Read the May 1 meeting.

If you can all please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Is Steven Mesa here? Stephanie? Stephanie Mesa, please come forward and lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council members, and members of the public. My name is Stephanie Mesa. At this time, I would like to invite you to join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. Please rise and place your right hand over your heart. I pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you very much. Now I see Bob Barnett, our police chaplain. If you could please step forward and give us our invocation.

Lord God, we begin this evening by inviting your presence to be here. We're always grateful that, Lord, we can trust that your wisdom will be displayed by those gathered here. We ask a blessing upon our city council members that you would give them keen insight in the decisions they have to make. We're thankful, Lord, for the public servants that are represented here as well. And ask a blessing upon them. and this night also, Lord, bless those that are going to be honored tonight for their service to this community. Thank you for our city. In the name of the Lord, amen. Amen.

You may be seated.

I believe our first presentation is going to be by Council Member David Benavides, followed by Council Member Sarmiento, and afterwards, Council Member Solario.

Good evening, community members. I want to thank you for your patience as we had an extended closed session. Today, here we're recognizing the month of May as Mental Health Awareness Month. And there are a lot of people out in our community that, in one way or another, struggle with mental health. And my family alone, there are a few family members that deal with various developmental disabilities, a nephew that struggles with autism, and I think one of the key things that is

important is for us to work toward removing a stigma around around issues of mental health. Oftentimes we, particularly right now as we struggle with issues of homelessness throughout our community, sometimes we might see issues of mental health at perhaps an extreme and allow for certain stigmas to be perpetuated but I think it's very important for us to as a community recognize that it's one is that there are challenges and illnesses people struggle with and that we need to we can't dismiss but rather engage and and work toward helping people and and coming alongside people

rather than stigmatizing and isolating people so today within the city of Santa Ana as we're taking the step of recognizing May as mental health awareness we're asking that as a community we do our very best to erase the stigma of mental health conditions may has been recognized as mental health awareness month since 1949 each year millions of Americans face the reality of living with a mental illness the fight against the stigma of mental illness continues each year by way of providing support educating the public and advocating for policies that support people with mental illness and their families.

One in five Americans is affected by mental health conditions. The stigma of mental illness is toxic to those who suffer with mental health conditions because it creates an environment of shame, fear, and silence that prevents many from seeking treatment. This perception of mental illness will not change unless we act to change it. That's precisely what the action here tonight is, is to be able to, as a city, recognize this as an issue and take a step, again, toward removing stigma and letting people know that, again, as a community, we want to work with them, support them,

and encourage people to receive that type of support. And standing here to my right is somebody that you all might recognize. It's a very familiar face and a friend to our community, personal friend and a former council member, former colleague here and serving here to the city of Santa Ana, community leader, works with our youth to an extensive levels and he's also here today in the capacity as outreach engagement senior specialist with the Orange County Child Abuse Prevention Center so he will be receiving today's proclamation but before I present the proclamation I'd like to ask former councilman Reyna if you'd like to share

a couple words. I'm not used to public speaking but I'll try. No just keep it definitely short and when we start talking about mental health it really does talk about the stigma that associated with this and in my belief because we're human beings we all come up short we're all a little bit broken a little bit differently than each other myself i'm dyslexic i have a learning disorder and it all leads back to mental health issues if you have children bullying is what a humongous mental health issue child abuse domestic violence there's so much wrong going on in the in the community and a lot of it has to do with the stigma that's

associated with mental health. Please help us and share that. It's okay if you have challenges and issues. It's okay to seek out assistance and help. That is called the process of learning and growing, and that is how we start to achieve a better place, a better wellness for individuals. So I encourage everyone to go out there and support mental health awareness, which is every May, and I want to thank you for your time.

Thank you, Councilman. So this presentation on behalf of the City of Santa Ana as a proclamation recognizing Mental Health Awareness Month. Whereas mental health contributes to one's overall health, it helps sustain an individual's thought processes, relationships, productivity, and the ability to adapt to change or face adversity. And whereas mental health, mental illness adversely affects those abilities and often is a life-threatening in nature. I'll jump to the last comment here. therefore we as a mayor and city council of the city of Santana do hereby recognize the month of May as Mental Health Awareness Month and urge all

residents to increase awareness and understanding of mental health by taking the steps to protect their overall health. Thank you for what you do out in the community, Roman. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Congratulations and Councilman Sarmiento.

Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, and thank you, Councilman, for bringing that important matter before us. So May's not only about mental health awareness, but it's also Water Awareness Month as well, and this is Drinking Water Week, so May is full of different things that we should be aware of, and I wanted to talk a little bit about water and water is so precious to all of us but it's also very important to the city council I'm a director at the Orange County Water District representing the San Ana City Council and Madam Mayor Pro Tem is our representative to the Metropolitan Water

District so as we know we have a lot of issues that we've been facing these past few years we had a drought that lasted four years long and unfortunately this last year wasn't a very good one and I see our waters are Nabeel Sabah shaking his head so you know we are very

important and interested in making sure that we make folks out in the community aware that you know we have to continue conserving water we have to continue making all of us realize that it's a precious resource and that we're trying very very hard to make sure that we all are aware that we live in a desert, right? And it's a very arid place and we don't have control over our hydrology. And so months like May, where we're able to focus in on this, is very important for us to just deliver that message in a way that we can, you know, share with our youth, share with our families

how important it is for us to be very, you know, concerned about water conservancy as well. So May is recognized as Water Awareness Month and we are interested in increasing the knowledge that we face about water supplies, droughts, water saving efforts every day and this, as I said, is the first full week of May which we're celebrating Drinking Water Week and as you know the water in Santa Ana has for the last couple of years competed very well as the best tasting drinking water in the Berkeley Springs competition. So we put our water up against anybody and we've come out on top,

I think, two consecutive years now. So that's a good thing. Water is very important to human health, economic vitality, the environmental quality of our state. And as we know, the water fluctuates, the sources fluctuate with the hydrology and the needs that we have in our community. Water professionals and communities they serve join together to recognize the vital role water plays in our daily lives. And I have with me here Dennis Bilodeau, who's the president of the Orange County Water District. He's my colleague on that board, but he also is a former councilman from the City of Orange,

and he's also chief of staff to Supervisor Sean Nelson across the street at the Board of Supervisors. Aside from that, Dennis presides over, or I should say President Bilodeau, because we're in a formal setting, presides over the Water District, and we have a function over there and we have a project over there called the groundwater replenishment system so if those of you who haven't gone out and visited really should I invite you out there to see it's an award-winning internationally recognized project it's the largest water recycling system in the world we recycle about a hundred million gallons of water a day and we

just celebrated our 10th year anniversary and President Bilodeau presided over that ceremony and we were also inducted in the Guinness Book of World Records for recycling the most amount of water in a 24-hour period, I believe. So we're going through our final expansion and I believe once we're done with this third and final expansion at the GWRS, we'll be generating about 130 million gallons a day. So that is a lot of precious water and resources for a county and an area that desperately needs reliable drinking water. So So that's a great thing to have in our community. Sometimes those of us who live here aren't aware of it,

but we have people visiting us from all over the world just to study our system and see what we do to address these water problems that we have. So today, the City of Santa Ana recognizes the month of May as Water Awareness Month and May 2nd through May 8th as Drinking Water Week. And we ask all of you to do your part, continue doing your part in conservation and be responsible users of the valuable resource that we have here as water. And we invited President Bilodeau to accept on behalf of not only the Orange County Water District, but a community that places a very high priority on this precious resource.

And President Bilodeau, why don't you go ahead and give us a few words of wisdom, let us know what we're doing over at the Water District, and just go ahead and just share some information with us. The floor is yours, sir.

Thank you very much, Councilman. I'll be brief. I'm pleased to be here this evening. Santa Ana is actually our second largest groundwater producer that we have. And I'm pleased to tell you that two weeks ago we took action to raise the amount of water that could be pumped from the aquifer from 75% to 77%. 7%, and that will help to stabilize water rates and keep water plentiful and affordable for Santa Ana residents. And actually, that increase was a direct result of the advocacy of Councilman Sarmiento. I can sincerely tell you that. I look around the room.

I've been on the water board for 18 years. I've been very fortunate. I got on just after my 18th birthday, of course. And I look around the room, and I see a lot of former colleagues. I've actually served with Councilman Solario. The mayor has actually served with me on the Orange County Water District. I see Councilman Reyna. And actually I served with Councilmembers Franklin and Lutz in my formative years at the Water District. And I will tell you that our water basin is in very good shape. last year when we had a lot of rainfall we took the initiative to buy as much

water as we could from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and and we're thankful to Councilwoman Martinez for selling us about a hundred and sixty thousand acre feet of water and we were able to to replenish our basin not to not to completely full but we made great headway and through that we were able to actually raise the amount of water that can be pumped this next year. So we're keeping our fingers crossed for more rain from Mother Nature and that would be a significant help to all of us. And on behalf of the Orange County Water District, thank you very much.

So I didn't realize we're actually going to be presenting President Billideau with a proclamation that you can proudly put in your office and display from a grateful community because I guess what we didn't explain is that the mission that the Orange County Water District has is to manage and operate the groundwater that we had, the groundwater basin. So it's a really unique basin that we're on that many communities don't have the benefit of. So we can draw from that basin, and we have to make sure that it's fully replenished and that we're not overcharging and that we're responsible with managing this resource

that one day could be dry if it wasn't managed well, and then we wouldn't have that resource to use. So it's an incredibly important responsibility. We take our roles very seriously, all of us who served on it that President Bill O'Hill mentioned. I think you've outlived all of us. So, you know, you named a lot of people who were formerly there and you're still there. So that's a good thing because I know you've directed this board very well under your leadership and we've done some great things under your tenure. So let me present this proclamation recognizing Water Awareness Month and Drinking Water Week to President Bilodeau.

There's a lot of whereases, but just let me recite the last one. Whereas to ensure the continued success in quality drinking water, every resident can do their part by protecting our source waters from pollution, supporting the upkeep of our drinking water infrastructure, practicing water conservation, and getting involved in local water issues. We therefore, this mayor and council, proclaim this Water Awareness Week and Drinking Water Week to President Bilodeau on behalf of the City of Santa Ana. Thank you all very much. Continue conserving, continue what we're doing. We're probably one of the best communities at conserving water,

so we do take that responsibility seriously. Thank you so much. Big round of applause for President Bilodeau.

Thank you. Councilman Tolorio.

Thank you. You know, I'm always proud when I think of the many great leaders we have in our community. And what a great leader does is it helps other people rise. And so today I'm really honored to recognize Monica Garcia, who's an officer of the Consulate of Mexico based here in Santa Ana. It's with great honor that I recognize Monica, who has motivated so many people in our community within the very broad Mexican consulate network, which includes a lot of folks here in Santa Ana, but really throughout the county and beyond.

And she has a real talent and it's a special one and that's to inspire others to realize their dream. And that dream is often of starting a business, building a business, and helping others. Our partners in the Mexican Consulate recognize Monica's skills right away and utilize them to have her facilitate leadership awareness training workshops for hundreds of Mexican nationals that reside here in Orange County. She has, in fact, devoted now more than 20 years of her life. She started young, like the rest of us.

She's devoted 20 years of her life to providing professional development and leadership training to Orange County residents. Our community has received everlasting impacts through her hard work and dedication, and she continues to pay it forward each time. And I know now many of the people that she's helped are helping others move forward. The city of Santa Ana is very proud of recognizing Monica, and we do so in collaboration with the Mexican Consulate, the Orange County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Orange County Small Business Development Center for the outstanding service she has shared.

and in fact 60 have already started their own business because of the efforts of Monica Robles. So it's with a big heart and a lot of gratitude that on behalf of the Mayor and City Council we recognize you. Gracias por todo.

Thank you very much. It is a privilege to be able to educate, motivate, and empower the leadership skills of our Latin community. It has been known through the last two years that there is a lot of people with a lot of skills, that they didn't have where to go, and they found the consulate and the people that were willing to volunteer to bring those talents up to life.

And I do appreciate Consul Asolario to present this recognition for me, but it honestly is because of the trust that I have received through our community and through everything we have done to support them. So thank you so much to all of them.

Thank you.

And I was going to say she spoke great English, but I know her Spanish would even be beautiful as well. So, in both languages, you speak beautifully and you do a lot of great things for our community. Gracias por todo. Gracias.

Thank you, Councilman Salote, and congratulations to all our awardees. Next, we're going to do the closed session report. Madam City Attorney, do you have anything to report out of the closed session meeting?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. We do have a few reportable items. In the first case of the Santa Ana Police Officers Association versus the city, the city council agreed to a settlement of $350,000 by a 6-0 vote. with Council Member Sarmiento abstaining as he had come in later to that discussion. Also in the case of Rush v. the City of Santa Ana and its related case involving Mayor Polito, the City Council has declined to pay attorney's fees in this case by a vote of 4-1. Mayor Polito abstained due to the potential conflict and Tina Harrow was absent. Council Member Villegas voted no.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

And that is all the reportable action that I have this evening.

Thank you, Madam City Clerk. We're now going to be moving to the public comment. This is the time and place for the public to address the City Council on consent calendar items and regular business items. We have a couple of speakers on non-agenda items. I'm going to ask for Dale Helvick, if he can please join me, followed by Cesar Medina on 20B and Francine Harris on 20B.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Councilmembers. Just wanted to start off by saying thank you to Sergeant Blake of the Police Department. He's put in a lot of effort in working with the Park Santiago cleanup. He has a group of people that have assisted us in park cleanups that have been regularly scheduled every month. and he's also gone above and beyond by continuing that even though the neighbors aren't organized. He's been working tirelessly to help us out.

Unfortunately, over the last three nights, we've had two home invasion robberies while people were sleeping in their houses. One is a young family. They have a four-year-old and a one-year-old. People broke into the house. No harm was done to the residents, but it just scares people to death that this is happening. So we have a neighborhood watch group. They've been advertising make sure you're vigilant and doing the due diligence of locking up your property and everything, but it's not enough right now, so hopefully that will get under control as well.

The other thing I want to talk about, of course, is the 2525 main residential development. Last week I attended the Historical Resource Commission meeting, and during that meeting they were going to talk about a resolution to oppose 2525. Prior to that occurring, there was a request, a recommendation from the legal counsel to have that item pulled from the agenda. It was pulled from the agenda. It was unfortunate that they couldn't proceed with that resolution.

And just kind of curious as to who really controls the agendas and public comments that were looked at for that line item. So hopefully they can resolve the issues because they did have essentially approval from a previous meeting to talk about the thing. The legal counsel, planning department, both agreed that certain bullet points could be addressed on it, but yet it was pulled. So hopefully it will get back on the agenda at the next meeting. Thank you.

Thank you, and I believe we have our next speaker. Didn't you already call out? Mayor Pro Tem. Cesar Medina on 20B.

Good evening, Alcalde Pulido, miembro del Consejo del Consul. My name is Cesar Medina and I am a member of the Santana Senior Center, the Advisory Board. And we have come here to thank you for the approval for the FENSI and the Banho as part of a strategy to improve the level of life of the residents of Santana. Porque en Santana, porque en Santana se puede vivir mejor. Gracias.

Thank you.

My name is Francine Harrison. I'm the chairperson for the Santa Ana Senior Advisory Board. And I'm here to thank the mayor and all the council for helping us to get this fence. That we haven't waited too long. We just thank God for the fence and the restroom. And I'd like to applause each and every one of you for standing by us seniors. and because that senior center there is historic. And we thank you for helping us to get this fence, and the seniors would like to give you a hand clap, and God bless you. Thank you.

Thank you all for coming down.

Michael Ovalla followed by Francine. That was Francine so Michael. Hi thank you it's Ovalle.

Appreciate the time I just wanted to I'm Park San Diego Chair for the Park San Diego Neighborhood Association and I wanted to voice my objection to the 25-25 projects I'm speaking for myself and for the neighborhood. I think you've heard most of the spiel already so I'll keep that short. Go ahead. Go ahead. Well besides the traffic and the issues that it's going to bring to our neighborhood what I really want to speak about tonight on top of that was the homeless issues and the and the parks. So Sergeant Blake has been doing a great job. Our Councilman Jose here

came to our last park cleanup. Thank you very much. It was great. I'm glad you had the opportunity to see that. We've been doing it every two months for about a year now and we basically haul out dumpsters full of trash and lots of needles and we'd appreciate it if you keep the needle exchange out of Santa Ana as much as possible because it's not helping anybody and more security in the park Sergeant Blake with the horses I know they stepped up patrol I was personally threatened taking a picture of a homeless encampment Friday morning. So I was submitting it to Colt, basically chased out of the park.

I live six houses from the park, so I had to walk several blocks away from my house, so I didn't have several homeless people following back to my house.

So that being said, I would appreciate everything you can do to pick up

or give more attention to our park, to the north side, to the riverbed. all the way through to the Santa Ana River Trail. And, you know, if the 25-25 project happens, we're going to have three years of construction there at least, and it's going to be just the haven for homeless people and more crime. And right now our neighborhood isn't safe. So thank you very much. Thank you.

With that, let me bring attention back to the council. Did we already ask city attorney to report out?

Yes.

We did? Okay. So now let's go to the consent calendar. We've had three speakers already. Any items council members want to pull?

Mr. Mayor, I'll be abstaining on 11A.

11A. I will abstain as well on that item for previously mentioned reasons.

Just for reference, just wanting to make reference, I'm going to know on 22A, 25C, and 25D.

Can we note that for the record, please, Madam Clerk? I would entertain a motion on the balance, if there is. Go ahead, Council Member Vos.

I'd like to make, to pull 17A and 20B.

17A and 20B, I'd entertain a motion on the balance.

Is there a second?

Second.

Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye, the opposed motion carries. Let's go on to 17A.

Thank you, Mayor. So this is just a simple item, track map approval for 42 new homes coming into Ward 4 down by Sigurdjian High School. So I'm moving the item. Just wanted to inquire from staff as to, I believe this might be, it's 42 new homes. I believe it's a gated community.

