Read the April 3 meeting.

And please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Ready? Begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. If you can remain standing, Susan Cho, our police chaplain, is going to give us our invocation. Please go ahead. Let us pray. To the Almighty, who is the source of our strength, we give thanks. We come together in gratitude for each other and our ministry in serving your city of Santa Ana.

Sustain us with wisdom and grace as we continue to lead by your example. You said that we are the light of the world, and we are humbled by your great calling, and we ask for the courage and resolve to use our light to brighten the lives of those around us. Bless us, Lord, so that we in turn can be a blessing. Guard our hearts and guide our steps always. And all God's people said, Amen. Thank you. You may be seated. I'm going to call on Mayor Pro Tem Martinez and Joey. Oh, yeah, Councilor Sarmiento, excuse me. Valerie Amesco, are you here?

Can you please come forward?

Welcome Valerie. Thank you Mr. Mayor.

Yes, and if Valerie can have Sonia Llamas come up here as well. She's the co-chair of the School Climate Committee. So Valerie is the President of the Santa Ana Unified School District. Welcome Valerie. and thank you all for all the good work that you all are doing over at the school board. And we have the, it looks like the board here of the school climate committee come before us. So I have the honor of making this presentation to our friends at the climate committee, the school climate committee. And, you know, we're blessed in the city because our agency, our council, has such a good relationship with the school district.

We work together. not only do we have mutual constituents, but we are very aligned on different things. So it's, you know, welcome to the people's house, right? And we feel just as welcome as I was over at the school district just last week when we were talking about the census and how we can get more money, how we can make sure that our resources are not compromised in the next census count because that means resources for our kids, services for our family, representation for our community. So all these great things that we've worked on together.

We have a number of items that bond us as agencies, such as joint use programs in our schools, where the city and the school district are able to share that space. So I always feel very, very honored when we can work together on things. And we have a very, very excellent school board and good work being done there. I was just listening to a study done on public schools today, just ironically, and they said that California schools are outperforming schools across the nation, and specifically Southern California. And I think if they dig down deeper, they'll see the progress that's been made by the San Antonio Unified School District.

So let's give them a big round of applause for that.

And I think a lot of it has to do with my colleague back there who's helping with the debate program at the school. They're competing at Harvard. They're competing at a lot of big campuses and introducing advocacy, being able to publicly speak. And for our kids, we've got such a talented group of kids that now they're finally receiving the attention that they so desperately need. So let me just talk to you about a little bit about the school climate committee and I'm going to go ahead and hand the floor off to To Valerie to go ahead and give us a little bit more detail

The school climate committee is comprised of two Santa Unified School District board members parents students several community partners site and district administrators and the Santa Unified School Police This became the catalyst for enhanced communication between the district and community partners serving the students and families in our district It's comprised and committed to holistic student services as the result of transformative relationships amongst staff, family, community, and through collective action and ensured equity.

The School Climate Committee continues to remain focused on expanding school support services to address barriers to student success. An example of this collaboration is the implementation of restorative practices within the school district. Today, we're honored to recognize the good work that this committee does because what it does at its essence and at its heart is to improve student success. And really, that's the mission for all of us. And that's the hope that we all have as a community to make sure that the generation presently on campuses throughout the school district and generations to follow will have the support,

will have the network to be able to rely on to compete, to do well. and I just want to thank the committee for all their hard work. I want to thank the parents and I want to thank the students for committing themselves to, you know, this important task of doing well and improving the quality of life in our community. So Valerie, why don't you come on up and talk a little bit more about the committee. Valerie Amasqua.

Thank you very much. Good evening everybody. So I'm going to be brief. I know when people say that you say, oh, that's not true. First of all, I want to thank everybody standing behind me if you guys want to come up here. there are 32 members and a lot of us a lot of our members are on spring break and they're out so they couldn't be here but there are 32 members that have been meeting for over three years the community parents students and some non-profits and some agencies have come together and those of you who work with other people and collaborate you know how challenging it is

for everybody to come together right so we worked really hard to figure out our why why are we meeting? What are we doing? And as Councilman Sarmiento said, to us it's about the kids. Not just one group of kids, but all of the kids in our district. Whether they went to, they're attending a fundamental or they're attending what we'll call a regular high school. Because they're all the same. And they're all our children. So we did not want to separate them. The needs are the same everywhere. You'd be surprised. We have mental health needs at our fundamental

schools. We have mental health needs at our regular schools. And so we're raising the bar for all of the schools and listening to the voices of our parents and students and hearing from them what they need not what we think they need but what they need and it's been a great group of people and as a board member I've really been honored to sit with them and then take it back to the other board into the district office to say here's what we're doing here's what we're talking about here's what we like to implement can we do this and here's why we're doing it so

So as many of you know, I hope you know, or you watch school board meetings from home, some of you, or you get our mail pieces. You know, our graduation rate is the highest it's ever been, 93% in the city of Santa Ana. Let me say that again, 93%.

And yes, we have a wonderful speech and debate. And we have STEAM, and we have STEM, and we have Circulos. And I can go on and on. We have wonderful counselors that are going to be recognized tonight for the amazing work they do. We have Joey Daniels, who's going to be recognized as a wrestler at Santa Ana Unified. We are doing phenomenal things within our district. Do we have room to grow? Yes. Do we have room to improve? Yes. Not one of us will stand up here and say, we do it all, and we do it right. We learn every day. And when we do the work, it's for our kids, and it's for all of our kids and all of your kids.

So as we say at Santa Ana Unified, we are SAUSD. So thank you again, Councilman Sarmiento, for this wonderful award. Thank you.

You know, those numbers, I mean, are striking when you hear them, 93%. I mean, that's just incredible. That's something that we can all be proud of. But I remember what the numbers were like before, right? And so there's been so much progress, so much advancement that's been made, and I'm really honored and really proud to tender this certificate of recognition on behalf of the City of Santa Ana to the Santa Ana Unified School District School Climate Committee. I thought you guys were going to talk about climate change or something when I saw climate committee, but this is much better news

and much more exciting than just talking about the weather. In recognition of your outstanding contributions to the community, please join me in thanking this committee and those committee members that aren't with us today. Thank you very, very much.

Thank you.

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So now we're going to take a presentation a bit out of order. At this point, we're going to invite Mr. Mike Wiseman and other members of Amusement Park here in town to join us. I think we have both John Gotheld and Mike Wiseman here joining us. So just a couple of, earlier this week, we had a celebration here. Councilor Mayor Potem and myself had an opportunity to be a part of a celebration here in downtown. And from the presentation you saw earlier, there are a lot of great things going on in Santa Ana at the school, school district, leadership there. And we also have leaders in the business community.

A number of years back, I believe about 19 years ago, there was an advertising agency that chose to move from another part of town. I'll let them tell a story in a bit. another part of the county here to the beautiful city of Santa Ana and specifically within Santa Ana a really cool building one of my favorite buildings in the city right in the corner of 3rd and Main the old City Hall it's a beautiful architecture designed building and they had been sitting idle for some time and there was some visionary leadership that came and saw potential there some potential and beauty in the city they came polished it up and they've been

doing some amazing work uh being uh as a leader nationally uh in the area of of marketing communications and advertising and uh at that point dgwb and now uh under the name of amusement park and let them tell a little bit about that story as well but one of the key things is not Not only are they a model and a leader in the communications and advertising industry at a national level, they are a company and leaders that believe in giving back to the community and in a number of different ways.

They've taken pro bono clients, Taller San Jose being one of those, and more recently working with Brian and Vanessa Peterson with Faces of Santana. We recognized them a few months back. A young couple of artists that are bringing dignity to some of those neighbors out in the community that find themselves without a home and and they need the Faces of Santana needed a place to be able to do their art where they paint some of the folks out in the community who are homeless and help them and that maybe they'll share a little bit more about

that story as well but again here's a company who is doing so much in so many different ways to put Santana on the map and always give back they celebrated the 30th anniversary as an ad agency so we had a part an opportunity to be a part of that celebration I'll go ahead and pass the mic on to Mayor Pro Temer if she want to say something at this point or if she wanted to have a John or not

much, Councilman Benavides. You pretty much said it all. So, but he was spot on. The only thing I would say is that celebrating 30 years is an amazing accomplishment, but more importantly, their commitment to this community and to the organizations that they've supported and the support that they've given to the city. John and Mike, thank you so very much for being a true leaders in this community. When I think about the creative, you know, when I think about makers and creators in this space here in this community, you know, one of the first people I

always think about is Amusement Park. And I love the new name because it's fun, it's exciting. But more importantly is that what really attracts me to them, and I'm always thinking about them, is that they have a heart. And they truly love this city. And they do whatever they possibly can to help as many people that they meet, whether it's between Faces of Santana or helping Taller San Jose, who's now Hope Builders, you know. And so I'm excited that they continue to be in this great community. I look forward to another 30 more years of you all here in the great city of Santa Ana. And without further ado, John, Mike,

please share about your story.

Appreciate it. Thank you.

It's such an honor to be recognized. Obviously for our work, I feel it's more important to be recognized for your heart.

As David and Michelle have said, we started out as entrepreneurs like any other small business in 1988 with a dream. you know the dream was to you know become rich and famous

we're neither but but but we're rich and famous in other ways so it was interesting because we celebrated our 30th anniversary last week and what we realized is that 20 almost 20 of those 30 years have been spent here in Santa Ana so most of our adult life and our business is spent here in the city that we fell in love with when we came. So you can imagine as a creative company where ideas are your business and your requirement, you know, I joke all the time because we were literally a few miles away

on Main Street, but we were in Irvine.

and obviously a few miles makes a big difference going from Irvine to Santa Ana but the thing that John and I both agree on was the spirit that we were welcomed with when we came here we were just an unknown business in in Irvine

here we were welcomed with open arms Main Street was shut down for us when we came we were a little business that could so here we are almost 20 years later in this city and we said when we came that we were going to give back it was interesting so you can imagine for an advertising firm we moved in on Halloween

in 2000, 1999-2000. And the first day that we were in business, we shut down the business at noon, and we sent all of our employees, many who were from South County, into Santa Ana, into the downtown. 20 years ago, it looked a little different than it does now. But we shut down at noon and had a scavenger hunt. And we said, you're required to come back at the end of the day with the menus from the local restaurants, with the dry cleaner schedule. We want to get to know the people in our community. And I have to tell you, we found a home.

And we're so proud of being able to do national work, international work with clients. You know, we've had clients that have been on the Super Bowl with work that we've done. national clients Hilton Toshiba you know big big clients and Los Angeles was always the Mecca for advertising and we said you know what it doesn't matter where you are for creativity to occur and I have to tell all of you when you're sitting in the middle of downtown Santa Ana and you open your window and you hear the sounds and you see the sights all of it the rich the richness of a

true urban city with a heart and with a soul, we were captivated. And so John and I are both at a point in our careers, and so is the other leaders and partners in the agency, where it's that idea of going from success to significance. We've done the things that we've wanted to do in our business. We still have more to accomplish, but now it's about other people. I constantly remind our staff, believe it or not advertising can be a noble business right the spoken word and the visual arts are a very powerful medium that can actually create change

for good and that's what we're attempting to do with what remaining time we have we're getting grayer as we go but just so in love with this city and I just have to thank, I mean, all the council members. You folks are, you're pouring your hearts out every day into this place as well, and we're just proud to kind of stand shoulder to shoulder and do what we can in our business to make this city all that it can be and more. So I just thank you so much for this honor. All right, so I'm not going to go too much longer because I think Mike covered a lot of ground. The only thing I wanted to add to all of that is when we when we

started the agency in 1988, 30 years ago, a lot of our colleagues, you know as Mike said, said well if you guys are going to open an agency that's like real creative then you got to go to LA. And we said not necessarily, you know, and we and we made the firm commitment that creativity is where you make it and that we were going to open in Orange County. And I personally was living in Los Angeles at the time, and I said, well, if I'm going to commit to opening a business in Orange County, then I'm going to move to Orange County. But I didn't want to move to Orange County. So I came down here with my wife and kids,

and we went everywhere looking for where is the soul in Orange County? Where's the heart? Where are the creative things that are in Orange County? It's got to be someplace. and I moved to downtown Santa Ana. I moved to historic French Park 30 years ago and I have lived in Santa Ana for all 30 of those years which is maybe one of the greatest benefits of us starting our company is it brought me here to this city with all of these incredible people this incredible council. I just want to Thank you for everything.

I'll hope that you read it.

So Mike, John, and the whole Amusement Park team, on behalf of the mayor and the city of Santa Ana, it is our honor to present to you the certificate of recognition, recognizing you for 30 years of outstanding contributions to the city of Santa Ana, the broader community, and beyond. Congratulations. Thank you so much.

And just one thing that I will say, because I've known John since 2002, and I just told my colleague, met him in China up in the Great Wall, but I won't share the rest of the story.

But it's not about the monetary wealth that you create. It's about the wealth that you commit and assure that you're able to invest not only in your employees, but a city and the people that live in this city and this is what this company has done here in Santa Ana for 20 years and so I want to thank you both because you guys have hearts of gold and we meet a lot of people in business in the work that we all do but there are times where we know that some folks are genuine and have a true heart and love for the city and then those are just will just speak just to say

hey yeah Santa Ana is a great city but you guys have talked the talk and walked the walk so thank you thank you thank you thank you next if I could have mr. Joey Daniels and I know I see his family in the audience so please come up here and coaches it's a very special day for this young man

come on i see his father please come up here don't be shy you guys come on up family please come up here it's a very special day for us

so as they come up and i know coach glab couldn't make it uh he had his son i think basketball or soccer? Baseball. Okay, baseball season. And so a few months ago, I had brought Joey up here for his accomplishments. And really, you know, this young man is making history in this great community. And it's important for us to recognize what our young people are doing, not just in our high school, but throughout our community. And really, what kind of future this young man truly has is going to be an amazing one. And so come closer, guys. Come closer. And so before I begin and read

the whereases and some of his accomplishments, I want actually his coaches to read off some of his accomplishments. Because I did that a couple months ago. But I think your dedication as coaches and how you've been able to help this young man achieve what he's achieved. And obviously, he's put the hard work and dedication but it takes coaches to help him and groom him to make sure that he is successful so which coaches want to come up here and talk about joey real quick

all right great um last year i said if there's anyone that can win state it will be joey and And I said, God willing, next year we will be here celebrating that.

All I want to say about this guy is that he is going to be one tremendous leader. He has four things going for him today. His friends watching at home, his coaches here supporting him, his teachers who are in the stands right there, and most importantly, his family who's right behind him right over here. the four major influences of students these days so this guy has them all and that's why he's so

successful congratulations joey great and joe if i'm gonna have his dad come up and say a couple

words i just i just want to say thank you to all the coaches especially the san unified school district uh all the staff for helping out joey especially uh scott glad that he couldn't be here today and I just you know what else more could I ask for Joey thank you Joey so Joey Daniels is a

senior at Santa Ana high school this is why I have read on today go Saints a class of 1997 a very proud graduate of Santa Ana high school he has conquered his third California Federation CIF championship in the sport of wrestling he made history on March 3rd as the Santa Ana's first Boys Wrestling State Champion and won at the 220 pound title at the CIF State Championship with a victory of 5-2. In addition, Joey is a three-time Golden West League champion and the

champion of Five Counties Invitational Wrestling Tournament. Furthermore, Joey competed in the Masters Meet, which is a state qualifying tournament that represents 390 schools in Southern California, taking the runner-up position in 2016 and claiming victory in 2017. Joey is currently ranked second in the state and 18th in the country. Today, we recognize today, April 3rd, as Joey's Daniels Day, his exemplary athletic abilities in the sport of wrestling and his positive representation of our community deserves great recognition. And I don't

see, you know, Principal Jeff Bishop, he's not in the audience, typically he usually is, and I have to tell you that, you know, Jeff Bishop was my principal and assistant principal when I was in high school, 20 plus years ago, right, graduated in 1997 in How Time Flies. The principal that you see today is not the principal that I had 20 years ago. Full circle, and his love and commitment, not only for the students at Santa Ana High School, but for this community, I think has been

invaluable to this community and to the support of students like Joey and the other amazing students. This principal actually brags. And so every time I go on my Facebook, the first thing I go to is Jeff Bishop's page. So I can see like, what's Joey up to? Because he's always taking pictures. and so it's been a quite an amazing journey to follow you know this young man's career and not only that his brothers are not here but they all wrestled and so this has kind of been a tradition but this young man his dedication is amazing and i'm really proud joey and i know you you're not

one with a that likes to say a lot of words but i want you to come up here and just Share your experience because not too many people get this opportunity. This is rare. And he only did it because of his dedication every single day. I have supported this wrestling team for over 20 plus years with Coach Scott Glab. And he actually gets to retire on a high note, on a very high note. and he's not here today, but eventually we'll bring Scott Glab here as well to recognize him for his amazing career as a coach.

So, Joey, please join me up here, say a couple words about your experience, because I know you're a senior. Graduation's coming in a few months. And what does your future look like?

My future's going to be joining the United States Marines, and I just want to say thank you for the community. It was an honor for you guys to help me out and just support Sanana. At least I can represent Sanana, And thank you to my teachers and family that's always supported me and Michelle Martinez for honoring me in this award. And for Scott Glab, it's an honor for him to retire as a high-good coach. He's a really good coach, and he's really out there like another dad.

Awesome.

So I'm not going to read all the where-asses. I'm just going to read at the very end. whereas Joey Daniels is a national runner-up and state champion in the 220-pound division, whereas Joey Daniels will be continuing his accomplishments, as he just mentioned, by joining the Marine Corps as he graduates this year. And now, therefore, we, the mayor and city council, to hereby recognize April 3rd as Joey Daniels Day.

Yeah.

So now if we could have Donate for Life. As they come up here, we've been recognizing Donate for Life for many years. And as Blanca Velasquez comes up here, the One Legacy Ambassador, I know she actually left, and I forgot to bring it up here, but some goods for the mayor and council.

And I want to thank you for that. Thank you so very much. And so one organ donor can save the lives up to eight people, and a tissue donor can enhance the lives of 75 people. There are currently over 114,000 people awaiting an organ transplant within the United States. The need for transplants are disproportionately higher among minority populations. African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians have a higher incidence of conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, or both, which can lead to the need of a kidney transplant. And I have been

doing this because I have a personal story. My mother passed away in 2010 and was on a waiting list for five years. And right after my mother's death, you know, we finally got the notice that she was eligible for a kidney transplant and so I have always been a supporter and on my ID every time I go to renew it I always make sure that I'm a donor you know I made every attempt to go in and hopefully I would be a donor for my mother unfortunately that wasn't the case and no one else in my family as well and I saw my mother struggle and and ended up you know having a

heart attack and passed at the age of 47. She was very young. And so one thing that we can all do is always pay it forward. There are those, you know, young, there's young children, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's adults, there's seniors that are on waiting lists for years, just like my mother. And so every opportunity that I get, I always do my best to recognize, donate for life and for you all to share the information that many of our communities may not be aware of because I know when we go and renew our driver's license sometimes, you know, and they ask, do you want to be a donor?

Some folks like, well, what kind of information do you want from me? On and so forth. And at that time, we just want to get in and out. And so I think it's always important to educate ourselves. And so I just, Blanca, if you can share with us just a little bit about the program and, you know, the One Legacy Ambassador.

Well, thank you. Thank you, Consa. I'm here. ¿Quieres decir en español? Tenemos translated en inglés. Sí, okay. Okay. Well, I'm going to say in Spanish. I'm here, I'm Blanca Velázquez. The story that I can bring you to is that I'm a mom-donate. My daughter, Sandra, was born in nine years. She was a donor of organ and saved four lives. I'm sorry for her mom, she didn't receive the gift of life. What did I learn from this?

But seriously, this isn't a recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery recovery

I was a person who didn't have a favor of this, but my daughter taught me. We always have to be able to be the parents, but no. In this case, my daughter was my daughter, she is the one who taught me. And she taught me. This is education. We need more education in this. I invite you to register, because it's a privilege to be a donor. I'm a privilege to have a daughter that saved lives. Gracias.

Don Cesar, he's going to translate.

First of all, I'm sorry that your mom did not get that gift of life, and I'm sorry about that. We all have the power to save lives, so I'm urging you to become an organ donor. There's a website where you can register to do that. and it was at first I was not in favor of organ donation but it was my daughter who taught me and she's my hero and she educated me we're supposed to teach our children but she taught me and urge you to register it is a privilege to be an organ donor

so whereas the California residents can sign up with the donate for life California donor registry by applying or renewing their driver's license or ID cards at the California Department of Motor Vehicles and whereas in recognition of National Donate Life Month we encourage all Californians to check yes when applying for or renewing their driver's license or ID card or by signing up at www.donatelifecalifornia.org or www.donavidacalifornia.org and now therefore we the mayor and city council of the city of Santa Ana do hereby recognize the month of April as DMV Donate Life California Month.

Wow, a lot of great talent. The next couple of individuals I'm proud to bring up because I've known them for a while, and we talked about the folks with gray hairs. Well, we've got to replace all those people with gray hairs with folks that don't have gray hairs to rebuild the talent in our community. I want to bring up Brandon Wells and Alan Serna. They're with this amazing new project called Apprentice Builds. They're co-owners. They have roots here in Santa Ana. They got their college degree. And one of the first things they want to do is give back to the community. How amazing is that? Let's give them a round of applause.

Operating as a nonprofit organization, Apprentice Builds is a program that offers high school students in low-income or at-risk areas an opportunity to participate in apprenticeships. Through the Apprentice Builds organization, students will gain hands-on experience in building hot rods, because hot rods are still in, and maintaining vehicles that we all need to do or that could be a career. These invaluable skills taught by an experienced mechanic and fabricator will allow students to build a particular skill set that will benefit them later in life.

