Read the February 2 meeting.

In this case, Russell Fisher obtained several approvals in 2019 to develop a combined car wash and gas station. Early in the administrative process, the petitioners, a competing car wash owner and operator, the Conklans, opposed Russell Fisher's car wash, citing anti-competitive motives. The Conklans then hired attorneys Kara and Evan Grant, who just spoke, who are local attorneys that we call in the industry CEQA bounty hunters, whose business is intended to profit from settlements and attorney's fees awards in CEQA lawsuits. The Conklans and the Grants have

pursued scorched earth litigation against the city and Russell Fisher, and Russell Fisher can no longer financially afford the fight and must end its participation in the litigation promptly. As such, we filed a motion to have the court grant the Conflicts the relief they seek against Russell Fisher's project and have the 2019 car wash approvals set aside. This motion harms only Russell Fisher. We have made this blatantly clear in the motion moving papers, which Russell Fisher accepts because it cannot fight anymore.

We ask the city join in this motion because it represents the best resolution and outcome in this case for both the city and Russell Fisher. And to cooperate in good faith with the city, Russell Fisher has agreed to amend his settlement agreement with the city to delete the city's indemnification of Russell Fisher in exchange for the city's joining Russell Fisher in this motion. If the city does not join Russell Fisher's motion, Russell Fisher will be forced to drop out and the city will have to proceed alone in this lawsuit.

And as far as last comments, the settlement agreement that petitioners offered early this morning, it still demands an astronomical settlement amount, which is not feasible. Right now in the litigation, our motion represents the very best strategy forward for ending this case favorably for the city and Russell Fisher. and we have repeated to the court and in our moving papers and we'll do so at the hearing

that the motion to grant judgment for the petitioners and to set aside the 2019 approvals really only affects Russell Fisher itself and its approvals. We have asked the court to make its findings or rather to make its judgment without making any legal or factual findings against the city or against petitioners. And so the motion would only set aside the approvals. Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other callers who would like to speak on closed session items, please dial star nine or select virtual hand on your device.

Okay, Mayor, it looks like every other caller that I had lowered their hand, so.

Great, why don't we go ahead and recess this portion and we'll go into closed session.

Thank you.

So I just had an abundance of caution that I've accused myself since. So I think that is it. Are there any other recusals, any other comments before we leave public and and recess into closed session.

And to be clear, it's Mayor Sarmiento and Council Member Fan that are both being, that are both recusing, correct?

On different items, yes.

Jessie LopezItem 1

Thank you.

The city of Santa Ana cares about keeping our streets clean and safe. When you see an issue, it's easy to report it using the My Santa Ana app. Make sure you've downloaded the free app on your mobile phone. Open the app and press the Report an Issue button. Choose the category that best describes the issue and the type of location. The app will automatically geotag your location and you'll take a quick photo.

Once you've submitted the report, it is sent directly to city staff who will come out and resolve the issue. It's fast, it's easy, and before you know it, you've helped our city become better. Every little bit counts and together we can help Santa Anna stay great. For more information about our efforts and the My Santa Anna app, please visit www.santa-anna.org.

In Santana, we want to keep our streets clean and safe. When you see a problem, it's easy to report it using your app. Ensure the app to download free on your phone or mobile phone. Open the app and press the button to report a problem. Choose the category that best describes the problem. The app automatically will find your location and you will take a photo using your phone. When you have sent the information, a city staff will come to solve the problem. It's fast, it's easy and an open and close eye has helped improve our city.

Every small effort has to do and we can keep Santana. For more information about our efforts and the application MySanaana, visit www.santa-ana.org. In Santa Ana, we want to keep our streets clean and safe.

The city of Santa Ana cares about keeping our streets clean and safe. When you see an issue, it's easy to report it using the My Santa Ana app. Make sure you've downloaded the free app on your mobile phone. Open the app and press the report an issue button. Choose the category that best describes the issue and the type of location. The app will automatically geotag your location and you'll take a quick photo.

Once you've submitted the report, it is sent directly to city staff who will come out and resolve the issue.

It's fast, it's easy, and before you know it, you've helped our city become better. Every little bit counts, and together we can help Santa Ana stay great. For more information about our efforts and the My Santa Ana app, please visit www.santa-ana.org.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The City of Santa Ana cares about keeping our streets clean and safe. When you see an issue, it's easy to report it using the My Santa Ana app. Make sure you've downloaded the free app on your mobile phone. Open the app and press the Report an Issue button. Choose the category that best describes the issue and the type of location. The app will automatically geotag your location and you'll take a quick photo.

Once you've submitted the report, it is sent directly to city staff who will come out and resolve the issue.

It's fast, it's easy, and before you know it, you've helped our city become better. Every little bit counts and together we can help Santa Ana stay great. For more information about our efforts and the My Santa Ana app, please visit www.santa-ana.org.

