Read the June 19 meeting.

If you all please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I'm just waiting for the camera to come on. It's barely five seconds away. So we'll give them ten. And now we're going to start. All right, let's 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. Thank you. Please remain standing. Bob Ornette, our police chaplain, is going to go to his starting vocation.

Lord God, we're so privileged to be here tonight and to be able to serve our community. We ask your blessing upon this time. We ask your blessing upon all of the people that are gathered here. And thank you for our city council members. And Lord, we're asking tonight that your wisdom would be displayed here. And Lord, we would also be mindful of those that are going to be honored, Lord, tonight for their service to the community. And again, Lord, bless our city. Prosperate, Lord God. And may your peace be upon our people. In the name of the Lord. Amen. Amen.

You may be seated.

Councilman Villegas will start with a presentation by Councilman Villegas declaring rights of all students to equality in arts learning. So whoever is here to receive come on forward and then after that if Councilman Benavides arrives we'll do the train of work this morning.

Rob McNair and the Santa Unified School District, step forward please.

Rob McNair, are you here? Can you keep walking and come around?

And join Councilor Villegas?

Good afternoon everyone. I'm here to present the proclamation for the rights of all students to equity and arts learning. And here today I have Robin McNair, who's going to do an opener on this. If you could please step forward. Thank you.

So I'd like to thank Councilman Villegas for being an Arts Equity Champion. And on behalf of Santa Ana Unified School District, I'm grateful to have present with me our School Board President, Valerie Mesquia, and board member John Palacio, our deputy superintendent Alfonso Jimenez, and our assistant superintendent Daniel Allen. We have an amazing teacher of arts education who's a leader in our district with us, Jeanette McMahon, and the arts commission and our arts and culture liaison, Tram Lee.

I just want to thank Councilman Villegas for making this opportunity possible because with our collaboration with the district and the city partnerships and all of the many arts partners in the audience here with us tonight, this helps us to activate stronger support systems and greater resource and access to a caring community and the community members and organizations that help remove barriers to access and participation and success in a well-rounded, comprehensive education that includes the arts. This allows our students to have access to what has been called privileged

knowledge sometimes and this levels the playing field and equips our students to thrive in the global creative economy. There are over two billion two hundred billion dollars worth of jobs in the creative economy and we are trying to build a pipeline and fuel that right in the heart here in the capital where we live. So our visual and performing arts strategic plan in the district, the arts and culture master plan of the city the city the district declaring itself an arts equity district and the city declaring itself an arts equity champion is making the way for our students to

have access to incredible opportunities and we are grateful for this recognition tonight and the support that comes with it and the acknowledgement that this is important part of our education thank

you thank you robin if i can have president or someone from the staff come forward valerie if come forward address to you thank you so much um hi i'm valerie mesqua i'm board president sata

anna unified school district i'm going to turn it over to dr allen but i do want to thank you councilman viegas and the city council for a wonderful partnership that we have dr allen yes so daniel allen assistant superintendent of teaching and learning for santa anna unified school district and we're just really excited about the work that's being done here at the city level in terms of promoting the arts with the arts commission and the partnering that's happening as As you heard from Robin McNair, our board has also moved forward leading with the Arts

Equity District, really guaranteeing our students that they have access to the arts as part of their core curriculum across the city. And so that's something that we've been working on for a number of years with the vision of the Strategic Arts Plan, which I think is already three years in the works. And so it's just really exciting to be a part of that work and to be partnered with all the different organizations that are bringing that to reality so we're grateful for this recognition and to be a part of that work and I will just close by thanking all the staff from Santa Unified that participate in this and for

all of their hard work and working with the city and the nonprofits in the community and so we thank them thank you Robin Robin Robin Robin if you can please

accept this proclamation on behalf of the mayor and city council for the rights of all students to equity in arts learning.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

How are you doing, man?

What? What?

We don't want to catch you.

Go.

Now switch hitting or not switching, but it's coming in. And then the bat for pinch hitting for the David Benavides. Is Councilman Ben Sarmiento going to do the presentation?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Councilman Benavides has big shoes to fill, but I'm going to do my best tonight. So if I can have Liam Barnes come join me. He is the Development Director for the Alzheimer's Association of Orange County. and I have the distinct privilege tonight to present this recognition on behalf of my colleague Councilman Benavides who's running a little bit late tonight, but really I think he, as I believe that we're presenting this on behalf, come on up, sir, and join me up here. And, you know, we're presenting this on behalf of the Council, recognizing June as Alzheimer and Brain Awareness Month.

You know, many of our loved ones are afflicted with, you know, different illnesses and different conditions, and this is something that's affected a family member of mine, and I'm sure that, you know, we're maybe one step removed, if not just very, very close to this. And all of us may be, you know, closer to this condition than others, but we want to make sure that we make awareness as much as possible, and we highlight what the condition is and how we can help more importantly. So June is recognized as Alzheimer's and Brain Awareness Month,

and June 21st is recognized as the longest day, a sunrise-to-sunset event to honor the strength, heart, and endurance of those facing Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia, which is a general term for memory loss and other cognitive inabilities, and they are serious enough to interfere with daily life as we know. Today, there are more than 5.7 million Americans living with Alzheimer's, and a figure which is expected to grow to as many as 14 million by mid-century. So it's a very staggering number that continues to almost increase exponentially.

Although Alzheimer's disease cannot be prevented slow to reverse, new research shows that a healthier lifestyle can reduce the risks and diminish one's ability to get it later in life. Furthermore, although there is no cure, there are treatments for symptoms and research to prevent the disease, and these continue. So this is a really timely way to make sure we call attention to it. those families, those members of loved ones that we have, to let them know that we're a supportive community. We want to make sure that we not only highlight, educate, but try to put resources behind it.

And here to accept this proclamation is the Alzheimer's Association of Orange County Representative. It was founded in 1980. The association reached millions of people through global, national, and local level. and with an advanced understanding of the disease, the Alzheimer's Association provides support, education to those suffering from Alzheimer's. Please, if you have a loved one, if you know a friend, if you know a friend who has a loved one, just let them know that it's very important to continue to support efforts like the Alzheimer's Association of Orange County does to make sure that we all make it aware,

make it a priority to be present, to be available, because it's a very debilitating disease. it not only affects the person who's actually being diagnosed with the illness but it really affects an entire family and it devastates an entire family so to see someone decay and have trouble you know just functioning you know on a daily basis as we're used to seeing it really does just put a really big strain on a family so thank you Liam for being here and accepting on our behalf and do you mind saying a few words to the public? The floor is yours.

Thank you everybody for for being here today and thank you for generously giving us this proclamation. He pretty much covered everything that I wanted to say but like he said it's a it's a very debilitating disease and and we're obviously all in it for to see the end of the disease and you'll see a hashtag tag end alls all over this month, especially around this week, the longest day. And we kind of formed the longest day as a do-it-yourself fundraiser to kind of honor a loved one

or honor all those who have a loved one affected by the disease. So we really appreciate everybody's support, and we really appreciate the mayor and the council giving us this proclamation this month. It's a very big honor, and we are excited to continue to work with the city of Santa Ana and all of Orange County for the foreseeable future, and then hopefully to see the first survivor and the end of this disease. So thank you so much.

Let's give Liam a big round of applause.

So Liam, this proclamation is a little long, but I'll just read a very short summary of that, that on behalf of the City of Santa Ana, we are recognizing you and giving you this proclamation for Alzheimer's and Brain Awareness Month. You're going to be receiving this on behalf of the Alzheimer's Association of Orange County, and this encourages all residents to become informed about this epidemic and become part of the effort to combat this disease. This strips people of their dignity. This strips people of their ability to care for loved ones, and it makes it real difficult for loved ones to see somebody that they care about decay.

So Liam, please let them know that Santa Ana is 100% behind finding a cure or at least easing the pain. So thank you on behalf of all of us in the city of Santa Ana.

Thank you. Madam City Attorney, anything to report out of closed session, please?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Mayor and Councilmembers, we don't have any reportable action and also let the public know that we did not discuss in closed session the items of pending litigation.

Thank you. With that, I'm going to turn our attention to the consent calendar. But before I do that, we have two Councilmembers who are with us via telephone. and that is Councilmember Tina Head on Mayor Pro Tem Martinez. So first of all, let's start with Mayor Pro Tem first. Ladies first.

Mayor Pro Tem, can you hear me?

They have not called in yet.

They haven't called in yet? So let's vote on everything fast.

All right. We gave them their chance. All right, let's go item 13 C. I have some speakers on that item Janelle Hardy

Carl Benninger Tish Leon Mike Tardif

Go ahead Janelle

good evening council members mayor pro tem if you're listening and mayor I'm here to speak on 13c and I'll be reading my statement I met Phil Bracera when he was serving on the historic resources commission as a commissioner we not only take an oath but personally make a commitment of time and study our city commissioners benefit from commissions with expertise and experience and in some cases a percentage of commissioners with a personal discipline is required

the planning commission requires knowledge of zoning cpus and ubc just to name a few with a degree in urban planning and development. Mr. Bracera has this knowledge and meets these qualifications. He's been appointed to serve until December of this year. I ask, what is the rush?

Please consider allowing the highly qualified commissioner, Phil Bracera, to complete his remaining only five or six months. appointed Planning Commissioner Commission term. Please vote no against removing the Ward 4 Planning Commission appointment. Thank you.

Thank you. Carl, please come on up. Followed by Tish and then Mike. Good evening and

Mr. Mayor it's Benninger. Benninger. There you go. Unless you're in Germany then it's vinegar but that's how you say it in German. Yeah I've got a guy calls me

Palita every time. Keep going.

I'm just here in support of Phil Bessler also. I don't understand where this is coming from. Phil has served the Planning Commission very well and those of us who have attended those meetings realize that he's always well prepared to speak about any subject that is there. And so to remove right now I hope it's not because he's put his name in for counsel. If that's the reason why someone wants to remove him, then that's our politics at the worst. So I ask you to vote no on his removal. Thank you. Thank you, Tish.

And Mike, come on down because you're next. Oh, there you are.

Thank you. Good evening. I'm also here to speak on the behalf of Phil. Everyone who sits on the commission knows that they serve at the pleasure of the council, which Phil has always done. Phil is being punished for asking a question regarding a new restaurant, the Cevichiria. And for that reason, David has chosen to remove Phil, using the excuse that he wants to appoint someone else. My problem with this is that if you are all in favor of his removal, knowing that David wants to honor the known sexual predator, Julio Perez, and standing with the commissioner who has given and served this council well,

if you all vote yes on removing Phil, you should all be ashamed of your actions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mike.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. As you are aware, the removal of a commissioner who is sitting at the approval of the council is serious business. A Santa Ana City Commissioner is sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States. An action to remove a commissioner is an action of force. use of this force should be justified to the residents of Santa Ana this city council approved Commissioner Becerra to sit in a position of authority to represent through you the residents of Santa Ana in matters of land use

did you not judge him qualified and competent to serve as a Santa Ana city official what if anything has changed or occurred for you to reverse your judgment it. The residents of Santa Ana and Commissioner Becerra deserve an explanation of why he is being forcefully removed from his appointed commission. Lacking such an explanation, you acquit yourselves as practitioners of dirty politics. Why is Phil Becerra being removed from the Planning Commission find it very unfortunate that councilmember David Benavides

is not here what I'm going to do I'm going to hold that item until he comes so that he's able

to speak to it okay thank you I'll ask again why is Phil Becerra being removed from the Planning

commission thank you mike thank you so with that let me come back to the consent calendar but first do we have either council member online both all right let let me uh do this uh for both the council members that are not able to uh attend and are calling in uh mayor poten martinez and counselor Tinajero are you able to hear me all right let's vote I'm telling you if we can move quickly enough we could be out of here early so when you get them all I'll go there meanwhile I'm gonna hold item 13c until councilmember Ben

avides arrives so I would entertain a motion on the consent calendar mr. mayor

can you pull item 19D as in David, please?

All right. 13C and 19D have been pulled. I'd entertain a motion on the balance. Mr. Mayor, I also would like to pull items 13A and 13B.

Okay.

We need five votes on 20A. 20A is an appropriation adjustment.

All right. So we'll hold that one over. Which was that item?

20A.

All right. We'll hold that over. so i would entertain a motion on the balance so moved second those in favor please say aye aye aye those opposed motion carries what was the first item madam city clerk 13a 13a and 13b

Councilmember I believe it was Valorio. Yeah items 13A and 13B I'd like to continue that for 60 days. Is there a second? Well what I was gonna say Councilmember

maybe that since it's award for appointment and the council member I believe is on his way maybe we could hold that one over with the other one that involves his appointment.

That would be fine. I do have some questions for him.

All right, so let's hold it for a few minutes until Council Member is here. I believe the next item was at

28? It's actually 19D, Council Member Sarmiento.

Okay, go ahead, please. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. If I could have staff come and approach us at the podium. I just have some questions on some of the

on the way the request for proposal or proposals I guess is drafted and what funds are being you know what funds are available it sounded like the in lieu fee was or the in lieu funds we're gonna maybe be set aside and not be part of the RFP process is that

correct that is correct we are what we're using the word we're reserving those funds to deal with one of our most pressing issues we have in our city right now which is homelessness so we're not making those funds available via this RFP this year. There may be times in future years where we make those funds available again, but right now we're going to put those on reserve for us to decide how to use.

Well, the only concern I have with that is those, you know, funds to address and resources to address homelessness are really not within, not sort of our primary role. It's really the county's primary role. the in lieu of funds as it was drafted pursuant to the ordinance is to make sure that we provide a larger inventory of affordable housing. So why would we hold those up? I understand that homelessness is a problem, but then we could use that with any other source of income and any other source of funds. I just don't see why these funds are being segregated from a development.

Well, these are our most flexible use of funds, and there are various sections of our code that allow us to use this for homelessness services. We've analyzed various sections of our municipal code and some of our program documents, and we've come to the agreement that these funds could be used to address the homelessness in our city.

But there are families that are on the verge of being homeless, and maybe being able to be eligible for affordable housing would prevent them from falling into that precipice of homelessness. So this is one sort of level of preventing homelessness. So look, I'm just not sure. I get the fact that we go out and we look at maybe some of the properties that are listed there. I don't disagree with that. I don't disagree with the merits, but I just don't know if we want to use this.

And we all know that we're in a struggle with the county to be able to access monies from them that rightly belong to be spent here in Santa Ana to address the homelessness problem. So I don't want to relieve the county or any other agency that has a responsibility to give us those monies.

We understand that. We can certainly will not use this money until we gain the permission from the city council. We are reserving these funds from the RFP. If the council decides not to use these monies for homelessness, we can put it back into the future RFP.

And if I just may, Councilor Monsanto, one of the proposals that we were discussing with the county the city taking the lead in possibly acquiring some property that they would then partner with us. And we saw this particular funding source as helping us start that process if we needed to go in that direction. So in terms of housing funds, they provide the most flexibility. That's what we thought we'd hold back to see if we needed to move forward in whatever range where we ended up with the county.

Is there any time sensitivity to this? I mean, I'd like to maybe delay this until we hear back and have more discussions with the county. Maybe this never comes to fruition and we're holding up developments and proposals that may be responding for projects that we could develop soon.

We plan to do an RFP pretty frequently.

Yeah, we do need to get this RFP out on the road, out on the streets. It is important to get it out by July 1. Judson could attest to that. Thank you very much, Council Member Sarmiento. And if it's decided at a later date to make those funds available in the RFP, we can simply do that. It won't – it's not a – the funds that are available through this RFP are published in our housing division quarterly report. And so we would simply make the funds available in our housing division quarterly report and remove the reservation.

Let's say that we get somewhere in the next month. Then Judson has provided an avenue to make those funds available.

Make the funds available for

the public. Yes. For the ARC. To respond to the proposals. Yes. And there's...

So at this point this is sort of a temporary thing to just hold it back just to see if there's an opportunity and we want it to be able to move quickly on the homeless front like i mentioned but we are going to be doing under this proposal an rfp pretty often quarterly right they're quarterly so we we would be able to quickly make these funds available we decided not to use them for homelessness we can always with the 90 days they would be back in uh in play i would just hate to use our money if there's other monies that rightfully should be

be spent for that purpose and here we are exhausting very valuable, limited,

scarce dollars that we have for our own affordable housing for families that live and reside in Santa Ana that could qualify. That's my concern. So I can't be supportive of this. I think that this is drawing from a source that already has a designated purpose. This has been discussed. There's a whole reason why in lieu funds exist. They're to address and help develop affordable housing, which we need. There are many families that just can't afford the house, especially at the rents that we have in our market rate developments all over the county. So this just doesn't seem like the appropriate purpose for those funds.

We're redirecting something. I mean, it's valuable. We all know homelessness is extremely valuable, but I don't think you can say that affordable housing is not important. No, and we're not. And that's a rhetorical question. I'm not asking you to answer that. I'm just saying they're both priorities. And so it's one way to address problems that we have. So look, I make a motion that we just table this for a while and let's see where we go with the whole discussion with the county. And I think that, I just think that they need to subsidize an effort and help us solve the problem that they have a vested right to address.

I support that motion as well.

I just have a question of our city manager. Are you okay with that motion? Do you have any thoughts on the urgency or what staff is recommending?

Well, the policy that we adopted was going to put us on a 90-day cycle so that we were always continuously, every 90 days, putting out an RFP and soliciting proposals. So if we delay that, I mean, we wouldn't often be doing that. I can't tell you what the impact would be. We would just be on a different cycle.

But I'm okay with that.

I think, sorry, if I may, Mayor Poligo and Council Member Sarmiento in regards to your motion, I think the discussion regarding the reservation could be separated from the issuance of the RFP. In terms of Council direction of making the funds available through this RFP, that is definitely being heard and understood. But again, I think that item could be separated because there's $6.1 million being made available through this RFP, including 100 project-based vouchers, which the project-based vouchers are on a timeline to expend and utilize.

So just sharing that point for consideration.

i'm just wondering is there a potential compromise here or not is there a way we could not if i'm hearing it correctly there's some projects that are maybe dependent on this that it's time sensitive and if we just continue it um we're going to be hurting some of those

projects um well i'm willing to support the motion as it stands without relieving us of the in lieu funds being used for for another purpose i just want them to stay uh to be consistent with the purpose that they that were bound by under the um housing opportunity ordinance but if we were to do

that with an amendment then potentially some of these projects if they were to qualify um they could move forward because you're telling me that they're time sensitive they're competing against

other projects and if we don't know what what i'm saying is that those funds would be in addition in addition to the six enumerated funds that they talked about, they would have the additional in-lieu funds available for those developments, which is what the stated purpose was of the in-lieu funds.

