Read the June 5 meeting.

The President of the Pledge of Allegiance

If you can all please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Ready? Begin.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

If you can remain standing, Jack Abilene, our police chaplain, is going to give us our invocation. Thank you, Brother.

Lord, we thank you tonight for election day. We pray that you would continue to guide us and to give us overseers that would desire to do things that would please you. We ask that you would bless our meeting tonight, that you would bless our servants here, that you would continue to direct their lives so that we might live the kind of life that you would have for us. So be with us and be with us in a way that we could understand, Lord, that you're doing great things for us. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.

Thank you. You may be seated. I'm going to ask on Mayor Pro Tem Martinez to give Taqueria La Venganza recognition. And after that, Councilor Benavides, you're next. And then we'll all come back for Gerardo Moet.

Raul, please come up here and join me.

so as Raul comes up here and joins me so this young man Raul was born in San Anne and spent most of his youth in Mexico in a rural town so Raul is a native of Santana and I wanted to start off by that first and it's because recently and the LA Weekly you know there's this there's been this movement here in Santana and across the country in regards to veganism and being having a plant-based diet Raul his vegan taco be a regular meat taco number one taco a vegan taco right so that is amazing on the LA weekly we all know in LA we have thousands of thousands of restaurants

thousands of different tacos and to know that here in Santana who is a native who has created this veganism move that he's a part of this movement and i've been a vegan now for 11 months and um i i will tell you that it's been an exciting time for me people will ask well michelle why did you become a vegan you know some people would do it for health reasons some people will do it because you know they want to make sure in regards to animal cruelty um or because for environmental purposes right you know with climate action with with with climate and greenhouse gas

emissions we all know what it takes to to feed cattle the greenhouse gas emissions so i did it more from an environmental and a social uh perspective and i'll tell you that it's been an a great opportunity to actually learn from young people like raul who are in our city and he actually is up here first because right now he's going to head off to mission bar where he's going to do his tacos at 7 30 and i was there last week and i was waiting and then i ended up leaving because there was too many people. You know, everyone's coming to eat his tacos. But what I wanted to just, I wanted to acknowledge and recognize Raul,

and I wanted Raul, just very quickly, before I read a couple more things and give you the certificate of recognition, just share your passion, one, for food, but sharing your passion and why you decided to do this. Obviously, you've been in Oakland, you're in LA, you go to Long Beach, there's these pop-ups, but you want a presence here in Santana, and you've been here. And so just share a little bit about that role.

First off, thank you very much for this recognition.

Primarily, growing up in Santa Ana, you're limited in the healthier options. We have amazing food here. I think it's one of the best culinary scenes, honestly, in the nation. When it comes to tacos, we are the definitive.

So growing up here and seeing a lack of vegan or vegetarian food, one wants to kind of leave, go out to LA, go out to Oakland, go to the Bay Area. So finally when I came back I noticed that Santa Ana is redefining itself in a positive way, in a way that's changing lives, changing Santa Ana, changing what it means to live here. I think it's honestly going for the better, it's going for the healthier way and I'm

hoping to be a part of that. Fantastic, so you have Taqueria Venganza, you have Taqueria Sombrosa that has a pop-up every weekend off of a flower and and Warner and you have we have you know tons of folks that are moving in this movement and I'm probably just a raise of hand not too many people probably are vegan or I even understand vegetarian vegetarian on the city council the mayor and of Corso Cesar Lodio and myself being a plant-based diet.

And I've always taken approach to wanting to push and emphasize public health in our community from the moment I got elected. And so this is something that is not new, but what is really new is it's this movement that you can eat Mexican food and eat it in a healthy way and live a great lifestyle. And I think that's important for Santana as we look at this culinary scene that we have here, people from all walks of life coming to our downtown to have an experience over our food and our spirits.

But now being able to have other options is important. How we look at retail and how we actually provide an experience is more important than just going into a restaurant today. And that's what makes Santa Ana special. That's what makes this movement special because not only is it socially responsible and environmentally responsible, is that you have people from all walks of life, you know, coming to Santana to participate and enjoy the food that provides healthy options here in this community.

And so, Raul, I just wanted to personally thank you for coming back to Santana and then, you know, working really hard to have, you know, for his honor of becoming the first vegan winner of the LA Taco 9th Annual Madness event for the contributions to the community. it's a privilege to recognize Dr. D'Avanganta on behalf of the mayor and city council we wish you well i know you have a kickstarter he has a kickstarter he's trying to raise money so that he can continue to move forward with his endeavors and so definitely you can count on me to contribute to you and congratulations and everything that you're doing and we look forward

to continuing to working with you in this great city thank you so very much

Thank you.

Thank you.

de Leon and a couple of leaders from Templo Calvario Community Development Corporation. This month Templo Calvario CDC is celebrating their 15 years of service in the city of Santa Ana. And the Templo Calvario CDC nonprofit in town that was birthed out of a very long time and historic church here in town. How many years now has it been? How many years? Over 90. over 90 years strong. And I think, Pastor Lee, you started the church? I'm just kidding. He did not. No, but it's a history,

a church that has a long history here in town. And one of the things that's very encouraging is that we have a lot of great nonprofits. We have a wonderful community here in the city of Santa Ana. A lot of nonprofits that are very much dedicated to serving our young people, our seniors, our families, and I'm particularly encouraged when we have also churches in particular that are stepping out and getting involved in serving the community, not just on the spiritual and support side there, but in the practical and real, meeting real practical needs out in the community and even launching a non-profit.

it. So Templo Calvario CDC, a couple of things. Their mission is to work within the city of Santa Ana by uniting, building, and transforming the community through educational programs. I'm just going to share a couple of key highlights here that I've got, but then Reverend Lee, if you would share a bit more. A couple of the key elements that I've seen as a community member and enough and has have observed this strong partnership with the Santana Unified School District and the the parent project which essentially

is helping our parents resourcing them and giving them tools that confidence to become increasingly engaged in their in their families in their students their education their communities now we have hundreds if not thousands of leaders throughout the community we've actually recognized some of your graduates here at council chamber so it's great to be able to have now the the uh the organization itself that's behind that movement of developing parent leaders throughout the city that we're recognizing and the other is in the

area of financial literacy and economic empowerment as well we're working class city we're very highly immigrant city and here you have a nonprofit that is working to be able to come alongside families and youth and teenagers in our high schools and again the school district to resource them with tools again knowledge to be able to think through creating business plans and And a couple of points that I wanted to make is that yearly, 2,350 Santana residents are directly impacted through Tempo Calvario CDC through educational financial literacy and

family empowerment programs. And additionally, 400 families are served through Edward B. Cole Senior Academy, the school that is led by Tempo Calvario CDC. and I mentioned our young people Santa Ana high school students in the last years have received over $60,000 in college scholarships through the work and programs them for Calvado CDC let's give them a round of applause for it for that alone investing in our youth the young people today we recognize them Calvado CDC for 15 years of service in the city of Santa Ana and I know here with you have Reverend Lee De Leon, which is

President and CEO. We have Bob Tapia, Board Chair, Janet Gonzalez, the Executive Director of Development. In the audience, we also have Mercy De Leon, Administrative Specialist, and I think Amy Deras is here with us as well. But who would you like to share a couple of words here, Pastor Lee? Sure, sure. Thank you so much. It's our quinceanera this year, 15 years. although the church has been around for 90 years and some of our programs have been around for many many many years this particular program the Community Development Corporation was just an effort on our part to go deeper into

some of the concerns we had for our city economic development education and other areas so it's a real joy to be here and celebrate along with the staff will be the quinceanera our quinceanera will last the whole year so we had a party on Friday and again I'd like to invite members of this council to to join us at some of our events we'll be having dinners we'll be having different events throughout the year so thank you so much David thank you mayor members of the council for your support we one thing we learned many years ago you can't do it alone you really need to work in partnership with the organizations and

the city, the district. So thank you. Thank you.

I just wanted to echo Lee's thoughts, and really this recognition means a lot to us, means a lot to the board. Lee, as I've known him for over 30 years, what a man of integrity, character, great vision for this community. and we're just so proud of him and his work and mercy too as well so thanks once again quite an honor for us thank you

thank you Paul with a Paul is a VP with Union Bank correct so it's great to see the corporate community in partnership against supporting our nonprofits to serve our community so here on behalf of the city of Santa Ana the mayor and City Council we'd like to present the certificate of recognition to Temporo Radio Community Development Corporation in recognition of your 15 years of service in Santana and outstanding contributions to our community. Thank you very much. Congratulations.

Gerardo, why don't you come on up? I'll join you there, but I want the council to come on down.

what I would like is for different that council members made a say a few words maybe a favorite uh out of those story or something that um that caught your eye over the years um sal if you could come on down a minute uh we're giving our proper respects to harlem moette and michelle why don't we start with you well gerardo you're going to a great city the city

of long beach is a wonderful city it's up and coming just like santana so they're very fortunate to have you one thing that i will say about gerardo i've never seen anyone work harder than this guy We didn't always agree, but one thing about Hidardo, he had no assistant, no secretary, did it on his own. Always committed prior to even being in Parks and Rec. He was the webmaster. I never forget that. So Hidardo's always done it. He's one of the only few men that I know that can multitask. And he does it very well. Because there's not a lot of men that can multitask, like women.

But I will say that Hidardo can do multiple things and do them all good. So that's a plus, Hidardo. That's a plus. The second thing that I will say about Gerardo, his commitment to not only to our park system with very little money coming in and to our libraries and to our youth, that Gerardo always had an art in being able to bring communities together to help support one of the most important things, I think, in our life, which is our quality of life, that wanting to make sure that we have outdoor spaces for our families and for our children, and for him to be able to help the city, help facilitate that and do that.

When we got elected in 2006, we were on a fast track to bring in more park space and more partnerships with our school districts. And we applied for a ton of grants. And Gerardo was very instrumental with his staff in making that happen. And so we went from, you know, the amount of park space that we have today is because of Gerardo. And I want to thank you, Hidardo, for your commitment and wanting to make sure that we were able to help facilitate that for our residents. And then just lastly, his commitment to our seniors. There are times where we have two of our senior centers that sometimes get forgotten.

Hidardo never let that happen. He always brought that to our attention and saying, hey, we got to make sure that we give back to them. And so Hidardo has been very loyal to our seniors. They're actually here today. They want to present something. so after we do the tile i want to call on frontine harris and a couple of the other seniors that want to recognize you gerardo for your dedication and with that thank you so very much i'll be calling on you and we'll go to some amazing vegan restaurants in long beach because they have a lot

of them i'll try to be uh brief but uh councilman martinez mentioned uh gerardo's dedication to our seniors and support of our seniors which definitely has been the case he has been here for 20 years nearly 30 years nearly three decades serving at the city of santa ana in addition to our seniors and and families in the community one of the things that i uh have always appreciated about gerardo is is him being a innovator and looking at uh creative problem solver and and also uh

starting uh launching efforts positive things one of those is teen space it comes to mind to me in our library, our basement library, you know, wanted to maximize that space and support our youth, and they expanded that into Jerome Center and supported teens throughout our city in various efforts and various ways. Somebody who's very passionate about serving our community with excellence and always being a hard worker, sometimes it seems like 3, 4 o'clock in the morning, getting responses, getting emails, reports, and not short ones either, very thorough.

And one of the things additionally is somehow I was sharing actually with my wife this weekend about your decision and having kind of one of those things that's bittersweet. We're losing somebody who's extremely talented, extremely hardworking. Excited though for you after being here for a long time. I'm sure that Long Beach will have a lot of new challenges and it's definitely a gain for Long Beach. but you've always were willing to to take on more even what we're thinning down as a city uh the the library for example we had like full design library director at one point went over

transferred over to to parks and rec and not only did you just manage it awards have been received by the library we had uh uh events community events serving hundreds of thousands of people on a weekend we had a professional service providing that and that went away and we that was sent over your way as well and did a phenomenal job with that as well you've always supported your staff as well and instead behind them so number different things I'll end it here Gerardo but definitely appreciate all of your hard work and your passion commitment towards the city of Santa and we're much better for it thank you

if there's somebody that has left the legacy in the city it's Gerardo Muey Let's give him a big round of applause for all he's done.

As many of you know, I was on the city council before I went to the assembly, and I'm back. And I mean, I got to say, you know, under his leadership, we've built probably close to 20 new parks in a city that's built out. That's amazing.

Also, with our library program, even though it's largely operating out of one site, If you go to the city's website, as I recently did about two weeks ago, to see where the youth programs are or activities on our monthly calendar, they're at the library. And we have here a manager who knows how to motivate personnel, motivate workers so that they give their energy and their heart to the city. And so the amount of activities and programs that we do at the library is completely amazing. Finally, you know, joint use agreements are tough. You know, it's us with school districts or us with others.

And Gerardo's kind of been our point person in working with our school district and others on those. We're actually going to talk about one a little bit later today. But, for example, even though we have some of Wormitantum, we continue to do more. You know, the next few weeks, we're getting ready to open up a new joint use community center with the school district, Walker Roosevelt. and that's going to be another amazing new asset for youngsters as well as there's going to be a library component.

And so there's so many things that Gerardo's done with a lot of passion, heart, as well as if we have an intellectual at City Hall, it's also Gerardo. And so I could go on and on saying all the great things professionally and personally. I've actually known him from when I was even at UCI and he did outreach and welcomed a lot of great new leaders to that campus and so we'll miss you.

Thank you Mr. Mayor. Gerardo I've known you about a year and a half. Actually I'm sad and I'm happy. I'm sad that you're leaving. I'm happy that you are you know pursuing something you want. I want what you want. We've had those conversations, had many conversations with you, Gerardo. Learned a lot about him. He knows so much about the history of the city, history of the municipal government here, and he's always someone I went to for help if I needed a fresh look at something. Gerardo was the person to go to. I learned a lot about him,

also on a personal level with his history and your family's history here and and here in the city and his roots from Mexico but at the same time also I learned that he's an avid reader so very very intelligent man you ask him a question about a book or something you probably read the book already and you can always go to him and you know it's you will be missed you will be

this very much thank you thank you we have very busy lives and we're running around and sometimes we don't have an opportunity to cross paths and say hello or good job or thank you but I want to wish Gerardo the very best you're definitely going to be missed here and you've definitely left the legacy and I think at the end of the day when professionals get into certain lines of work they want to know that their life made a difference and I really do believe that out of the your life has made a difference here avid protector of the zoo and and improvements in the zoo the zoo is much different today than

it was before you got here and a lot of that has to do with you so many other people already took my thunder but I just want to congratulate you thank you and wish you the very best

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And Councilmember Tinajero just stole my thunder on the zoo. So I was going to talk all about the zoo and the fact that Gerardo is going to be going not only to represent Long Beach with respect to their parks and their wrecks, but marine biology is, right? Because they have a great aquarium down there. They're right on the coast, so it's going to be something that he's going to enjoy. It's going to be a new area for him. But he was very instrumental in doing a lot of great things at the zoo. And there's kind of an aquatic theme, right, with Amazon's Edge,

because now we're going to have a viewing area where we can see the otters. And so make sure you stick around to come see that and do the ribbon cutting with us. But one of the things I admired most about Hedardo, I mean, we did a lot of great work when I first came on the council doing joint use agreements with different campuses around the city. And that was something that was a direct result of his leadership because he saw that we are a very park-poor community, and he started thinking outside the box and realizing, how do we get more open space, and how do we make our kids have access to playgrounds and equipment?

And lo and behold, he came up with the idea, started advocating for it very strongly, and we were able to turn a lot of space that was being unused and working with our partners at the district to provide open space for our kids. His work with the senior center, his work all over town, is so has been you know such a legacy for him but the main thing I think for me was that he lived here he lived here he didn't come from the outside you know he lived here he saw the issues he was in Park Santiago and he's told me he's gonna remain here even though he's going to Long Beach his commutes gonna get it

get a little longer but we hope to have him here as a resident as an advocate as somebody who's gonna continue to help us in the city as a voice of reason as voice of wisdom because he realizes how many issues you know we have and how many solutions he's always been somebody who's done so much with so little in his department when we asked him to take on the library he somehow found a way to make that work as well so Gerardo I want to thank you on behalf of all the residents for all the great work you've done don't go far please don't think about moving to Long Beach stay here with us at least as a resident but we

really appreciate all the great work you've done your legacy is going to be well well respected for many years thank you very much

yeah once you come over here and let's everybody get closer we're gonna get a photo here in a minute I remember when he was running for school board he decided he wanted to be a school board member and he had a campaign going he He was already appointed and he decided politics was in his blood. And I think it always is from a certain distance from Gerardo.

He's still on the fair board at the Orange County Fair, appointed by Governor Jerry Brown twice. And he enjoys that. He also marches to his own drummer. He's one of the few guys I know that if he wants to go to the movies, he goes to the movies. Solo.

I don't know, I don't have the courage to do that yet, but he has no problem. He's always reading a different book. He is a local intellectual, and it's a very good thing. But I think the biggest thing at all about Hidardo is he's got a huge heart, and he just loves people. He doesn't know how to say no and and he gets into the middle of stuff and he's so nice and so kind that he just Disarms everybody. I mean I've seen some really mean meetings where you know groups of soccer people want the same field

And you don't have enough fields and you have too many players So we kind of throw Gerardo in there and and underneath what he's wearing He's got like this referee stripes or something because he gets in there and he negotiates and at the end of the day Nobody killed anybody Including him and and they get along he figures out how to how to compromise and how to do good So you know as he enters this next chapter in his life I know our loss is going to be Long Beach's gain But but but I think it's going to be great for her though It's going to be a little bit of a change as Councilman Martinez said it's not that far away

20 minutes she goes every day and

Every weekend but it's not that far so you know we're losing it out of but we're not really losing them And I know that a lot of folks are you know that have a cell phone and stuff I'm sure they're gonna continue to call cuz how do you stop calling after 28 great years and What he has done from a leadership position? He's never learned how to say no he's always learned how to just go out there and figure it out and he's had a lot of tough problems because he's got a tight budget he's got a demanding community he's got a demanding council and he always figures it out so you know

what I'd like is I know that there's some seniors if you want to come up and get some photos counselor Moreno I know you're out here are you there for this guy you're not come on come and say hi to cuz I know you worked with there are no anybody else that Valerie MS go I know you've worked a lot with Hedardo would you like to come up as representative of the school board and and get in this photo and

I'll hold this for you.

I have no, I don't, I'll call him Jerry. I have no Jerry all 28 years that he's been working. And I thank him for putting up with me. Because I was doing the hard work to put up with. But he kept me in line. And yes, we are going to really miss you. You know, and behalf of the Santa Ana Senior Center Advisory Board, we will have to present you with a certificate of appreciation for what you did for your community, our community, for 28 years.

And also on the behalf of the Santa Ana Senior Club, which I thank you for helping me to run the Senior Club for 28 years. If it wasn't for you, I would have been out of tech. But we thank you and we appreciate you for helping us. And right here is photos that he will show you. Here is the beginning of your senior here, you know, the club. What you started was 28 years right here at 424 West 3rd Street.

Some of them have passed away. So here is the beginning when you started with me, and here is the end, the second one, which you're finishing up with. And we love you.

Hedardo, before I present this to you, a few words?

Well, I just want to I'm eternally grateful to the city of Santa Ana for 28 years of the opportunity to serve the public and the great city of Santa Ana

Public service is a passion and it's something that I love to share with young people because it's meaningful work It's very good work. It's something that's very worthy to follow as a career I want to thank all the city staff, the city manager all the city department staff. It's been great working with them. Of course, the community of Santa Ana is just, I love serving the community of Santa Ana. Special shout out to the seniors. And I want to give a special, special thanks to the Park and Rec full-time and part-time staff, an amazing team of staff people. They're so dedicated, so committed, and they think on their feet.

They're nimble. They always rise to the challenge, and they'll continue to do so. So thank you so much.

Gerardo, on behalf of the city and the community, it's my honor and privilege to present this plaque to you. And it reads, Gerardo Moya, Executive Director, Parks and Recreation Committee Services Agency, from September 1990 through June 2018. Thank you for your 28 years of dedicated service to this community. and so let me present it to you and then let's get a group photo here

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, now we're going to try to get through as much as the agenda as we can. I believe Mayor Pro Temp's leaving at 8, and it's election night, and there's a lot of things going on with campaigns. So without further ado, Madam Attorney, do we have anything to report out of closed session?

Mayor, we only have one reportable item, and that would be the item number 3. I'm sorry that's item number 1c and the workers comp matter the City Council approved a settlement 7 to 0 for the in the amount of $50,000 that's all I have

thank you now we're on to the consent calendar mayor pro tem any items yes mr.

mayor just want to reflect 11c I'm a no 11d I'm a no I would like to pull 25c and I'm a no on 30A. Any other members of the council wish to pull any items?

Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. I'm going to abstain on items 10A, 11A, 11B, 11C, and 11D. I wasn't at the last council meeting for those matters. And did you pull 30A?

I did. No, actually I'm a no vote on that, so do you need to pull that?

I think we're pulling it right to continue. 30A? Oh, it is. It hasn't been continued. Okay. They're looking for the item. Any other items?

The land disposition policy.

I think that's in the business calendar.

Oh, okay. It is a business calendar. Okay.

So I think those are the consent items, 10A to 38, and we've got the remaining of the balance. If I could get a motion.

Motion approved.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All those in favor, please indicate by stating aye.

Aye.

Those opposed, motion carries.

Just a point of order. We have, I think, in the consent calendar an appointment of one of our commissioners. Can we, is that later on in the calendar?

Actually, right after consent calendar, I was going to swear him in. So that's out.

I'm thinking ahead of me. Thank you.

Thank you.

Great. So there was only one item being pulled, and that is my item, which is 25C. And I just wanted to get some clarification from our staff. And what we're doing here today is really going into a partnership. it's an approval agreement of West East and Partners LP for parking lease at 300 East 5th Street and what we're doing is we're going to get into a partnership for 36 parking spaces, a maximum of 48 parking spaces and these are city owned parking structure and we're entering to 1,620 a month. The question that I did have for our staff

currently now do we have anyone on contract or has this just been of a city parking facility if someone can expand on that for me be greatly appreciated

good evening council mayor pro tem in relation to your question at this facility we do have a number of monthly daily users but there is no no current

long-term parking agreement pretty much the first time we're actually going into to a long-term lease?

