District 6.

We started with the concepts of the existing plan and looked to try to see if we could do something that would create a better relationship with the neighborhoods and with the Asian population and kind of minimal impact on the city as a whole. When we did this, we were able to draw a district where, in the data, 43% of one of the districts was Asian now. So this does achieve part of one of the goals. However, even just visually you can see that that most dense Asian population is still split into three pieces that Garden Grove Unified School District overlap.

In Plan B, we attempted to do another pass in maximizing the keeping neighborhoods together and also rearranging the way the districts were drawn in the center of the city. and then finally trying to maximize that Asian population, we were able to get it up to 45%, but with some elements that the public kind of pushed back on. In fact, that green hook from, I think, the adjacent district D into A does make sense in terms of trying to maximize the Asian population in A, but it didn't, to some people who were in the community meetings, really seem to be justified.

Plan C was another version of trying to do this, but also trying to look at and put in front of the community whether or not the Asian population that also resides on the east side of the Santa Ana River to the south is more connected to the Asian population that we've been focusing on in the Garden Grove Unified School District area. This was an option, but I don't think that it got a lot of traction in the community meetings or from the organizations.

And then Plan D is the plan that I believe was actually singled out by the plaintiffs. And what it did somewhat elegantly was essentially take advantage of that overlap of the Garden Grove Unified School District boundary in order to create a District A. District D is more similar to what you see in the existing city council lines in that it is a northern district that goes east-west, but that also encapsulates a lot more of the lower-density Latino populations. And then District C ends up being one of the more high-density Latino populations,

and that's where we received some community input that might want to be something that we look at.

and I don't believe that the Asian community really had a lot of feedback on this portion because this was more a concern that was brought up by the Latino community and didn't affect how the Asian community would be drawn in these plans.

What we essentially did in one small revision of Plan D was to take that triangle that I mentioned earlier and also one other adjacent neighborhood based on a drawing provided by OCO and Accord. And essentially Flower Park and the Santa Ana Triangle come into District C. District D then loses some population, so you kind of have to move the other districts a little bit clockwise in order to balance, rebalance, and make sure that they're all achieving equal size.

This version of the plan does take into account exactly the boundaries that were proposed by the public submission and tries to utilize those within the entire plan. And then also within this plan we worked on reducing the deviations. So the largest deviation in this plan is one district being 1% over and another district being 1% under. So that's what we would call a 2% deviation. And that is the end of my presentation.

Great, thank you so very much. I'm going to bring this back. Do we have public comment? We already took that, right? Great. Late. Bring this back to the City Council. Open it up. Councilman Benavides.

Two questions. One is, where are we in the process again? So what's the action tonight, if any? By when do we need to select the maps? I don't know if that's a question for the clerk or for the consultant. And I believe on the 30th is when we have to ultimately vote and select. And it's by five votes of the council. Is that correct?

So tonight we're holding the third public hearing. Four public hearings are required under the elections code. So tonight you can either choose to move all of these maps forward for consideration at the October 30th meeting. tomorrow I will need to publish these maps so these maps will be published in newspapers throughout the city in different languages so the public will be able to see what the maps that are being considered whether you move one or all five potentially those would need to be published and then on October 30th

the council will be introducing the ordinance that will be adopting the new boundary lines

And we would be, on the 30th, we would be limited to whatever number of maps that we select tonight. That's correct. Yes. So now, going back from practical purposes, I've noticed that I requested some information with regard to residences, current residences of City and Council and candidates. that are we so we know who's who the current candidates are one of them from each of their respective boards will be that the assumptions will be the city

council member replacing those of us who are going out in a number of situation I think in most scenarios there are going to be at least one ward if we're looking at these at these maps where there might be two people that are representing or two people that are living within that ward in some cases I think there was one where where depending on who was elected there might be situation where there's a proposed ward that doesn't have a representative living in that in that district so I'm curious and obviously this is not novel