Any thoughts, City Attorney?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

I would like to mention, maybe Mayor, without going into great detail, one of the ideas and thoughts here, I know it's for homeless services, but really it's the potential consideration of using the in-lieu monies to provide different types of affordable housing, It may be in the form of a shelter where we might have to do an acquisition of a property, for example. It may be a standalone project that is with or without the county, for example. I think that was the basis for the proposal, is we're trying to address our homeless issue, but the money would really be used for a potential housing type of project.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

But I think we won't know that maybe in those 90 days. so maybe the potential compromise could be to go ahead and bid out the $6.1 million so that you can get that project done, and then if staff cannot come back to you with a proposal for the additional $3.1, then bid that out in the next 90-day cycle. But it's not money to be, I understand the concern, it's not money to be shared with the county, it's to potentially explore whether we can acquire a site, potentially even our own.

And 90 days, is that a magic number?

Well, we want to do four RFPs a year, so 90 days. So they're from 90.

The intent of the RFP is to get the available funds in different categories, home investment funds, CDBG funds, project-based vouchers. It gets those out on the street. Not taking action on this RFP tonight means that we would be holding back those funds as well. So we'd like to get those funds out on the street. come to a compromise with the $3.1 million.

All right, so if I understand it, Madam City Attorney, the in-lieu monies, if they're not expended, within what period of time are we talking about?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

We would have to come back to you to even make a proposal for this expenditure. We're just kind of looking at whether those monies could be used to provide some type of housing, which is consistent with our housing ordinance.

It would be a separate action that we'd have to take.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

We'd have to bring it back to you, right.

But meanwhile, by supporting this action, they can put these other pockets of monies out in the street so they can be utilized and compete. Correct.

Mr. Mayor, I hate to interrupt. I just want to let you know I'm online.

All right. Just hold on a minute. Is Michelle there as well? All right. Well, she may not be coming. Let me just make you official, Sal. So just hold that thought for a moment.

Sal, can you hear me well?

I sure can.

does everybody believe that that is uh council member sal tina had on the line yes we got some no sal so i don't know but but does everybody on the dais nobody on the dais said no um yeah that's good that's a good thing so at this point um let me just uh officially say that can now uh participate as a member of uh of the council and if you have any problem hearing or anything please interrupt us and let us know and um and then when michelle comes on board we'll do

the same with her so so continue but uh councilman i had on now as a part of this meeting please go

ahead thank you the motion the um the agenda item as proposed has six different categories of funds that we would get out on the street if this was approved tonight. Up for question is one of those categories, and that's the inclusionary housing funds. If we were to reserve those funds today, it's not an expenditure of those funds. We're not expending the funds. We would have to come back to the City Council for approval of the use of those $3.1 million. So right now we're just asking to reserve it for the public not to submit proposals on that 3.1.

No, we clearly understand. At least, I clearly understand the purpose. What I'm saying is I'm not in support of diverting those funds or setting those aside and not making them available for the potential applicants that are going to be responding to the procurement. Okay. So I'm simply saying my motion is to go ahead and allow the release of the circulation of the RFPs, but to have those inclusionary funds, those in lieu funds, as another enumerated funding source.

Okay. And I second that.

That's a compromise in a sense. So you guys are clear on that? So you're going to put everything else out on the street?

We're putting everything out on the street. The direction is to put everything out on the street?

Correct. And the in lieu funds, you want to – They get included. That's right. They get included, but if you have a project, you're going to bring it back to us. Okay. All right. So with that, those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries unanimously.

Is Council Member Tina Harrow participating in that vote?

Yes, he is. Can you please say that you're in favor, Sal?

I'm in favor.

I actually need to do a roll call vote for Cal Conference purposes. Can you do it real quick? Council Member Sarmiento?

Yes.

Mayor Pulido? Yes. Council Member Villegas?

Yes.

Council Member Solario?

He's talking to the crowd. Aye.

Council Member Tina Harrow?

My green shirt friends.

Thank you.

All right, next. What's our next item?

It's a public hearing.

The appropriation adjustment, the one that requires five votes. Which item is that? 28.

All right. So we didn't have you on the phone earlier, Sal, so we held up 28. I would now entertain a motion on item 28, it's an appropriation adjustment. Move the item.

Second.

All right, roll call vote quick.

Councilmember Tina Harrell? Yes. Councilmember Sarmiento? Aye. Mayor Pelleta? Councilmember Villegas? Aye. Councilmember Solorio? Aye. Thank you.

Okay, next.

It's the budget public hearing 75A.

haven't we opened up this earlier or no all right we have quite a few speakers so just keep your comments in two minutes let's go ahead and start with uh claudio gallegos representing the office of our friend Congressman Luke Correa and then Lindsay Zolowowski after that followed by Tanya Sauvice after that. Please go ahead Claudio. Good evening

Mayor and Council. I distributed earlier letters so I wanted to check if you've received them. I am speaking on behalf of Congressman Luke Correa. I am writing to encourage you and the City Council to continue the funding of the Legal Defense Fund for immigrants in our community. This program has helped make legal representation a reality for immigrants facing possible deportation. My first bill in Congress was to establish a Legal Defense Fund for refugees and immigrants. Immigrants facing deportation need access to our legal system and I am proud to have a city from my district lead the way in this

endeavor. I supported the establishment of this fund approved last year and I continue to support its continuation. I respectfully ask you and the City Council to vote to approve the continuation of the funding and keep supporting our robust immigrant community. I commend Santa Ana for leading the way on the rights of immigrants and hope this leadership continues by renewing the Legal Defense Fund for deportation defense. Respectfully Congressman J. Luis Correa. Thank you Claudio. Can I have Lindsey?

Lindsey and I'm not going to butcher your last name so go ahead. Thank you

Lindsey Toslowski. Excuse me I'm the executive director of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center. As the contractor for this fund we have been able to open an office right here in Santa Ana. Additionally we've been able to staff that office with a Santa Ana resident and a graduate of high school from right here in your great city. Our office actually employs several Orange County attorneys and through this we have been able to serve the community of Santa Ana. We have accepted every single referral that we've received through this fund

which has allowed us to go into the music detention facility as well as at the Olesi facility and provide much needed services to the community. All of the services that we're providing, the families would have gone without these services if it weren't for the support of the City of Santa Ana. We have been able to open an office here, we have been able to serve the community, and up till to this date we were able to open the office in January and February of this year, and to date we've been able to serve ten families, which means that we We have 10 more families from right here in Santa Ana who are able to stay together.

We have people that have been able to stay in their homes, continue contributing to the economy here. And I thank you so much and I urge you to continue the funding for this program.

I have a quick question for you since you're running the program. How many of those individuals are Santa Ana residents?

That we've served under the program? Every single one.

Because prior to that I thought I heard one. It was only one previously.

No, that's not the case. Up to date, we've served 10, and they've all been residents of Santa Ana.

Do you know how many might have been DACA or veterans?

I know off the top of my head that at least one of them was a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival beneficiary. I'd have to check with my team to see how many of them were veterans. But we do have a focus on veterans as a program, and so that is something that we actively seek out. one of the things that we've been doing is working with community-based organizations and the city of Santa Ana to increase the number of referrals and that included is included with veterans groups including the state of California as well their veteran affairs program thank you Lindsay that was valuable

testimony followed by Tanya good evening my name is Tonya Sarsuk and I work for of the Vera Institute of Justice and the Safe Cities program. I addressed this council a couple weeks ago regarding the great impact the city of Santa Ana made when it funded the Legal Defense Fund last year. Santa Ana became one of a dozen safe cities jurisdictions across the country committed to providing quality representation for residents and deportation proceedings. I'm here today to remind you that Santa Ana is not alone in this effort. It's part of a growing network of jurisdictions and around the country that are dedicated to ensuring

all members of the community have access to due process and a fair day in court, a principle that is central to America's vision of justice. The City of Santa Ana can count on ongoing national support of both the Vera Institute of Justice and 11 other jurisdictions committed to due process for all their residents. As a partner to Santa Ana, Vera will continue to provide ongoing data-driven evaluations of the program to ensure accountability for the public dollars spent and show the program's socioeconomic impact on the lives of immigrant residents, their families, and larger

communities. When Vera conducted an evaluation of a similar program in New York, we found that providing attorneys allows hundreds of residents to gain work authorizations, thus contributing $2.7 million a year to federal, state, and local tax revenue. While Safe Cities is still in its first stages, the nationwide data is already significant. Through May of 2018, the nationwide program have entered representation for 200 individuals who have lived in the United States for an average of 13 years. This includes the parents of 136 children of which 92% are US citizens. These early outcomes show the need for

this program and the impact it will have on long-term residents in this community. We urge the City of Santa Ana to continue funding for Legal Defense Fund to expand due process, increase public trust in government institutions, and strengthen your local economy and communities. Thank you.

Thank you, Tanya. Followed by Cynthia Felix, followed by Carlos Perea.

Good evening, Council Members. My name is Cynthia Felix, and I'm a staff attorney with Immigrant Defenders Law Center. I'm the Santa Ana resident who's currently staffing the program. I do have a statement to read from my client's mother. Her name is Saviola and they are Santa Ana residents. She says, my son has been detained for a year and a half. He's sick. He has schizophrenia. He's detained at the Tia Lacey Detention Center and can't even present himself in criminal court to resolve those issues. He's detained in Orange County and ICE won't transport him only a few miles away. Now he has a warrant.

My son has been here since he was one years old and he cannot be removed. Right now I am happy because at least I have hope. that someone will fight for my son. I found my son's attorney by word of mouth. She gives me motivation. I know things are not in her arms, are not in her hands, and everyone's told me there's no solution, but at least we're not alone. And Council Member Soloria, I just wanted to mention, we also last week got two new referrals who are Santa Ana residents, and since there's no carve-out on this project, we will be taking them. So that'll leave our numbers at 13.

Great. Right, because the fact sheet that I received, that I'm just receiving, it says, this was a couple months ago. Yes. Nine residents from Santa Ana or surrounding areas. So I just wanted to clarify that they're all from Santa Ana.

Yes, so if that fact sheet was a few months ago, it's probably dilated. Okay, thank you.

Thank you Cynthia. Carlos Perreira followed by Alexis Teodoro.

Hello, good evening members of the council and mayor. I'm here to speak on behalf and support of universal representation, the Immigrant Legal Defense Fund. Like our previous speakers mentioned, it is an important service fund for our community to ensure that our undocumented population is protected and at least has some way of representation, especially under these times when we're seeing family separation and the Trump administration doubling down on family separation as well. Just a really quick thing. There was actually a poll conducted by UC San Diego professor Dr. Tom Wong

to Santa Ana voters, and actually 63% of Santa Ana likely voters for this election strongly support universal representation program. So we know that there is support from the community as well. I'm also here to remind folks that the city is over 78% Latino, so our communities are deeply impacted by this issue. So I strongly urge you to counsel to continue to support the service. I'm also here to speak on support and investment in youth in our city. I'm reminding the council that 30% of the population in Santa Ana are youth under the age of 18.

so ensuring that we affirm our commitment to the young people Santa Ana and the way they invest in them is the way to go for us thank you thank you Carlos Alexis followed by Gwen Barrios good evening council my name is Alexis and as a resident of Santa Ana I'm here to urge the council to approve option A for the budget and 70 the budget option A includes no cutting for services and it also includes the universal rent monies with the investing youth 2.6

million the reason why I also support and encourage the city to allocate that amount of money to the to youth services is because as a formerly incarcerated youth a lot of restorative justice services were not available or didn't exist when I really needed them. So it was very hard for me to get to the point where I am now, where I am in a path of healing. So I just wanted to share that that the city should be investing in transformative restorative justice like practices so that we can have a thriving city in the future. And on the Universal Rev program there's it's just a huge need. The city just needs to

recognize it as a core service once and for all and so that it can continue to have funding while we have a vibrant immigrant community here because that is what we need thank you and I hope that you stand on the side of justice tonight

Thank You Alexi. Gwen Barrios followed by Citalia Ruiz. Good evening. My name is

My name is Juan Barrios and I am a resident here of Santa Ana, California, Ward number two. I recently graduated from high school back in May and currently I'm planning to attend Cypress College. Last year my father was detained by immigration agents outside of my house. My house is next to El Sol Academy, which is a school my younger siblings attend, ages 10 and 12. My family and I protested and spoke out about the injustice that was done to my family and my dad. Now that he is out, we feel happy and grateful that he is home and with us able to spend time and make us laugh again.

It is saddening and disturbing to think about a small child being separated from the only people they truly know and love. As somebody who has been separated from their parents because of immigration agents, I know how that feels. It feels like you are alone and not worthy of having both of your parents because they are illegal. It is an unbearable feeling, a feeling you will never forget, a feeling that will never go away. This is why the city needs to vote today to approve the city budget by voting for option A, which includes youth services and services for immigrant families like mine.

The Santa Ana Universal Representation Program needs to be funded again and needs to be a priority core service for the city of Santa Ana to finally recognize and fully fund every year. My father is home with us now, but it had to take a huge community-led campaign that included support from my congressman Lou Correa, letters of support from counsel Michelle Martinez and counsel Sarmiento to secure my dad's release. If you can hear me, Michelle, I want to say thank you for helping me with my dad, and now I need your help to make sure young girls like me can have a chance to reunite with their dad. Thank you.

Thank you, Gwen.

Sitlali, followed by Roger Ricardez.

Hello, City Council members. I ask for your support to vote yes on item 75A1 on option A. We ask that you support Invest in Youth and Universal Rep. It's time that you start giving back to the youth of the community and to those who are not represented. Thank you.

Roger, followed by Emily Perraza.

I am asking to vote yes on option A on city budget agenda 75A1. Support a budget that includes investment in youth and immigrant families using the cannabis revenue for youth services and to refund the universal representation program to promote legal services for Santana residents who cannot afford a lawyer. Thank you.

You called Emily Brassa and did you call Ivan Enriquez? okay Yvonne Enrique is next please go ahead hello my name is Emily Peraza and

I'm urging the city council members to vote yes on option a for the city budget agenda 75 a1 not only would that be helpful for investment in youth which the city desperately desperately needs but also for universal representation which the community also desperately needs without any of this investment the city will not be able to thrive and it has not only personally affected me but also the people around me thank you thank you

Thank you.

Ivan.

Ivan Enriquez. No, Ivan Enriquez. Laura Perez.

Good evening. I don't know if Mr. Villegas is available.

Mr. Villegas, can you wait for about a minute? Good evening, everyone. I'm a resident of the neighborhood, the Santanita Neighborhood Association, where Mr. Villegas, Mr. Solario, and Mr. Tinajero oversee. I've spoken in the past about the issues that we have there right now with the prostitutes.

It's gotten out of hand. I spoke to Mr. Solario about two months ago regarding a 17-year-old getting an STD and having to go through 16 different surgeries. It's gone out of control. About a week ago, we called the vice department, and the dispatchers told us that no one was available, that they were out for the night on a Saturday evening when we had 23 prostitutes for about five hours on our street. It's gone out of control.

We are cleaning up the streets with the condoms that are being left behind. And I reached out to Mr. Villegas last week. You did have other commitments, and I'm here to invite you one more time to come out to our neighborhood or provide us with the support that we need so that my parents are not cleaning the streets, so that the children are not picking these items and putting them in their mouths and picking them up, picking their balloons. It's unacceptable at this point.

It's now come down to a finger-point game where the city is blaming the police department. the police department is telling us to contact the DAs, and the DA is telling us to contact the city. I think it's enough. We're sick and tired of being pepper sprayed by these ladies, walking around at 8 o'clock at night and parading up and down our streets.

If we can divert them somewhere else, that would be great. Police response is really bad at this point, and I would appreciate for someone to give me a call regarding this issue.

Thank you very much for coming out and bringing that to my attention. I know the last time when they invited me out to the meeting, it was last minute, both times. Can I have a big agenda? So I couldn't make it to the meeting. I know I was out there about a year ago, was it Jose, when we went out there in the area and we had three neighborhood associations we met with. And, yeah, what you're saying, I totally believe it. I understand. I know we addressed it with the former police chief, Rojas. They went out. It was all over the news. But, yeah, that group of people, they move up and down, and you have to stay on it.

And, unfortunately, we are very short. And this is what I've been saying all along. We are very, very short on our police department. 61 vacancies right now. So I will get to that later. But thank you so much. You have my word. I'll give you my number right now. Keep me going.

Your secretary has my number.

Okay, very good.

You can give me a call anytime.

Absolutely. You got it.

Go ahead, Sal. Go ahead.

I can also give her my information.

Speak up. Speak up.

If someone could also give her my information, I'd really appreciate it.

So you'll get two phone numbers. Also, there's a new chief right there. Please say hi to him before you go and sit down.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Lala.

And, sorry, I know this.

No, thank you.

Two minutes is really never enough. I just want to speak real quickly. There's a new development on First and Harbor Boulevard where we've been actively working with Ali and Scott Kuttner and with the new developers. We've had two follow-up meetings. Upon our conclusion of a meeting last Thursday, the representative for Premier Development left the premises of Rosita Park and flipped me off as he was driving off.

I don't know how that's acceptable.

It's not. Please talk to the chief. Yes, Cuisine.

I know we can't do anything long, but when we did speak at Chavez Park, I followed up and did some research and reported out here. We, in the past 10 years, have received 9,000 calls for service regarding prostitution. 3,000 are probably mine. 48% of them are along the Harbor Corridor. before Councilman Villas and I got on the council. We essentially had zero vice unit. We now have a little bit of a unit, but we need to grow. We have a lot of vacancies because obviously we've got a lot of work to do. And it's not all police. Some of it is outreach, community policing, security cameras. We need a comprehensive approach,

and we'll coordinate another meeting with the three neighborhoods, and we want you to be a part of it in the next two to three weeks.

And I know you guys are about to pass a budget. The budget has plans west of Harbor, but nothing east, which is where we live. And the girls are hiding in our houses. They're literally pepper spraying us, and they're causing damages to our cars.

I totally believe you.

And, I mean, there's really nothing being done, unfortunately.

It's a crisis. Thank you for coming. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Seeing no one else.

I'm going to close the public hearing and bring it back to Council for consideration.

Anybody has any thoughts or would like to entertain a motion? Go ahead, Council Member Solodio.