And I've addressed that question before, but I want to get a better understanding from staff.

on the potential consideration of holding back on gated communities within the city. When you get out into more suburban areas, suburban cities such as Irvine, everywhere you go, it's gated community. There's, I think, in my opinion, there's more of a separation. There's less community, if you were, less sense of community, more separation when you have closed and closed gated communities more projects that are being proposed now within the city are coming with these these uh uh with these gated communities i think that it should be something that we should discuss before uh we see them more uh

proliferated throughout the city and uh and it gives again less sense of in my opinion less sense of a community and more more of a again sense of separation so what would be the forum the place to be able to have that type of conversation is my question. City Manager, perhaps as a follow-up, you can, either yourself or Planning, I imagine, could bring that before us.

I'd have to follow up with our Planning staff to try to figure out what the mechanism would be. Perfect.

Okay, that's just my note, and if you can do some of that follow-up, just as a point of conversation as we go forward with planning and projects within the city. I know we've seen this project before and, again, quality project, but I thought I'd bring that forward for future consideration and conversation. With that, I'm moving the item.

Is there a second? Second. Those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. Do you have 20B?

20B, yes. So here, and we did have some of our leaders and seniors come and address us. I'll be moving the item as well. But I do have a question for staff. Since we are fencing, I looked in the, there wasn't any design. And so I'm just curious as to, we want to make sure that the area is protected, but at the same time that it still continues to be a park and be inviting. So I don't know if we have a design yet. Yes, good question.

So it's very much in concert with the historical wrought iron fence on Minter House, which is right east, directly east of the park. So it's a continuation of that same design that the historical Minter House has. So the whole idea is not only for it to be functional for safety purposes in closing the park, but also to honor the legacy of the historical park. So yes, there was a design incorporated in the whole bid process with regards to the type of fence that we wanted. If you can just, I'd be curious just to have council get a chance to take a look at it. Sure.

Just again, want to make sure that there's protective at the same time. It continues to be an inviting space. Yes. I know there was at one point a project that the district did where there was iron fencing, but there was spikes that were kind of facing out towards the community. I remember that was, yeah. Very inviting, so I'm sure we address it. Yes, I know that case. Yes, I remember. We'll definitely make sure that you get a picture of it. Okay, excellent. With that, just moving the item.

I think it's a good project.

Move that.

All right, we have two seconds. those in favor please say aye aye those opposed motion carries now madam clerk we're gonna go to the business calendar 58 Dave Hohen you want to talk to us please come on down sir about 58

Dave Hohen, long-time resident of Santa Ana. Thank you for having me, Council. First of all, I wanted to congratulate all of you on voting unanimously to support the lawsuit against all the other cities to bring the county together in trying to get a solution to the serious problem that faces our county and especially our city. Secondly, I wanted to say I go downtown a lot. Darren and I probably go down there way too much, but we see a lot of panhandling going on and see a lot of crazy stuff.

We're used to it, so we know who's safe and who's not safe. but yet there's a lot of new people that go into our downtown who don't know who's safe and who isn't safe. And so I think it's important that we put some teeth to this measure that allows the police to use discretion and enforce this panhandling ordinance. I kind of think of them as, remember back in grade school when we had the lunch money bullies that used to come around and demand money out of you before you could pass?

That's kind of what's happening downtown a lot of times. So I hope we get rid of the lunch money bullies and encourage you to vote unanimously on this. Thank you.

Thank you, Dave. With that, I'd like to entertain a motion.

So moved.

Those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Those approved, motion carries.

55A, this is a grant from the Orange County Transportation Authority.

So moved. Second.

Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries unanimously. 60A, this is our annual block grant program, and I was talking to Mayor Pro Temamona ago, and she suggested a two-week continuance. Continuance?

Yes, I'll second that.

And 60B as well. So if that's the case, let's entertain that.

Council Member Solario? Yeah, just one, I'm fine with this direction, but I just want to, again, request that staff on the Summer Lights Program, that we work at least with the sites that we might want to be at so we can reserve those sites. I worry that just us delaying this so much will maybe hurt that a little bit. So aside from this, if staff can kind of work on that program in advance so we don't lose sight that we may want to use. Thank you.

Yes, council member. There's actually one site that's being funded here, and that's a site around El Salvador Park. So staff is already working to make sure that we're ramped up and ready to-Excellent, excellent. That's what I want to make sure. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, so we have, I believe, a motion. Laquan, do you want to say something? Go ahead, please.

We'll also add, if we could take a look at the Second Chance Orange County under number 68.

Just for the record. All right.

And I support that motion. Second Chance is to help provide homeless with jobs. We definitely have an issue with littering throughout our city, and so it would be a perfect opportunity. and I think many of us on the council have been asking if we can possibly figure out a way to look at an organization that would be able to help the city to help hire some homeless to actually get them jobs so that they can go out there in particular, making sure that they can go out there in our community with certain littering that we have throughout the city with the increase of the unsheltered homeless in our city.

All right, so we have a motion to second to continue both 68 and 60B for two weeks, I believe.

Mayor, we'll also have to continue public hearing A, which is related to the CDBG.

All right, let's add that to the motion, if that's okay with the maker and the seconder.

Mr. Mayor, just on that point, I don't know if there was a lot of folks that came here just to speak for the public hearing. Okay, so then we don't inconvenience too many people. So that's okay. Thank you.

And if we do inconvenience him, we'll tell him that it was Councilman Solario's idea.

I'm kidding you. I'm kidding you, Jose. I'm kidding you. We have a motion of the second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. So now what item are we on, Madam Clerk?

We have 60C, and we have some speakers for 60C.

I think right now the council's pretty happy with 60 CN.

Entertain a motion to approve?

Would like to approve it. We have a motion to second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. We have some speakers here. If you want to talk us out of it, come on up. If you like with what we just did, just go have a great dinner and say the city council got us to go home. early so you just I think you just all got what you wanted so congratulations to you thank you

Thank you. motion approved second those in favor please say aye aye those opposed motion

carries I believe on

we might miss that guy too then they're asking me to skip 75 b for a moment so let's go on to how about 80 a for for now can we do that

let me entertain this is a joint session of the city council and the housing authority so let uh let's take on item 80a approve a request uh for consent by jamboree housing corporation to acquire limited partners interest for cornerstone apartments is there a motion on that item

Motion to approve.

Mayor, which? 60, it's 88. Item 88. It's a joint housing authority, city council agenda. Okay, okay. I do have a comment back on 60. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye.

We need a second.

I thought we had a Jose and Juan. We had a motion and a second. I motion. Got it. You did? Yes. but we had a second over here I thought. Jose.

I'll second the motion. All right.

The clerk can second it. Okay. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, the motion carries unanimously.

Now let's,

on 6th Eve, I wanted to record a no on that one. That's, I was actually reading some of my notes and we went fairly quickly. All right. can you please record a no vote if i can if i can just go ahead and make go ahead so part of the the staff report includes and this is part of this is a one project on east first street where again the the uh the the applicant uh has it's been a changing story the applicant initially came and presented to us that they were going to develop some projects

or developed a project of multifamily that would be affordable, that would be completely funded, privately funded, then later presented that they were going to be requesting some funds from the city. And in fact, Exhibit 5 in the staff report is a letter that the city drafted. That's page 39 on that item. It's a letter from the city to the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee correcting some information that the applicant had submitted,

indicating that the city of Santana had committed a $5 million contribution to this project, and the city had to send a letter to correct that misinformation that had been provided, misrepresentation there. So there's just a lot of concern that I think we should have around this project and the misinformation that's been provided. So my concern is that moving forward, I know that the vote has been cast. my concern is that if we support this now does this potentially obligate us to

support the project in the future and then allocate some funds toward this and so for those reasons I

don't think we should. Mayor for a time it's suggesting me we reconsider the item but let's right now just speak more and hear it out. I would request staff to be able to address that point. Why don't we do that, and then, Councillor Sarmiento, would you want to speak?

I was just going to suggest that the mayor pro tem is correct. Again, we are bouncing around so quickly, I didn't even know that this issue is...

So may we reconsider it, vote a two-week continuance, or what do you want?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

We didn't know that you moved with this item so quickly. Got it. Reconsider the vote.

So we need a motion to reconsider.

Reconsider, yeah, the vote. I'll second.

Okay, those in favor, say aye. Aye. aye okay but we're reconsidering so but wait a minute you request something of staff councilman

ben avi yes if staff can can come and address us this is my my question is that it's being recommended by staff however there there is reason here from what i'm able to see in the staff report that there have been some misrepresentations and inconsistencies uh so i would like staff whether it be housing or I'm not sure if it's planning or community development agency staff to be able to address this. I see that our...

Right. Council Member Benavides, if I may, until my housing staff comes up, you're very correct in representing the fact that we had concerns about the misrepresentations. We had concerns about the misrepresentations, So I directed my staff to go on record and state that we have not made any financial commitments to this project. As to why this is coming forward is because right now the city's density bonus does not have much discretion. If the application meets the standards, then they're entitled to get this bonus. It's one of the things that I actually have had a discussion with a couple members of council,

of maybe wanting to reconsider how we award those density bonuses and maybe revisit the criteria. But that, in a nutshell, is how we ended up here. But we have clarified that the misrepresentation of financial commitment by the city was incorrect, and we made that directly to the agency involved.

Any background, Mr. Brown, you can provide with regard to how we learned about this representation of this commitment on part of the city and why we were compelled to write to the tax credit entity? Yes, of course. Thank you very much, Council Member Benavides. When a developer submits an application to the tax credit allocation committee, the local jurisdiction is asked to review that project's application in something called a local reviewing agency project evaluation form.

And so as a part of our due diligence in reviewing the developer's application, we fill out a standard form, evaluation form, and submit that back to the tax credit allocation committee. And as part of our due diligence, we discovered that the developer had indicated that the city will commit $5 million to the financing for their project. And so we communicated to the tax credit allocation committee that that was not correct. I recall that was one of the points that we discussed when we last heard this project, when they were actually looking to apply for tax credits, that we were not committing any funds at that point.

So it just makes this quite peculiar to me that they still submitted that representation. So the staff is recommending this. So can you speak a bit to that? City Manager mentioned that the density bonus, the way that we currently, that currently our policy is set up is such that we, I don't know, staff feels like they automatically have to recommend the density bonus. How does that come about? Well, the financing for the project is different from the density bonus agreement. Right, but what we're hearing tonight is a density bonus issue.

So my question is, why is staff recommending this density bonus? What do we have currently policy on the books that makes it so that this recommendation is coming forward? Okay, of course. So per our municipal code, a density bonus agreement does require city council approval. This density bonus agreement before you applies the state's density bonus law, and then it applies an additional 35% density bonus provided by our city's housing opportunity ordinance.

So as such, the project was entitled in September, but it still requires a density bonus agreement to be fully approved to move forward to develop. And so as per our municipal code, staff is recommending the density bonus agreement for this project to proceed forward. Thank you. Yes.

However, I want to just... Go ahead. to add if there's enough concern by council we can hold this over and have a little bit more review

on this item i think that'd probably be best and maybe quite a bit more review um would you suggest a 30-day uh holdover or how long would you need mr mr mayor is the applicant here that they can

address this this issue or not uh maybe a staff is moving forward i mean i do i do hear one concern but I think what staff is recommending for this item are really some small items with respect to setback and other items they're not any major

items that we're really offering and you know when we're hungry for affordable housing and with the homelessness crisis it would be nice to move this forward particularly this is for homeless seniors as councilmember Viegas mentioned so and i think too from an entitlement standpoint it's pretty far long isn't it

uh comment from mayor pro tem and then councilman sarmiento thank you i just have a quick question

and so 418 units of affordable senior community housing we i guess the question that i would have based on the san an and need um you know because most of our seniors and i asked this question earlier to our staff currently live you know with their parents with their siblings here in this community and so i guess what senior population are we housing are we housing the santa ana senior population are we housing the county's senior population and again you know our land is very precious as we're trying to address the affordable housing crisis situation the homeless crisis

situation. We need to make sure that if we're going to be supporting certain developments that specifically one like this, when we're asking for 418 units of senior housing, when we already have over 6,000 units of senior housing here in the city, you know, I would like to see the actual figures of the senior population in the city of Santa Ana and the need, not the need for the county, because I will tell you that as we look at the various senior housing stock now many of these residents were not from Santa Ana came here because we provided

the senior housing and so we need to be very thoughtful about how we move forward as it pertains to our you know development here in this city as we have

these other crises all right well I think comes on Sarmiento and then I'll

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And, yeah, I guess my concern is that we also don't want to delay this unnecessarily if there's a timeline or maybe some sort of milestone that they need to hit if this is going to cause some delay there. But I guess going back to the point that Mayor Pro Tem raised, you know, I remember this project was brought before us as a tandem project. There was another larger project that was about maybe 600 or 700 units as well as this. They were both on First Street. So I remember them being brought together.

And I remember us discussing parking issues, discussing a lot of other impacts that we had. But I remember it was presented to us initially as a majority of those units were going to be senior housing and a minority of those units were going to be family housing. And I remember we referred to that very point that the need here in our community is for family housing. So I think those numbers were supposed to be inverted, so maybe there's a second project that's in the queue. That's the second half of this tandem proposal that was submitted to us.

So what worries me is that let's just say, for whatever reason, that second project doesn't get approved, doesn't move forward. Now we have 418 units of senior housing exclusively. And what happens there is that, you know, if you look at what our need is, I think our need for senior housing is 7%, which is very low. Most of our need right now is for multifamily housing, two- and three-bedroom units, and I see that the configuration of the units proposed is very small. So, you know, I don't know how much we bind ourselves, whether this is a perfunctory step.

and you know later on when we talk about financing commitments that the city is going to make on on on behalf of the project maybe that will delay it or or rescind our obligation but I'm just worried about creating expectations and and again being bound to something that we're doing here tonight so can you

speak to that yes thank you councilmember Sarmiento it was originally our plan to bring the density bonus agreements for all three parts of this project collectively together. On May 14th, the Planning Commission is going to be considering the first point apartments one and first point apartments two, which are the other components of this entire collective project. but the developer did request this density bonus agreement to be expedited

but it was originally our intent to bring all three density bonus agreements back to City Council together.

Again, is there a reason why this one's being accelerated before the other two?

Well, what I have from the developer is that the May 1st City Council meeting is the only meeting remaining before we have to close with Citibank to preserve the bonds and rate lock. And there's no scenario where they would close without our density bonus. They are standing by ready to do our rate lock this coming Wednesday as soon as we have an improved density bonus agreement. And then we must close on or before May 31st in keeping with our debt and equity commitment letters. so it has to do with their private equity financing.

And I also recall that there was a financing proposal by the developer that they were going to use future in-lieu funds for the next 10 years or so and it was going to drain, not drain, but it was going to access those funds so in essence we wouldn't be able to build any additional housing from that in-lieu fund any affordable housing from that in-lieu fund as a result of that commitment and obligation that we have Has that financing proposal changed?

So that is a part of the item that is presented to you tonight in regards to the developer's request that they submitted on September 28th for project subsidy equal to 70% of the city's annual affordable housing in lieu fees collected from developers. the the request was not approved by the city and so that that that request was

again that was not approved so we don't know what the financing or what the alternative financing proposal is as a result of that not being adopted or

approved by this council no at this time we don't know how they intend how the developer plans to finance this project well that's a concern yeah I think it's Mr. Mayor, there's far too many concerns. There's been verbal misinformation or misrepresentation. Now they've been documented misrepresentation. There's a lot of questions and doubts. I'm going to make a motion that we deny this item 60E. Okay, there's a motion to deny this item.

You know, I almost think that maybe we should give the applicants, And since they're not here, an opportunity to come before us and maybe explain what the... Continue at 30 days and reconsider at that. Why don't we continue 15? Let's continue it to the next council meeting just to get some... So it's a substitute motion, and I respect Council Member Benavidez's position because I do think it's presented... Well, so far, it hasn't gotten a second. It hasn't gotten a second, so... And you can withdraw it. Why don't you go for your two weeks? So I'll request a two-week continuance.

With the information that I requested? Correct.

All the questions everybody asked. I'll second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed motion carries.

Madam City Clerk, what item next?

If we have work study session number one, an update on the mobile vending.

what I would suggest in the interest of time maybe let's dispense with that and have staff go into the second study session which is the budget I believe is there any opposition to that Sal you okay with that we're in study session and what I'm suggesting is dispense with the first one and go into the second one which is the budget and there were

perhaps this is some of the same question up you have clarification have we have we taken up 60 D as a date they asked us not to we have some consultant

actually former director acting director who's on his way here he should be here about eight o'clock and then we're also asking for a short delay on the public hearing B, the ward reboundary item, also waiting for the consultant to make his way in. And if they don't

make it, then we're going to adjourn the meeting, and they'll have to come the next time. Alright, let's go. Study session on the budget, please. Who's got that? Miss City Manager. Yes, Mr. Mayor.

Our Finance Director will be making most of the presentation with help from our Deputy City Manager, and I'll be happy to kick it off.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Try that again. Yes, there you go. Mr. Mayor, tonight we're ready to present our third quarter budget update for this fiscal year, and also a trial budget for the next fiscal year, 2018-19, as well as a CIP budget proposed for next year as well.

I'd like to just start with a brief overview. As I've mentioned in the past, we got together as directors, as your EMT, the very first Friday of this year, and we spent half the day focusing on the budget and the other half focusing on the major objectives for this year. When we looked at the budget, we started to figure out how would we approach it this year and we came up with a set of governing principles. Be transparent and honest about the problem. Use a comprehensive approach. Oftentimes we just focus on the general fund. We should look at all the funds.

Establish a vision and develop a budget that promotes long-term sustainability. implementing best practices and a combination of reductions and revenue increases as appropriate. We didn't get in here in this predicament in one year, so we thought we'd embrace a multi-year approach to achieve the financial stability that we need, and it would probably involve focusing on core services and funding those core services. We'd also need to provide a very clear vision and direction from the leadership at the city to make this happen, and last but not least, we'd have to engage in a collaborative approach with all of our stakeholders.

The framework that sort of spawned from this set of governing principles was to prepare a long-term financial forecast and to plan to achieve stability and sustainability over the next few years. Again, focus on funding core services, identifying new ways of delivering city services at a lower cost when appropriate, identify any revenue enhancements, and to engage with key stakeholders. So that's in a nutshell how we decided to approach this year's budget process. Now I want to actually have our Executive Director of Finance provide a background and a budget history.