The immediate goal of the Apprentice Builds is to also reduce gangs, reduce drug use, and reduce dropouts. All very good goals as well. And all this while providing an outlet where youth can learn a trade that can be utilized in the workforce or for personal fun. I know a lot of folks just like to fix up their cars. Although currently in the planning and fundraising stage, Apprentice Builds is set to open their first location and begin working with youth of the City of Santa Ana by the fall of this year. Today we recognize on behalf of the mayor and City Council Apprentice Builds for their commitment

to the youth of their community and to the contributions. Let's give them a round of applause.

I'd like to say first off thank you for having us today to the council and thank you for recognizing us today Mr. Jose Zalorio. It's a longtime family friend. A little background about us. We both grew up and live currently in Santa Ana. So we're products of all the good people who are helping out the youth now. We saw the transition at a very young age. I know Alan's class of 2012 and I'm class of 2013 in high school. So we saw the transition of the higher crime rates into lower crime rates and higher graduation classes.

Thank you to the people at SAUSD, all the nonprofits helping out, and of course our police force reaching out to the community. We just want to be proud members of the community. And although we see that there's lots of help and that our graduation rates have gotten high to 93%, there's still those kids who don't have the support that our wrestling friend had, don't have the family support, and maybe don't plan to go on to our military or serve or go ahead and get any kind of secondary education. So this is a way for them to have an outlet that will keep them out of trouble,

away from gang violence and drug use and teach them valuable skills to become productive members of society. I'll let Alan talk a little bit more about our specific skills with the students. Good evening everyone. So yeah as here Mr. Jose Solori and Brandon said we are in apprenticeship and what we do want to do is take these kids, at-risk kids, and teach them the craftsmanship of building hot rods. Not only that but as well working on day-to-day jobs in their own vehicles with this you want to give them the craft there's too many people with degrees not a lot of people I know that there's between the side of the

screwdriver and once he's kids a craft and give them an opportunity show these kids that come out of areas like Brendan and I came that not because they are born there or grew up there that means they got to stay there that it could create some opportunities and go somewhere in life and find a way out like Brendan and I did as well through a passion like us automobiles yeah we do want to get these kids teaching the craft as well help them get into entry-level jobs build them a profile which companies like Pep Boys or Big Attire's can look at them and tell them I want

this kid and as well get them ASC certified maybe they want to have their own shop one day work in the industry for companies like Chevrolet Ford here in our own country and whatnot and just little things of what we have done we are part of the incubator at Cal State Fullerton which is where we came out of. We have had a gentleman give us a word-of-mouth offer. We're still working with them. We have talked with local companies here of San Ana as well, one being Suavecito Palmid, which we are trying to get a sponsorship through them. Working on it still. And little short-term goals, have our first shop,

as Mr. Jose Soto said, by August, and get these kids up and going.

Congratulations. applause

applause applause applause applause

next it's always great to thank our educators you know and they're educators of different type and here in Santa Ana as was mentioned by some of these youngsters we have a Santa Ana unified school district that continues to do more every day for their students and really part of the education community there are its great counselors and today I'm really pleased to recognize somebody that was nominated from Century High school their counselor lead Mireya Vasquez let's give her a big round of applause

Mireya Century High School's lead counselor and was recognized recognized as a professional school counselor by the entire Orange County Department of Education so she's well known countywide Mireya was recognized also by the National College Board with the counselor award that's a big deal all because of her impressive dedication to lifelong learning and professional development that shapes, guides, and informs critical interaction within students. Through Mireya's leadership, every student at Century High School participates in academic preparation and post-secondary planning through

the Early College Academy. I'm also on the California Student Aid Commission. I know you get folks to sign up and fill out those FAFSA forms so they can get Cal grants. She's also a tireless advocate for student academic success and post-secondary opportunities at all levels. Today we recognize Mireya not only for her award from the College Board, but also for her dedication to her students at Century High School and for her overall contributions to the community. Let's give her a round of applause.

Good afternoon. The recognition should really go to my parents that instilled in me the sense of community and the need to give back. I am Santa Ana born and bred. I live in Santa Ana still. My son goes to Sigurdsson High School. My brothers and sisters are also educators. So we come from a family of educators. My sister Adriana is a school psychologist. My brother Ben is a teacher at Valley and my brother Ugo. I have to give a shout out to my family. Sorry there's a list of us. But my brother Ugo is a special education teacher in Santa Ana. Then three of my nieces

are working to become special education teachers as well their assistants for the special ed program in the city so i i thank my team as well my cheerleader my pr person mr bowman chaka and jennifer who's part of our dream team of counselors at century high school and i want to say about the graduation rate century led the way so if you look at the numbers you'll see that we led the way and increasing those graduation numbers and we're very proud of it thank you for the

recognition I appreciate it and as Hillary Clinton said you know it takes a village so I'm glad she has all these relevant relatives educating our youngsters in Santa Ana on behalf of the mayor city council congratulations

councilmember council member if I can just add because I've actually I get to see her in action. Century High School has an all-star cast when it comes to their counseling department. They're incredible and what's really cool to watch is to go to walk by Ms. Vasquez's office and it's filled with kids. It's always a party. It's always a party. It's filled with kids. They're coming in. They're asking questions and what a great mentor and role model our kids have in what you do. So thank you very much for everything.

If I can have Catherine Brocks come up and anyone else from the Center for Autism, it'd It would be great if you could all join me up here.

There are a lot of gems in Santa Ana and this center here is one hidden gem that I had to recognize. I took a tour the other day and we are recognizing them because it is

the Autism Awareness Month, excuse me for the pause, and we have this center here in Santa Ann I'm so proud of. It's just outstanding the work that they do, the families that they touch, some families that they help and I've been waiting to recognize all of you and you know this is the appropriate month so here we are today and I was just so impressed I went down there and this is a very very special center it's right on the edge of Santa Ana and Tustin still in our city it's a hidden gem there's so much that goes on there great work beautiful facility beautiful people

helping out beautiful families here. They have a lot of different programs and I was just amazed at the different areas that they help the families in when it comes down to children with autism. Very very, it takes a very very special type of person and a lot of patients to work in this environment and you know they also make it fun. But you know this is a very very special place and want to recognize them the executive director kathar brock if you could please come forward and

talk a little bit about the center thank you thank you so much councilman council member viegas um i just really appreciate being here and on behalf of our families that we serve as well as the staff we have a staff of 62 people so this is a small sampling of our staff and last year we served over 2,000 family. It was 2,832 families that we served here in Santa Ana. And we often kind of refer to ourselves as the best kept secret in town. And that's certainly not true for the families that we serve. And so I'm really thrilled too that we have several family members up here as well.

And so I wanted to say thank you to our team. One of the things that we did is back in 2012, we formed because a lot of people don't know 1 in 68 children in the United States are diagnosed with autism, which impacts not only the families and the schools and friends, but it's also your co-workers and your neighbors. And so we were really thrilled that partners came together to help create the center in 2012 so we could provide direct clinical care, education and training, research, as well as community engagement to the community as a whole. And the community engagement

piece, most people are surprised. We have tried to have partners with a lot of other non-profits like Pacific Symphony, they perform for our families. A lot of times our families aren't able to get out into the community because they're unsure of what's going to happen with their child. It's an unusual experience and so they often are very sheltered and they have to spend a lot of their time doing therapy. And so to be able to partner with other non-profits in our community to enrich the lives of our children and the families really means a lot to us. So I just

very much appreciate this opportunity not only on behalf of again our families but our staff for this recognition and so I want to say thank you again very much appreciate it. Can we have one of the family members come up and say a quick word? Yes, oh go for it. Yes.

Well I just want to say that we're very honored for this recognition and thank you so much because I'm one of the many families that were impacted with autism. My child was actually diagnosed at 25 months, and when he was diagnosed, he couldn't even speak. He started talking at the age of three years, three and a half years. He couldn't walk. When I came to the center, it was really hard as a mother. And now he's going almost to junior high. He's going to be in sixth

great and thanks to the center and to all these wonderful facilitators and doctors and therapists now he is in a fully inclusive class he could speak he could run he's performing on his great level and I have no words to thank you all for this recognition thank you I am so happy that you are here

Catherine and because it is National Autism Awareness Month if you could please accept this proclamation on behalf of our mayor and City Council and thank you all for being here.

I'm going to get really cool with this point in the back.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you.

And the last presentation of the evening, if I can have Mr. Paul Guman, step forward, and the people from the 7-Eleven corporate office. Please join me up front.

Also, I can have Council Member Sarmiento and Council Member Solorio join me up front.

So, Mr. Guman here is the franchisee owner of 7-Eleven, and I have so many things to say, including my colleagues. This is a gentleman that works a lot for our community. This is a gentleman who doesn't know how to say no. He is always there for us. This recognition is well-deserved. And also we're joined by him and the corporate members from 7-Eleven. And it is my pleasure to introduce to you, to Mr. Paul Kuhlman. And if you could please say a little bit about your store, how long you've been here.

We appreciate it.

Thank you. Hi, my name is Paul Guman, and I have my brother with me, Mr. Basi. We've been in the city since 1994, and since then, this city has given us a lot of growth, and we'd just like to thank the mayor, council member, all of you for having us here, and thank you for the recognition. And my brother will probably speak better than me here. I'll have them here. Thank you. Hi. Thank you very much. Just want to say, you know, ever since we opened our store here,

this city took us in as one of theirs. So, you know, it helped supported us, put our bread on our table. Wonderful people, wonderful customer, and we're glad to be of any service. Thank you. Thank you.

Someone from the corporate office, Nabel?

Thank you. Thank you. How are you guys doing? My name is Nabel Cogianni. I work for 7-Eleven Corporate. So we have Paul Guman, Bossy. I'm joined with my supervisor, Graeme Brown. These franchisees, they've been in Santa Ana for close to 30 years, seen a lot of different things, seen the city grow in the direction it's going, like all the great things going on tonight, the autism organization, state championship, the young business owners. City's going in the right direction, and we're all glad to be a part of it.

And then on behalf of the four of us in 7-Eleven, I want to thank again Councilman Villegas for the recognition, as well as the whole council for their great leadership and setting an example in the community. It's just they're leading the example for us to follow. I think community involvement is very contagious. It starts here at the top, comes down through Paul, my boss, to me, and it goes out to everyone else. So I want to thank them. We also put together a little one-page flyer. It shows some of the things we've done in the community. and on the back it shows how you can get in contact directly with me or Paul of

how we can connect together because we want to do more stuff so um and then our company just one last thing I'll say we have a motto for the company it's together we can so that works for our company and I think it really works in the community as well like together all together if I had to leave you with one thing I'd leave you it together we can we can make a change we could do stuff we can get involved. So thank you everybody.

They've been inbound for many years and we have Councilmember Sarmiento who has worked with them in the past and recently also Councilmember Soloria and I'll let each of my colleagues come up for a quick second.

I'm going to be brief because it's all been said but I think another motto that we can use for you guys is they never say no. Never. Because when you ask them to support a graffiti abatement program a neighborhood

Association, anything. And I know I worked on an effort to give out toys, and our family's been doing that for about 25 years. I just mentioned it to them, and they showed up with pizzas and hot dogs for the volunteers and all the kids there. So look, from a grateful city, and you should know your franchisees here do incredible work. So thank you, Paul and Bossy, for all the great work that you do for all of us. Thank you, Council Member, for recognizing. Well-deserved.

okay and we could please come forward Paul please accept the recognition on behalf of the mayor and city council for all that you do for the city of Santa Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

All right. Now I'm going to thank the council members for all the fine presentations. And I'm going to bring it back to council. Mr. Mayor.

Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Mr. Mayor, if I can beg your indulgence, I'd like to add a special presentation that will highlight the work that was done this Saturday. Correct. Correct. Okay, great.

Mayor, Mayor, Pro Tem, and Council Members, good evening. It is my pleasure to be here to report to you on some of the efforts that took place over this weekend based on the directive provided by the City Council as part of their March 30th Special City Council meeting. one of the directives was basically to implement a point in time count. I'll be covering that as well as how to increase capacity to the existing quality of life team and also posting the city's draft plan in terms of addressing homelessness. So as far as the point in time count,

through a lot of work and collaboration of our city employees and partnerships that we've developed, we've been able to conduct a point in time count within a relatively short period of time less than 24 hours from planning to implementation we were able to gather approximately 140 participants city employees residents and other volunteers from surrounding communities to participate in this in order to make this project happen we actually had city employees working tirelessly through the night and actually some employees did not even get a chance to sleep in order

to make this happen. Typically a city or a county who conducts point-in-time counts will take anywhere between three to six months and also close to a year in preparation to implement such an effort and I'm happy to report that through our efforts and through our dedicated staff we were able to accomplish this within a 24-hour period with good results. The results of the point in time count for unsheltered homeless individuals is 1,030. This is a significant increase from the 2017

points in time count that the county conducted in 2017. So it equates to approximately 564 additional homeless individuals that we've been able to identify. Almost 82% of these individuals are chronically homeless, which means that they've been homeless for more than one year. 52% of these individuals that we've captured as part of our point-in-time count came from outside of Santa Ana, which is an important point for us to compare here. Comparing the last 2017 to the 2018 pit count, more women are unsheltered here in Santa Ana.

when talking about pit counts it's important not only just to talk about the unshelter but it's important to talk about the sheltered homeless as well because it magnifies the amount of resources and what Santa Ana really is doing from a homeless standpoint so right now based on our count we have approximately 1,617 homeless individuals residing within the city of Santa Ana and that's a combination of both sheltered and unsheltered. Within the county there's approximately 4,700 homeless individuals. So if from a percentage standpoint Santa Ana houses about or has approximately one-third of the overall population

within its city boundaries. In terms of the unsheltered population you'll see here on this graph going from 466 all the way to 1,030 that's approximately 121% increase in our unsheltered population. And we'll go over some of these numbers that identify how some of these individuals ended up coming to Santa Ana.

From the study, we were able to report that about 8% of these individuals that were surveyed are veterans. About 28% are experiencing some type of domestic violence. 32% have some sort of mental health concerns. Approximately 37% have some type of disability and over 50% of them have reported some type of substance abuse.

Impacts tied to the riverbed displacement. Based on this new population count we are estimating that approximately 132 individuals that were living on the riverbed are now residing here in Santa Ana, according to this pit count. So that represents about a 23% number, or 23% of these individuals that were now counted as part of this last pit count.

Impacts to Santa Ana, about 15% reported that they were referred to the city of Santa Ana. These were either from another agency or another individual or another organization which directed them to come to our city, either to seek services or to seek some sort of shelter.

Our civic center is also being impacted. Back in March of the 18th of March of this year, a point in time count was also conducted. there were approximately 206 unsheltered individuals in the Civic Center area, and this is the greater Civic Center complex that we're referring here. And just to point out, there are two libraries within our Civic Center area, and there are four schools within 1,000 feet of these homeless individuals that reside here in Santa Ana. And this is an important point because this next slide identifies the number of schools,

schools in particular from the Santa Ana Unified School District within close proximity of a homeless encampment. If we were to add additional schools such as private schools, other school districts like Garden Grove and others, we would depict here a bigger segment of schools that are being impacted as a result of homeless encampments.

one of the things that the city is doing in order to address the concerns and the quality of life of our residents is the implementation of a quality of life team that is spearheaded through ken gaminski and and a number of other individuals within our our city the intent is to basically increase efficiencies as to how we respond to the complaints or the requests coming in from our residents. The first nine weeks of operation for the quality of life team, we've reported or captured information on 442 individuals that we've provided

service to. The estimated cost of running such a program is approximately 1.4 million dollars annually, just for Colt. It's estimated that about eight full-time equivalent positions are needed in order to run this operation.

This is one of the items that we may be bringing forward to the City Council in terms of extending or adding funding as part of the budget process, but we are looking at other models as to how we can increase the capacity of Colt, which includes teaming up with the county because they have a similar team that they've started just recently. It is known as Chart, and also we will be seeking potential reimbursement from the county as well as far as to how to recoup some of our cost. As far as the overall cost of homelessness for the City of Santa Ana, we are estimating that on an annual basis we spend approximately $17.4 million

in costs tied to addressing homelessness.

One of the directives from the City Council was to post the draft homeless plan and staff recommendations on our website, and we've done that today. here on the screen you will see the the website as well as we created an email address specifically for individuals or any community member who wishes to read the plan and submit comments to the city and they can submit their comments to ending homelessness at Santa Anna org moving forward and in the spirit of collaboration. We are going to be moving with this type of marketing and messaging

as far as encouraging both the county as well as all other 33 cities that going forward that we implement a shared solution to addressing homelessness going forward.

And with that, I thank you for your time.

thank you uh go ahead i know we're going to have comments yeah you know later on in the we are but go ahead but i just wanted to say this really quick first and foremost i want to thank uh councilmember martinez and the other individuals that went out and and participate in the count councilmember viegas but here's what i really want the public to know on friday our staff this This is on Easter weekend. On Friday they received information from our city manager that we needed to do a count. Our staff was here until 4 o'clock in the morning. They didn't go home. They didn't sleep.

They went out there to make sure that they did the best possible count they could. In an age where people always talk about bureaucracies and how staffs don't do certain things, our staff has continually done this time and time again and they did it one more time this time. They stood up. They did the job. They didn't ask for more pay. they went out and did the job that needed to be done to better our city so i want to thank you robert i want to thank you city manager and the rest of our staff thank you uh thank you for that any other comment um go ahead council audio and then villegas

thank you uh first i also want to thank uh mayor poten martinez and councilman villegas for waking up early and getting this done literally it was like at 4 pm on a friday i read that this is going to happen starting the next day and they put it together quickly but you know special shout out to you know Robert Cortez and our new homeless coordinator Hafsa Keika who came from you know LA ready to go and she was a big part of this and I think she was one that didn't sleep that night and the rest of the management team and our city manager as well a few other quick

points I think with the big increase in homeless part of it is yeah a real increase but the other is that in the past maybe they didn't look into every nook and cranny in the community whereas we know this community and we knew based off calls for service where to look so a lot of it was just counting folks that previously were not counted even though they were there to know that pretty much now every city council meeting we're taking various actions to address our homelessness crisis I know later in the agenda that there are two items dealing with telling other cities to stop dumping homeless people here in

Santa Ana that's a big one and another one related to you know the kind of safety that there should be associated you know with panhandling or other activities finally the quality of life team is doing an amazing job there is a phone number that really is the public works dispatch number that if you see large encampments or safety issues you could call that number and really that work needs to be multiplied times three I know at our meeting last Friday we discussed that and as part of the budget and separate I'd like to see how we can increase the size of that team as well as as we ask the county and cities to

help reimburse us for all our costs and issues we should ask them to step up and help fund some of these things but thank you very much to the staff.

Councilor Villiers. Thank You Mr. Mayor. I went to bed around midnight and then got up at three to be here at four and I get here at four and I got a hundred and fifty people in here. It was a great sight to see and like I said it this morning or that morning and I'll say it again this is us fighting back this is us protecting our city. Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who showed up that morning. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Just to echo what

others from the council have referenced. We have a very committed staff, a team that truly believes in the city, believes in providing quality customer service to the residents of Santana even when we're sleeping. So just definitely appreciate all the hard work of all of the teams that came out and led and those who went out there and served. Appreciate your hard work. Thank you. I know Mayor Pro Tem is filming so I don't know if she can film a selfie but But before that, let's go ahead and have a Facebook Live. Vince Armiento, please.

You didn't have us sign any releases or disclosures for that, so we'll forget about that. That's all right. Look, I just wanted to echo what was said already to thank everybody who did that. Thank you, Mr. City Manager. Thank you, Robert. Thank you to my colleagues for doing this and to all our employees who spent a really special weekend that they could have spent with their families, spending it with their city family. and doing something that's so vital to us today. The mayor, Mayor Pro Tem Martinez and I were at the hearing that Judge Carter held on this matter.

And, you know, what stands out to me is something that, you know, Mr. Cortez just mentioned. We spend over $17 million on this issue. And what really offended me this morning was that the judge once again called out the county having so much money that they've been hoarding and not spending on this issue. So the reason why people are sleeping outside, the reason why our city and our residents are impacted is because this issue has been left unaddressed for decades. And we know that.

And the only reason why we're talking about it now is it's left the Santa Ana boundaries and it's gone into other communities and those communities got outraged. But where was the outrage when our folks couldn't go to the library, when our kids couldn't walk through the Civic Center on their way to school, when our employees were being accosted? So what you did this weekend was tell our story and help us give evidence and proof of how we're being impacted. So the outrage that we've been hearing from some of our sister cities and from some of our supervisors,

thank you for giving us proof and evidence that we could fight back and defend our residents and defend our neighborhoods. So thank you very much. Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Obviously, we're not on Facebook Live. Yeah, that would be great. I'm just playing. It's actually being recorded. But for those residents that actually want, you know, to be informed and engage of what we're doing, I think it's important for us to share as much information as we possibly can. Specifically those, you know, who may not have access to live stream or internet, on and so forth. You know, they have the opportunity, obviously, if they have cable at home. But one thing that I did want to mention on this subject, beyond thanking Councilman Villegas for for being in attendance with me.

I truly want to thank one individual that rarely gets to thank enough. And that's Ken Gominski, Commander, Deputy Chief. Ken Gominski, please stand up.

Thank you.

Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, in. This man is dedicated, came in here on a Saturday morning sick, but still was here ready to put us out there with his troops, with our police officers. I want to thank the police officers that came out to help us and keep us safe as we were doing this count. But he goes beyond the call of duty. As he interacts with Judge Carter, as he's interacting

with the homeless population in a compassionate way, as he receives the various emails and phone calls on how to address the quality of life team and the issues that we're facing out there in our community with over a hundred encampments. This is the gentleman that is addressing and dealing with all of it. And let me tell you firsthand, as I went out there on a Friday with Judge Carter, but more importantly, as I came out here on Saturday with our employees,

There were things that I saw that no child, no resident, no business person, no police officer, no employee should ever see. But this gentleman sees it every single day and how he's interacting with this homeless population.

He doesn't look at them as if they are no one. He treats them with respect like he treats every resident, every employee. And that goes a long way to the work that we're trying to accomplish here. And let me tell you that this is the beginning.

when I hear that armories are going to be closing down, when I hear the vouchers have already expired in the hotels across this region, that's about 1,000 people that have been temporarily housed in the armories, 200 in Santa Ana, 200 plus in Fullerton, and the hundreds that were receiving vouchers across this county.

That is very problematic when other cities are not willing to do their fair share and they continue to just give lip service. Because that's what it is. For decades and for these past couple of years as we've done this new point in time count, when we hear in 2017 that it was only 466 unsheltered and as we go out there and do our own count, It is over a thousand, and these are just preliminary numbers.

I am going to ask our residents, our school district, and our business community to please contact us, to contact the Quality of Life team. If you see more encampments surfacing, if you see things that are unfamiliar or new people coming up, you need to contact us. We need your help. You need to be the eyes and ears because I believe that this problem is far from being over. And we have to be honest with one another because let me tell you that these cities in South County are not wanting to step up.

They want to continue to make sure that Central and North Orange County continues to have the burden of the homeless population. But we've said enough. But obviously we can't control those folks coming from various parts ending up here. But what we can do is work together as a team and help the Santa Ana employees who truly care. I have to tell you, as we sat here Saturday morning, they didn't have to be here. But they showed up because they care and this is impacting them every single day.

There's 25,000 government employees day in and day out. They have to face the problems that none of us, none of us really understand. And some of us, you know, where we see near our schools and some of the railroads, definitely we see that. We get upset and we call. But these guys have to walk through it every single day. And so I want to thank all the employees from Santa Ana. Thank you for your dedication. And thank you for coming and helping us count.

because I don't think we would have been successful if you wouldn't have stepped up to the plate. And lastly, I want to thank the residents that were able to come to support us, the various nonprofit organizations. When we can work together as a team, we can do amazing things together. And this was one great example. I look forward to working with our city staff and hoping that we will continue to curtail this. I believe that you have this entire mayor and council united as one to fight for the residents and the business community and all 25,000 employees here in the Civic Center. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Potem. At this point, I'm going to read something into the record, which is part of what we did in closed session. but I want to preface it by giving you a little bit of background about some of the things that have been going on. You know, Judge Carter is extremely active as a federal judge and thank God he's right here in the Civic Center at the federal building and he knows the city very well and he takes it upon himself to get here sometimes at four and five o'clock in the morning

and he walks around he comes to the courtyard the plaza of the flags he goes to wise place he goes to other parts of the city and he is in the process right now of expanding you know his jurisdiction this began over at the Santa Ana riverbed by you know Anaheim and Orange and in that area and that's kind of what got everything you know got the the snowball going if you will and so at this point we have a lot of folks participating but not all there are still

many cities in orange county that are not really stepping up yet i believe they will i think we have to appeal to them i think we have to nudge them we may have to sue them and and and we are prepared to do so we're prepared to do so to give the judge jurisdiction so that he is able to have power over them as we address this regional issue this is a an orange county issue really it's beyond that but if we can address it as a county we're going to do much better than if we try to address

it as a city singularly and so the reporting out language I'm about to read talks about what we just did in in closed session of about an hour and a half ago or so so what I want to report out is that the City Council voted unanimously to direct staff to prepare demand letter to all Orange County cities and to the County of Orange outlining Santa Ana's demands for one is for greater

participation in resolving the homeless crisis in Orange County and two is for monetary reimbursement and contribution by the county for the city's ongoing efforts to address homelessness. I believe and that's a statement i believe we have to do both and what i mean by that is that we have to demand money now not a month from now or six months from now or three or whatever when when things hopefully begin to come together county-wide because we've got needs right now

as mayor potent pointed out earlier look they're about to shut down the armory you know some Some people have already been let out of hotels that were over at the riverbed. And where are they going to go? They're going to come to Santa Ana. And we have to have immediate solutions as to how we're going to protect our city, how we're going to protect our residents. You know, it's a common sight, but you go home and you see somebody riding down a street with two bicycles, they're riding one, they're holding another, and guess what? They're stealing the second bike. That's what they're doing.

Or we get calls, and Commander Kaminsky and others know about these all the time, that there's somebody at a local store, and they've taken their clothes off, and they're terrorizing everybody. And what do you do? You show up, you arrest them. We don't need that in the first place. We deserve much better than that. And while we can't take on everything, and we shouldn't, I believe we should ask for money now because there are some things that we can begin doing right now to help our community and we need to do that.

Now, you know, the first one of the two that I talked about was greater participation in resolving the homeless crisis in Orange County is because at the meeting and Mayor Pro Tem was there and Council Member Vince Sarmiento was there. We had a hearing with a judge. It was historic. We had mayors and city managers and board of supervisors and all their staff from around the county. But everybody wasn't there. Everybody should have been there. We had about, I want to say, 20-some mayors, but there's 34 cities. and in particular there were cities from south orange county that just didn't come

and they need to come because there's homeless in south orange county also and the solution can't be well provide no service so that they go up to san anna it can't be you know maybe arrest them and take them to the county jail and then they get cited and released and guess where they're released right here in san anna or even worse off may put them in a car, just take them to the city limit and let them be. None of those are acceptable. So we need to make sure that other cities do their fair share. And it's got to come down to property. It's got to come down to how many beds they're going to house. It's got to come to an

acceptance that says that this is a regional problem. I, some time ago, and I've mentioned it here before, I had about eight homeless folks just at random that I invited up to my office. and and and we sat around and we talked and i asked him where are you from and several of them said well we're from santa anna but then i said where are you from really where where where were you born where'd you go to school where was your last job they were not from santa anna none of them were from santa anna but but they're here and and all other cities are going to say well

they're not our homeless and they're going to try to show them all to us. No, they're here. We all have to accept what we have, but we have to address it. And that means San Clemente. It means Irvine. It means Rancho Santa Margarita. It means La Habra, Huntington Beach. Every single city has to do something. Nobody can put their head in the sand and say, well, I didn't cause it. Because guess what? Some of the folks here that are from Orange County, some are from outside, but Some are from Orange County that are not from Santa Ana. They are from other cities here in the county.

And they'll tell you when you ask them where you're from. Well, I'm from Fullerton. Well, why are you here? Well, I'm a drug addict. My mom doesn't want me anymore. And I'm just living here. Yeah, it's not acceptable. All cities have to stand up. And that's why we're taking this action, which I think is very bold. But we have to. I believe this is a historic moment. We actually have a federal judge that is helping us, helping us in a big way.

He is going through the county budgets, identifying hundreds of millions, not a million, not tens, not dozens, hundreds of millions of dollars, more money than any of us could have ever imagined. In some accounts, it's close to a billion dollars. We don't need to spend a billion dollars overnight, but even some steps in the right direction are going to make a huge difference. And if we get other cities to accept their fair share, and right now some are doing something. I'm not saying others aren't.

But part of what the judge directed us to do today, basically in chambers after the hearing, all the mayors and city managers, we went back, those that were present. there was about 65 folks in the room he directed five things he said I want to know we're going to come out with a form and I want you to fill it out and on these five things you're going to tell us how many shelters you have in your city how many you know profits or non-profits some of these lists are going to be pretty short by the way but but but but Raul we need to make sure

that our list is complete every single thing that we're doing because we're doing it has to be on that list. And they want to know what are the rules for entry. They want to know how many beds do you have. They want to know what kind of service are you are you giving. They want to know if it's if it's publicly funded or if it's a joint venture if it's private sector. And and and the county tomorrow is going to issue these letters out to all the cities. And believe me everybody's going to want to fill it out because you don't want to be the only city that didn't fill it out.

They're all going to fill it out. But once they fill it out, we're going to see where the gaps are, where the assessments, where the holes are. And we're going to initially divide the county into three areas. It's going to be North County, Central County, and South County. I've already volunteered to be the leader within Central County cities in this area, because other cities in Central County are not doing their fair share. and they can't just write on our coattails and say well we're in central county things are taken care of san anna's doing a lot so so we're not going to do our part everybody has to do their

part in in in south county they already have a meeting on the 19th of this month where all the south county mayors are going to show up and they're going to talk about what they can do some of us that are not south county mayors but are interested in what they do because it impacts are also going to show up and encourage them to do what they need to do. And I believe they can do it. And then North County, they already have a meeting that they're working to set up. We're going to help North County as well. And there the city managers are taking a leadership position. That's where our city manager has to be a leader as well.

I think the president right now is the city manager of Newport Beach, Dave Kiff. I spoke to him today and I said, Dave, this is your chance to do something. Newport Beach has to do something as well. Every single city has to do something. We need to do the peer pressure. We need to do the threat of a lawsuit and potentially a lawsuit very quickly. And we need to ask for money. We need to do all of the above. And most importantly, we cannot rest. you know i don't know if this is going to be you know a year-long process or six months or what it

is but this just has to remain you know on a high alert the way our staff came out over the weekend and i and i and i thank you um uh uh councilman retina heddle for pointing that out and others that have talked about that because we need those kind of efforts right now we have a judge I think he's a little bit like a Rambo. You've seen that movie. He today had a general in the courtroom and he said if there is land here in the county I'm going to order the general to go build some houses. They'll be done in 30 days. Forget CEQA. Forget you know planning commissions.

Forget city. Forget everything. We're going to build something that quickly. We'll pave a road overnight. He wants to bring in the Marines to help us build things. And he is a former Marine, by the way. And today in court, you know, he had, you know, my friend Doug Wagner, the mayor of Irvine, on the microphone talking in front of the whole room. And you were there, Michelle, you were there, Vince. And he put him on the spot. And the mayor danced as much as he could. but at the end of the day I think his feet got tired and and and and I think he just said we

are going to have to do something because Irvine is going to have to do something they had you know a discussion of 400 beds then it went to zero beds now they made 200 beds something's going to happen and it's going to happen in Irvine it's going to happen soon and that's going to be good for Santa Ana because we're going to start to share the burden in the county not only that We're going to start spending money, county money, that's intended for this, that's intended for this, that hasn't been spent. There is no excuse by what's going on here in the Civic Center with the amount of money that is sitting in those coffers.

By latest account, the interest alone is probably in the $25 million category. Just the interest on that money. And so I think we're going to continue to work. I think every single one of you, you know, Vin, Sal, Michelle, you know, Jose, Jose, Juan, and David, you know, we're united, and the city staff. And, you know, right now, you know, Commander Gominski, he's kind of laying back, because he's deputy chief, he likes to, you know, he likes to read everything and be in control.

and he is, you know, he's out there walking with a judge and Michelle at 6 o'clock in the morning on a regular basis. I don't even know if they have coffee or they just talk or what they do, but it's working. It's working. We need to keep up that pace. This is not a sprint. It's a marathon, but, you know, every time we pass that one, you know, kilometer mark, we need to say, hey, you know we're making progress so i know today the commander asked me as we're preparing this statement you know make sure you get number two in there because we need reimbursement now but we

need additional money now and and it's got to be a formal request so you know probably no later than tomorrow we'll have our first request and i want to hear from council members you know you know tomorrow send me a text and a memo talk to the city manager whatever we need to do but right now is that moment. Right now is that moment. So with that, I'm going to move on to other parts of our agenda because we have other parts and part of what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask the City Attorney, was there anything else that we need to report out of closed session please. Yes, thank you Mr. Mayor. I wanted

to report out that the City Council confirmed the appointment of the executive director of the community development agency and mr stephen mendoza also confirmed the appointment of the executive director of the planning and building agency mr ming tai

great if we can make some comments on our new comments go ahead please

i'd like to ask mr uh just to use the edge over here mr stephen mendoza to please stand He's my nomination for Community Development Agency Director. Welcome, Stephen. Mr. Min Tai. My nomination for Planning and Building Agency Director. Thank you for being here tonight.

All right, thank you for that. Now I'm going to go ahead to other items on our agenda. Let's begin with a consent calendar.

Mr. Mayor, I'm just a no on 25H.

And that's it? And Mr. Mayor, I'm going to abstain on 11B because I abstained on it at the last meeting.

I will abstain as well on 11B, Madam City Clerk. But wait a minute. Mayor Pro Temp just had one item and nobody said anything. Hey, hey, hey. Can we just keep going? Make a motion and put the rest? Just keep going. All right. We're on a roll. Sorry about that, guys. All right, we have a motion. Second. No, no, no, no. Councilor Hurtina already moved. Do we have a second? Second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye, those opposed. Motion carries. Let me bring a couple comments that we have.

Ilia, Teslin, come on up. And you just have to do both right now. 11B and 13A. Do both, please. Okay. Good evening. Mayor Pulido and respectful Santana City Council members and public. My name is Ilya Zeglin and I want to talk to minimize my time for a few items.

I really approve cannabis testing laboratories for medicine.

and adult use purposes. Also, I support legislative affairs, ethics,

transparency, communication. And because of this especially second item, I want to tell I have no big project with Santa Ana City Council members. except one to save my son's life. I do admire the community for the hard work, decency, fairness and support towards justice. I am coming for years to your meetings due to that I deal with your council member as compassion and decent people

to ask the support of Santa Ana Police Department to prepare unbiased report to submit it to the court to save life of innocent Nate Zeglin, kidnapped from caring my family on the basis of a false report fabricated by Director of Orange County Regional Center and CEO Larry Landauer for his personal profiteering from public funding reserve for the treatment of my son Nate. and especially today this month of autism

I appreciate that you would not bring him to say something about autism because this is a really documented criminal who steal money from people with autism and their families and he doesn't deserve to be here but please do something to save life innocent person.

All right. On item 20A, we have six speakers. We already approved it because we are so, I was in a state of shock temporarily, so we approved it. So, Ileana Rios, Yantelli Motuate, Brandi Wilson, Blanca Robles, Ysuli Ramos, Adela Montañez, we approve the project that you wanted. Yes, bravo. Bravo.

so if anybody wants to speak I'll call you if not you can go home early you can go do your homework you're victors you got a unanimous vote congratulations all right thank you

so now if you want to speak you are welcome to come on down

Mr. Mayor, just very...

We just want to say thank you for submitting the project, and we are very grateful for all the Lacey community here. Thank you. Thank you to you.

Mr. Mayor, I actually was very close to pulling it, but, you know, just because I wanted to thank the residents of the Lacey neighborhood and the surrounding area for their efforts, and in particular, Hedardo Moet, Director Parks and Rec, raise your hand. Thank you again for moving us forward.

Great. Thank you all. And if you want to watch more of what we do, you're welcome to stay. But if you want to go home and have a nice evening, we're not going to hold it against you. And congratulations to the Lacey neighborhood. And Hedardo, thank you for the good work that you do. We knew you were instrumental in putting this together. So with that...

no Ilya I know you had 25 CND but I asked you to speak on everything and I know you you know what you spoke on so we're we're done we're done with that um we're on we're on to the next one. This is to item 50A. I will entertain a motion. It's expanding police canines. So moved. Second. We have a motion. Pardon? Oh, 30A? It's part of the consent. But if you want a separate motion, I'll indulge.

I'm kidding. Okay, let's go. 50A, I would entertain a motion. So moved. Second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. 55A, Council Member Solari, I believe you had a question.

Yeah, I just wanted to highlight the importance of this item and maybe a couple things to watch moving forward. The Southern California Edison Company provided cities some years ago an opportunity for cities to buy the lights and they charge us a good bill for maintaining them and the lights themselves and all the maintenance related to it. They've allowed cities the opportunity to buy those poles and lights. Not cheap. You know, there is some expense but really there's a lot of value in that if we buy them, maintain them and retrofit them with

more efficient LED lights that will save us money. It's kind of like in your own home when you make some of these retrofits. They cost a little bit of money up front, but over time you really make those costs back in savings. So this is a very important action that's been in the works many years to make this happen because since the Edison Company decided they really don't want to do many or more of these deals with cities, but the city of Santa Ana took advantage of it.

The only thing that I ask going forward is other than the lights, we can have them be compatible so we might have security cameras or other opportunities for Wi-Fi and high-speed fiber, and that's part of this as well. But I know that there's some limitations in that there are also some areas in our city that aren't well lit enough, and we need to add additional lights. and early on there was a proposal that would add more lights where they do not exist the program got scaled back I would just ask that our staff to the extent that there are savings in the program that we continue to maximize

additional lighting for those neighborhoods that need them and I would also ask the community if there are parts of your neighborhood or parts of your street where there is a need for an extra light that you let us know now because we do have a slot of some additional lights to do. And if dollars get freed up, hopefully we could do more. Finally, I know that the financing arrangement that the city did is a pretty good package. But, you know, it's kind of like when you buy a home and you have a mortgage. You know, sure, if you pay it off in 15 years, in this case we're going to do a financing deal in 11, the overall interest is less.

but oftentimes you do the larger mortgages so that you have more cash flow. And in this city, for the next five years, folks, we have some tremendous cash flow challenges. And so although this is a very aggressive timeline to pay back the debt, to the extent there's some flexibility to give the city money that would go towards the general fund to pay for services, I would encourage that. I know it may be too far gone, but I see this as an opportunity to, you know, really improve the city as well other than just by the facility. So thank you so much. I don't need any responses. I just wanted to highlight those items. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, I'll move the item with comment.

Go ahead.

Just very quickly, I just want to thank our city manager for moving this forward and our current interim public works director. We've been trying to do this even when I think Raul was our public works director. So it's been long overdue. This is a great opportunity. We're modernizing our utilities. We're purchasing so that we can have more power and have the ability as we move forward towards our fiber optic network master plan. as we try to address small cell sites, but the opportunity as well that we will have to do Wi-Fi with our fiber that we already have throughout our city

to connect cameras, to connect other opportunities in regards to IoT, which is the Internet of Things. And so this is a really good opportunity for us as we move towards the 21st century, that as we are able to own our utility and our lights, we're able to do a lot more, much faster than having to have conversations with Edison and contacting them, can we do this, can we do that. Now we're going to have control and be able to move faster and be more nimble, which I believe sometimes government is not. And so with owning these lights, we have a lot of opportunity,

and I look forward to working with our staff as we continue to move forward on this, but I'm really more excited in regards to our fiber network master plan that I've been waiting for for quite some time, and it's an exciting time for this city as we do move forward with that. And with that, Mr. Mayor, again, I move this item. We have a second.

All right. Any more comment? Not those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries.

so now what's our next item mr. mayor we're actually 65a but some things have changed you know over these past couple days so I'm not sure if our water manager can come up here and just very quickly just brief us our waters are the bill

hey you can cut your water off

You don't pay your bill.

Even if you do?

Good evening, Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem and members of the council. I'm going to just go over a quick presentation on the California Water Fix, item 65A. Just recently, the Metropolitan Board has entertained funding the Water Fix project. and to give you

the Department of Water and the Department of Water Resources approved the California Water Fix in July 2017 which consisted of 9,000 CFS cubic feet per second flow and two tunnels and three intake structures. In October 2017 the board also approved the funding or the finances options Metropolitan Board did to fund the entire project or their Metropolitan portion of that project and February 2018 Department of Water Resources announced that to a stage construction option because there was

not commitment from the Bureau of Reclamation to fund the entire project the first stage of that option was to construct two intake one tunnel, two intakes, and 6,000 CFS pump stations. The second stage would include another intake structure, one tunnel, and 3,000 CFS pump stations. Stage one, again, two intakes, one tunnel, 6,000.

It will allow metropolitan share to be 47% of the State Water Project, which will cost about $5.3 billion. About 31% of the capacity of the entire project goes to Metropolitan Water District. It would amount to about a monthly cost to the Santa Ana customers of about $2.40 a month increase. The project is very favorable. It's one of the best projects that we are looking at in terms of water resources for the region.

There was an option that Metropolitan Board has directed their staff to go after the portion that was in stage two, but the board has really rethought the project or the expansion of that project because the Bureau of Reclamation and the Central Valley Project water contractors were not really interested in having Metropolitan Water District be the water purveyor up north. With that it is a favor project. Metropolitan Board

is going ahead to vote on funding this portion of the stage one of the project and I'll entertain

any questions. Any questions? Mr. Mayor, I brought this item as you all know I represent the city on the Metropolitan Water District and I actually was not at the Board of Supervisors meeting last week because we had a workshop on this and you saw the number 5.3 billion dollars. That's a huge investment and I always say that if we're not at the table we're going to be on the menu and how to educate ourselves, educate myself, and that's where I was for half the day and learning. But things have changed drastically. What they were presenting to us was possibly funding the two tunnels, and that cost was going to be a little different.

Now there's been a change of plans, and now it's only about funding the one tunnel. And so I wanted, this is a historic vote that's coming on Tuesday. and in many respects even controversial. And so we are expecting a lot of people at the board meeting on Tuesday. And so that's 23 different agencies and supporting a very historic project. This council a year ago or in October, was it in October?

In October.

In October of last year supported the water fix. Obviously, the conversation last Tuesday was supporting two tunnels. Now we're back to one tunnel. And so I guess it's a mute point because this council already supported the initial resolution. Unless there's any changes from this council, I will be showing up there on Tuesday to cast this vote on behalf of the city of Santa Ana. Mr. Mayor.