Mr. Mayor, just some initial comments. First, I do want to compliment staff this go around. I do think they did finally incorporate suggestions and input from Council members. So this budget now restores all the youth programs that staff previously tried to cut, including Sunday library hours, so we're going to be able to protect that. We're also adding in additional dollars for our quality of life team that helps in particular with homelessness issues and other park related items. I do have one question. I know based on my follow up on the cannabis dollars, Initially, it was very, very conservative.

It only projected $2.6 million. And now they are fully incorporating what we really expect, which is an additional 5.2 million. This is just regarding the adult use commercial cannabis program and additional commercial work. The $5.2 million, obviously, that's a big number. However, it's not clear to me from the staff report where that new money is being allocated towards. Because I do see some other things being included, including what I mentioned, but nothing that totals anywhere near $5.2 million.

If I, would you like to meet with Sean, Council Member? Either. Sure. Yeah, just a second. So we, at this point, the $5.2 million that you speak of are being placed in a reserve account. We're anticipating that any additional revenue comes in, we would place it in those two accounts. And the expenditures are not there. They're not detailed. The idea would be that once the revenues come in, staff would come forward and present the spending plan for council's review and approval.

Post-July. And that's what we discussed, and I support that. I just want to confirm with you and our city attorney that when we post July 1st try to appropriate those dollars that we can do that with four votes as opposed to five given that we are putting in this in this budget yes that was the whole goal okay and if I may add councilmember on page 2-145 of the budget book that you have option a at the very top we list the breakdown between the reserve appropriations for youth programming and cannabis enforcement and the corresponding accounts.

Very, very good. I do want to talk about one or two other items, but I'll save my remarks for now.

Okay, any other comments? Are we ready? I'll make a motion to approve 1A, but I would like to say publicly that I don't support funding the Legal Defense Fund, And the reason I'm going to say this is because other people are going to come forward and they're going to start asking for legal representation also, like child support or divorce, child custody, probate, workers' comp, and injuries. So, you know, it's not open to everyone. And that's why I'm not supportive, but I add a motion to approve 1A with that comment.

To follow up on that item.

We have a second from Councilmember Tina Heddle.

Please go ahead. Okay, on that same note, I like what I heard today. I in particular like that the person that was hired to run this program lives in Santa Ana and apparently works in Santa Ana, so that's fantastic. I would just add that moving forward that we try to ensure that all the dollars that we spend go towards representing residents that live in Santa Ana. and with the priority of those individuals being DACA members or veterans, as opposed to what could theoretically be giving monies and representations to people even in other states and that maybe are violent criminals.

So I would like to have the program participants be thoughtful towards that, because I'm sure you'd like to see this as an ongoing program that even grows. But I think with what you reported out, you've showed that you're doing good by the residents of this community and investing the dollars locally. So that I very, very much appreciate. Thank you.

Now we have, I think, Councillor Vince Armiento. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I will be supporting the budget as well. It's certainly not perfect. There's a lot of difficult things that we aren't addressing in this budget. We're unfortunately a city that's trending with diminishing services for our residents, so it's always difficult to be content about a budget like that. But I do know that staff has done a very, very good job in trying to make sure that we at least keep baseline services in effect. And so I want to applaud you for your efforts because it's a challenging time.

That being said, I'm glad there was some funding available from the rebate from the fire authority that we were able to apply towards some good purposes that you have enumerated here in the budget. So I think that's good and I understand that there'll be some additional cycling of maintenance for some of our city parks and restrooms. And that's always a real concern for our families that use the parks and make sure that they're clean. And so hopefully if we add some additional cycles for that cleaning and maintenance, that's going to help. And the dedication for additional youth programming, I think, is real important.

So that I appreciate. And for those of you who came out and spoke on the Immigration Defense Fund and support for that, thank you, Claudio, for speaking on behalf of the congressman. I know he and I have had many conversations about this. And my understanding is that last year I recall that there was a matching fund that we received from the Vera Foundation in the amount of $100,000. And I see your head nodding, Madam City Attorney. So we were able to leverage those monies. What was a relatively small investment became a larger one. For our city, that's a lot of money.

For other cities, obviously, like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, they're putting millions of dollars behind this effort. So what little we can do, I think, is well intended, and we certainly want to continue to support our families, especially in light of what we're seeing that's happening at the border. And we see families and mothers and fathers separated from their children, and it's a very graphic, ugly time that we're living in that we have to be witnesses to that.

It's very unfortunate, but I'm glad that we as a city can stand together and try to provide some relief for some of those families that hopefully won't have to endure that. But with that, Mr. Mayor, I'll be supporting tonight's budget. All right.

If we have no more comments, I'd like to call for the question.

Go ahead.

Council Member Tinojero?

Aye.

Council Member Sarmiento?

Yes. Mayor Polito?

Council Member Villegas? Aye. Council Member Salorio? Aye. Motion approved.

The ayes. Take it.

So with that, let's go on to the next item. Would that be 75A?

Yes.

75A2, I would actually open up the public.

It's a public hearing that legally has to be opened and closed.

All right. so we opened that public hearing we actually had Laura Perez earlier who spoke and she indicated a 2 so let let me just state that for the record any other speakers on this item item 75 a dash 2 have not received any others okay so see none I will open and close the public hearing and bring it back to council for a consideration. I'll move the item. We have a motion. Sal can you second? Everybody's asleep here.

All right he seconded. Those in favor please say aye. Or no go ahead Madame Clerk. Council members Sarmiento? Aye. Mayor Pulido? Aye. Council member Villegas? Aye. Council member Salorio? Aye. Council member Tina Herrera? Aye. Motion carries. Thank you.

75A3 and four are not public hearings these are not public hearing so I can just entertain a motion I would entertain a motion on both items 75A3 and item 75A4 so moved second okay two seconds

roll call please councilmember Tina Harrow aye councilmember Sarmiento aye mayor Poulos Council Member Villegas? Aye. Council Member Solorio?

Aye.

Motion carries.

Thank you. Now 75B, this is a public hearing. It's an appeal application 218-02 of conditional use permit 218-01 to approve a conditional use permit allowing operation of a K-12 school, Citrus Springs Charter School. And we have some speakers.

Let's go ahead and start with Stephanie Phillips, please.

Followed by Dr. Alfonso Jimenez.

Good evening, Mayor Pulido. I'm Stephanie Phillips, Superintendent of Santa Ana Unified School District, and here standing next to me is Board President Ms. Valerie Amesqua. As the superintendent of the Unified School District, I'm here before you to express our district's interest in the council's denying the appeal. I won't go into the whole title, but for 75B. Our interest would be for you to deny that conditional use permit to approve for a K-12 school for Citrus Springs Charter. We oppose this for the following reasons. In the letter that you're being passed around,

that was also submitted on March 22nd, the charter organization states that they need students attending on campus, particularly their English learner, students with disabilities, and struggling students that will need help in meeting grade level. We believe that these students would be better served in our local public schools and with highly qualified trained teachers and with up-to-date instructional materials on a consistent basis. Furthermore, the charter school holds at most the total number of students in 9th through 12th grade, which will only be at that campus twice a week.

This falls very short of providing struggling students the interventions that they will need to be successful. Additionally, how can the charter school arbitrarily make a decision on providing services twice a week with students with disabilities? The individual services for each student with a disability is determined by the Individual Education Program or the IEP team. By stating that services will only be provided twice a week, the school will not be able to meet the needs of these students with disabilities

and will be denying access to students who require five days a week of specialized academic instruction related to their IEPs. Consequently, adding additional days would impact severely the traffic around Sierra Preparatory Academy and impact the quality of life for Santa Ana residents who are already impacted by density. Personally speaking, that is my neighborhood, and that would impact me as a Santa Ana resident as well. We welcome the students from Charter Springs to enroll in any of our schools as we provide innovative opportunities all across the district.

For example, these students could enroll in our dependent charter, the Advanced Learning Academy, which provides students with competency-based learning, and early college programs where they will eventually earn college credits leading up to an Associates of Arts degree. We also offer other programs such as our XQ Super Schools, which provide students with place-based and project-based learning innovative learning environments. As well as our programs such as the International Baccalaureate Program, our Film Academy, our Legal Academy, and 32 career and technical pathways across our district.

The district would like the opportunity to also inform the council of the district's success and 93% graduation rate of our high school seniors and 97% of our students expressing that they will move on to college as successful indicators of the district's performance. This year our students earned $10.7 million in total FAFSA grants, scholarships, and awards as an indication of their academic persistence and the rigor that they've received in our schools. So we greatly appreciate the Council's consideration for common goals related to public education that will benefit our students and our residents greatly in our community.

Thank you.

Thank you. And I noted you were not alone when you were standing up there. It was not unnoticed. Dr. Alfonso Jimenez, followed by John Palacio.

Good evening, Mayor Pulido, Councilmembers and staff. I am Dr. Alfonso Jimenez, Deputy Superintendent of Educational Services. And I'm also here today to express our interest in the Council denying the conditional use permit for the charter school. I will be brief, as our superintendent has eloquently stated our position with respect to the charter. So we oppose the charter for the reasons as outlined by our superintendent, but also express concerns about the viability of the program in our city. Our district currently offers a plethora of programs all across the city.

In any point within our city, you can identify an innovative program within our schools. As our superintendent mentioned, we have 32 career technical education pathways all across the district. There isn't any charter school that can currently compete with what we are offering as a system. And so I'm really proud of the efforts of our district and all of the programs we are providing. And so we are moving forward with respect to our programs. And we currently, as our superintendent mentioned, our Advanced Learning Academy, which is a dependent charter, has led the way in that area where this charter plans to open.

So with that, I'd like to say that we are making significant progress with all of our schools, our students, and our programs. That is very difficult for any charter to be able to compete with what we currently offer. So we respectfully request that you deny the permit. Thank you.

Thank you, I believe, John Palacio. I kind of want to say Dr. John Palacio. I'm not sure why, but it kind of fits. Honorary. Well, honorable for sure, but kind of like doctor.

Please go ahead. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. First of all, I want to acknowledge the partnership that we have with the city. I'm really excited. I think we've had some great conversations with Councilman Salario and Councilman Tinejero, and Mr. Villegas and Mr. Benavides in terms of looking at joint use opportunities. And I think that shortly we will have some very viable opportunities where both the city and the school district will benefit. I also want to acknowledge Mr. Tinejero, who is in Florida. He's bound and determined to bring us a national championship. Is that correct?

I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm trying. but I'm still here. I'm still here. Thank you. I also want to acknowledge the great work that the wife of Jose Solorio does as an educator at San Diego State School District. So obviously you know the importance of public education. Mr. Benavides, same thing. Likewise, you've been involved with kids work, which involves with education as well, in particular in the early years.

I'm here too to ask the council to honor the process the Planning Commission has made a decision and I mean we need to honor that process I think they made a difficult decision but a correct decision and I think that's really important I'm not aware of all the years that lived in the city where the council reverses a decision made by the Planning Commission if it happens it happens extremely rare and I think it's important to support their decision to deny the condition use permit. Next door is Sierra Intermediate School.

There will be an impact at Sierra. You've heard the arguments very clearly that the reason that the San Diego School District denied the actual application by Central Springs is for a number of reasons, but in particular, it is very difficult to do a program for children with special needs, English learners, or students who are struggling academically and expect to go to a school site two days a week. It just doesn't happen. It's not viable. Anyone who has a child with special needs, they need services every day, not periodically.

And for those reasons, I think it's important that you honor the process. Let me close with this. There's a lot of good things happening in Santa Ana. We're going to win the national championship, where Mr. Neno's going to stay in Florida until he does it. But in reality is this. There's not a school district in the state of California with a 96% Latino student body that has had our success. We have 92% low on free or reduced lunch. We have 65% English learners.

We're within 4% of having the highest graduation rate of any school district in Orange County. That's something to be proud of. We're within 2.5% of having the lowest dropout rate of any school district in Orange County.

So, think about the good things that we're doing, and for those reasons, please honor the process. Please do not reverse the decision that the Planning Commission made, and very wisely. Thank you. Thank you. Barbara Pearson.

Followed by Mike Tardif.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Barbara Pearson, and I am the president of the Santa Ana Educators Association, representing 2,600 educators in Santa Ana Unified School District. I am here to urge you to deny the appeal on the charter, the same appeal that my predecessors spoke of, the Planning Commission's denial of the conditional use permit. I have seen presentations by this Charter and have been utterly shocked at their lack of knowledge about the most basic elements of education and the educational process.

I am a product of the Santa Ana Unified School District, and I am entering my 28th year teaching in this district, and here's what I know. Our students thrive at our public schools where they are taught by highly qualified, experienced teachers. Our accountability measures show this to be true. Santa Ana Unified School District's daily instruction provides an academic rich environment where collaborative conversations with peers allow our students to build language and skills. This would be difficult at best in an online format and at the inconsistent rate of two days a week that this charter is proposing.

I am asking this council to make the right decision for our students in Santa Ana and deny this appeal. Thank you.

Thank you, Mike.

Followed by Monica Lopez.

First of all, this is not a political issue. This is not an issue of charter schools versus traditional public schools. These people are way off base.

Staff has reviewed the applicant's request and is still supportive of the request. The Planning Commission made no changes to the recommendations outlined in the original staff report. the commit the commission referenced an increase in traffic to be detrimental I find it interesting that the Planning Commission would deny a CUP based on a finding which was discussed only very briefly by the Commission and not in depth at all why did this it why did the Commission decide to outright deny the applicants CUP rather than offer for them to resubmit to verify the traffic safety of their operations.

From the staff report, it is not anticipated that the expansion in grade levels being offered in conjunction with the conditions will adversely affect the surrounding commercial residential community. Parking for the school use has been accounted for and meets the requirements of the Santa Ana Municipal Code. Upgrades will be made to the site, along with recent improvements to the site. The site will meet all necessary code requirements.

Any comments related to the issue of charter schools versus traditional public schools are not relevant to the land use issue concerning approval of this CUP. I agree with your city staff that the CUP for Citrus Charter School should be granted.

Thank you, Monica Lopez, followed by Amy Podrach.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members. My name is Monica Lopez, principal of the Citrus Springs Charter School Santa Ana Student Center. Our school is located at 2121 North Grand Avenue on four acres of property that we lease from the Santa Ana Methodist Church. We are nestled between Santa Ana Grand Avenue Post Office to our north and northeast Santa Ana Little League Baseball to our south. A school has been located on the site since 1960s and our existing CUP was approved by the city in 1988. Our school and the church are independent of each other.

Citrus Springs is authorized by the Orange County Office of Education to serve the students of Santa Ana and is fully accredited by Western Association of Schools and Colleges. It serves a total of 266 students, 180 students are enrolled in our five-day program, and 86 secondary students are schooled through homeschool or independent study. We offer families a variety of learning options, including the opportunity to work closely with California credential teachers to choose the right combination of personalized learning programs. Students can work independently and attend meetings with credentialed teachers weekly

while attending academy classes, online foreign language classes, internships, and career and technical education courses. We would like to humbly request your approval for our requested modification in our CUP so that we may slightly modify our existing situation and be able to accommodate our students who are interested in continuing with the school on site for 7th through 12th grade. We are making this request at the urging of our students and their parents. I have with me about 200 petition letters from them. The City Planning Department staff has told us that we meet all necessary code requirements.

We have twice the number of parking spaces necessary to meet parking requirements and that our modification of grade levels will not adversely affect the surrounding commercial and residential neighbors in any way. On behalf of all Citrus Springs students, parents and staff, I respectfully request the San Andes City Council accept our application to allow our Student Center to continue educating and preparing San Andes students for the future. Thank you.

Thank You Amy, followed by George Erch, followed by Cecilia Iglesias.

Greetings. I just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Amy Podratz. I'm an assistant superintendent for Springs Charter Schools, and I'm here to present to you over 200 letters from our students and parents who are currently on summer break, ensuring that you get to hear their voice as well.

George Erich, please.

Mayor, City Council, City Staff, George Urch here to speak on the item. This isn't an argument of charter school versus public school. This is a decision based upon the merits of their application. They meet all the requirements. There are no issues with the neighborhood. It's a pretty much straightforward, easy decision to make. It's not political. The school already has their charter. This isn't going to change the number of students. The number of students stays the same. All they're doing is trading out small students for tall students as they change the grades. Everything's the same. No impacts. They meet the requirements.

Thank you.

Cecilia Iglesias, please.

Good evening, Mayor, Councilmembers. I'm Cecilia Iglesias. I am a resident of Santa Ana, also a school board member for the city of Santa Ana School District, and also I am the president and the founder of the Parent Union.

As you know, I support school choice, along with many other families here in the city of Santa Ana, and I'm very happy to see the signatures that was presented here by Citrus Charter School to you. And like my predecessor said, you know, this is not a political issue, which some people do make it political, but it should not be political. what should be done is here is look at the facts and look at the conditional use and what it's saying is like they do have that opportunity to operate according to what the staff recommendation is so my being here it's

to support the parents but also support the decision that was given to by the city staff saying that the conditional use permit is something that is valid. So I'm here to urge you to vote for option one

because politics versus district schools versus public options of schools should not play a part in your decision. So I'm just going to end with this. I know you're going to do the right thing. Please vote for option one. And also, let the people choose. Let the parents choose. and if they choose citrus we have to support them as their elected officials because they are our constituents too. Thank you very much.

Okay with that I believe that is our last speaker as part of the public hearing so I'm going to close the public hearing and bring it to Council for questions and comments. Yeah our city attorney. And Mayor Palito and Council

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

I just want to remind you that when you sit in review of a conditional use permit, your duties are that you are sitting as a quasi adjudicative body. You are not sitting as a legislative body. And what that means is that you actually have to make findings to support your decision. Findings which come from evidence in the record based on the staff report that's presented to you. Sometimes when you make a legislative decision, you can decide whether you want the zoning to be commercial or residential.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

But as a quasi-adjudicative body in this matter, you're like sitting like a judge where you have to actually rely on evidence to support your decision. So the Planning Commission found, they found, that traffic might be an issue. You sit here, what we call de novo review, you review it independently, all on your own with the evidence that's been presented to you. So if you can find that you can make the findings required by the CUP, then that would lead you to approve the CUP. If you find that the Planning Commission was correct in the finding it made with regard to traffic, then you can go ahead and deny this appeal.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

But I want to remind you that you need to cite to evidence that's in the record and rely on the findings as required under your municipal code.

And just for a point of clarification, the findings do not have to be complex. They just have to be compatible with the position that one has taken.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Yes, and supported by evidence in the record.

Okay, so with that, let's go ahead and start. Council Member Villegas.