or new to Santa and Fullerton went through this Anaheim went through the even locally Garden Grove has gotten got through this redistricting process and That's just Orange County alone and believe that there are other cities But this is just an ongoing, you know, so What is the process that does take place? What would be the situation that would take place? Practically speaking we have an election here this year in 2018 We have another would have another one scheduled in 2020 if there is a situation we have two council members living in one district and or a district where there is no representative

residing in that district? How does that get addressed in future elections? Yeah, so right now you're having an election in 20 or so days in the existing at-large structure where you'll be electing council members that will be carrying through their terms under that at-large structure, and your election that this first election this is operative in will be 2020. And in 2020, you will be able to select as a part of this process which seats come up in 2020. Which of these, I've numbered them, I've not numbered these for a purpose. I've kept these letters. You'll be able to assign that A is going to be

District 3 and B is going to be District 2. You're going to be able to assign those and

in assigning those and assigning what order they're going to come up in election, you're going to help determine which seats are going to be, which geographic areas are going to be up for election in 2020, and which geographic areas are going to be up for election 2022. You have full discretion on that, and you can take into account factors like somebody whose term is going to be expiring and lives in that area, their term is going to be expiring 2020, so let's make that one expire and number it in that order. You will, after 2020, have essentially a blended council.

You'll have two or three council members that were elected under one system and other council members who were elected under the other. So you'll have some who were elected under the districted system and some who were elected at large. The fact that the at-large council members might live in a different district has no bearing because they're still fulfilling their at-large terms that they were elected to. You can think of this plan being fully operational in 2022, and by 2022 there won't be any examples of council members who are living in or were elected in a district that is different than their current boundaries.

The determination on which wards are up for election in 2020, at what time would that be selected and determined? is that that's not part of the October 30th process, right? That would be the future council would have the opportunity to be able to figure that out. Okay.

With one caveat to that, I think the settlement agreement, I don't know to what extent we could speak about it, but there was one piece in that agreement that I think speaks to the timing of when one of these districts would be up on the ballot. Can we disclose that to the attorney?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

I think, yeah, well, as part of the settlement agreement, because it was aimed at making sure that we address this racially, alleged racially polarized voting, to correct that, it would, in the settlement agreement, direct us to at least let that area that we're trying to address through the lawsuit be one of the first areas to be put up for vote.

Right. So the goal would be expediency, have that seat take effect as soon as possible is the idea.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

So while there is discretion with respect to which ones will, we, as part of the settlement agreement, identified that one area to be one of the first. Right.

Exactly. Madam City Attorney, follow-up question. The settlement agreement was brought up. There are very clear deadlines that were spelled out within the settlement agreement that the City has agreed to. And one of those is that on October 30th, we would select the maps, if I'm understanding correctly. that based on charter happens with an affirmative five votes let's say October 30th comes around and for some reason there are not five affirmative votes to select a map what do we know what the

next effort scenario what the implications are for toward settlement agreement our obligation to the

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

city exposure or anything well because the terms of the settlement agreement would are public because you've approved that settlement agreement, we can talk about the terms. So if the City Council were not to conform to the terms of the settlement agreement, you would be deemed to be in breach of the settlement agreement, and the consequences of that could be significant. As you know, as part of that settlement agreement, the City expended over $200,000 in settlement of that matter, and we advised the Council of what that litigation might cost if it had gone to trial. So if you were to violate the terms of the settlement agreement,

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

we would be back in a position of litigating that issue and the dollars that we advise the council of, you would incur those costs.

Thank you.

All right, who else wants to comment? Jose Solario?

Mr. May, I don't know if we're ready to start going through these various motions, but I'll just say that I think on the whole, the four recommendations look good. For me personally of the maps that we do have to forward for consideration at the fourth public meeting, clearly there's been a lot of support around Map D, but I think from other input that we've received, there's quite a bit of support also for Map C. And as I understand the process,

I guess item 2 says that folks still have up until midnight on October 26 to provide other tweaks or suggestions map wise and then on the 30th we need to approve with five votes one distinct map. So I guess I'm just sharing with my colleagues that I like the idea of moving more than one just so there's some flexibility, but not all of them, just so that we can begin to get some focus on this.