Thank you, Raul. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Temp and Council Members. I will be providing a historical view in terms of where we were and how we got here in terms of the budget. So I'm going to take you back in history for a second. In December of 2014, we had provided the City Council a general fund forecast where we actually had shown that the city was actually moving in the right direction in terms of our revenues and expenditures. At that time, the city manager decided that given the sacrifices that the city had made as a result of coming out of the recession, that it provided an opportunity to provide employees

with half of the gap, in essence, as well as the community to benefit from the other half of the gap as well. So he did that by implementing a 2.5% increase in 15-16 and 16-17, and that resulted pretty much in the lines for expenditures versus revenues to line up At this time, there were no other assumptions placed into the forecast because there were other elements that were going to be taking effect down the road that were going to be impacting both the expenditure line as well as the revenue line.

So here I kind of highlight it does not include what eventually would happen in terms of revenues is the reduction in terms of the water transfer. as a result of moving graffiti back into the expenditure line that came down the road, the decision to basically get out of the ICE contract. And this is prior to PERS coming to us and basically letting all cities know that they would be increasing our PERS rates in the future.

One of the underlying trends, though, that I did want to point out, that even though we were in a good position, our expenditures were actually growing at a faster rate than our revenues. So as you have revenues, well, as you have expenditures growing at a faster rate, at some point those lines have to cross. And given the pressures that we were experiencing as a result of our expenditure growth and our basically flattening of our revenue line, those lines have crossed. And that's the position we are in today.

So as we moved into 17-18, as the lines crossed, we experienced a $9.3 million budget gap. This budget gap resulted because of the increase in the revenues, I mean increase in the expenditures that we had to experience, which included PERS increases, a 4.8, health increases a 1.3, OCFA coming back to us and indicating that they would take the full value of their 4.5% contract increase of 1.3. And this actually begins the incorporation of the graffiti into the general fund as well. So that popped our expenditure line.

After we adopted the budget, this is a timeline because even after we adopt the budget, there are other decisions that get made during the course of the fiscal year that actually impact the budget. So I kind of just want to highlight that we did do a budget reading in June, and then in July 5th we adopted not only the POA MOU increase, but we also adopted the budget as well. Now in terms of the POA, when it was adopted, that city budget, there were offsets to the POA contract that were in place in order to mitigate the increases. This constituted, for example, that the police employees were going to contribute 3% more

to their contract, that we would cap their health insurance. And this budget actually incorporated a move from a type 2 facility to a holding facility, which eventually we were looking to eliminate approximately or reallocate 12 correctional officers to help offset that. The issue that occurred, though, is that in August we approved the U.S. Marshals contract, which basically, for all intents and purposes, meant that we could not move away from the correctional officers. We needed the correctional officers in order to ramp up for the U.S. Marshals

contract. However, the projected U.S. Marshals contract involved that we were going to receive revenue of approximately another 10.2 million, although it would also increase our expenditure side by 5.9. So there was a positive gain there too, which would help offset some of the MOU increases that later would hit the budget. In addition, we also had homeless pressures, and so on September 19th, we approved the homeless services manager, and then in November, we also approved additional combination building inspectors, 420, but we also had offsetting revenues, so we were fine there.

And then in December, we approved the fine, the balance of all the, the balance of the bargaining groups minus the part-timers, but most of the balance groups were approved by December of 2017. So as a result of this, this actually resulted in our adopted budget moving to what we call now the adjusted budget, and on the revenue side, it increased our revenues to $235. The bulk of that increase, obviously, was the U.S. Marshals contract. So for the most part, our top six revenues are in alignment with our revenue trends which we show in

the green on the chart right now even though you may see sales tax at 54% we get over 40% of our sales tax in the last quarter so we feel that's going to be in alignment our property tax is really booming so we feel confident in terms of our property tax our utility users tax has been has been lagging over the last few years a lot has to do with the cap and trade, the electricity component of it, which has been lagging tremendously. Business license actually is fine. It's been improving. Every year we get additional business licenses. And our hotel visitors tax is, you know, for

the most part will come in, we believe, come in. Now the two areas that we do highlight are the jail revenues and the medical marijuana. Obviously the jail revenues is a big

highlight for us because with the U.S. Marshals and the ramping up, we may fall slightly short here. Currently, we were projecting 10.2. We think possibly that we may hit 8 or 9 million, so just slightly short but nothing major. But you have to realize at the same time, they haven't ramped up all their expenditures either, so there should be some offset there.

in terms of our expenditures most of our departments are going to probably hit right on target in terms of their allocated budgets as you see here you know we're supposed to be at about 73% in terms of our overall trends at the bottom line we show 73.7 but most of that is really because of the fire department when we initiate the contract we actually make two payments at the beginning of the year, which is kind of pulling that 73.7 and up. We don't make the payment in June, so that will actually even out. But we believe that because of the MOU increases, that most departments are pretty much going to

absorb their entire budgets for the year. So what does that mean for us? So if you recall, we had indicated that we probably need about 9.3 in order to bridge the gap. Right now we're projecting our revenues to hit 232.2 and our expenditures to hit 240. That difference there is 8.1. What I've pulled out is because of the decision in terms of adult use, we believe that the adult use could be a factor in minimizing how much additional one times we would be able to use. So right now we're projected for year-end potentially to hit 6.1. That

would allow us if we could do that that would allow us to use more one times for future budgets like 18-19. Now here we provide the vacancy report in terms of the overall city we distinguish between general fund vacancies and non general fund vacancies if you notice on the last column we actually identified the unfunded positions as a result of what previously was identified as attrition So if you remove that from the 127, we have approximately 70 vacancies. That doesn't mean that they're vacant per se, because there are recruitments that are taking place. So eventually those positions may get filled.

But for the most part, as a result of those vacancies, we've been able to absorb most of the MOU increases that the council has approved.

Now as we move forward to 2018-2019 general fund, we're projecting a budget gap of 17.1. Now in relation to the 17.1, most of these increases are resulting again with PERS, with health increases, with the Orange County fire. and we believe that we've now the city with the city manager we've developed a strategy in order to address the long-term fiscal sustainability of the city and so this is something that we we're going to be looking at to incorporate and you will see a beginnings of that the deputy city

manager Robert Cortez will go a little bit further in terms of the budget pan budget plan later during this presentation but we you will see the elements of the plan in addressing the 17.1 budget gap.

So here are the increases. So if you recall, the base budget for 17-18 was about $240. So if you start adding up all the additional elements that are impacting the budget, for example, the PERS increases of 5.9, the MOU increases now that we have to absorb into the budget of 3.1, additional, obviously, this is the last year for the strategic plan before a renewal. The contract increases for OC fire and care. When we decided to go back into the U.S. Marshals, the time that it was adopted, we only had 10 months. So the 1.2 is a reflection of the final two months that we need to build into the budget.

The workers' comp fund is an area that has been hurting for the last few years. Last year, we adopted a 1% rate increase, and part of the plan was to increase the workers' comp rate by another 1%, so this is a reflection of that. Obviously, we've had health insurance increases of $746,000, and then there's a recommendation to add an additional payroll manager.

So how are we going to address the $17.1 million deficit? So at a high level, what we're looking at, obviously, are some cost reductions, some revenue increases, the use of one-time monies or unallocated fund balance, and some additional one-time revenues in order to get down to a remaining deficit of 2.05. As you recall, when I mentioned earlier, if we can limit the use of the 9.3, and most of that I showed you for 17-18, and right now I was projecting 6.1, we could use a portion of those funds

in order to mitigate the $2.05 million that still remains in this 17.1 deficit.

So getting down to the next layer in terms of what type of ongoing cost reductions are we looking at. So we're looking at obviously departments providing us recommendations in terms of what they could provide in assisting with the budget. They've identified $2.1 million, which I will show to you in a little bit, what those really mean. There's other cost-saving strategies that we want to collaborate with the new human resources director. Then we wanted to actually reduce the strategic plan funding to what's been actually being spent over the last few years. And we think that we can reduce it by $700,000.

And then we're looking to do a PERS prepayment of the safety side of the business, which basically means we're going to fully fund our PERS requirement, two PERS in July, and that would net out for us a $500,000 savings. On the revenue side, the commercial cannabis is still an element that we believe has been a positive factor for the city in terms of addressing not only the city's budget, but as a new revenue that the city can gain upon.

Currently right now on the commercial cannabis side we're only recognizing 2.6 million in the budget But we anticipate that probably being a little bit more but since it's kind of a new game for us It's kind of hard to gauge and then we currently have a user fee study that's ongoing We anticipate that hopefully by fall That we will have completed and implemented the user free study and basically that's a cost recovery component In other words, recovering our costs at 100% across all areas. And then the last element is we actually went out and asked the employees,

what do you guys think in terms of how can the city raise money or other revenues? And they had identified advertising, marketing opportunities, and so we included this. There are some ideas that we need to explore, but we wanted to recognize the employees for at least, you know, providing us some areas that we could look at.

Okay, so in terms of the deeper into what the budget elements that we're looking at mean, so in terms of the police department, the first element is the school crossing guard agreement that we currently have, where there will be, we're seeking a cost-sharing element with the school district, and hopefully we'll be able to achieve that. They also anticipate aromatic contract savings in terms of the food element, in terms of the jail. They're also, they currently think that they can delete five part-time correctional service officers

or the equivalent of two full-time officers. officers. They're looking to delete two correctional record specialists that are currently vacant. In addition, they currently have been providing additional security services on the south side of the police building and currently they don't feel that they need that any longer. In terms of ongoing revenue increases, they're looking to increase their parking related revenue through additional parking control officers and then seek reimbursement from OSHA in terms of their school resource officer that would

be fully funded now on the parks and library what we're looking is to seek alternative funding for the 5k and the Plaza Navidena events now one of the big elements obviously is we're looking to close the library on Sundays that's Right now, the library is only open for four hours on Sunday, and foot traffic is minimal on that day, so that's one area that we're actually looking at. We're hoping to reduce four part-time vacant positions in terms of the summer sports programs, reduce landscape maintenance contract services, and then seek alternative funding for the Catalina trip.

In other words, reduce the trip cost by 50%. Currently right now, to my understanding, we send about 79 participants. So this would actually, at this level, reduce it by half if we can't find alternative funding for the balance.

In terms of planning a building, planning a building that looked at its various line items, and they've identified about 156,000 across all line items related to their contractual services. Another 13,000 reduction in operating materials and supplies. Public Works, we went out, if you recall, the council approved the LED project for streetlights. So there's going to be savings in terms of what we pay for utilities. So they've identified that as a savings component because that activity is actually embedded in their general fund.

And then obviously the miscellaneous departments have all identified line items within their budget that could be reduced in order to address the deficit.

So, on top of not only looking at reducing the budget, we also had to consider elements that were important or additional budget requests that were really going to be included back into the budget. We looked at it two different ways. One, if there was offsetting revenues that we could utilize or that they were cost neutral, those were approved. So for example, the three parking control officers would be offset by the additional revenue that they would bring in through the writing of the tickets. The reallocation of positions really identified where

positions could be more efficient and effective by having a different type of position and the departments would make it work within their budgets. So, for example, we had a litigation assistant move to a paralegal or a senior office assistant move to an executive secretary. These were identified as efficiencies and effective positions for departments. One of the big items that parks had identified was adding more maintenance in terms of restrooms at the various city parks. So the $20,000 was, in essence, to pay for an additional, in order to do maintenance in terms of the restrooms twice a day.

So we decided that was important, so we put it back in. Obviously, the November election is an element that needs to happen, so we identified that component.

We added money back in in order to ensure that planning and billing can continue with their general plan. And one of the biggest items that we're looking to provide a change to is actually moving away from our current salary-based matrix, which was established maybe 50 years ago, and move to a different, basically to modernize our payroll system to a more updated system through an upgrade. So we have identified money for that. One element in order to address funding for the last three items, what we identified as we look through the budget,

one of the areas that we're looking at and we've been working with departments actually for the last year and a half are what we call agency deposits. When developers come in or individuals come in, they sometimes place a deposit and we hold it for them. So they don't necessarily come back or identify those deposits. So what we've done is actually put out a public notice and we've tried to identify all the individuals in terms of these deposits. If they do not come back and claim them, then those deposits would then be borne by the city and we could utilize that.

So right now, we currently have been doing a public notice. We would come back and identify those. And like I said, if nobody comes to claim them, then we would use those monies in order to offset some of these costs.

but we didn't want to even though we've identified those priorities there's still a lot of different priorities that the city still needs to contend with that we've heard at various meetings and basically the council has talked about obviously one of the elements is the quality of life team and homeless funding the need for more youth programming

obviously in terms of our revenues we need to enhance our economic development. We don't want to obviously stop the police officer recruitments. We want to make sure that we maintain our reserve policy funding levels.

Early on at a previous council meeting, we identified all the deferred maintenance, not only of vehicles but of facilities as well. Information technology infrastructure continues to be underfunded, so we've got to make sure we keep that on the table. Currently, we're still undergoing the enterprise fund compliance, and so those are issues we need to address. The workers' compensation is an area that we need to contend with since the workers' comp fund, as a result of outsourcing, primarily because of outsourcing of fire, has really hit us hard in terms of our liability claims.

We will continue to have liability increases over the course of time. A big area that we need to address is obviously the retrofitting of City Hall in terms of its seismic condition. Sartek, which is the entryway for the city and is going to be big as it relates to the streetcar, has to be improved. And ultimately we need to recognize that we will continue to have PERS challenges over the course of time. And so I highlight this here in terms of PERS, what the city is facing long term.

As PERS tries to fund its activities in terms of making sure that the retirees are able to be paid, obviously, long term, and what this means for the city. So as you can tell, the impact of the city over the course of time is going to be increasing every year for a while. And just recently, the PERS announced that they were decreasing their amortization schedule from 30 years to 20 years, which will also increase our rates.

Also, what we wanted to highlight is that we've had community budget meetings. We've actually done five of these at various areas throughout the city. Some of the recurring themes is, you know, the common recurring theme is the need for diversity and youth programs. The youth basically recognize that one shoe doesn't fit everybody, and so they kind of are looking to see what other programs we can provide that could capture the attention of all the youth in Santa Ana. So obviously it's the investment in youth.

They talk a lot about moving funding from public safety to youth, the need for additional parks.

One of the other elements obviously, especially when we go out into the community, is the need for affordable housing and the addition of community programs. And you know, one of the big elements is we always hear, it's really interesting, is the addition, is the need for neighborhood street improvements. That comment continues to pop up. Now the other one of the other one along with the street improvements is our parking issues. They also highlight that and then obviously is the addressing of the homelessness issues but given everything all the activities

been going on that you know we're able to address that. In terms of city budget presentations one of the important things for the current city manager is transparency and he wanted to make sure that all employees and bargaining groups received information as it relates to city's financial position so we've had ten presentations in terms of presenting the budget and the current and the city's current financial position as it relates to PERS so we actually give him an overview in terms of what's happening at PERS in addition to the budget

These, I think, have been very successful. We've had a lot of positive feedback in terms of these presentations.

And then with that, I'm going to now turn it over to the Deputy City Manager, Robert Cortez.

Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and Council Members, good evening.

You overheard our City Manager talk about the importance of transparency in providing information to our city council our community and our employees and that is because as representatives of the city we have a responsibility to provide true and accurate information we are fiscal stewards the city's financial or finances that we receive so one of the things that i need to mention as part of this general fund trend is what we're presenting here today is a base budget it is status quo at this point in time. It does not include any raises, any MOU increases,

and as Francisco highlighted, there's a number of additional priorities and needs that the city still has, such as the 218 assessment that we're going through and the results of that, the need for additional staffing in terms of PD resources, the need for addressing workers' compensation, liability, capital improvement. There's an array of different needs that this organization has. What we're presenting here today is a baseline budget. Any changes that occur during the course of the fiscal year or decisions made by the City Council will then be reflected here on a go-forward basis.

But it's extremely important for me to state that this is a base budget. It is based on status quo.

So, taking a look at the changes in our revenues and expenditures as a result of the decisions that have been made in the past, it's easy to understand why there is potentially some clarity that needs to be provided from a staffing perspective. And that's because in the past years, as Francisco mentioned, the city was in a financial position where revenues exceeded expenditures. And that was primarily because of the recession that we went through. The city of Santa Ana went through a significant cost reduction strategy that ultimately resulted in almost reducing the full-time staffing levels by close to 40%.

It included the outsourcing of the fire. All at the same time while our revenues started to increase. So you had periods of time in which you had revenues that were exceeding expenditures. That allowed the city of Santa Ana to achieve a fund balance that allowed for us to fund our reserve levels, which, according to GFOA and other financial institutions, say that we should maintain anywhere between 16.67% up to 20%.

And it was this city council at the time, based on a decision to approve a fiscal policy that allowed us to generate those fundings and allocate the funding to put us in a much stronger financial footing. So there's a lot of credit to go to the city council for taking those measures in place.

Over a two-year period of time between fiscal year 14, 15, all the way through 16, 17, we saw a dramatic increase in the number of positions that were brought back on board into the city and number of raises that were provided to the employees. Because, like Francisco had mentioned, the city manager at that point in time felt it was extremely important to take some of those gains that we had in those years and provide some of those gains back to the community in terms of programs and services. and also to provide MOU increases and raises to the employees. So the result of those two years,

Santa Ana experienced a 13% increase in its labor cost overall. It's equivalent to about $15.5 million increase in our base budget, which is now a reflection here. So taking a look at fiscal year 16-17, the culmination of new programs and services that the city is offering raises, some other increases that we had, led to the culmination of 16-17 now experiencing a deficit. So last fiscal year, we closed the general fund, which is fund 11, okay, with about just under $400,000 in the negative. Because of that, and those continued trends

and increases in terms of salary and labor and pension and health insurance and workers compensation we're going to continue to see that gradual increase over the course of time and again i do have to mention that this budget that you're or these line items that you're seeing here expenditure and revenue these are based budget they do not include any raises again they do not include any additional increases to the base budget but one of the things that this slide does illustrate is that the current situation is not sustainable i mean maintaining the same level of

service, the way in which we capture revenue, it just needs to change. Santa Ana needs to transform itself into a new organization that is more nimble, more effective, more efficient, more productive, and we need to find ways and strategies in which to address this deficit.