For this particular facility, yes.

Yes, and that was my question that I wanted to ask. As we move forward and this possibly works out, will we be looking at partnering up with other potential folks that have temporary spaces there so that we can get our best bang for our buck and fill up that parking structure? Because a lot of times that parking structure stays fairly empty. You are correct. It's being underutilized.

That facility Monday through Friday is underutilized, but it does fill up more on the weekends. But this particular agreement, it's really the first of its kind because it will allow for overnight residential parking.

Which is fantastic. And that's one of the other reasons that I'm asking because it's a big issue in the downtown. And so however we can help provide that parking during the week, mostly it's used during the weekends because we have a lot of activity. but you know being able to share that space and you know again get our best bang on return and and trying to generate some more revenue is it's in our best interest obviously we don't want underutilized parking you want to use it to maximize as much as we possibly can and so i would just encourage our staff that as we continue to do this long-term lease that we

open up and look at other opportunities to making sure that during the week it is always being maximized to its fullest and with that mr mayor i move the item is there a second

Second. Those in favor, Councilor Saladio. Yeah, just a couple quick questions.

If I read this correctly, we're going to be leasing these spaces for $2 per month?

No, it's $60 per space. I'm sorry, per space, $2 per day is what that equates to?

If approximately, yeah. $30. I know for, you know, on-street parking, we charge quite a bit more. and maybe to rephrase the mayor for Tim's question, there are no other similar arrangements we have for other residential parking stalls?

Nothing that allows overnight residential parking at the moment. The only other one would be at 3rd and Broadway, which is the agreement between the city and Cal State Fullerton.

So for those per day, because they're only there for the day, how much do we charge them per day?

That agreement was, again, early 90, that's about $40 a space. For this particular agreement, it's $60 per space.

Okay. I would just ask that if we do more like this, that we offer the same arrangement, just so that folks don't think that we're doing anything preferential. Sure, of course. Okay. Thank you so much.

Yes? Okay. So I think we have a motion and a second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye, those opposed motion carries.

Mayor, if I can ask Adolfo Sierra to come up to the front. He will be sworn in as the new arts and culture commissioner.

That's fine, go ahead.

I, Adolfo Sierra, who solemnly swear, support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies for an end I'll be fast. I take this obligation freely, without any mental preservation, for purpose of evasion, that we will. And faithfully to start the duties that I upon above.

Mr. Mayor, if I could, just while Adolfo is making his rounds and shaking everybody's hands, just introduce him to those of you who don't know him, and I know everybody on this dais knows Adolfo. He was gracious enough to accept my appointment to the Arts and Culture Commission when Lisandro Orozco decided to step down. they're both from Madison Park neighborhood. Adolfo has been doing work on behalf of his neighborhood and on behalf of this city for many many years. He comes to us by way of his good work on Casa Guanajuato and he's looking very handsome tonight as well. I like the glasses and the handkerchief as well so

thank you Adolfo. Give him a big round of applause as he steps down. Thank you for your service.

Came on madam city clerk. I believe our next item is the budget. Yes, that's correct

So on the city budget 75 a Let me first hear from folks that wish to address us Madrid the bus followed by Ruben Barreto

and I believe we need translation on Madrid de Paz

and then Roberto Herrera

Madalit de Paz from Oco if you could please come down está aquí Madalit de Paz si quiere empiece a hablar ya viene el traductor empiece a hablar por favor

Good evening.

more recursos para llevar a cabo las clases y así hay miles de familias que necesitan recursos por eso apoyo para que haya más recursos para nuestra comunidad por eso apoyo 75 a 1

my name is madrid the past and I'm a leader at OCO and resident of Santa Ana for over 16 years and I have three students here in Santa Ana and I'm here to support our children so they have more resources we want to have more swimming classes but they are very expensive we need more resources in order to have these classes and then there's thousands of families like these that need these resources that's why I'm here to support our community that's why I'm here to support 75A1

Great, thank you. Next, Roberto Herrera, followed by, no, we have here Ruben Barreto, followed by Roberto Herrera.

Good evening, City Council. My name is Ruben Barreto. I am here to speak for Santana's People's Budget Platform, and we're here to ask and to share with you that residents thrive when they can take their families to parks and community gardens, when educational and recreational programs are available for young people and when families are free from fears of eviction and deportations. As we already know, 70% of every dollar that the city of Santana allocates in the general fund is used to pay for public safety, while only 30% of that is used for just a handful of city departments

to share for community programs. so we're here to ask you that the budget the city budget should reflect the needs of the community and just a quick reminder that there was a work study that it may first showed that there were community budget meetings where 170 participants of these meetings the top three community requests were need for a diversify of youth programs invest in youth shift funding from public safety to youth programs. This is what the community is asking of you. Thank you. Thank you. Roberto Herrera,

followed by Tania Swatsu.

consulta de migración a dos trece seis treinta y cuatro cero nueve nueve nueve. Hi, I just did some outreach for you all around the services for universal representation that the city of Santana offers. I'm here tonight to urge you to reinvest in universal representation and reestablish your commitment to keep due process as a right for Santana residents. Since the start of Trump's campaign, attacks on immigrants have been far-reaching, often making their way to our local community here in Santana and Orange County.

It is not a secret anymore that local elected officials are actively coordinating to instill fear in our communities and jumpstart their own political campaigns. This is just plain wrong and unsettling. We need to not scapegoat and alienate the immigrant community. Rather, we need to create systems of support for families, children, and individuals who are working day in and day out, looking to thrive and live meaningful lives. We need to invest and uplift the struggles and beauty that make up our city. Detentions and deportations are a part of that ugly that we need to do away with because they're so detrimental

and weigh heavily on families and children. Council members, you are not alone in this fight to secure universal representation as a core service. In a recent poll conducted between May 31st and June 2nd, just this past weekend, UCSD Professor Tom Wong found that nearly two out of every three likely voters in the city of Santana, which is 64%, support or strongly support paying for legal representation for anyone who cannot find an attorney. More so, large majorities of registered Democratic voters, 92%, and registered independent voters, 90%, and a strong majority of registered Republican voters,

64%, feel that it is important or very important for all people to have access to legal representation and due process in the court of law. Council members, the time is now to invest and secure universal representation as a core service for our residents. More so, we need to develop a process that is inclusive of community members that prioritizes community benefits. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Tanya. Followed by Cynthia Felix.

Good evening. My name is Tanya Sosuk and I work for the Vera Institute of Justice in the Safe Cities program. Last year, as one of the 12 jurisdictions in the Safe Cities Network, Santa Ana became a leader in Orange County, the state of California, and nationwide when it instituted the Legal Defense Fund to provide representation to its immigrant residents at a time of increased anti-immigrant rhetoric and widening federal immigration enforcement. As they just mentioned, a recent poll conducted by Professor Tom Wong of UC San Diego found that 64.5% of likely voters in Santa Ana support the city funding representation

for people facing deportation. Santa Ana residents understand that the stakes in immigration court are high and the fairness dictates that no one should face exile from the community, family, and children simply because they can't afford an attorney. With over 100,000 of Santa Ana residents vulnerable to deportation and over three-quarters of U.S. citizen children in Santa Ana having an immigrant parent, the need for representation is especially stark. Last year, we responded to that need by funding the Legal Defense Fund, and you should be applauded for addressing this due process crisis in our immigration system.

As a partner in Santa Ana efforts, VARA is providing ongoing data-driven evaluations of this program to ensure accountability of the public dollars, as well as demonstrate the network's socioeconomic impact on the lives of immigrant residents, their families, and their communities. In evaluating a representation project in New York, one which our Safe Cities program is based on, Vera found that providing attorneys allowed hundreds of residents to gain or maintain work authorization, contributing to $2.7 million each year to federal, state, and local tax revenue.

While the program is still in its first stages, the nationwide data is already demonstrating significant results. The average client benefiting from Safe Cities legal defense programs have lived in the U.S. for an average of 13 years. Additionally, 92% of the minor children of clients are U.S. citizens. These early outcomes demonstrate the need of this program and the impact it will have on long-time residents in the community. We urge the Council to continue funding the Legal Defense Fund to expand due process.

Thank you very much. If you could please wrap up.

Increase public trust in government institutions and strengthen your local community.

and communities. Thank you. Cynthia Felix followed by Jennifer.

Hi, my name is Cynthia Isabel Felix. I have lived in Santa Ana since I was 10 years old and I'm a staff attorney with the Immigrant Defenders Law Center. My job is funded by what you provided on the budget last year. It's a privilege for me to speak in front of you tonight. I come from an immigrant family from Mexico and now working as a deportation defense attorney is dream come true. Being able to provide universal representation for Santa Ana residents doesn't feel like a job. I can walk into court and I can easily recognize my fellow residents.

Last week my 20 year old client's mom called me at 830 while I was reading in bed with my niece. She said her son had received a letter saying he was going to be deported. So my niece, my mom and I jumped in the car, drove down Bristol to the Lacey Detention Center only to see it was a false alarm. But I know that that mom slept well that night because I was able to do that for her. My niece said it was her prayers that helped. For me, this is what the project is about. Not only helping the most vulnerable immigrant community members with legal assistance, but helping families navigate the immigration system.

The worst part about this job is having to turn a client down. I've had to listen to moms crying over the phone when I have to turn away their case. and that's because of the fiscal shortage and the lack of capacity. What I actually did for one client was I printed the instructions in Spanish for his mom so that she could file his notice of intent to appeal. Last week, I ran into a UC Santa Barbara student whose dad has been here for 20 years. He's a legal permanent resident, but he was in detention, and I also couldn't take his case. The family had to pull out a loan so that they could hire a private attorney.

Tonight, I ask for the city to continue funding this project so that I can continue making a difference in the lives of my fellow residents. Santa Ana is my home, and it's my pride to represent my city. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Ms. Felix.

Jennifer Koh, followed by Loneen Vasquez. Good evening. My name is Jennifer Koh, and I'm an immigration law professor in Orange County. It's been a pleasure and an honor to work with the city over the past several years in creating immigrant-friendly policies including the Universal Representation and Deportation Defense Network. And I can tell you that Santa Ana's leadership in this area is being recognized, whether from the New York Times or from my informal conversations with immigration professors and advocates across the country. They see Santa Ana's willingness to act as a visionary on behalf of all of its residents.

In the past year, since the city took its first efforts to fund deportation defense, the federal government's war in immigrants has only intensified from efforts to expand detention, to increase deportation, to exact immigration raids, and impose policies intentionally designed to maximize cruelty and suffering. The need for brave local leadership has not gone away, and if anything, the need is particularly acute now more than ever before, especially in Orange County.

And so for the past year, a group of law professors, attorneys, and community leaders have laid the groundwork to create a non-profit organization, the Orange County Justice Fund. And one of the Justice Fund's top priorities is to support initiatives just like this, to work towards a vision of universal representation for detained immigrants in immigration court. I'm actually the president of the board of the directors for the Orange County Justice Fund and I very much hope to have the opportunity to see the city's support for universal representation continue and to work to enhance private

support on this particular issue. Again thank you very much. Thank you Leonel Vazquez followed by Josue Hernandez. Leonel Velazquez. My name is Leonel Velazquez. I'm a resident for almost 20 years. I'm a community organizer with OCO. Every day I hear from the community the lack of resources to recreate their children and lack of green spaces in places where their family can recreate and educate themselves. That gives me a lot of sadness. Why more than 70% goes to the police and fire department?

Enough is enough. We need more resources for the community. That's why I support 75A1. Thank you very much.

Jose, you're next.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council members. My name is Jose Hernandez. I come on behalf of OCCORD, Orange County Communities Organized for Responsible Development. and I want to definitely speak up and support a universal representation and the prioritization of community in a moment when as you've heard in so many stories and you know as a person that teaches citizenship classes every week at Immaculate Heart of Mary I can tell you that our community very much appreciates the Southwest Senior Center appreciates the center right here but could appreciate so much more there's so much need for our children to be more

proactive with the way that we address the problems in our community right so constantly constantly like we have crime problems just throw more money at more police so that they can and and then to be able to to get into the schools to start the school to prison pipeline and that ends up institutionalized so many of our children and it's it's frankly just a very important thing that we need to be thinking proactively about I would love for the city of Santa Ana to to be able to do away with years when the city manager and the police chief was one in the same and so

you could see the conflict of interest and the the scale was tilted i would like to see a balance of it 70 for public safety and 30 for the community is outrageous uh and even more outrageous when election season comes out so i hope that this council does the right thing represents the community the youth of tomorrow and and votes for a fair budget that prioritizes the community's interest thank you thank you Angelica Quintana followed by Charlie Ruiz

hello y buenas noches and it's Ciclali based on the May 1st budget work study presented to the City Council out of 170 participants in community budget meeting the top priorities were one need for diversity of youth programs to invest in youth three shift funding from public safety to youth programs it's time that you start actively listening to the public you represent and act on the needs of Santana I urge you to reflect on the power your decision will hold and the long-lasting implications on Santana's youth. I ask for that you

prioritize all three pieces of feedback given given on by the city on the budget hearings during. I ask you that you also support the People's Platform agenda. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

Hello my name is Angelica Quintana and I'm a student at Godine's Fundamental high school and today I would like to talk to you about the lack of youth investment in Santa Ana. So last year money was allocated to create a youth coordinator position but I do not believe that is enough. Santa Ana wastes $12,770 on each youth arrest while only investing $152 per resident ages 10 through 24. On healthy youth development programs and services, so we are calling for the city to redirect use suppression spending into youth development. For example, a one-year

tuition at UCI costs about $11,500, which is less than what you guys are spending on per youth arrest. So as a young resident, I would like to see that more than one-third of marijuana revenue go towards youth investments such as re-entry programs and services for formerly incarcerated youth, intensive youth services, and decriminalization practices, such as expungement clinics for people with criminal records. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Before we continue with the budget, I was informed by the city clerk that item 11C required five votes, and apparently I was not here. Maybe other folks were not as well. So if I just bring that one back for a moment for reconsideration. Are we talking about 11C?

Yes, 11C.

Is that dealing with the property at Mater Dei High School?

Yes, it's the rezoning of 19 properties located on Berkeley Street, Occidental and St. Andrews Place from residential to open space. So it's the rezoning part.

Mr. Mayor, I'm going to ask if we could table this to the next meeting because we have 65B that we're going to be discussing. I believe it's 65B. To clarify, this is a second reading, correct? We already voted, approved it, last meeting.

This is just a rezone. It's not the money. It's not the street. It's nothing else.

No, I understand that. I understand that. But if I don't support it, then it fails.

or do we have do we have the vote it only requires four votes but because the mayor was absent during

consent a vote um so i'm going to continuing the other stuff because i think uh you know maybe we should but this is a second reading so why don't we please go ahead and consider it okay so is there a motion in a second i'll move second okay we have motion a second those in favor please say aye aye those opposed no and I'm an abstention because I wasn't here at the first reading okay sure he said or so four three or four two one got it thank you so with that let's continue with the the item that we have a force which is the city budget.

So let

let me go to the city manager for a moment. Do you want to say anything as we consider the budget vote here today?

Yes, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. First of all, I wanted just to mention and stress that one of my top priorities as a new city manager was to try to figure out exactly what the fiscal position of the city was and so I had a couple observations number one it became pretty clear that there was a lack of clarity as to the city's current financial position and that has to do with the myriad of things how the budgets were approached in the past and clearly we can do better in terms of how transparent we are it's a goal and it's a goal and commitment from me to make this budget and future budgets more

transparent the second observation is that you know the problems and challenges we're facing today are really years in the making they really are the result of several decisions or many decisions over quite a few years and as i sit here i'm probably guessing at this point but the city of san anna has a lot of needs some of them you just heard from our residents tonight that creates pressures that lead to decisions that led to expenditures rising at a rate of four percent and our revenue is rising at a rate of about 2%. So consequently, I inherited a budget with $9.3 million structural deficit.

That structural deficit for next year is projected to be 17.1. So as we've been here trying to troubleshoot, we've been trying to maximize opportunities. So I wanted to just highlight a couple of successes that we've had. First and foremost, when I started here in November, we had cannabis before us, and staff worked very, very hard to make sure that Santa Ana was one of the first cities that was operational by January 1st for adult use retail. Since then, with your support and your leadership, we have also passed policies that allow testing for cannabis

and most recently, commercial cannabis applications for manufacturing, cultivation, and distribution. In addition to that, we have been maximizing the development interests from the development community. We right now have 108 total residential and non-residential projects in the entitlement plan check or under construction. With these projects, we anticipate about 6,180 residential units will be produced, and 1.3, almost 1.4 million square feet of non-residential development as well. So staff is working very hard at all of that. In spite of our challenges, we wanted to make sure that we fund some key investments,

And one of them that will lead and support some of this future stability to the city is the general plan update. The general plan has been underway for many, many years. We just hired an executive director of planning the building that's done this in another city, and we want to support him. So I want to provide him the funding to make sure that we get this done. And that is reflected in this year's budget. We also have some investments around infrastructure, specifically information technology. We want to make sure we're operating in the 21st century.

We also wanted to make sure that we had some key positions which we've spoken about in closed session. A risk manager position that we used to have many years ago but went away because of cost savings. We were finding out that it was probably penny wise and pound foolish. Same thing for a payroll manager. We want to reinstitute a payroll manager position because we're starting to have quite a few issues having to do with compliance with state and federal laws. And also, we wanted to make sure that we continue to fund our police officers.

Part of the lack of clarity around our budget is that previous fiscal years have not fully funded our police department. We had 55 unfunded positions. This year, we're adding some more money so that we can reduce the number of unfunded positions from 55 to 36.

And I can go on into more detail, but I'd rather get on with the presentation. I just wanted to mention that we have been working very hard. I wanted to particularly thank the budget team for their dedication and countless hours, and the executive management team, whose leadership and dedication and fiscal restraint has helped us come up with a little bit of a surplus this year. Our goal this year was to try to not spend the full $9.3 million that were appropriated last year. And I think we've succeeded because of a combination of revenue increases and trying to be using fiscal restraint.

and we've also tried to we have a plan for you in terms of next year how to reduce at 17 point million so with that I'd like to ask our executive director of finance to start a brief presentation for you

Good evening. Mayor, Mayor, Pro Tend, City Council. I will be providing an overview of the fiscal year 18-19 budget with an emphasis on the City's General Fund. I will also provide a quick summary of the miscellaneous fees in the Capital Improvement Plan. The City's total budget for Fiscal Year 18-19 is $547.2 million. Of that, approximately half belongs to the General Fund, which is the City's discretionary fund. The balance of funds and accounts belong to restricted funds, such as enterprise funds, of which the water enterprise is the largest at $60.3 million.

Housing Assistance is the second highest restricted fund at 51.5. In addition, other restricted funds belong to special revenue funds tied to gas tax, AQMD, OASI, COPS, the Civic Center, as well as capital funds such as Traffic Safety, the Successor Agency, and CDBG, among other grants.

In terms of the general fund, as the city manager had indicated, we identified about a 17.1 structural deficit for fiscal year 18-19. In addition to the 17.1 structural deficit, we also wanted to address within the budget the enterprise fund compliance which added an additional 1.5 million. In order to address the deficit, what we did is we identified ongoing cost reductions, revenue increase, and the use of unassigned fund balance to help bridge the gap for Fiscal Year 18-19. As such, $4.4 million in ongoing cost reductions were identified. These will be outlined in the succeeding slides for further detail.

Ongoing revenues in the amount of $3.1 million was included, with the use of one-time revenue and unassigned fund balance to assist with the budget gap. There was actually some net adjustments that we had included, but these were revenues and expenditures that offset each other, which included, for example, the sale of land, jail revenue, the Fund 98 trust fund, and expenditures related to the general plan, election funding, police officer hiring, and a payroll and fiscal assessment was also included. The cost reduction strategy of $4.4 million is comprised of $1.7 million in departmental reductions,

potential cost-saving labor strategies, the reflection of the strategic plan in terms of actual annual expenditures, and $500,000 related to the PERS safety prepayment savings. In terms of ongoing revenue increases, we identified the new commercial cannabis at $2.6 million, the implementation of the user fee study during the fall at $400,000, and potentially some advertising or marketing opportunities that could add another $100,000 in terms of revenue.

One of the main elements that we wanted to ensure that everybody understood is in terms of the impacts as it relates to the departments. Each of the departments were asked to identify their impacts as related to either reductions or increases in terms of revenue. The police department identified 944,000 which really comprised of 459,000 in cost reductions but also 485 in terms of additional revenue. The reductions as related to the police department involved the reduction of part-time correctional officers as well as two correctional records specialists.

In terms of revenue, they identified the funding of a school resource officer by OCSA, as well as additional revenue related to parking. In terms of the parks and library, I want to emphasize that we will be seeking alternative funding for the 5K and the Plaza Navidena event. But the biggest impact would be that currently the budget contains the closing of the library on Sundays. They would also include the reduction of part-time vacant positions assigned to summer sports programs, some landscape maintenance reductions, as well as seeking $40,000 alternative funding for the Catalina trip.

As it relates to other departments, planning and building was identified $169,000. Most of it was a result of contractual services. as well as Public Works identified utility savings as a result of the new Street Light project, and then all the other departments had some miscellaneous cost reductions.

In terms of the city's general revenue fund, the sales tax continues to comprise the largest component of the city's revenue base at $47.9 million, followed by property tax and the property tax in lieu of. The utility users tax continues to be the fourth highest at $25 million, with the balance coming in from the other funds, which include business license and the hotel visitors tax. The cannabis program now is growing in strength and most likely will overtake, will probably get into the top six in the coming year.