Councilman Villegas? Just a quick question. So again, one of these maps that's popular has me out of my ward, and then I'm gonna be reelected, or I'm gonna have my reelection in two years, so that's when I'm up next. what happens if I win

or if I lose it wouldn't matter but if I get a reward this is a little confusing

it is confusing I understand you as the council will have the ability to decide which geographic areas come up for election at what times so you could theoretically say you know that your election is in 2020 you could then advocate for your geographic area to be concurrent with the 2020 election cycle.

Your new ward. My new ward with the new lines. Yeah. Yeah, but there's a couple of different council members in there also, including our mayor. There's some other spots. I think, like, Council Member Benavides was talking about some of these wards don't have anyone in there. And I don't know. Well, that's a lot of discussion right there.

You could have some good things.

All right. Thank you. Of course. That's a lot of discussion.

No city council members.

Then again, we have a new council coming in. We'll be discussing it then, too. You never know. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. So, Council Member Solaria, did you have a suggestion?

Maybe like what we did before, maybe we just go one at a time and vote on them, just so that there isn't any question.

But there are four different items that we have to roll on. But up to you, Mayor, whether you want to try to take them all at once or individually.

What's the pleasure of the Council?

Does it?

I have a suggestion or thought. All right, let's go over. At this point, we have five at least maps that have been presented. One option is to move all five. there's a comment about maybe beginning to narrow down so that maybe it is and so if which I think that there is some some merit to that so we can start then zeroing in and focusing on both us as a council and then the public the community there was comment that there was the map C and D certainly seems to have some traction interest now there's the D2 that was proposed which which provides for

for some more balance I think around demographics. So if we were to narrow down, I would suggest that we look at and consider CD and D2 to consider for October 30th. Just some thoughts and suggestions on what rest of that.

Councilor. Okay. Okay.

The only brief comment I would make is, you would think that because it's D and D2 that they're very similar maps. But D2 actually is pretty substantially different.

So I don't know if that really helps.

Do you want to rename it or what do you.

No, no, no, I'm just making that clarification. That really then it's like three distinct maps, which again is better than five. So at least it does get focused, but it's substantially different. I don't know if Council Member Benavidez prefers one over the other, or if our consultant maybe can speak to D2. Call it what? Why is it D2 rather than-

Call it E is what I was suggesting, change the letter. The reason I named it D2 is simply because the public input was to modify Plan D.

He used that as a basis.

So I could have called it Plan E or whatever. And you can actually choose to name it whatever you want. One other advantage of having D2 in the mix is that the deviations of D2 are a lot narrower. I didn't make any revisions to Plan D, although I could have, although the settlement agreement asked us to put out the plans as they were at the time and not to change anything. So the deviations are a lot smaller in Plan D2 as well. But you're right. The rather small change of just actually 9,000 people moving up a little bit end up having ripple effects throughout the rest of the plan as we tried to rebalance.

But I guess the benefit to D2 would be of certain sets of inputs, it's reflective of a lot of the input that we got that tended to be of this nature.

And it's reflective of some of the comments that came up here. They were expressing them verbally. They weren't expressing them with maps. maps, but the maps that they submitted are being reflected by what's in that version of the plan. Right. And it doesn't impact the other things about Plan D that the API community were advancing.

You know, the only analysis that I didn't see in a lot of the data that you presented or the findings is that you'll see that the actual, you know, square footage or the square miles within each area differ quite a bit. Absolutely. So you see that obviously C versus B, just in size, is very distinct. So C is heavy residential versus B being probably a blend of residential and commercial and industrial or non-residential. If you can make that available to us when you come back to us, or if it's not already embedded in some of your matrices that you provided,

But I guess when a council member takes responsibility for a ward, some will have 90% residential versus 10% non-residential, and others may have a 50-50 split. So you're answering to not only residential constituents, but also business constituents and non-residential constituents. So that matters, I think, just because we want to see which one is heavy on both.