Okay. Questions? Go ahead. Go ahead, Debbie. A couple of questions I do have.

the estimated cost of $2.40 monthly per household in Santa Ana. How long, for what period of time? This is as we have our water rates as exist today. Today's dollars, the impact would be $2.40 monthly. So going forward in perpetuity, that would be the increase that we anticipate? Yes, that increase will continue until the project is paid for and such. Which we don't have a necessarily timeline for. It's for a long time. One can anticipate that it's going forward.

This is listed as stage one, and your presentation also references stage two. Right. Which I believe, I don't know if that's going to end up being one or two additional tunnels. Stage two is the part where the Bureau of Reclamation will be building the second tunnel and the other pump station for the additional 3,000 CFS cubic per second flow, which they don't have the monies to fund right now. So they're sidelining that project.

So where I was going with that is just trying to get to whether we know the amount, what the cost, the implications and the share on our... It is cheaper, and that's what Metropolitan's Board was really discussing. It's cheaper to build the two stages at once, but because there is no funding and because the Bureau of Reclamation and the Central Valley Project water contractors are not interested, in having Metropolitan fund their project, they basically said institutionally we cannot do this. Metropolitan cannot step in and fund that portion of the project.

Two last questions I have. One is whether there is a potential for change and increase, in essence, in the cost or specifically the fee to Santana households. And two, there's reference, Mayor Patel, on the controversy of the project. And I'm curious if either of you can speak a little bit more to that, why it is such a controversial? Well, you know, again, it's bringing water from Northern California. Metropolitan Water District and Southern California Water Agencies are really interested in building a reliable system that continues to give us water from the delta. Right now what we have is something that really doesn't work.

Years in the past we've had a judge tell us that we cannot take enough the water that we are entitled to from the delta because of the fish and other environmental concerns. So we were really restricted in how much water we could take, although the water was available, but we were not able to bring that water down into our area here. So building the tunnels would alleviate a lot of environmental concerns that the judge had, and that was a solution really for a long time. But now, Metropolitan and the Department of Water Resources have completed the CEQA document, and it's been approved, and they're going forward with the project.

The only thing is funding right now. Other comments?

Councillor Sarmiento, please. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you, Nabil. And, you know, we're just kind of conversing up here with Mayor Pro Tem. She represents us on the Metropolitan Water District. I represent us at the Orange County Water District. And there are other projects that are much more expensive that have been proposed. That's correct. And one of them is a desalination plant out in Huntington Beach. And, you know, when we're talking about reliability, when we're talking about solving the problem that we've been having with variable hydrology and droughts and just lack of reliability,

there is, you know, there are obviously other projects like the expansion of the groundwater replenishment system, which was a very, very solid investment. It's going to produce now 30 million gallons of additional water that we're going to have available to us. We're blessed in many ways, and I do think this is a sound project. I think one of the things that we need to think about, and one of the things I'd like to mention to our residents, is that the three cities that sit at the Orange County Water District, Santa Ana, Anaheim, and Fullerton, have all three pushed back on the basin pumping percentage. That's correct.

So we saw that there was going to be a rate impact to our residents on that. So we're working with the board there just to make sure that the impact is nominal, if not zero. So there is a benefit to working together with our cities on things that we have in common, like making sure that our rate payers aren't squeezed. Because as we see, this is $2.40, but if you add and layer on to that other rate increases, then the number starts becoming bigger. Absolutely. And what we see is it's very regressive for our city because our ratepayers have the lowest average median income in the county.

So the impact to them is more severe than they are to some of our other residents. That's true. And we are very efficient, too. So, you know, thank you for helping us out. And, yeah, we can serve at a much higher rate than other cities as well. That's correct.

Now, Bill, before you leave, I just got a couple questions.

One is, don't we have our own Santa Ana River species? Isn't there a fish that at times has been endangered?

I'm not aware of it. He calls it Santa Ana sucker. I think there is. I think there is. There is? I'm a goldman. I'm serious. Look, you're on all these boards. You ought to know this. You ought to know this.

There is a Santa Ana sucker, but it's not indigenous to Santa Ana. It's up further in the river. Kind of like the Santa Ana winds.

All right, we'll claim it. So it's not ours, but it's got our name on it, right? That's right. But you should be aware of it. You're our water director. I have heard the offense. Is it shown up there, Michelle? What is it?

Santa Ana sucker, which is a freshwater ray refined fish. It's to California, not to Santa Ana.

It has our name up. but it has our name and it's in the santa river upstream i think that's right all right second question second question more serious but but that's serious too i mean if you were one of those little fish you know you you'd care so so anyways um not that you don't but uh but but but anyways uh i believe that other cities are looking at it at buying water rights and and uh like la you know through the owens valley and the owens lake and all that they they've got a lot of water

for the city of la that they've locked in there's still some water out there not a lot that isn't locked in i'm just wondering if we shouldn't either do an rfp or look around because with the these rates we know they're not going to come down right now we're fighting to try to make it reasonable but long term if we had a little bit more water set aside for the city I mean right now we're pretty strong we've got the 75 percent that we're talking about that's reclaimed so all the water that we're buying is really only 25 percent because 75 percent is really our own

water that we're recycling but if we could take and that 25 percent if we owned it on the other end you know met could still process it and deliver it but in the future we'd have our future more locked in i just think we ought to you know consider that it might mean that you have to do a bond and maybe you've got you know depend on the rate maybe an eight-year payback or something of that nature but it would be a situation where long term we'd be looking out for the residents because long term it's going to continue to increase. We have more density than other cities.

So whenever we've got to cut back, we've got to cut back at the faucet or at the toilet or real use. You know, other cities with different demographics, lots of open space, they can cut back on other things a little bit. Mayor, I think we already do that in a way through Metropolitan Water District and Orange County Water District. that both agencies actually go outside and look for waters for storage, water that is available through exchange programs with the farmers. In fact, Metropolitan Water District have a fouling program where they actually pay the farmer not to farm their fields so they can save the water.

So Metropolitan can take that water and bring it down to us. We do it collectively as one. Well, why don't we look into it potentially just a little bit deeper? Because I'll tell you this. like the irvine ranch water district right most of that water goes to irvine but they're always looking to lock in positions right and they do they do and they do even some of our water at the dyer well field you know well number nine mr mayor and another thing i mean you're both right

through met where we're buying extra water and land elsewhere but irvine ranch is a perfect example they've bought land along the colorado river so that they have access to that they've all they also have investments in the current county water bank and so they have access to that water because you got to have a diverse portfolio and met's great but you know and then you're your own

landlord and and i believe i mean maybe the city attorney or the manager can explore but i bet you because we're our own water entity i mean we have to have transfer uh you know agreements and and and swapping and other things and it's not simple but i think long term if we want to look out for the water of the city if we can chip away at that 25 percent i mean it's like having a freeway or having you know new streets or whatever it's your own infrastructure and then you're only paying for the transfer because you own it at the other end and at these rates right now you know at over a

thousand dollars an acre foot you know if we could buy it for a few times that but then it's yours forever sure you look at the payback maybe it's an eight-year payback and and will strengthen the

city so just a thought it's a good thought mr mayor just caution us in regards to storage capacity obviously we don't want water to go to waste you need agreements agreements and more importantly um i would have to say that santa ana has one of the lowest you know when you talk about conservation you know we're great we're amazing and it's not again because you know we're like other community you look at a city like beverly hills who's over the top right and and they're and and how they use their water uh but more importantly here you know we have residents

that are on fixed incomes and i think one of the things that we're always watching out for is making sure that you know in the long run they're not going to be having to pay more when we're already doing the conservation. Sometimes, you know, when you look at supply and demand and we're continuing to save and save, obviously that could be a penalty also as well back to the residents because then we need to figure out how we're going to get rid of the water that we've already purchased that we may not be using. And so we need to think about that as well. And so, again, thank you, Nabil, and thanks to the council, you know,

in regards to the same direction that we're moving in. And so I will be at the Metropolitan Water District in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

Good. All right, so do we need an action on this? I don't. We're good. Receive and file. All right. Madam City Clerk, what's the next item?

Okay, this time and place for the appeal to allow construction of seven-story, 260-unit mixed-use building, the Madison at 200 North Cabrillo Park Drive. and we have Carlo Bonanni I'm gonna open up the public hearing and please if Carlo is here now is it time to speak

hello City Council and mayor it's amazing how we're building so much but we're putting all these high rises and just a few minutes ago you talked about water conversation okay where are we gonna get all the extra water for all these big projects and especially along the five freeway because you're not asking the developers to widen the five freeway the state's not going to do it anymore and measure M it's not going to do it so you guys need to get these developers to start paying up their money to take care of the intersections widening I wish you guys would be down on MacArthur and by Seekersome High

School and see what it's like a nightmare down there with those 42 houses going up you guys are gonna have a disaster down there and when you guys retire whatever you'll remember what I'm telling you. It's a terrible design and all the other designs I've seen around here in the city are really terrible. They're really bad. I don't know how you guys are allowing all these projects to go and somebody was telling me they're taking out air quality control to see how bad the pollution is especially all the units are along like Harbor Boulevard, First Street, 17th Street. I mean especially right there by Norms and 17th Street. I

hate to see those people try to open up their windows with the pollution rate right there. Nobody's thinking about that but there are lawyers thinking about it. some people up here think about the kids they hate to see those kids come down with asthma and everything else thank you alright, thank you anybody else wish to address this on this item?

Jay Torres

and then Tim Payne go ahead well, I'm just curious I mean 260 units is great for Santa Ana problem is is parking and number two because I deal with the homeless and with the MHSA and and all this how many of those units would be supportive living homes to our community of Santa Ana residents to be able to provide them supportive housing and how can we do that and make sure

that they're Santa Ana residents. Thank you. Tim. Good evening Mayor Polito, members of the council. My name is Tim Payone and I'm here on behalf of the owner of the Xerox building which is immediately adjacent to the proposed project site and the the my client has no objection to the concept of this project whatsoever mixed-use project is great there it's consistent with your planning efforts but there are specific aspects of it that are very troublesome we we address this at the Planning Commission hearing and we've submitted

correspondence to set out set forth all of our concerns and I'll walk through them you know very very quickly first of all I and mr. Bisnow has not been up here but he is suggesting that we're obligated by a private agreement to go along with this project and object and I would just share with you that that's absolutely false we have every right to object to any aspect of the project as submitted our concerns specifically have to do with conflicts in the morning peak hour of traffic when cars, our tenants, our visitors are entering at the peak hour

and the parking structure will be exiting, people leaving the residences will be exiting at the same time. So there's already some stacking occurring there and those cars exiting will have to cross the traffic where our tenants are waiting to get in the parking structure and there's some stacking there. We have urged Mr. Bisnow to pursue an option where the exit would be on the opposite end. Traffic, his traffic would enter on Xerox Center Drive, but exit over on State Fund Drive or State Comp Drive. I'm not sure which it is. That way, there would be no cross traffic on either of the

existing drives because the traffic would be entering and exiting in both places at opposite peak times. Mr. Bisno is open to that idea. We have had discussions with the state fund owners or the property managers and there will be discussions that they're having tomorrow internally and what we're asking the council is to allow us to continue this for 30 days. Let me just ask staff, I don't who's handling this but do we have any drawing they could talk about what was

just mentioned to us by mr. Bailey yes we do do you want yeah can you put on real quick I just and then I don't know if we can ask mr. Bisno because you indicated that he's in favor of that well he's supportive of it if it can be worked out and we need time to work it out rather than getting in a fight if the projects approved I know mr. Bisno is here Bob do you want to comment on this while we put this drawing up on the on the board go ahead please

mayor Palito mayor Patel Martinez other council members it's good to see you we don't own or have any interest, we wish we did, in this driveway that the state comp building has. Number one, no legal rights except fire access. We do have that right, but we have no legal rights day to day. Number two, Mr. Payone and I have worked together trying to get state comp to say

yes to us. This is the result of our working for more than two and a half months. I have a litany of emails starting back in December after we were denied by the Planning Commission with Mr. Peown. We have been the best neighbor possible. We suggested a guard, a monitor. We suggested a traffic signal, a stop sign, we suggested no deliveries peak time, no move in, no move out

peak time. But beyond that, there's a traffic study that you have as part of your information. The number of cars, peak hour, peak hour, eight to nine and nine to ten, leaving our property that would cut across Mr. Payone's entering is less than two a minute. So here's what the car count looks like leaving our property. Car.

You're going to run out of time, Bob. Car. Well, that's just it. I'll run out of time. Our drivers will fall asleep. And when you augment that, you're right. Thank you, Mayor Polito. When you augment that with the fact that we're willing to pay for a traffic monitor, we're willing to install a sign, it's a gated entry in any case. What they fear is fear of the unknown. If we can work out a deal with the state comp, I have given Mr. Payone my word, and we will honor it, we'll redraw. But right now, that is a scheme. It's a hypothetical. This project should be approved.

Councilmember Solario spoke of economic impacts in the city. It'll be a tight sled for five years. The documents you have show this project alone generates in excess of $100 million dollars economic impact to build it and more than $8 million dollars per year. This project should move ahead now. Let me ask you this Bob. We know Caltrans and they're now in that state comp building they've moved in state comp is out if we continue this for two weeks and solve this issue are you open are you open to that mayor palito it's even better than that we're looking for

approval and i will tell you if within the next month you can get the owner to deal with us and give us that easement we'll redraw the plans but let's not stop something that we have in front of you today for what I believe is a pipe dream. But if we approve this, we're done, right? You're not done, because I still have to get 260 units from Mr. Payone. I only have 250. I'd like 260, and Mr. Payone was right. His client has only approved 250. By the way,

The difference in traffic between 250 and 260, that's four cars an hour. And so we would request we get approved tonight. We do want the variance, and the reason for that is economics. You will see in front of you information, how tough it is to develop podium.

there is only information from the traffic engineer stating that 1.7 to 1 is sufficient parking. We're building or proposing 1.8 to 1. And Mayor Polito, you and I have known each other for about ever, if you are able to convince or work with us to convince the state comp building, we will be back here and we will redraw it at that time. But let's not wait for something that so far, despite our best efforts for the last two and a half months, has come to naught. Let me ask Mr. Baoni of his thoughts to that, Bob.

I can pull out my phone and read to you an email from today where the property manager for that building said, I apologize that we have not been able to, we've lost the communications, death in the family. I'm meeting with the lawyer tomorrow morning. our view is that Mr. Bisnow needs not an approval followed by well if it works out it works out we need some pressure here we want to avoid litigation and all the nastiness that just doesn't have to happen here it's just totally unnecessary if we can have 30 days we believe

that we can together work to try to make this resolve these issues that are legitimate issues. We're not here to oppose the project, but the economics of this project will be here, will be the same 30 days from now that they are tonight. I think you've had a building here and a property here for 30 years. It's filled with tenants. Their needs, their concerns need to be addressed. As our correspondence points out, I won't bore you with all the details, but there's a number of issues of concern which simply weren't addressed as required by CEQA. We want to work it out with Mr. Bisnow. We don't,

you know, we're taking the position we are because we need to work it out. But one way or another, we have to protect our tenants. Bob, final word. If I may conclude, Mr. Paoni is making my case. It's not just this issue. There are other issues. He's told us that. But here's what he also told me in writing. Bob, we appreciate your proposal, but we're looking for either a binding agreement in advance of your approval or a condition which requires you to obtain the right to use state fund drive. That won't work. Let's get this approved. If we can use it, great. We've had no

success so far. Mr. Payone, if we were to continue this 30 days and we all make our best effort and it doesn't work out, and then we come back and approve this gentleman's project, what will your position be? Well, I'd have to discuss that with my client. These are matters of serious concern, but there are other matters here. There's no move-in, move-out space. The loading zone is also placed right there on Xerox Center Drive. There are several conflicts here which simply must be resolved for the sake of our tenants.

and but in 30 days we hope to resolve them because we want to see his project go forward

look I'm inclined to say 30 days go ahead I actually know the former deputy director of Caltrans he actually is now the planning manager for for SCAG who I'll be in Los Angeles tomorrow and I could have a conversation with Comey Asai and definitely has contacts with he's had 15,000 people under him and so definitely has those close relationships and so I will make sure to contact Comey to see how we can get somebody from Caltrans to have a conversation, engage with you all. We would certainly welcome that.

Councillor Solodio? Yeah, you know not enough it needs to be 30 days or two weeks or even today I think Mr. Bisno has been involved in town and he you know usually says what he what he does and means what he says. I'm comfortable with this commitment but rather than that latter issue I have more a concern or questions just about parking maybe if the planning manager could speak a little bit more about the parking that staff believes is necessary what you are willing to approve what were you were willing to approve initially what the

applicant would like to provide and where we're at with this recommendation

today. All right, well, look, why don't I... She's going to answer the question, Mr. Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead. Okay, all right. The project was originally approved with, I believe, 420 parking spaces. They have an entitlement. This is an increase in the entitlement, and if I can get this what 445 441 and they're asking for and it was at it was

consistent with the two units per two spaces per unit requirement right now they're asking for a slightly so this is the proposed right now they're asking for two spaces for 468 spaces two spaces per unit they're asking that's what you're asking that's what they are asking for we have we are suggesting that that

they comply with the required ordinance or because that was the Planning Commission's recommendation or if you are not comfortable with that you could go with the 1.8 and require do long-term parking agreements for the differential

between outside parking and has the applicant agree to find off-site parking to fulfill that

commitment council member solario the only traffic report demonstrates that 1.8 is more than sufficient to the extent and we're spending a fortune on this building to the extent that we didn't have sufficient parking our enlightened self-interest would cause us to buy it at any price to satisfy our tenants it is our wish here to develop the finest building in the community and if you take a look at the architectural renderings I think you'd agree with that so we will do what is necessary to satisfy parking for our tenants but to provide a requirement to buy it today in the face of a parking

study that shows that 1.8 is more than sufficient I don't think that's

appropriate well if we do that the two weeks I could read that parking study I I mean, I hear staff still saying they'd like more parking, and we have too many circumstances in our city where the enlightened self-interest doesn't always work out. And so we're left with everybody scrambling for fighting for spots on our streets. And we have even later on our agenda an item that I and others have been pushing for, which is a residential parking study pilot program and then citywide. So it's a real issue in our community. and I thought there was a stronger commitment of finding off-street parking, but apparently we're not there yet.

Council Member, the staff recommendation to the Planning Commission was in support of 1.8. So staff has now adopted the Planning Commission view, but if you ask staff, they recommended 1.8. They read the report.

Right, but today they're recommending something else is what I heard. Yes, sir.

okay thank you got it so look we have another speaker uh and then we'll bring it to council uh donson lew please if you if you wanted to proceed uh mr lu is also representing the project owner uh to address some traffic and stacking well look uh what i would recommend thank you for that um Mr. Paoni. What I would do, Mr. Aliyah, is I'd rather bring it back right now to Council and see if there's consensus for two weeks, and may we bring it back, and hopefully pressure

makes you solve it all. If you need two more weeks at that point, make the case. But I know Mayor Potem is going to talk to Galtrans. I'm going to try to help out as well. Councilman Ron Rinsarmiento, please.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I'm glad you said two weeks. I'm certainly not supportive of 30 days. I think this was addressed by the Planning Commission in December. Right? So I understand that there's, you know, client issues sometimes. But, you know, there's been an abundance of time to be able to address this. And I think our staff was prepared to answer these questions. And from what I understand from staff, Candida, if the issues that are before us, we're talking about a setback variance and we're talking about a parking variance. But the letter I read from Council for the Xerox building has to do with traffic.

So, look, we're not even dealing with the substantive issues. So what I would like is that if you sit down and address this with our staff and with the applicant and you understand what the concerns are. But what I'm a little troubled with is that staff recommended the 1.8 variance, and now we're doing something different. So, look, to me, going from one position, staff recommendation on one ratio during the commission, and now at the council we're changing it. Look, we need to be consistent. We need to figure this out a little bit better.

This is in my ward, and I think that you could have had substantive discussions with both the state fund, whether it's Caltrans or the state comp fund that's still in the building, and the Xerox folks. But look, I just think it's unfair that we're treating the applicant the way we are. And all of us are talking about economic development and how we want to be business friendly and how we want to make sure that the reputation of the city doesn't suffer because things like this get stalled and they get dragged out. and look all this should have led up to the commission it should have led up

before this council meeting and I just think you know look this is not a good look for us so to the extent that we go ahead and put this over for two weeks let's get our work done if things aren't addressed I think there's a there's a traffic study that was done by a legitimate firm I read the study I don't think that any of the findings are questionable there I think that staff feels comfortable with what that study demonstrates so to the extent that we get ourselves ready to make a decision two weeks from now let's just do that up or down can you

make a motion please i'll make the motion second for 15 minutes all right motion is second comment

then we're going to vote uh councilor vanavides thank you mayor just brief comment uh i'm not a fan of continuing uh projects uh either especially as they've they've gone through a process uh we clearly know that we both are in need of housing economic development uh quality design project However, as I read the correspondence from the representative of Xerox, it does seem to be some not major issues, but some legitimate concerns. We want projects to be successful. The Xerox building and tower, the tenants' company there, has been a longstanding business in town as well.

So we want to be able to be supportive of local business existing and those businesses and developments that are to come. so I'm hopeful and confident Mr. Bisnow put his efforts been successful in other projects in the past addressing and mitigating issues I'm confident he'll be able to do that and work with the the property there at Xerox to be able to address those concerns and two weeks we should hopefully be able to move this all right so we have a motion a second those in favor please say aye aye aye those opposed motion carries unanimously please go out there do what you can two

weeks go by quickly so every day counts right now thank you both 75 B I would entertain a motion

continuance so make a motion on that move to continue to the second those in favor please say aye those opposed motion carries 75 C ditto I think that's continuance as well to the 17th I'd entertain a motion. So moved. Second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. The opposed motion carries. No, Mr. Mayor, I'm just, I'm opposed to Warner

expansion, so I'm just, I'm always going to be a no. Got it. Got it. All right. Now we're on 85A.