In terms of expenditures, the general fund expenditures, the general fund expenditures is at $260.4 million. As indicated, the general fund expenditures with the police department is at $131.7 million, or 50% of the city budget, and combined with the fire department at $53.9 million, account for 71% of the entire fund budget. Parks and recreation budget is $20.6 million, or 8% of the budget, with the balance of the departments filling out the rest of the pie chart.

As a general overview in terms of what is in the budget, we wanted to highlight the fact that currently we assume no new labor negotiated increases in the budget. We reflect a PERS increase of approximately $5.9 million in additional monies. We include the increase for Orange County Fire and Care contract at about $2 million. We also include a current projected average daily population for the jail to add another $1.9 million in jail facility revenue and at the same time provide the $1.9 million to maintain current police officer recruitment levels.

We also reflect partial funding as we identified earlier for enterprise fund compliance at $1.5 million, additional funding for the workers' comp at $1 million, general plan funding that we've added at $850,000. Dependent on how many measures that go to the ballot, we've added $600,000 for the November elections, $250,000 to conduct a general fiscal assessment, and $100,000 for a payroll review. Not negating what is in the budget, we also wanted to make sure that we identify the additional needs and priorities that the city has identified over time or has current needs.

This includes the quality of life team and homeless. Obviously, as indicated by some of the speakers, more youth programming, the necessity to continue or to enhance funding for economic development, the need for additional police officer recruitments.

For the future, you'll need to ensure the maintenance of the reserve policy funding levels. We have extreme needs in terms of...

Francisco, if you can, we're going to lose Councilman Martinez in five minutes. So you're going to have a great presentation and not enough votes.

Sure. These are the priorities. You've seen them before, so we'll continue. At the last meeting, we handed out the workforce changes and the miscellaneous fees. So if there's any questions or comments, you can obviously share them with the city manager. This just highlights the miscellaneous fees. and you've actually had the presentation of the capital improvement program, so I won't go over through that. And so that concludes my presentation.

Thank you.

So with that one, I bring it to Council for consideration or questions.

Mr. Mayor, I have some comments. So just let me just start before I leave, and I think over the years you all know that I have not approved a budget. and for various reasons, transfers of Prop 218 funds to our general fund, not paying back the money back at the end of the year, which is against the law. That's one of my issues and why I have not supported the budget. The second issue that I have is that there's been inconsistencies with the various city managers that we have in this city, that one year we have a surplus, the next year we're in a deficit, We're in a surplus. We're in a deficit. The sky is falling.

I have asked my colleagues repeatedly to do a forensic audit for us to understand what our financial situation is so that we don't have the community doesn't have questions. We don't have questions up here. It's not about that someone's done something criminal. but for the mere fact that we all are confused, that we don't know what we have, and then we want to make decisions about giving raises and not understanding our position. But what I do understand and what is true is that when you have only a 2% growth and your expenses continue to rise, obviously there's not enough money coming in

to actually pay for those expenses and creates that deficit. and we've continued to have a deficit. We've used our enterprise funds to inflate a general fund budget for the past 20 years. That isn't so. And so I still continue to have concerns. I will continue to implore my colleagues to move forward with the forensic audit, as you all don't trust the numbers, and think that the numbers are not real when this current city manager is telling you that there are financial implications and is wanting to bring to you and to the voters a penny tax to stay status quo because, you know, if you do not move forward with that,

there are some major financial implications coming to the city as it pertains in particular to the pensions that we are facing not just in Santa Ana but across California and across the United States of America. It is the biggest crisis that municipalities are facing across this country, So this is not unusual to Santa Ana. And so I will state that for a fact. But we have to modernize government and we have yet to do that. And there are things that we need to do to modernize government. And we're not there.

We can't continue to give raises without modernizing government, because at the end of the day, there's not enough money coming in to meet the needs that we have here today. And so I want to just put it on the record, Mr. Mayor, that on appropriation adjustment of the $10.2 million using one-time funds, I do not support that to balance a budget that you all are asking. So I am a no vote. Number two, in regards to the several agencies, I do support that. Adopt a seven-year capital improvement, which I do support. Number four, which I also do support, which is a resolution in regards to making changes to basic classifications.

And then number five, and I think this is where I probably was very upset over the weekend, and I chose to refrain from calling our city manager because I was extremely angry when I looked at the record certain deposits and a tune of $1.6 million that all of a sudden that we have and that we are putting this towards, you know, to balancing our budget. Where did that come from? And if you read the report, the report states that, you know, these funds, you know, there is a state process that when you do make deposits, you need to return those. We have not returned those in various years.

And then we said we can't return them because we can't find those folks. Well, obviously in the report, it states, you know, Senator Feinstein, I'm assuming she's still here. She's running for Senate. She's alive. We can't find her. So when I look at that report, it's flawed and it's very upsetting that we're not being transparent. We're not holding ourselves accountable. And I'm going to just end there because I get very upset because I care about this community tremendously. And it just seems every single time that something new comes before us and our staff is unable to articulate how is this is happening.

And when I read a report that is inadequate, it frustrates me because you all are the practitioners. We pay you a lot of money to give your best judgment to this council so that we can make good decisions. And right now you are providing information where my colleagues cannot make good decisions. And so I implore you to do your best, to put your best foot forward, and give us the information that we need to make good decisions.

On number six as well, the record of certain deposits within the bulk water deposits where you have for a 10-year period of time of a tune of half a million dollars where we continue to increase our rates and go out to the bonds to fix our infrastructure. but we have five hundred dollars five hundred thousand dollars in an account and and and we have yet to to to not provide notice and it's in a report and now we want to utilize those dollars i i want us again to pay attention to these things because uh they're critical as we move the city council the city forward we need to know exactly what we are accounting and what we're not

accounting so that you make good decisions and right now unfortunately uh we are not and the last question Mr. City Manager that I want to ask you personally that when I look at page six under your manager city manager budget page six there's a tune of three million three three hundred and sixty eight thousand dollars and it's on under your general non-departmental budget what is that what is that amount for the three million three hundred and sixty eight thousand three hundred and

forty dollars I will have staff come up to respond to that but But just while they're coming up, I wanted to point out, Madam Mayor Proctem, I know you mentioned you wanted to, you call it a forensic audit. We're calling it a fiscal assessment. I just wanted to point out that we are budgeting for that fiscal assessment that you've been asking. Of course, I, on my own, believe that this is something that we should do because, again, we have this lack of clarity in terms of our fiscal position, one of my observations. So it's something that's in the budget, I just wanted to point that out to you.

So in terms of the non-departmental, what's included in there, and I'll have to provide you a further breakdown, is really it's the debt service, it's the transfer that comes through the general fund to the IT department, as well as various contracts that the city manager's office maintains. But I would have to get you the actual dollar breakdown for those.

And again, when I see that amount of money and we're not being transparent in articulating what those dollars are for being spent, it's in our best interest moving forward, Francisco, that we're able to be transparent and put that down so that we know exactly what's coming in and what's coming out. When we don't understand that, yeah, it's being used for IT, then why isn't it in the IT budget? Why, you know, if it is contract, why isn't it, if it's contract with different departments that the city manager department is augmenting, why isn't that dictated within the budget to making sure that we are being transparent?

So if it's just coming out of the non-departmental fund for the city manager and not us understanding that some of those additional funds that are coming from that department are going to police departments, are going to public works departments or other departments. And we never really know the total amount of money that's being contributed specifically to their budgets because we put three or sometimes in a tune of five. It's been higher in the tunes of five, six million dollars I've seen. This is probably one of the lowest that I've seen in our time.

And so I would just ask to, again, you know, provide the clarity so that we know and we understand what that money is being used for. Thank you.

All right. With that, I know we're going to start losing folks. Maybe let's see if there's more questions and or potentially a motion or a second for a first reading. Thank you. Councilman Heddle, please.

I appreciate it. Thank you to the staff for providing information. I want to respectfully disagree with not everything Mayor Pro Tem Martinez said, but I need to be real clear that she can speak for herself, but I'm going to speak for myself as far as understanding what's going on with the budget. I don't think everyone is confused about the budget. I think some people might be. A little history is the previous city manager that was here slow down the hiring of a variety of different positions in departments. When you talk to department heads, department heads don't worry about the longevity of the budget of a city.

What they worry about is the strength of their department. So if you're a head of a department, you're going to want to always bring in more people to help with the new projects. That's normal. There's nothing wrong with that. What happens is every time you bring in a new employee, there's also a purse component to that. And so when you have a purse component, it also increases your budget for that year. And if you have a deficit, it increases the deficit. The previous city manager had come in and slowed down the hiring, made some adjustments on the city to bring in more revenue.

It's not smoke and mirrors because we did have a surplus because prior to him coming here, we had almost like $2 million in our reserves. And so the surplus started building. It's not smoke and mirrors because there was an organization that came and did a complete audit of our financials and saw how financially sound we were that they gave us a double A rating, which helped us with other areas. Whether you agree or disagree, this is an entity that banks don't like to lose money, so they're going to make sure that things are set in a certain direction and that things are financially stable.

So, that being said, numbers change because different scenarios change. That city manager is no longer with us. Okay? Interesting enough, he leaves. We go right back to where we were prior to that, where now we're talking about cutting and potential deficits and all, you know, things that we don't like to talk about. We are where we are. We do have game plans and our staff has started working very diligently in creating some short-term and long-term fixes so that we can move in that direction. There are some things in this budget that I would like to see.

One of them is we have to make sure we had people come up here and speak about representation for our individuals who are facing potential deportations. we need to increase that or to put it back into the budget so that we still provide that service I think councilmember Vincent Sarmiento brought that up last time and I just think we need to continue to do that that's a service that our community desperately needs I think we need to collaborate this is an opportunity for us to collaborate with the Santa Ana Unified School District because we have talked about collaborating we've talked about

joint use but they have many after-school programs in the district that we could either help support they have the professionals already in place we can help support them financially if there's a lack of employees to be able to do it here in the city so I do believe that there are there are programs out there that we need to continue to move forward and make sure that our our youth are being served and I agree we serve our youth and it provides it's it's something that is a cost today but it's a savings down the road because individuals will benefit from that they don't get into the negative stuff that

you can get into when you're not supervised so all of that makes sense I think we need to really take a good look at this budget and realize that we do have a structural deficit and when we have a structural deficit we have to we have to tread carefully but we can't just burn the house down we have to do it in a responsible manner so thank you for the work that you've been doing and I just want to ask hopefully we can get some support to move in that direction

with those items as well. Council Member Sarmiento. Thank you Mr. Mayor and so you know again also to repeat what the council member said thank you to staff I know it's not easy to present the budget this complex and I know that especially in an environment where we are, it appears to be that we are facing some challenges. The reality we really don't know specifically, right? I think it's somewhere between the 17 million or less. But we are facing some challenges, and we could debate how accurate we are on that, but there are some challenges that we're going to have this time around.

So one of the questions or a couple of procedural questions I have, Because the first item on 75A is an appropriation from the reserves, that is going to take a two-thirds majority to appropriate that money, correct, Mr. City Manager?

That is correct. But I just wanted to clarify, Council Member, this is not coming from our reserves. This is coming from one-time monies that are unallocated at this point.

Got it. Nonetheless, it's an appropriation that in order to go ahead and make this budget work, this $10.2 million is going to be an appropriation that's going to require five votes. That is correct. And without that, then we're not going to have a balanced budget if we don't include this item number one. That is correct. So that will be an impediment. The second thing is I saw that there is a schedule that you have, I believe, second reading would occur on the 19th. That is correct. And the new fiscal year begins July 1st. So I guess I'm trying to get to the time sensitivity on this.

We're at the back end of this fiscal year and entering the next one. So to the extent that we can't agree on something, because there are a few line items in here that, again, I feel were left out or need to be adjusted in some way. So do we have time to maybe have first reading or approval at the 19th and go ahead and adopt at the subsequent meeting?

We could approve tonight and still make changes at the second reading. We could make changes tonight, of course, and we can make changes at the next reading as well.

Or can we decide to continue to the 19th and have that as our first reading and adopt at the subsequent meeting?

Is it possible? I'm not saying I know I know you prefer us to move that so that's that's clear yes it is possible

it is possible that we can do that we have enough time to do what councilor Sarmiento is requesting

I think I saw no I kind of saw nods but I just want to yes is that a strong yes well it is

allowed by the Charter it's allowed by the Charter the Charter requires that we approve a budget by the end of July. July 31st. July 31st. So it is something that we could do, but we can also make changes tonight. We can also make changes on the 19th at the second reading. And certainly if we were to go ahead and delay this to the 19th, then the second reading would have to happen on the

first meeting of July. Understood. Mr. Mayor, traditionally what we've had is had some time to be able to make some adjustments between the time that we first see this, and maybe there's some work that we can do on this bring it back on the 19th with those adjustments

I would be comfortable with that but do other folks want to speak okay let's have other questions and but I concur with your suggestion councilor Benavides please thank you mayor a few questions a couple questions here for staff thank

you for all your hard work by the way no it has not been an easy never is to be able to put a budget together particularly what we have we're looking at deficits and trying to end one year solid in the black while trying to look at filling gaps with the following and such so i appreciate all the hard work that city manager finance director all the staff have been placing all of the department heads as well as they've had to go through and and skin in already a very thin budget in their respective departments. I do have a question with regard to revenue.

On page 10 of the presentation, it shows a combined cannabis-related revenue total of $10.4 million, which includes adult use medicinal and adult use commercial. within the, on page 7, revenue increases shows a 2.6, which indicates there in parentheses, 2.6 for commercial cannabis, which indicates one third of projected, what the projected revenue amount.

So my question is, what is the actual amount that is factored into the proposed 18-19 revenue budget? Is it at 10.4? Is it at 2.6? Is it something different?

Very good question, Council Member. The item on page 7 was only referring to commercial cannabis, as that is the only new revenue that would be forecast for the next year, because it's really not coming online until next year. And a 2.6 is basically a third of the low end estimate. There are two ways to generate revenue from cannabis. One of them is a base, revenue based on the square footage. Right. And that's what this is. This is a third of that forecast amount. So it's just a third.

and what you see on the other page, on page 10, is a total forecasted revenue from cannabis. And in fact, it's summarized, you see 10.4 as a designation for the blue slice of the circle, but on the right-hand side, just above the number 10, you see a breakdown of that 10.4. medical marijuana is 2.3 million adult use is forecast at 5.5 million and then the commercial revenue which would be new so the 2.6 is specific to that to

the commercial which we don't yet know right so my follow-up question and we touched base on this a bit before city managers that the when the medicinal or medicinal one effect under measure BB that was general revenue that there wasn't any type of specific allocation or direction that council made with with regard to those revenues however when we did approve the adult use retail back I believe it was in December there was a clear direction by council that

those funds were to be allocated in in thirds general a third general fund a a third for enforcement and a third for youth programming. And I think the intent of myself and I think some of my colleagues is that we have new revenue that is unallocated, unencumbered, new funds that we would be able to count on to be able to enhance services that the city is providing. that was the same direction that was provided when we then approved a couple of months back,

I believe it may have been in April, the adult use commercial side, the manufacturing and other components of commercial. So there again, we discussed and gave direction that it would be that same third for each of those different categories. What I'm seeing here is that that's not, in fact, what's being reflected. it. It's at least for the adult use retail. It's all right now being absorbed and directed into the general fund, as I'm understanding, if that's correct. Is that accurate?

Yes, it is. All of it gets routed into the general fund.

And on the adult use commercial, there is right now you're just estimating about a third of what you anticipate potentially would be revenue, which is at 2.6.

Yes, I think we're being conservative because we don't know how fast these tenant improvements for some of these warehouses would need to take place. And also, so we're just being conservative.

So, it sounds like we may be continuing the actual deliberation and decision or vote by council. with regard to the budget overall. I know that we're in a very tight situation when it comes to basically our expenditures exceed our revenue.

So we're in a tight predicament there. However, we were also a number of years back when we set policy to be able to indicate that we needed to recognize that we needed to create a general fund reserve and we adopted an order towards that effect, also an economic uncertainty policy. That was because we recognized that there was a need that was very certain, very real, and we needed to in essence sort of create policy to obligate ourselves to ensure that we were able to meet those obligations.

We did that, made a decision, and now those funds are there that we can count on. We do have that fully funded reserve. We do have an economic uncertainty fund. I think the intent of the Council was that when we saw new funds coming in, is that we recognize that there is a need to be able to support. We're the youngest city in the nation. We're second-end city in the state, fourth-end city in the country. We have tremendous potential and opportunity for young people if we invest into them, if we believe in them, if we create support systems behind them. And I think it's been a priority by this council to be able to see that,

and that's reflected in the direction that we gave when we approved both the adult use and commercial cannabis policies. So at this point, we're not seeing that reflection here. and unless we take a step to actually hold ourselves accountable to that effect we're not going to see that.

So I'd like for us to be able to think through and figure out maybe it's not a third for this next year going out and maybe that staff can come back with something that is tangible, that is substantive but maybe still allows for some of that flexibility for it to be larger funds to go towards general fund. We clearly need it. However, there needs to be a mechanism by which we actually follow through on that priority that the city has provided by way of some of the public meetings that the council has also directed.

Otherwise, we can verbally say youth are our priority. We see needs in the community. We want to invest in them, and it doesn't go beyond lift service. So we need to make sure that we have an opportunity to be able to create the mechanisms by which it becomes tangible and real and we see that level of investment.

Along those lines, similar lines, there was some recognizing needs within our community. One of those, we took some bold steps last time to be able to set some funds aside towards universal representation. There's one-time funds that we're able to identify in city clerk's budget. as we go into this next year, some of the needs in our community remain. We've been able to take bold steps in leadership. All other cities have, in the county, taken steps to actively and verbally attack the immigrant community. In Santana, I think we've taken pride in standing up for the community.

So perhaps even within those cannabis dollars, within the youth support, maybe a part of that is supporting youth by way of standing up and providing universal representation for their families, for parents who might find themselves in a position where they're having to fight deportation, in order to be able to keep that family together. I think that there's an opportunity there for us to be able to look at creatively how we can provide for continued support to some degree for that service that's very much needed in our community. So those are my comments for now. Thank you.

Thank you for those comments. Councilor Solorio. If I may respond. Go ahead. I wanted to just mention, Councilman Benavides, that we literally struggled with that directive of trying to figure out how to, you know, use these monies for additional services. While we're struggling with an increasing deficit, we really, really struggled with that. We were trying to see how we could deliver on that. And obviously it's very tough when the deficit keeps growing every year. And the result or the need is really to reduce costs and actually increase revenues to close that gap.

We have tried to, in the way we budgeted, to try to preserve funding in these key areas as much as we can. I mean, the cuts are pretty gingerly proposed at this point, and we're still trying to support public safety and, of course, all the other important programs.

With the adult use, with the commercial cannabis, we only budgeted a third, and so the idea was that at mid-budget, depending on what happens with any kind of ballot measure or any kind of revenue measure, We would come in at mid-budget and we would then reevaluate. And if things were successful, then we could go ahead and the rest of this money that would be forecast, we could then address some of those priorities in a more clear and satisfying way. But the only alternative we had come up with is to free up this amount of money and offer it for these programs. We would be playing a shell game.

and we would make these cuts and then offer, say, this is what we're proposing to cut in order to reserve this money for priority spending, and then you can decide to fund some of that back and include it into the budget. I just didn't want to do that. I think that was not the intention.

And that was exactly, that wasn't the intention.

But I just want you to know, we literally struggled. We tried to figure out how we could do it, and we thought, you know, short of playing games like that, which I don't support, we just were really stuck. but we did not budget all of the commercial cannabis and we're hoping that at mid-cycle we have a different story to tell.

And I appreciate you did share with me before that staff did struggle with that and I appreciate that and I believe that going forward and for me personally in order to be able to feel comfortable supporting a budget when we do it sounds like the next meeting come around some of these actual follow-through and not just theoretically if possibly depending on how things are mid-year I wouldn't be able to support something when it's very open-ended and ambiguous. That way I won't be here during that time. So I would need to be able to see that there's a mechanism in place, whether it's ordinance,

policy of some sort, in place to be able to ensure that we're actually going to see that type of investment in our youth programming. Thank you.

Councilman Salo. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I know for the public it can sound alarming that we have a projected 17 million dollar deficit and it is alarming. But I would tell you that every year most municipalities including Santa Ana, you have a projected deficit. But by law we can't do deficit spending. We can't print money like the federal government. So we do balance it before it's time for the next fiscal year. But this council has made some tough decisions, which is why we're willing to put it out there that we have these challenges. But we're going to make some tough decisions to get us there.

I would say though that I'm a little disappointed in this staff budget presentation because we now have had literally three to five budget discussions from the dais. We've made general and specific recommendations. And I don't think any of them are reflected in here. I mean, we've talked numerous times about the use of those cannabis commercial dollars. I've talked about how I don't want to see further cuts in the library in terms of their hours or other specific items. And, you know, youth services and programs, they are a priority. We've got to protect as much as we can.

In terms of police services, and I know there were some individuals that spoke about their thoughts on it, what the general community needs to know is that really based off best practices, we should have about twice the number of officers that we currently have. You know, we have approximately 300, but we should have many more. And right now, especially given our homelessness crisis, there's more issues out there. And I know some people say, well, you just want to keep hiring more officers. But I always remind folks, we have many of these officer positions in the budget.

And sure, maybe for various reasons, some positions we can't fill, but there are many that we can't. So literally today in the police department, there are 100 vacancies, sworn and non-sworn positions. Again, maybe some, doesn't make sense to hire, or even if we want to, we can't hire them fast enough, honestly, but it's a priority. On the cannabis item, I appreciate hearing our city manager saying that the staff has struggled to figure out how to put the cannabis commercial money, one-third youth services, one-third enforcement, code enforcement, city attorney, and police, and then the other third admin.