I think this might be something where there might be some city staff that would be able to help me with planning zones or other help the council members understand these lines within the planning zones to determine those ideas between commercial and residential. You know, commercial properties don't participate in elections. They don't get represented in the same way.

But they still need to be, have to be serviced and responded to.

So, but definitely we see that in a lot of redistricting, especially around California. You can imagine there are some cities with huge, or counties with huge rural areas that end up being rather large districts with not a lot of people.

All right, let's try to get out of here before midnight if we can, so maybe we pick up our pace a bit. Do we have a suggestion or a motion on this?

I'd like to move approval of these four items, but for item three to suggest that we bring back maps C, D, and D2.

Is that clear for everybody? Is there a second? Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? No. So we have 5-1, is it?

I would like to hear what the record can hook us.

I have none.

All right. Next then, item 75B is adopting a resolution authorizing negotiations for sale of portions of city-owned real estate at 1301 and 1305 West 12th Street, non-general fund. Aaron Albertson wants to speak.

Hello, my name is Aaron Albertson. I'm a professional engineer, principal engineer at Commercial Development Resources. Rick Marshall and Linda Kelly hired our firm to help them with civil engineering and expanding the parking lot of their little retail shopping center in response to the Bristol street widening. This resolution was continued to tonight, and I just wanted to remind the council that Rick and Linda, this property's been in their family for over 30 years.

They're not developers that are getting a sweetheart deal. They actually dedicated 25 feet of their frontage of their existing retail property to allow for the Bristol Street widening

on the understanding that when they did that dedication that the two adjacent residential properties to the south that were purchased by the city in the last few years,

12th Street, where those are frontage, would be closed off to create a Colesac, and the remnant areas of those two parcels would be sold to them at fair market value so that they could create a parking lot and continue to provide the retail strip center. Without this property, their strip center does not meet the parking standards. And there's five micro-businesses that provide sales tax to the community, so we would hope that you would pass this so that we could continue our process and get construction documents done and get it permitted. Thank you.

Any comments or questions from Council members?

If not, I would close the public hearing and bring it to Council for adopting a resolution. Move the item.

Second.

Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? No. One no. Motion carries.

75C, there's a resolution established in the Ground Utility District, No. 37 on Warner Avenue, from Main Street to Grand Avenue, to coincide with the Warner Avenue improvements. I'll now open up the public hearing. Do we have any members of the audience which to address this? Seeing none, I will close the public hearing, bring it to Council for consideration. I'd entertain a motion. Second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. Good staff recommendation and presentation. No, I'm kidding. I know you were ready.

75D, public hearing ordinance amending certain sections of the Chapter 8 of the Municipal Code. It's a certificate of occupancy and foreclosure registry program. Anybody wish to address city council as I open up the public hearing? Seeing no one, I will close the council and I will, the public hearing and I'll entertain a motion.

Martinez, motion to approve.

Those, we have motion by Martinez, second by Sarmiento. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries.

I suggest the work study session, may we, it's almost midnight, Ms. City Manager.

can we dispense with that or is it something short or what do we want to do

guys you all want to put it over or let's put it over

if we may we can keep it very brief we're at a decision point

can you do negative time

30 seconds to move alright go

all right your 30 seconds are up thank you good evening thanks for the time just a quick update

this presentation this evening kind of summarizes the city's commitment to updating our general plan. We had a quick discussion with our Ed a bit last week to talk about some of the study areas. Really the key focus for tonight is to try to land on the study areas, the focus areas that the city has identified to begin our environmental impact analysis for the general plan. So we'd like to kind of quickly flip through those. The consensus from the community was to preserve and protect the majority of our city. We're a single family. There was also discussion about keeping

our light industrial and industrial commercial uses intact. What we're trying to do is create a series of linkages with these proposed focus areas in conjunction with our successful harbor downtown Metro East, which was recently updated, and then create an extension essentially of our of our existing downtown south on South Main Street consistent with the Gensler study.