This graph may not illustrate the impacts of the deficit, so I will turn to this next slide, which helps to depict what the deficit looks like in the future years. So I mentioned earlier that in the past years we did have revenues that exceeded by far your expenditures. So you see here in fiscal year 13-14, 14-15 and 15-16 the years in which we had you know revenues that exceeded expenditures but then you started to see the decline. As you started to see the revenues and expenditures meet as Francisco explained you start to generate these these deficits and it's important to highlight because it may not be as

transparent in the previous slide that we have presented to the City Council in terms of how we're generating those deficits. But this, I think, paints a much clearer depiction of where we're headed if we continue with the current trends and the current path.

So what is Santa Ana doing? So over a series of meetings that we had with our executive management team and also through discussions with the City Council via our city manager, we're developing a plan of action as to how to address the budget chore fault that we are facing. So one of the goals that we had set is current fiscal year that we're in, we had adopted a budget with a $9.3 million deficit, and we were plugging that with $9.3 million worth of one-time monies, or these were unallocated fund balances that we had. So through the direction of our city manager, we're looking at opportunities within every single department.

How can we reduce costs? Can we hold certain vacancies that may not be deemed as critical and hold them vacant so we can generate some of the savings? And as Francisco illustrated earlier, instead of using 9.3, we may only be using close to 8.1 or maybe 6.3, I believe, depending on how the revenues on adult use are generated through the rest of this current fiscal year. There are additional things that we're going to be doing, looking at revenue enhancements in terms of cost recovery.

But we're also starting to have discussions in terms of defining what core services are, what are priorities, and maybe if service levels or service delivery needs to change in order to meet our budget expectations. The plan for fiscal year 18-19, and you hear us talking about the use of one-time monies, because 18-19 should be viewed as a bridge year. 18-19, our goal here is to limit the use of one-time monies. You know, start to make some strategic changes in the culture of the organization that will result in cost savings long term. We're also looking to see if we can start

looking at core services and define what core service is within every specific department. Fiscal year 19-20 is what we're calling transformational year. This is where we anticipate on implementing many of the suggestions and recommendations that are going to be coming before the City Council. This is going to include service delivery model changes, limiting the use of reserves on a go-forward basis, you know, and continuing to implement organizational changes throughout the entire city. Ultimately the goal is that by fiscal year 2021 is that we have a more stable budget by then. What this looks

like in terms of numbers because we do illustrate the the deficits here. Again, current fiscal year was addressed through the use of one-time monies. Again, the goal is to preserve as much of that as we possibly can to utilize in the next fiscal year. For fiscal year 18-19, the deficit is 17.1. Our goal is to achieve cost savings and revenue enhancements of about 7.9. We will be using the last remaining portion of the unfunded or the unallocated fund balances we intend on using about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars that remains from a Nexus development revenues that we had received in the past but again that

leaves about two million dollar shortfall and this is the area that we will be working along with our city manager in our departments in terms of trying to achieve additional savings during this current year to bridge that gap. One thing to note is that any ongoing revenue increase or expenditure reduction should be considered a deficit reduction as well. And as illustrated here on the slide, what's important to note is that if for fiscal year 18-19, if we achieve 7.9 million in ongoing deficit reduction measures, it reduces your structural deficit on an ongoing basis. So for 19-20, we're anticipating

on achieving about $16.2 million in ongoing deficit reduction measures. We're projecting on potentially utilizing our economic uncertainty monies and dipping slightly into the operating reserves in order to balance that budget with the intent that for fiscal year 2021 we should be implementing additional changes to the equivalent of $22.1 million to bridge the gap for the remainder of this this period of time. One thing to note is that the fiscal policy that we do have in place requires that the city maintain anywhere between

16.67 all the way up to 20% of operating reserves. If we do tap into the operating reserves during fiscal year 1920 we will need to seek council approval to make changes to that fiscal policy going forward. So with that I will turn it over to William Galvez who will cover the capital improvement program

good evening mayor and members of the City Council I'd like to present to you a summary of the capital improvement program for fiscal year 1819 these four pictures represent the four main categories that we deliver projects under And that's street improvements, traffic improvements, utility drainage and lighting improvements, and city facility improvements. For fiscal year 18-19, we have a little over $40 million in capital improvement projects.

What this represents is really a snapshot of the project-specific funding that we've been able to secure for these projects. And so for street improvement projects, we're at about $12.8 million for traffic safety improvements, about $16.7 million. Utility and drainage and lighting improvements, $4 million. And city facility improvements, $6.5 million. Again, this is a snapshot of what these projects look like from a funding perspective going forward. A lot of these projects will take two and three years to deliver.

So it doesn't quite give you a snapshot of exactly what's going to be happening in this next year. It's really more from the funding that we've been able to secure.

For street improvements on the $12.8 million that I mentioned, we have a few planning projects that are in the infancy stage, but most of our roadway improvement projects are being delivered via 15 CIP projects, totaling a little over $11.6 million. And then we do have two streetscape type improvement projects totaling $590,000. So that kind of gives you an idea as to the types of street improvement projects that we're able to secure. For traffic safety improvements, we have four planning projects totaling $673,000.

Traffic signal improvements are pretty expensive. We have three of those at $465,000. And then we have mobility and safety improvements. Our active transportation projects that we've been able to secure, some of those projects fall in this category. So we have 12 projects totaling over $15 million. And again, that's great leadership on behalf of the council and great work by staff in being able to secure these funds. For public utility and drainage improvements, we're at about $3.2 million.

We have some sewer projects. We have four specific projects in the CIP, totaling $575,000. Of course, we have our water improvements being funded by our water fund, and that's $2.2 million. Facility and drainage type projects, we have two of those, $350,000. And then under the street lighting financing, we actually set aside $130,000 for street light improvements for maybe providing lighting in underlit areas. So we're hoping to be able to address some of these community concerns with, you know, locations in the city that are too dark.

And then for city facility improvements, $6.5 million. Seven recreation-type improvement projects totaling a little over $4 million. And then the park and zoo facility projects, we have 12 of those, a little over $2.5 million. And a lot of the funding here is CDBG-type funding. and I just wanted to remind the council that the CIP project is being funded primarily via project-specific funding, so we don't have too much discretion as to what to spend.

It takes us a long time to go after funds, and again, this is the culmination of us securing $40 million in CIP projects. Some of the featured programs that I just wanted to remind the council that we're working on SB1 funding, we're getting $9.5 million of SB1 funding. That's one of the reasons why this year's CIP is $40 million. It's because we've incorporated the additional $9.5 million in SB1 funding. Otherwise, we would have fallen back to $30 million, which is what we've been averaging for our CIP on an annual basis.

We are working on fiber optics.

We believe that I can jump in here if I can just jump in here. Excuse me on Mr. Galvis as you mentioned SB1 funding I just wanted to highlight for everybody for the audience and for the council that this is being threatened And in fact, I was just talking to the mayor pro tem about that I just wanted you to make everybody aware that there is a initiative

So this funding here may not be around as much as we'd like to see it but we are doing everything to make sure that we're capturing the opportunity while it's here through the leadership of Mr. Galvez and his team.

Yes, and talking about SB1 funding, we are working on some informational flyers that we can send out, and again, we're going to be informing the community as to what's at stake, so we're working on that. As far as fiber optics goes, it's a great opportunity for the city not only to provide data services to the underserved and the digital divide that Santa Ana suffers, but it's actually an opportunity to maybe create some revenue to the city. So we've had discussions with the city manager, and we have our consultant Magellan who's on board, and we've been specifically talking about how we can make this work for the city.

Of course, you all know about the street lighting LED conversion project, which the financing was approved by the City Council a couple of meetings ago, and so we're excited to complete that retrofit. We think that we can complete the upgrades and transition of all the street lights by October or November of this year. That's really great news because the sooner we can convert and get the streetlights under the city's ownership, the sooner we can begin to get the savings so we can pay off the financing, the debt service. Active transportation, I had mentioned that before, that through the leadership of the city council

and the great work from staff, active transportation, we've been able to secure a little over $11 million in funding. And we are going through an asset management implementation, and that is basically a GIS and technology service where we're going to be able to catalog and track all of the assets in the city. And so we'll be able to report and map out and really track and monitor the conditions of our assets citywide. So that's an exciting effort.

And this year, we want to come out to bid. We had identified $100,000 in our landscaping operations, and we want to use that $100,000 to convert the medians on 17th Street and convert the irrigation on those medians from a turf irrigation to a tree irrigation system. So that's going to be out to bid in a week or so. So that's another important pilot project that we want to see how that turns out. And then, of course, we also are working on AMI, which is the Automated Metering Infrastructure.

And we have our consultant on board. We're making progress. I have nothing really to report at this time, but it's a major undertaking that the Public Works is going through. So a snapshot. This is a seven-year snapshot.

This goes back a couple of years. This is again to give you an idea as to the funding that we've been able to secure over a seven year period. Going back three years, the current year, and going forward three years, and it's $184 million. That's just a little over, excuse me, a little under $30 million a year. So the reason why this year's CIP is $40 million is primarily due to the SB1 funding.

And as you know, we have been under the leadership of our former Public Works Director, Fred Musavipour. We've been providing this executive report on a monthly basis to the City Council, and that way you could see the progress on how we're doing and delivering CIP projects. And so this is a monthly report, and it's just one slide of four. and at this point I think that the next steps

Mr. Cortez do you want me to go through that?

So Madam Mayor Pro Tem members of the City Council so this is really the next steps in terms of our budget development for fiscal year 18-19 Work study presentation in two weeks. June 5th, the first reading of the budget and CIP program. June 19th, the second reading of the budget and CIP and adoption. And then July 1st, we'd start with the new fiscal year. But I'm also looking forward to continuing to meet with you individually as we go along and get into more detail to address some of the questions that you've posed to us today.

Great. Thank you, Mr. City Manager, and thank you to staff for providing this budget review. Questions from the Council?

Councilman Benavides?

Thank you, Mayor Portem. I do have a few questions. I was jotting down some notes as we went.

I'll go back to the front, to the top of the presentation. there was a communication that the U.S. Marshals, what we had expected for revenue, was 10.2 for this current year. And I'm curious as to whether we're on track to realize that 10.2 in revenue for this year is going to be different than what we had projected. And in essence, was that a wise part of the reason that we entered that contract? we anticipate that it would have been, that it was going to be revenue positive for us.

I just want to see if we're realizing what we had projected.

So as far as the jail revenue, initially when the budget was adopted, we had anticipated generating about $2.7 million in jail revenue. With the addition of the two-year short-term agreement with the U.S. Marshals, It was increased, I believe, by an additional $10 million. So right now we're projected to hit the $10 million in terms of jail revenue. The jail revenue does come in. There's a lag time in terms of the process, in terms of the billing, and when we receive the funding. But by the end of the fiscal year and with the accruals, we should be hitting that $10 million mark.

If I may add, part of the challenges have been staffing up for it. because you have to have so much, you know, it's a regulated industry, and so you have to have a certain amount of staff in order to be able to open up another pod and accept more customers.

So from what I gathered, it looked like it was a 10.1 increase, but a 5.9, 10.1 increase in revenue, but 5.9 is what I remember seeing as far as increase in expense, so it's more like a four-point some-odd million-dollar net gain. So still a gain, perhaps not the full 10, but it's still an upside there. A couple of other questions. This is more of perhaps another deeper conversation, longer-term conversation, but there was reference of the OCFA contract.

from what I recall and I know there's been a number of changes over at OCFA over the last couple of years with regard to leadership increases on charges and fees to the city also some threats from other cities namely Irvine of potentially exiting so it seems like there is some lack of stability and uncertainty as to what the future of OCFA may look like. Something I think might make sense for us to be thinking about is our exit clause, just for us to look,

at least be mindful of options, which I believe it's 2020, and I think we have to, if we were to exercise something like that or even consider, that would be, I think it's sometime in 2018, if I'm remembering correctly, from when I was a director there.

So I don't know if either. It looks like the deputy city manager might have some comment to that.

Council Member, if I may jump in here. Is your question, when you're talking about stability, are you talking about the prospect that some cities may pull out? Correct. And costs and all as a result of. To that point, we just had a meeting with one of the assistant chiefs. Laura Zeller. Laura Zeller and so she mentioned to us that the cost of cash cities, fee-based cities, are completely separate from the other cities. So if a city like Irvine decides to pull out, there should be no impact to us because the way we at Chief Black can fill in the blanks here,

because he was in that same meeting, the way we're structured is strictly cost recovery from the service that we receive. so there's a firewall that I think the chief could better explain so that was good to hear because we were concerned about that same scenario that's correct

counsel the if Irvine should withdraw or any entity within OCFA should withdraw their amount of service being provided as well as what we recoup from that is equal. So there would be no upcharge by any single entity within the OCFA pulling out. Thank you for that information. So I think it's when we entered, remember one of the

kind of selling points was this idea of

basically that the cost benefit when you have a larger pool of entities funding. So it's good to hear that there wouldn't be a potential impact, although it's still kind of some question in my mind. It's more something that came to mind just as we look at the fact that over 70% of our budget is public safety, which includes both police and fire. A couple of other follow-up questions are on other items. Thank you, Chief. On page 22, there's a reference of the cannabis revenue that's projected at 2.6, and that represents one-third is what I'm seeing. What is the other two-thirds?

Can you speak to that?

Yes, I can, Councilman. The 2.6 figure is one-third of the projected amount that's based solely on the projected floor area, because there's two ways to calculate it. There's a minimum tax based on floor area, but if this industry takes off the way we anticipate it will, the actual sales tax based on gross receipts should exceed the minimum tax. This is based on an assessment of the floor area that we think would be part of this,

and so it's not based on actual sales projections but we hope that that will take off. The reason we put in a one-third is because for commercial cannabis, unlike a dispensary which has potentially less tenant improvements required for manufacturing or distribution and cultivation, we anticipate there might be some more extensive tenant improvements that might take a little bit more time to get through the approval process, through the building and safety process. and so it's an issue of timing how much we can project for next year but once it takes off we're hoping that it would be a lot more successful than that so that

this one-third represents one-third of the just using that the floor space

formula the minimum tax minimum fee I'm sorry the minimum charges based on floor area it's not based on any assumptions on grocery seats because we just don't

have any data and right why did I'm just curious why the one-third was used as the figure here versus some other uh uh a percentage or amount i think it was just an

assumption of how much time it might take for them to for the industry to get operational okay so so

that then is a follow-up as we've been uh part of the policy direction that that council has provided with regard to the cannabis industry and revenue is that there would be uh designations of revenue toward, and that's what I was curious as to whether this third represented, we've indicated a third to go towards enforcement, a third to go towards general fund, a third to go towards youth services. So is that not represented here at all?

That is not represented here in this number. This number is just an estimate. So an estimate of the overall revenue?

Yes. Okay, so as a follow-up, I would be interested in getting a better understanding as to how the policy direction of Council, with regard to how the cannabis revenue will be used, how that is going to be reflected, particularly the enforcement side and the youth services side. But part of the interest of council was that if we are going to enter this area of business, that there would be direct benefit to the community, also recognizing that this industry requires more regulation,

requires more resources from both attorneys, law enforcement, code enforcement. So that should be reflected, and I'd be interested in seeing that. And then that other piece, that youth services education, drug prevention education, other points that Councilman Salorio and others have made reference of. So I would imagine that that would be, again, should be reflected in the budget, in next year's budget.

Right now we're just looking at trying to plug the deficit, but we are trying to find ways to still accomplish the policy goals of the Council through the community benefit provision of the agreements. we're looking to see once these things get started and ongoing that we can have it. In fact, I was just asked at the community, at the Comlink meeting the other night by an applicant saying, listen, we'd like to participate in the community benefit. Can we get a list of programs or entities that we can consider funding? So I think there's another way to get to those types of benefits.

And that was separate, right? that was one of the other issues or priorities when it comes to applicants coming in that there would be a community benefit. However, the revenue itself was something that that council here from the dais gave direction as to how that revenue would be allocated. Like the actual revenue comes in, how we would expend it. So, you know, I would again want to be interested in seeing how that is going to be reflected in next year's budget. And we can discuss more. I know other council members have also some questions. I do have a couple of other additional points.

Across the board right now when it comes to reductions in expenses, has there been a – I know we've been discussing priorities or hoping to discuss priorities with you, and it's been continued time and again. when it comes to the cost savings or reductions, if you will, and what was reflected in this report in the departments, the various departments,

is there a percentage across the board or have any priorities been given to try to minimize reductions, if you will, to certain departments or agencies? or how have those, the direction that has been provided to the different departments?

I'm sorry, good question. What we did is a series of approaches. On page 22, we have the ongoing cost reductions. We said 2.1 of it would come from department budget impacts. What we did there is we asked the departments to look at a 1% and 2% scenario in terms of reductions. This came after I met with every single department and discussed their budget. I was looking for obvious places to save. What I found is that most departments were already pretty thinly staffed, you know, in terms of there wasn't any fat, so to speak. And, in fact, there was a lot of need. A lot of them came with asks of me for their departments.