And that was a directive. I mean, it wasn't a cute idea that we said, hey, let's do this. In fact, the only reason we got the votes to move in that direction was because of that commitment. And I know some would say that staff isn't trying hard enough to implement it. Some folks may say it's misappropriation of dollars if we have formal actions on formal programs and the money isn't being used appropriately. I would go as far as saying something like that. Maybe they should go into a special enterprise fund so we could track it really well. and we have our challenges so sure it might mean that we put some of that

money to say we're gonna save the library hours on Sunday we're gonna save you know this special police program over here or we are gonna fund those code enforcement spots that we've been meaning to and then maybe the rest is to replace other lost funds but I know we can do better I know too there's I think make a suggestion to add another $1.9 million in the budget for some police position. And I know on multiple occasions I've said, that's not even necessary. We have a number of vacancies there already. There's a substantial police department budget with many positions we can't fill.

There's no need to increase this idea of a supposed $17 million deficit. it. There's no need to make that worse by saying we need another $1.9 million for that police function. Lastly, I'm glad that Councilmember Sarmiento did suggest really doing the formal votes in two weeks because that's the schedule we had last year. And another reason for it is I think there is some serious consideration of a penny tax. I'm not sure if I support that yet but i think this community needs to have a conversation about that because

we do have a very service deficient city in the past we've just let you know our funds whittle and whittle away at the size of our workers in santana whittle and whittle away and that does not make for a better community so we gotta really think about that as well so with that mr mayor those are my comments for today thank you all right what I want to do is bring

it back to councilmember Vince Armiento because I believe you had a concept earlier maybe we've all made comment oh I'm sorry go ahead one thank you mr.

mayor I'll be brief just to reinforce what councilmember Solorio was saying regarding public safety as you all know I'm very big on public safety you know We all, yeah, thank you. Everyone, I believe, you know, we all want our loved ones to be protected.

And that's a priority. You can't do anything in this city unless it's safe. No one's going to want to shop here. No one's going to visit here. No one is going to want to go to school here if this place is not safe. I mean, who wants to stay here? You know, if you can't enjoy yourself, you want to go to your favorite restaurant, you're worried about that. With 75 gangs in this city and about 2,900 documented gang members here, and you only have 14 gang unit members, it's tough. We don't have a full-time vice unit to address the human trafficking problems that exist here in Orange County to help out.

We don't have a full-time marijuana unit to work on those businesses that are out there that are illegal, that are not within the M1 and M2 zones, that are not authorized. So, you know, we have serious problems. And you don't have to look any further than just pick up the phone and call for a non-emergency. Every time I go to a neighborhood association meeting and I speak to the residents, they all talk about they call the police and sometimes it takes a long time for them to show up.

And that's true because it's happened to me. I don't like to say I'm a council member. I shouldn't have to say I'm a council member. I'm just like everyone here. I'm a resident. If I call, you should get the same level of service as anyone else. So in other cities, when you call the police and they show up in a reasonable amount of time, that's great. But we need to have that here also. But with 61 positions vacant and they're not here, of course the service is going to suffer. We are operating at a .09 ratio of officers. We should be at 1.8. So that's about half. That's why you don't have the officers.

That's why you have these cars speeding. That's why you have the uprise in gangs or in shootings or in noise. or you want to call, you have the increased homeless problem that we all are aware of, that we're being affected, and you call a police officer because you've got some guy running naked down Bristol Street and no one shows up, that's unacceptable. We have children. We have senior citizens that need protection. So that's why it's so important. It's not like we're trying to increase the number, we're just trying to increase the vacancies that are there. We lose between 28 and 32 officers every year for a variety of reasons.

Retirements, injuries, so on and so forth. But we also hire about 28 to 32 officers. We are actively hiring. But the thing is, we're staying at the same level. We're not making a dent in it. So that's why we're making a big push to try to make sure we can increase the numbers. It's hard to find qualified people also. Especially with the new state law when everyone thinks that you can go out and smoke marijuana and get involved in other things, and you end up, oh, you realize, well, maybe I want to give law enforcement a try. And then you don't qualify because of drug use.

So those are things that we have. There's a lot of challenges here. I believe in youth programs. I believe in all that good stuff that we need to have more outreach. Of course, it all works together. But the thing is that the public has this perception that, well, all we want is just officers. We're just trying to meet the quota. that we are operating at half right now thank you mr. mayor now back I believe

to councilman Vince Armiento thank you mr. mayor so I think everybody had an opportunity to comment and so hopefully when we bring this back we won't have as much comment to make I think everybody's spoken their piece but I would just recommend that you know there are some questions still in here that I'd rather not be presumptuous about and get some clarity and I think all of us will need to have some one-on-ones with you and your staff and be able to make some adjustments and bring it back. So I would move that we continue this for a 15-day or whatever, a two-week continuance until the next meeting

so we could take this up again on first reading with some edits to this.

We have a motion to second, and what I suggest is may the city manager can make an extra effort and meet with several council members, get input and all that, so that when we bring it back uh me we're closer to the interval and move forward and adopt the budget but thank you um so we have motion a second those in favor please say aye aye aye those opposed motion carries unanimously so now we're going to go out to our next item we're we're going to go to 85c all right yes let's go ahead i'll call on uh who wants to go councilman

I believe we have a speaker, but I'll wait until after we have our speaker.

All right.

Joyce Fannerborn, I believe it is, from Godinez High School. Please come on down.

Be nice, Joyce. Yeah, I'm going to speak. Hi. Be nice. Oh, Sal. Go ahead. Hi. I have a lot of parents, and I'm a teacher. I just want to say to the students that spoke previously, both of them go to Godina's, and Sitlali, who's a recent graduate, was one of my awesome journalists. My name is Joyce Fearborn. I am a teacher and a resident and definitely a voter in this district. And we're here to talk to you about the joint use agreement that has been in place with the city at Goodenest Fundamental for the past 11 years. It's not working out very well.

And the easiest way to explain it is my principal, Jesse Church, has to cut a check for $20,000 this summer to you guys to use our own gym during the summer. You know, we talk about all these great programs for our kids. We're trying to do that. And what happens is that Godina's has been too successful with our athletic program and academic program. We have first-rate academics at Godina's, but second-rate athletic facilities. We're the only high school in all of Orange County that does not have tennis courts or a swimming pool. You try being a parent and picking up your kid at 8 o'clock every night.

It's exhausting, me just telling you that. Now try being the kid. Our athletes spend 13 hours a day just to go swim in a pool. They walk over two miles to go play tennis. And we can't even use our gym when we want to. And if we want to, we have to pay out thousands of dollars. This has been continuous. The item's on your agenda. You need to talk about it.

You know, safety's a really big concern, too. We've had a couple times where we've been on lockdown or we've been told to stay in our rooms because we have a stranger on campus. We have a stranger on our track and field. If a stranger comes on our track and field during PE, our PE classes cannot be conducted. And we have to reserve the fields to run our PE classes during the day. Does that make sense to you guys? It sure doesn't make sense to me. our athletic director spends more time organizing the schedule calendar throughout the year just to

make sure that we are covered so we can play our games we had a soccer tournament last year we have like one of the number one soccer teams in the country and we had a tournament at our own school and we couldn't even reserve our fields we had to send them to other schools can you imagine trying to explain that to other teams uh isn't this a home tournament yeah but you need to go to car and you need to go to valley and that field that's right over there that you can see we don't get that because we didn't reserve it seven months ago it's like that all the time we want to serve

our kids we want to serve our kids really well and we're standing here because we're exhausted

there are so many other reasons you guys I can go into we emailed you our athletic director emailed you i emailed you a couple more of us did um we just need to coordinate a better joint use

agreement if you can uh wrap up it's red i'm done thank you thank you thank you so much i should

have said that sooner okay oh come on we had a lot to say you could have all six of us speak

thank you guys come back who wants to go first sal or jose all right you want to go first

okay this is a surprise

And he's got a handout.

City Councilman, Mr. Cortney.

Yep. But he didn't request this on the agenda. But anyways, go ahead, Juan.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So we had a Youth and Education Community Services Council Committee April 23rd, where we were briefed on the JPA and the efforts behind it. And the committee received an update and a partnership on these efforts. And the report explained how Godina's joint use functions. And this was shared with Orin Williams from the Santa Unified School District. And it was verified for accuracy.

So all of you here have the hand on it, it tells you exactly how these facilities are used. So the ones that are in red, below on the map are available to Godinus for their use whenever they want to and it is provided free of charge. I'm just trying to make clarification of this. The city does not charge for the high school for the use of the non-joint use park facilities in accordance with the fees approved by the City Council on miscellaneous fee schedule. So I provided the map, I provided all the information.

Council Member Tinajero was absent at that meeting and it was myself and Council Member Benavides that were present. So I wanted to share this information with you and if we could call Director Moet up front, it would be helpful if you have any questions.

Thank you Mr. Mayor. Can we bring up-All right, let's go ahead, Sal. I think we need to bring up Mr. Church as well, because there's a question. I think the question that's being asked right now is that there are no funds being paid to the city. Is that what Mr. Viega-Is that the question you had?

Yeah, I was bringing this information forward on how they charge and who they don't charge and-

Director Moet. What we want to find out is, in fact, is the Santa Ana Unified School District paying the City of Santa Ana for the usage?

Gerardo, if you can go ahead and explain a little bit further on this report.

the map actually that was referenced by Council Member Villegas shows that the joint use facilities which is the two ball diamonds, the football field the Godinus gymnasium, the performing arts center and also part of the joint use is the parking structure the high school when it has needs after school hours to use those facilities they get priority and the city does not charge does not charge any city fee for those it's free what we do charge on I believe it's blue and the blue is the high school uses for PE during the school

hours what we call five and six field five and six which is in blue and the some of the fields in the soccer complex those are not part of the joint use those are part of the park and we just apply the the miscellaneous fee and that's what we do charge, but not for the joint use, and we haven't since I've been a director. And that report was reflected at the last council committee, and that report was verified with regards to accuracy by Assistant Superintendent Oren Williams. However, Ron did speak to Mr. Williams today.

Ron, if you can, perhaps this might clarify some of the confusion. Thank you, Ron. Please. Thank you. thank you just for clarification the $20,000 that the previous speaker was alluding to I followed up with Orrin Williams and find out wait we don't charge the school district where's this $20,000 payment going and he's indicated the schools actually charge themselves for use of the facility so actually the $20,000 is taken out of Godinas's account and put it into the district back into the district's account. Just like we have work order numbers where we ask public

works to do work, they charge to our work order numbers, they charge to our account, but it's all within the city funds. So the $20,000 is all going back and forth between the district as part of their

operation. So that money does not come to the city. Correct. Very good. Thank you for the clarification.

Mr. Church, can we have you come up? I just want to hear your position here Well first of all good evening thank you for allowing me to represent not only Godinus High School but the city of Santa Ana as well as Santa Ana Unified School District unfortunately I wasn't prepared to litigate the technical allocation of funds or payments but I definitely want to thank the city for even considering

85C which says that allow Godinus High School to enhance the security control main campus we're talking about the physical structure the theater and the gym. I'm hoping that we can at some point have a meeting to discuss how to amend that agreement because contrary to what was stated we don't have complete control of the gym or of the theater. For example if the bleachers are broken in the gym who pays for those? When we have an event in the theater and the soundboard goes out or the lighting goes out who pays for that? When we have a stage manager who provides the stage manager and who pays for that? We pay for

that. Also we have a huge security concern. It's not reflective of the city it's just in time that we live in where we're located. We don't have adequate security in our parking structure. We've had seven break-ins this year. I believe your police reports will reflect that. We can't get to our theater sometimes because it's overbooked because of the joint usage because as you guys do know by definition people can reserve the theater and the gym by going through the city. So as simple as it may seem publicly for an athletic director or athletic directors or even our VAPA department to schedule events now which

is what we're doing that actually handicaps us to have extemporaneous rehearsals and different things like that so as opposed to me talking about the funding I would leave that to the assistant superintendent and superintendent but I do wish that we could have a meeting to talk about amending the joint usage so that all of our kids will have access to it and then also we can properly maintained it for our kids and for the community. Thank you.

I don't know if Councilman Villegas is finished.

Mr. Mouet, you have anything else to add to that regarding the parking and all?

Yeah, when the city parks and rec rents out to the community the joint use facilities to a third party. Let's say some dance group wants to use the Performing Arts Center for their recital. The city charges the school district fee to pay for the custodian, to pay for the stage manager, and transfers that money on a monthly basis to the school district. And we have accounting and all that. So any third party user, whether it's a charter school,

a private school, a non-profit organization to use the ball diamonds, the gym, if it's available, if it's not being used by the high school, the city parks and rec, because of our joint use agreement, we provide the permit. The city does not take any fee for the joint use. We take all of the fee 100% and provide it to the school district because it's a school district fee as defined in the joint use agreement. The next thing that I want to mention is, as you know, for the last eight years we have been in the process of doing a land exchange to allow the

Santa Ana College Adult Education Campus to stay there. Why? Because of the deed restrictions. The 84 acres that was provided by the federal government many years ago was in perpetuity to it to be a public park for recreation purposes. The National Park Service allowed the joint use Godinus because the 18 acres that the recreational facilities that the Godinus has is going to be used as a public park after hours. If we change that we have to find 18 acres of land exchange of new park land just like

we're working on the 2.6 acres for the adult education campus or else it reverts back to the city to the federal government as land. That's very clear in federal deed restrictions it's the same thing that the joseph prentice family would take back the zoo land if we failed to get have less than 50 monkeys it's a funny story but it's true that's what the legal de-restrictions occur so that's something to consider thank you mr mollett uh councilman thank you i appreciate it it's in my ward so usually you get that courtesy but that's all right we're gonna we're gonna move forward um first of all thank you to the parents for coming

out it's been a long haul i know for you i've seen you guys speak at board school board meetings and we've met with you on a different different occasions so i want to thank you and and anytime you get involved because you see something that's problematic and you're trying to create solutions it takes it takes time and it takes endurance so i want to thank you for having making the time and having the endurance i know we have other members here from the Santa Ana Unified School District. We have the School Board President, Valerie Amesqua, who's here and I think I might have seen Dr. Where's he at? Oh there he is.

So we have different folks here that are representing the school district and I think we also have our Deputy Superintendent. There's too many doctors out here is Dr. Alfonso, Dr. Jimenez, just too many but anyhow so a little bit of history I want to give you a little bit of history so we're gonna go back in time for just a little bit this was a joint use agreement I was with the school board at the time and and the school board one of the things that I need to clarify is I don't think anybody's talking about the fields tonight so when we talk about finding 18 acres we're not talking about the field space but I

want to let you know i grew up on stanford which is right by stater brothers and this area that you see that has a track on it and has baseball fields and so forth when when the park was opened i think i was like eight years old i was all excited went out to to centennial park and that area was all dirt um i turned 16 it was still dirt i turned 21 it was still dirt 29 it was still dirt So what happened was the funds that went to build more schools in the city of Santa Ana actually paid so that we could have park space. Because it was all dirt up until that point. So no one is talking about that.

So let's take that off the table because no one is talking about changing the joint use when it comes to field space. What is the issue is this. as a principal of a school it is difficult for you to run an operation where you don't have control of your infrastructure so what we're talking about here is the infrastructure of Godinez fundamental and for the record the buildings that you see at Godinez are 100% school district property they always were the only thing that was this that was city property was the park so I just want to make

that you know clear clear that up a little bit so let's pretend you're a basketball coach and you you have a tournament that's coming up okay and you did not reserve the basketball court a while back and you want to do something on a Saturday well if someone's already programmed it you can't go in. The other issue is this, is if you are a theater teacher or you want to have any type of activity in your theater, it's already been booked. So a theater or a teacher has an idea, we want to showcase some work, we want to do this, we want to do that. If it's already booked, it's already booked. You don't have that

opportunity to have something, you know, something that's new or organic that's growing to go and showcase it because it might be already taken. But I think the biggest issue here is that for the administrator there is a cost okay and let me tell you something what the money that is brought in by the joint use does not cover all of the costs that are associated with that because costs have to be spread out and so what you have is individuals that come in who's going to take care of your gym who's going to be the one that's going to look after the gym is it going to be the coach who uses it all the time for his or her students

or is it going to be the outside person that paid a nominal fee to use it for the entire weekend but at the end of the day it's the coach it's the administration of the school that has to deal with the aftermath it's not us it's them if something gets broken they fix it if if something gets damaged they have to fix it so it's that's what you have to look at here so I think we have an opportunity to send this to our staff so that they can engage in a discussion with the school district and give them the opportunity to program it themselves that does not exclude anybody but it gives the school district through the

Civic Center Act an opportunity to program it themselves I don't think there's really a reason for us to use their facility their gym or their theater and not in other words we I don't see us the reason for us to program that we can still use it other organizations can still use it but they have to go through the school district Civic Center Act so again this is not has anything to do with with the field space in fact I support the joint use on the field space but this is becoming an issue at that school and it's one of our top schools in the district so we want to protect those investments and we're

serving the same population so I want to bring it up and I want to thank councilmember Solorio because he's taken an active approach in this as well and he's really been at the table and has been critically thinking to how we can make this work without hurting the city and without hurting the school district so this is just an opportunity to start showing that we want to be partners with the school district because at the end of the day we're serving the same

community. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Additional thought or comment Councillor Solorio and then Benavides. Thank you Mr. Mayor. I know at the last

meeting and at this meeting we're talking about a lot of the excellent academic institutions we have in our community whether it be a modern day on the private side as an example or today Godenas and part of the reason why I'm really involved is you know both my children have had the opportunity to go the top school, very successful, and we wanted to succeed. But before I make some specific points regarding the sidearm, and since it's Director Mouet's last meeting, I'll ask him a couple of softball questions, because I know there's quite a bit of talk about the finances and the general role.

For our work scheduling all these meetings and doing what we do with this joint use agreement, does the city make any money for its general fund? No. No. Okay, that's good. So it's revenue neutral there. From the perspective of, is it always easy, or do we sometimes get complaints or issues with scheduling, including odd hours, evenings, and weekends?

I think the kind of work that Parks and Rec, we always get some complaints, but it's always a pleasure to do that.

Yes, you handled those things well. Thank you. Those are my questions. I bring this issue up because I know at the beginning of this talk, there was a lot of discussion about the finances. This item here isn't about the finances. I think that this item here is about the fact that we have a joint use agreement that's about 10 years old plus minus and needs to be fine-tuned. And I think you kind of heard from the audience that there's different issues, points of views, ambiguities. You know I would argue that number one security particularly with all the campus shootings and issues around the country

giving the school a little bit more control over who comes on and off the campus. I think that's important. From the perspective of maintenance and scheduling you know if it's the school district that does the scheduling evenings and weekends because they by law need to continue to via the Civic center act make it available to the community or to the city it's still going to have that use and that function i think too what also happens a lot of these joint use things end up being over the weekend or evenings and so when school starts up again on monday morning who gets the calls or the

visits it's the principal it's the assistant principals and they're having to scramble and following up with the city hey what happened who came why if it was campus personnel more directly involved it would be a benefit finally these changes we're only talking about the physical facilities kind of on the enclosed side of the campus that those be managed by the school district but with priority use for the city when it needs it which we really honestly don't use it that often but that there be priority use and the other spaces I was mentioned before

the open space is going to continue to be open space the joint use is still going to be there the activity is still going to be there really they're not Santa Ana students or Santa Ana parents school district parents or students there are communities residents and users so we're really talking about the same folks and again finally even in terms of with any perceived loss of use of the facility via the Civic Center Act those facilities will all be available to the city to the community but with a little bit more organization and again just in closing we're just saying hey this is important enough to the community and

the parents let's engage our staff to work with school district staff and the parents to figure out how to update this joint use agreement so it can last us

another 10 years thank you mr mayor thank you councillor david benavides please thank you mayor uh i appreciate uh that i mean i you can you can go ahead and and no i might call you back out of the before now you can you can go ahead and hang out over with ron on uh inside there but i may have some follow-up questions for you in fact i know i do uh he appreciates everybody's thoughts, passion around this item. And I understand the perspective that the speaker came and presented with regard to having a facility there. And it would seem that it would be always available, that it would make sense.

It would always be available to the school, the gym, the theater, the fields as well. I think the fact that it is a joint use and the way this came together, I think Councilman Tinajero was referencing what all came together. Remember that this is Godinez Fundamental High School at Centennial Park. It's a school that's at a park. And perhaps part of what we're finding out here is that maybe it wasn't the greatest idea when it was conceptualized. Because the way it did come about, as was referenced, the academic buildings are on school district property and land. And that was designed and agreed upon.

It also was agreed upon that on the park side, the school district would be able to build some of its amenities and make those available, that those would be available for the school exclusively during school hours, but that afterward it would be able to be a part. That's what true joint use is, that it's available at times for the district to be able to support our students during school hours, and afterward that it would be a part of a true integrated part of the park.

As was referenced earlier, the school still gets priority whenever they have need and interest and desire to use it. They still can. They do have priority to be able to schedule. so I am concerned about the idea of some of the comments that were made by council members is that it's their gym, that it's their theater that it's their space their facility based on the agreement it was on the city's community land and it was to be shared so I don't

I'm concerned that the joint use aspect of it would be it's sentiments being suggested it should be eliminated, that it should all be a school district, a managed and controlled facility, therefore then eliminating the community and the park aspect of it. One is I'm concerned because it wouldn't be followed through with the intended agreement. and the other is that we would be jeopardizing the land because it was conditioned that it would be a park space when the federal government deeded it to the city. So there are deed restrictions. Another thing that's really concerning to me

is that there seems to be this idea that the city is not collaborating, not being willing to contribute or be a good partner. At some of these meetings that we've had with the Youth Education Community Services Council meeting and actually joint meetings with the few council members and school board members. There are a number of projects that we're working on and we work well, that we work on together. We're coming up with ideas how we could more intentionally work together in the city and the district to, again, serve our youth. We all serve the same population of youth.

one of the items that has come up in conversation there is a parcel of land. There's been a number of parcels of land that the city has made available to the district for development of schools. There's a small parcel of land in the city that is actually on district property. We all know the water tower by Davis Elementary School. That's been on long-term lease, I believe a 99-year lease that the school district has made available to the city, which is fantastic. But I don't know if the community knows that that lease has come due, has come up.

and has expired in that sense. And you would think that a partner, a good partner, would say, hey, you know, this is a significant, not only is it a landmark location within the city, but it's also water that, again, all of our community needs that is held there. Well, the district isn't saying, let's extend the lease at a dollar, you know, for the next 99 years, just make it available or let's deed it over, the district is saying, hey, let's go ahead and sell it to the city, find out what the top value of this land could be, and let's charge the city for that. Over a million and some dollars.