Quick map to show the city as it exists today and the 85% or so of what we're not planning on touching based on some of the community feedback, preserving some of our historic resources and enhancing some of the key business districts. And then really quickly here to cut to the chase on the focus areas, there are five of them. The streetcar alignment was one that was discussed tonight. South Main Street, lots of activity at Main Place Mall to our north, so I wanted to capitalize on the regional importance of the Main Place area to draw some potential interest. 17th and Grand was another area that we had identified.

Lots of single-story commercial uses that are kind of out of date. Some opportunity there for some mixed-use, missing middle type of housing that some of the residents expressed. And then we have the crux right now at the 55 and Dyer interchange, one of the study areas that we'd love to move forward with and do some additional analysis in response to the heritage and some other projects that are coming through there, as well as some other developers that have expressed interest. We're trying to balance out really our priorities and trying to keep that industrial base solid, maybe attract some additional corporate businesses

due to the proximity to the beach, to the airport, to our universities. and then these slides kind of just illustrate the individual areas. We'd like to come back at the end of the year with our policy framework. And Michelle, you had mentioned, I'm sorry, Council Member Pro Tem Martinez, you had mentioned, it's getting late, you had mentioned some examples. So we're checking out some of your suggestions on Detroit, Pittsburgh, and then tonight you talked about Sacramento a little bit. So absolutely love to come back and take a look at some of those policies

that you might be able to present to weave those into our policy framework that we helped to bring back in December. There will be some more time to study these in detail and maybe talk about potential uses at the beginning of the year, but really we're anxious to move forward with environmental documentation. That is it.

All right. Look, I'm not comfortable giving you input. You've got new council members coming. I feel like we're rushing this at minutes before midnight. It's not your fault, but there's a big big big series of questions and you know thank you for the

if I can go ahead if I can us address and and disagree with you you you are we've been we've been working on on the general one is the general plan has been that the general plan is grossly outdated we've been trying to work and address this for some time you I respect your position I disagree with it you're one of seven only one of seven so our community deserves to have a general plan updated our staff deserves it needs to be able to have direction from council the future council coming in they can very much they're right now

they what they need is direction on what to work on future council can still come in and speak to it but to hold things up because you don't want us to be able to address. It just seems counterproductive. So we can go based on the committee recommendation and just go with that and ultimately with what committee recommendation is to move forward with all of the work that the staff has already provided and what they've worked on. Just to reassure the entire council, at this point we're not making any land use changes or decision. What we're asking is that these are the focus areas that we'll be studying.

in December we'll come back with actual policy then we'll recommend to the entire council but these we already have directions on where we should go in terms of study areas and for the most part the entire city we're keeping maintaining and protecting the characteristics but along major corridors at areas where we have major commercial centers industrial center that's where we would like to focus some of our strategies in terms of how do we make the best use of what we have. I guess the question would be, does anybody oppose that? If not, then just allow staff to

continue to do their research. That's ultimately what they're asking. So if, yeah, I don't think you're hearing any opposition. Well, you can vote for me, but we'll deal with it in the future.

There's one, but the rest I don't think. One.

I want the staff to continue the work.

Okay.

They're going to come by in December. I'm sure we have some time between now and December to get a briefing. I've been talking to them. But, you know, what I don't appreciate, Mr. Mayor, is that when they start saying that you've been there a long time, this council here has been, a few of them have been here 12 years. So you've got to also blame the take also.

Well, and I think a lot of things have gone well over the years.

You're welcome. All right. Thank you. So I was in the committee meeting as well, and I think that the discussion that we had there was something very similar to what you're talking about here. I don't think there was much difference, but I think it makes a lot of sense. It's something that is protocol for most general plan amendments, and I think you received a lot of good feedback at the committee. and I think there are three seats that are up there. So, Mr. Mayor, I wouldn't presume that you're going to be back to certainty. Could be four, but for sure agree. So, you know, I think you should comment.