I'm going to call upon Council Member Solario Martinez and Sarmiento, who would like to go first, and then I think Mr. Villegas is involved on another one of these 85As. Sure. Sure. So you

Go ahead. It takes a team, and I would just move both these items. They're related. We've discussed these a lot. The first item deals with the city sending a notice to other cities in the county about the abandonment of homeless individuals in our city.

Excuse me, Council Member. We have a couple speakers. Let me just call on them if I may. Jay Torres.

Hello. Followed by Peter Katz. Peter, if you can get close to the mic. Followed by Teresa Adir.

Good evening again. You know, as a long-time Santa Ana resident and being homeless in Santa Ana in 2003, 2004, and then in 2005 was, you know, uplifted with supportive housing, You know, I know that our, you know, if you look at our Section 8 housing, there's a supportive component in there that's supposed to be.

One of the suggestions that I, you know, I really want to commend you guys on is, you know what, you guys deserve some of this money to be able to deal with our Santa Ana residents. But what we need is supportive housing, whether it be six months to two years, two permanent places here in Santa Ana for our residents. We need to have that support. The problem is I've watched them bring busloads from Los Angeles. I've watched them drop off people from Irvine, from Huntington Beach. And you know what?

If you ask somebody, they're going to tell you these poor police officers are out there every day. And they sit and they try to bring people to the courtyard. But the problem is, is that courtyard is way over packed and it is not a suitable shelter. Thank you. If you can wrap up, it's yellow. Well, my wrap up is that we get a shelter that is Santa Ana, the city of Santa Ana. and we also get permanent supportive housing with conditions of you guys bringing in a director that will run this program. Thank you.

Thank you. Peter, followed by Tessa Dare, followed by Laura Cantor. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. I just want to commend you and Michelle for your comments this morning in Judge Carter's chamber. And you've made a statement that said we have a broken system. You don't know how true that is. I have a newspaper article here that talked about the Orange County's fight for homeless. And it talks about a committee and a task force and an awareness campaign. And this article was for November 12th through 19th. You know when that was? 1994.

You were just elected mayor and they reported 12,000 homeless in Orange County. So these counts are way off base. And so when you look at this, what they proposed in 1994, nothing has changed in 25 years.

So when Judge Carter talks about 3 million residents and 5,000 homeless in the county and 0.02% of the population, just drive around and take a look at this. Everywhere from Newport Beach, everywhere, you've got people on all the corners. And so when he made that comment, when he asked Lisa Bartlett where she was going to place a shelter in her district, And she hemmed in hard and he said, I'll probably be dead by then. And that was a judge's comment. So, you know, I commend you guys for standing up and fighting back.

By enjoying all these other cities, it prevents the judge from issuing a TRO that will put these people on every street corner. Thank you, Peter. Thank you. Tessa Adair.

And Laura, if you're here, please come forward. And then followed by Laura Morphine. There's a big city changing here. No, it's good. Hi. I'm Tessa. I live here in Santa Ana. I want to start by just echoing what the two before me have said. I really want to talk about this aggressive and safe panhandling ordinance that's been proposed. Can you bring the mic down a bit? Yes, I'm very short. Is that better? Yeah.

I mean, I think we've seen today that the needs of the poor and homeless in our community are not being met. I think the council recognizes that. I think regardless of which city they came from, we need to recognize that our poor and homeless are human beings. and any of us in this room. Some of us have been in their position. Some of us could be in their position now, in the future. And I think what I'm seeing in this proposed ordinance is really taking us backwards.

So I think this is really a step that's going to, it's going to further marginalize and criminalize the poor and homeless in our communities. Under this law, so just holding a sign on public spaces, so media and shopping centers, driveways that are entrances to shopping centers, gas stations, outdoor public dining areas, any, quote, public place, just holding a sign asking for help is prohibited. So basically you can ask for help from the public, but not in anywhere where the public actually goes.

That doesn't make sense to me. I think while of course there's some incidents that can escalate, surely we can respond to these in a more nuanced way, especially given the fact that we know these people's needs aren't being met. I think this proposed law is ineffective and its effects will be frankly cruel. I hope the council can consider a more radically compassionate approach. Thank you. Thank you. Laura Cantor followed by Laura Morphine followed by Beatrice Salas.

Laura Cantor, if you're not here, Laura Morphine.

Followed by Beatrice Salas and then Connie Hamilton.

Oh, sorry.

Good evening. Good evening, Mayor and Council. I want to preface all my comments by saying that most of you all already said what I'm about to say now. However, there are still some things that were left unsaid in some of your comments. As you know, I have appeared before you in the past to express my concerns about the homeless here in Santa Ana. You all know this issue has not happened overnight. But I do have to say that it did happen under your watch, and particularly under Mayor Pulido, for over 20 years that you've been here, past 20 years.

I would venture to say that the City of Santa Ana has spent more of its financial resources in settling personnel disputes over the years than resolving the homeless issue or exploring possible litigation against the county to resolve it. But now that the time has come to address it and meet it head on, I urge you to relent, not to relent rather, against the Board of Supervisors and allow the City of Santa Ana to continue to bear the burden of being a dumping ground for all the homeless in this county. Every city must and shall be included in solving this issue, not just Santa Ana.

Our children matter too, not just the ones at Irvine or Mission Viejo. We too have parks, schools, and we also care about the quality of our life. And I apologize because I'm very passionate about this, and I don't want anybody to misunderstand my position. It's very difficult, as I've said in the past. It's not a simple issue to resolve. But Supervisor Nelson did say that Santa Ana, Anaheim, and Fullerton should be exempt from adding new shelters because we already have them. And I hope that Judge Carter takes into consideration the cities who have been dealing with this issue

and every other city who hasn't done their part, and furthermore possibly order these cities to reimburse the city of Santa Ana, which all of you agree with, and for us using our resources while other cities do nothing. Thank you, Laura. May I please wrap up, Mayor? Go. Thank you. I reminded Supervisor Doe and at the time, or State Senator Janet Nguyen, when they visited our Homeowners Association meeting on separate occasions of the incident at Starbucks on South Bristol.

A few years back when a teenager was in fear for his life and struck a homeless person on the side of the head with a skateboard, killing him. And the other time when an elderly gentleman sustained severe head trauma and almost lost an eye when he was beaten severely by a homeless man when going on his morning walk. And finally, the incidents here at Civic Center where one homeless person was stabbed and another person shot by police a while ago. Not to mention everything else that we're not aware of. Thank you. So, and finalizing and closing, I just want to say, and I commend you because it's not easy. It's hard work.

So I get that. And I appreciate everything city staff has done. And this report, the on-point report, is impressive. And it's appreciated. But city staff should not be spending. We're reacting. and we shouldn't be reactionary and on an emergency basis. I appreciate everything they do. They should be spending their time with their family. Thank you. And there has to be a fine balance overall. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Beatriz, followed by Connie Hamilton, followed by David DeLeon.

Good evening, and good evening, everybody, all the city councils. I feel the need to come over and talk about this issue because this is been for a long time and it's really, it is disturbed into the mind of people. When you see, you can start from San Isidro and you will see homeless. You go to the high deserts and you will see the buses from the city, they go and dump the people and they live in the open desert without no food, without nothing. Just leave them to die. And it's really disturbing to see that the government, they don't take issue on this.

A lot of the middle class is falling apart. The high class, they went up and they get more money. And the middle class and the low class, they're getting homeless. And we're getting, like me, I got emotional crisis. I even end up in a mental hospital for a lot of things. And I've been drinking Sirocol. And like you say, the medicine, it makes me crazy. It makes you do crazy stuff and even get naked and do stuff. I decide myself to start drinking the medication because they're forcing me to drink it. Because three times I end up in a mental hospital because I have emotional crisis.

for me to see all these things happening because i realized that the government some of them they only care for the power but i really appreciate and i really seeing that you and everybody is taking action on this and i really appreciate it thank you i appreciate it thank you beatrice and good luck to you and your in your journey um connie followed by david leon

Good evening, Mayor Polito and members of the council. Yes, I have a black eye. You should see the other guy.

Got involved in street fighting here. Not really. I wanted to talk about 85A2.

Actually, Councilorio and I talked a little bit about it. And yeah, I'm all for cleaning up some of the bad things in Santa Ana like aggressive panhandling, etc. And I know this also would keep the panhandlers away from ATMs and sensitive areas like that. And I'm all for that because I am concerned about Santa Ana's image. So I'm all for helping with that. But that also brings me to 85B. And I'm kind of worried about our image there. I know you guys are trying to protect people, but at the same time, it's kind of bad for our image for the other parts of Orange County.

I know you guys aren't really concerned about the other parts of Orange County, but, I mean, I hear it all the time. Santa Ana, people a lot of times have a negative connotation of it from other parts of the county. But, you know, I just don't want us to seem like we're trying to be misfits in Orange County. but I know you guys have thought about this long and hard and this is the position you want to take so but you know I am concerned about our image so anyway that's all I wanted to say. Thank you Connie. David DeLeon.

Good evening council. First and foremost I want to commend Mayor Pro Tem and the mayor for speaking today. I was there this morning at the meeting with Judge Cardin. You guys did excellent speeches. You stood proud. You stood loud. You have your own delivery system, which is very unique to you. But you did a great job, so I want to thank you personally. Thank you. And I want to thank Commander Gaminski and our city manager for doing an excellent job in our city. I had an interesting—it was quite an experience to be able to take my little guy to the—we were in the lobby.

And the judge came out before he started his meeting and apologized to us for not being able to step inside his courtroom. but it was very interesting to see the dynamics and the lack of ownership from a lot of other cities and we've stepped up and Fullerton's done well and Anaheim done well and Orange has done well and then Supervisor Spitzer had his opportunity to speak up and he didn't say a word and I was downstairs once the meeting was over and I was speaking with Councilman Sarmiento and we were kind of elaborating on what was going on and Mr. Spitzer he ran to the cameras and he had

a lot to say in front of the cameras but couldn't say a word in front of the judge and he comes to speak with Councilman Sarmiento and I and he stood his ground he defended Santa Ana and you did a great job so thank you sir but I want to I want to say this this issue is bigger it's not about you guys this issue is not about me this issue is about stand up this is this issue is about him some of you guys up there are currently raising little ones some of you up there are mentoring little ones in our city some of you up there are educating our little ones in our city and some of you have raised little ones that are not the

schools like Stanford and you've done an outstanding job as parents but everything you do is in their best interest every decision you make I grew up in a very traditional Mexican house we spoke Spanish and we ate in Spanish We spoke Spanish at the dinner table. And my dad said,

You need a lot of honor. You need a lot of fortitude to live. And there's a lot of pride in Santa Ana. And you have it. And we have it. Everybody you see out here has Santa Ana pride. So when you go forward and you issue this letter and this demand from other cities, know that you have our back and we have yours. Stand proud and stand with a lot of valor. Thank you. Thank you, David.

Okay, now, Councilor Soloria, I believe you were making comment earlier.

Yes, I just want to quickly speak to both items here. One is to have the city send a notice to other cities saying, don't dump your homeless here. And we really need to kind of put them on notice for that. The second deals with what is aggressive and safe panhandling. This ordinance really is based on best practices from other cities, in particular Sacramento that have passed this similar ordinance last year. And we have, in addition to supportive statements here, received about a dozen letters of support from businesses and residents.

We last year, you might have heard, we had 13,000 calls for service homeless related. A lot of them were assaults. And this ordinance here really it's about safety on both sides. First of all, you know, if you're a senior and you're going to an ATM machine, you know, there's somebody that's aggressive panhandling. That's a concern and we got to protect our residents. But also when homeless individuals are in the middle of a freeway, in the middle of a street or someplace that's unsafe, it's not healthy for them to be in that environment. Also, this isn't really just about homeless.

We had many complaints last year about individuals in the middle of Bristol Street going up and down lanes asking for money for funerals that our police department and others did research. Apparently, they weren't really legitimate items. And so we really don't want people panhandling, asking for money in the middle of our streets or freeways. This is also just a tool for our police department to have because right now they're lacking in these items and we need to protect our residents. and I ask for the support of my colleagues. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Villegas. Thank you,

Mr. Mayor, and thank you Councilman Salote for bringing this up. I do support this item, and in 2017 we had 930 calls for service regarding panhandling in the city, and a lot of it was also people on the roadway, people on the sidewalks not allowing the pedestrians to continue along their path so we really need to do something we need to have some type of ordinance out there so we could use it also this is about aggressive panhandling it's not about holding a sign somewhere you need to read the ordinance not about holding a sign you're not bothering anyone that's you know that's up to you but

this is about people bothering other folks touching other folks getting in their way harassing them while they're eating at a restaurant sitting outside and you're having lunch or dinner with your family or breakfast, and you have someone that comes up to you and just keeps bothering you and pressuring you for money. So we need to have something on the books, and I totally support this. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. Councilman Benavides. Thank you, Mayor. I do have a couple questions for staff.

I would imagine that some of these actions, whether it be bothering someone at an ATM or if they're at a dining establishment, that there would be some other type of code already on the books to be able to address. I don't know if we have, whether it be deputy chief or somebody else from the law enforcement standpoint. My question is whether we have something already on the books that would address some of these concerns. Surely, sir. California Penal Code Section 647C deals specifically with begging for coin.

However, we run into the problem with free speech issues, so the District Attorney's Office won't enforce or allow us to enforce 647C. The municipal code that's sitting before you is a joint effort by not only the police department, but an extensive amount of work from your city attorney's office, as well as other departments within the city. We did, in fact, model this ordinance after Sacramento's, which they have had success with.

we looked at this ordinance and in so looking at it made the determination that we as a city have the right to determine times and places that certain activities can occur. We're not saying that panhandling is bad because it's a First Amendment right. We're saying that panhandling should not occur in places where people are not allowed to leave, like if you're sitting in line to get your hamburger at McDonald's. You're stuck in that car and you can't leave.

We're saying that people shouldn't be allowed to panhandle from center medians because, as it was stated, they can become injured or they can cause injury to other people. We're saying that as far as times and places, it's bad for the community for people to panhandle at the entrances to driveways because it can cause accidents. We're simply saying that for the best interest of this community, we need to put time and space locations for this activity. So a follow-up question.

if let's say this ordinance is approved, how would it be enforced? There are a lot of things on, a lot of priorities that your officers are dealing with on a daily basis. And as we talked about this ordinance with the various different departments, We understand that as a municipal code, this will not sit high on our list of priorities.

However, I am in a position to say that we will focus some of our efforts on locations that we understand are constant and chronic problems and address some of the long-term, long-standing issues we have at some of the locations to ensure that people who would just like to conduct business do not feel harassed or intimidated to go there. And what's the penalty? Somebody is... It's a Santa Municipal Code violation, so it is a misdemeanor. However, I do believe that there's quite a bit of wiggle room, and I would expect that a lot of these would probably be infracted.

Thank you. Thank you. now let's go on this side uh mayor from town yeah mr mayor very quickly um you know when i brought

this up i wanted to have discussion but one of the issues um that i do have is that we do have a lot of students that do car washes so sometimes they're all on the road trying to get folks attention to wash cards for fundraisers and then too we do have a lot of residents too that don't have the means to help um with pay with for funerals and so that they go out there so that is a true statement and we have a lot of those some of them are starting to go on go fund me but we also know that they're able to get more of funds as they as they wash cars and they're out

there with these signs we know that for a fact in our communities the last thing that i want is to make sure that you know those those folks are not impacted the second part that i do and i didn't see on here is that we have a lot of of of folks that are in the medians but they're not asking for money they're actually selling flowers they're selling oranges on and so forth and so I just have a question because you know the Latino community has always done that to earn money versus them

trying to you know do other negative things all they're trying to do is make a dollar to survive and they're out there at Home Depot. They do whatever it takes to make money so they can make sure they have shelter for their families. Let's just be honest, folks. We're 79% Latino, 13% or 12% Vietnamese. We're a minority-majority community. Our culture is different. But one thing that I can say is that our Latino culture,

they will do whatever it takes to support their family and that's not a negative thing we don't see them out there and we're talking about homeless

and some of us will laugh oh there's so many people we look yes we will have three or four families because the last thing that we want is for our grandma our aunt or uncle to end up homeless we do take care of one another and so I just want to make sure that when we're looking at an ordinance like this that we take into consideration the culture and look let me tell you I'm fourth generation born in the United States so I'm far from understanding the Mexican culture I grew up eating hamburgers and hot dogs you know and barbecue chicken and and spaghetti and macaroni and cheese that's how I grew up right

I didn't speak Spanish until I was 18, but when I came to this community, I fell in love with it, and I fell in love with the culture and with the Mexican people of this community who are extremely hardworking people. We need to give them a hand up, not a hand down. And so I want to make sure that we do this the right way and address it the appropriate way so that we don't victimize these folks that are trying to make a living.

Thank you. you shall now sound then Vince the mr. City manager the ordinance has some some areas that I think we need to kind of go over a little bit I'm with I think the rest of the council we don't want to criminalize or be a little harsh on individuals that are trying to make a living and doing their best they can I I don't want to dictate from the dais either and to start rehashing an ordinance that we're going to approve. What I'm going to ask our council is if we're willing to continue it for two weeks so we can give that input.

I just think it would be important for us to give that input so that we can mitigate those issues. so that the spirit of the ordinance is being implemented in the correct way and not in another harsh way that could hurt some folks in our community that are just trying to make a living. Let me inquire of those that brought this before us, see if they would be amenable to that. Council Member?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I guess because we have two sub-parts of this 85A, I wanted to speak to the first one because that's one I signed on to. And that one, and I want to thank Mr. DeLeon for coming and speaking before us. So, look, I have no problem with that one. And I'm, you know, I really would like to see if we could remove the word courtesy. What courtesy have we been shown by these other cities? So to the extent we can give them notice with code sections attached that it's illegal to dump, it's illegal to abandon, you know, people who are homeless into our community, We have to be a little stronger.

So I want to commend the council member for initiating this 85 sub one and bringing it before us because it's an extremely necessary element. And the judge this morning referenced it. He said there are three ways that you can dump in communities. And one is trying thinking you're benign by being a city and you find a person who's homeless and you bring them to Santa Ana because this is where they get assessed and just leaving them there. and that's what I think is happening over and over again and they never go back to the community of

origin and they stay here so to the extent we can maybe be not well you know what I think I want us to be a little forceful because I think it's necessary I think you're outraged at the same thing we have to be also we have to stand our ground and I think it was spoken very well look we have kids like that young man that just stood up David's son and those are the I mean what again what courtesy was he shown when he can't go to the public library because he has a he has a public health problem in front of him because there were people lying around and preventing

him from going that he can't go to parks he can't and i know mayor polito has had people in his backyard i have as well that are homeless so you know those are things that you know look we have to be outraged by so i do am glad that uh the councilman brought this before us and so uh i'm very supportive of sub element one of 85a to the second element i think that um you know i i would like to maybe get a better comfort level because i think it's coming from a a very good place i did want to thank the person who spoke um you know and said let's be careful how we implement

this because we don't want to criminalize certain activity and to me my wife is an ada attorney that represents families with disabilities we also don't want to criminalize those that are mentally ill people that don't know you know right from wrong those of us do and there are many homeless who do know right from wrong but there's as our pit showed there's many people who are ill and so their activities may not may not be volitional acts so to criminalize them we put them in the system and it may just be an infraction but what happens is it turns into

something greater you fail to appear at a hearing you fail to pay your ticket and it just becomes this problem that overwhelms the system so that's the only thing i'd like to do but i think it is coming from the right place so i would you know and i know sacramento was the model and right now sacramento probably isn't the best example to use on many things but you know um let you know let's look at their code section and be sensitive you know but the one thing i would say is um we have to be careful strategically as well because you know as we go through this issue of homelessness

we have a judge who's been very sensitive to the homeless community and the homeless population so we don't want to show him that we're being overly aggressive with that population that he's really gone out of his way I think as you know the mayor was speaking to he goes to wise place and and meets with the homeless population every morning he's walked the riverbed he's walked the Civic Center so you have somebody who has a real sensitivity and care and love for a population that he realizes sometimes is there by no fault of their own and so I just want us to be careful as we take these next steps so you know

I want to be supportive but maybe what we can do is work with the staff to maybe look at the language and make sure that it's something that's tailored to the to the city but i'm extremely supportive of uh 85 a sub one and that's something that we should

do tonight uh mayor pro tem i think you have a question if i wanted to bring our homeless zard

if she could come up here because she definitely has experience and i know i had a conversation with deputy chief gaminski about the um abandonment of and again this all comes down to for resources right so for the panhandling definitely something as a tool but our resources you know and the amount of officers that we have and our other stuff we're at capacity and so we have to also be very careful that we we're going to be implementing ordinances that we can't enforce and so um again you know we want to do our due diligence and i have kafka to come up here because obviously you worked in los

Angeles and I'm assuming these ordinances have come before you know Los Angeles and just wanted to get your thoughts as a homeless czar that you are here and you know you're now our practitioner and our expert we just want to hear from you specifically on these two issues as your thoughts and how you have to address you know this population and work with this population

what are your thoughts well I definitely think that the discussion that's happening is very relevant. I think some of the biopsychosocial pieces that you brought up in regards to the cultural, it's definitely relevant and there needs to be more conversation around that. I also think that, you know, in terms of law enforcement, I think Deputy Chief Gaminski did go ahead and express the clear law. And so the fact that there's a wiggle room and that that is communicated and that is part of the law enforcement, I think that is going to be able

to create for not necessarily a black and white but an ability for balance between the community and so those two things i think are very important fantastic thank you very much thank you so now let me maybe go back to councilman solodio uh first let uh councilman real quick great points on the

mentally ill uh part that uh that should be addressed or we need to talk a little bit more But regarding people, car washes or vendors, I don't really see a lot of aggressive people hurting someone or threatening someone. They're just selling. You know, we just, you know, that's common sense type of thing. But I understand that, you know, our officers do have a PC4 discretion of what they're going to do. It's just good to have something on the books. And, yeah, it needs a little more work. But I'm glad we're having this conversation. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

All right. Who wants to take it from here? Mr. Mayor, I will suggest that we take up for a vote today item number one. And item number two, I do like the idea of maybe having staff add like a section for special consideration for individuals that may be mentally ill. And so we've got to give special consideration to those. And then also special consideration or exclusions for those things that are really more temporary or seasonal, like car washes and even flowers or other things. They're more seasonal or time of day.