I'm not sure exactly what the dollar amount is. So it's very concerning. It's disappointing that only the message is that the city is not doing enough when, In fact, we're following through with the agreement that was set in place, and that here on this example, where the district could easily say, hey, city, this is something that we haven't been using for the last nine years, and likely won't be using. It's got a water tower on it that we're being built for it.

So in this whole context of conversation, if we're going to discuss how else the city might be able to collaborate, which maybe there are some ways that we could address some of these concerns with regard to safety, let's remember, one, that there is this deed restriction, two, that it is on a park and that it should be available for the community, and the other that there are other partnership opportunities where the district can offer something to the city, such as the land over at the water tower. And I don't know if any of our staff, Mr. City Manager, Mr. Parks Director, if we know what that dollar figure was.

You may not, it was a couple months ago, for the water tower, what the requested value, and our public works directors are also no longer here. So if we don't know offhand, we... Do we have...

Our water manager is here, and he would have a better idea. Okay.

I mean, it's gotten to a point where we've had to look at... We just acquired another parcel land right down the street where we've had to look at, does it make sense to move the water tower altogether in order to be able to address this? But is there a dollar figure that you... It was about a million dollars. A million. I think it's north of a million. but uh thank you uh very much for those are my my comments mr mayor and i just say yeah go ahead

and then i i know there's others that want to speak go ahead i'm trying to contain myself and

be as professional as i possibly can on this one but it's kind of it's a little bit difficult today so i'm going to have to just kind of speak a little more bluntly about this let's look at this one more time no one is losing field space no one is talking about not having a joint use when it comes to the field at Godinez. There's no change. So any concern for having, you know, being able to play on the football field or soccer field or anything like that, no one's talking about that. What they're talking about is the structure that is on district land that the city paid no money to build. So let's not

forget what happened there, okay? The reason why I'm so fired up is because when I was on the school board I couldn't understand there were other people that were putting a lot of pressure on the City Council that lived in that neighborhood right down the street and it was a handful it wasn't a large group that were putting pressure to force the district into complying with some of these things that didn't match up in other words forcing the city to or forcing the district to put the buildings in as part of the joint use it wasn't just the field space because remember it was the field space that the district had paid

for so that our residents had field space remember i told you it was dirt so i want to make that clear so no one's asking what's interesting is no one's asking the school district for money modern day is going to be asking us for money in a little bit but no one's asking the city for money What they're asking is, can you just let us program our gym and our theater? It does not exclude people. If people apply, they can still use it. But it gives us that opportunity to have control. Now, that being said, let's go to the water tower. And this is why you have to be real careful and you have to know the history.

A couple of years ago, the school district came to the city and said, let's do a swap. The city staff said, yes, Santa Unified, here's a list of properties that we can use in the swap. So you decide how you want to do this. You pick three properties that match what the water tower land is valued at. So go ahead, San An Unified, go find those, or tell us what you want to use. Here are some of our parcels. We can do a land swap.

Sanana Unified goes and and starts to investigate these parcels of land they come back to the city the city goes through a dramatic to go starts going through a transformation in leadership and

the properties that were given they were given like five different properties to look at right the city gave the district about five different properties to look at the district looks at them identifies three brings it back oh we sold two of them okay see this is why you have to know the history and know what's going on the district's always been trying to figure out a way to work with us on that water tower I'm going to tell you right now the only reason the school district started to even consider to charge the city is because we weren't doing anything about it they just want

to get the ball rolling so it's it's it's not correct to say that this is a partnership issue no they've come in in good faith and we are the ones that have not uh been straightforward with the district on this i'm just you know what i this is our city and i represent the city council but when there's a wrong you have to also speak up about it i can't just stay silent i i don't want to go against my colleagues. I appreciate my colleagues. But on this one, there is no harm. So that's what you have to look at. When you do, when you create policy, where's the harm?

Okay, so there is no harm. You still get to program the facility, the community still has access to it, they just have to go through the Civic Center Act, and no one is changing the field site. So that's, those are my comments. All right, Councillor Vince Armiento, and then I'll come back.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Simply what I wanted to do is make a motion to move the recommended item. I think the recommendation is simply to have our staff speak with the district staff. So that seems simple enough. We're not going to be adopting any policy tonight. Let's find out. I know I was on this committee when I was a young council member many, many years ago. And I think we created some of these joint use agreements. And so, yeah, they get vague over time. they get stale, they need to be addressed again. And maybe what we could do is have both staffs work on that and

come back to the City Council and bring back some assessment and some recommendations. But I don't see any harm in revisiting this and looking at this. I think there were some valid points made on both sides. I think both agencies serve the same constituents. We want things to be done fairly. I think we want things to be done well. And, you know, I know when we created a lot of these joint use agreements, it was done because we saw a need on both sides. So to the extent that, you know, one party may feel aggrieved, another may not feel like, you know, there's a fairness in these agreements anymore.

Look, there's no better way than just to revisit this. So I'll simply make the motion for us to allow our staffs to work on this. Second.

We have a motion to second.

Council Member Solario? Yes, Mr. Mayor. I think we have two ways forward on this. One is we can vote on the item, and I think it's a good item, but I do worry about perceived division up here. Another approach may be just for two or three of the council members. We can't have more than three because of quorum issues, and we sit down with our city manager, and Hardo will be gone, but maybe Ron Ohno can join, and some school district folks. and we focus just on this and we can vet out any questions or issues that have been raised. The key thing here is there are disagreements.

It's an old agreement and we ought to make the situation better for the community as well as for the understanding of the city. So, Mr. Mayor, I don't know if you have any thoughts, but either way would be good. But I think there are clearly issues even though they might not be humongous issues.

I've got a couple thoughts, but does anybody else want to speak?

Sure, Mayor. I think ultimately there is some discussion that needs to take place. I think there probably are some points that can be addressed, some ways to be able to work more closely together to address some of the concerns on scheduling and such. The motion, as it's stated here, I do have concerns about just moving forward with the motion because it does speak, give specific direction to amend the agreement. So I think it's giving direction before we're able to do some fact-finding.

So I wouldn't be comfortable with supporting the motion because, again, it's a specific direction to amend agreements, which I wouldn't be comfortable with yet. However, having some of those discussions would be helpful. Those are my comments.

So the only – just to clarify the intent of the motion was to not come back with – not to amend it because we would have to adopt any change that would have to be proposed or submitted by the staffs, then we would consider, and we would either vote it up or down. So that was my, I guess, clarity, or lack of clarity when I was making the motion. The other question on creating an ad hoc, don't we already have a subcommittee that addresses these issues? So I'm not sure if we kind of layer on top of that, but we, I think, have a three-member subcommittee that's already been convened.

So do we, you know, to have an ad hoc on this one issue, I'm not disagreeing with it. I'm just saying, you know, for efficiency purposes, do we want to consider doing that?

Councilman Villegas, I believe you serve on that committee. Yes, sir, I'm the chair. I was supposed to meet with the school district, but we couldn't agree on a date because it was a scheduling complex. So we can revisit that then.

I look my two cents would be if we have a committee maybe it's best to have that committee try to take this up with a school district and and and see if they come back with with a recommendation I would prefer that to right now giving staff direction then staff will feel compelled to come back with something because they were given direction and we might be putting the cart before the horse obviously there's enough discussion that folks want something resolved i'm not 100 clear on what it is but i think in the committee it could be discussed and they come back with something

that um that we can all approve we go from there so i know right now we have a motion in a second i don't know there's a substitute motion and if there is we'll consider if not we'll vote on the original motion and go from there what's the council's wish I think we should

just vote on the one that's on the motion vote on the motion all we're doing is asking our staff to communicate with the school district just to do this fact-finding I don't see the harm in that in opening communication we we

already had something set and if you want to call Valerie Amesqua from the school district up here the president maybe she can verify that we were supposed to have a meeting, weren't we, prior to our next meeting, and try to work out some deals that way to make the regular joint use meeting more efficient because they get a little long. So we were trying to work some things out prior. Go ahead, Madam President.

Thank you for calling me up here to clarify a few things. So I want to be really clear. Thank you, Councilman Benavides, for your comments. But I'm going to take you back for a second. Mr. Tinejaro is exactly correct. we have reached out many times and I'm new I'm gonna say I'm new to the board I've been there now this is my fourth year but looking back in history when we've reached out to take properties or to buy properties they've been sold right underneath us and so we have been a great partner and I know with the current board that we have we work very well all of us together so I don't want

to turn this into a tit-for-tat because we are willing to work with you all very closely for the benefit of our children and so this really is about exactly what we're saying the safety of our kids right so we have people entering our school at any time and so we want to we want to make sure that our schools are safe and you of all people councilman viegas are aware of the safety issues in our country and the dangers that our kids go through you talked about gang activity homelessness issues so we are a good partner and we canceled the meeting only because we were in the middle of graduations and every day in the month

of May and every night we had events and so June's a better month in July and the three of us meet I believe it's you Councilman Solorio and Councilman Benavidez gladly we will take this up but I want to take it up and not meet and then come back six weeks later meet again and again and again as you know my style let's take care of business because that's what this is about we can't keep going back and forth and saying well the city does this and the school district does this it's a different board we are here to work with you guys and i mean so tell me what you want

when you want the meeting and we'll make it happen the meeting our next meeting schedule is the 11th

that's correct so if we can meet this week and the only thing on the agenda let's put is the joint use how does that sound to everybody let them meet and it's a public meeting i'd rather work it out I agree.

I think you can sit here and come up with a vote. I agree.

Thank you very much. We'll meet on the 11th. Thank you.

We'll have the staff.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. So I would suggest that we just let them meet and we all try to be supportive.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. That was the idea, really just to raise this to a high level, get folks to understand there are some issues and this committee that we talked about only meets quarterly so I'm glad that one is coming down if they need to meet more often let's meet more

often exactly just decided thank you so we have a motion is that withdrawn

all address so we agreed to agree to a meeting that was already on schedule

yes but now they're all gonna attend it now they're all gonna show up and they're and they're gonna have only that one agenda why don't we just start with at the beginning but all right let's move on madam uh city clerk where are we item 75

a 2 is related 2 and 3 is related to the budget um so it's at your discretion whether you want

to continue those items also let's just do it together with the other item so uh we i would recommend we continue it move that uh make that motion for two weeks we have motion and a second

from solario this is to move this is to move to table it through yeah with the rest of the budget

i'll second that all right we have another second from dean i had on that was a voluntary so those in favor please say aye aye aye those opposed motion carries now i believe is it uh

wood china madam clerk it's item 75b and we don't have any speaker cards for the for that item

Okay, this is a public hearing updating our solar streamlining ordinance for solar energy systems, establishing revised maximum fees for solar energy, and establish minimum permanent fees for thermal energy systems, extending applicability limits on solar energy system fees, and extending repeal date to January 1, 2025. Do we have any members of the audience that wish to address this on this item? Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing and bring it back to council for consideration. I would entertain a motion. Move to item.

Second. We have a motion and a second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries.

75C.

75C has been continued at the request of the applicant.

Okay, so how long is that continuance?

It's a two-week continuance.

All right, so we just won't take any action then.

75D, is that the next item?

Yes, that's correct.

Okay, we're vacating a portion of a public alley on Bush Street, the Hampton Inn Hotel project. I would now open up the public hearing. Does anybody wish to address this on this item? Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing. Is there a motion? Motion moved.

Second.

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

75E, this is vacating portions of Baker Street, Berkeley, and Occidental Streets. I would invite anybody that wishes to address us to do so at this time. Seeing no one, let me close the public hearing. is there a motion on this item? Move the item.

Second.

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

55A, this is giving notice of a general election to be held November 6, 2018.

And we have some speakers.

Jorge Rodriguez from OCO.

Followed by Madalyn De Paz, also from OCO.

Followed by Leonel Velasquez, also from OCO.

Followed by Ruben Barreto, no indication.

Do you need a translation?

Yes.

Need a traducción? Sí. Ahí viene. Empiece, ya viene. Ya viene caminando César. Empiece.

Buenas noches. Mi nombre es Madalí de Paz. I am a leader of OCO and resident of Santa Ana for more than 16 years. I have three children in Santa Ana. The elections in general are unjust because they are inclined to benefit from the police union. That's why we support the elections by district and a just map for the elections in November 2018. Por eso apoyamos 55 a 1.

the elections in November 2018 that's why I support 55A1 my name is Lenel Velazquez Rodriguez I'm a resident Santana for almost 20 years and I'm a community organizer with OCO our Santana voters need more representation enough it's enough no more apps abuse of authority we want this district election as soon as possible that's why I support 55 a Wow thank you god bless

you

good evening City Council my name is Robben Barreto with Santana building of the communities we support and we support equitable representation to district based elections we support equitable representation through open and transparent selection of new district lines we support equitable representation that will give a voice to the Vietnamese community in Santana we need district based elections in Santana we support item 55A1 thank you

Ruben Barreto Teresa Lee Miguel Hernandez

Jose Hernandez and that is it.

Good evening, council members. Thank you again for your time. I ask that the issue of district-based elections be put on November ballots.

Oppression is defined as prolonged rules or uncharted treatment that crushed the Cypriot when the city council vote was delayed by a bill of authority. That was a check and grueling, especially to those of us that caught our hope.

So, every time the process is unreasonably, the purpose is another intention of uncharged treatment. I can honestly say that my spirit is being crushed, And I can fairly say this process is becoming operative.

Let I put an end to this check delay by November.

I support the 5581. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Teresa. Jose Hernandez?

May he went home. Miguel Hernandez? Oh, no, there you are, Jose. Miguel Hernandez?

Go ahead. Good evening again. Just to reiterate our previous support accord for the district elections issue. Teresa up here representing the Vietnamese community and so many other folks that can't make it or haven't been here but are definitely caring about this and so we hope that the council does the right thing, votes to approve, to put it on the ballot as soon as possible so we can get real representation here in the city of Santa Ana and turn it the way that so many other cities have already done because we know that it works better by the constituents. Thank you.

Thank you, Jose. With that, let me bring it back to Council. I'll call on Councilor Benavides and then Solorio.

These are items that we've discussed before. I think at this point we have the opportunity as Council to just move forward to place some ballots. I'll be supportive and be ready to make a motion. I'll second it. Go ahead and make a motion. We have a second.

Any discussion?

Mr. Mayor, I know there's been some general discussion on this in the past, but I feel unless this is tied to the ward map consideration, I don't know that this really helps us with the issue we're trying to address, which is the possible violation under the California Voting Rights Act. So a question to our city attorney is whether this is time since May we can postpone it for two weeks so we could have our special legal counsel that's going to be helping on this review and see if passing this is a good course of action or not.

Yes, you do not have to take action on the item tonight. We thought it might show good faith that we're moving in that direction. However, you have until the last meeting in July, as I recall. I'm looking at the city clerk to put these measures on the ballot. You have about a month left.

So for that reason, I won't be supporting this item tonight. So I won't be supporting it, or maybe that could be a friendly amendment to postpone this for two weeks. Either way, it's fine with me.

I'm open. I know that, again, it's a discussion we've been having. There is some work that Special Legal Council has been working on. with regard to the CVRA issue as referenced. So again, just to clarify both

Madam's City Attorney and Clerk, there is no sense of urgency. This is brought forward primarily to try to address the CVRA. We were simply following up on the Council's previous direction that said bring it back to you. Since we are anticipating a number of ballot measures and this one was ready we just put it on here at this time if we do move forward today on this and and do you have a conversation legal counsel except what subsequent medium can always modifier or withdraw right we such is I'd be in favor of moving forward

if we think it's it's a good thing but councilman Vince Armiento please thank

you mr. mayor so so I'm very supportive of district elections and I think that was clear from you know the moment that we put this on the calendar on the agenda and we've addressed it a couple of times my concern with this is that as we know there's litigation involved and there's a case that i think we have a mandatory settlement conference that's coming up on madam city attorney so my concern is that this is seen as a way for the court to punt and say hey, the council's already addressing this, they're going to go ahead and put it on the ballot,

they'll redraw the lines at some point in the future, and it gets delayed, and we have some very critical elections coming before us. And as we know, there is some relief that's being sought by the plaintiffs, and that is to have no more elections that are going to be under the at-large system. so my goal and my hope is that the judiciary can help us meet that so those of you who are supportive of this as i am that is my concern is that we could maybe undo the work that the court

could do to help accelerate us changing from an at-large system to a bi-district system so that is you know where it's more of a strategic sort of you know I'm looking at this from the legal perspective a lot of times courts just don't want to make a decision when they see something moving in the direction they're going in they'll go ahead and delegate or defer and allow that so I don't know if our special counsel has any opinion on that but I'd like to hear if we you know I'd for us to not do something that's in our best interest.

How about a two-week continuance?

I'll second then if there is. I will withdraw the motion. All right, two-week continuance and we'll take it up. Okay, those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye, those opposed, motion carries.

Madam City Court, are we 55B now?

Yes, and we have a speaker.

Okay.

Thomas Hartneg, I believe it is.

Welcome.

Hello, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Thomas Cartneg, and I am an 18-year resident of Santa Ana, a very proud 18-year resident of this city. And I have spent those 18 years in one neighborhood, which is not terribly far from the development that's referenced. I think that it is amazing that at this point in time the city has before the opportunity to really give a new face to Santa Ana with all the redevelopment projects that are in the pipeline as referenced by the city manager. 108 projects, 6,000 units of housing.

So specifically with regard to the Cabrillo project, that is a fantastic project and an absolutely appropriate location. A high density apartment dwelling, mixed use, and an area that desperately needs some commercial businesses and definitely a grocery store for the surrounding community.

However, the other project that has been branded with another wonderful M name, which is called Magnolia, also known as 2525 Main Street, is going to basically be a far denser development with nearly 500 units directly abutting an R1 neighborhood. that is mostly single-story homes of one-story only, a majority six-story high building with an eight-story max-out. And the reason that I'd like to speak to that issue as well is just in general,

with regard to all the projects that are before you, of those 6,000 units, 1,900 of them are proposed for the main place mall redevelopment. That's nearly one-third all in the Main Street corridor, not to mention the projects that Orange is bringing online with high-density apartment units. And with respect to the specific development at 2525, it is simply not appropriate for the site.

And I request, like many, many residents in our neighborhood, that the zoning not be changed to accommodate this developer and this project. It is absolutely a beautiful project, but it does not belong in this location. and we would certainly like to see a much better use of that property, hopefully with some future expansion capabilities for the science museum that's across the street from it. So I thank you very, very much for your time, and I hope that all of you please take a trip through Park Santiago. You will see no zoning signs everywhere.

We are very, very committed and unified in our opposition to this project. Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks for your comments.

So with that, I believe we're on 55B.

Mr. Mayor, I thought we passed this two weeks ago. Is this a related item?

These are actually the resolutions that are needed to formally appeal that item.

I'll move the item.

Okay. We have a motion. Second. Second question.

question i don't know if any from for staff uh there was a a a previous couple of times that this project came before us there was discussion about potentially looking at a ingress egress to the north of the uh of the on the north side of the property next to that compensation fund building the uh the applicant had indicated that he would continue to work with that neighbor to try to work that out. I actually was hesitant on a approving project. I didn't support it because I really would have liked to have seen that come together. I'm just curious whether there has been any update to staff, any actual discussions or

resolution to that. I'm not sure if you have any update or info. Thank you for the question, Councilman. Our staff did speak to the applicant and the applicant did reach out to the probably owner to the north. However, there wasn't a response back to the applicant regarding that request. So that was also discussed, I think, at the previous hearing, but there was no response. Okay. Thank you for that update. I don't know if the planning manager has any later hot-off-the-press info. It may have recently come up.

So I'm interested to see if there's any additional information. Go ahead. I did speak with the applicant today, and they have had a very successful conversation with the state comprehensive building to the north, the property owner of it, and they are hoping that they may even get resolution to the issue within the next month or so. So they're very optimistic about it as of today. Fantastic. Thank you. So given some of that background, and I think there probably would be support anyhow, but I will be supportive as well,

and I just want to encourage staff to continue to help and support that effort. Hopefully that is able to come together. I think that will enhance the project. It would help alleviate some of the needs, traffic, and such in that area, and make that project, I think that's running an area for development, even more successful. So those are my comments. I think we have a motion in a second.

Okay, additional thoughts or comments on that? We have a motion and a second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. 60A, I'd entertain a motion.

I think we have we do have Mr. Sershneed who's here with us so Mr. City Manager I'd be interested in getting a bit of an overview I know there's been some work on this project I mean on this proposed policy so if we can get input or update and then I know we don't have any speakers on this one there might be no interest in having a further conversation later time but thank you

mr. mayor members of the council staff from multiple departments have worked together to establish procedures whereby city-owned real estate is identified and recommended for sale lease easement license or agreement for use the intent of the policy is to provide an ordinarily and transparent open and fair process for public, private, and non-profit organizations, individuals, and other entities to acquire remnant, unneeded, and marginally used real property assets. The policy is comprised of seven sections. Section one is the guiding policy. Section two designates the clerk of the council to function as the official

custodian. Section 3 establishes a real property disposition committee. Section 4 describes how those real properties will be classified in the real property's interest for disposition. The fifth section provides a process for nonprofits and community organizations to formally affirm their interest in acquiring and leasing property. The sixth section of the policy provides the disposition procedures and details on any special requirements before dispositions such as the use of brokers, appraisers, come into play. And the final section provides a process for the leasing of city-owned property.

And now I'm going to reintroduce my predecessor, Robert Zershmida. We'll talk about the background of how we got here. Bob. Rob.