So when it became apparent to do that, so we said, okay, let's look at a 1% or 2%. On top of that, separate from that, we have what we're looking at is cost-saving strategies, strategies which are we're looking at labor strategies here that we need to discuss with our bargaining groups that was separate so what we did with the one and two percent lists is we went through them and reviewed them and we said okay this is not something we'd like to recommend this is something we could recommend we sort of picked and at the same time we're trying to take in the information that we hear from all of you up on the council and all of the

information and feedback that we've gotten from the community meetings that we've gone out to and spoken with folks and we've been very clear that we have a structural deficit but what I've messaged to the community at the very beginning of the meeting is that it's just as important for us to hear their priorities when we have money to spend as it is to hear their priorities when we have to make reductions and they've been very receptive and they've shared you know their priorities yeah a lot of common threads and that was reported

here right and I appreciate that being included as well the rest I have a few other I'm just gonna make some comments just so it can be rather than asking some questions that my other colleagues I don't want to dominate the time but to the point exactly is there were some comments with regard to priorities around youth programming I noticed that there was a few comments related to that yet when it comes to cuts that's what we're seeing some of the some of the impacts as well so so it's staff I mean council has referenced some of the areas of priorities and so I would just hope that we would factor that that in you

know that Catalina trip is one example some of the other the 5k a couple of other areas where it's direct benefit and service to the community where we'd potentially be seeing some hits so I would just recommend that we would factor that in general plan also there's a there's a percentage or there's an amount here we've been talking about general plan general plan update for for quite a few years the general plan update could directly be linked to if one done once done and completed ideally would be able to have economic development as a result of having more clear land use guidelines so you know I'm

not sure if within that what's being presented if that represents an actual completion of the general plan or not I would hope so but something for us think about general plan the strategic plan I see a reduction however I believe we're in the going into the fifth year so we actually based on ordinance were required to update the general that this the strategic plan so I'm not sure that there is that there that has been factored in funds to both complete the update the strategic plan as well as implement and one of the other speaking the strategic plan we're in the process of uh finalizing the the our branding uh uh study and

strategy and i don't know if there's uh funds that have been allocated to be able to actually implement what the what will be what will come of that uh those are some of the comments there and and last two on on cip neighborhood streets you know there's more uh we're seeing more of that deterioration of the streets that we invested quite a bit to complete a few years ago and then And we had started working towards the SAMHSA initiative, and I'm curious if that's still in conversation. So more anything you want to provide one-way communication around that.

My colleagues might have similar questions, and I'd like to, I don't know if anybody from staff was recording some of those comments, but I'd like to be able to, either as a follow-up today or offline, be able to follow up on some of those points.

Council Member Vincenzo, I believe you are next. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I'm wondering if somebody could put slide number 35 back up for us.

So in addition to that, I also wanted to ask if anybody has the amount that's in our reserve, our operating reserve at this point.

It could be ballpark. It doesn't need to be.

Sure. So operating reserves is $42.4 million.

Okay. So what I recall from that reserve policy when we adopted that, the only triggers or the only protections to access those monies were a two-thirds majority, not a declaration of a fiscal crisis, correct?

I believe so, yes. Two-thirds majority.

So it would take a five-person vote to go ahead and access any monies from that one-time basis or at all? I'm just doing some math here. Assuming that we can get through what's a bridge year deficit amount, structural deficit amount of $17.1 million, assuming that gets resolved and we address the $2.05 million in the remaining budget gap, If you add the transitional year revised deficit amount with the balanced deficit in 2021, that's pretty close to exhausting all of our reserve fund balance.

I mean, I think we'd exhaust some and maybe need $2 million more to cover that balance there, that deficit. So, you know, what's really troubling is I remember the years that we were going through our recessionary period. I think our fund balance, our general fund balance, got as low as $3 million. That's correct. And so I think we would probably be in a worse place in a couple of years than we were during that global recession. That almost forced us into a Chapter 9 bankruptcy. So that's a little unsettling to see these numbers, and we can see why a lot of the impacts brought us here.

But, you know, I guess my real sort of broad, high-level question is that as we go from 1819 to 1920, we're looking at, you know, the ongoing ways we operate and provide core services. It's a huge, huge gap between those two amounts. And sort of reinvent our city is probably not redefining but contracting. and becoming much smaller with respect to service delivery. And I'm not sure if that's what we're talking about.

It could be a combination of, you know, service reductions. It could be a look at what is considered core service. So right now what's happening with many of the departments is you've cut so much of what could have been perceived as fat, I guess in an organization now with a lot of the reductions that we're having you're actually cutting into the flesh so some of the departments and some of these programs and services that we operate and we have running are operating with minimal staffing so they're no longer effective or efficient so it's one of the things that we would like to do is start looking at redefining

what a core service is and if an item or a program or a service is not defined as a core service Maybe that requires us to take a second look and see, do we continue to deliver that service, or is there another way to provide that same service?

Right. And I do recall that there was a case, I think, Madam City Attorney, before the California Supreme Court regarding the whole PERS issue, and I think it's called a California case or something. I know that we had been getting updates on that, and that may change the way PERS structures its criteria. area. Any updates on that? Because that would impact quite a bit, because it seems like that's the pressure that we're receiving on this budget as well.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Yeah, I believe the case that you're referring to is a case that's examining whether the State of California and the local agencies can make changes to vested PERS rights and can make adjustments. And I don't know the status. I can find out the status of that, but I think it was still pending review, and we're waiting for a final decision. Many cities are anxiously awaiting that news because it would be the difference between whether they can actually bargain with their unions over reductions in pension payments.

So we know that's tenuous at best, right? We can't rely on that. We don't know which way the court will go. But as we look at some of these reductions, I know that there was a reference to closing libraries on Sundays. And that's something that really makes you realize, look, a $50,000 haircut on that is not going to make much of a difference on a $46 million deficit over the next few years.

So, you know, there are ways that I think we can try to maintain those really quality of life and necessary services that we need to provide for our families. and one of the things I know that we had spoken about was going out and bonding. I know we had spoken, and I think the city manager had spoken with the firm that had come before us who did bonding for us when we went out to do street repairs, and we did, I think, a $100 million bond with them. And so I think it was a De La Rosa firm who now some of the principals went over to the Ramirez firm, and I know they brought us a proposal.

Things like that we need to start looking at really quickly. and you know other things that we've talked about digital reader boards that other cities have that can go out and put digital reader boards on some of their freeways that carve up their cities right I mean so what could be a bad thing and we used to say you know look we have the five and the 55 and maybe the 22 in some places you know dissect our city those could be opportunities you know and those are things that at this point yeah nobody loves you know blight but some of these are done well and maybe what you do you put up a reader board that reduces the number of

you know cardboard billboards that we have interested but it generates some revenue it's not going to solve this problem but again if we're going to be redefining and reinventing ourselves we should be looking at things like that finally naming rights you know look we have a stadium i don't even you know i don't even know if anybody knows that it's called eddie west why can't it be called AT&T or Verizon or whatever the case is, name that out. The zoo could be named out. We have other assets that we could possibly consider. But, look, these are things that I think we have to, if we're in this dire of a condition,

we should be thinking very creatively and doing things that we normally wouldn't do. But, again, these aren't irresponsible things. I think these are things that we have to be thoughtful and realize that other cities have done. So, look, just something for us to consider. But, you know, I think this is an ongoing discussion, and I think this is alarming. It should alarm anybody that looks at these projections.

So, Councilor Villegas next, and then Councilor Solario.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. A quick question for you, Robert, Mr. Cortez. On this one right here, the $131 million, is that for the PD? Is that with the funded positions or the unfunded?

This includes vacancies that are funded and also unfunded.

So it's a totality? Total, correct. I see. So this number is not correct, and for people that, for the actual members, the employees that are there now, this is everyone, 55 vacancies, correct? According to your paper, it's 55 vacancies.

Yes, so one thing to mention, and I'm going to turn to one of our slides. In terms of the police department expenditures, so if you notice here, if we can get it on the screen, so PD currently, if you notice on here, by third quarter they've spent 73.4% of their total budget. Okay, the current 17-18 budget included 55 vacant, unfunded police officers and about 40 positions that were not sworn that were funded. Correct. Correct.

So if you notice here, even with those vacancies that were funded, the department is going to hit its budget. It is going to be expanding those vacancies. So maybe the question is, where are those vacancy monies being spent? So when we take a look at the analysis of PD, a lot of it is going into overtime. A lot of it is going into additional services that we're providing. So homelessness. So we're having to deploy staff to provide resources to address homelessness. Overtime costs. And there's an array of other different expenses that are included within the PD.

So this OT that you're talking about is because we don't have personnel. We should have 1.8, but we have .9.

Currently, I believe the standard.

That's why it takes forever to get an officer to come to a non-emergency call.

I believe, yes. The standard is 1.8 per capita, I believe, Chief. And I think currently we're sitting at .9. Half. Correct.

Right. So this number is not fully funded. This is with the 55 vacancies.

This value here that I have on slide 15 for the current fiscal year includes all those vacancies. Correct.

Okay, just want to clarify that because every time I look at these numbers, I have to guess, is this with the vacant positions or without the vacant positions?

And I know that in the past it's been a little difficult to follow in terms of the number of positions that a department has and which of those are vacant and funded. So under our city manager's direction, we're going to be changing how we present that budget going forward. So we will be illustrating not just a number of vacant positions, but also those vacant positions that are deemed as unfunded in the budget document.

Thank you very much.

Councilman Solorio?

Yes, I have some comments and questions. First, just overall, I think every year this city, like others, projects deficits. And then we've got to go through workshops like this and a lot of internal and external work to close the projected deficit. But by law we have to pass a balanced budget, so I have every faith in this council. We're going to pass a balanced budget this year. Also I know this presentation, as Councilmember Sarmiento said, begins to talk about some revenue opportunities, but I know there's been other discussions about other things to, for example, place on the November ballot.

whether it be the hotel visitors occupancy tax, there's been discussions of sales tax, etc. and that's not in any of these items and that would also offset projections. On the cannabis item that Council Member Benavides brought up towards the end, and it's a very significant one at the last council meeting, I raised it as well.

When we passed the items related to adult use cannabis, it was with the condition and written approval that the revenues would go towards enforcement and youth programs in particular and some for administration. I think I heard our city manager say, well, we're not really sure we want to use it that way. I want to be really careful that we really stick to what the council approved direction on that was.

Really for us to deviate from that, you know, gets us really into dangerous territory in terms of council approving one thing and staff wanting to spend money the other ways. I would in fact argue that we improved those, I guess it was last fall, those policies and the retail adult use stores began to generate revenue starting January 1st. So really revenue from January 1st through the end of this fiscal year, we ought to bring that back and get clarity on how that money is being spent for enforcement and youth services.

services really in a way that's additive rather than supplanting other items. So I think that's very, very important to mention.

And I respect that, Council Member, but I think the other thing that we must understand is when the Council came up with this policy, I don't know that I was here or not, but I don't think that the fiscal situation that we have before us was very clear. So we're happy to follow the lead.

I think you probably were here, but whether you were here or not, I think just the important One thing is if the council adopted a policy including very specific financial instructions on how to spend that money, it's staff's role to implement that policy. If there is a recommended change of direction on that, that needs to come back to the council to reallocate those monies rather than it being a staff driven internal decision. Correct? Sure, we can do that. Yes.

I have a question regarding slide 16, which shows for the end of the year projection, a projected deficit of $6.1 million. Is that including or on top of the $9.3 and one-time dollars that was approved last year?

Sure. So looking here at the projected values for revenues and expenditures, this difference value of 8.1 is what we anticipate being the deficit. So the council, when they adopted the 17-18 budget, we anticipated having the gap of 9.3. What this illustrates is what's being materialized as part of the revenues and expenditures, we will only be using 8.1, not 9.3.

Okay, so then really then compared to our approved budget that we did last year, we're not using the full 9.3 in revenue that we projected. So really, we're in the positive, you know, a million in change based on that.

I wouldn't necessarily view it as a positive. I would view it as you're using less of your unassigned fund balances to bridge a gap.

Right, but we had budgeted spending that 9.3. 9.3, correct. And we now are only projecting spending $8 million change, and I think that's very positive. And the way this is written kind of makes it seem like this is another big deficit on top of fully spending the $9.3 that was in the budget. Another just observation that I want to point out on page 20.

On page 20, this here says increases to base budget, right? So comparing the next year to the current year, and it has the MOU increases at a net of 3.1. I know when the council approved the MOUs, the direction was that those increases would be absorbed internally. So I just want to make it clear that that was the case and I think now you're just making the case it would be nice to still have that but I don't know that I agree that this should be viewed as an increase to the

base budget because staff was supposed to absorb those cuts. So if I can

explain a little bit as to what happened here and I'll focus on fiscal year 17-18 when those MOUs were approved, the assumption was that departments had vacancies and that we were going to be able to use some of the vacancy savings in order to pay for some of these costs so that we would not increase the base budget and that's exactly what happened. The other thing to mention as part of the POA agreement or the MOU, we had identified about 1.6 million dollars tied to jail reduction strategies. When the City Council took the decision back in August to reintroduce

the jail back into the budget, those potential savings were no longer going to be realized because you're now reintroducing the jail back into the base budget. Other measures that we had identified that have been implemented is there's been some efficiencies in parking citation and the collection of revenues, so that was applied to it, as well as looking for additional revenue sources to pay for overtime. So those have been implemented as well. Okay, very good.

On page 33, which is the general fund over-under, I know for fiscal year 16-17, I've seen other reports that show that we actually ended that year in the black. Correct. This here says we ended it $400,000 in the negative. Correct.

So the explanation behind this is when you take a look at the comprehensive annual financial report, which is also known as the CAFR, general fund is a combination of not just fund 11 which is illustrated here it's also a combination of other special revenues that are tied into fund 11 such as the strategic plan funding there's monies that come from general fund 11 they get placed in the strategic plan funding if there's capital improvements they get taken from fund 11 they get placed into this other pot that is also combined as part of the general fund so when we look at the CAFR and we see the name general fund

the one thing that we need to understand it's comprised of not just fund 11 which is illustrated here but there's other items that make up that difference so it's one of the things I think from a staffing perspective that we need to find a way to clearly depict

okay so there's a distinction between this presentation and how we know general fund and the CAFR also on the same page and it relates a little bit to the prior question about the 9.3 It says fiscal year 17-18 projected 6.1 million deficit. Is that still going to be the case or not?

This 6.1, if I turn back to slide 16, the assumption was that the adult-use retail revenue that we're generating between January of 2018 all the way through June and was going to be utilized during the current year to offset that deficit. Now, if there's a policy decision from this body and direction on the city manager to not take this approach, then that deficit will go back to being either 9.3 or the 8.1 that we have referenced here.

And just as a general point, I would say that because we had assumed we were going to use 9.3 in one-time dollars for the budget as approved revenue, that we can't still say that that's a deficit so here I mean you know we could follow it separately but if we're only going to use 6.1 instead of 9.3 and we had the 9.3 as real money in the budget I don't know that I would view then us finishing the year as a negative just just some couple of closing comments I

I agree with Councilmember Sarmiento on if we do need to make any changes to the library, I would not start by closing hours on Sundays. Maybe there are other days of the week. In terms of capital infrastructure, I'm very happy that we are recommending doing the work on Raid Street between McFadden to Civic Center because that has been in need of some work. Also, as Councilmember Sarmiento mentioned, there's a need for creativity on revenues, and I have a list of suggestions and items for the sake of it being laid.

I know we have other items I won't bring up today, but I'll work with staff on them as well. Thank you.

Councilman Tinajero.

Thank you very much.

So, first and foremost, thank you for the presentation. Sure. I know you took a lot of work to put this together. So this is some comments that I want us all to understand, both staff and as counsel as well, is that being an individual who's also a bureaucrat. I work for the San Antonio Unified School District. And one of the things that is constant is when you are responsible for a department or a responsibility for a program, you start the day with a list of 10 things that you want to get done you have your to-do list and you get busy at your to-do list you're excited in the morning you have your nice little java

and you're good to go all of a sudden you get a call and it's a council member and a council member says hey just wanted to know i have a question i need to know the answer to x okay Okay? Immediately, what do you all do as staff members? You put on the brakes and you're running around trying to find X. Okay? Sometimes X is complicated. Sometimes that little heathen is hiding behind a door and you got to go look for it. What I'm saying is that sometimes I think we as a council have to be very careful too because we want our staff to do things, yet we sometimes become the obstacle to staff getting the job done.

I know you don't want to nod your head because your job is on the line. I understand that. That's okay. I still love you. But I know inside you're going, thank you, Sal. Okay. But someone said it. So that being said, I think as a council, we need to be very strategic on how we deliver information and really make a decision on what truly is important and what can wait. Because if everything is important, then nothing is important. It doesn't change. So I think culturally, that's something that we as a body have to come up with.

Now that I've said that, and I'm showing you that I empathize with you because we're two of the same kind, I also need to tell you something else. I'm a little bit frustrated tonight, and you know I don't like to bash on staff.

Mr. Cortez, you can take a deep breath because I'm not upset with you. I'm very happy with your work right now. So don't get red. You'll be all right. But here's the issue, Mr. City Manager, is that I don't understand how many green lights we have to give staff to go get the job done. We have brought up the, Councilman Solorio and I sat with the mobile truck vendors. You know what they said? Give us the green stripes, Sal. We'll pay the money. Give it to us.

So I said, what's going on? They go, these guys are starting to park right behind us. They sell the same product. Because there is no structure. That structure, how difficult is it for us to go out and start with a segment of our city and green stripe it and collect the business license, the significant increase that they are willing to pay? In fact, they even said, this is what we'll pay. It's in the thousands. Have I heard a report? Has anybody looked into it? Have you piloted anything? Have you taken a gosh darn risk? The house is burning.

And we're not doing a gosh darn thing. It cuts is one thing. But it's also, you're collecting a paycheck here not to keep a seat warm. You're collecting a paycheck to be innovative. You've heard that throughout this discussion. So that's just one. I haven't heard anything about a sales tax increase. Or a sales tax to bring to the voters where we can solve for this. You know that Westminster did this? and their residents supported it. Fountain Valley did this, and their residents supported it. And now they're not having the type of discussions that we're having tonight.

The reality is that services have to be paid for. Our community right now, there was an individual who was a couple. The woman was being mistreated, verbally mistreated. A call goes in to PD. They're going to send someone out. Then it becomes physical. Now she's being beat up. We're going to send someone out. They're doing the best they can, but there weren't enough officers on the street to make it happen. So residents had to get involved. Fortunately, there were several residents that did get involved, and they held that individual until the police officers came in.