But even for those, I think it's one thing to be by the side of the road, like in the middle of a sidewalk. But it's another thing to be in the middle of the street or in the middle of the freeway, especially with all the pedestrian fatalities that we have in town. We don't really want to condone that, especially through actions like this. But we can take the time to make those clarifications. And I think those are great suggestions. And then the little friendly amendment on number one.

I think staff, starting with the attorney's office, had already drafted a courtesy notice. But maybe we can just say notice. And staff does have a draft of the letter. maybe they can circulate a new updated draft as well for everybody to see before we send it out and hopefully that will be soon thank you so is that a motion yes we have a second we'll second

first one yeah um this motion on i'll second that on one yeah 8581 all right those in favor please say aye aye aye the opposed motion carries now on two you wanted to basically the table letter continue for two weeks to first all right let's get a motion on that then so motion second those in favor please say aye aye aye the supposed motion carries so now we're going to go to uh item uh 85b and i believe that's uh councilman benavides we have speakers Oh boy, Connie Hamilton again.

On 85B, okay. Laura Cantor.

Ashma Ahmed.

Followed by Carlos Percea, I believe it is. And then Doreen Myers.

Hi, good evening, Councilmembers. My name is Asma Ahmed, and I'm with the Council on American Islamic Relations. We are a civil rights and advocacy group that is based here in Orange County in Anaheim. And many of the communities that we serve are made up of immigrants and Muslims. And so this is an issue that's very important to us. Last year, SB54, the California Values Act, was one of our main legislative priorities for the year, and we actually took up about 800 community members up to Sacramento to advocate on behalf of this bill and to meet with our state representatives.

Even tonight as I speak here, we have staff and community members across Orange County at various city council meetings speaking in support of SB54 and how important this law is to our communities. So, as I was saying, many of the communities we serve, unfortunately, are experiencing a lot of fear and concern right now. There is a lot of anti-immigrant and hateful rhetoric and policy actions that are taking place in various cities across this county and in the county itself, as we saw at the Board of Supervisors meeting.

So I would just like to say that your efforts in bringing, you know, doubling down on your sanctuary city ordinance and saying that you'd really like to be in, you know, support the state against Attorney General Jeff Sessions' lawsuit is very welcome. you know you led the way when you passed the sanctuary city ordinance and we really hope that you continue to lead the way and serve as an example for other cities in Orange County who unfortunately are trying to take us back to a time when Orange County was even more you know racist and divisive and discriminatory than it is and so we

hope that what happens here tonight serves as an you know takes us forward into where we'd like to be a more progressive California that really values equality and justice and compassion for everyone who calls this city, this county, this state home. So thank you.

Thank you. Carlos Perea, followed by Doreen Myers.

Good evening, members of the council. I'll keep this brief. It's been a long meeting. My name is Carlos Perea. with resilience in Orange County. And as Asma mentioned, there is a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment in Orange County. And unfortunately, it has been fueled by political agendas that seek to escape for immigrant communities, especially by elected officials that definitely have been hostile towards us. But also, it's not only them, but also this administration has been openly willing to challenge any type of protections that the state of

California has passed to protect immigrant communities. So I'm here to continue to commend the city, to continue to stand with immigrant families, and also to support the item that seeks to not only reassure sanctuary, but also join the state of California against the administration's threats on sanctuary. And finally, you'll have a letter that has been supported by multiple organizations and broader coalitions as well. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Doreen Myers, followed by Nylee Diaz. Doreen?

Hello. My name is Doreen Myers, and I have a couple issues with the Sanctuary City concept. One is as a citizen and one is personally. As a citizen, when I read what was in the agenda, the Tenth Amendment is for anything not covered by the federal government, and national security is specifically the role of the federal government. So I do not agree that the Tenth Amendment of states' rights in this case is applicable. Personally, I'm a homegrown person.

I went to Santa Ana College and started a long list of student loans into health care provision. I've done medical missions in Guatemala. I'm quite aware of the need. And I'm grateful to Santa Ana, but I've also had my home burglarized. and I've had my 13-year-old daughter brutally raped in Santa Ana. And the person was never caught and was traced back to be a gardener who was not here legally, but no sign.

And my concern is, should this person return and do something minor prior to a sex offense? The police officers are not allowed to ask because we are a sanctuary city. They're not allowed to look at the immigration status and possible criminal record and deportation and prevent that from happening to another person. And that's my issue with it is with law enforcement having their hands tied in that area. Thank you. Thank you.

Nayali Diaz.

So I just want to thank the City of Santa Ana and the Council for fighting against anti-immigrant sentiment. I do believe, after hearing the lady before me and her story, I do feel for her. But I feel that, I mean it's not like everyone's DNA, like the police have access to everyone's DNA. Whether the person is an immigrant or not, the police would have trouble catching the perpetrator. But I do really feel for her. but I would like to state that the city of Santa Ana is a majority minority.

Most of the people living here in Santa Ana, they are all minorities. Most of the people here are minorities. They are not rapists. Most of them are not criminals. Most of them just want to secure a living. Most of them just want to care for their families. and you know crime will happen across the board whether you are an immigrant or an immigrant or a citizen and you know and our police department you know they will they will do the best they can to know to protect the citizens and just in general the community of Santa Ana but I would also I thank the city for

protecting the community here who the majority of whom are not criminals they just want to provide for their families. Thank you very much. Thank you. Let me bring it back to Council. Can we entertain a motion possibly? Sure, Mayor. I'll try to be brief, although I know this is an important matter and frankly it's it's it is an important one and it's and it's a personal one. It is something that about a year and a half ago the council took an action to

formally declare ourselves a sanctuary city and it was directly as a response to the anti-immigrant rhetoric that at the time

candidate Trump was spreading throughout the country and then once he became president, our community was very fearful because he made very clear direct charges against and threats against the immigrant community. Many, again, in our community were very fearful and concerned.

At the end of the day, there has been a lot of comments about this idea of sanctuary, whether it be sanctuary cities or sanctuary California being a sanctuary state, that it would cause a threat to public safety, but in reality the opposite is true. In order for a community to be safe, there needs to be very positive and strong police community relations. And this idea of, in essence, deputizing local law enforcement to do the work of the federal government breaks down the trust of the immigrant community. And again, this is a very personal issue.

that this affects our neighbors, our friends, our families. And for me, it's very personal in that my father came to this country undocumented. And it wasn't, he didn't come to break laws, he didn't come to do anything negative in this country. There was opportunity for work that he didn't have in his home country and town. and he came to work, he came to work at a restaurant, he came to wash dishes and continued to work and eventually ended up working for the county out in LA.

A man of very much, a family man, a man of integrity, a man of strong and deep faith convictions and so I take it very personal when there is this rhetoric, this anti-immigrant and frankly a very racist tone that has been experienced recently in the county of Orange. I'm extremely disappointed by some of our counterparts in other cities. People like the mayor of Los Alamitos, who I very much respected.

Mr. Edgar, who I worked with in a regional board who's come out and made, led an effort in Los Alamitos that has turned into the snowball effect. People across the street, the county board of supervisors, themselves majority immigrants or children of immigrants that are scapegoating our community, the immigrant community in particular. So at this point, what is before us here tonight is an opportunity and I think an obligation for us to speak for the dignity of everybody in the state, particularly everybody in the city of Santa Ana.

and it's reinforcing our position that we are here to focus on serving all residents of Santa Ana equally and with dignity, that our law enforcement and the law enforcement throughout the state should be specifically focused on doing local law enforcement, let the federal government do what it needs to,

and at the end of the day it's fixing the immigration system, which again that's what the federal government should be focused on. Can we please just take a moment here and I have to leave to get on a conference call involving the homeless in the city and all that. How about if we call for a motion and a second and we cast a vote but we still make a comment. Let's do that. Is there a motion please? I'll second. Is there a second? Okay, I'd like to cast a vote in favor of this but a discussion, let's leave it open. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Do we need to all take a vote right now or is that enough for the mayor?

Well, she's going to cast. She's going to cast the vote.

So long as his vote is cast as yes. Okay. Madam Clerk, just want to make sure his vote was cast.

So the motion by the meeting is seconded by Sal. Yes. 7-0. No, we have no. No, he's opposed. Yeah.

Got it.

So, Madam. Mayor Proctor.

Yes. Yes, Councilman Dinojero.

Are you finished? Yeah, I'll go ahead and see.

Thank you.

not going to shop in our city so let me just kind of clarify a few things and we had a speaker who came up and said that we are tying the police officers hands so let me explain to you the law the law states this that when the federal government asks our city for information regarding a person who has been arrested we must comply and that is what we do what we do not do is give you and forgive give immigration or the federal government information

willingly without them asking that's number one number two it is not correct that our police department cannot once you've been arrested cannot ask you what your citizenship is. In fact, when they are booked, that is one of the questions that is asked. Once again, we do not share that willingly, but if the federal government asks, we give them that information because that is the law. That is why we are in compliance. When the President of the United States and Attorney General Sessions stated that they

were going to take funds away from us. Do you remember that scare tactic? They realized that they didn't have a leg to stand on because we are following federal law. So let's just make it very simple. We are following federal law. We are just not going out of our way to use our tax dollars to help the federal government do the job that they're supposed to do. So that's number one. Next, When you don't work with a community like ours, they become afraid to call the police, which in turn creates more crime.

So we made sure that our community was well aware that we were here and that our police officers are here to protect them, not to go against them. That is why our police department and our community has continued to build a stronger relationship as we've moved forward. So that's another piece of information I need to do. Now I need to take us back on a little time. We're going to travel in time a little bit. California is not just a blue state. It's a dark, dark, deep blue state.

And part of the reason is because a while ago, Proposition 187 was used to make Latinos look like we were the cause of a recession. That we had no blame for it, but they blamed us. Pete Wilson, who ran for governor, won on that fear. The people of California voted for it, but it did something. It awoke a sleeping giant. People who had been immigrants for years then decided to become

citizens. And when they became citizens, they never forgot how they were talked about and how they were treated and started to cast votes. You cannot win an election in the state of California without the Latino vote. Period. Let me tell you what's happened since then. The Republican Party in Orange County is only about 11 to 12 points above the independents in the state of California. There are statistics that show that in the next cycle, that party is going to become a third party in the state of California.

So now, instead of learning from history, what does Los Alamitos do? And what do our supervisors attempt to do? They attempt to go against SB 54, which again is doing everything legally because every city is still supposed to give information to the federal government. But they're saying we're not going to just give it willingly without you asking for it. But here's what happens.

As we bang our heads against the wall, as we continue to reassure our community that we're here for them, I want them to know this. History is repeating itself once again. And every day that comes by a new 18-year-old that has a completely different paradigm. I'm not even talking a moderate democratic paradigm. I'm talking a much more liberal paradigm. is now eligible to vote. History will be rough on those that stood with this

president and those that refused to speak up against them. I used to be a Republican up until 1999. Yes, it was like breaking up with a girlfriend when I switched parties. Let me tell you, it was rough. Welcome to the club. But let me tell you why there were a variety of reasons why I switched but one of the things that really did it for me was that when I would go to events it was always being Latinos were always the problem and I looked around and I started to realize Judas Priest I'm one of the few here what's going on and I started to have to reassess where where I stood and what my belief system was but here's what's

happened. For many years, our parents were our Google. This generation has information at their fingertips, and they are dissecting, and they are reading, and they're checking for facts. We are not their only influences, and they are making up their own minds. We are starting to see the issue of gun control come up and they're not letting up and here's what's happening right

now is as Los Alamitos and other cities and the members of the GOP rise up and say we want to go against the sanctuary city or SB 54 all you're doing is alienating a new generation of voters They're not just Latino. These are white voters who are sympathetic to the plight of the Latino immigrant here in Orange County and the state of California.

I remind you once again, if you had a salad today, that lettuce went through the hands of possibly an undocumented individual. If you sipped on a little vino tonight, those grapes were taken off those vines from an individual who is not documented. They are an essential part of our economy, and I refuse to not call out our president when he calls us rapists and he calls us the worst that Mexico has to give. I'm sorry, Mr. President, but I kick some butt in my profession, and so do my colleagues. We're the best that Mexico has to give.

So we're going to continue to protect our residents, and we're going to strengthen what we have to strengthen. And I'm very proud of this body because we have not backed down. We'll continue to move forward. Thank you.

why did you make me follow councilman tinajero after that that's like you guys always tell me to be brief wow that that was like the keynote he waited his time i think we should just say

good night after that you know i'm just saying i pulled one item and i could have pulled 20

Look, I'll keep it relatively brief then. Look, all we're doing tonight is following the law, right? We live in a state that enacted three bills, and, you know, it's SB 54, AB 540, and the third one. We're just following that law. They were duly passed by our legislature, and thank God we live in California. And California has been on the vanguard of laws and making sure that it leads. So, you know, in my opinion, this is just something that is going to buttress what they've done in the legislature.

And we have a lot of confidence in our lawmakers, both in the Senate and in the Assembly. But simply what we intend to do was to file a friend of the court amendment. It's called an amicus brief in the law. And what it does is it supports the state of California Attorney General's defense to the federal action against California. So, you know, what's ironic is we were talking about homelessness and we were talking about cities dumping their homeless populations in our city.

A lot of the cities that have gone against the legislature and against the sanctuary state policy are those same cities that dump their homeless folks in our city. So, you know, it's been a tough week because just dealing with this homelessness issue, dealing with the sanctuary city policy trying to be eroded by neighbors in our county has been very painful to watch. Because the language that's used is not a legal language. It's not trying to be technical and, you know, are these bills legislatively correct? You know, do they follow the law? It's been filled with hate. It's been filled with racism.

it's been filled with these vile comments that what they do is you know to me and I think you know the councilman can can attest this and we just heard words matter words matter to a young boy to a young girl that's listening to this and they're hearing how hateful people can be because they're growing up in an environment where they realize I'm going to have to deal with this so So simply what we're trying to do here is to file this brief on behalf of an ordinance that we've already enacted and supports the state's position.

And also to clarify some of what people define us as, as a lawless community, as a community that forgives this behavior. And I know I had a very good conversation with Chief Valentin when he first was appointed. And I was really glad to hear him say all we did was codify practices that we've been doing for the past 40 years. This has been our policy forever. Yeah, it predates, you know, Chief Valentin, Chief Rojas, Chief Walters, goes back decades. Because they realized these were the best practices that you could possibly have.

which is to have true community-oriented policing by instilling trust in everybody in the community. So everybody becomes a witness to a crime and doesn't have fear of coming forward. Everybody who's been a victim to a crime comes forward, and it just allows for that easy discourse. And to me, it's just a much better way of policing when you have a community that has its eyes and its ears open and is willing to come forward without fear. So I certainly appreciate the support of my colleagues, and I respect Councilman Villegas' dissent. I understand. Look, not all of us agree on this, and that's okay. That's democracy.

But one thing, and I feel very, very bad for the person who came up and spoke and went through a very tragic experience with her daughter. Look, I try to do my research as well, and the Cato Institute came forward with a study and findings showing that the undocumented population commits crimes at a much lower rate than the Main Street population. And the reason why is because they're in fear. They're in the dark. They're in the shadows. They're scared to death to come out. And so, yeah, we can cite an incident of one thing happening and another thing

happening, but proportionately, if you look at the populations, you'll see that the immigrant, both documented and undocumented, commit crimes in a much lower degree. And that's not me telling you. These are findings by independent institutes of study. So, you know, I just want to leave us with that and thank my colleagues for their support on this action and look forward to seeing the amicus brief.

Any more comments on this item? If not, we are moving towards, yes, Councilman Benavidez. I was supposed to actually leave. Council Mayor left again, and I'm staying here. I have a flight to catch.

What I would just add as part of the motion here, you mentioned that we'll be directing the city attorney to write that amicus brief from the court letter. But then there's, I think it's important that we capture some of the comments

that Councilman Sarmiento just mentioned, that our own law enforcement, our own city, there's a position, there's a reason, there's the ordinance that we have, that we've approved. I think it would be helpful for us to also draft a document that addresses the values, the value toward public safety, the benefit of having this community trust. So, Mr. City Manager, I'm going to ask if you would follow that up by either your office and or the Chief's office to be able to draft the, basically, FAQs, if you will, to the

sanctuary city ordinance position of the City of Santa Ana. I think it would be beneficial for the public to be able to stand, you know, the answers to basic questions because there's a lot of misconception out there especially with this anti-immigrant sentiment that we're hearing throughout uh the county so it would be helpful for for residents and others to be able to understand uh again the overall benefits the the improvement to uh and contributions towards public safety community policing so if you can work on that that's my only comment in addition thank you councilman benavides we are now moving

towards the work study and i think we need to stay for these work studies they've been put on here we can't continue them so i'm expecting you all to stay i'm staying i have to catch so with that we do have two members of the public they wish to speak oh housing authority see i'm really moving fast so we can please move towards approving the uh um housing authority items motion to one and two and excuse the absence of mayor polito

second first in the second all those in favor please indicate by saying aye aye motion carries great we we don't have any comments we're now moving to the work study and we have two members of the public that wish to speak one is araceli robles and then jose hernandez

We do have a public hearing.

Just hold a moment.

Oh, my apologies. I went a page further. If we can please approve the Housing Authority Annual Plan and adopt the resolution.

And opening the public hearing. Any members of the public that wish to speak, do we receive any communication?

No.

Great, fantastic. Going to close the public hearing.

No.

Bring back the council.

Hello, I need a motion and a second to move forward.

Second.

Everyone's asleep here. So moved. Great, fantastic. Do we have a second?

Second.

I'll second the motion. All those in favor, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Okay, fantastic. We are now recess and going now back to the general public meeting. Yes.

Comments. Yes, work study. Yes. Yes. Fantastic. And we have two members of the public that wish to speak. Araceli Robles followed by Jose Hernandez. Is Araceli here?

She's up?

Okay, great.

Sorry.

Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem, City Council members. My name is Jose Hernandez. I come representing, yeah, Jose. I come representing OCORD, Orange County Communities Organizing for Responsible Development, but as also a coalition of Equity for All, which is comprised of close to 20 organizations, grassroots groups that have been following the issue of these 90 plus lots for quite some time. I joke with the current city manager, Godinez, that he's the fourth city manager that we've been meeting and discussing with him. So we're quite versed on this issue. And I just want to, first

of all, commend Rob Schmeade for all of his work on this item. I know that it is quite important and to develop a process for developing these lands. They've been there forever. Many of them have been there for decades, but no process has been done. However, I will say that as a policy it stands, we cannot support it. And for various reasons. For the most part, one of the issues is that it sets it up as a system for disposition, meaning get rid of public land. These are public assets.

And so we are saying that this process should be slowed. The community should have more ability. We just got the ability to look at it not too long ago. We got a chance to meet with him. And we're saying that it should be able to be more inclusive to the community. It should have more steps to prioritize retaining public lands, leasing it, developing it for affordable housing and so many other very desperate needs that we have in our community. As we're dealing with homelessness, we're dealing with the issue of rapidly rising rents. And so this is a matter to try to resolve this.

And also the disposition policy must have strong enforcement mechanisms. mechanisms. So there's a lot more to be said and I look forward to being able to meet with all council members and being able to share all those very good ideas that we have with it. But like I said, as it stands, I think it would be premature to go ahead and move any further. I know that this is the first reading, but we just wanted to make the case known and obviously community members with children couldn't be here towards the end, but that is what many folks in the community say. Thank you, Mr. Hernandez.

Fantastic. Bringing back to the City Council, so the first work study session, Mr. City Manager, we're going to be calling on Interim Public Works Director William Galvez to please provide us a brief pilot study on parking and then we'll move towards the discussion on real property disposition.