Thank you, Steve. and good evening Mayor and Council members it's nice to be back here tonight just by way of a little bit of background this process got started through some direction from the council you were looking for a systematic policy to dispose of real real estate assets and so following that up we did form the group with all the departments that are listed on the slides city manager's office city attorney community development public works parks and rec and planning and building we presented a draft policy to the edibt back in march we then met with the

equity for all coalition on march 22nd and then we had a subsequent meeting with them on the 18th we did a workshop item here before the council and we did make some revisions to the policy resulting both from council member comments primarily from council member solorio and then also some adjustments trying to respond to the request from the equity for all coalition and we a couple of changes that we made there were the this is staff committee this proposed to make a staff recommendation those committee meetings would be held publicly they would be

noticed and there would be an opportunity for comment we also if i can just refer to my

We also included as a potential use projects that would provide community benefits. That was one of the other points.

and we also added prior to issuing a solicitation for a particular property that we would follow certain of the provisions of the sunshine ordinance and that would basically require neighborhood meeting we give neighborhood residents surrounding the site an opportunity to give comment on their views on how it should be developed if disposed of. So with that, rather, I think you'll probably have some other testimony tonight from some of the Equity for All representatives, but I think with that I would wrap it and be happy to take any questions you might have.

All right.

We have two speakers, I believe, Jose Hernandez.

And then Karen Romero-Estrada, I believe.

Jose, if you sit a little closer to the front, our meetings will be shorter. No, keep going, I'm kidding.

Go ahead. I'll just, yeah, I'll let that go. So good evening, Mayor, again, City Council members. So we've been at this for some time, this issue of the city-owned land, public-owned land, that we see as a very valuable resource, an asset of our community. In a moment when we don't have as much land to develop, these lands should be used to address some of the very real needs. And so we've been mentioning it and bringing it up, and there was a broker that had been hired before in the history of this issue.

We've had a few city managers handle this and Rob was hired recently to bring this up. I must say that as it stands currently, the Equity for All Coalition is opposed to it as it is written. I think that there's a lot of good points to it and we appreciate the points that have been included but I believe one of the big aspects of it, and there's various, is that it doesn't prioritize community benefits. It just does not allow for the ability to address some of the housing crisis needs, some of the open spaces, green spaces, community centers. The list goes on. We could use that.

So we feel that the balancing of the budget on this is a real issue. So there's four asks, and I'd be happy to send this to you, and we actually have emailed it to the council. 50% of the community representation to be on the Real Property Disposition Committee. The creation of a designation G for land to be developed by a community land trust, which as Irvine has shown and has been shown nationwide, is the best way to do affordable housing by the city and also address the homelessness crisis. 75% of the parcels to be categorized as either having a community use or benefit potential.

and also that 50% ultimately be developed for these purposes. And lastly, that if it were to be worst case scenario, that it could be sold off, that 30% of the proceeds from the sale of the property, those without funding restrictions, as we understand many of them do have transportation restrictions, to be put in a community fund administered by the community development agency to be used exclusively for community projects. within those 30 percent 15 percent would be directed towards universal representation fund which a lot of you showed support for early on you know at

the end of the day again this is an opportunity for us to do a policy that can for now and for future publicly owned lands that it really be done in a way not just dispose of it to the highest bidder and try to balance the budget you know we can not increase salaries on you know we could do all sorts of things to balance the budget we should do more affordable housing and a lot of folks would love to be here to do that but obviously with the voting happening today election day and school and so on it is it's difficult but we just want to definitely let it be known that there are dozens of organizations

that are supportive and we plan to do this and we hope that you vote to postpone this so that we can sit down with each and every one of you to make those suggested amendments. Thank you.

Go ahead. We have another speaker. Please go ahead. Good evening. I'll keep my

message short because my colleague mentioned a lot of similar points. So as you know, as we all know, the city has developed this policy to create a process for the sell, lease, and transfer of city-owned property. As we understand it, the policy right now, of course, there's a need to meet city needs, but we feel like it's really in balance in also recognizing and meeting residents' needs, as my colleague said. So on behalf of the Equity for All Coalition, I'm here to say that we support a land disposition policy that would center both city and community interests, facilitate equitable development,

and ensure community benefits in the development of city-owned land. Jose also mentioned we've been in communication with some council members regarding our stands and suggestions on how to incorporate our asks, and we're ready to share amendments to the policy with your staff. We submitted an electronic public comment regarding Equity for All stands, and that also lists out our asks that Jose just listed out, which I have with me here. We urge the city council to include our ask in the final draft to be voted on.

We ask that you postpone this item so that we may take the time to arrange meetings with council members to review and discuss our amendments, which we already have prepared, so that the policy provides the greatest benefit to the communities that we serve. Thank you.

Thank you. So with that, let me bring it back to council for consideration.

Mayor, I want to thank staff for all the hard work on putting this together. I appreciate particularly the meetings that have been held, both the council, the community meetings as well. I think the proposed policy does reflect a lot of the different priorities.

I would be interested in continuing so we can have any I mentioned meeting with the community group I think a couple of my colleagues might be as well see if there's anything else that we might want to consider and with that I'll request a continuance of 30 days.

All right is there a second on the request for the continuance on this item? Second. Those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. We're now on 65A, is it? Okay, I would be willing to consider a recommendation by the council on this item.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I don't know which staff. I know I was kind of, I think I mentioned this in comments and staff followed up. So, Madam Clerk, do you want to just recite very quickly what those recommendations are?

Actually, it was actually drafted by Julie Castro.

Julie, come on up. Give us a very, very quick nutshell version so everybody knows what we're talking about in addition to the public.

So we caught you snooze in there, right?

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. So the policy essentially was taken from the council meeting per your direction, where it was to reduce the council presentations to one presentation per month per council member in order to just become a little more efficient with the time, the council meetings. We also expanded on that policy to include some parameters for certificates and proclamations for events outside of the city council meeting. In general, that's, you know, taking our common practice where it's about 20 certificates per outside council meetings

or two proclamations per outside city council meetings. That can always be adjusted at any time with the direction of the city council.

So, thank you, Julian. So, Mr. Mayor, I'm not sure. I think you were here or maybe not, but there was a meeting when we came out maybe an hour later than we really should have from closed session and we had a lot of people waiting not only to receive certificates and be recognized by the City Council but also to just conduct council business and and city business so we I think a couple of us had recommended that we try to be try to set an internal policy that we be a little bit more efficient so I don't know if it was a recognition per month but it was a recognition per council member per meeting is what I remember

that would make more sense so so you know because what I was saying is if it was two presentations per council member per meeting we could have 14 recognitions and we'd be here for a very very long time so that was one efficiency the other one was just getting ourselves out of closed session on time so we can begin at 6 and maybe starting our closed session earlier or maybe recessing our closed session at 6 p.m. and you know convening again after the regularly scheduled public meeting so we wouldn't keep the public waiting. That was the other one and the third one was to as we impose term excuse me time

limits on public speakers that come before us to self-impose those same limits on ourselves so we don't go on and on. I think all of us. Yeah, I know. I'm hurt by my own policy. But so three minutes for each of us. And so it was a consideration for all of us, and I think we've tried that in the past, but we've never codified it or we've never really adopted it.

There is a resolution that's in place currently with decorum that speaks to those elements, as you mentioned, that can be revised and staff can change.

Isn't the chair supposed to sort of enforce that? But we've had some laxness, I think, from our chair. So maybe he needs to have a copy sent to him. All right.

Pleasure. The council will be happy to update the resolution and also amend the policy as proposed to one presentation per council meeting instead of the per month.

And the time limits are in there. And we also include trying to get out here on time as well to be respectful of the public and folks who are watching.

And for clarification, the time limits aren't included in the policy for the presentations. So whatever we're talking about to now just to augment the policy. Yeah. Yeah, let's put it in there. Certainly.

Okay.

And can we have...

Do you want to modify it and bring it back, or do you just want to give direction? I think modify it and bring it back.

All right, let's do that. Go ahead with that direction. There will be clear. I'd also like to have the clerk monitor the time per council member so that it's not the mayor. And not because I don't think the mayor could do a great job. It's because when you're up here, your mind is racing and you're thinking about a bunch of different things.

Sometimes eight days don't stop, Sal.

Well, that's my point. so if we can have a work to notify it put it up in your start the clock right now

yeah the councilmember and I think give you the authority to do that and then the chair can say okay you have to kill the mic right so all right so with that

direction let's go so bring it back and we're good next item are we on is it 65 5B.

Okay,

David De Leon,

Jose Hernandez.

Buenas noches, good evening everybody. My name is David De Leon. I'm tired. I'm tired because it's 10 o'clock. I'm upset because y'all tabled three items after you talked for half an hour. And we got young kids, we got working people that have to wake up at 4 in the morning. And I think sometimes we like to hear ourselves talk a little too much. And I think we got to get to the substance of the issue and move on. And this is getting ridiculous, you guys. We got to just take care of business. and you can't keep just tabling items after you just talk for half an hour. Let's get to it, you guys.

Let's take our job a little more serious. You're reflective of us. Take us into consideration. I'm talking about this specific issue, and for our Godina's teacher that's back there, she talked about trying to get some extra time. Maybe you should talk to the mayor outside in the room like he talked with the principal of Mater Dei just before you guys voted on this issue. I personally would like to know what the mayor discussed with the principal of modern day and then what you talked about with our city manager just before you guys voted for this issue. But I don't approve of this.

I think some of you guys are more fiscally conservative. And I think to allocate $2 million to an entity, if we're serious about taking care of our structural deficit, I think we need to take care of the little things like we take care of the big things. And we got to look at every single thing and how we allocate money. And allocating money to an organization, no politics straight up, to an organization that spends millions and hundreds of millions of dollars to protect pedophiles, and you're going to give them $2 million to take care of this issue in Santa Ana? I'm sorry.

You have much better reasons, motives, programs to take care and allocate this money for, and it's not to modern day. $17,000 just for tuition. not including uniforms, sports. If you have an athlete, you're spending $20,000 plus to send your kid to modern day. They have plenty of money. They're supported by the archdiocese, by the Catholic Church. Billions of dollars. They don't need our community's $2 million that could be used for. You could spend it on rate, fixing rate. You could fix it on anything. We could fix it towards Godinez. We could fix it any project you have.

Thank you. Jose Hernandez, please. Take care of business.

This is Jose Hernandez, Greatest Hits here tonight.

I definitely concur and totally resonate with the frustration of the previous speaker. I think it's great that we can make these more approachable. I mean, to me it's insulting enough that we have to get wanted every time when other city councils don't. I mean, I still will never forget that. And so that takes a while, but then folks talk way too long, and then people can speak and hear what's happening. And also, to the point, which is a modern-day issue. I think, Council Member Tinajero, you spoke it very well. Last time this came around, there was a lot of students and teachers.

You mentioned how you had been and your family had gone to modern-day. I know good friends that have been there. it's always the issue about private versus public schooling, right? And in a moment, OSHA and modern day, they get so much love. And I remember saying this one time, you know, Santa Ana, where we have a school for the arts but can't afford art in schools. And it's a real tragedy when, you know, these people can come in and ask for $2 million or all these subsidies, and our kids are struggling. We can't get uniforms. We can't get, you know, some support. So I really think that this is a bad idea.

Obviously we're in a budget crisis, we're mentioning this, why would we want to do this? And you know, the fact of the matter is if almost 80% of the people that go to modern day are not from Santa Ana. So there's, these are South County kids that are coming into our communities and a lot of them they're just like using Santana while you know talking crap about sanctuary cities and you know just trying to reap off the benefits while not trying to live here and build here and just asking for handouts. Enough is enough. Let's support public schools and not just the private schools

because they're going to support our candidacies. Thank you.

Margarita Gonzalez, followed by Olga Olivares.

I do have a timer. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the council and public. How much money does it take to repair Sanana streets? I will talk about the East Side neighborhood, hood and I'm sorry that Michelle Martinez is not here. Maybe 1.8 million dollars can fix our streets where the pavement looks like a cement puzzle and patholes. You also need street lighting, repaint curves and cross lights for students' safety during school time at Roosevelt Elementary. Our community, our children deserve better treatment and

service for the city and I don't support 65B for the improvements for Mataday High School campus parking structure expansion project to be in a private school it's a choice so if they don't have parking structure I'm sorry that comes with the enrollment package and dues we're struggling with parking all of us are struggling with parking what makes them special and you know what I'm so sorry to hear this that you guys are taking the opportunity to provide this money to matter day like I said before we're struggling everybody's

struggling with parking and you know Godinez is one example I used to live at Stanford for the past 25 years and we're struggling really really bad with parking. You know, all the parents, they're actually using the parking lot at Steader Brothers, Corner of Fairview, and Edinger, and that creates a chaos. That's a chaos. And as a business owner, I have to close my business because there's no business since the parents are taking over, you know, the parking spaces from a business. What are you guys doing? I mean, I don't see you

guys are doing anything so please do something in favor of the community not just one special group of people thank you thank you all the other is all by Valerie mesquon good evening first time up here I feel so strong about this subject council members please vote no on the funding it's one thing for them to want to do this project. It's another thing to fund it. The youth, the nonprofit organizations, the public schools of the city of Santa Ana need your support and the funding. I think Matter Day can take care of their own.

When you fund a private school, you harm public schools, nonprofit organizations, and the people of Santa Ana. Thank you.

Thank you, Valerie Amesco, followed by Patrick Murphy.

good evening again and when I come up here is no disrespect to any of you and I always welcome you to come to a school board meeting as well and express yourselves we're talking about modern day let me share a little bit about Santa Ana unified because many of you a lot of you appear support us and I thank you but you know mr. polido our wonderful mayor you've never really talked about Santa Ana like I know you're at NAC on Saturday and thank you we have a 93 percent graduation rate let me say that again 93 percent graduation rate we are investing a lot of money in the arts and drama and mental health and expansion

of programs but we do we need more assistance yes we do and that's what we're talking about working together we have via intermediate at the corner there of Chaston and Grand. We need to make it easier to be accessed by our parents and our staff. It's very dangerous. Thank God there have been no children hurt or killed at that corner because we can't even get in and out of our building. So when you want to talk about expansions or giving space to create a parking lot, let's talk about VIA because those are our children from Santa Ana. Those are our children. Juan, your daughter, I believe, attends one of our schools, or did.

I think she may have graduated. Congratulations. You do not want her attending a school where you cannot get in and out because of traffic issues, because it's dangerous for her and for the community. I think as a council and as a school board, we need to continue to work together. And when you're supporting a private entity, a private school, and not supporting Santa Ana Unified where our kids attend there's a problem and we need to be very transparent about that so we want to continue working together but if you've got money for modern day and let's talk about how much

money you have for Santa Ana Unified because our kids are just as important if not more important and no disrespect to their children or our children it's homeless issue South County doesn't want our kid while homeless there because of their children well they want to leave them here in Santa Ana we tend to forget about our kids here at Santa Ana unified on a regular basis we say all that they're okay they're okay now if you're gonna do for modern day you got to do for us as well and let's continue to work together and I know my red lights on and thank you mayor believe that for allowing me to go over a little

bit but I just have to say if you want another add another agenda item mr. Mr. Viegas, let's add the expansion of modern day to Monday's meeting because we really need to address this. So thank you.

Thank you, Patrick Murphy.

I believe the title of this item is a misnomer because once again, I must clarify, modern day high school is not requesting any funds from the city of Santa Ana for any part of our parking structure.

What Mater Dei High School is requesting is that the City Council direct city staff to speak with OCTA regarding what we understand to be excess revenue left over from the Bristol Street widening to improve two aspects of the city streets in this area. One is to add signalization and improvements at the corner of St. Andrew and Bristol. This would be for the good of the city, this would be the good of traffic flow, and this was shown in the environmental impact report,

and it would be for the safety of the local community, not for modern day students. We would also ask that the improvements to St. Andrew, the upgraded black topping would also come out of this project. Mater Dei High School is withdrawing its request for SB1 monies for the public alleyway. We will take care of that. The overall cost, based upon discussion with city staff, and asking for these two aspects of city improvement from the OCTA money

is approximately $800,000 for city improvements. Thank you very much.

Thank you for that. Let me now bring it back to the City Council for comment and consideration. I know that earlier I had spoken to our city manager, and I know we were talking about potentially a continuance so that you could speak more to OCTA. However, I think if we are able to state this in such fashion that it doesn't involve any city money, only money that's potential access on Bristol for Bristol improvements,

that might be a win-win situation. And if I understand correctly, modern day just committed through pat murphy um to spend additional money out of their own pocket for public improvements such as the the alleyways and the curve cuts and things towards the back so things that often the city would normally do for people uh developments neighborhoods here they're now agreeing that they will pay for such improvements. So with that, I don't know if there's a council comment. Council Member Salatina-Heddo, please.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. One of the things that is frustrating to me is that when someone comes up and speaks and says, I'm not asking money from you, but I'm asking for you to go to OCTA for excess funds from the Bristol Street widening to come to us for our project. Why aren't we asking for that money to come to the residents of Santa Ana? There are streets that need to be fixed. When I first got on the council, we had to go bond some money so that we can fix our streets, yet here once again we already gave them pretty much a parking lot they use that parking lot there on Bristol and

Ettinger and they and and that's pretty much it was built for that school so we have supported modern-day high school throughout the years what I do want to tell the council is this if if you are utilizing funds if you are if you are When we are going to OCTA to utilize funds for a private institution, how do we tell our residents that this is the best use of our money when there are streets that need to be repaired? I heard the gentleman from modern day come up and say that this is going to be not a safety issue for modern day,

but it's going to provide safety for the city and the community. I've yet to hear one Santa Ana resident come up and speak and say thank you. that's something that I wanted for our public safety. In other words, it's not something that's being demanded by our residents. Modern Day created a project. They knew exactly what they were getting into when they decided to go forward with that project. They have a need. And when you have a need, just like all of us, you budget for it and you pay for it.

I don't think it's right for an institution, knowing in the situations that we are in, to come over and ask us to provide more money to go their way. what really really kind of makes me like pull the little hair out that I still have is that we are quick to say hey Godinez no we're not going to make this decision right now we're gonna have more conversations to see if we can figure something out for something that's much less of an impact and I kind of I kind

argued that earlier is that there's no downside there there really is no downside so we're going to iron that that's a different issue but on this one here there is a definite downside and the downside is that our community doesn't get served why aren't we if we could go to i this is news to me mr mayor i didn't know that we had excess funds at octa that we can go lobby for to for bristol street for pay to pay for our streets no bristol we could still use it to pay bristol there's still needs at Bristol. I didn't know that we had that money where we could use that, but all of a sudden

a friend comes over and says, hey, this is what I'm looking at. Oh, let me see if we can figure this one out. You know, and it's presented to us in a way where, don't worry, Santa Ana residents, this isn't hurting you. You're not giving up anything. No, we are. And so that's why I can't support this today, Mr. Mayor.

All right. Thank you. Additional comments, Council Member Benavides and then Villegas. Thank you, Mayor. You know, it's, this is...

No, it's not. Now it is on. I was that frustrated that I couldn't... But it's frustrating. The rhetoric, the conversation, the comments even from the public, frankly, it's...

we should be celebrating all of the accomplishments of the schools within our city and all of the students that are able to go to quality schools. I'm a huge fan of Santa Ana Unified. I have kids at Santa Ana Unified. And the district is making strides to really elevate. I was just talking to one of the district staff recently on how proud I am to send my kids there.

And there's a lot of things that we as a city can learn on how the district has been highlighting its accomplishments and building a lot of support. Again, highlighting 130 years and so many different things that are taking place there. And that's a positive thing. That's a good thing. OSHA was mentioned earlier. Another great school within Santa Ana. We should be proud of that. Modern Day, years ago, had an opportunity to leave. And there's been mention about how our city has had its challenges. There are people who are coming in from outside of the city of Santa Ana.

And the diocese had an opportunity to pack up and move to another city, to go to South County. and all of the accomplishments of modern day that we celebrate here in this dais, in this council chambers, would be celebrated at another city. The headlines of the accomplishments of the students of modern day, when the headline speaks of Santana, it wouldn't be here in Santana. It would have been somewhere else. So it's extremely hypocritical for us to do that, celebrate them, applaud them here,

but then go ahead and make these ill comments of disparaging comments of the school.

The improvements that are being considered that we're talking about today, there are improvements that we as a city are imposing upon the project. We're saying, hey, you're going to – we did not – are contributing towards a parking structure, or are there improvements? There are tens of millions of dollars that they have raised to be able to make improvements to their campus that's here within our city. And as part of that, we've said, hey, well, you need to improve this street, you need to put in a street light. And so I think

part of public-private partnerships, it's something that we should be considering with any type of development. What are things that we could bring to the table to be able to make these projects come together so that at the end of the day it does benefit our city. So I think it's very reasonable. There was comments that one of the school board members made with regard to partnerships and contributions by the city. Via Intermediate was actually ironically what was highlighted. Historically speaking, if you go back and look at history, everything from what I

understand and know from Via Intermediate is that that was land that was provided by this city. funds from this city went into developing that school in particular. And a number of other questions. There are numerous asks. The SAUSD, we talked earlier about Godinez High School. That's a high school built on city land. Branch Santiago Community College District has their education center on city land at the public park. College Avenue was over by Santana College. We vacated that to be able to provide for the Santa Ana College to expand. The digital media center, that's land that we provided.

These are other agencies where our community pays taxes towards that. On top of regular taxes, they put out bonds where, again, our residents are paying towards these schools and their improvements, the district and the college district. And then they come back, and we, on top of that, provide even more money from the city land and city funds.

So let's just be fair, let's be honest, let's be professional, let's look at truly improving our city across the board and not be disingenuous and ultimately try to harm a school that's just trying to do some good for its students, which a number of them happen to be here within the city and our students. So I'm very frustrated by just, again, everything that's been, the comments that have been made.

However, again, I stand by making sense on multiple levels to figure out ways that we can support these improvements on our city street, Bristol, and the other street there, St. Andrews. So those are my comments, Mayor.