It was 45 minutes later. The reality is that here in Santa Ana, we've made great strides. and but we can do better we can find ways to generate more revenue isn't it interesting that with the cannabis we were able to move quickly that was something that we said hey let's get on it all it took was a will a will we have low-hanging fruit right now in our city let's go get it let's go get it because this conversation tonight should not just be about the cuts that we're going to make, this conversation tonight should also be about the new revenue that we're

going to create. So I just want to encourage staff, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. Be bold, be innovative, and go get me some money and tell us where you're getting it from so then I can thank you and recognize you. But this standing back and, you know, we're going to just see how this goes. no no no there's a small fire in the house and we have the capability of turning it off if we as a council understand your time and that's why I'm speaking about it today is because we as a council have to also understand that your time you're trying to get things done so we have to be strategic don't be

afraid to say councilmember is this something that you need me to do like right now don't be afraid to tell them councilmember this is going to take me more than 24 hours. This is probably going to take me 48. And it's not that you're not important. It's not that what you're asking is not important. But can I wait that long? Because I have X, Y, and Z that I have to accomplish that's going to bring us revenue. That's going to get, you know, solve another issue that's important to your heart as well. That's okay. It's called communication.

But in the meantime, if we're going to chill out and step back and go, shoot, our staff needs some time then you have to deliver okay and so that's what I'm asking for I'm asking for innovative thinking there's so many things councilmember Sigmund talked about the stadium other folks are talking about other areas we need to go and get it I don't care if it's a hundred thousand dollars get the hundred thousand dollars that prevents us from cutting an after-school program for the time being so that's those are my comments I believe I believe the numbers I think there was a great question by councilmember Villegas so those unfunded

us what happens with those unfunded costs I've been wanting to know too what happens with that I had an idea but I wanted to hear it from finance none of us up here have a finance degree okay but we are doing the best we can to understand it we rely on you and at the same time we're the ones that are getting the phone calls from the community so this is a team effort but uh mr city manager i just really need that our staff members to really start thinking outside the box and bringing us these items that we've said that can bring revenue to our city immediately thank you thank you council

member now i'm going to call on mayor pro tem martinez thank you mr mayor um first and foremost

just want to thank our staff and our city manager for putting this budget presentation together I want to start off, and I'm going to read something because I think it's important for me to put this in context and do it in a way where hopefully it makes sense. So the service a city provides most time, and I'm talking about the city of Santa Ana is a full-service city. So when we look at that, sometimes it fully does not explain its proportion of the 1% tax.

So Santa Ana receives approximately 19% of property collected within its boundaries. For example, there's a difference between the city of Long Beach and the city of Santa Ana. Santa Ana, as I mentioned, receives 19% of the 1% proportional tax. Long Beach, on the other hand, receives 26%. So the example is that 7% less, Santa Ana receives 7% less than Long Beach, despite both cities are a full-service city.

So the difference is that the city's proportion results from the property tax all starts from the starting point prior to Proposition 13, 1978. City property tax revenue is primarily based on what each city is received and compared to other governments in the area, and in particular, in regards to the mid-1970s. And I say this because we can't make decisions in a vacuum. So revenue and taxation matters.

Land use and zoning matters. How the city grows and sustains itself financially matters. And you have to connect the dots. and it starts from the basic formula of our property tax and sales tax. If you look at page 14, you will see that the two major sources of revenue for the city of Santa Ana are sales tax and property tax.

sales tax is very volatile and it will be changing in the next three to five years because of online sales the city receives more sales tax than property tax

and so when we look at the property tax in lieu of the vlf that was changed in 2004 which essentially we are now receiving some of those monies and there has been an increase but essentially those monies in the past would go to the school district and I want to add where the other one percent of our property tax goes to approximately 63% of our property tax goes to the schools, goes to community college, goes to the ERAF, 19% as I mentioned goes to the city of Santa

Ana, 18% or so goes to the county and special districts. So when we look at this share pool, Santa Ana is only receiving 19%. To run a full service city And when I say full service city, I mean police, I mean fire, I mean parks and recreation, I mean public works, on and so forth. The amount of revenue that the city is generating is not enough to sustain a full service city.

And when you look at the percent in our budget of who receives what, when you look, the lion's share is going to public safety. Because this community has always valued public safety as number one. But our police department takes 51%. Our fire department takes 21% for a total of $185.3 million. And the remaining 28% share receives $71.6 million. Code enforcement, parks, finance, you name it.

We're $71 million. We are cutting. There are bare bones the rest of our department. our planning department, every single department. And so as I look at all of this and I see how we generate our revenue, we have to connect the dots. And those dots need to be connected with our general plan and our zoning. The only reason we have increased some of our revenue through property tax and in particular in regards to the property in lieu because of the assessed

value has been simply because in the past 2017-28 when you look at our permits we have had an increase in residential of new additions and alterations what increase our evaluation and as well as our non-residential, which is our commercial and industrial use. There's been an increased valuation, which means we received more property tax. And so that means that a lot of the changes that have happened, and one of the main reasons in regards to residential, is that if we

all remember in 2008, and to where we're at in 2014, there was a loss of foreclosures of over 5,896 homes. A lot of those now are back on the market. They've exchanged hands. You have new ownership. So they made alterations and changes. Assessed values went up. More property tax came into the city of Santa Ana. That is great progress. But the city cannot move forward if this council in this community does not update its general plan and its zoning code,

the only reason why we are afloat today is because we were smart enough and our staff was smart enough to do the harbor-specific plan, which by right, they don't have to go and get all these permits that they're having to take a year and a half because we have an outdated zoning code and an outdated general plan.

That harbor-specific plan is almost in its completion. People are buying properties. And then we have another specific plan, which is on the other part of our city. But the rest of this city is constrained due to the fact that we have an outdated general plan and a zoning code.

We must, if we're going to want to generate the amount of revenue that is needed to sustain this city moving forward, we need not just to go out there and look at vending trucks or the comments that my colleague, Councilman Sarmiento, said, and I agree with him, figuring out how do we use marketing digital billboards. Certainly that is it. But realize that our best bang for our buck is property tax and focusing and making sure that we create a balance.

And so I would just implore my colleagues and implore our community that as we move forward that, you know, and my colleague, Councilman Medavina, made the point earlier that we have to update this plan. I have been asking for this update of this plan since I've been on the City Council along with my colleague Councilman Benavides. We are now on our 12th year and we probably will not see the update of this general plan before we leave. I am very disappointed because four years ago we allocated 2.5 million dollars to update the entire comprehensive plan and I'm not sure what

happened to the money, where that policy decision was made, those allocations of those funds,

and if we were going to want to move this city forward, we would do everything in our power to help provide the funding necessary to update this plan so that we can have a strategy in making sure that we're able to zone appropriately these land uses so that we can have a true economic development strategy because land use and economic development go hand in hand. And so those are my comments. I look forward to working with the staff in regards, and I've shared with them, in regards to the vacant properties that we have, which is $699. The current revenue we are receiving is only

$259,000. That is shameful. The exempt properties that we have in this community is $1,875. When we generate zero, that's an exemption, and that is all government and non-profits and our schools. I could go on and on, and the faith-based community. And so we need to figure out a way because again when we look at how we generate most of our revenue it's between sales tax and property tax and we need to figure out a strategy if we're going to want to sustain

this city for the in the near future thank you thank you um i believe it's my turn at this point in time some years back i know uh all the folks that are here right now may not remember but we asked Hassan when he was director of building and planning you know how can we get more capacity in the department because there are certain positions that generate more money if you get if you've got a developer coming in and they need their drawings reviewed and they need a quick

turnaround we you know didn't have enough folks in public works to do the inspections and also within the building and planning department. I don't know if there's anybody that could speak to this at this time. If not, that's okay. I would prefer the city manager may do some homework and come back and say, I found the request. I see what you guys were doing in the budget. I'm going back a couple cycles. But the reason I'm making this point is I believe we're still low there. And even if we're squeezing and reducing,

I think we must find a way where we can become more efficient, and in particular, find money for jobs that produce more money. Because those jobs and a quicker turnaround at the building and planning counter, inspections from the public works department, means that projects that we've approved that people want to build are going to hit the market that much sooner. I know right now we're having some issues, I think, at 88 North Main Street with some of the adaptive reuse projects that are going on.

There's also a potential and a possibility that something happens possibly over at the register site, the old register site, that something could, as Mayor Pro Temp said right now, density could increase more money, especially when you're talking about real estate and property taxes. Also, maybe something happens with one Broadway plaza and we've got all of a sudden an oracle moving into town or a company of that nature, along with a high-rise office building. Things that bring revenue. I mean, the folks down at the auto mall, they're doing a great job.

You know, we're very fortunate that Roger Penske is here in town and that, you know, you know, Crevier and all those other dealerships down there are doing as well as they're doing because they are a generator and they pay sales tax and property tax. And they create, you know, jobs, many of which are here in the city. so Miss City Manager aren't you making notes but if you could find out where we are especially in those inspectors within Public Works that help facilitate projects and also we are going to get an extra few positions in the building and Planning Department to be able to elects but I I just fear that that hasn't

happened and that as we try to become more efficient produce more money process things in a quicker manner, that that becomes important.

And the other thing is, I know it's not directly in the budget, but we're being impacted a lot by the homeless right now.

We're trying to get more police officers and better service. And if you look at the hours and the time and the effort that's dedicated to chasing our own table, which is what we're doing and the faster we go we you know we it's just a revolving door we can't catch up well if we're able to solve that and I think we have an opportunity right now and I think this council because I know we unanimously move forward you know try to bring cities and the county under the jurisdiction of Judge Carter and we're all hopeful that that you know results in something positive if it does that's going to have a big big impact in the

budget because we'll take resources that right now are being devoted to babysitting the homeless and and you know stopping crime and all the things that are occurring in our city and and we'll be able to rededicate those resources so um i'm you know hopeful that we continue to stay focused on that hopefully to have some victories here in the near future and and that's going to have a big impact because we can have a new general plan we can have a new building but but if you've got homeless out in front of that building impacting the operation impacting you know whether or not people want to come to your town

and do business you know that that you don't see it directly in the budget but it's there and the impact is tremendous so I think we need to continue to try to figure out how to work with other cities so that they all carry their fair share we can't be the scapegoat for the scapegoat for the whole county but on the other hand things that we can do by working with the county to solve our immediate midterm and long-term homeless problems you know it has to be somehow part of the focus of what we're doing here as it relates to the budget. Mayor

Potem has a question yes. Yeah for our planning director or either Candida in regards to the homeless situation as we move forward in trying to provide permanent supportive housing or do conversions currently we have the current sites that are in the pipeline, whether it's Jamboree Housing for the Veterans Housing or ACWA, those are already gone through the pipeline. Currently, because we have our outdated general plan and zoning, any new permanent supportive housing without doing anything, how long would the process take?

this is a good time to introduce our new planning and building agency director

this is his first answer it's a first answer that he's gonna give us right now this first day welcome

thank you thank you good evening mayor mayor pro tem and members of the council you know I think every city has a different process but we do have you know in in the field of planning and building there is some established thresholds of timeline that we have in terms of processing entitlement sequel so at the minimum on a project that involves conversion or creating conversion of housing into formal housing probably it's going to take at least somewhere between eight to 10 months or more depending on the the based on our prior experience I've been

told it's a year and a half because we have an outdated zoning code and general plan and so I don't know how we're gonna get to 8 to 10 months on anything else but because these other projects that's what they took a year and a half to go through these changes and then to build it took another 18 months right and you

know like I said my answer is based on what my experience in the past but you So there have been a lot of state regulations that could help us if we take advantage of the exemption to help reduce that.

Correct. And one of the reasons I'm bringing this up, because I think as we continue to be leaders and following the footsteps of Los Angeles and moving forward with two emergency ordinances in regards to motel conversion and permanent supportive housing, will position us for state funding and actually will help those developers that want to build a permanent supportive housing or do the motel conversions. they'll be ready to go and not have to go through the red tape of possibly a year and a half and we'll be able to build within 15 to 18 months so that we can get those homeless folks

off the street and into permanent supportive housing.

I think you hit the nail on the head. Thank you.

And look, the fact that you're new, welcome. It's a good time for you to be here. If you can bring new energy and figure out how to do things faster, know that the city council and the rest of staff and everybody will be behind you. So good luck to you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. I think that's what he was suggesting.

On his first day, he's going to reduce by 60. He just did.

And then Michelle told him he couldn't, but I'm telling him maybe you can. Be optimistic. Thank you.

Thank you. And I did pre-qualify that statement, so thank you.

Yes, Ms. City Manager.

Since we're introducing one director, let me introduce you to the other director. It's his first day as well. Mr. Steven Mendoza, he can come up here.

Can we ask him a question and ask him how he's going to improve things?

Well, you know all these ideas in terms of economic development and thinking outside the box I'm glad that today is his first day so he's here and able to take that input directly from all of you So without further ado mr. Steven Mendoza. Thank you very much

Good evening mayor. Mr. Mr. Mayor Mayor Partem members of the council I look forward to working with all of you on property tax sales tax and other creative things to make sure our city is sustainable in the future

Give us your name and title just for the record. Stephen Mendoza, Executive Director of the Community Development Agency. Welcome. Thank you. Welcome. Any other questions of him? I'll be nice to Stephen. Why are you making an exception? And I'm a Santa Ana resident. Don't encourage him. Yeah, that's right. All right. Well, thank you for that. So with that, what do we need on this item, Madam? On that item, it's just a study session. All right. Got it. Go ahead. I'm now going to turn things over to Mayor Pro Tem. Go ahead, please.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We're moving. We have public comment 75B. Actually, we have a presentation.

Presentation? Okay. If I can take a moment of your time, Mayor, members of the Council, I would like to point your attention to the several actions that are on the agenda on this item. The first is the approval of a resolution that declares the city's intention to place a charter amendment on the November 6, 2018 general election ballot to change the method of electing council members from at-large to by ward. The second item is the approval of another resolution that declares the council's intention to modify the ward boundaries. The public hearing before you

is to actually review the, excuse me, the ward boundary process and to take testimony from the public. I would like to introduce our consultant. He's in the back. Paul Mitchell. He was here. Paul Mitchell is with redistricting partners. He will be leading the effort in the re-boundary effort. Mr. Mitchell has worked on similar projects with many cities including the cities of Fullerton, Costa Mesa, and Anaheim. In addition to the extensive experience that Mr. Mitchell brings

to the process, we also have the expertise of Christina Talley, Special Counsel with BBK, who has also worked with many jurisdictions, including the cities of San Juan Capistrano and Anaheim. For background purposes, I would like to note that the city of Santa Ana, through the vote of the people became a charter city in 1952. The city charter, in essence, is a city's constitution that contains many elements, including the number of wards and how council members and mayors are elected. The charter may only be approved and amended by the vote of the people.

The voters in the city approved ward boundaries in 1954, but over the decades has changed from five wards to seven wards and as many as nine wards. Our current structure of six wards with a directly elected mayor was approved by the voters in 1986.

I will now like to turn the microphone over to Mr. Paul Mitchell, who will go over the ward reboundary process. Christina Talley and I will be available for questions after the presentation and the Mayor Pro Tem can then open the public hearing.

Thank you, Council Members, for having me here. My name is Paul Mitchell. I'm with Redistricting Partners. I'm going to go through a basic overview that is both for your and for the public interest to kind of go through exactly what happens with redistricting, some of the terminology, and some of what we are expecting to see happen in the next coming weeks. So first off, the California Voting Rights Act is a law that has to do with at-large election systems. And under the California Voting Rights Act, you're in an at-large system. You have districts, but the elections are held at-large.

Another term that's going to be used in this conversation has to do with racially polarized voting. And one of the conditions under the California Voting Rights Act is that you can't have an at-large election system if you have racially polarized voting.

The California Voting Rights Act takes its ideas and principles from the federal law, but it liberalizes their interpretation. The idea of racially polarized voting is actually a more liberal interpretation than the federal law. and in changing it, it actually applies these rules to a lot more jurisdictions than the federal law would normally apply to.

The conversation in Santa Ana is not just about this CVR implementation like other jurisdictions. It's about taking the boundaries that you currently have and adjusting them and changing that election system and then on top of it, as was discussed, having to take this to a vote of the public to have, under the charter, the actual conversion take place. So there's some traditional redistricting principles that are important to understand as you're engaging in this process. Some of these principles have been used by the council as it's done its adjustment of war boundaries every 10 years,

but they are slightly different and will involve more engagement, I think, on some of these principles as we go forward and actually go to bi-area elections. The first one is that districts should be relatively equal size. And what that means is that the number of people in each district should be roughly the same. And we're not talking about voters. We're not talking about citizens. We're talking about whole people based on the 2010 census. And that current number is 324,000 people in the city of Santa Ana. The median district size would be roughly around 65,000 people,

and the 5% normal deviation from the largest district to the smallest district would put the largest district around 66,500 and the smallest around 63,000.

The actual population estimates for the city of Santa Ana are actually a little bit higher. And in fact, the Department of Finance today came out with even newer estimates for the state's population. But the current American Community Survey estimate shows 332,000 residents. The adult population in that would be 140,000 and the current voter registration is at 98,000.

The second criteria that I want to make sure people are aware of is that the districts need to be contiguous. This means they can't hop and jump around, that they have to be whole pieces. And there's also an idea within contiguous of things being functionally contiguous. So if you had a district, for an example, that crossed a freeway in a little sliver where you couldn't get from one side to the other without leaving the district, that would be considered not functionally contiguous.

Or if we were up in the foothills having a district that starts in Glendale and then goes over the foothills over to Palmdale, that's not functionally contiguous.

A third area, and one that I think requires the most public input, is maintaining communities of interest. And communities of interest is a term of art. There is not a handbook that comes down from the federal or state government to say these are what communities of interest are. There are a number of communities of interest that are covered by the Federal Voting Rights Act. These would be ethnic, national, language, religious communities of interest.

There are other communities of interest. Actually, I'll go through this real quick, these communities of interest. The Latino and Asian communities of interest are two that stand out in analyzing the city of Santa Ana. And for these, we look at the citizen voting age population, which is over 18-year-old citizens, as counted by that American Community Survey, which is a more up-to-date estimate. And in the city of Santa Ana, we have 17% Asian and 60% Latino population. I've done a couple maps that actually show this in order for us to understand how this population lays out in the city of Santa Ana.

And so first, to look at the Latino population, you can see this rather the darker blue, more dense population. And when I bring up these numbers, it's hard to see the numbers, but these are areas that have 80 and 90 percent Latino by population, by citizen voting age population. The Asian population is more to the east side of the city. And when I bring up these populations, I'm sorry, it's the west side.