I think it's important that you do just in case we don't know what will happen. You know, the future is always uncertain. So, look, let me take the opportunity to say I think the work that you've done has been very, very good, and I would support you continuing to do your forward progress on this because it's important that we not stall this. This has been stalled for much, much too long.

All right. Let's go on. Brenda Gonzalez.

Followed by Raul Nolasco.

Sumfura Otsuji.

Dale. Come on down.

a record before midnight. I just want to say councilman.

Well, like some of you folks have done in the past, this is the time to pound the pavement and look for votes and everything else. I've been doing the same thing, pounding the pavement, talking to people, knocking on doors about 25-25.

What I just wanted to tell you, because it is really late, is out of all the houses I've knocked on, which have been quite a few over the last several months, I've had 16 people that have told me they don't want to give me their email address to get updates on it. And out of those 16, only two of them were really opposed to what I was doing. Two people that would like to see that apartment complex go in.

So there's a lot of people out there that are still opposed. You'll see that when we have our chance to bring it in front of you guys later on this year, next year, whenever. So I just wanted to give you that update. and we will be meeting with the Planning Department next week to go over some issues that we brought up to them back on September 5th so we look forward to doing that with the Planning Department and just let you know we're still here

I've been kicking. Thank you Olga Duarte,

Karen Duarte, Kylie Schuyler, Patricia Coleman, Chris Schmidt,

Good morning, Mayor, City Councilmembers. I'd just like to take this opportunity to recognize and thank somebody, the Interim Park and Rec Director, Ralph Nunez. In the short amount of time he's been here, he's done a lot for our Parks and Rec Department. Ralph literally calls me once a week, asks me how's everything going, wants me to meet with him at parks. I'd really like to thank Ralph for all the work he's done in removing All the dead trees in Centennial Park to make room For the 130 trees that we're going to be planning there to replace them. So once again, thank you very much Ralph

Thank you Carlo Bonanni

Mayor and City Council this charter school up here was worried about the rail line I believe none of you guys have been down by Segerstrom and Greenville by MacArthur and Segerstrom Avenue and see what a nightmare is especially when the construction guys are trying to get in and people are trying to drop their kids off okay it's getting closer there somebody's going to get whacked and somebody's going to get killed over there and whatever engineer who designed that housing track to have that exit pointed right at the high school made a terrible mistake. Terrible. And it's going to happen. You city council members over here

better take note. Not the ones that are leaving. But the ones that are going to be staying. Some child over there is going to get whacked. Mark my word. Could have gone right up the exit. Could have gone right up where the church was and let it go out over there on Alton.

Especially when the football games are there. And people are going to try to come home and get in and get out and rush around.

Somebody's going to get whacked. Mark my word. I've been there a couple times, seen it there. I don't see the council member there that represents that area. Never seen them. Mark my word. Thank you. That's all I know, Sean Mill, we got along real good.

All right, so with that, council comment. Councilman Sarmiento, please. Thank you, the staff. Have a good night. Mayor Pope-Townton.

Good night.

Councilman Solario.

I had two, but I'll just keep it simple, two-one, and maybe staff can provide a response. I've been frustrated. I know Mayor Porton Martinez has been part of some of these emails. We have some ladies that simply want to do Tai Chi at a park, and city staff has not allowed them to do it. They want them to file a permit and do who knows how many more meetings. And I just understand it. Maybe I'm missing something that doesn't look like it's a commercial thing. Tai Chi is a very light exercise, meditative type of thing. And we want people to be fit and healthy.

So I just don't get it. I think it's been maybe like just at least six weeks that I've known about it. And it's still unresolved. And so they're not allowed to go do Tai Chi. And it's a group of like, you know, ten ladies or something. is the parks person or somebody here that can speak to what that situation is and when that's going to get resolved

so the first director here I'll let him give you a quick update councilman

good evening councilman yes staff have been in contact with a group and apparently there are fees that are here that I have been exchanged so staff will continue to meet with them to try to address that and the reason is is that if we allow one group to come in and they charge fees and don't go through the permitting process then the problem would we that we would have is that other groups would want to come in and do the same I get all that but still it should