Thank you. Councilor Villegas, please.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just a few words. It's, well, my daughter goes to public school, has gone her whole life since kindergarten. And I'm a big supporter of public schools. And I believe in it, and it's our choice. And as a council member, I shouldn't be put in a position where I have to pick and choose over the schools, because it gets pretty, it frustrates me when I see this battle going on between the public schools and charter schools, and now they want to drag in the private schools. You know, as a council member, I'm the council member for everyone in this city. That's my job. No bias.

I support anyone who wants to go to school. Why wouldn't I? And in the end, it's still the parent's choice where they want to put their children. I'm a parent. Hey, I choose public school. And I'm proud to say I do so. But if a charter school comes up and asks and they want me to support, I'm going to support. Private school comes up, hey, can you be here for us? Absolutely.

Public school asked me? Of course. Absolutely. I'm there. Why not? So now in regards to this issue, I commend, you know, Mater Dei for getting this parking structure project up and running. And I want to help because I know it'll alleviate the big parking issue that we got in that community. You have to remember right now you have all the students and all these people that are parking in the community. So it's causing a big problem. But I will say if there's no money or if we can't afford it, then I'm going to have to make a responsible decision and stand down on this.

So we'll have to figure out. Do we have a presentation from staff, city manager?

Yes, we do, council member.

Okay, thank you. Can we have that?

Good evening, Mayor Polito, members of the council.

Thank you. Thank you.

I know you know most of what has been requested. Just to recap, it's Traffic Signal Bristol and St. Andrew. cost of around $482,000 and St. Andrew Place pavement replacement, which is now valued at about $250,000. And we've talked about the alley connector, but that appears to be not under consideration. We recently received a letter, the city manager did, from OCTA that talked about possible funding sources.

He had mentioned transfer of savings from Bristol Street from the right-of-way phase to a construction phase. That could potentially fund the traffic signal, and I'll have to get into details on each of those. A second idea was to re-scope the Bristol Street project. Also, it would be something that potentially could fund the traffic signal.

One other one that we've talked about a little bit here tonight was the proceeds from the sale of the remnant properties where we would get local gas tax money back. Again, that would be something that potentially the traffic signal would be eligible to fund. and then the other items were California Senate Bill 1 funding and then Measure M fair share funding. Just real quickly on that, different from what the staff report said,

we dug a little deeper and found that it doesn't look like the Measure M fair share funding would be, any of the improvements would be eligible for that kind of funding based on the M2 guidelines.

Again, just the transfer of the savings from the right-of-way phase of Bristol Street that was suggested by OCTA, we are nearly complete with that phase, but the funds for that project have been expended and there is in fact there's currently a shortfall on that so there is no there would be no savings to to use the next idea of rescoping Bristol is it would be very problematic in order to reduce the

segment or eliminate project elements it would not be feasible to come up with the potential $480,000 that would be requested. Beyond that, that project isn't scheduled to begin until 2019, and any potential contingency savings wouldn't be available until about 2020.

Now, and the bottom there is the important part. That project is currently underfunded to about $5.1 million. Current estimate is around $33 million. Current available funds are around $28 million. Staff is pursuing grants to fill the gap in addition to considering the property sales for a long Bristol Street that could backfill that.

And that brings us to the next one.

The property sales along Bristol, we are very interested in that, and that property is pending the disposition policy that was discussed tonight.

Staff had considered that the proceeds would be used, they have to be used on Bristol Street, and they would potentially fill the project funding gaps that we have. Further, other considerations would be utility undergrounding. However, obviously, the City Council could designate $482,000 for the traffic signal for St. Andrew and Bristol traffic signal.

On the SB1 funding, that hasn't been discussed much tonight, but the revenue is expected annually is around $5.8 million. The current year allotment has been spoken for. The projects have been programmed and submitted to the CTC. Out years, we currently have projects listed in our own staff documents for roadway repair. Delay of those roadway repair projects would increase those costs,

but Council could defer those and recommend for submittal to the California Transportation Commission in 2019-2020. and the following year, that's $732,000 for both the Signal and St. Andrew Road repair. I mentioned earlier that on Measure M fair share, we don't think that money would be eligible for the improvements.

And then finally, there's just a matrix of the three different requests and what types of funding we think would be available for that.

If you have questions, I'm here to answer. So based on that, it doesn't seem like they qualify for any of those funds.

Not correct, but I'll speak in a moment. Are you done? Do you want to be recognized?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Do you want to be? Yes. Okay, go ahead. So based on, I'll reiterate my question. Based on that, it doesn't look like they really qualify for any other ones. Let me, the traffic signal would be eligible for the property sale proceeds.

assuming we had enough money for that because there are funding gaps in the Bristol projects

and we expected that some of the proceeds from those property sales would go to fill the funding gaps. The other one that does seem to be eligible is under Senate Bill 1 in 1920 and 2021.

Okay. In 2020, 2021, correct? In 1920 and then 2021.

Okay. If I may, other questions, I've got some comments.

Money from Bristol, I don't need any more tech things. Money from Bristol basically is about $125 million that we are able to secure from OCTA to do all the Bristol widening. widening the property you know acquisitions the medians the landscaping all of that at the end of the day what occurs is it goes back into OCTA and if it isn't used it just goes away OCTA will use it for something else it's not it doesn't remain with the city of Santa Ana so part of what we

should do is seek to maximize the utilization of that money so that it stays in the city and then we don't have to touch our general fund at all so you know to me this is not do you support the school district or a charter school or a private school I think we support all education within the city you point out Valerie you were correct we are out there when was it Saturday night till after midnight graduating a hundred and ninety-five scholars under the Nicholas

academic center scholarships they're going to go to all sorts of wonderful institutions and hooray wonderful I wish the number continues to grow and the scholarships that have come underneath that program are now about 60 million dollars in a period of 10 years it is phenomenal benefiting exclusively Santa Ana Unified School District students you know should we

somehow find areas to criticize about how could that program be better? No, I think we need to support it and continue to encourage those scholarships and the kids and the benefit, and the benefit that's bringing to this community. And in that sense, when modern day embarks on a major capital campaign,

I know it's in the tens of millions of dollars, it's a huge campaign, And at the end of the day they say we're going to pay for all the off sites, things that often we pay for. Sidewalks, curve cuts, alleys. Often we build something and we end up paying for that out of our capital fund. In this case they're paying for all that except for the portion that's on Bristol Street. And if this can qualify for monies from Bristol Street, I say what's wrong with that? It's money that if we don't utilize, we're not going to receive. Same thing as what's happening right now with a streetcar project. I hope we can start that project soon.

That's going to bring about $300 million to the city. And I'll tell you, if we don't use it all, it'll go back to OCTA. It won't stay in the city of Santa Ana. So whenever we get monies from any of these projects, we should optimize it within the rules. what i would move is that you know we adopt on motion give staff direction not to use a set from any city dollar i.e our capital improvement project you know measuring two money that can go to any other city street sb1 money that can go to any other city street only money that's restricted

to be used only for improvements along bristol street and if that money isn't there then that money isn't there and we don't have it but but if it if it does exist let's optimize money that's already come to the city so so that um that would be my motion and and then again the off-site stuff i know our uh you know principal from modern day today pat murphy said you know we will pay for it we being modern day will pay for things that are not right along that portion of bristol such as the alleyways and you know the the the you know the curve cuts and things that are going to protect

that neighborhood i believe from modern day because modern day is a busy school with lots of people they come they watch basketball games they have tournaments wonderful wonderful activities but there's a neighborhood right next to them now that neighborhood is going to be a happier neighborhood because it's going to be you know protected so if there's a second to the motion yes counselor Vince Sarmiento thank you

mr. mayor and I just would like to speak to the to the agenda item before we we continue on with them with the voting so I appreciate everything that everybody said both in favor and against. I think it gives us all a moment to pause. For me, I'm a product of Santa Unified and public schools, not only K through 12, but beyond college and undergrad as well, and law school. But I have my kids in a secular school and that's a choice I make because I know that that's something

that I believe they needed some faith in their life, they needed some structure, they needed a spirituality that wasn't provided to them, and I think that's a good environment for them, but that's any parent's choice. So one thing I don't expect, though, is the city that that school is in to augment any of the cost of operating. That's something that I believe those parents that send their kids to that campus have to absorb. That's why you make that decision. You don't do it because you expect a subsidy from local government, county, or state.

My concern is that to the extent that there are transportation authority dollars out there for the issues and the capital improvements that Mater Dei is seeking, to the extent that they otherwise couldn't be used anyplace else. In other words, if we have some issue that we have, let's say, Warner and Bristol, somewhere within that phase that that money is eligible for, that's where I guess I would have some concern. But if it was something that is going to be cost neutral to us, is not going to affect us, then that's something I would consider.

But that, I'm not sure if our staff or anybody can fully explain and be crystal clear on. So I don't know, Mr. City Manager, if you feel comfortable making that statement that this is a cost-neutral funding source that we couldn't use someplace else. And then if it's only available and the campus sought this independent of any other monies that we could access.

Well, at this time, I was reviewing the memo that OCTA sent over to our mayor. And they had about four options that they listed and then a fifth one that they didn't number. The fifth one was the M2 turn back, which staff has just identified does not qualify because of the guidelines that prohibit us from

supplanting funding that would otherwise come from a developer for developer related project. The presentation that staff just gave shows that we have a gap in the actual project that fronts this school. So right now we're short about $5.1 million currently. And so any funding that we would get, any funding from the sale of remnant parcels, for example, which yes, you could direct us to say the first $482,000 that we get from the sale of parcels could be used for this.

But the fact is that staff was planning to use it to try to backfill that $5.1 million gap that they have for this particular project. They were telling me that the program is underfunded as it is right now. We're coming to the end of the available funding that we've been using to leverage, like the mayor suggested, the staff has been leveraging that initial seed money for competitive grants in order to be able to do more work than the $125 million would originally have funded. So what the staff report has is a list of projects that are programmed into the future

that we could defer, you know, it's a policy call, you could defer a project that's already highlighted.

So the short answer, these monies couldn't exclusively be used only for this. They could be used to augment or fill gaps and address other issues that we have along the Bristol corridor. That's correct. The Bristol corridor has funding gaps. Okay. So, you know, I think what was said before, the city and this, you know, councils before have been very supportive of helping the school district with land and property and other ways.

And I think the city has been helpful to modern day as well in relaxing some zoning and trying to make sure that land use efforts have been made to make sure that there is some cost reduction, you know, on their end. So I think we've helped both the private schools, secular schools, and public schools. To the extent, Mr. Mayor, you can find, I mean, you're the representative from the council on the transportation authority, if there's some way you can come back with some assurance that a funding source exists that we can't use. I can't really be supportive because I believe, and I think this was your original comment to me,

was that you were going to go back and talk to the director, the general manager, and see if there is some way that you can make this happen without, you know, with it being a cost-neutral effort.

If I may, then I want to go, Council Member Solario. Several things have happened which are making this much easier. One is Mater Dei has agreed to cover a portion of the cost straight out of their pocket, a portion that's really on public land where, you know, public cars are going to drive and, you know, where there's going to be a common alley, things that normally, you know, we would pay for if we're building somewhere, something in the city, a street, a sidewalk, etc. They're paying for that. The other thing is that originally the scope basically said they're going to tear up the entire street

and do like an eight-inch reconstruct, which is very expensive. guess what that part of the street's in pretty good shape we can do a an overlay for a portion of the cost so so now the dollars that we're talking about are not in the millions of dollars it's now in the hundreds of thousands of dollars so just good engineering and moral analysis it resulted in very significant savings which i think is is is is a win-win and what i believe

is that you know bristol has a lot of different phases to it it's got you know different portions of the street and as we fund it we come in we bring in money we do the scope we we implement it we do the contracts and all that and then there's constant adjusting because sometimes you may have bought a piece of property that you then sell to the private sector for example within a sector and so that brings money back in so you know what i would recommend and say is let's work

with octa i believe we can do this in this portion i know the city manager is talking about a gap I'm told that there's gaps but there's also surpluses some surpluses I've heard of are as high as nine million dollars does that mean that at the end they were gonna have a ton of money left over no because we're trying to maximize these dollars we're trying to spend the money make the street as beautiful as possible bringing the best possible landscaping where we can have a linear park you know we're really pushing the envelope here and what I mean by that is no other city is getting this kind of money.

We got a ton of money to widen Bristol. No other city in Orange County has anything like that. At the end of the day, we're buying property, and a lot of it's just open space at the end of the day. It's just landscaping. It's just palm trees. It's sycamore trees. It's really making a more beautiful street, a more beautiful city. So if I could have a motion or a second to my original motion, I'd be happy to restate it.

I'll second it and then I have a few questions. Thank you, go ahead. I think we're here in some ways similar to the Godina situation too where in this case, as in that case, there's an older agreement where commitments were made and it's time to re-look at it. I think because of city staff's work, modern day's work, we've reduced the amount required. I think as most folks know, I'm a public school parent and I'm very, very proud of that. Both my boys have been going through Santa Ana Unified Schools and it's fantastic.

And as Council Member Villegas said, we can't differentiate our kids based on what type of school they go to. We ought to support all our children. And if we have strong, good schools, we ought to help them grow and keep them here. I know too at modern day there's been talks about are they kids from Santa Ana or not. Approximately 450 of their students are from Santa Ana every year. And a lot of them receive full tuition or big parts tuition and they're on a substantial campus and they're successful.

And I think that's important.

You know, we obviously have a lot of needs in our city. You know, we have private schools. We have public schools, many of them. You know, we have San Unified, which is our strongest and best partner. But because in my ward, we represent a lot of folks on the west end of town, northeast of town, as an example, you know, between Orange Unified, Garden Grove Unified, and Test Unified. But we have 6,000 kids in Santa Ana that go to these other public schools, mainly in Garden Grove. And we have to partner more with them as well. And where I'm heading with this is, I think the direction we're going to is,

these are improvements that are public goods on public streets with public dollars from OCTA. and I would like to as we move forward look at proposals that Santa Ana Unified may have for you know our public streets that other school districts as well I know back to Godina's there's been talked to about another lane on Fairview to help with the traffic in and out of the school and again that's successful school we have to help it grow and keep it there so we have to be open to partnering and we always can't give everybody everything they want but when and where we can we

ought to be able to help i used to work at octa myself and i think what i see that this discussion being is we're not going to use city dollars we're going to make and direct our staff to find the best pitch and the best match to try to fund the improvements that we're talking about as well as ultimately a separate agreement is going to come in the future on the actual source of the money and that's also going to give us more time to continue to fine-tune the proposal. So I'm supportive really just to give direction to staff to find the best matching dollars, OCTA dollars,

and then come back in the future with a more fine-tuned proposal. Thank you.

Council Member Villegas.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Real quick, so the motion is that if there's money left over from the Bristol project, correct?

Correct.

Is there any money left over from the Bristol project, Mr. City Manager?

that you see?

Not at the moment, Councilman.

Okay, so if we have a vote, we're voting for nothing then. If we vote on this, we're voting for no funds. We're voting for nothing because there's no funds.

Right now we've got a deficit in that project.

That's what we've got to find out exactly. And another thing, as we talk about this and they bring up fifth and rate, which is the area I frequent, I could still, if I close my eyes, I could still feel my car bumping from the road that we should be repairing over there. And 1100 Garnsey, when I was out there on the parade out there in that area, and I said, hey, if we can get a flyer out to those folks out there, because they said, hey, what about the street right here? And I remember going in the procession and the car still bumping like this,

because they, and I wanted the flyer to go out so people would understand that the repairs, The street repairs in the city go in phases. And I wanted to at least let them know that at this time or at this future date, your street's going to be repaired. So I have a bit of a problem with this because our city's streets need to be repaired. And I also want to help here because I understand we have a parking issue over there. But then again, we have parking issues everywhere. So if we can look into if there's funds or not. And how do we do that? It's going to take some time.

You know, and on that point, I think too, part of what happened is we did get that memo from the OCTA CEO, and he knows about, you know, the use of the dollars, and we got it late. So I think, you know, we're still analyzing it. So staff has some thoughts about what's usable or not. OCTA has some thoughts, and we just need more time to have them, you know, figure out and sync it.

Right now, I mean, the staff did get a chance to analyze it. That's why we sent it out today. There wasn't any new information. But what I wanted to point out, though, is that on the list of streets that we offered up that are programmed right now, that you could defer one of them, I just wanted to point out to Council Member Villegas and others who have mentioned rate, I just looked at the list for fiscal year 1819 and 1920 and 2021. Rate is the first list on there. So right now it's programmed.

from McFadden to Civic Center to- But those are not the OCTA dollars though, so that's not really the motion that's unrelated.

It's not Bristol Street money. Right. Right. For Bristol right now, for Bristol we have a gap according to this presentation.

Let's try to wrap up. Council Member Tinajero please. So first and foremost I think Council Member Villegas brings up a solid point. I do want to express the fact that we have three San An Unified School Board members here, and it's almost 11 o'clock at night. We have Dr. Alfonso Jimenez. We have President Valeria Alvarez. Did I say Jimenez? Jeez, it's getting late. Sorry about that, Dr. Alfonso. And then we've got John Palacio, who wants to be called doctor but hasn't finished. But the reason why I point that out is I don't think any of us have ever been at a school board meeting this late,

and partly because I don't think anything has meant this much. So as Mater Dei comes before us asking for this type of money, understand that there are a lot of people watching that there's an ask, okay? Okay, and understand that it's not just residents who come to council meetings consistently and always get involved. These are people that are, I mean, social media is blowing up on this one as well. So here's, I like to compromise.

And it's been hard for me to compromise on this, but Councilman Villegas brought something up that made me kind of think about it. How about if we vote down the supplementary motion and we give a different motion that says that we direct staff to go and find dollars. And if dollars are found, then we can take a vote on that versus doing it this way.

Councilman Aviles? Mayor, I just wanted to clarify the motion. What I understood is that the motion was for staff to work with OCTA to be able to identify if there are funds that are not allocated elsewhere to go towards these projects. If there are no funds there, then there are no funds there. Correct. That's my motion. So with that, it's pretty clear to me, again, if the funds are there, they'll be identified. If they're there, you do it. If they're not there, you don't.

So that's with that.

I can see that.

So we have a motion and a second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed? No. Okay, motion carries 4-2. So with that, let's go on to the next item. Madam City Clerk, is that, do we have speakers on that item? Mr. Mayor, can you do me, well, can you accommodate a request from Councilman Tienajedo and myself?

Councilman Tidajero is about to leave, and there's an 85 matter that he and I have.

All right, let's take that up before he leaves.

I believe that's 85B as in void. All right, let's go on 85B. Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This is simply to request that we draft a letter in support of, is it AB? It's getting a little bit late. I believe it's AB 2943. and that is a bill that would consider the sale or selling of services constituting conversion therapy as an unlawful business practice, and that's circulating in the Assembly right now. I believe that tonight's motion would simply make it before the Senate. Correct, Mr. Garcia?

I believe that's where that is. I think it's already gone through the House. I'm not sure if it's...

What is the P85? That is correct, we'll have a vote this Thursday. So any action we would need to make today to get that up to the board.

Okay, and basically what the bill is doing is that there's services out there that are trying to sell efforts to try to convert young people who are LGBTQ and convert them and sell these services. and so there's this bill that's out there saying that this is an unlawful practice.

Correct. So this would be a prohibition of those types of services.

Go ahead. I'll make a motion to approve. Second.

Comment?

Commissioner Millevez?

So I was trying to look up information on the bill,

and it's just a little unclear to me.

I was watching some of the comment and I didn't hear anything about teens being addressed. I did hear about people choosing to go get therapy and if there's a financial transaction. So if you go see a therapist, you've got these feelings that you're concerned about your sexuality, whether you embrace it or not. And I'm totally respectful of people's choice, But I don't understand the law very clear on, you know, it's pretty creative how they wrote it, saying that, you know, it's an unlawful practice. You know, that's like trying us to outlaw palm reading or fortune telling or something.

So, because, I don't know, I'm just not comfortable with it. Is there a legal analysis or can we request one for Mike or else I'll abstain?

And I think Councilman Soloria will probably speak to this a little bit more, him being in the Assembly. But there is a legislative analysis that goes with any bill that's circulating through the House or the Senate, the Assembly or the Senate. So those are available. But basically what it is is that these conversion therapies have been out there as consulting services trying to convince folks that people, whether they're young, and young people have been targeted for some of these, targeting parents who have children who are LGBTQ. and basically saying that that is a choice.

And so these conversion therapies are made to try to change a person's sexual interest, right, or a sexual orientation. And that's something that a lot of folks, and I believe, is a very offensive thing, because folks who are LGBTQ are born that way. It's not a choice. This isn't something that you decide one day, I'm going to have this, I'm going to change my orientation. and so the conversion therapy is a philosophical perspective.

But there was testimony of people who have gone to therapy and are now living a traditional lifestyle, and they went there to testify on it, and so, I mean, it was their right to go and seek therapy. I don't know how we tell somebody not to go seek a counselor or something to that effect. I mean, it's written a little broad, no? Right.

Well, it is, and I think if you speak to parents who have children

I have LGBT in my family and relatives and friends, so I'm supportive. It's just when you make a law to try to ban somebody from doing something or on religious, people have religious views too. Suppose they want to go and see.

So, Council Member, I think you're free to not support. We wanted to bring this before the council because many of our constituents wanted to have us consider this bill because it's an important thing for them because they saw that a lot of families were being preyed upon by these consulting services. And I think that's why this bill was introduced.

I don't have any knowledge of that, but I'm very supportive of the community, of everyone, of all communities. And I also respect people's right to go seek help if they want it. and so I'll abstain because I don't know enough about this. Understood. That's your choice.

And I just wanted to, I think Councilmember Sarmiento and myself, we both met a young man, well he was in his late 20s by now, and what happens is it's mostly with young kids because the parents still dictate what you're going to do. In other words, if a parent wants to take you to counseling, they're going to take you to counseling. So this young man was diagnosed with having too many women as role models in his life. So I think it was, what is it, like six years? He was not allowed to talk to his mom and sisters.