On the west side of the city, and as you can see in this, it's hard to see in the slide, but this is populations that have 50, 60, 70% Asian population.

Another idea for communities of interest doesn't have to do with race or nationality, but it has to do with just the communities that are living within the city. It can be something about how people are working or a downtown versus a suburban or even rural area. Senior citizen communities. It could be people who live around a campus or it could be people who are in a senior citizen center. So the idea around communities of interest is more broad. I've seen people come before redistricting meetings talking about dog parks. I've seen people coming before the city council meetings talking.

I actually just left a redistricting meeting this evening where somebody brought up little leagues. So there are a number of different things that can define a community of interest that are more broad and about how people in the city view themselves.

A fourth thing to look at is following city and county and local government lines. This is a way to kind of look at how the city is laid out by other governmental jurisdictions, or by how other redistricting commissions, or like the statewide redistricting commission, viewed the city when it did redistricting. And finally, keeping districts compact. Looking at the appearance and the function of the districts, and making sure that they are more circles and squares than big, long, serpentine things. There's a number of mathematical formulas that can define compactness, but the best one for me is just kind of the eyeball test.

When we look at the current districts, we can see these districts, and we can think about, in particular, where the Asian population was and where the Latino population was, and how well these districts serve to either unify or divide those populations.

We also have neighborhoods, and this isn't the neighborhood file we'll be using for the redistricting. We're getting one from the city that has the actual neighborhood organizations. But neighborhoods are another way to define and essentially piggyback your redistricting on some of the boundaries that exist in those neighborhoods. because neighborhoods in and of themselves are a definition of a community of interest and how people draw those neighborhoods relates to how they see themselves. I mentioned school districts earlier, and the school districts actually do provide, particularly on the west side,

a way of understanding the city's population.

I also looked at the statewide redistricting and the way that the city was divided in state legislative districts. And this is the state senate district and the way that it divides the city.

And the congressional district. These might not be ideal lines, but there might be a reason why the statewide redistricting commission divided a city in a certain place.

And then finally we have a precinct geography that will kind of come in handy as we get through the process working with the county to convert the to the new district lines and even the precincts themselves sometimes can be ways that the city is delineated among major roads and where polling places are put which a lot of thought is put into that at the county level as well.

So some next steps that we have, obviously was just discussed the act of passing a resolution. We're going to have two hearings that are about listening. Two hearings where I'm not drawing maps, we're not discussing District A, District B, we're actually listening to the community talk about communities of interest. Then we're going to have maps drafted and we're going to have two more hearings where we're going to actually be receiving more community input about communities of interest and taking input on draft lines. And that's going to be input from the council members, from the public,

and it's helping essentially get us to a point where by May 19th, we can have had two hearings about just communities of interest and broad input, two hearings that are more specific about the lines that are being discussed, and then finally an adoption of final lines I believe on June 5th.

And we have an email address that you can send in comments to. We are going to be partnering with Esri to have a public mapping, a way, a portal for people to use to be able to see maps. And in my experience, another wonderful way to engage with the community is through community organizations that might be doing their own redistricting, might have their own potential plans, and definitely want to be able to receive those. So if working through the city clerk, we can obtain those kind of files from any organizations that are watching the hearing or that are here in the audience, we definitely appreciate that. And that's it.

Great. Thank you, Mr. Mitchell. Councilman Tinajero.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I just wanted to let everyone know the mayor had to leave. he's having some stomach problems.

Going into ward elections, we wanted to put this on the June ballot and restructure lines.

Councilman Tinajero, is it possible that I can open up the public hearing? Because I have not done that. We're waiting for the presentation. Thank you. So this is the time for the public hearing to consider, approve the FY 2018-2019 annual action plan. Oh, actually, I'm on the wrong one. Here we are. This is a time for a public hearing to adopt the resolution declaring the intent to change the ward boundaries, hold a public hearing on the same, and adopt resolution declaring intent to place a charter amendment for voter consideration regarding by ward elections.

And at this time, Madam Clerk, have we received any written communication?

The communication that was received has already been circulated to the council.

Fantastic. And I know we do have members of the public that wish to speak, but I'm going to go ahead and pass this on to Councilman Dinajero. And then if there's any other comments from the council in regards to Mr. Mitchell. And then after that, we'll move forward with the public comment.

Okay. So because it's now in November, because we're going to have to try to put ward elections on in November, I do believe that we should maintain what we have in place right now. When the new election takes place, at that moment, redraw the lines at that point without removing, obviously, the council members who have been elected in. So if Ward 6, for example, there's a council member that lives in a certain area of Ward 6, they still are a part of Ward 6 but there's ways to draw the line so that

there's equity in the in the population we did this about 10 years ago council member Benavides and I they were all out of whack some districts had like 30 thousand while others had like 60 some thousand and so what we tried to do is bring them in within two to three thousand individuals you know residents So I am more, I think where we should move towards right now is assuring that we have ward elections on the ballot in November. And that gives us more time to think about redrawing lines and we can make a better decision after the election. Because if we do, if we redraw lines now, there's people that are running.

that there's potential for it to look extremely political to remove people from running in certain wards. I don't want to get that reputation because that's not what we're trying to do. What we're trying to do is basically bring democracy, stronger democracy to our residents so that they have more of a voice through the ward election process. So that's something that I want you all to think about as we move forward as well today.

Councilman Sarmiento.

Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. And I want to thank our presenter for doing a good job in describing the issue and the subject matter that we're going to be covering. And I also want to thank my colleagues on the ad hoc committee that helped address some of the questions and give direction to the city clerk to move forward on this. One of the things I was going to mention is that the five hearings or the five meetings that are scheduled in recommended action number two, that is the legally minimum required.

So we can go above and beyond that, and I think that's what the ad hoc committee had discussed to see about addressing community groups, outreaching to neighborhood associations, maybe the Chamber of Commerce, maybe some of the advocacy groups that came before us and requested more information and have this issue brought before them, and especially outreaching to the Vietnamese community. This is obviously, they're the community of interest that we're discussing here.

There are different ways you can define a community of interest, as you mentioned, But I think here in Santa Ana specifically, we see that this population has had its vote diluted by the at-large system that we have in place. And we have several examples of that from previous races and previous election cycles that they've performed. And you see that they vote ethnically as a block, as do Latinos and as do Anglos. And because their vote is part of an at-large system, they obviously get diluted.

So I just want to encourage, and I think the ad hoc members made a commitment to the clerk to go out and try to advise and inform the community at some of the other meetings aside from the five meetings that are listed here in the resolution. and to the extent that we're able to exchange information, you can put some dates on our calendars to go out. I want to encourage the public to participate in that because this is moving very rapidly because it's a very short window that we have

and to the extent that this issue has been distorted so, I want to say, drastically by some of what I've read and emails that are being exchanged and this is sort of an issue that is being used for another underlying motive, look, I think that distortion needs to be answered and needs to be cured because people are acting under an incorrect premise. And so when they go to the polls, they need to know what they're voting on. We need to be very explicit about what's going to be on the ballot, what we mean by going to district elections versus at-large elections, what the problem is that we're trying to resolve.

and it's going to take education and it's going to take discussions because people are forming their own opinions about this without any information. They're hearing one thing, they're thinking something else, and unfortunately the way we stumbled out of this really gave us a bad look when you have somebody who's supposed to attest what the council majority voted on and then it doesn't get signed and we have to go and sue one of our colleagues and we have to have a judge declare that somebody acted inappropriately and didn't follow through with their ministerial duties,

those things are bad looks, and that discourages a community from participating and having trust and confidence in the body that's going to be putting this forward. So to the extent we can try to clarify that and correct that error, I would encourage us. And the last thing I was going to say is that I know our hope is that we can have something online in our website where folks can go on and draw their own maps as well. And I know Esri had a presentation to us that seemed very simple to do, and as opposed to having a map and somebody use a colored pencil or a pen,

they could actually go online and use that link to be able to draw maps and be able to see the population size and the configurations. And so hopefully we'll have iterations and versions of maps provided to us that we can look at that are going to be very helpful. So I'd encourage groups that are interested in this, individuals, folks who truly want to help this process along to participate in that. So to the extent we can outreach more, I'd encourage everybody to do that. So thank you for all the hard work.

Thank you, Councilman Sarmiento. Councilman Benavides.

Thank you, Mayor Portem. A couple of questions. Thank you so much for your presentation. and clerk for your work on following through on the council interest and direction. A question that I have is with regard to the demographics and changes and increases in population from the 2010 census data to today's date. You mentioned the Department of Finance and the projections that are there at ACS. It's a part of the U.S. Census. It's the American Community Survey. Okay. So is that the information that we will be using?

And my question is there have been some developments actually in the west end along Harvard Boulevard since the numbers of the census. There have been several pockets of other developments as well, housing developments that have brought some new residents. So what is the criteria? How do we capture, or is this the ACS information and the Department of Finance information as far as updated population numbers? Does that capture that? How is that addressed?

Well, I'll break the kind of data you're going to see into three buckets. The first bucket is the population number. And for that, we use the 2010 census, period. And that's how we define the number of people that are in each district. Now, the 2010 census in of itself was faulty. I think there was a significant undercount in the city of Santa Ana that was well documented in the 2010 census. But we treat those numbers like they're absolutely real and unchanged. And we can't, in that population number, account for growth somewhere or population being reduced somewhere,

even if we know it with some other data set, the 2010 census is how we define the population. The second set of numbers, the American Community Survey, is in that bucket you're defining how Latino or Asian or African American, the ethnic composition of that citizen voting age population is defined by that American Community Survey number. So when somebody says how Latino is this one district that's been drafted, the number you're going to get back from me is the American Community Survey number of how much adult citizen population of Latinos there are.

Then the third bucket would be a bunch of other data that can help inform the process but doesn't have a lot of legal standing, like the number of registered voters or the number of renters or the number of churches that are in one part of the district or another, the number of young people or, you know, these other kind of data sets that you can build within the redistricting process that help to inform the process, but don't have the same legal standing as the broad population being the 2010 census or the CVAT population being the American Community Survey data

on how the percentage of Latinos or Asians are African Americans in a district. Does that make sense? I think it does overall, the various buckets that you described. So there isn't, am I clear and understand that there isn't necessarily a projection on the increase in numbers population? Notice that you did reflect both the census numbers, 20 census numbers, and then an updated figure. So the American Community Survey numbers continue to grow. They get released every year. And those American Community Survey numbers are going to show population growth. They're going to show growth of Latinos and Asians.

and the percentage of Latinos and Asians that are in a district is going to be reflected by that kind of growing number. However, we still look back to that 2010 number for how big a district is going to be. And legally, we can't actually project out. We can't say, this district we're going to underpopulate because we know there's new developments there. And this district we're going to overpopulate because we know people have actually left. and so we we have to treat that 2010 census data as if it's a fact and you could however say that the new residents are a community of interest or you could

say that a part of the city where there has been you know a lot of people leaving and moving out that that is an area that has unique needs and should be treated as a community of interest so you can draw lines that take into account these different areas and how the city's changing but still at the end of the day that number of the maximum size of district minimum size of district that's not going to change until 2022 okay okay and you mentioned 2022 because the census is in 2020 but the actual numbers and data the actual numbers come out in 2021 most cities will be doing their redistricting in 2021 or early 2022

too they're still talking six years out from from today's you know from 2018 so and that's a good point that you present because some of the question that has been presented why don't we wait until the 2020 census it's only two years out but reality is that it ends up four years yeah right so four years so and and that brings me back to actually a question for the city attorney

Councilman Tinajero referenced the idea of potentially waiting. However, I'm not sure if he was in a closed session when you presented some information with regard to the city having been served with legal documents towards a lawsuit. So if we were to, part of the remedy on the lawsuit with regard to the California Voting Rights Act, part of the remedy is the steps that we're taking, in fact, to look

at the word re-boundaries, as I understand it, that this step, in fact, is helping to address or potentially help to address us kind of fixing this issue. If we were to not move forward with the consideration of word re-boundary, then, as I understand it, it would somewhat strengthen the argument, if you will, of the party that has brought the lawsuit before the city. Is that correct? Can you help address that?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Yes. Just in summary, the lawsuit has been filed, your CVRA, a lawsuit was filed, served on the city, and it seeks three things. it seeks immediate addressing of the ward boundaries to make them more equal and it also requires you to reconsider your current election system to go to the by ward or by district. And it says in the meantime it's seeking to enjoin you from electing any new city council members.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

So I think by taking these actions, you will at least be addressing some of those demands as we answer that complaint and then demonstrate to a court that we are moving forward.

Thank you. And so my last, this is more of a comment that was mentioned by Mr. Mitchell, that the 2010 numbers were very likely undercounted for the city of Santa Ana. And unfortunately, there's a very, we can anticipate, and there's a significant concern, I think a valid concern, that 2020 will even be more so skewed given some of the climate around the census and some of the potential questions that are being presented by the current administration. So those numbers are probably going to be even less numbers that are going to be less accurate, potentially. Lee and so it almost seems like that using these numbers of 2020 or 2010

probably even be a better situation so for the community itself. Last comment

for me. Great thank you let me get to a public comment because I know these folks have been waiting here. Theresa Lee followed by David Holm, Miguel

And I think Theresa Lee asked for translation as well. We have a translator, a Vietnamese translator. Okay, great. Welcome, Miss Lee.

Good evening.

Ms. Lee, can you put the microphone close to you? Thank you.

Sorry.

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For all the people, we have to do that. That is the system. The system is correct. That is not a system.

The system is correct. It is not correct.

I have heard people who have been wrong with the system. I have heard the new system, but I have never heard the new system.

They have not been able to confirm this. The reason I have been to the city is because I want to make everyone that the law of the law of the law is law of the law of the law. It is not law of law, but law of the law. Dù tôi không thắng vụ kiến này, tôi xin hội đồng thành phố vẫn cứ dựa tiếp tục hệ thống bầu cử quân vì đây là một hệ thống công bằng. Tiền xa hơn, hệ thống cũ là hệ thống bằng cấp. Ms. Leif, you can please wrap up. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Yep.

Good evening. Thank you very much for the opportunity for my voice. My name is Theresa Lee, and I will be serving as the plaintiff in a lawsuit against the city of Santa Ana. For a long time, I am very disappointed that the Vietnamese community goes unrepresented within our city. At first, I wished for the situation to change and to happen on its own. And then I myself decided to try making the change.

I and many others have raised the concern at the city council meetings about the petition of Santa Ana City to adopt an election process that would authentically involve the voice of the people. Our efforts were met with the success. However, our wish was stalled and delayed in process. I am at an age where I simply cannot tolerate tactical thoughts and unreasonable delays.

There was so much attention drawn towards politics that I think we all lost sight of what was important. This was not about Mayor Pulido's actions. It was not about whether or not the city council vote was legitimate. It was honestly not even about whether or not Santa Ana election system was lawful. This is about the population feeling unrepresented. If an election system leaves most of the population feel poorly represented, even if it is a lawful system.

Does that make it right? I have heard several speakers oppose the new election system, but never heard that they oppose it on crowd of fair representation on the old election system. And that is because they cannot confirm. My reason for taking part in this lawsuit is to remind everybody that the law is appropriately named the Fair Voting Act, not the Legally Adequate Act.

Even if I should lose this lawsuit, I asked the City Council to move forward in a fair and inclusive process for the new district election system. That's fair system better than old system. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

David Hohen, followed by Manuel Hernandez.

Good evening, Council. Dave Hohen here, long-time resident. I think we've run out of excuses. A couple of you used excuses for keeping it off the June primary, and those excuses are no longer valid, and we're out of excuses now, so let's get this done where we go to a fair representation of all of our residents. and otherwise that cost in June will look like pocket change compared to what we're going to be facing. Thank you.

Thank you. Manuel Hernandez, followed by Paul Gonzalez, Ken Nguyen, and Miguel Hernandez.

Good evening, council members. My name is Miguel Hernandez. I'd like to first to wish everybody a happy May Day. Today we recognize and remember all our workers, so I just want to put that on the record. Unfortunately, a lot of our supporters are my allies, and part of which we are part of the Santa Ana Fair Coalition elections had to go home early, but I am here to represent them and represent their voices.

I've mentioned this before, but my name's Miguel Hernandez. I'm the Executive Director for OCO, the Orange County Congregation Community Organization. Also, we're a member of the San Enafair Election Coalition. I'll keep this really brief. I think Teresa Lee just mentioned the most important reasons why to move forward. I mentioned previously, justice delayed is justice denied. I think we need to move forward in the redrawing of the maps of putting the election on the November ballot. This is really about democracy and making sure

our city is respecting the voices of all our residents and all our citizens. I participated in many and actually two district election process both in Anaheim and Fullerton and it is possible to do this in the time frame given we got to make sure we do it in times and places where the people are so we'd be glad to work with you to make that happen and so let's make sure our Vietnamese community is well represented and make sure we don't dilute anybody else's vote we have a Latino community we have a low-income Latino community

that we want to make sure is representative. So let's just move forward with this, and we'd be happy to cooperate and assist any way we can. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Gonzalez. Paul Gonzalez.

I'm exhausted. I'm calling you. Miguel Hernandez. Paul, I've been going at it since 4 a.m. every hour, and I have to admit that I can't even see anymore. Paul Gonzalez.

You're doing great. Good evening, council. I'm here to talk about item 75B, which is broken up into a couple parts. First part on holding an election in November on the question of district elections. I am wholeheartedly in support of that, and I would encourage you to move in that direction. This really is the direction that we should have gone several weeks ago when you decided, I felt, in a very rushed and secretive manner to try to force this issue onto the June ballot.

Unfortunately, that just caused a lot of embarrassment for our council and for the city, which is unfortunate. But here we are. We have the opportunity to put this on the ballot in November as it should have been all along. With regard to the question of redrawing the maps, however, I feel that we are putting the cart before the horse. As Council Member Tina Harrow mentioned earlier, it doesn't make sense for us to proceed with redrawing the map before the question of district elections has even been asked and answered. Once that question has been addressed by the public, it then makes sense to follow the public's wishes

and proceed with redrawing the maps. So I would encourage you to act on moving forward with district elections in November, and then, once that question is decided, move on to the question of the maps. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Gonzalez. Ken Nguyen, followed by Shahiq Isti.