Mr. Mayor, thank you Mr. Mayor. So they're saying that it was a traffic issue and they have over twice the amount of parking spaces that they need. It kind of doesn't make sense to me that they have so many spaces there and they find a traffic problem now. And I understand that they're not going to increase the number of students, they're just going to have some of the students now come forward and participate more on one on one. So I still have a problem with them, with the traffic study, it just doesn't equate. So it just doesn't make sense to me.

There's plenty of parking, that means that there's plenty of room. And of course on something like this they would have to look at the totality and see if who's going to be aggressing and degressing, who is going to be frequenting the area. And it just, I don't understand. I just don't see it. I don't see the problem here.

Are you done yet?

That's one right there. And I just don't see the problem.

All right, more comment. Councillor Vince Armiento, please.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I kind of want to get back to the point that the city attorney was discussing. And we're basically sitting in review of the decision that was made and appealed from at the planning commission. So we're sitting as a quasi-judicial body, I think is what we're trying to say. So it's not talking about everything under the sun. We're kind of looking at the four corners of the information that was presented to the commissioners during their deliberative process. So I wanted to first begin by saying I appreciate all the comments that were made by everybody that spoke.

I'm very proud of the SAUSD. I'm a product of it. And I think it's something that all of us can be really, really content about their trending and about the direction and about the great success that they've had recently. And so that speaks to the leadership there. So I congratulate all the school board members and the superintendent who are here with us. And you're welcome, obviously, in the people's house. What I did want to talk about, though, is this is a little different the way I see it than what the issue was, I think, a couple of weeks ago when we had Mater Day coming before us.

and they were asking for public funds to address some issues that they had during their expansion, their capital improvements that they were having. I applaud Mater Dei as well for being such a strong campus, providing a service to parents and the community. But I just had a difficult time being able to extend public funds to a private campus at that point. But this is a little different. We are dealing with an appeal from a decision that was made, and so I wanted to see if I could have staff come up and answer a couple of questions that I had on this.

um so candida can you kind of tell us aside from parking traffic i mean or or was parking an issue was it exclusively traffic but what were the uh land use uh issues that were before the commission

to deliberate the planning the planning commission was basically concerned with traffic That was the issue. And they were concerned about the number of trips that were coming in and the number of trips that and how that would affect traffic in the area. So that was the basic trip.

So at the planning commission, what was staff's position? Was there a position to oppose or to recommend?

Planning staff recommended approval of the project because the number of students that are being increased is very small. Excuse me. It's not very small, but they currently serve 180 students on campus. That's what they have on campus now. they will continue to serve those 180 students on campus they also have an

online curriculum which the students don't come to campus and that serves 86 students so they have a total of 266 students in their program what the proposal will do is they're licensed by their CUP to serve students from K to six on campus they're asking that and that's a hundred and eighty students they're asking to take those a hundred and eighty students but allow them to go from K to eight so eighth grade in addition to that the second component

that they're asking is for those students those 86 students that are on the online curriculum program, they're asking that they have, excuse me, that they be able to on Tuesdays and Thursdays hold classes for those students to come. Those classes would not be held during the longer school day, goes from, I believe it's 8.30 to 3.30, but those blocks of classes for the online students would be held between

9.30, 10.30 to 2.30 or so. So it would be the trips, the new trips that would be generated would not be during the same time period as the kids would be doing drop off and pick up. in addition the families that attend this school tend to have a number number of children so and they all attend the school so they're they're interested in having more students their students be able to their children be able to come

longer but it may reduce the trip slightly as well that was another factor that staff took into consideration is that if you have two or three children in a family, you would only be having one trip.

So you don't need to say any more. Thank you for setting up Maria. You might want to give her a glass of water. Yeah, so let me speak and you can listen or just be silent, but thank you for that. But you can maybe nod your head.

but I guess what it appears that you're saying is that there's not going to be an intensification of the use. There's not going to be additional students attending. There's sort of a net zero impact as a result of this. So there really isn't expansion, isn't really accurate in the meaning of the sense that the campus is going to be growing. There's going to be a larger student body. it's more that they're going to be able to extend or expand the number of classes that they have. In other words, I think you said they're going from K-6 now. They're asking to go K-12, right?

They're asking to go on campus K-8. They'll go on campus at K-8, but they'll go K-12 offline on the online program.

So, but let's just say if we do nothing today, like we just decide to, you know, punt or table this or support the position that the planning commission, they're still going to operate, right? And they're still going to have 150 students and those that are online. So they're going to still continue to draw from that community of folks that want to continue to send their kids there. So, you know, there doesn't seem to be, are there any public funds that are being dedicated to this campus?

Not from the city.

Right. So the fact that, you know, there may be underperforming in the opinion of some, and I get that, and, you know, again, that's a question that to me is relevant, whether they're maybe not addressing some of the needs, especially some of the special needs of students that they have. That's not a question that's before us. It could be if we wanted to review their CUP and see if they're operating within the standards that we have. But that's not before us today because that's not part of the findings, not part of the question that was presented to us. So I just want to keep to the narrow focus.

So it just doesn't appear to me that there's a net growth of this campus or a drawdown from any students going to public schools at this point. Because even if we did nothing today, they're still going to continue to operate. That doesn't mean that they're going to go away. We're not introducing a new school. It's just being able to change and modify the way they actually operate and the grades that they're able to serve. So I think if I understand you right, that's the question and that's the request that's being made of us. Yes. Thank you.

Thank you for that. Additional thoughts, comments, Councilor Solorio and then Benavides. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

I do support option three to uphold the planning commission's decision. And I do so because in the past I have been on the city planning commission and on the council now as well as a prior tour of duty. And one of the things I know about these CUPs is they run with land. And so whatever decision we would make today carries with the land and And I appreciate the various speakers on both sides that came out. I also did speak to Dr. Regal Rodriguez, who's also on the school board.

And we chatted about this item a little bit, but really related to the items in the staff report, which are related to traffic, and again, because CUPs run with the land and And because the model really is to grow in the number of type of grades in a very limited scope right now of the number of days. If we grant the CUP, we're really giving a very broad approval that will lead to more traffic, will lead to more growth.

I'm particularly concerned with school hours, it's also just when the trip generation is. And I know in this part of town where I live, and it's north of 17th, that part of the city. And I think there are many of us in our ward that are concerned about traffic overall. Particularly, some more like myself, during peak times. And I have concern that even though the presentation may appear modest, The reality is that CUPs run with the land and to today approve

a CUP allowing that really is just creating problems for the future. So for those reasons, I am in support of the planning commission's decision. I think folks know that I'm generally supportive of all excellent schools, so this has nothing to do with that. I'm supportive of the modern day proposal. I'm working with San Antonio Unified on joint use proposals for Godenas and elsewhere I'm supportive of many of our strong charter schools in our city. So for me it's not about that, but it's about the reality that this proposal may appear modest, but CUPs run with the land and that is forever. Thank you.

Councilor Benavides please. Thank you, Mayor. My apologies for being...

My apologies for my delay here at my call.

Please, let's respect everybody. Mike, we've respected you for years. If you disagree... I understand, but please, let's not be out of order. Councillor Benavides, please. Thank you, Mayor.

A few questions that I have for staff. And I'm looking for this information in the report, and I don't know if I'm missing it. However, what I'm trying to find is the number of students, actual students that are part of the school currently.

And specifically what's allowed based on, is there a cap based on the CUP? Because that's what we're looking at, right? It's land use, it's conditional use permit, it's the allowed use at this location, this facility. There is a current CUP, so I'm interested in knowing what the cap as to the number of students based on the current CUP and what the cap will be based on the requested conditional use permit. So I'll start with that question.

They're requesting no increase in their additional students on campus. So that will remain 180 full-time on campus. Is that information in the report? No, it is not. I've been looking for that information and I noticed that it wasn't in the report.

That's where it is going back to the question or the information, the background that the city attorney provided for us, which is very important information and helpful, is that we're sitting, serving in a quasi-judicial hearing, if you will, and some of this information not being in the report makes it so that there's just additional question or not enough information to be able to draw a conclusion and a decision.

But I'm still interested in you providing the information verbally, but I'll need more information in order to be able to draw a conclusion here, an informed conclusion. But you're saying verbally you're indicating that there are 180 students. Is that based on the current CUP or based on what the school has, information that school has provided to us? That is information the school has provided to us. But if you wish to limit the number of students that they can have on site or off site, that was the third option you had, or the second option you have, I believe,

which would allow you to approve the use with conditions so that the the other question I have so that's that's a potential option there the other question I have is the current CUP is K through 6 the request for this new CP is K-12, if we're not going to be changing the number of students that are allowed to

be a part of this school, why the reason for a required change in CUP? If there is no net difference, it's conditional use, it's based on the use of the facility, the true impact is the numbers of people served typically. That's what we look at, the numbers of people in a classroom, the number of people in a facility, how the parking relates to the parking needs, relates to that, so to the people that are going to be served, again, what the capacity is. And if there's no net change or difference,

why even a need for a cup because their original cup limited it to k through six

it still seems a bit uh on site that's right uh so those are my questions uh for now mary

all right i i've got a couple questions but first uh councilman juanville just wanted to hear from

Mr. Erch, if he wants to clarify a few things, if you want to come up, sir. You represent the school, right?

Yes, I'm going to defer to the yes.

Sure, absolutely. Smart move.

Hello. Is there anything you'd like to add? I mean, you hear our comments up here. Is there something that we're not understanding?

What I want to make sure is understood is that our school is doing very well in comparison to the other schools and our competitive schools. So we just serve students differently. So I want to make sure that it's understood that we follow all laws, rules, and regulations regarding English learners, students with disabilities, etc. That being said, I also want to say this is not a charter versus a district issue. It is very important to us that all students are served and all parents have a right to put their children in any school that they would like.

So coming from a district and now working for a charter school, I want to say that both work depending upon the child. Aside from that, again, not a political issue. What we're simply asking here is that we can better help our 7th through 12th grade students by allowing them to come on site for small group instruction courses during non-peak hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays. unfortunately the cup that came with the building is only k through six we're simply adding that to be extended to k through 12 is that for two days a week for two days a week days a week

for the ninth through twelfth grade it would be the two days a week and for some homeschooled students who choose to come in for electives you're not at full capacity in all the classrooms correct that's correct we have how many classrooms 13 classrooms 13 classrooms that would hold 30 each five days a week if we chose to do that we are not choosing to fill to that capacity the five day a week program would take 180 students 180 students and the rest of the classrooms we use just two days per week we're not going to fill the building monday through friday

so this site is built as a as a school correct that's correct so if you were not there and there was another school there they would be facing the same correct thank you thank you mr mayor thank you

Yes, just stay up there for a moment, please. I will.

So your overall numbers of students are not going to change. Is that correct? That's correct. You're not even adding one new student.

Well, correct. I mean one. No, that's correct. We have a capacity for Citrus Springs Charter School, an internal capacity, where this is where we like to stay as far as enrollment is concerned.

and we do not plan on expanding. Let me ask the city attorney can we condition this so that they cannot because I didn't like that well because you know well could be something happened if you do one then you do two, if you do two

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

maybe you do 20. The answer to your question is yes and I think it would probably be better policy for you to put restrictions on the CUP as to numbers which could be more related to traffic and parking impacts than to put a restriction that's k-6 because k-6 k-12 and that i'd be more comfortable with a land use impact

i i don't want to get in the education business i have tremendous respect for the santa unified school district and the as do we amazing work that that that they are doing i mean you know the numbers that uh uh board member palacio mentioned are are real numbers and they're amazing and and so if we're simply changing the mix of what you can do but but you're not going to increase you're just going to have a different mix but the same overall number you know i i think that um

you know can work well but i just want to make sure if we do that it's really well defined because if it's loose loose can be problematic especially we're here 10 years from now and what did the city council say and somebody goes back and they start reading it and they have different interpretations i don't want that i i want you to continue to do a great job that you're doing but i don't want to hurt the school district in any way from this not being well defined um mr mayor when you're done connect absolutely um so anyways um i think i would be more uh leaning uh council villegas

based on some of the questions that you and and councilman sarmiento were making probably two might be more of a of common sense for where i think i'm thinking why don't you just be available and i'm now going to let the guy up upstairs he's not literally upstairs but he kind of feels that way because the speaker is above us uh sal so why don't you go ahead please sal councilman rutina

Can you hear me okay, Mr. Mayor?

Yeah, but it's good when you speak up because after a while sometimes you start to fade a little bit. So just make an extra effort.

Thank you. May I, I would like to ask a couple of questions. How is it that you, I used to, I used to work for United Cerebral Palsy of Orange County. I used to work with infants with disabilities from the moment they were three months old up until they were three years old. And so I have a good experience working with infants who have disabilities. So I've seen firsthand how it affects the families and how the dynamics shift.

and the parents of those students are always seeking if there's something there for their child that better meets their needs.

Sometimes it is very easy to persuade a parent, because sometimes they're desperate to find something that can help them to go a certain route. So my question to you is, how is it that you can serve students that have a disability and that are English learners and that are struggling with courses only two days a week? Can you explain that to me?

Hold on, Sal. They're coming back up to the mic. Hold on.

Good evening. Amy again. I want to say that all students with disabilities have an IEP, and IEPs are followed. Services are given to students based on the IEP.

Can you say what that is?

Sorry, Individualized Education Plan. So what happens with a student with disabilities is they have a written plan, and those are followed. What's currently happening is services may or may not be happening on the campus, depending upon what program the parents choose. Services may be happening in the home. So we meet our homeschool families in their actual home, and the service providers will go there. we will meet in libraries if the services are required for that. So IEPs are followed for all of our special education students. But again as a CUP

hearing I want to make sure that we're just focusing on the campus if at all possible. So what I'm trying to figure out is if you you have a school right? Yes. And I drove by it, and it was empty. And so I'm not sure if you're, are you operating at that school, or are these online courses? We are five days a week at that school for our K through 6th grade students.

What hours? What hours are you there?

Yeah, what hours? Monica.

So before you call Monica up, what's your position in that school? I'm the assistant superintendent of Springs Charter Schools. Okay, so what I'm concerned right now is why you have to call Monica up to answer this question. Because Monica is the principal of this site, sir. I know, but you oversee it, so I would assume that you know how the programming works. That's correct. Springs Charter Schools has 8,600 students and 17 sites in Southern California, and Monica oversees this site in particular.

Go ahead, Monica. She's at the mic, Sal.

so our school hours are 7 45 to 2 45 for the five-day program okay so I drove through there and I didn't see anything happening I didn't I didn't see I think I saw like four cars parked in the parking lot do you have online courses as well can you tell them when you were there

me they were indoors or would it what can you mind telling us say I was there

like two weeks ago on a Tuesday at about 11 o'clock in the morning I drove by yes students are in the classroom during that time and you know and their

children so they don't have cars but they get dropped off during peak periods and that's what creates the traffic and councilmember Tina Harrod I'm not sure if you heard the city attorneys early comments that we ought Can you restate that, Sonia? Stick to items in the staff report and items like traffic or things that were part of the planning commission findings.

Well, no, I heard that. And one of the questions I had is that my understanding is that they had their permit under a church. It was not under citrus. Is that correct?

There has been a school there for approximately 50 years. It's in conjunction with the church. It's behind it. And I believe originally it was a religious school, but it was a school before you came on board.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

And if I can just clarify for Council Member Tina Harrow, that is the point I think Council Member Solario was making, is that when you have a conditional use permit, it runs with the land. So if the land is sold or if the land is leased, the conditional use permit stays with the property. So the operator can change as long as the operations remain consistent with the conditions of the permit.

Okay, so here's what I want to do right now. I would like to call up our superintendent from San Ani Unified, Dr. Phillips, and maybe if I could also have the board president, board president Amesqua, to come up as well.

And since I can't see, just let me know when they're at the mic.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

They're almost there, but Sonia, go ahead. You want to say something. I want to remind you that we should be discussing not the operations of the schools. If you have concerns about the operation of the charter school, that would be best addressed with the Orange County Department of Education. We are looking at the land use issues alone. And the planning commission specifically looked at traffic. And the finding that the planning commission made was that the use and expanding from K through six to K through eight would increase traffic.

When I spoke to planning commissioners, what they shared with me, Madam City Attorney, is that there were other concerns, but that staff was the one that has pretty much said this is the issue, but that there were other issues. So what I'm doing right here is exactly what you said earlier. This is called fact finding and trying to find out information that maybe is not in the staff report. And that's why I'm calling up these individuals, because I want to get a bit clearer picture. So what I want to know from our superintendent of Santa Ana Unified is what

was the rationale for denying them? Because Santa Ana Unified does have what they call district charters. So when people start to come up here and say this is political, there are, I believe, five charters that the San Anden Unified School District has approved because when you approve a charter, there are several areas that you have to meet. So this charter was denied by San Anden Unified. I want to find out why they were denied. And then it was approved by the county.

When the county has a habit, has had a habit of approving, basically overstepping local control and approving charter schools, even though they've been denied from the local jurisdiction. So I want to know from Dr. Phillips or from the board president, Mesquah, why was this school denied?

Before we get an answer from our attendees here, I'd like to hear from our city attorney if that's an appropriate question. We don't want to create liability for the city or the school district and there are certain parameters we got to be within. So city attorney, if you can shed some light on that.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

The findings required to approve or disapprove a conditional use permit are contained in your municipal code. They're all about impacts of the school, usually what we call nuisance impacts. Are there noise? Is there traffic? How will it impact the neighborhood? not whether one city school district would approve the charter or whether the county would approve a charter. The issue is will this use, let's pretend that it's not a charter school for a moment, it's just a religious school, for an example. If they were operating the school operations, would it impact the neighborhood?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

And if you need the staff to go over the findings, they can do that. But that's what this hearing is limited to.

So is this question relevant?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Councilmember Tina Harrow is relating this question to a land use impact it would be but whether they got approved or disapproved by the district is not relevant.

Well I want to know if the district thought there was an impact to one of their schools that's neighboring that school. So based on traffic or quality of life or whatever the case may be. I don't know.

And if that wasn't the jurisdiction or the nature of your review, you can also say that that was not the nature of your review.

Sure. Councilman Tenejaro, in answer to your question, there were many pieces of the review. We reviewed the petition for multiple vantage points. Location is one of those vantage points in terms of its adjacency to another school of ours, which is Sierra Preparatory Academy, right adjacent to that site. Currently, we have a traffic issue in that area. So I don't know that this appeal would help that in any way. So as a district, we are supporting the denial based on the planning committee's commission's recommendation. Thank you very much.

That concludes my questioning. Thank you.