Yes, Madam Mayor. Pro Tem. this is coming to the council at the request of the council to try to begin to address the overcrowding and and lack of parking resources that some of our

neighbors are struggling with yes good evening mayor Potem and members of the City Council there I promise to be very brief the parking permit districts is comprised of 27 distinct districts throughout the city and it's used to manage residential parking intrusion by by high density residential units and commercial endeavors it was established by California vehicle code and it's actually also part of our Senate and a municipal code and it is managed on a block-by-block basis you have to demonstrate a need so we have an

observation period and then and then we ask the residents on a block-by-block basis as to whether they want a parking permit district or not so so we go through that and this is a picture of the 27 different districts that we have in the city and in order to do a full-blown citywide analysis we knew that that would take some time so what we did is we did a two-pronged approach we're still doing the citywide analysis but we wanted to identify two areas that maybe we can do a pilot study and so we chose the two of the most challenging

locations in town and one of them is the Northeast parking district roughly bounded by Lincoln and the 55 freeway 17th Street and the North City limit and again it was chosen because it seemed to be particularly challenging the other location that was chosen was the Eastside parking district and that's are roughly bounded by Main Street, the railroad tracks, Ettinger, and First Street. And so what we are choosing to do is basically to do a field audit. We would go out there and audit how many parking spaces are on private property, and we would also audit how many

spaces are available on the street. And with that information, we wanted to maybe figure out some immediate areas of opportunity, perhaps some arterial streets or collector streets that have prohibited parking maybe we can return some parking spaces available for the community at those locations maybe there would be some park frontages that maybe we could free up for parking so the idea would be again that we come back with some immediate improvements to those two challenging districts and

just the next steps is that this presentation was done two to four weeks ago so the audit would be completed in 90 days I figured that it's going to be probably by the end of May or early June that we have some preliminary results and then we can actually put into effect some implementation of improvements in July of 2018 the the information from the raw data that we'd collect would be used actually for an RFP that we would then float for an in-depth citywide analysis and so that's our two-pronged approach if you have any questions or input I'd be happy to thank you William I know I won't say much because I

provided my comments during my EdBet committee meeting wanted to bring this back to the council and wanting to thank the council for supporting my pilot study on this part of parking obviously I know Councilman Solorio and Councilman Villegas wanted to do a comprehensive study we are going to do that but right now we have some key concerns and I think doing this pilot is in our best interest to get a bigger picture and to identify some positive next steps for us as we do this comprehensive study and with that I'll bring this back to the City Council and hopefully we'll be brief so we can go off to the next study

thank you yes a couple of brief things that thank you for this work just three three or four points in addition to some of the items you raised the other things I'd like to be considered are particularly in the northeast part of town where I represent we have like on Grand Tustin some shopping malls that in the evenings you have season seas of parking that maybe there could be some shared parking opportunities there also I know from our police parking folks that near the palace center there are some apartments

that use those lifts. I'd like an inventory or examples of where lifts may be applicable, parking lifts. And then third, apartments on the whole are doing quite well. And I think some of them can be asked to do a little bit more on site or maybe to somehow help financially or otherwise with this issue. And part of it also may be, over time, maybe some of these apartments added in more units or reconfigured the parking and lost parking spaces we got to revisit things like that and then finally from an economic standpoint I know when I asked me about a

year or so ago the parking permit district program I think it generates 400 to 600 thousand dollars a year in revenue and yet there are shortages in staffing etc and we got to look at that piece as well to see if we can maximize the staffing and financial opportunities as Well, thank you.

Great, thank you, Councilman Slur. Anyone else up here wanna say any comments? Fantastic, yes, Councilman Benavides.

Just a question you mentioned, well, in the two-prong approach, is that, are the two prongs, if you will, the pilot study in these two neighborhoods and then the RFP for the citywide? Is that what you're referring to as a two? That's correct, yes. Okay, just, I needed that clarification.

Great, thank you, Councilman Benavides. Thank you very much, Mr. Galvez. We really appreciate you and your team, in particular your traffic engineers. They're amazing. We really appreciate everything you all do. Thanks. All right, Rob, please come on up here. Rob and Mark, we move forward to the next item, which is a discussion of real property and disposition.

And thank you guys for your patience. We appreciate it.

Oh, we're happy to be here. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem and Councilmembers. We're here tonight to discuss the draft real property disposition policy.

Let's see.

There we go. A little background on this. This is the development of this policy followed up some council direction going back several years. I think starting with disposition of properties along Bristol. And so what we did, we formed a staff working group. We had representatives from the city manager's office, city attorney, CDA, Public Works, Parks and Rec, PBA. We developed the draft policy that you had before you. And then we presented that to the EDIBT on the 12th of March, had subsequent meetings with the committee members.

And then we also had a meeting for the Equity for All Coalition on the 22nd of last month. That coalition is quite broad, made up of Santa Ana Building Healthy Communities, Accord, Latino Health Access, El Central Cultural DeMexico, Santa Ana Active Street Coalition, Thrive Santa Ana, Santa Ana Collaborative for Responsible Development, and many others, including the Kennedy Commission. And we had a good meeting. We went through the document kind of line by line, section by section, listened to some

of their comments and suggestions, and I'll touch on those in a minute. Turning to the document itself starts with a purpose and intent, which I think is a very important section of a document like this. It is proposed as a policy, not an ordinance. The next section, we established a custodian for the list of the properties. There are approximately 90 properties on the list. It also establishes what is called the RPDC, the Real Property Disposition Committee.

That is a staff committee that would review properties that are proposed for disposition and make recommendations as to their possible reuse, including economic development, housing development, community beautification. These are not mutually exclusive designations. A property could be designated for more than one purpose. and then the committee would make a recommendation whether a property would be added to the list and then that would be approved by the council. Initially, you're going to have coming before you, if you approve this policy, a fairly long list.

But then in subsequent years, it would be kind of one or two at a time that a property might come to be added to the list and come before you for your review. It also deals with, because there has been strong interest on the part of our local nonprofit community, which does a lot of good work in the city, of being able to access some of these properties and use them for purposes that would create community benefit. And so this policy recognizes and allows the council to recognize the value of that community benefit in addition to cash value of the property.

The basic guiding principle of the property is for the city to receive maximum value for it, but it's also allowed to consider community benefits in that calculation. It also establishes a process whereby nonprofits can apply to be considered and be added to a list to potentially purchase or lease city properties. And we thought that was important because there is kind of a basic level of capacity that needs to be established for the owning and operating of real estate.

The policy also considers other elements that govern how we dispose of real property. Our municipal code, those sections were attached. It also discusses the California Government Code section 54220 at SEC. That's the Surplus Land Act. Also discusses grantor restrictions. Those would be restrictions placed upon the property by the either granting an authority providing us a grant, Most often that would be, say, Measure M or, in the case of parks, Land and Water Conservation Fund dollars, and there are others. It also includes a fairly extensive section on leasing.

However, we don't see that there would be a great number of opportunities for leasing a property just because of the nature of the properties that we have on the list, their size, location, et cetera. Then just to kind of dive into the meeting that we had for the Equity for All Coalition, they had indicated these four general areas. Public participation in the process of identifying the properties that would go on the list. They also indicated interest in seeing public participation in the disposition solicitation process.

So once properties have been approved by the council to be on the list and the council has determined that they want to dispose of the property, how do they participate and does the public participate in that process? They also suggested that the policy should indicate a preference for buyers whose proposals include community benefits. And then they also had some suggestions on the use of proceeds. And I'm going to touch on each one of these. With respect to the participation in the process of this staff committee, they suggested that certain seats be established, that they would be part of the committee that's reviewing it.

I, Steph does not recommend that. However, we think a good alternative might be for the RPDC to conduct its meetings publicly so that members of the public could hear the deliberations that go on and comment upon them. And then that information could be brought to the council when the property is being proposed to be added to the disposition list. With respect to the disposition solicitation process, we thought a good way to get at that might be to have a neighborhood meeting akin to the way that we handle our Sunshine ordinance meetings,

where if a particular property is being proposed for disposition, a neighborhood meeting would be called, would be open to the public, and there would be a discussion about potential uses of the property and how the neighbors felt about that. and that could be communicated as well to the council. They also suggested a preference for buyers whose proposals include community benefits. I think that is something that could easily be added to the solicitation document that the city would issue.

And then on the use of proceeds, they were suggesting that these proceeds be basically put into a fund that would be used to pay for projects that would provide community benefit. And I think certainly all of these are council policy decisions. That one in particular, just to kind of tee it up, of the 90 properties roughly that are on the list, a great majority of those have grantor restrictions associated with them. So the universe of properties that are purely city properties

and the council has unrestricted ability to designate use of proceeds would probably be five or so. I think if the council wanted to make a determination on how those proceeds would be used, that would be fine. I would welcome your thoughts on that tonight, as well as the suggestions for the other aspects of community participation that I've outlined.

Happy to answer any questions.

Yeah, great, bring it back to the council. Please be brief. Yes, Dr. Menendez?

A couple of comments. One is I would be interested in having a follow-up meeting specifically with staff to go into this little further. Julie, maybe you can help me arrange for that, please. Certainly. Then you mentioned with regard to disposition of the 90 properties. I think there was five that you singled out when there was a reference about proceeds. I'm not sure what I – I missed something there. Right. Basically, the overwhelming majority of the properties on the list have a restriction related to the funds that were used to acquire them. A good example of that would be Measure M money. Yeah.

If they were required with Measure M money and they weren't approved, like there are some parcels along Bristol that were designated for park. We keep those parcels and we can develop those into a park. If we're going to sell it, then those dollars have to go back to OCT and they have to be fair market value. So my only other comment besides being interested in discussing further with staff, I'd be interested in discussing further with the recommendations that some of the community members have made. I do agree with the idea that it's these parcels, generally speaking,

either many of the ones we hold now, not all, and are potentially future ones. They are at the end of the day public land, they're at the end of the day city. the city is, we hold them for the taxpayers, residents, communities, so to the degree that they will be of benefit to the community. And looking at the long haul over the short term of a sale that might bring some proceeds, but that'll go into general fund or something will be gone. I do think there's definitely value to looking at long term benefit for the future of the city, its residents.

I really thank you for your question and I'll tell you why. I forgot to mention something on that list and that was one of their other suggestions, you know, when the committee is looking at a property there are some factors included in the policy that they should look at to determine whether it should be disposed of. the coalition suggested well there should be some criteria that would help the committee determine that the city should keep the property and I thought that was a really good suggestion and I haven't made these changes to the draft that you had before us but if the council gave direction I would make those changes

before it came back to you with a request for adoption

that definitely would be something that I would recommend. Thank you, Rob. Any other questions?

Councilman Solorio. Yeah, good overview, and I know this is kind of at least the first time I've seen it. And you know, you're right, we kind of have a long list of properties now that we're looking at, and after that, they'll be less. I appreciate that some may be for sale, maybe some for lease, I think that that's an opportunity. I also see back to the city areas, I'd like to see some areas for food truck islands for example, or maybe community fairs or-

That would be a community benefit use.

Yeah, right, so things of that would be significant. When and if we do sell or lease to nonprofits, I want to make sure that they have an operational plan, a maintenance fund, a development plan. When I was on the council last, we helped Latino Health Access with the park and the little park turned out great, but it costs money to maintain. I think they realized it and so for various reasons, it's closed to the community a lot of the time.

And so it's important that these organizations factor that in. Also, I think there needs to be provisions. If they're sold to private or nonprofit or the public agencies, possible revision of land clauses. So if something takes too long or unintended purpose or they want to sell it for private, even though it wasn't intention, we need things of that sort.

Some clawback provisions.

Yeah, some clawback provisions. Okay. And then finally, in terms of public participation, I agree that the nonprofit community should have a seat at the table, but just as important, are the neighborhood associations from that area because they're the ones that live there?

That would be the primary groups that the meeting would be targeted to, would be the immediate neighborhood.

Okay, because I know the group that you met with aren't necessarily that. That's correct. that there they have a mix of them, but I just want to make sure that it's more with a focus on the local folks with that community and then that those individuals, especially if there's some kind of voting participation, it has to be individuals that don't have an interest in the state of the outcome, which is why I like your idea of just making the process public that folks can provide input in, but I think whenever we empower individuals that have some kind of financial connection or relationship

with we got to be careful about that but you know good move forward on the

policy. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Salordio. I gave a lot of my comments to Rob and went to our committee. The only thing that I would just say is that you know as a city moves forward you know in regards to the disposition of properties is that we We have to realize that government is subsidized when it comes to properties, not on the tax rolls. Right? And we need to make sure we can do everything we possibly can to put our properties on the tax rolls. And so if we're going to keep this asset, it has to go to someone that is going to either be able to lease or

it's going to go to community land trust so they can take care of it. But the reality is the City of Santa Ana does not have the means to upkeep those properties or even manage those properties. And this is why I have been asking to bring this forward. When you look at our assets now in regards to our deferred maintenance, and I'm not sure if our city manager could tell us what our deferred maintenance is on our assets. It's a very high number. Financially, we are constrained.

We need to do everything in our power to make sure that we either sell those properties and we build housing on those, or we're able to sell those properties or give to a community land trust to be able to manage those. I heard today and he articulated very well Mayor Wagner from Irvine and he said look our properties community land trust we give them the money to build affordable housing you know we need to continue to follow models and I know there is a community land trust that started here I know

we're in the process of negotiating some land but look if this entity wants to be part and wants to help us and if we are going to keep some assets we need to make sure that we're able to work with groups like that and so I want us to take that into consideration because of what we're facing here financially and as we move forward we need to realize that we need to do a couple things and we need to make sure that we do them right and more importantly we also have to look at this property and how do we get the best value obviously there is a need for housing here in this community as we continue to move forward and you know a

lot of these small properties or properties that have been on Bristol a lot of those we're not going to be able to utilize for obvious reasons in regards to how those properties were purchased but being able to identify that so that we have a clear understanding and we're transparent you know is important for us and we've been asking for that so that when we're dealing with whether developers or small private entities that want to purchase property or, again, a community land trust, they know what the expectations are. Right now, you know, it's even hard for me to understand what surplus property means for the city of Santa Ana.

I definitely understand what surplus property means for the state of California, but here in our city, I'm still trying to figure out, you know, I always ask, like, okay, when are we going to be able to understand that? because there's been times where we've had properties, we swapped them, staff has said this is surplus, and we're all over the map, and I think it's time that we finally figure out ways to be able to be transparent and open, and if these properties are available to get on the tax rolls, fantastic. If they're going to be a community asset, that it benefits the neighborhoods in those communities.

And I gave you the great example in regards to the cell site towers. Those monies go back into those neighborhoods. I'm still a big believer that we should do everything we possibly can. That if it's going to have any kind, whether it's a small impact or a large impact, to look at ways. And I know that our city manager is trying to look at monies to bring to his general fund. But at the same time, we do need monies that are going to go back into those neighborhoods. So we're still kind of putting it into the general fund, but it's being dedicated into those neighborhoods where they need to be addressed.

And we haven't been able to do much in those neighborhoods. And so those are just my comments. I've shared those with Rob, but I want to thank you for really, you know, dedicating yourself to put something like this together. I believe it's a plan that's moving in the right direction, long overdue. And you're going to get us to the finish line, Rob. So we thank you, and I thank you for actually meeting with the community and getting their input. I look, I think my colleagues will follow back up with you on some of the questions. I know you met with a couple of us. We gave some some some some some some feedback already.

So I think the next steps is please provide feedback to Rob before he brings back a proposal for us to to to approve. I think that's important within the next two weeks as we move forward. And I know he has a very short time period as he's almost out the door. How long are you here for more Rob?

Long enough to get this all across the finish line.

So thank you. I appreciate that. But again, he is on a timeline, and so we want to do everything we possibly can to help Rob get this done. I have an expiration date. Yes, you do have an expiration date. Any questions on to my right? If not, we're going to follow back up with Rob and move forward. Thank you very much. Thank you.

All right. All right. If I could have Dale Helwig, followed by Joe A., and then Brennan.

Good evening, Mayor, Pro Tem, and Council Members. I think if you were to talk to the Discovery Science Center board, they'd be very pleased with their rainforest adventure exhibit. but I don't know if you've been up there the last few weeks during spring break, but the parking lot there is full, lines are full. Overflow parking is being used by the 2525 property, and even into Bush. It's been a very successful exhibit.

But what I really want to talk to you about tonight is essentially vineyard development has 1,200 apartment units going in down on Dyer. We know about that. This represents 1,987 units going in along Maine and up in North Santa Ana. It's already a well-developed area. Dyer was an industrial park, 1,200 units, 1,987. And that's before Veneer Developments wants to put in another 500 units right across from Discovery Science Center.

I can't imagine what this place is going to be like when all this development takes place. We've requested that the EIR look at the cumulative effect of all this because it's going to be devastating up there. So you guys will have this in your email tomorrow. I want you to take a look at it and consider the effect that this is going to have on North Santa Ana. It's also going to impact Discovery Science Center if we continue to build right in that area and they have no place to go. They've had over, I think it's 500,000 people attend Discovery Science Center. The attendance is good there. It's very good.

But it's going to take a hit if we keep on doing this.

Thank you, Dale. If I could please have Joe A. Joe A.

Followed by Brennan. And then Joy Torres. But seriously, seriously, please put on a little on the microphone on the

I thank you first to the police, because we have now slept better in the neighborhood of Shelton, from the 1st to the McFadden, we have slept a little more. But now we have problems with the neighbors, We are not with the neighbors, with the neighbors.

Because the neighbors have houses of a house and rent them to 7 or 8 families. Those families need a parking lot because they don't give them a parking lot. adentro no les dan parque adentro y ahí enfrente de ellos ellos mismos tienen ocupados ahí ni ni eso les dan entonces esa gente yo no tengo problemas con que le rentan a mil o dos mil

siempre y cuando no molesten a los vecinos entonces nos dan problemas nosotros también me amenazao porque porque yo este en veces este me siento enfermo y yo aparto lugar dice es así ilegal que usted aparte el lugar dice digo no me dan otra opción no me dan otra opción le digo ustedes ahí de una recámara vean siete o ocho familias vienen y me quitan el parque me amenazan algunos y este yo digo una cosa

If you could make us a favor of talking to this people, that if they don't have a park in their own property, or in front of where they live,

it's simply that they don't rent, so they don't have problems to the other neighbors. porque también nosotros poco pero pagamos taxis también si yo yo puedes hablar con la señorita

aquí julie ella te va a la información porque podemos agarrar con enforcement para allí para allá ok si puedes hablar con que en el casco esta señora se llama julie castro esa señora

I feel bad. I guess my Spanish is awful. Whatever.

I like to think the police would have been able to sleep better around the neighborhood in Sheldon and between First and McFadden. But now the problem is the neighbors are fighting with the neighbors. there are some one bedroom houses and they rent that to seven or eight families but they need to provide parking parking inside on site and not parking in the front I don't want to have problems with them I don't care if they rent to one or two thousand people but they need to provide parking inside I've been threatened by the people there because I do set aside parking for

myself and they tell me it's that's illegal for me to do that and I don't have any other options so they threaten me so if you could speak to them to tell them that they can rent to people only if they can provide parking on-site or parking in front.

Great. Thank you, Cesar. Followed by, can I think if I could get Brennan Sesmore?

And then followed by Joy Torres.

Good evening, Council Members, Mayor Pro Tem. My name is Brennan Sesmore. My colleague and I, To Tran, who is here with me, are financial educators at WFG WSB office on East Dyer Road, 1221 East Dyer Road. The reason I'm here tonight is to share with you about our national campaign for financial literacy to have one million financially educated families by 2020.

As you may know, April is Financial Literacy Month, which was recognized in 2004 by Senate Resolution 316 to raise public awareness about the importance of financial education and the serious consequences that may be associated with the lack of understanding about personal finances. This resolution was an effort to highlight the importance of financial literacy and teach Americans how to establish and maintain healthy financial habits. As of today, these principles are still relevant.

Our organization, WSB, has helped some of the most underserved communities across North America. We provide free financial classes by experienced and certified instructors. My family has benefited greatly from this campaign and education. Most importantly, I would like to invite the city to join our campaign and help us in our cause by allowing us to bring these classes to Santa Ana residents and libraries, community centers, schools, and have these classes posted in the residence bulletin. This campaign will help achieve your city's five-year strategic plan,

especially Goal 5, community financial health, livability, engagement, and sustainability. I would like to suggest that the city has a proclamation for April as Financial Literacy Month. And in closing, I would like to read a comment from Governor Brown last April for Financial Literacy. Let us all take time to increase our knowledge of our finances and encourage our friends and family to do the same. I encourage Californians to take advantage of the free resources, including seminars and workshops, classroom presentations, online services, and educational materials,

and learn how to better manage money, investments, credit, and debt, and avoid financial scams and fraud. By empowering Californians with the knowledge and tools they need to help them make critical decisions, including financing higher education, buying a home, starting a business, and saving for retirement, we are investing in a brighter and more successful future.

Thank you, Brandon. Appreciate it. Joy Torres, followed by S.G. Sarmiento, and then Karen Estrada.

You know, I just want to say, you know, the time that I spend in Santa Ana, you know, and the days just keep getting longer and longer and longer. you know but I I do want to have you consider for a supportive housing unit of a hundred people where you direct you hire the director you get the services into that hundred complex of supportive services where you have an LVN to have

safe disrepresent of medications because a lot of medications are being over abused. We need drug testing. These people want supportive housing. They want the help. They're willing to give up their dogs because if you go to jail or you go to a hospital, you don't get to have your dog or your family with you you know or or be next to your spouse all night the thing is is this is what we need to do tengo un familia grande en español también

we abrito casas siempre to a you de la gente and I'm gonna say this in English We open places to help our public, but we need to help our Santa Ana residents. You guys need to step up because none of the other cities are. Make this permanent supportive housing, even if it's only 100 people. but make sure that it has the gaffes where it teaches you how to fish not that we're giving

them fish where they're asking for more and more and more but giving them the support that they need these people are sick whether they've been homeless for two days or three years so if you could please wrap up okay but I really want you to take consideration for this and I know in your power that you can do this because even with codes you can find a way around very supported thank you followed

by S.G. Sarmiento and Karen Estrada. S.G. Sarmiento? Karen Estrada?

Hello, my name is Karen Romero Estrada, last name Romero Estrada, and I'm a research and policy analyst at ACCORD, which is part of the Equity for All Coalition. As a representative for Equity for All, I'm here to express our feedback on the Real Property Disposition Policy. We have reviewed the City's draft Real Property Disposition Policy and we have met with the Interim Director, Robert Zershmi, to discuss the policy and provide feedback. We felt like we had a productive conversation with him and we thank him for the opportunity. I'd like to emphasize that the City has a responsibility in stewarding public land and

that public land should give community benefit. This means policy regarding Santana's public land should not be primarily profit-driven. This topic is extremely important to us and we look forward to continue collaborating with the city for a policy that is representative of all Santana's communities, especially the most marginalized. Equity for All has surveyed many communities around the lots and part of what we propose is a community vision in the process. Mr. Schmid came into agreement with many of our points, in particular with having community input in the process and having a certain percent of profit go towards

to fund exclusively for community projects, what he called revenue sharing. Equity for All hopes to see a policy that prioritizes the community, public loan retention, and a development process that has requirements to produce community benefits, and we would like to support the city in this process. Equity for All has the capacity to provide legal language on our policy priorities that can be incorporated to the city's policy. So we ask that the city allow more time for the community to meet with city staff and council members by opening up dates and times for in-person meetings to facilitate

conversations beyond the city council meeting. Thank you. Thank you.