Good evening, Mayor Patel, and Council Member. My name is Ken Nguyen. I'm a Santa Ana resident for 39 years. I'm here on behalf of Vietnamese American residents in the city of Santa Ana. As you may well know, Santa Ana consists of about 11% population of Vietnamese living in Santa Ana, about 9% white, and 78% Latino. The redrawing of the war boundary in our city is very important to the Vietnamese American community. in Santa Ana as you may some of us point out most of the

Vietnamese population country in the west end of Santa Ana mostly in divide in two words four and six because the the the reason why the we're trying because we will give us the ability to have our own representation and the City Council So our vote will be counted and make an impact for the city election. And otherwise we will be deluded in general vote population when we vote by at large. But the most important to us is how the district line we're going to be able to withdraw.

A good redistricting process should help community have secure, meaningful representation. will be open and transparent and allow community to give input, especially the ad hoc committee, whoever involved in the redrawing district should have a good representation of the community, especially the community of interest, which is here we're talking about Vietnamese community as well as the non-Latino and Latino community, which are interested in all residents of Santa Ana. I also would like to thank Councilman Vincent Salmanto to point out about the community of interest in San Nair.

It might believe the individual or consultant who is responsible for redrawing the line, the boundary in our city should be fully aware of our city. Just for example, recently in the city of Garden Grove, they just have recently redistricted and vote by district. and very successfully done and all community of interest have been protected and equally treated.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Nguyen. I don't think Mr. Saki-State is here from a court. I think he probably left, right? So that was our last speaker. And so now what we have before us is a recommendation action. But before we move forward, is there any other members of the council that that wish to speak on this issue?

No? If not, we have a recommendation action one and two before us.

I'll move the item, both matters on the agenda.

We have a first, which is a resolution of the City Council to declare intent place charter amendment for voter consideration of November 6, 2018 general municipal election ballot to transition from an at-large to by-ward council member elections to the California Election Code and a resolution of the City Council of the City of Santa Ana declaring its intention to consider changes of boundary lines of wards and fixing the time and place said hearing. Maybe we can break both of those out and start with one and then move with number two.

whatever is your pleasure Madam Mayor Pro Temp

bifurcate them

that would be fine

so act number one

75B we have a motion by councilman Benavides and councilman Soloria

Ready? All those in favor, please indicate by saying aye. Aye.

All those in motion passes. Number two is the resolution of the City Council of the City of Santa Ana declaring its intention to consider changes to boundary lines and wards and fixing the time and place of said hearings.

A quick question for a friendly amendment. I really do believe, as I was thinking, I was talking to another council member as well, and I do really think that you made a point. So don't ever say that we don't listen to people from the public. I thought your point was very well articulated, and you were very articulate about it when you said it doesn't make sense that we would change boundaries before voters have said that this is what they want.

So I still, that kind of, I was on the fence, but I think what I'd like to make, put language in there, Madam City Attorney, that states that. I don't know if I'll win that one, but can we put language in that states that we would change the boundaries after?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

I think you simply wouldn't pursue the second resolution, but then it was going to defeat the whole purpose of tonight's discussion. Got it. So you might otherwise just vote no.

Okay, so then I'll vote. I'll make a motion to approve then. Item number two as well. Because we could come back to that, right, and make a decision on that.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Right, I mean, the second resolution is simply declaring that you're going to have a series of public hearings. You're not making a decision to do anything at this point other than to begin the process and to hold public hearings.

So I'll make a motion to approve. Second.

We have a motion, second. Any comment? Yes, Mr. Solario.

Just a brief comment because I know from the dais and from the public there's a question about what order to do. And I would just comment that we don't want to, I think, do district elections just to do district elections. I think the reason we're here is we heard some legitimate concerns from the Vietnamese community last summer. We did some demographic research, and we really do find ourselves in a situation where we're probably out of compliance with the California Voting Rights Act. And so that means that we need to change our wards in a way that are going to be consistent with the California Voting Rights Act.

and to first do an election on wards and then ward boundary changes later is kind of like a justice-delayed, justice-denied kind of issue so that at least for now, too, just process-wise, it's just to do this series of hearing and maps. And when we do approve wards, if we do, we're going to need five votes. So we're going to be having many more conversations on this. But I'm supportive today. Thank you.

Yes, Councilman Vieque.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I understand that we have to do the wards if it were to pass in November, but still, I'm still hanging my hat on the census because we're using numbers from eight years ago, so I won't be supporting this item, but we do have to go through the process.

Councilman Sarmanto?

Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. and since you're so tired, I'm going to speak extensively. Just kidding. I'll be very brief. But one question for our city attorney staff was, in the event that we can't agree because to redraw boundary lines for wards or districts, you need a two-thirds majority to do that, which means five votes from the city council. Let's just presume that we don't achieve that. we're unique different from Anaheim different from Garden Grove and other cities that have gone from at-large to by district elections because we have

lines drawn already so in the event that we can't reach that two-thirds majority would we default back to the existing lines and in the event that the voters approve of moving to district elections from at-large would we just use the existing lines in the event that those that that we can't agree on on boundary

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

lines upon the council yeah I'm gonna actually ask our special counsel to also assist in that and answering that question as to what will happen if we can't meet our charter thresholds and what that results in she wants to be our

city manager as well so please sit down

thank you um if the voters were to um decide to move from at large to by ward elections um at that time the council that that would be in effect for your next election right for um for the next election in 2020. Before then, the council then could

change its boundaries before that election. Or if it didn't, it would be the existing boundaries. So you have an opportunity after this election to change your boundary lines before the next election, the next byward election.

Right, but my question was, in the event that as we're moving forward here, and for this selection cycle, if we don't achieve a two-thirds majority to draw new lines, would we default to these existing lines if, in fact, the voters approved a change from an at-large system to a bi-district system?

Yes, nothing changes. You need an affirmative action to change your boundary lines. So if you don't get the affirmative votes to change your boundary lines, your existing boundaries stay exactly the same.

And again, the benefit is that we already have lines, and that's where I think a lot of other cities really had to go through this forced exercise because they had no lines. It was just one boundary for the entire city.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

That's correct. But without disclosing too much information, I would just also like to remind the council that we did get some advice on what that might look like. Like if you change to a by ward election system, we already have some information on whether given your existing lines, you're really going to be in compliance with CVRA. So it's kind of a catch-22 in a way. So my opinion would be that if at some point in the future the voters approve, you're going to have to take a serious look at your boundary lines.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Yes, it will default, and yes, that would get you there, but I don't think it will 100% get you out of the situation that you're currently in.

Right, and I think similar to Councilman Solorio's point, I think, to me, you need both of these elements to be addressed because addressing a change in boundary lines without moving to a district election system from an at-large really is a hollow change because it's still going to have the element of diluting votes and not achieving compliance with the CVRA. So that's, you know, to me, again, something that we need to consider. But I think we've... Right.

So I don't know who's chairing this because our pro-tem just left.

Mayor Pro-tem had to head out, so she handed me the gavel here. So we have a motion and a second. I think one quick comment that I wanted to make with regard to when we would consider the ward reboundaries and to the comment that has been made with regard to the 2020 census. Based on the comment the special counsel just made,

assuming that we do move forward with things are moving in the direction, whether the support will be there from the public or whether the court is going to call on us and demand us to go to bi-district elections. I think that the writing's on the wall, if you will. there is very very little chance unless we want to do like other cities Anaheim and others to fight we're going to end up going and then pay millions of dollars and then at the end of the day have the court decide for us anyway so assuming we're going to go to by ward elections the 2020 census those numbers won't be

available until basically post the next election so we have a 2018 election then we have the 2020 election so regardless we're going to have to redraw using the numbers that of the 2010 census so it just that this idea of using the 2020 numbers it's not going to we're not going to have them basically before either the 2018 election or the 2020 election so just a comment of information So we do have, I'll call the question now, we do have a motion and a second. You have the maker and second of the motion? Clerk?

You do have that?

Yes. Okay, so those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. We've got one no, no abstentions. Motion carries. Then we'll move on to, we already addressed item 80.

And we have, I think we had another work study session that I'm assuming at this point we're going to, for Gomez City Manager, what's your intent there with regard to the second work study? I think we already did that one. Did we do the second work study? I'm going to ask, is it timely that we have to have that work study today?

Council Member City, we don't have to have it. In fact, there was a comment by the Mayor Pro Tem to carry this one over. Can we do that, Mr. Chair?

So we'll do that. I will go back to, I believe we have recessed to the Housing Authority. Recessed to the Housing Authority. We already addressed one of the items, but we have the consent items 1 through 4. So I'll entertain a motion at this time. So moved. Second. I have a motion and a second. Those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Mr. Chair, did we do 60D?

I apologize. 60D, actually, I thought that the former acting director was going to come back, but I was advised by the city manager that the item was continued to the next council meeting.

Okay. Was that by staff or was that by...

What happened is, I think a little bit of misinformation. We got the impression that that item was being continued by council so we communicated with mr zerschmead who is actually was chairing a meeting in the in the mayor's absence in his city so he so it actually worked out better for him but he was prepared to come but we thought that the item got continued but if you'd like to

have us present it we do have other staff no no no that's fine i mean and then so i guess that's the problem with having elected officials as um staff as well so um but no i'm completely good I'm good with continuing it because I know that there were some issues with that. So why don't we go ahead and take the-I just wasn't sure if it was the council continuing or if it was staff continuing.

So at this point, is staff recommending or would council like to make a motion and to what date?

I think we should just put it on the record that we continue the matter because the director isn't here. So I'll move that we continue the matter.

I'll second.

Motion, second. Should we do 30 days? Let's do 30 days if that's okay with my colleagues.

Okay. 30-day continuance on item 60-D. Do we have a motion to second? Those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Abstentions? Motion carries.

So we'll be, I guess we technically adjourned a housing authority meeting a bit ago when we came back to a council meeting. We are continuing the work-study session one as well, so we'll come back then now to, we don't have any, we've already addressed all public comments, That's correct, Madam Clerk. So we'll go then to City Manager. Any comments?

Mr. Chair, I just wanted to have one announcement. The Police Department Open House will take place on May 12th, Saturday, May 12th, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. This will be the third annual Open House. The community is invited to attend this fun-filled day and meet with officers and get to know the specialized units such as SWAT, Mounted, Police, Motors, and K-9. Staff will also provide tours of the police department and give interactive demonstrations. Free hot dogs, chips, juice, and other refreshments will be provided to their attendees.

Thank you, Mr. City Manager. Thank you for that update to the community. All are welcome May 12th at Central Police Station. We'll go to City Council comments, Councilman Sarmiento.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. and I want to begin by, I'm not sure if we're going to be back here before Mother's Day.

Actually, this meeting will be adjourned to Thursday, May 3rd, to hold the second public hearing on the Ward-Reboundary process.

I'm going to wish everybody a happy Mother's Day anyways, because I don't know if we're going to have time for that when we're at a study session. So happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there. A special shout-out to mine. I love her dearly, and I'm blessed to have her in my life still. but to all the mothers out there that do an incredible job raising their families and being great role models in our city, I certainly do want to give them praise. One last thing I wanted to mention, and I think I mentioned it to a couple of my colleagues tonight,

I think it's incredibly disrespectful for the council to not respect the public's time and come out here an open session after a closed session that goes beyond 6 p.m. We schedule our meetings at that time. We publicly notice them at that time. And we often come out here 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, an hour and a half after our scheduled time is. And we have to do business, council business. There are folks whose time is very precious in speaking about mothers.

We have a lot of mothers, parents, children in the audience that have much better things to do than wait on us. My recommendation is that we either stick to a strict schedule and come out here at 6 p.m. We can schedule our closed session for an hour earlier if we have a dense amount of items that we need to cover. Or we could simply adjourn the closed session item at 6 p.m. and continue after we're done with our open session. I just think it's happened too often. We get neglectful. And I just think we're inviting people here to recognize them, giving them certificates and proclamations, and we have them waiting out here for an hour.

And that's just not a good look for us. I think there's a simple cure to that. I could be here all night. It's 1030. But I also want to be respectful of staff's time. I think there are ways that we could reduce the time that we spend here. Also, doing presentations, I think, is a great thing. There's so many things that we need to celebrate and recognize and applaud people and the public for the great work that they do. But maybe what we could do is we could condense our presentations that we all provide and we like to recognize folks with to maybe one per meeting. Because if we all did two, we could have 14 presentations a night.

So there has to be something to govern our conduct and to make sure that we're, again, respectful with the public's time, staff's time, and everybody's time that's involved. The final thing that I would say as a suggestion is that as we limit the discussion and the comments by the public to three minutes, we should do our own limitations on our time because we could get very verbose. and maybe there is a way that the council can kind of self-govern itself and try to keep to three minutes. If we need to go beyond it, we can ask for one of our colleagues to give their time and use theirs.

But I just think it's about time that we start being a little bit more rigid. Nobody's saying let's be completely strict, but let's do a little bit more to tighten up this program because I think we've gotten way, way out of hand. So just some food for thought for my colleagues to consider. I think it'll be helpful. or run a much leaner meeting, and as we're talking about reinventing how we govern, maybe this is one way to start. Good night.

Thank you, Councilman Sarmiento. Councilman Tinajero. He took everything I was going to say. All right. So happy Mother's Day. Thank you, Vince, for taking my thunder. But the other thing is thanks again for taking the second part. I'm basically going to support Councilmember Sarmiento here. Madam Clerk what I would like in our next meeting is for you to have a stopwatch and for you to time every council member and how long they speak because there are some people it's kind of like an alcoholic that doesn't admit they're not you have to show them proof you know I don't want to you know yeah

I'm just using as an example but there are some members who think they speak like two minutes in a meeting and I'm like no that two minutes is really four hours and so we we need to be mindful of that so right now council members can give how many how many presentations per month is it two two per meeting that's to be fine it's supposed to be one okay so you have adopted a

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

resolution which governs your presentations it also governs your speaking time so perhaps what we could do is get you all a copy of your resolution just to remind you of what you've imposed upon yourself as a good

starting point. Well that's that's that's great but I also think that staff I'm basically saying asking staff to keep us in line because they're the ones that are doing this they're the ones that can you know time while we're up here and not be afraid of basically telling us to adhere to our own policies okay so what What I would like is for us to make sure that we limit one presentation per council member per month and let's strike out that little loophole that says if you give a joint presentation,

then that doesn't count against you. So it's just one. If you're up on that microphone, I think that's one. Number two is we should be adhering to the three-minute rule as well up here when it comes to items and like council member Sarmiento stated if we need to go over we ask permission and it could be that the lively discussion it's a lively discussion and we do give ourselves that that professional courtesy but let's give it a shot. I'm sorry that's right let's do it now so anyways and with that good night. I think you would have gone red twice and that let's go to Councilman Solorio. Any comments?

Yes, because in case I take four hours instead of two minutes, I'll just speak to one item. I had the pleasure today to, on behalf of the mayor and the council, go to the ribbon cutting for the new children's playground at Chepas Park. It turned out a beautiful, small little compact playground, but there's a lot of density there. And so they'll get a lot of good use and a lot of very happy children. We also did receive certificates of recognition from Huen Nguyen, County Clerk Recorder, who has a lot of roots in Santa Ana, so he was really pleased to be there.

And then we also received, and the Clerk Recorder was there himself, and Supervisor Andrew Doe had a staff person also provide a certificate of recognition. So thank you to all the staff, particularly the park staff, for putting that event on. and it was well-deserved and well done.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman Villegas. Thank you, Councilmember Benavides. I'm just going to report out of the Youth, Education, and Community Services Council Committee, which met on April 23rd. In attendance was Councilmember Benavides and myself. In the committee, we discussed the installation. We got an update on the security lights and security cameras in all the parks. We also received an update on the police services at the park. That's something I asked for.

I want to know how often our officers are being called to the park because we don't have any park rangers or we have one and a half. Also, we received an update on the park bond, Proposition 68, which is on the June 5 primary election. And we also received an introduction and we met with our new youth services supervisor who's taken on that role here.

And she briefed us on what her job entitled and what her goals were within the city. and we also received an update on the partnership for the Santa Ana Unified School District in preparation for the May 21st Joint Policy Committee meeting. Thank you, Council Member. Thank you, Council Member Villegas.

A couple closing comments that I have. First of all, I want to once again officially welcome Mr. Mintai, our new Planning and Building Director. Thank you for also quickly running to the mic and addressing questions on your first night And I also want to welcome Mr. Steven Mendoza, our Community Development Agency Director. I know you were walking earlier, walking toward the mic as well, and we're trying to get some questions addressed there. Welcome to you both. Glad that you're here with us. We're a dynamic city, and today was with the budget presentation. Maybe we should have had him come next meeting.

We would have had maybe more exciting and upbeat things to be addressed. But overall, you're confident you'll find that the city of Santa Ana is a great place to work and a great community to serve and look forward to working with you both and supporting you and your efforts here, directing both of your departments. I want to thank also just the overall staff. Again, budget was maybe not the smoothest or easiest meeting. There was a lot of thoughts here from Council, but I know that it's been a lot of hard work by Mr. City Manager and Deputy City Manager at Finance, the rest of the team.

We addressed some questions, some ideas. I also want to encourage us to think through just the economic development opportunities, what we might be able to do on new and creative revenue producing measures. One thing that I would request from City Manager, if you can provide to the Council, I know we've mentioned earlier the branding strategy plan, just a memo update perhaps to Council. from what I understand North Star the the firm that we have retained to work

on the branding plan is coming close to conclusion and almost at a point of being able to present to the community but if you can provide the rest of the council my colleagues and myself I mentioned getting some information on that that I think is also will speak into our efforts around economic development and speaking of economic development just want to encourage members of our community of residents to shop local, shop Santana, support local jobs. And as a last comment, we will adjourn to this meeting to Thursday, May 3rd at 5 p.m.

here at Council Chambers for the second public hearing on the ward reboundary process. I want to encourage those who are not able to attend to please participate in the process and send their comment to e-comment at santa-ana.org. you can also inquire from our clerk of the council to be able to provide you with further information with that meeting adjourned have a good night all

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