Let me bring it back. Heck, now we lost Councilman Juan Villegas. So I don't know if we just, any other thoughts or questions?

No, I just have a procedural question for our city attorney in part because we don't have all council members present. If there aren't four votes for any of the recommendations, or possible recommendations, what happens?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

The Planning Commission decision would stay in effect because you in effect would not have overruled it. Then the applicant would have a period of 30 days to determine whether they would challenge that in another jurisdiction or not, another level or not.

Well just process wise, just so we can at least have a process here going forward. I do want to make a motion to approve option three, which would uphold the Planning Commission's denial.

I will second that.

Thoughts? Councilor Benavides?

Yes. Thank you, Mary. I come back to the question and the point that the city attorney has stated. This is a legal matter when it comes to land use. What will be lawfully allowed or what permit would be given? and under what stance would we either support it or deny it. When it comes to the school itself, or schools and the school district, I definitely recognize and appreciate the comments of the school board members

who provided information to support the strengths of the Senth-Denha Unified School District, of its local schools. The local school actually there, Sierra Prep, has been doing phenomenal when it comes to my son. I've got several sons that are part of the school, a couple of sons that are part of the school district. And one of them is on the speech and debate program. So I've gone to the number of different, and I'm not saying this because Councilman Tinajero is part of that. So I've gone to a number of these tournaments, and Sierra is just doing phenomenally well. And so I commend the district. I commend the students there.

the principal, the staff, the teachers at that school and schools throughout the district. And I understand the impacts and the concerns about potentially,

as more charters are appearing throughout the city, the potential of having students and the reality that we are losing students at the district to these local charter schools. and then there there are fiscal implications as well and and and so that that's a reality and that is a concern that I think all of us should have parents within the city parents that have schools children in our local schools and just residents who may not have schools children schools we want to make sure that that something unified is continues to be strong continues to to thrive and continues to improve it as they're doing the matter that we're

looking at and considering today is not whether to approve a charter or not it's strictly a land use and are there impacts to that local community so that's what what the lens through which myself my colleagues have to look at this and and that's what we're tied to unlimited to so I go back to the question if the charter if the conditional use permit allows for 180 180 students currently and if that is what is going to continue to be the case, then

there isn't a net increase or in this case a net loss, well, can't necessarily factor in net loss to the district, but if it's 180 students total and based on the analysis on traffic if the total is going to remain 180 and based on the analysis again information that's been provided to us by staff there isn't going to be a net negative impact then I think we are somewhat tied to that that information however it does need to be very clearly spelled out I think that one of the

options is that that we consider that the the this matter with certain conditions and if we're going to at all consider this again because I this is again strictly land use and based on on that limitation that we have I would say that if we're going to consider that it would have to be very clearly spelled that it'd be 180 students so I know we have a motion in a second unfortunately because I don't feel that I have information that would provide for these negative implications traffic implications and I'm I wouldn't be able

to support that the current motion so those are my comments and I'll turn back

now well look if we need more information that's not an unfair position we do have a motion if there's a substitute motion for a two-week continuance whoever to get more information that would be in my opinion the right time for such a motion if that doesn't carry then we can go back to the original motion me that's three three on what happens there but if you'd like to make substitute motion at this time I think it'd be appropriate I'm not necessarily inclined to I

don't know that the two-week continuance would would necessarily help or just or any continues frankly it's it's the question is the impact to the local community based on the information that we've been provided, traffic was the concern that was presented by the Planning Commission. Again, based on number of trips, again, tying it back to the number of students. And if the number of students is going to remain at 180, that isn't currently in the report. That would need to be included within the condition of the condition use permit. I don't know that adding more time. However, at the same time, I'm not necessarily inclined to be-

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

You have the ability to do that this evening because you're sitting de novo. So you have the ability to either deny the CUP as a planning commission or to condition it right to add your additional conditions which would address what you feel are some of the concerns i.e. limitation on the numbers etc.

Madam City Attorney, I'm sorry to interrupt anyone right now. I just I don't have a monitor so I can't see what's happening. But is there is there a way to cap it? because there is an issue when it comes to traffic and the adjacent school there.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Yes, the answer is yes. You can cap it based on the representation made in the record this evening of, I think, 30 students in 13 classrooms, I think is the number that was. Yeah, and so you can cap it at 180, you can cap it at 150, you can cap it at a number that you believe would control any of the impacts that you're concerned about.

So, their current, can you please state once again what their, I believe it's their current population is 185 or 187. What's the actual number? 180 is what they have communicated verbally. The report, I believe, or a letter indicates another number.

Sal, I believe they have 180 max at any one time. They have 86 that are online, and part of what they want is some of those 86 to come back when the 180 are gone. so so there is so we could cap it at 180 and you know no more than 180 at any one

time I would make a substitute motion for option two with a capital 180 all

right all right we have motion a second those in favor please say aye aye oh Oh yeah, go ahead.

Councilmember Tinejero.

Aye.

Councilmember Sarmiento. Yes. Mayor Villegas. Councilmember Benavidez. Aye. Councilmember Villegas. Aye. Councilmember Solorio.

No, and I would like to comment that, well, I'm going to.

All right. Motion carries. Thank you for that. So now we're on item 55A. I would entertain a motion. So moved. Sal, would you like to second? I'll second. Thank you. Those in favor, roll call, please.

Council Member Tina Harrow.

Aye.

Council Member Sarmiento. Aye. Mayor Pulido. Aye. Council Member Benavidez. Aye. Council Member Villegas. Council Member Solorio.

Aye. Thank you. Now item 55B, I would entertain a motion.

Move the item.

Second. Please roll call vote.

Council Member Tinojero?

Aye.

Council Member Sarmiento? Aye. Mayor Pulido? Aye. Council Member Benavides? Council Member Villegas? Aye. Council Member Solorio?

Aye. Item 55C, I would entertain a motion.

Move the item.

Second. We have a motion and two seconds. Roll call vote, please.

Councilmember Tina Harrell.

Aye.

Councilmember Sarmiento. Aye. Mayor Pulido. Aye. Councilmember Benavides. Aye. Councilmember Villegas. Aye. Councilmember Solorio.

Aye. Item 55D, I would entertain a motion.

So moved. 55D is in David.

I think there was some information that was going to be, we continued this previously because of lawsuit situation and

right because this is the award elections. I don't know if Fortunnell was not able to make a closed session when this-

You know we actually bypassed the sign because we were late with our-Make a motion to approve.

We have a motion, Councilor Solario?

Yeah, I have a question. I know that this item really, I think, addresses two things. A general election, as we typically would, but also items related to the possibility of award-based elections.

And what I wonder, because what I'm most interested in just moving forward with our traditional elections and not the other, because I know there's a variety of legal and other considerations. And I'm interested in the idea of ward based elections, but only if that goes with the drawing of new lines so so that we have wards that abide by the spirit of the CVRA.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

So the item presented before you this evening can have an alternative action, which is to take action on items A and B, which are the resolutions calling for the election, but to be revised to remove the language asking for the by ward election. And we have prepared those resolutions, the city clerk has them. Could we do that at the next meeting?

We can do that anytime before the August 10th deadline.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

So you can remove the by-ward elections tonight, or we can bring them to you at the next meeting.

I'm not sure I mean the councilman is done. I have sort of similar reservations on this as well. Maybe more strategic and tactical ones because we have pending litigation on this matter. So we didn't get a chance to discuss it in closed session. so I would just make a motion to defer this so we can get a little bit more time for the entire package for now

yeah for the entire part all right we have a motion just before everything motion but there's no I'll do it it'll be a substitute so made a substitute motion just defer and bring it all back hopefully it's the next council agenda madam city attorney what do you think 30 days Why not the next meeting, no? Next meeting.

30 days we won't be here. It just won't leave very much time in case there's a go-to-it item.

All right, we do it two weeks and then we can decide. So it's two weeks.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

And we'll bring them back to you without the by-ward election information. Bring everything back. We're continuing everything.

Well, and especially an update on the litigation. That's important. The whole package. That's right.

All right. We have a motion to second. Roll call? I'll second it. Roll call. Go ahead, Sal.

Mayor, Councilmember Tina Harrow?

Aye.

Councilmember Sarmiento?

Aye.

Mayor Polito? Aye. Councilmember Benavides? Aye. Councilmember Villegas?

Aye.

Councilmember Solario?

Aye. Okay, now I want to go off agenda for a moment. I know we continued some calendar items that involved Councilmember Benavides, and so let's go and take those up at this time please I think that's 13 a b and c that's correct can we take them all up at the same time one roll call vote we can't talk to the council that people want to talk about different things or

it's typically on consent you know we do a I know on a vote so you can pull any

one item right if you want what's the pleasure of the council so i'd like to make a motion that

make a motion that uh for to approve items 13a 13b and 13c second there's a motion a second

is there any discussion councilor villegas yeah i'm gonna know on all three

Okay. Any other thoughts or comments? Call the question.

Go ahead. Councilmember Tinajero?

Aye.

Councilmember Sarmiento? Aye. Mayor Pulido?

Aye.

Councilmember Benavides?

Aye.

Councilmember Solorio? I mean, I'm sorry, Solorio? Councilmember Villegas?

No.

Motion carries.

All right. Next item, where were we?

they present uh two of the council owners are present should we swarm in or do we uh tell the commissioners commissioners do we swarm in now or like come on down

oh they're going to change their clothing

Thank you.

to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation of purpose of evasion that I will and faithfully discharge

the duties upon which I'm about to enter. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, so we're going to continue. Madam Clerk, what's our item now?

It's 65, eh?

65. I think Councillor Dina Hedl took off, which is fine. I think it's getting late back there I'd entertain a motion on item 65a

I know that we it's simple policy internal policy for us and I recall we continued I'm trying to want to continue and review I'm trying to remember what what the reason for it was some cleanup on

Yeah, Madam Clerk, if I could, I think I had some questions that Councilmember Benavidez had. I think I may have raised this, it was more for just efficiency purposes,

some housekeeping language that we've addressed in the past. It really wasn't fully discussed, but it had to do with just simply limiting our time to speak. Limiting the number of presentations that we would make to one per meeting per council member.

And I think those are included in the policy does limit one per council meeting now. So it was modified to include that provision. As far as the timing issue, it's in the resolution of decorum. So that's already part of already in our current decorum resolution.

OK, what about our time on the enclosed session versus public?

The resolution, it was going to be presented at your next legislative committee with options for you to consider and then bring back to the city council.

All right. All right. So I don't know if there's a motion on the floor, but I'll move it.

Second. All right.

Councilman Daniels is gone, right? So we just vote regular. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries. Item 65B, I would recommend yet another continuance, but what is the pleasure of the county?

I second that motion.

Okay, I'll continue to start first of the meeting in July. And meanwhile, I would also want staff to continue to provide information and do whatever we can that's relevant on this item.

Mayor, if I may, just a question to staff. I imagine that it's similar to the other potential ballot matters. My question is with regard to timing. and what that does. At this point, Mr. Mayor, is the continuance, what was the time frame for the first meeting? Okay, so the next meeting, so I imagine we're still within.

As far as timing, this is just to provide staff direction. If the motion carried, then the staff would come back with the resolutions for you to actually place these items on the ballot. And that would have to take place at the July 17th meeting. That will be your last meeting before the election.

So if we continue until the first meeting in July, we'll still have the second opportunity in July.

That's correct, Mr. Mayor. Go ahead. If we roll this over to the first meeting in July, this is just saying, direct us to bring back the resolutions to place it on the ballot. It's not to place it on the ballot.

And all I'm saying, let's continue it, but instead of bringing back resolutions, continue to do analysis, continue to talk to us, continue to crank numbers and you know whatever is appropriate that City Councilmembers need to have in order to direct you to potentially write resolutions. Councilmember Vince

Armiento? No, I'm fine with that. I'll support that motion but I do think at some point we have to come to some decision we just can't keep rolling. No, no, we're running out of time so you know maybe you know we all do our due the next few days.

Mr. Mayor, and maybe we start giving the direction tonight. I mean, I'm fine with continuing it because you may-

No, no, but if you want a direction of the continuance, whatever you think is relevant, tell staff now.

Yeah, because if my colleagues do want to consider this, I'm fine with it. I do plan on voting no for placing this on the ballot. But I do feel that the staff work to consider possible revenue enhancement options. I feel the research and the outreach has been inadequate. There's been polling done, including questions and probably results that have been done, has not been shared with the council. Some of it began to get shared today, but only after many items of encouragement from myself, as well as from current research and outreach.

There was a lot of consideration of a penny sales tax or a penny and a half sales tax, tax, but not other items like parcel taxes, assessment districts, oversight commissions. There were a number of items that weren't considered or pondered. And had there been better communications with the council, there could have been additional input received on what to research, ask. And so I just worry that we don't have time really to get all the information that we should have,

because this is a very significant decision, as well as we should be communicating and having conversations with our residents as a staff, as a council, presentations to neighborhood associations, comlink, etc. And none of that has been done. And also now the bar is higher because my understanding is that there have been enough signatures gathered for a measure that's going to be on the November ballot statewide that requires a two-thirds vote for all taxes of this type. And so the threshold is now a little bit steeper and that with passage in November,

the results would be retroactive to any items on that election. So for those reasons too, it also should have us consider a broader range of possibly other revenue enhancements. And none of that research has been done, or at the very least has not been shared with the council, let alone input on surveys that have been done to date or any results that have been done to date, even though many of those items are public records. And it's quite unfortunate that staff has been withholding that information and not conducting that type of outreach, both with the council and the public.

So for those reasons, whether it's tonight or in two weeks or four weeks, I plan on voting no. So I don't want to hold back my colleagues if there are interest in moving forward with a penny sales tax or a penny and a half sales tax as staff has been recommending.

okay so with that uh any more thought or comment counselor yes go ahead tina heado go ahead

um i think that uh what i would like to do is see if uh we could go ahead and and go ahead and vote uh to approve this and the reason is is we're not saying that we are going to increase taxes what What we're doing is the responsible thing, which is stating that we have issues. They were spoken about earlier. Public safety is a major issue. We have some infrastructure issues. We have after school programs and so forth. There's escalating costs with the retirements across the state. We're not the only city that's dealing with this.

And I think it's a responsible thing to do to articulate this to the residents. to place it on the ballot so that they get to make the ultimate decision, not us. We're giving, we're basically empowering our community to choose which direction we want to go. And so I would respectfully ask my colleagues to let's go ahead and make a decision tonight so that that way we can now create a game plan on how to inform the community, get their feedback, and then at the end of the day let the chips fall where they may. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you for that comment. that's not too different from mine that I just want to continue with staff giving us more feedback but you're saying take the extra step and let staff make recommendations in a written form so let me just hold that thought counselor Tinajedo and go to counselor Villegas please thank you mr. mayor you

know no one really likes taxes I know I don't don't like it but sometimes you We have to do things that are necessary. And right now we have reduced services. And if we don't get some help in the near future, the reality is, and you know I like to speak about reality. The reality is that we're going to probably face some cuts in the future. Our water and our trash is going to be fine because those funds come from the enterprise funds. But the way things are right now, you could tell that there's a lot of people who are unhappy. There's not enough police services. Our streets need some work.

You know what's suffering right now here at City Hall? Service. We have a lot of, we have a hundred and something vacancies. Those are services that could be provided for the residents. We need inspectors. We need code enforcement. We need parks and recs people. We need folks at the library. We need another library. There's so many things that we need here. and the residents can make that decision all of you we can't make that we're putting that out to the public they make the decision if they want to step up and and deal with that that way or

if we don't and that's fine then we all are going to have to deal with the the reality that if we have extra funds, then the services are going to be cut even more. That's the reality of this. And I asked the public to really think about it. It's something that's not popular, especially for a public official here. You're supporting raising taxes. That's a mark on your record. But the thing is, sometimes, you know, I thought about this a lot. I'm like, well, you know, I'm just going to tell the public straight.

So then again, we're not making this decision. We're asking the public to make this decision. And that's where the power is, the power is in the voters, and they will make that decision. So please think about it. And I like to think that my word is good. When I come out and I relay this to you, it's something that I'm seeing here that we need to think about. Tough decisions, believe me. But if we don't do anything, things are going to stay the same or they're going to get a little worse. And I hate to say that. And that's all I have to say regarding this. All right.

So, look, I had made a motion earlier. Let me amend it. And maybe the second can be a friendly amendment. and that is basically to direct staff to go the extra level and come back with verbiage that would potentially allow us to consider this further. But I would further ask you to also consider in your recommendations or in your analysis possibly a half-cent sales tax, which only would raise half the amount of money, obviously, but let's see what that looks like in the budget. it i know you probably have already done uh you know polling etc etc and on that i would further

ask you to communicate with the entire city council but especially with council member salario because he's been attempting to get information and he's just not getting it from staff and i i think you can sense you know the frustration that he expressed earlier and and i don't need an answer right now i'm just telling you you've got a few days communicate with all of us But if he's been asking a lot of questions, give him a lot of answers. You know, whatever you can do. And if you just absolutely can't answer something because you feel it's incorrect or that you shouldn't, then I think you've got to communicate with all of us.

because i can't think of any reason why a a city council member would not be given full information on on anything that um that we're doing as city staff trying to you know do either this analysis or polling or any other efforts that that we're undertaking i think city council has to have full access and and and full and complete information so right now you've got one no vote coming into this thing maybe you can turn that one around is what I'm suggesting yes counselor of in Sarmiento please thank you and I'll

support that motion with the condition that staff comes back in two weeks with again I think what was asked is some alternatives some options to this I I don't think there's any problem with having more information. It's always better to have a thorough vetting of this, whether it's a full cent, a half cent, but also some discussion about the new threshold that's going to be required if this ballot measure gets approved statewide. And we won't be able to go out and do this. And that's why many other jurisdictions similar to ours are going to be going out now because they have to. So my mind is open on this.

I'm not committed one way or the other, but I think the better conversation we have, the better result we'll have. One thing I think that I do want to make sure of is that as we talk about where we're going, we can't discuss any revenue generation in a vacuum. We have to realize that there's going to be some additional costs that are going to be imposed upon our residents and our rate payers when it comes to utilities, electricity, and water.

And so, you know, look, we have a very big vote coming up at the water district that may increase water rates because we're going to be considering the adoption and support of a desalination plant. We have to be mature about it and understand if we decide to do that, we're going to be laying an additional cost on our residents. And so if we all are willing to do that, in addition to another half-cent sales tax, we're looking at compensation changes for some of our employees, increases, all those things we have to consider. So let's be mature about this.