So they're not licensed, per se, and that's why it's something that you just have to take a look at because, unfortunately, for some of our kids, that is a very high level of suicide. There's a high level of suicide rate. particularly in our community sometimes it's just very difficult for a male individual to accept the fact that their kids might be same-sex oriented and so it's just trying to you know find a way to doesn't prohibit people who are you know older to go and seek this out but it's just it's really trying to protect

the young the young folks that don't have that opportunity to be vocal or to

house all right so we have a motion a second correct those in favor please say aye aye aye opposed motion one abstention motion carries uh let's go on uh councilman i think you have to take off so uh thank you for being with us and let's uh go on to where were we now madam city uh 65c

okay this it's a what city manager requested we put on the agenda I suggest we continue it and I'll give this more thought it's a big issue and do council members feel otherwise or would you like that it's the half I mean the one cent sales tax I believe there isn't any

time sensitivity to this is there two weeks I'll say two weeks we have a

motion in a second I believe Sarmiento and Benavides those in favor please say aye aye the opposed motion carries and really as a council we need to give this a lot of thought very quickly because if we're gonna do it we give a thought if If we not, we need to give a thought.

So now we need an airport representative to the Trans Station, I mean, appoint a representative to the Trans Station Corridor Agency.

I'll move the item. It indicates Mayor Pro Tem Martinez being recommended.

Okay, is there a second? Who were you recommending? Mayor Pro Tem Martinez.

Okay, I'll second that.

I thought I heard Sarmiento, so I was going to oppose.

you're going to oppose me oh i'm supportive as well but has she accepted yeah okay she told me

earlier she has excellent thank you and i'm and she'll attend and she's not here to say she won't no no but earlier she said yes so anyways those in favor please say aye aye those opposed motion Gary 65E, I would entertain, well here we have to appoint particular folks.

Why would we have to appoint if there's already two members on that committee?

Is that the discretion of the council? You can have two to three members and you currently have two members on the public safety committee.

I mean, let's think about that one. Let's move the second part of that. I mean, let's see if there's some interest and we can always bring that back.

Councilman Benavides, do you want to speak to this?

I just ask for the appointment. I motion to move 65B2.

All right. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed. Congratulations. You're now in the Economic Development and Infrastructure Technology Committee.

Thanks.

Hey, you wanted it, right? You wanted it. All right, 65F. I would entertain a motion. So moved. Second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, the motion carries. Haven't we been trying to do this for some time? We have. There's no opposition. We're getting closer. We waited them out. It's quite late. This is annexing a portion of unincorporated land. It's actually on 17th Street, right there next to Tustin Avenue and right by the 55 Freeway. I don't know if you know what I'm talking about.

If you drive around that part of town, all of a sudden it looks like it's not as well kept up as the rest of the city there.

And there's actually two prospective tenants that are ready to move in, which is In-N-Out, Burger, and Chick-fil-A. So they're ready to go.

I mean, I won't have to drive as far at night when I'm taking my daughter to In-N-Out. So anyways, although now she drives, it's a new day. 65G I would entertain a motion it's just a receiving file so moved just a quick question

for staff do we have I know we have an update here with regard to the general plan it's been several years that we've been trying to get the general plan updated it's been sort of a start stop I'm just curious in the next fiscal year what our plan is and when we anticipate that we would have been able to complete the general plan update itself.

Are we allocating funds within the next year? I know we put money in, and it's been a back and forth, and it's a very important document that's grossly outdated, and I believe hinders potential advancement in economic development in town. So to respond to your question, yes, we work with the City Manager's Office to put funding in this budget year so that we can proceed with completing the general plan. Our estimated completion date will be early 2020 to complete the general plan update. We're starting to, we have substantial work completed already.

We're moving towards the next step, which is formulating the policies and the vision. we'll come back to city council periodically to check in and work with the council on moving and adopting the general plan as well as certifying the eir okay all right great well that's good that there's that we're getting closer it's been a number of years uh and clearly it's on here as regular update because this is has been deemed important by the council and has requested that anything that you need from us to be able to help expedite support, prioritize Madison Oaks I think would be interested in being supported and helpful with that.

I remember here when I was public works director and interim city manager Kevin O'Rourke had surplus of $2.5 million and he moved it for that effort. So shortly after that I left and so I was surprised that it wasn't completed. But it is a top priority for us to get. In fact we're funding it with some one-time monies in this proposed budget. Great. We'll have to fund it the following year for another effort, and then we should be done. Okay, great. That's the case. Thank you.

So with that, those in favor, please say aye. Aye. The opposed motion carries. Are we on 85A, is it? And that's Mayor Pro Tem Martinez. May we continue it until she comes back? Is there a motion to continue?

Continuance. All right. Two weeks.

Two weeks continuance on that. work study session, that's another item that I think is very close to her heart. So I would entertain a motion to continue that for two weeks. So moved.

Second.

Those in favor, please say aye. Now we're on to the housing authority meeting. I'm going to call it order and entertain a motion on item number one.

Can I also request an excused absence for Council Member Tina Harrow and Mayor Pro Tem Martinez?

although he won't vote for me on that right

all right but let's be the bigger person i'll move it those in favor please say aye aye aye those opposed motion carries so now we're on uh item uh i believe it's city manager brief comments from the city manager it says keep this very brief mr mayor uh just want to put out Another public comment?

May I have some speakers? There's another public comment, Miguel?

Okay. Oh, yes, non-agenda public comment. Here. Jose Hernandez.

Followed by Leticia Hernandez.

I think you met Jesus Hernandez.

And later, next is Jesus Hernandez. We got the whole Hernandez family.

Come on down.

And then Ted Moreno wants to address this.

We'll leave him for last so we can close strong. Go ahead, please.

Okay. Good evening, Mayor Pulido and Council. My name is Jesus Hernandez. I've been on the board of San Antonio Memorial Park Little League for about four years now. In that time, our fields and park have deteriorated to a very poor condition. I've prepared these packs. I'll hand to the clerk, and I ask that you please take a look at them so that you see our fields and the very poor condition that they are in. You will see photos of fields that are muddy and flooding. Please note that that's not from a rainy night. That's from broken sprinklers that run all night, and they've been like that all year. They have not been fixed.

We have fields on the outfields, holes. There's a tripping hazard. It could be twisted ankles. There's holes on the infield. On those muddy fields, we resulted to laying rubber mats down just so kids can come in and out of the dugout. With funds being cut, it seems like every year there's less and less maintenance going on to the park. with further cuts. I don't know what less can be done maintenance-wise to our fields. You'll see how ugly they are, but my concern is safety, safety for our children, our players in the community.

Again, if there's mud, that's a slip hazard. That's twisted ankles. This season alone we had so many injuries just from the lips. That's where the infield meets the grass. Balls bouncing up and hitting our kids in the face. The only thing budget cuts and removing more field maintenance is going to do is increase risk on the field, increase injuries, the severity of injuries, just add more liability to our park. I don't think that it's kind of fair. I know I've gone to other fields for other organizations. Pony Baseball, for example, their fields are very well maintained.

They're a lot prettier. Their lights, all their lights are working. Our lights, if there's also a picture of that in here, half the bulbs are probably missing. I'm wondering how many more bulbs go out before we can hold night games. Even with all the lights on, it's pretty dimly lit. Some of our mounds are literally halfway gone. I invite anyone to take a walk with us in the park. I'm confident in saying you guys would not want any of your children playing at our park.

first of all thank you for coming down waiting this long to give us this message normally I tell you go talk to Gerardo but now he's gonna be moved on but

Jorge if you can meet with him and and our city manager Godinez if you could oversee it we want to make sure we're responsive to you thank you for coming down thank you did you get a good look at him corner over here no he's standing in the back he's trying to get away don't don't let him get away okay thank you

Dale did I call your name up earlier because if I did and I didn't see you Leticia Hernandez come on down and then Dale you're gonna get an award too for being that in the over after the 11 o'clock club please go ahead good evening

my name is Leticia Hernandez I'm the president at Santa Ana Memorial Park Little League and I just wanted to everything has been said you know we both agree we've been meeting with Parks and Rec with Rudy with everyone and pretty much I feel that they've done everything they can in their power it's just not in their budget to help us so we wanted to see who else can help us because it seems Parks and Rec has their their hands pretty tied up they they don't have the money to help us anymore so that's our frustration

Got it. Thank you. And Mr. Mayor, that park is, I believe, in my ward and Mayor Pro Tems. I think we share that space. So why don't we, if you can, Julie, coordinate with us and we'll see what we can do to help.

Thanks for that, Council Member Sotomayor. Dale, you're here. And then Patty Mays, I believe, is also here to speak.

Good evening, Mayor and the remaining Council Members. Thomas talked earlier today, a couple hours ago, about the appropriateness of the Madison down at Cabrillo. I agree with that. I also agree with the 1,900 units that are going in at Main Place Mall. There's also some other projects going in. The 182 units at City Place, right on Lawson Way, that's already been occupied. the 247 unit project that's going in at Main Place Mall in addition to the other 1900. The Town and Country project, all of those are appropriate use of the land.

The common denominator for all of those is they're not next to single family homes. There's another project going in, the Metro East Mixed Use Overlay project down on First Street. That project in itself is kind of amazing because it's 552 units and it's going to have 80 dwelling units per acre on it. The one that we're concerned about, 2525 Main Street, 84 dwelling units per acre. It's even higher than any other project going in in Santa Ana. It's amazing and it's right next to single family homes. That's why we're opposed to it.

within the last two weeks I heard that some council members don't have time to read the emails that are being sent to them so what I've done is I provided a brief discussion last meeting about the 17 special development projects that are going on or have gone on in Santa Ana over the last 25 30 years here's a copy of those that I'd like to have distributed.

In all of those projects, none of them have even a dwelling unit per acre occupancy rate, even half of what is being proposed at 2525. So again, take a look at it. You've got a copy of it now. If you want a color copy, look at your email. Thank you. Thank you very much.

patty okay so my name is patty sigmund mays i've lived in park santiago for 30 years i've been here before i've sent you guys emails i totally support everything that dale just says 2525 is the wrong project for that parcel of land we my kids grew up in that neighborhood my grandkids. We love that park. You know, I want other young families that are moving into that neighborhood to stay in the neighborhood. But I see four sales signs going up in our neighborhood and I'd like to see that stopped. And I think that this is just not the right plan. We have a historic

neighborhood. It's right there in the corner. I invite you to go look at it if you haven't been by there. It's already so backed up on Main Street with people coming to get on that five freeway. Everybody from Orange, now we have all those new developments going in, coming down Main Street, if you get on there at a certain time of the day, in the morning, you'll be three traffic signals before you can even turn on Edgewood to get into Park Santiago. So what will it be like when 2525 is occupied? So please, please, please do not support this project.

Do not change the zoning that that developer feels like it's a done deal. And I don't know why he feels like it's a done deal.

Thank you, Patty. We hear you. And thanks for coming down and speaking. And now like at Disneyland when they have the grand finale, we have Ted Moreno.

You're the last speaker, Ted.

Yeah, this is like the night fireworks at Disneyland, right? Yeah, yeah.

Close out the night. You saved the best for the last, but he comes accompanied.

I come accompanied. I never thought I'd be out here speaking again before the council. My name is Ted Moreno. I'm the vice president for the PTSO at Godinas High School and the government liaison. This is Lisa Tran, which is the president for the PTSO, which is pretty much what would be like the PTA, and also Lynn. I don't know if you want to be referred to as Lario.

we just we're coming up here to give a little bit of clarity this issue on 85c the joint use was not brought before you by the school district it was actually brought to you because of us as the parents we're the one that initiated for this to come before to try to amend the joint use because I was as was brought up earlier by the speaker. Our kids have a problem when it comes to athletics. There's no pool. There's not a decent football or soccer field out there for our kids to use and also tennis courts. And everything that kept coming back was we can't do anything because of the joint use project.

We lobbied the school district and the school district's attitude is we're not going to put any money out there if we can't control the property. And in order for us to be able to improve that park for the for the 2,000 students that we represent as the PTSO we need your assistance we need your help to try to amend that agreement in order to improve the park and that's the whole reason why this even came before you we would hope that you guys would diligently actually look at the issue specifically I know that right now it's dealing with the buildings but ultimately I'm hoping you guys would at least deal with the issue of also the

land use portion where it's either going back to the federal government and amending the way that the deed is written in order to allow the school district to be able to have those enhancements where they're not asking the city to put any money. Their willingness seems like to put the money to make those improvements but they need your help to to address the issue for the future use for those kids. So that's why I just wanted to come up here and give a little bit of that clarity that way you don't think that it's something that the

school district was trying to to do well let me thank you for that number one but number two any thoughts as to the public side of it in other words when we gave that land to the school district we said no walls let's do it so that during the day the district can use it the kids but in the evenings or on weekends make it available to the general public do you envision something let's just say let's say we were able to do a pool where maybe that pool in the summer schools out community doesn't have a pool in that area that it could be used in the summer

something like that would happen I mean it ultimately it's the school district that would have to make that decision but I could see that during summertime yeah that the community could use that pool and also the tennis courts the The soccer field, I mean, the football field, that's a little bit more touchy because it's a lot of money. Mary likes tennis.

Oh, no. Tennis weekend. Tennis courts.

They could be available to the public. I mean, they are in some of the other high schools. You know, they're available for tournaments.

If you take an aerial look at Godinas compared to all the other high schools in Santa Ana, they have a beautiful football turf field, and Godinas is the only one that doesn't. If you've ever gone out there, it's dangerous because it's like running on a trail. Like if you're doing a trail run, that's how uneven.

I don't want to debate it with you. Go to the committee. I'm just saying think of the city side and how do we benefit the general public after hours. I think it's been a beautiful partnership, and maybe we can find another middle ground to where you get control of the land, but we get access for the community after hours.

And ultimately, but they still want to be, at least from a parent's point of view, we would like to see the school, you know, fenced off. Because it's not the same way when that joint use was initially put in. The park seems like it's a little bit more, it's not as safe as it was when it was first implemented.

Well, we need to make it safer. Correct. Look, my kids go to OSHA, no fences. And I think that's a good thing. They're in the downtown, and there's homeless, there's everything. I think it's a good thing to be open as much as we can. But thanks for coming down.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor and City Council members.

Alright, with that, I think other than Council comments, Council Member Vince, or Ms. City Manager, something real brief? I know you were going to start earlier.

I'll keep it very brief, Mr. Mayor. Just wanted to let you know that the depot at Santiago has a grand opening June 14th from 1130 to 1.

Roosevelt Walker, it's a facility that having a ribbon cutting on Monday, June 25th at 5 PM. This is another collaboration between Santa Ana Unified School District and the City of Santa Ana to create a 10,000 square foot community center. And then finally, we're getting a bunch of calls, not a bunch, we're getting a few calls on a water rate pass rate. I just wanted to let the council know that this is simply an increase due to the retailers that provide us water, which is MWD and the Orange County Municipal Water District. Each raised the rates about 3%, and that's why we're passing it on in case you get any calls.

And that's all I have, Mr. Mayor.

All right, any council comments? Councilor Vance-Armiento.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. and I just wanted to remind everybody I hope everybody went out and voted tonight today I voted by mail a couple of weeks ago so let's hope that we're moving in that direction but the polls closed I know they did but I'm just saying I hope they did vote I see you have your sticker on so that's good I know your

previous election so I'm not sure I see mr. Cortez in the audience I just wanted

to briefly give him an opportunity to speak but but i'll go ahead and kind of summarize what happened so i went to the board of supervisors meeting earlier today and addressed an issue that was before them which was the three-year extension on the mental health association site that's in south maine we've received hundreds of calls for service for problems that residents and business owners have identified that have emanated from that site so i thought it was important that the board consider those concerns that we've received before they decided to renew a three-year contract there unfortunately chairman doe was very very hostile

towards our staff that went before him I went before him and had some very disparaging remarks to make about our presence there and why we were there I had left by this time but mr. Cortez advised me that he said that this was a political ploy this was just an election pre-election effort to try to politicize the issue look I don't know anybody who's running against chairman go do or anybody else on that board so I don't know how it became political but I simply wanted to share with him the two the concerns that were in the letters that were drafted and submitted to the Board of Supervisors both yesterday and

on May 21st when they first had this matter before them. So, you know, I tried to appeal that basically just the fact that you had many constituents, hundreds of constituents that have been calling us and asking us for some relief. And all we wanted, not really to shut them down, but for them to hold off on renewing that three-year lease extension until they sat with us and discussed how we can cure those problems. So basically what they do it's a low barrier intake facility it's an outpatient service and those services are sorely needed it's the only facility in the entire county

which we absorb in our city so we thought we could receive some consideration from them given all that that we've done to that for them to go ahead and work with us but basically they let folks out at about four o'clock which is very close to the time that Monroe Elementary Esqueda and Cesar Chavez who are right around there let their kids out as well so we've had a lot of issues folks there need to be monitored a little closer so they disregarded all that and decided to go ahead and renew in any event so what I was hoping staff could do is update the community because they've been very

active in trying to call attention to that issue to us and the board and these are constituents that we both mutually represent the board disregarded our comments and my comments and said that they went out and took a look at that site this morning at 5 15 a.m. with judge Carter and they didn't see anything well I said well at 5 15 that's not really when the problem is the problem is is when folks are released and and are leaving the facility so to the extent that we can do something to update our residents, update our business stakeholders to know that we were present. We've been trying to be sort of the bigger party in this

and try to help and facilitate some changes there. The board was very unreceptive to our request and was very hostile to our presence there. So that's unfortunate for the chairman to take that position. He represents this district, And I think he disregarded many of our residents who I think were in good faith trying to compel him to address a problem that's been longstanding. Thank you.

Thank you for that. Councilman Jose Solorio. Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. A couple things. First, we received a report from the staff that our staff team working with Assemblymember Tom Daly secured $5 million from the state for two Santa Ana projects. water meter project advanced metering four million dollars for that and then one million dollars for the sewer infrastructure improvement at 17th intestine so very very timely so that is good I also want to follow up on what councilmember Sarmiento was mentioning regarding MHA and I've seen that that's

been a problem for a long time and it's only getting worse and I think that we have so many documented calls for service that I think it's time for us to consider filing a public nuisance charge against them as a way to stop those activities I just don't think it's mitigatable if that's a word anymore I think that's just a bad location bad operation and the county now wants to extend the hours and that's only going to make it worse and we got children nearby we've got a lot of sensitive uses they claim on paper they have a good neighbor policy

but if you look up and down the street not not a lot of love coming out of that policy and the number and the type of complaints from the businesses and others it's substantial and so we really gotta keep keep going and i appreciate councilmember sarmiento going before the board of supervisors to let them know that we have a real concern with it. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Villegas, please. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Briefly, I just want to thank

Chief Valentin and the officers that attended the Orange County Peace Officer Memorial event at the Orange County Sheriff's Academy. It was great. We also had the officers there representing the following officers that are in the history here in Santa Ana. I think it's like three or four. And a very good event. It was done very nice, and it was great to see the chief there and all of our officers. And that's all I have, Mr. Mayor. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Vanavides, please.

Thank you, Mayor. I just want to reiterate just appreciation to staff for all the hard work around putting together all the information for the budget. Point here at this thick notebook here of all the information that we'll continue to sort through. And look forward to just some of the updates and conversations as we continue to revisit budget prior to the next meeting. and you know the city there's a lot of positive things taking place in the city from recognition that we had today throughout this meeting and this last weekend Saturday first weekend of the month first Saturday of the month the

art walk and it's just a fun time just to walk around the downtown it was that life salsa and lessons and then dancing taking place over it's the Spurgeon Street promenade Bish along Bush Street between Bush and Main the alleyway they're a Callejón del Beso it's called in kind of a lot of local artists displaying some of their work Second Street Promenade a lot of the restaurants a lot of activity and the neat thing is just that they're coming together of cultures of people from both within Santana and from outside of the outside of town highlighting again the arts and culture that the the

architecture in our town so just a lot going on that's positive in our city I just want to highlight that and just encourage, one, the community to benefit and take advantage of all the wonderful things taking place here. And for us as a city, it's to have to continue to support all that's taking place there. With that, I want to encourage folks who shop in Santana, support local business, local jobs. Have a good night.

Thank you for that. I just have to give the city's condolences to the families of Luis Verduso and Alan Dobie. um louise uh became ill in december of last year and he passed away recently on may 26 of this year he's a valued member of our water resource team he worked uh uh here for the last 10 years he's going to be sorely missed and he survived by his wife and three young daughters so our condolences go out to him or to his family and then also very recently last

Saturday Alan Dobie who was here in the Parks and Rec's department many years ago before her Ardo and others came in Alan was a real character and for some of us that had a chance to know him he was bigger than life I remember one time Alan decided I'd come on the City Council he's going to show me all the city parks here in the city and we got in the car we drove around and there was three of them that he couldn't find and you know because some are small in there he just couldn't find them and he got really upset and i finally we did find him but i remember that tour and and and and and alan's

personality you know he he was a real real character um you know he i i think worked at Compton as a reserve police officer before he came here as a park ranger and then we when he took over that parks and recs he was just you know big charismatic guy and real active and had ideas and projects and all this energy uh he was african-american he you know was you know you know had a lot of lively humor and all that and then more recently i saw him a lot because he was part of church i go to often which is the church of the messiah and just to give you a little other

insight on on on on alan you can see just by his funeral services where they've scheduled prayers and visitation uh in los angeles at the angeles funeral home on crenshaw where i know he had a a lot of connections then they're coming here for his life and legacy on saturday june 9th at noon at the Church of the Messiah, but then in Grand Allen Dobie style, he's going to be interred in Goochland, Virginia, at the County Line Bassett Cemetery on County Line Road. And only Allen would be this, you know, so much variety in his life.

He, again, I know, you know, Ron, you're sitting back there in the last row. You got to work with him a long time. Very nice man. very nice man so our condolences to his family and and you know he leaves a big legacy and he was just a pleasure to be around so with that this meeting is adjourned

Thank you.

Thank you.