We're bringing this now back to city manager comments.

Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Temp. I just wanted to highlight a couple of events. One of them is our bike rodeo. Santa Ana Police Department will be hosting on Saturday, April 14th at the Boys and Girls Club located at 950 West Highland from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The kids will have the opportunity to learn safety tips and practice their skills on an obstacle course. And the highlights include arts and crafts for children to participate in, and two bicycles will be raffled. In addition, I wanted to let everybody know that we're in full-blown budget season.

And in the spirit of transparency, we'd like to invite the community to attend one of the upcoming community budget meetings meetings that will take place on Wednesday, April 4th, that's tomorrow, at 7 PM at the Lawn Bowling Center. Wednesday, April 11th, at 6.30 PM at Madison Elementary. And then on Thursday, April 12th, at 6 PM at the Adams Elementary School. And then finally Thursday, April 26th, 7 PM at the Police Community Room. The topics that we'll be covering will include an overview of the city's budget development and process, fiscal year 2017-18 budget and financial update,

and the City's five-year strategic plan, along with fiscal year 17-18 capital improvement program. This would be an excellent opportunity for the community to get involved in the budget process, ask questions regarding the City's financial position, and provide input as we begin to finalize fiscal year 18-19 general fund trial budget. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. City Manager. Next, we're going off

the council comments. Councilman Solorio. Thank you. Three items. One, I want to thank the staff and the attendees for the Cesar Chavez beautification event that occurred the day of the big count. I had another event and it was well attended and we had some community folks paint some things, some very environmental trees. We thought about planting a tree, one for Helen Chavez rest in peace and one for Dolores Huerta and the community came up with the idea instead of painting the trees that we don't need a water on but they're nice and they're going to

have a dedication so that's good second I do want to on that note thank the staff and my council colleagues that participated with the point-in-time count it was well done and I'm glad we finally did that and then finally I have I have a council request to get a number of calls for service for prostitution and related issues along the Harbor corridor for the past 10 years because well know there's a lot of trafficking and very bad things going on on Harbor Boulevard especially the northern part of Harbor Boulevard

much of the area that I represent and councilmember Villegas I know we're slowly increasing this vice and narcotics unit but we really need to have an action plan to do that i was particularly uh upset because at this chavez meeting there was a lady that came specifically to talk to me about that and she said that a little boy as one example has been dealing with stds pretty much all his life because of of a used condom and after i heard the story well well, you know, but if you touch it, that necessarily won't give you STDs.

And apparently, you know, kids not know and think they're balloons, then they will put it around their lips and blow on it. And so this little boy has had for about 10 years STDs all around his mouth, and he needs to have regular treatments to deal with that situation. And that's just one of many situations. numerous instances again of you know prostitutes or pimps forcing themselves into cars being aggressive etc etc and honestly we've turned a blind eye to it and as the saying goes times up we really need to focus in on it figure out how

big the problem is and start dealing with it so as soon as we get that information I'll share that with my colleagues and follow up with PD staff in particular Councilmember Villegas to get an action plan going on that I know it's been a priority as well thank you thank you Councilman Salor councilman

Villegas thank you mayor Pro Tem yes I can I agree with councilmember Salorio it's been about a year now if I remember about in February a little over a year when I was speaking to back then chief Rojas regarding this issue and council members Salorio and I went out to the neighborhood we met with four neighborhood associations in one area and we went out there and we saw the condoms and all the videos and all the people walking down there after the meeting as a matter of fact I went back to my car and there was one of these persons walking around there you know trying to do business and there it was

no joke I know we ended up having a task force put back together went out there cleaned it up for a bit but you know this is an ongoing thing you gotta keep addressing it. You got to keep showing force out there because that community or those people that do that kind of work, they're all up and down the street and they're getting very aggressive. They're out there telling the homeowners to stay in their house. You better not call the police and their pimps are aggressive also and it's getting a little dangerous and I have been getting some emails

regarding that. I'm looking forward to talking to the chief soon when he gets back and we do need to address it. Again, take another look. I know our department is stretched thin

and, well, we need to figure something out.

I could include security cameras as an example, too. Yes, and lighting.

Thank you, Council Member Solorio. And so, and again, thank you to all the staff and the volunteers from the community coming out and helping us with the event this weekend regarding the homeless count. Thank you so much. and it was great to see everyone there. It shows how much you're dedicated to the city, how much you love the city also. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman Villegas. Councilman Benavides.

Thank you, Mayor Proctel. A couple of things here. I want to welcome our new personnel director here joining us for the first council meeting officially. Welcome. and we also made two appointments today city manager appreciate your diligence and filling these these important positions tonight we had both community development agency director planning building director and some of the the feedback and and I know I've shared some of my colleagues it's a lot of

opportunity when it comes to economic development within the city and I I believe that part of what you referenced with the new planning and building director, that they see themselves as a partner in economic development. I think it's very important that that person be in a role where they see themselves, have vision for the city and are problem solver looking at out-of-the-box solutions to be able to invite, attract, and support business and development to grow in the city.

and we also recently appointed a youth services supervisor and I'd be interested to want to reiterate from last last meeting I'd be interested in and very soon however whatever you think would be the best approach I know that that person is is technically a higher of the parks and rec director but whether it's through the parks director to you or I'd been should meeting with the youth service supervisor directly more than anything just want to see what what that that the vision the idea behind that position to be liaison to the

broader community to look at a bigger picture plan and how we can support youth that the success of youth within our city that we're able to to carry that forward I think looks like you wanted to make comment yes council member

As a matter of fact, I did have a conversation with this person, and I actually suggested that as part of developing her plan of action, that she meet with each one of you to get direct input, because I know it was your vision before my time that created that position. So I've encouraged her, and now whether her boss, the director, will also be part of those meetings, I'll leave it up to them. But I do want her to have direct access to at least have one meeting with each one of you to see, you know, to hear from you directly.

Great. Thank you for communicating that. And if you can follow up, I'm not the only one on the council here that would be interested and has that supporting our youth as a priority.

And there's a lot of good things going on in our city. This weekend we have the first Art Walk, and it's going to encourage folks in the community to support Santana, local businesses, the art community. We're a very diverse city, and both whether it be folks who have been here a long time, recent arrivals, folks from different backgrounds, make the city of Santa Ana a very strong city and community. And I'm proud of my colleagues for standing by our community, particularly our immigrant community.

It is a very, just tonight, there are a couple of council meetings taking place in Orange County that were lined up seemingly to also adopt this anti-immigrant sentiment. And it's not just, some folks would indicate and say that it's just the undocumented community, but at the end of the day, it's felt throughout. and Santana being a predominantly Latino community, it's frankly it's hard not to take it personal.

I mean it's our people. I was born in this country but my roots are still very much Latino, Mexican and that's part of who I am and this hateful speak out there, it's saddening. It's saddening that here in Orange County, I'm proud of being from Santana, living in Santana and being a part of the county. And in essence, they're not proud of us. They're not proud of me. They're not proud of me being a part of this community. And I'd say me, but it's my family. It's my kids. It's my neighbors. It's my city. And it's hard not to take that personal.

And I'm glad that we demonstrated leadership tonight. and appreciate those of us who stood by. And again, we're in this for the long haul. I'm sure it's not just tonight. I just want to just, again, thank everybody here and encourage us to continue to send that message out there, both from positions that we can take policy-wise and just from our staff. I know as well there's been leadership on the part of our, even law enforcement, our police department, where that's the angle that others are taking. So I just want to reiterate just some of those positions and stances that we can document.

You know, Mayor Pro Tem addressed even the Deputy Chief a bit ago, just that approach of responding to everybody with dignity. It's important that we document that, that we communicate that, and take those positions in written form. So with that, thank you. Thank you, Councilman Benavides.

Councilman Sir Miento.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. And I'll echo what Councilman Benavidez said.

I was proud of the step that we took today. And Mayor Pro Tem and I were speaking when we were at the hearing before Judge Carter. You felt a palpable discomfort in there. And it was really interesting because I started relating that experience to average people. And we had Sylvia Mendez, who was a plaintiff in a seminal case that ended segregation. and she sensed it but it was interesting because i think you know those of us who were there the mayor mayor pro tem and i um look we could defend ourselves against anybody but the fact that you

had some real hostility and some um real anger you know at the fact that you know this is a community of color this is a community that has some issues it's an urban area um was really difficult because I think to myself, how does an average person feel? Low income, doesn't have the resources, may not be as well educated. So I think, you know, I see my parents as they came here being put in that position and having a real sense of intimidation, right, and not being able to speak. So it's unfortunate. It's this environment that's around us. It's difficult, but I'm glad

that we are standing tall so I just wanted to relate something that Jorge reminded me of we we did have a legislative ethics transparency and communication council committee last week and we brought on a new communications firm and so that's a really good thing because many sort of many other communities many other press outlets define us and we're not able to tell our story and a lot of times our story is a really good one and most of the time it's really good one so I hope that the firm that came on is going to be working with us I know they were with us during some press conferences during

some media interactions that we had because it's been a busy week with the homelessness issue the sanctuary city issue and one other issue that we're going to be dealing with very soon is the census issue and how we count our community and it's a constitutional requirement to count communities as we as As Mayor Pro Tem and I both know as members of Naleo, we were reminded it's in the Constitution that every person is counted. Not every documented person, not every citizen, not every voter, not every adult, not every property owner, every person. And we have a very hard-to-count community because we have a community that's in fear.

They don't want to disclose information. They don't want to be accessible because they're fearful of being deported. They're fearful of being, again, intimidated. So we have a real challenge because how we get resources, how we get funding for different things, both for school districts and for city efforts are through the census. So that's something that I think we're going to have to tackle very soon and be present at that discussion. The final thing is I know that we tackled something at the council subcommittee dealing with the code of ethics

and looking at what models we're going to look at as far as whether we're going to do some sort of sanction for violations of our code of conduct. So I know our clerk is working on those and will probably be presenting some feedback to us and some options. We have a value-based code of ethics right now, which doesn't have any reprimand or any punitive measures that we can take. But she's going to at least come back and bring us some options so we can reconsider that again. So with that, I'll tell everybody good night.

So Councilman Dinajaro.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I do want to, before I forget, kind of piggyback on what Councilmember Sarmiento mentioned about the census. I think, and I was kind of grinning a little bit because I don't want to overwork our staff, but we're going to have to overwork our staff.

The census is so important to us that we as an organization have to figure out a way to educate our community about the census. But let me tell you what area I'm talking about. it's called it's a provision it's called I think it's provision 13 in the document in the law if you look it up I think it's called title 13 it's in the census docket and it talks about how the census the information that comes into

the census is completely private that the federal government can ask for it but But they don't give it to them. Because information that deals with individuals and with businesses is not released. The President of the United States can ask for it. They do not release it. Because it's so important to our society and our democracy that every individual is counted that it's almost a sacred thing. So if you can take a look at that and read it and analyze it a little more and let's publicize it does it mean that our community is still not going to be afraid after the rhetoric that's been coming out of the White House of course

not they're still going to be afraid but I think it's even it's even more of a responsibility for our city to let people know how important it is and how they are protected so I don't know if we can partner with the school district to help in that because they're affected with this as well and one of the things that I have noticed is you have a very very active parent group in our schools I mean you really want to go in there it's they're very active and it's fascinating is it's 99% women you know the moms are not messing around they're

out there and they're involved and they're working so that's that I do want to say this is that I think historically we're in it we're an interesting time in history right now where you have like I said the sanctuary the sanctuary cities the individuals going against sanctuary the sanctuary cities law SB 54 is not something that someone just came up with and they just woke up and said let's do this it's a calculating push and hope that this will be the one thing that will offset the momentum that's happening right now politically here in

California and that is if you can start to get people afraid that with this false narrative that sanctuary cities are not working with the federal government and we're not providing information and scaring people to believing that that it could then help them at the ballot box in November the fact is we're going to continue to educate we're going to continue to let people know what it is we do and I think as a city we have to continue to do that as well. So those are my comments for tonight. Ms. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Councilman Tinajero.

And I will be brief as we have to close. We will be closing the meeting in honor of a few folks, but I'll do that as soon as I make my comments. I just wanted to remind our city manager and our public works director that Bike to Work Week is coming. If there are any activities, please share that with me. What are we going to do? definitely want to continue to be involved with that and Jorge please stand up come to the podium Jorge Garcia I don't think he has been introduced correctly but he plays a very important role here at City Hall he is the assistant to the city manager so when we need to get something done we go

to Jorge when you all in the community need to get through our city manager you go to Jorge you guys remember Mark Lawrence he's Mark Lawrence now when you

have a pothole don't call us you know I wanted to recognize you because you're

doing an amazing job and I don't think we have yet publicly been able to recognize your efforts and your promotion that was very well deserved but we need to utilize you more our city manager is very busy and you know we We have always gone in the past to the assistant city manager to get things done. And so I just wanted to introduce Jorge Garcia to the residents of this community and the business community. Say hi Jorge, give us your phone number and help people contact you.

He's Mark Lawrence 2.0.

Yeah, Mark Lawrence 2.0 with lots of hair.

Well, thank you Mayor Pro Tem. Yes, of course, myself as well as our entire city manager's office are available whenever any of our residents need us. 714-647-5200 and you will get a hold of us at any time.

Fantastic, thank you Jorge. Thank you. And next, and I sent an email to Jorge and to Julie in regards to fireworks. fireworks we're already in april we heard bang bang this past weekend whatever we can do to get started and getting education out getting pamphlets out to the community i've asked several times to take this to the voters i have yet to get a full consensus of this council to do that the reality is is that every july we come back we get the emails we get the calls but we haven't taken any action so i just want my colleagues to consider that we need to take it to the voters and

let them decide either they're going to move up in support of fireworks or they're not. But obviously, I'm already starting getting the calls and talking about the issues about fireworks as they start to go off. Definitely, I want to share with you all is that I love celebrating Fourth of July. It's a great holiday. But the way we sometimes celebrate Fourth of July in this city is not safe. And we need to take that into consideration. And so I just hope that we can put some education materials together and get the word out there starting now versus starting to have that conversation in June.

We need to do it now so that the community can help us and identify some of these folks that have illegal fireworks. And next, I also just wanted to talk about CDBG's coming in. And I know there's been some recommendations going to our commission. I just want you, Mr. City Manager, to continue to work with the staff, making sure that our priorities on this council is reflected on the CDBG. I did see and I had some folks contact me, those that, you know, have been supported in the past, possibly not this time around.

A great example is Pastor Nati Alvarado, who we asked to help us out with the new program. but then they chose not to support his other program, right? So he should not be penalized for that. We asked him to support our Saturday Night Lights program. Obviously, there's very few organizations that could handle what we're asking. And so let's make sure that we don't penalize on the economic development front. I know we asked some folks to apply as well, and there were some concerns in regards to the ranking. And just want to make sure before we come up here

that we are able to address these issues head on before it comes the budget season and wanting to make sure that our priorities on this council is being reflected on the CDBG process. And then, you know, I do want to just end with this, and I shared this today at Judge Carter's hearing, And I think it rings true, and I do believe that the nation is watching Orange County. And our legacy and political future will rise or fall on how we handle this humanitarian crisis. People are watching.

I got a phone call from my friends in New Jersey, in Boston, saying, hey, we saw, you know, how, you know, We feel bad that Santa Ana, they're dumping the homeless. You're having to deal with this. But what we have to realize is that, yes, I have a great relationship with my colleagues throughout this region, but I will hold them accountable. I'm not ashamed to hold them accountable. I will protect this city because I love this city. and I made that very loud and clear. I will be seeing them on Thursday, many of them from South County, and I will share my position with them.

I have always been cordial and supportive of their efforts, but not once have they been supportive of the city of Santa Ana. And this is not new. This is not new. And I had the honor to sit right next to Sylvia Mendez and that case, Mendez v. Westminster in segregation, Well, let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, Santa Ana has always been discriminated.

And that's not right. We have amazing people in this community who are hardworking. They care about their families. They have pride for this city. And yes, we're not a perfect city. but let me tell you one thing that brings us together is the pride and love that we have for this community i always tell people when i travel and i'm coming back i get this warm and fuzzy feeling i'm coming back to my city coming back to santa ana you know where i feel welcome and appreciated and i've traveled the world not too long ago i was in tel avi in israel and let me tell

you, those folks, what they experience in other parts of the country and the world, don't have the same feeling and pride that we have in this community, and it's special. And we need to embrace that. We need to be tolerant amongst one another. We can't hate one another. We have to love one another and it's time that we go through this healing process and so as many of my colleagues up here are talking about you know immigration reform and about sanctuary cities and other cities across this county continue to

bash and now they use the code immigration reform when essentially look and I've come to realize this and it's taking me quite a while that there are certain people that just don't like Santa Ana and don't like what it stands for. But you know what? We have to stand up to that. And we have to say enough is enough. And this is why they continue to do what they do. But I believe that this community is standing firm. I want to thank all those that sent emails to this council, that sent emails to Judge Carter. And more importantly, When we see a homeless person, let's not, let's be tolerant.

These are our mothers, our brothers, our sisters, our uncles. These people.

I understand this. But when I hear, and you didn't get to finish my statement, they talk about these people. These are not just people. those that are here in our community, we need to make sure that we do everything we can to provide them the shelter that they need. Because let me tell you, and the mayor admitted it today, there has been failure. We've allowed this to happen in the public realm. We need to make sure that we provide the needed services to get them out of the public realm. We cannot continue to allow this to happen in our community or throughout Orange County or throughout California.

It costs us more money to address people in the public realm than provide them the funding that they need when they're in facilities. And so it and I'll just end with this. If every city in Orange County could build 150 permanent supportive housing, we would not have any homeless in Orange County. We're not talking about the homeless population in San Francisco or San Diego or Los Angeles where it's 50,000 plus. We're talking about 5,000 people. We can definitely help if we all come together. And so I would just encourage the residents of Santa Ana to continue to stay strong,

but to also be tolerant and have compassion as we continue to try to resolve this problem because we're better than these other cities. We're better than this county. And we need to make sure that we can do it in a dignified way. And I think that we're doing it. Our staff is leading the way, and they're showing their compassion. And I want to thank them for that. And let me just end here. Our adjournment next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, April 3rd at 5 p.m. And we're going to be adjourning this meeting. Retired Chief of Police Raymond C. Davis. Chief Davis was retired from the Santa Ana Police Department in 1987.

1973 to 1987, Chief Davis was an exceptional leader and a pioneer in community policing strategies. When this philosophy was in its infancy stages in the 1970s, Chief Davis led our department to unprecedented reduction in crime, revolutionized our department services, which was based on treating everyone equally, and along the way brought statewide and national recognition to Santa Ana Police Department as a premier law enforcement organization.

Chief Davis centered his policing strategies on the importance of building and sustaining community trust, harnessing the value of community input, while concurrently holding everyone accountable to the department and the community. Want to extend our heartfelt condolences to the Davis family, and I know we will be sending something to his family. Next is retired police sergeant Irma Vasquez Mendel, wife, mother, grandmother, honorably retired with 30 years of distinguished service. Irma never gave up her fight against cancer.

For those of us who had the great pleasure to work alongside Irma and got to bear the witness, the incredible service she provided to everyone in the department and in our Santa Ana community, we know how special she was. A Santa Ana product herself, Irma was the first Latina to reach the rank of sergeant in our department's history. She led by example, always was a professional and of the sense of the word, regardless of the situations that she faced out there in the field. Regarded as one of our premier CAP homicide investigators, everyone knew one thing about her.

She was relentless in her pursuit of justice in the most heinous crimes of our city. Sending our heartfelt condolences, and I know our staff will be sending some certificates to her family. Next is Harry Dean Thomas, a.k.a. Rabbit. For those of us who grew up in the Santa Ana community, he was a beloved security guard. he's someone that kept me eating every single day when I was at Santa Ana High School didn't have money growing up and was kind of embarrassed to use the free and reduced tickets out and so I

wouldn't use those and so he would all he he knew that he would give me a dollar and say love go buy yourself a burger go buy yourself a burrito I was like I really don't need it rabbit but thank you you know and he knew I played basketball he's like you have to eat you cannot go hungry and That's one thing that I always remember about Rabbit. This man had a heart of gold, always helped students, and will be fairly missed. Lived off of Raiden Willett's area, and his car was very distinct. He was always at the norms, just a humble human being.

And I just want the residents to know in his family that he was a dearly loved person within the Santa Ana High School family. So our beloved and dear friend Harry Dean Thomas, a.k.a. Rabbit, known by many at Santa Ana High School and the San Antonio FI School District, passed away on March 22, 2018, of natural causes. He was loved by many and known as a great, humble man, a security guard at Santa Ana High School and Valley High School.

They don't have a lot of other information, which I wanted to read here. And so let me get that for you all. He was born on March 17, 1935 in Oklahoma and entered into the eternal rest again on March 22nd in his home in Santa Ana. He was 83 years old. Harry was a proud veteran of the United States Armed Forces. And our condolences to his entire family and to the Santa Ana Unified School District family. And with that, we will be sending him certificates of recognition. And with that, this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.

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