Let's discuss everything that we need to that's going to be impacting our rate payers and our residents as we make these decisions.

all right so with that uh councilman i view this please thank you a few things for for staff here

uh i i will be uh i'd say somewhat reluctantly supporting the the item as some of my colleagues have mentioned it it's it's not out of uh it's recognizing the true necessity uh that we have to be able to ensure that we have that we don't uh significantly impact negatively impact or see a negative impact to services uh there we if anything our community deserves to have services enhanced not reduced uh i would so a couple of comments that i would like to make uh with regard

to even the consideration tonight we're not voting on yet necessarily placing this on the on the uh On the ballot, we're asking for staff to come back with some information to be able to then potentially consider voting for the matter to go before the voters. A few things. One is, if the mayor suggested studying and providing this information on a half cent, rather than a penny, I would also like to get a sense of what it would be at a three-quarter cent just to see what the the impact again that financial impact would be of revenue the

other is if we were to come back and consider I certainly would only consider if there were a sunset versus the in perpetuity so that's something I'm stating right now for the record and I would ask for staff to be able to provide some information around that and some options around that. And the other is what we are asking the voters and granted they're the ones who are going to decide whether they're going to choose to impose an additional tax on themselves. And to the point of my colleagues that there are already

certain expenses that are likely going to be going up but other utility fees and such a lot of our residents are working families lower income seniors on fixed income we also need to demonstrate as a city so this is what I'm asking for staff we also need to demonstrate in the city that we're doing everything we can that we're not just shouldering the residents but that we're going to take going to take some very intentional and pointed actions to in the areas of economic development. So that's what I would like to get from staff is what does that mean? What would that look like?

What is staff proposing and presenting a council that city is going to do, whether it's hotel development is something we have one that's coming up in North Main. Other cities are building hotels at a significantly more advanced and more rapid rate what are the hurdles that we need to either remove and or what can we do to promote our city marketing branding our city that there are so many opportunities here and and we don't necessarily do as effective a job as we can to promote our city and draw business into our city any other steps in the area of development of

streamlining development, support business retention, attraction, business growth. And I would hope that our staff would have more ideas, tangible concrete ideas, beyond just a few that I just wrote down now. So I would certainly want to see some research done and some concrete ideas that are being presented that, along with us going out and asking the voters to tax themselves that we're also going to look at what we can commit to to raise revenue uh here on the city that we're going to be shouldered with as a city as a municipality and not just the residents

those are my comments and i'm hoping i'll be able to get some information some feedback

on that in the future thank you councilman i just wanted to assure you that go ahead i wanted to assure the city council that the the support for economic development by the entire city council and in particular you, Council Member Benavides, is not lost on me. In fact, in a very difficult budget this year, we're still prioritizing the general plan update. Because in fact, post redevelopment, that is one of the only tools we have is to set land use policy that creates opportunity and incentive for people to develop here. And of course, like the Mayor Pro Tem, who's not here today, but

She's always been stressing the importance of focusing on things that improve property tax generation for the city through development, much like you. So we're making a commitment to really get that done in the next year and a half or so. And that's a very tough investment because we're investing quite a bit of money into that effort when we know there's other needs, for example, in parks and city facilities and whatnot. We're using the one time money for this because we really think that it'll pay dividends. and so we have new directors here so I'm glad they heard it directly from you and

we'll be working very hard on that all right just another thought because we're all kind of you know speaking here a little bit of a train of thought I think maybe some analysis is it deals with housing and what I'm talking about is the impact because we're talking about an increased tax here sales tax and yet we're building a lot of housing and much of that housing doesn't have any any sales tax or real revenue associated with it and yet the minute we build a

dwelling unit we have to provide police service fire service many other city services you know in our parks weren't there etc etc so I'm suggesting is that we start looking at things a little bit more holistically and on a longer term base and trying to figure out how do we balance revenue versus new construction you know for example I know at main place that we're talking about potentially as many as 2,000 units up at around the shopping mall there if one were to do that maybe we could also encourage them to increase sales enough

to be able to offset that load on the city because as we're asking folks say look we're going to have to increase taxes but if we don't watch money everywhere and the impact of the city everywhere we're kind of taking a step forward and a step back and before you know it it's not going to really have the impact that we want the other thing is i'd like to see an option with and without the

sunset, and I'd like to ask that the one with the sunset be at least long enough to be helpful to the city. And what I mean by that is there's two significant events that I think are going to happen. One is at some point some of the bonds for the construction of the city police and jail facility are going to be paid off, yet that utility users tax is still going to be there, So that's going to be a windfall. It's not going to be big enough to address some of the things we're talking about, but we ought to be considering when that event takes place and what it means. And the other is an analysis on PERS.

I know that now, you know, through PREPA and some of the lower benefits to employees, there's going to be this wave. It's going to be similar to, like, you know, what the baby boomers did to the country, where all of a sudden you had like this population that was very large and was very different. We've got that wave right now within the PER system. We have years and years where we were told by PERs you've got endless money, you can do additional benefits. Cities across the state did. Now we're finding that the retirement fund is at 68% funded,

and yet we're going to have to carry a lot of employees for 20 or 30 years until they begin to pass away and the newer employees at lower levels start to kick in. So cities across the state right now are trying to figure out how to do that. So if we were to do a tax increase, it would have to last long enough to help the city sustain that period because there's going to be tremendous trust to the system.

The other thing I would ask us to consider is, I know I was on a call today with some of the largest cities within California talking about this initiative that Councilmember Solario mentioned earlier. And the real problem there is that it's being really pushed by the beverage industry. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, other soft drinks. And the reason they're pushing it is that cities like San Francisco and Oakland have already done a sales tax on the beverage industry. And they're raising lots of money, but the beverage industry is saying, gee, we don't want to be next. L.A. hasn't done it.

Long Beach hasn't done it. We haven't done it. San Diego hasn't done it. If other cities were to do this tax on the beverages, which are generating a lot of money for cities like San Francisco, they want to stop that. So that's why they're killing potentially all taxes that could go before the public. And the way they would kill it is they would say you have to now have a two-thirds majority. and all these taxes you know they pass with the majority but it's like 55 you know 60 63 percent rarely are they 70 or 75 percent it's hard to get people that

in those numbers to vote for something so if this were to pass and we have all these increases coming up and cities can't do anything to save themselves that's a real real problem so that's why I think right now we have to pay extra attention there is still hope that they're gonna withdraw this tax we're trying to coordinate cities across the state to fight back the beverage industry and if they are able to decide that they're not going to do it because they don't want the negative publicity then they could pull that initiative and we

We have until the 28th of this month for them to decide if they're leaving it on the ballot or if they're going to withdraw their initiative. So unfortunately a lot of exciting times, a lot of things happening right now. But I think that's why we as a city and looking at our long term fiscal health have to really be considering everything right now.

So Mr. Mayor, one last comment. Something else that I think we should have been doing these past few weeks is considering if we do generate this kind of revenue, how might we spend it? And we really haven't done that. An excellent point. Because we're saying that we want to raise approximately $40 million, but we haven't really had a discussion about how to spend it. We have to earmark much of it, correct. Correct. Number one, and number two, and I know the polls were already done, but I only took a quick look because I finally got something very late today. But the essence of most of the poll questions was to use that money,

$40 million to maintain existing levels of service, including police levels of services. And again, if we already have deficient levels or inadequate levels, I'm not interested in having a regressive sales tax on working class, poor class, to keep the same level of low numbers of police services. We should have been considering having some questions to speak to enhancing certain items. And again, that just speaks to, we're asking folks for a ton of dough and we ought to have a thoughtful conversation about how it might be spent.

So can you please add that into the motion and into direction from staff so that when you come back, you've given a lot of thought as to, and different options that we consider as to use of funds. Thank you. So with that, roll call vote, please.

Councilmember Tinojero?

Yes.

Councilmember Sarmiento? Yes.

Mayor Pueblo?

Councilmember Benavidez? Aye. Councilmember Villegas? Aye. Councilmember Solorio?

No.

Motion carries.

Mr. Mayor, wait a minute. I made a mistake. Sal, let me let Peter Katz speak before you speak. Peter, come on up. I just saw your name, Peter. My apology. And then you can speak, Sal. Is that okay? Sure. Thank you. Peter Katz.

Good evening, everyone. Since you guys have already taken your vote on this issue without even giving any input but from the public, it looks like it's a done deal. But let's take a look at the hypocrisy we have up here. We had a city manager a few years ago that did balance the budget in this city. Whether you liked it or not, the budget was balanced. In the interim, while you searched for a new city manager, you went out and ran this city $17 million in the hole. Next year is projected to be $31 million in the hole. And now you want to fix the problem by putting it on the backs of these people that live and work in this city?

You talk about affordable housing. What the hell housing could they afford when you're going to increase their taxes again? People are sick and tired. They're fed up. This gasoline tax will be repealed by almost a two-thirds vote in November, and this is going to go down in flames if it's not done right. And we're going to have to cut services. You're going to have to look into this city and find out what you're doing wrong. You did away with $12 million on the ICE contract to satisfy uh people from outside this city you got nothing to replace it you got an empty jail

over here you got a city hall that could be rented out because you're not using half of it when are you going to take the monkey off the back of the residents of this city you're building units here right and left with no thought on new schools new roads traffic jams more gasoline spent at red lights. What the hell is happening to our neighborhoods? You're building monstrosities five stories high to look down into the backyards of people just to bring in tax revenue. Where does this stop? And you think that people are going to shop in Santa Ana when they can go to Garden Grove or someplace else where the sales tax is cheaper?

They're counting the pennies in their budget. And they don't have enough to make ends meet. The water rates are going up. The sewer rates are going up. the electric rates are going up everything's going up you got this gasoline sales tax and the driving up taxes and then the vehicle license registration fees are almost doubled they've gone from on some vehicles as much as from 200 to 500 where does it stop what are you doing to your people here you're making slaves out of them and they're not happy and you better start looking at it because there is a major tax revolt going on in this state and you're going to see it this

November with this gasoline sales tax is going to be repeated repealed and that money that you were counting on coming into the state for road repairs not going to come I'm warning you if you look at the sob that the recall of Josh Newman over this gas tax was a two-thirds vote thank you thank you

all right uh look i just one thought on the gas tax and that is is cars become more and more efficient and they are as we get more and more electric cars and we are as a country we're going have figured out how to pay for it because the old formulas of a gas gustler that got 10 or 15 miles a gallon and drove on a freeway or a city street those formulas are gone now cars get two or three times the mileage some don't even use any gasoline it's people at home that are plugging in which is

by the way better for the environment but they drive on the same roads as everybody else so We've got some real rethinking as a society that we have to do in order to make things function. You know, Europe and other countries are ahead of us. They've already done somewhat the shift. We haven't. And we're just going to have to because funding it the old-fashioned way is not going to work. And by the way, I believe that just increasing tax on gasoline isn't it either because more and more people are not going to use gasoline.

And more and more people that have better and better cars are going to use even less than the poor people that have the lousier cars with the lousier gas mileage. So increasing tax on gasoline really is a regressive tax. But we have to change the paradigm because the world is changing. Technology is changing. Cars are changing. Fuel sources are changing. and politically as a federal and state and local government, we are just way, way, way behind that curve. So with that, Councillor Villegas, please.

Real quick, Mr. Mayor, the people, let's make it very clear. The people, the residents of Santa Ana will decide if they want a tax or not. Just like they decided, which I'm against, the marijuana industry. They voted, they spoke, that's what it is. we can't make that decision for everyone the voters will that's it if they deny it okay so be it but it's our responsibility to put it out there for the public and to be truthful on what's going on that's all I have to say mr. mayor

now but madam city clerk what's oh yeah sorry about that Sal see what happened theater came up and we forgot about sal sorry sal i apologize go ahead please and and i appreciate

uh council member viegas's comments uh that's exactly what it is is we're letting the residents decide we have an issue and i think councilman salario brought in some items that i think are important and everyone else that has been adding to this discussion at the end at the end of the day we're doing the democratic thing is allowing the residents to decide so this council is not imposing anything on anyone what it's doing is it's allowing the residents to speak their voice and that'll happen in november in the meantime mr mayor i know we voted on this uh the clock has struck 12 out in

florida and uh i do have to be up at 5 a.m so i'm going to sign off and i thank you for allowing me

to come in via conference well you're welcome and uh thank you for your your contribution i think It was not insignificant, and I know it's awkward. I've called in before myself. It's never as good as being here, but I'm happy that you were able to do so, Sal. And have a good night. Whatever you're doing tomorrow, I hope you have a good day.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Bye. So with that, Madam City Clerk, what's our next item?

We're on item 65C, and I do have one speaker.

All right. Let's bring that speaker forward.

Michael Massey, Jamboree Housing. That's me.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, council members. My name is Michael Massey. I'm the senior vice president of finance for Jamboree Housing Corporation. Jamboree, as I hope you know, is a nonprofit affordable housing developer working throughout the state of California to help cities solve their affordable housing issues. and while we do work statewide we were born and raised and continue to concentrate here in Orange County and have a long and I think quality relationship with the city from our cornerstone project in in mini street to our veterans village project which is scheduled to close at the end of this

year and is now fully funded but tonight I'm here representing Jamboree and our partners the Pacific companies and AMG and Associates and we are partnering with them on on Metro East and and First Point two very important and significant affordable housing developments that we are thrilled to be involved with as I don't need to tell anyone at the dais and and certainly don't need to tell anyone in the room we are in the midst of a housing crisis in the state of California and at Jamboree we believe that one of the solutions

is to provide as many units as possible to affordable families and seniors. And this project certainly represents that. This will provide a very significant number of homes to working families and seniors that are high quality, highly amenitized, very architecturally well designed, and fitting within the community. The density bonus that's under discussion tonight is a culmination of a long series of discussions and conversations with staff and with the Planning Commission.

We think that as issues came up through that process, we were responsive and responsible in addressing the issues. And the density bonus that is under discussion, I think, represents that. if you have any questions about the project I'm here to answer them and

sincerely appreciate your consideration let me just ask a question I know it's completely unfair because you've been playing under a certain set of rules for a long time but does your project generate any money for the city is there any retail or any there is there is yes there's no how much there's 9,000 square

feet of of retail space how many square feet of residential uh square feet i don't i the square feet of residential i don't know off the top of my head i can 10 times 20 times 30 times many many times yes it's it's uh 412 units and 568 units all right and and look and my question is not

so much for you but earlier we were talking about the uh the tax increase and or the city budget I think we should more and more try to have analyses as to how much revenue is being generated by these projects that we're approving so that at least they're revenue neutral, that at least they can carry the burden of the, in this case, 400 units. I don't know maybe you know a thousand people maybe 1,500 people now in the city driving calling for police service calling for fire service all that costs

money and it's gonna have to come from monies we already have that are already pretty thin so to the extent that we can try to emulate revenue kind of like what we did on North Main Street when they built some of those homes right there by mother's market if you look at the retail on that particular development it's pretty significant and the jobs and the dollars generated i think at least offset the residential that we placed on the city so you know just something to to keep in mind on a go forward basis but on this project any

questions or thoughts councilmember go ahead i have a question issue for staff uh i need clarification on the matter that's before us or the question that's before us tonight are we able to deliberate and discuss the actual decision by by the Planning Commission and and assigning the density bonus deciding whether to assign a dense density bonus or not or is tonight are we strictly uh uh limited to deciding whether

we're going to bring it back for discussion at that point that's what i'm not certain this is actually the first time we we implemented this procedure this process this policy to allow for council to call up an item uh about a year ago perhaps maybe a little less than a year ago but I think this is the first time that we're actually activating it. So I need some clarification for myself and my colleagues on what the matter is and what we can discuss tonight and what we're deciding tonight.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

So what you would be doing tonight is merely asking your colleagues whether they would like to, as a whole, majority of the council would like to hear this item.

Okay.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

That's all that you're doing this evening. You don't get into the substance.

Tonight we're not deciding on whether we want to consider approval of the density bonus or not. It's the question as to whether we can actually hear the item and make a decision as a council on that.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

That is the new procedure that you adopted under your new ordinance.

So two comments. One is I would recommend that we review the process altogether. Because as much as my request of my colleagues is that we do, that they agree and allow for me to be able to bring it back for us to be able to have a thoughtful discussion. I at the same time want to be mindful of the applicants, and unfortunately this being the first applicant going through, they're going to be, if we are able to bring it back for discussion, which I hope we do, they're going to be hit with delays.

It would be ideal to figure out a way so that we can bring it back, hear the matter, discuss it, make a decision, move forward so it doesn't have to come back a couple of times and then we're talking about at least a month of delays for consideration. However, this is a mechanism that we have in place right now. So my request of my colleagues is that we do bring this back to hear and have the conversation and discussion and consider. I do appreciate the work of Jamboree Housing. There certainly are reputable firms that do quality work.

I do appreciate and respect Ms. Pero, who represents the applicant. At the same time, there are a couple of projects in that East First Street corridor. We're talking about nearly a thousand or so projects or homes that are units that are concentrated in a very compact area. There are significant implications. Our consideration of density bonus is, I think, it essentially exacerbates the impacts. I think at a minimum it'd be helpful to have a dialogue and one of the things

that I just want to want to that particularly is a matter that has raised some hesitation on my part is something that I've mentioned before there has been different representations as to how these projects and developments are going to be funded. I'll reiterate that my first meeting with the applicant was that it was going to be privately funded, nothing, no public funds, they were ready to go, they just were, it was just a point of information that they were presenting, then later there was some indication that there might be some

need for some assistance and then later it was they were going to need a a change to our housing opportunity ordinance to allow for years of contributions of in-lieu fees to go towards funding the projects that would then hinder the opportunity that the city would have to be able to support other perhaps less dense projects that would be more evenly spread throughout the city and perhaps in areas where there is greater need like central part of town versus the eastern edge right by Tustin. So there's just some questions and some factors that I think would be helpful for us to consider, to have the dialogue on.

So given those matters and those questions, my request of my colleagues is that we do agendas to bring that back. I brought this forward, so that's my motion. Well, no, my motion is that we bring it back in two weeks to be able to have that discussion.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

If you're going to bring it back under your current ordinance, as I understand it, I'm looking at planning staff, we would actually have to then publish notice. This is a, under our existing rules now, these are our new rules, we would give the applicant notice and the community notice that the council's going to hear this item, much like you did tonight on that CUP. You're going to have like a full blown conversation about this project.