not take pride for what the group has been maybe six months trying to resolve it. So maybe our city manager or somebody can step in to help resolve this but you know you have a lot of ladies that just are wanting to do exercise in their

local park and do Tai Chi. Well we'll go ahead and get in contact with her tomorrow and then we'll go ahead and let you know exactly what we're able to work out. From what I understand it's a small amount of money that's being exchanged but the problem that we have as I said if we allow one group to do it it may be Tai Chi, maybe another activity, we have to be consistent with the established policies. Otherwise, I don't disagree, but it needs to be resolved. We'll definitely meet with her tomorrow, and if you'd like, I'll follow up personally with her and see what we can work out.

Right. And it's more than just following up again. It's staff coming up with creative resolutions to say we need to update a policy or we need documentation of X, Y, and Z. But, you know, it needs to be resolved. Thank you.

Councillor Villegas. Councillor Benavides. Thank you Mayor. A couple of quick brief comments. I want to echo just the recognition of Mr. Nunez, your work that you've been doing during your interim time here has been very helpful. Switching gears here, we are coming down to the last couple of meetings, some of us on the council. There's been a few projects, a number of projects we've been working on for some time. Appreciate the fact the staff has been working on expediting, bringing some of those forward.

One of those, we got pretty far along in the branding study, and we invested some funds, contracted a reputable firm, North Star, and I think we haven't quite brought that to resolution. So I would ask that we, I certainly would like to get what the outcome of that is going to be and if there's going to be any action recommendation, not tonight, but any action recommendation by Council, hopefully here in the near future. also I know that staff is working on the revenues for the cannabis fund revenue

that council has addressed and talked to staff about when we approve both adult use and commercials looking forward to that coming forward for council to memorialize that policy and that's all that I have for tonight thank you all for your hard work

thank you and for that I want to get us out of here before midnight so thank you council because we kind of spared up a little bit So one final report from our city manager.

Yes, Mr. Mayor. Very briefly, I just wanted to remind everybody that we have a downtown Santa Ana 5K run this weekend. Pre-registration would help everybody in terms of their line, in terms of getting registered that morning. It's going to run through some of our historical sites. And the other thing I wanted to go over is the Santa Ana windstorm response. We had some rain a couple days, Friday and Saturday, and then we had heavy winds, which is a bad combination. 20 to 30 miles per hour with gusts up to 42. So 300 tree-related work orders were created. 50 trees were down. 250 large tree limbs were down.

So far, 135 have been inspected, made safe. 40 have been completed, and we have another 125 to still address. We had 12 on vehicles, 23 blocking streets. And that's just our public right-of-way. On the parks side, we had 41 trees down at parks. I want to commend our interim parks director because we would have had a lot more if we hadn't removed all those dead trees from Centennial. They would have for sure come down. We still had quite a bit of failures out in our parks. We had a large oak tree that fell near the entrance of the zoo, so we had to close down the zoo for a day or two.

Three cars were damaged in our parking lots for our parks. and playground equipment was damaged over at Centennial due to a tree falling on it. And fencing at several parks was damaged due to trees. So I just wanted to report out staff was working late today and they're going to continue to work to address all these issues. And that's all I have, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. I just wanted to make one request on the 5K.

Can staff mark the one kilometer marks? There should be five marks. If we could do that I plan on running it and I run in other races and it so you know zero one two three four and five So if we could do that it would be helpful as one is out there running And it starts at eight o'clock correct?

So eight sharp So get there early and get ready to run

Are you not sure, Mayor, whether you'll be able to complete it, so you just want to know how far?

No, no, when you're doing your splits, I want to try to do it in under, you know, 27 minutes or so, so the splits help. No, I'll definitely complete it. Why don't you come on out?

It starts at 8, but people can get there as early as 6.30 to register. Yeah, get there early.

All right, with that, I'm going to continue the meeting to the next regularly scheduled. it'll be on the 30th adjourn to the 30th but for the purposes only of the maps because the other motion failed so it's strictly on the maps all right

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