So then two weeks would be too soon, it'd be 30 days?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

So my understanding is you should publish, right, for two weeks? Right, and the staff will probably do it two days. Yeah, so it will be a push for staff to prepare that staff report and get the public notice out, but that is the new process.

So again, for clarification, would it be two weeks or 30 days, or is that to be determined today? Do we just give direction?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

I'm looking at staff because I don't want to commit them to a timeline they can't meet.

So my motion is whatever, I guess my motion would be as soon as it can feasibly be brought back. that that's that's what what i would all right we have our directions but we will have to notice it it will have to be noticed that's right so that's that's my my motion as soon as it can feasibly be brought back that's my motion second for my call councilman solario yeah you know maybe the plan

manager can come back up a related thing is um i believe that there are other items still required to continue to entitle and move this project along that have so many additional items continue to come back is just burdensome on staff and on the applicants maybe the planning manager can speak to what other entitlements or procedural discretionary things they may need in other words this item is going to come back already for other reasons can you speak to that the only action

that you have left on this project is the density bonus agreement we have the project is located in the Metro East overlay area in which it is a permitted

use so so that I'm hearing you say that really because the Planning Commission already acted on this and their decision would have been a final had it not been for this request and now a possible hearing, there would be no additional

actions needed by the Council to

fully entitle this project and I don't know if maybe if the applicants want to speak to that. I know at minimum there's still some financing issues but I don't know if there's other entitlement issues. As the applicants come up, because I do have that question for them, I do worry that many of us on the council speak about affordable housing, having more, supporting development, expediting development, but yet we continue to do things like this that create hurdles. So here, theoretically, with this process, we now have added this meeting, now potential another hearing and additional work, and it's not helpful in my humble opinion.

Maybe if... Ms. Sopoto. Well, they're together. other side if she's fine with the applicants speaking directly please do to your understanding what additional actions are still remaining from the City Council for the project to be fully entitled well I think it's important to

kind of separate a couple of issues anything that would be discussed in terms of funding or financing this project obviously would have to come back separately in terms of the in terms of the density bonus this does represent the last of our entitlements and we're we're eager to to move forward

with this on you don't need any other permits CUP correct that's your infrastructure changes right mitigation changes EIR's nothing for this item is

just this density that's correct a lot of a lot of those issues as I said that that came up through through the density bonus discussion were addressed with staff and with and with the Commission and and again I think we responded to those in a responsible way but it does represent a lot of effort and a lot of conversation and a lot of work but yes this does represent the last of it and

we're not so I feel for my position at least that I'm comfortable with the Planning Commission's decision so I don't personally view any for an additional public hearing on this side you know but I'm just one of yeah and

In crafting, in getting to the density bonus agreement, it conforms with all state and local laws.

Eligible under those laws. Exactly right. That's exactly right.

Additional thoughts or questions? Candida, I've just got a couple. Now that we're going to be bringing it back and going through the process,

this is close to the 2020 building, is that correct? Is it around that part of First Street? This is close to the... The Colton Properties?

Yes, it's on the other side, yes.

Do they have 100% control of the parking already? Because I knew there were some parking issues previously. Is that figured out or resolved?

That has been entitled, yes. That portion of it has been entitled.

So we have no parking issues, 100% solid on parking?

They have been, their parking issue, their entitlement for parking has been granted. And they are parking at a, they have a concession for the number of parking spaces that they were given. And in addition to that, they are going forward the shuttle system, which will go to the train center as well as to off-site parking areas.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

So we're doing exactly what we shouldn't do as part of this process, which is supposed to be, do you guys want to call up this item or not? Do you want to hear all the details?

We get it, Sonia. We get it. You made the motion to call it up, right? So is there a second?

Thank you.

I'll second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed?

No.

So motion carries, I think, three to two? Yeah, because, well, I mean.

So we don't have four votes then. All right, so then what happened? We're just thick and stuck.

All right. All right. So then you're not coming back. Do you play soccer, by the way?

My husband does.

No, but his name is Masi. I thought maybe there was something there.

Yeah, his name, yeah. And that's his guy. All right.

Thank you. So with that, let's go on to the next item.

65D.

65D, what's the pleasure of the council? Council member Solario?

Yeah, one thought I have on this time, because there's still a lot to review and with a lot of things already on the November ballot statewide and things that the council may add statewide. I support that moving item number one, which is to receive the report from the ad hoc committee. That way we can continue to consider that. and at least at this point in time not consider item two. So I would move just recommended action number one.

Is there a second?

A question for staff. Okay. And perhaps also for the ad hocs. I think there were a few members of the committee or a few members of the council that sat on the ad hoc. But my question for staff,

I think some of there have been over the last couple of years or several years several matters that have arisen from different issues that we've had whether it be in essence charter issues that tied our hands because they're in charter within the charter that have come up as a best practice would be for us to fix it and make do a go through a charter amendment.

I think some of those items are on here. I see the civil service position of the police chief has item number seven on there, the mayor's signature authority, the first item, maybe a couple others. So my question for staff is, are there any key things here that staff would recommend that we do consider? Perhaps nine items is quite a few, so I hear what my colleagues are saying. But maybe there are a couple that we should consider.

or if it's tonight is not enough time for to be able to have staff maybe process and consider that I would be interested in getting some feedback and input from staff in the not too distant future

and perhaps re you know think through what let me because I think the committee did most of this and much of it was mayor pro tem but I know councilor Villegas was pretty active councilor would you like to address council member of niv this is uh thoughts um there's a lot of discussion

in this there's a lot of items so i'm going to go ahead and second uh 65 d1 only

uh any additional thoughts from staff you don't i know another matter if i might

clarify a bit the the personnel board is one of the things that has gotten us into some challenging situations in the recent past. I don't know if that's the matter that was trying to be addressed there in item number two.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

So when the ad hoc committee met, we made recommendations with respect to cleaning up. We saw this as like an administrative clean up item. Take out archaic provisions, look for any provisions in the charter that conflict with the municipal code, vice versa, and to address any larger policy issues. Those are the nine issues that we kind of issue spotted with the ad hoc committee. These are the ones that came back. I believe there was an attempt to at least rank them for you to identify which ones were of greater importance. I have given the legal opinion that some of these items, in my opinion, can be combined into one

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

charter question, much like the City of Anaheim did. I think that was something raised by Council Member Sarmiento the last time we did this, and I researched that. I think he was absolutely correct in that. So I do believe that there are a couple of these that could be combined into a single question. Those would be the ones that are administrative in nature. Personnel boards, signature authority, conflicts with gifts, campaign contributions, etc. Thank you for that clarification.

I think to that point, if it can be simplified and provided again for the voters to be able to clean things up, as I'm thinking through, some of us are going to be rolling off the council here in a few months, and I'd like to do whatever we can to provide for you know future councils as much of a improved and streamlined charter and any other again improvements that we can provide for the benefit of the community going forward takes it's some basically all these have been around for these items and matters have been around for for decades and

we've been wrestling through them for the last number of years so I think to degree we can help improve things by putting something on the ballot that would be in one question addressed a number of administrative matters I think it would be a benefit to the to the community to the city to the staff and future council as well that's my comment opinion I think maybe I've got two folks

on the left you want to go first and I'll make it brief I'm I was just gonna echo what madam city attorney said so I'm fine with supporting the motion to put it to put it over or just address the first issue i think this matter needs to come back to us because we're an incomplete council right now i think one of the ad hoc members isn't here so just if it's a pleasure of the council maybe we can you know adopt um the first part of the um of the of the agenda item and then the second item maybe comes back to us when we have a full council

but i think uh let me go to the council members i think the motion was more or less just to dispense with the second part altogether tonight. But who wants to go first, Councillor Villegas or Solario?

I'll go real quick, Mr. Mayor. I was just going to say it is the wish of the Mayor Pro Tem for us to have a discussion with all these items. It's only fair to her that if we could bring it back and discuss. But for right now, absolutely adopt and file this or hold this. but we do need to discuss it. The list is long, and if we could shorten it with the Council Member Sarmiento suggestion, then that would be a good idea. There are a few things that we do need to clean up in the charter.

Mr. Mayor, on this note, this dialogue, you know, a lot of these items, too, have a lot of history, but I think the items really that need quite a bit of administrative cleanup because there's conflict between the charter or resos with state law and regulations or items two and three. So, I mean, I would be supportive today supporting those items. The rest are pretty involved. And again, the same kind of thing, if we're going to do something major essentially to it as our city constitution, we have to have real and full conversations amongst ourselves, with staff, and the public.

I think with two and three there's been very clear instances where there's conflicts that just create problems for many. But those are my thoughts.

Mr. Mayor. So, yes, go ahead, City Manager.

From a staff's perspective, the top three are in the order of priority that staff rank them. And then after that, the ranking shifts from the listing. But the top three probably represent our highest priorities, even though all the other ones have work as well. But I think the process should be that every election we should take and focus on different parts of the charter that need updating. But if you try to do all of it as much, you end up confusing the voters. So two, for example, is really one that we would really prioritize.

You know, we would like to really modernize and move all the commissions into the municipal code so it can be updated periodically. In the charter, it's hard to change. The other, like I said, one in three would also be, just like Council Members, Laura mentioned three has conflicts as well that we can clean up. So if we had to focus on just a group, I would recommend the first three, and that would be plenty of work. Because we do have to do work if the council decides to move forward with this, with the city attorney's office and staff to bring back the changes and the proposed language.

Those aren't good points and I generally agree. The only thing I would say on item number one is I think we essentially now have case law about roles and responsibilities. So I don't know that that really is something that needs to be written up and placed on the ballot, but those are just my thoughts.

I would agree with that, that item number one now has been pretty much decided by the court. we had quite a bit on that so i would recommend let's bring back two and three and and you know we don't have a lot of time and we've got to be doing a lot of work on things like if we're going to look at this tax or not that's a huge lift it's not something you just say okay let's do it so um

I would like some clarification, thank Mayor, from perhaps the City Attorney with regard to the first item and although there is case law, there are no alternatives I believe currently within the Charter.

The Charter already calls for the Mayor to sign resolutions passed by Council, yet there there is no alternative other than the mayor's signature and I think that's what we would be trying to address if there were a situation where mayor was not available or something of that sort then there would be right then that's what I think we would try to address we would have language

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

that would mirror the language that says that the mayor shall sign all contracts and in his absence the mayor pro tem may sign them or another council member we don't have similar language with respect to resolutions and ordinances so the proposal would be to put that language in to avoid the type of problem we had in the past.

Right. So basically, even though there is case law, I don't think

And what I would argue is that we now have, because of the court case, pretty clear language as to what must be done. And we haven't had a problem except for in 150 years.

So I don't want to make a mountain out of a molehill. You made case law. Yes. And that's it.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Well, the order was specific as to our current mayor. So if we ever had in the future someone else.

Well, and you haven't had a problem in 150 years.

And I would just add, too.

We've got better things to do.

We are a charter city, and so we have the priorities of how the city ought to function in roles and responsibilities, but there's a whole other body of state law and federal law that dictates a lot of other things. And so we don't really need to put all case law, all ideas in the charter. And again, on that item, I think there's been a lot of discussion and some court direction on that. Whereas items two and three, there really are issues that are unanswered that need clarification. Because like with item three, regarding gifts and campaign provisions,

there are conflicts between the charter, the resolution, FPPC, codes, and a number of other items. And so two and three really deserve and need clarification, whereas one, I think there's quite a bit of case law on the various items that have been discussed.

So, Mr. Mayor, I'm going to have to leave in a few minutes, so hopefully we can call the question. I think there's a motion on the floor, but I was going to say, can we do a substitute motion where we adopt, I guess, 65D1 and accept the report from the ad hoc committee, but continue D2 until Mayor Pro Tem, who was on the ad hoc here to address this, we know it's time sensitive. Two more weeks I don't think is going to really hurt us and maybe in the balance or during dependency, see the city attorney and staff can go ahead and maybe blend two and three. Maybe they can blend some of the others. Let's see what it looks like.

And if we don't like what we see, then we accept some and we delete others and we can go ahead and do some redacting up here.

Well, why don't we at least for now, so staff's doing stuff, maybe the motion includes item two and three. So you start on whatever that looks like. And let's see if there's votes for that.

Yeah.

Then later on if other council members want other items to be considered, they could do a separate item and then we can review those. But this way staff can begin to work on them because with everything else going on in the city, we need the time.

All right, so we have a motion and a second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. David was very silent but he I think he said I I whispered it he whispered reluctant but it was a soft but but solid I so with that councilmember Vince Armiento is going to have to excuse himself and we appreciate your time and effort Vince and so let's try to stay focused here and wrap up what we have to do.

Are we on 85A and B? I would continue 85A again. Councilwoman Martinez is absent. All right.

Why don't we, maybe both items, yes? Well, the other one I do have a question for. All right, let's do 85A.

We could potentially bring back. Well, let's have at least 85A. Let's do 85A first.

move to continue all second those in favor please say aye aye those both motion carries

let's continue now if i do you have a question go ahead i do for staff so so i i joined councilman martinez uh to bring this forward uh and and this is a question i do have a question for staff on this matter so a few years ago the city approved the housing opportunity ordinance purpose and intent was to uh ensure that we were taking steps to continue to develop uh accessible or affordable housing within particularly as we saw more market rate, basically to include both market rate and affordable housing development going forward within the city. So the idea of the housing

opportunity ordinance was to clarify, because I think it wasn't very clear, and part of what we wanted to do is make it clear for the development community what that looked like for them, because it was on a case-by-case basis. In some cases we were asking them the in-lue fees were a certain amount in one project or a different amount in another project. What the percentages were were very unclear and ambiguous and it was I think very difficult for the development community to have predictability as to what was going to be required of them. So that was I think a couple of intents

within the Housing Opportunity Ordinance to be able to clarify and to be able to ensure that we had mechanisms to be able to have new development new units or affordable develop within the city we did have one amendment since the initial that I recall since the initial approval and that was to try to try try to motivate or try to ensure that there are more units developed on-site versus

strictly going to or primarily seeing the in-lieu fees. So my question is, so that's a little bit of background, and my question before staff is this. From what I understand, what triggers the Housing Opportunity Ordinance is an upzone, if you will, to basically if there's a development that's going to be developed or development's being proposed but that needs a variance of some sort when it comes to the zoning that's that that's what triggers the housing opportunity ordinance so if there isn't such action requested or needed for the

development project then the the housing opportunity ordinance would not be triggered and then in essence that the uh the additional affordable housing would not be incorporated into that into to that process and our development. Is that in fact the case? That basically the ordinance is not triggered, it does not apply to all developments, only when there's an up zone that's required. When there, the inclusionary part of it, the inclusionary requirement only occurs

when you do a change of zone that would allow either higher densities of residential or converting it from commercial to residential. Okay. So, and that's the inclusionary piece, which is what addresses affordable, which is what I'm specifically, the question that came up for myself and Mayor Pro Tem, the city manager addressed the fact that finally we're getting around to and hopefully in this next year updating our general plan so if we had once the

general plan is updated then there will be certain areas zones that would allow certain densities that don't currently exist therefore from the way I'm interpreting it and this is like my question for clarification that once we have the general plan then essentially that inclusionary piece that that that we were the reason for which the housing opportunity ordinance was developed in order to ensure that we have clarity and a mechanism by which to continue to develop inclusionary housing that in essence is going to go away and then we

that that mechanism then won't be in place anymore right is that accurate it unless they wanted to make a change yes it would only be there for a change so so so with that being the case my the the request here from myself and mayor portem is for council to one is be aware made aware of that we're talking even earlier about an affordable project we recognize that we are in a high housing crisis and we do need to look at going forward how we continue to develop housing that's affordable housing across the board market rate and

affordable so given that the fact that the trigger here would potentially be going away with the general plan update my request tonight is that we my colleagues join me in asking staff to analyze that those implications and you come back with recommendations in essence to fulfill continue for the intent all right is that your motion that is my motion is there a second there's no second now

what do we do well what's the motion again can you well it's going to take half an hour for him to

explain it but he will that's why so so the the motion is simply to ask staff to analyze the implications of the housing opportunity ordinance with the general plan update okay yeah and come

back with recommendations. Yeah, I support that. I'll second it. He gave it to you in less words. Yeah, yeah. Gave me the elevator speech. That's what I needed. All right, we have a motion to

second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. Thank you. Now, I think we're going to dispense with a work study. We'll dispense with that. City

manager's comments. I was a little bit remiss I wanted to introduce our new Public Works director this is his first meeting as an as the official employee

he was here before Mr. Fouad Suisse. Come on up and say hello to everybody please.

Hello good evening my name is Fouad Suisse and today is my second day on the job. I was very welcomed. You know, staff are very nice and warm. I came from San Francisco, which is colder than here, and not only the weather is warmer, but people are very warm and very welcoming. Just to give you a quick background, I have about 30 years of experience in the public service, public works. I'm a civil engineer. I served 17 years, City of Oakland, two years under our city manager Raoul. And then I moved to San Francisco. I served as city engineer for about eight years

and two years as a senior advisor to the mayor who passed away in December. For the last six months, I was looking for a smaller community, a smaller city to come and serve. And I found the city of Santa Ana. I'm very, very glad to be here. I hope coming from a larger city with much bigger and more complex problems that I can supplement and support staff with fresh ideas and help them basically do better here.

I did some homework and I found that you guys have a great public works department with great staff. and I said like as I said earlier I'm here to help them and support what they do I chose the city of Santa Ana to live in it and I'll be available here to serve the community and you and the city manager, I hope I can meet your expectations or even exceed it

Thank you Welcome to Santa Ana I know we have a former unfortunately passed away but the former mayor of San Francisco, Ed Lee, who I knew very well, apparently you knew very well as well. He hired me in San

Francisco actually. What year? Back in 2008. So that's when he was city administrator. He was a city administrator, yes. I had an interview with him and he

hired me as a city engineer. Well excellent. Well you know some of our new employees are HR director. I don't know if you've seen them recently but they're really really well dressed I don't know what that means maybe we're paying too much I don't know what it means but but now we all have a higher standard to try to keep up with here and and and and welcome though thank you thank you welcome I know you're gonna do great thank you so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go straight to a public comment because there's people here that want to talk to us Raul

Nolasco followed by Paul Mag please come on down and after that Dale Helwig you're up so just come towards the front and then Michael Ovalle please go ahead

thank you all so much it's so amazing to be in front of the City Council this afternoon I'm here to alert City Council of a nearby deadly danger a nearby by deadly danger affecting hundreds of thousands of superior courthouse visitors. The deadly danger is a portion of the sidewalk on Civic Center between Ross and Flower Street. According to CNN, one person was killed and three dozen injured on the world famous Las Vegas Strip by a driver. Just like the Las Vegas Strip, Civic Center between Ross and Flower is heavily populated, especially during the day.

In order to save hundreds of thousands of lives, I propose a guardrail that is durable, visible, incredibly safe, and very cost-effective, and badly needed. This guardrail will give pedestrians more confidence in their safety, and it will be very, very effective in protecting pedestrians against the tragedy that happened on the Las Vegas Strip. failure to come to an agreement on this guardrail will result in hundreds of thousands of pedestrians that are vulnerable to being killed or injured by a dozen by the dozen by a driver. That's make the city of San Ana great by protecting the lawyers and responsible citizens that walk the

courthouse on a daily basis. Thank you. Thank you Paul.

Paul. My name is Paul Mogg. I'm a property-owning resident of Santa Ana. I would like to present the case for an immediate moratorium on any and all zoning change requests and or general plan amendments whose primary intent, whether directly or indirectly, is to pave the way for additional housing in Santa Ana. A chain will always break at its weakest link. With all due respect, if there exists a chain keeping Orange County's population in check, it would appear that a good many land developers have recognized the city of Santa Ana as the weakest link in that chain and have thus taken advantage of our city.

Of all Orange County cities larger than 5 square miles in size, Santa Ana, second in total population and third in total land mass, is at the top of the list regarding residents per square mile. Based on the most recent data I could find, Santa Ana has on average over 12,000 residents per square mile. This is over double, that's right, double the average density of the other 39 cities making up Orange County. Kapernaum, which is one of its neighboring cities to the south, Irvine, whose density is only 3.4 thousand residents per square mile,

is easy to see and difficult to ignore the huge density disparity between the two cities. Based on Irvine's current density and size, they would have to add an additional 572,000 residents to equal the population density of Santa Ana. Let me paint a picture of the magnitude of this. Based on a moderate occupancy of five individuals per an apartment unit,

it would be the equivalent of an additional 231 apartment complexes the size of the five-story, 496-unit apartment complex proposed for 2525 Main Street. Based on the current disparity in density between our city and the other cities in Orange County, it is beyond unconscionable to think that our city planners are even considering zoning changes to add even more residents.

We need to say that enough is enough. We have done our part. It is high time the rest of Orange County does their part. As City Council members, you should be making decisions for the betterment of the residents of Santa Ana. It is not, I repeat, it is not your responsibility to provide the housing needs of Orange County beyond what the original city plan called for. Thank you, Paul. By the way, just...

Dale? No, thank you. Thank you. Thanks for coming down.

Dale, followed by Michael

Ovali, or Vagia, and then Frank Lopez.

Good evening, Mayor Polito and Council Members. First off, I was amazed at the time that it took to go through the Citrus Springs Charter discussion over the traffic issue for maybe an additional 30 students or something because we're putting in roughly 3,600 apartment buildings in North Santa Ana with the 1900 at Main Place and all the other projects that are going on up there prior to the 500 units that are going in at 2525. And so I just, I'm encouraged that you're concerned

about the traffic over on Grand for the charter school, and I just can't wait for the discussion on the traffic jam that we're gonna have as a result of these over 4,000 apartments that go in on Main Street and the artillery property there.

One of the things that also got me was, I heard that the CUPs go with the land, but yet we feel that we can rezone and redo the general plan amendment to accommodate developers putting in such high-rise structures. So, you know, I don't understand the difference between a CUP and zoning requirement, I guess. and the fact that you know the developer or the investor wants to put in this

project is amazing and one of the things that he has on his website is he talks about a seven-story office building going in there and so I don't know why he puts data like that on his website which essentially is intimidating people into thinking that well take this otherwise you may end up with a seven-story office building so we got together last thursday as a neighborhood and all ward three people were invited

we had a large turnout we have started a public awareness campaign to bring forward the issue to more people because we realized just talking about council meeting is not going to do it So you'll be seeing more and more people showing up. You'll be seeing more information in the papers and so on. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Dale.

Mike and then Frank Lopez and then Stephanie Gorgone.

Hi. My name is Mike Cavalli. I'm the president of the Park San Diego Neighborhood Association. You guys do a lot of good things in the neighborhood, and every once in a while you do a few bad things, like the 2525 Main Street project that's possibly coming up here. Well, it's coming up, but these projects tend to cause a lot of traffic in our neighborhood and becomes a nuisance to our neighborhood as well. And things like this can take a lot of time to overcome. Let me read my letter.

First, I wanted to say thank you for things like the OC Streetcar. I think that's a great project. it's going to help alleviate traffic and if you have plans to bring it up to the north side of this the city that'd be great projects like these take years of develop to develop everyone seems to be talking about the shortages in housing so we continue to continue to build I think it's very short-sighted to wait until traffic and the quality of life is miserable before we start to remediate in general I'm pro responsible development I was excited to hear about

the main place transformation, but not so excited to hear about the thousands of units coming around the properties. But I do get it. Me and my wife, we do enjoy going to the restaurants and going to use the amenities and all the different things that have been coming along. And I know that this development will bring more of that to us.

The more money, the more services, the more people, the more money the more services. And I'm optimistic that the development of North Indiana will bring those high overpriced apartments to our down. But high renters require high paying jobs. And I don't think St. Joe's is going to support all those jobs. Taking away a professional office space at 2525 Main Street will be detrimental to Santa Ana.

What else does Santa have to offer us besides manufacturing and retail space?

A lot of the other cities like the Bay Area, Oakland has technical, Irvine's got financial, Newport got financial nobody's going to want to sit in this area and live in Santa Ana and have to commute 45 minutes to get to Irvine or Newport every day don't take away the professional space that we have currently another concern is the entire time that I've been here we've had a shortage of police and services and every year it's the same story we have 90 police positions but we don't have and we have the money to fund those positions and but we can't hire people for whatever reason maybe

you're not paying enough, maybe you're not incentivizing the police enough. But what do you think bringing more people in, requiring more services is going to do when you can't fill the positions that you have today? Of all the projects in North Santa Ana, the one at 2525 Main Street is the only one that backs up to residential space. It's the only one that exits onto a residential street. It's the only one in North Santa Ana that exits onto Main Street. So I'd like to take that into consideration. The charter school, I was surprised that you didn't

approve their appeal due to traffic. That's very dear to me. Frank, if you could wrap

up, it's been red for a while. Sorry, didn't even pay attention to that. Thanks. No worries.

And by the way, real briefly, Frank, on that school, we ended up approving it. We just capped it but we told them they could do what they wanted to do basically.

Please go ahead. Good evening. I think everything's been said. I'm here. Doesn't stop people from saying more stuff though. I know but I'm a resident of North Santiago. I've been a resident for 41 years. And I've known you for a long time. I know that. What surprises me, well first of all I thought I was going to have more people to talk to, I only have four of you guys to try to help some kind of thought in your mind to what you're doing to Santa Ana. Okay, Polita you've been here many many

years I mean I remember when you first started with your father's muffler shop I mean you went in there and you nailed all kinds of stuff but today you I don't know why you guys are bowing to the developers you know Santa Ana we've been there 41 years this other residents and they've been probably 50 years we built a beautiful gem community that's diverse it's loving and understanding and all of

sudden there's this development right behind us are you know overlooking everything and we've committed millions probably of dollars as citizen residents okay and now here comes a developer who comes in has nothing nothing of interest to the development of our community. The only thing they're interested in is coming in, getting their money, and when they leave,

we, the city of Santa Ana, will be stuck with everything that follows, and they're scot-free. But all of a sudden, this beautiful gem of a neighborhood which most people have a negative thought of what Santa Ana is like. You live in a great neighborhood also. Ours is a secret. If you come there, I don't even know if any of you have ever been there. It's beautiful. But, okay, this is the wrong project in the wrong space, and you guys really have to look at it seriously.

Don't get shortchanged by these developers. That's all I have to say. Thank you.

Janelle Johnson, followed by Laura Perez. Please go ahead.

Hello, my name is Janelle Johnson. I'm a resident on Santiago Street. My husband and I bought our home about 21 years ago. We spent a lot of money fixing it up. We know a lot of our neighbors, and we're friends with them, and we have a great neighborhood. And this project abuts our neighborhood. It will cause a lot of traffic problems. If you're worried about a charter school with a few extra students, that's nothing compared to what this is going to do to our neighborhood. We have already had problems with having to close off Lincoln at Fairhaven, so that exit's closed. and we only have about three entrances and exits as it is.

And to put that development at one of the major exits that's our neighborhood, it will severely negatively impact everyone in that area. I don't know what school those kids would go to that live in that area, but I'm assuming it would be Hoover. They would all be coming into our neighborhood several times a day to drop kids off and pick them up. I urge you to oppose this development. developments such as proposed at main place would be a better alternative because at least that is not an impact a neighborhood directly. Thank you.

Thank you. Laura Perez followed by Irma Macias. Maybe Laura is gone. I know Irma is still here so come on down Irma.

I know you.

Good evening. Thank you so much for staying to the end of this meeting. First of all, I'm here today as a Park Service Commissioner. And it is a letter that was provided to us during our last meeting and it was directed to our manager, Raul Godinez, is in regards to the budget. So one of the issues that are approved by us is that, first of all, to thank you for approving the $30,000 additional monies to add a second cleaning day of selected parks that need these services and allowing the library with no money impact.

to convert two youth service technicians to labor positions. We understand that the remaining agency supplement budget requests are not being recommended because of the city's budget's surefall. We do find it necessary to point out that the agency's number one supplement priority of approving for an annual cost of $137,787 for a new full-time zoo visitor coordinator and they support part-time employee of this very important function. We believe these two positions will more than pay for themselves

with added new zoo revenues. These two positions will help increase the quality of zoo visitors' experience and manage the integrity of the zoo box office transactions and supports the recently approved master plans and strategic plan for the zoo, which I'm really looking for. I think Santa Ana has a lot to offer, and I think the zoo is one of the entities that is becoming more and more familiar because it's the closest from, we don't hear, Irvine or Costa Mesa or other cities having this. So really looking forward to see if there's anything

that you can help us with to keep this money for these purposes not only because it's going to be paying for itself. Secondly I would like to extend an invitation for our annual CAM link board meeting which is on the 28th at the Bower's Museum and I would like to extend the invitation to all of you. I am sure you already received the invitation but formally look to forward to see you there thank you thank you William Billy lay fall by

Kelly Medina

no but your bow tie is still straight it's just my behind well god bless you

guys I'm glad you're sitting there and I'm so blessed to hear about you trying to fight the tax thing and try to raise money for the city, but also for the colleagues that just came down here and presented themselves. When I came here in April, I talked about the deceit of the developer. And then the one young man, Dale, talked about his web page, which says something just to throw you off. But I would like to leave a thought with you. Assume that you live on a street where there's a predator, a known predator, registered predator, who comes along and molests and or kills little children. Would you allow such an event

to take place on your street and then go and try to do something about that child's death or that molestation? Now that may sound a little perverted based upon what we're trying to accomplish here and keeping 2525 from coming into existence, but I'd like you to just think about that. Would you permit such an event to take place? No, you never would. You never would. Maybe it's your child, maybe it's your grandchild, and I'm just trying to get you to say and think to yourself, no, we don't want to make that mistake, so we'll have to go back and try to reconcile. So please, hear what the voices are telling the magnificence

of Santiago community and the deceit of the developer, what he's trying to portray and put over on you guys so you'll allow the rezoning. So God bless you. Please continue your good work, and please think about us as we're trying to live civilized, reasonable lives at Santiago.

Thank you. And Billy, I agree with you, and I think so does everybody else up here. It is a

gorgeous neighborhood. Kelly, come on up. I'm Kelly Medina. I live in Park Santiago. I've lived in Santa Ana for 58 years. I've seen a few things change in that time, from orange groves nearby and shopping at Buffum's downtown. There's been a lot that's gone on. One thing that's happened is we've had a great deal of increased traffic on Main Street. For us, I've lived in Park Santiago for 21 years.

and just to go from our house to St. Joseph's takes so many stoplights. And now they have moved, they're building all those apartments in orange just barely north of us, north of the creek. And now you guys want to add 2525 to that. People will just go through our neighborhood to go around going up Main Street because it's just a bottleneck, a complete bottleneck.

Plus, with the carpool lane for the five going north being eliminated soon, that's one more possible thing that's just going to clog things up. People are going to be coming and looking for ways to get on the freeway, etc. It just all has to go right through there. And that's a very short block between the Discovery Science Museum and Edgewood Drive, where this whole development is going to be supposedly exiting. It makes no sense.

So please do not be persuaded by the money of the developer. If you have to do something there that they have to provide extra housing, please put in like a regular home. That would fit because our neighborhood is very special. People know each other. We feel safe walking at night. It's a good place to live and it's unique in Santa Ana. Thank you.

It's unique in Orange.

I think it's unique in Santa Ana and Orange County thank you all for coming down we hear you loud and clear and let's let's stay in touch I think we're about to lose everybody I don't want to be just it's now down to two so I think we're just about wrapped up right madam clerk yes that's correct that was a So seeing no city manager comments?

Mr. Mayor, I think there are a couple of city manager comments. He's not here.

All right, brief. Brief.

Mr. Mayor.

Are you Steven? Yes. I'm sorry, I called you, I thought. May I didn't pronounce it correctly. Come on down.

It'll be quick.

How do you pronounce your last name?

Gorgoni. It's Italian. gorgone yeah there you go well i don't need to introduce myself again but uh mr mayor and speaking of the mic though mr mayor and council members i again want to introduce myself my name is steve gorgone um i'm actually new to santa anna i'm a teacher over at santa anna high school and i do want to thank you guys for giving me this opportunity i'll be really quick i know um it's getting late uh you know i just want i'm here to address the 2525 north main street project I'm new to Santa Ana. I moved into the Park Santiago community, and me and my wife simply fell in love with this area.

It is truly a gem of Santa Ana as far as, you know, that's what we think. It's one of a kind. The sense of community, social responsibility among its homeowners, and the fragile historic beauty are things that we just fell in love with. The neighbors, the children, they're usually out and about enjoying the beauty and the openness of the streets and the sidewalks. In my opinion, we need to protect neighborhoods like this at all costs. The main problem with the 2525 North Main Street project is that we are going to be negatively impacted by this development, simply by its size and location.

And don't get me wrong, I understand the need for developments like this, but where it is is the problem. This is what hopefully you'll all look at. From what I can tell, there's simply no other plans where there's something this close to right backing up to a neighborhood. It's density of 496 units. It's going to simply overload the surrounding area. Main Street, from my short time here, is already overloaded. Going into that development is a problem. And, you know, everybody in that area is going to be impacted, but please just make sure you guys make this a priority.

Thank you and welcome to San Andy.

All right, a brief city manager report, please.

Yes, Mr. Mayor, I wanted to announce that with the assistance of Assemblymember Tom Daley and our state lobbyist Townsend Public Affairs, we've secured $4 million for automated metering infrastructure for our water system. The funding will be available through the Governor's budget in fiscal year 18-19, and this will allow the city to modernize our city water metering and building systems. And I wanted just to thank you.

What's that got to do with the 4th of July?

Well, actually-Because they're flashing that while you're speaking. I'll jump on the 4th of July. The City of Santa Ana's 8th annual 4th of July celebration will be taking place on Wednesday, July 4th from 4 PM to 9.30 PM at Centennial Park. The event includes live music, tasty food, youth sports zone, face painting, and a spectacular fireworks finale. Fireworks finale will begin at 9 PM. Guests are encouraged to arrive early, bring a launcher, and enjoy the show.

Safe and sane fireworks. The use or possession of illegal fireworks in the city of Santa Ana is a crime. Any individuals caught will be subject to a $1,000 fine and up to a year in jail. To report individuals lighting illegal fireworks, you can call 714-245-8771. And lastly, I wanted to announce that the work center has moved. The Santa Ana Work Center moved to a new location on the corner of Flower and Civic Center Drive on the second floor. They open to the public on Monday, June 18th, and will continue to provide workforce services.

Employers can use the Work Center to conduct job interviews or work with staff to customize a recruitment for their businesses. A ribbon cutting ceremony is planned for July 17th at 3 PM, and we'll send out an invitation. And that concludes my comments, Mr. Mayor.

All right. With that, I think I have no specific person to close in honor of, so with that, this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.

Let's go.

Those activities, because sometimes you go to the home and you don't really know who released those illegal fireworks. There are now resolutions that would get to the host of those parties and places were responsible on them. And then last year I think volume wise we did collect more illegal fireworks, but there were less fines. I know we're limited, but I would like to see an increase in folks being fined because this is a big issue in our community. Thank you.

You know what I would like to see? I would like to see those lights come back on.

I just want to take a brief moment to congratulate Chief Black from the Orange County Fire Authority. He's our division chief here in Santa Ana. He was promoted to assistant chief of the Orange County Fire Authority. He spent 27 years here with the Santa Ana Fire Department. And he has 33 years of service in the fire service altogether. And so I want to take this opportunity to congratulate him. for a job well done and a promotion well deserved. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Villegas.

I'll make thank you for the lights as well.

Last comment, I'll make Mr. City Manager, just the Fourth of July event, it's a wonderful event for our community and I just want to encourage us to do everything we can to promote get get the word out as soon as we can I haven't seen a whole lot out there yet including typically Nixle and other other efforts around promotion so I just would ask that we would start getting the word out far and wide the an

additional comment the the mentions made this comment before with regard to the When we went through a few years ago and improved streets, the pavement of the streets throughout the city, in our neighborhoods in particular, that was, I want to say, probably about 10 years ago. We're beginning to see some of the wear and tear and some potholes beginning to pop up. We had gotten to a place where the conditions of the city were in very dire condition. and we've made some significant investments, tens of millions of dollars,

I just hope that we would have a proactive approach at figuring out how we're going to be able to address and ensure that they don't deteriorate. And on that note, Mr. Fuad Suiz, welcome to the city of Santa Ana. I didn't want to put that last comment in charge on you quite yet in your first meeting, so I'll direct it to the city managers, but ultimately I know it'll get to you, I'm sure you'll help us to be able to address that. But welcome here. Look forward to working with you. And I'm sure that you'll find that the city, in fact, is a very warm place,

both within our staff, wonderful and talented staff, but our residents as well. This community is a great tight-knit community, and I'm sure you'll find it to be a very pleasant, pleasurable experience. I look forward to investing your talent here with us. So with that, I think the mayor has left the building, so this meeting is now adjourned. Thanks so much. Have a great night.

Thank you.