The city of Santa Ana In Santa Ana, queremos mantener nuestras calles limpias y seguras. When you see a problem, it's easy to report it using your app. Ensure to download the app free to your phone phone. Open the app and press the button to report a problem. Select the category that best describes the problem. The app automatically will find your location and you will take a photo using your phone.

When you have sent the information, a city staff will come to solve the problem. It's fast, it's easy and an open and close eye has helped improve our city. Every small effort counts and we can keep Santana together. To get more information about our efforts and the application MySanaana, visit www.santa-ana.org.

We want to keep our streets clean and safe. When you see a problem, it is easy to report it using your app. Ensure the app to download free on your phone. Open the app and press the button to report a problem. Select the category that best describes the problem. The app automatically will find your location and you will take a photo using your phone. When you have sent the information, a city staff will come to solve the problem. It's fast, it's easy and an open and close eye has helped improve our city.

Each small effort counts and we can keep Santana together. To get more information about our efforts and the application MySanaana, visit www.santa-ana.org.

The City of Santa Ana cares about keeping our streets clean and safe. When you see an issue, it's easy to report it using the My Santa Ana app. Make sure you've downloaded the free app on your mobile phone. Open the app and press the Report an Issue button. Choose the category that best describes the issue and the type of location. The app will automatically geotag your location and you'll take a quick photo.

Once you've submitted the report, it is sent directly to city staff who will come out and resolve the issue. It's fast, it's easy, and before you know it, you've helped our city become better. Every little bit counts and together we can help Santa Ana stay great. For more information about our efforts and the My Santa Ana app, please visit www.santa-ana.org.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The City of Santa Ana cares about keeping our streets clean and safe. When you see an issue, it's easy to report it using the My Santa Ana app. Make sure you've downloaded the free app on your mobile phone. Open the app and press the Report an Issue button. Choose the category that best describes the issue and the type of location. The app will automatically geotag your location and you'll take a quick photo.

Once you've submitted the report, it is sent directly to city staff who will come out and resolve the issue.

It's fast, it's easy, and before you know it, you've helped our city become better. Every little bit counts, and together we can help Santa Ana stay great. For more information about our efforts and the My Santa Ana app, please visit www.santa-ana.org The City of Santa Ana cares about keeping our streets clean and safe. When you see an issue, it's easy to report it using the My Santa Ana app. Make sure you've downloaded the free app on your mobile phone. Open the app and press the Report an Issue button. Choose the category that best describes the issue and the type of location.

The app will automatically geotag your location and you'll take a quick photo.

Once you've submitted the report, it is sent directly to city staff who will come out and resolve the issue. It's fast, it's easy, and before you know it, you've helped our city become better. Every little bit counts and together we can help Santa Ana stay great. For more information about our efforts and the My Santa Ana app, please visit www.santa-ana.org.

The City of Santa Ana

In Santa Ana, queremos mantener nuestras calles limpias y seguras. Cuando vea un problema, es fácil de reportarlo usando nuestra aplicación. Asegúrese de descargar la aplicación gratis en su teléfono móvil. Abra la aplicación y presione el botón Reportar un problema. Elige la categoría que mejor describa el problema. The app automatically will find your location and you will take a photo using your phone.

When you have sent the information, a city staff will come to solve the problem. It's fast, it's easy and an open and close eye has helped improve our city. Each small effort counts and we can keep us together. Santana. Para obtener más información sobre nuestros esfuerzos y la aplicación MySanaana, visite www.santa-ana.org.

En Santana queremos mantener nuestras calles limpias y seguras. Cuando vea un problema,

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Liberation is easy and in an open and open eyes has helped us to make sure that every small effort

comes together and we are hoping it will end by 6 pm we will go ahead and start the meeting for those that want to speak on any agenda non-agenda items for regular and special meetings

Again, please select Raise Hands so we can see that you want to speak for you may dial star 9 in your phone room. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, Yes Yes

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Thank you.

Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, Mayor, I think we are ready on our end.

You know, Madam clerk, I can't seem to get my video started because it says that the host has it disabled.

And I don't see anybody's video on either.

So okay. Thank you. There we go.

There we go. We're all set.

Yes. Thank you for that.

Great. Great, so are we ready to start, Madam Clerk?

Yes, Mayor, we are.

Great, thank you. Good evening, everybody. Let me go ahead and call this regular open session meeting of the City Council and Housing Authority for February 2nd, 2021 to order just a couple of things. We do also have a special open meeting item number 22 that will be embedded in the regular session that we will be having and we will be taking that in order. Let me go ahead and just read this disclaimer before we get started. In accordance with California Governor's Executive Order

N25-20 regarding the Brown Act and guidance from the California Department of Public Health on gatherings, this meeting is taking place entirely by teleconference via Zoom. The council chambers the council chambers are closed. The public is accessing the meeting via the Santa Ana YouTube channel or the, or the city's website, the council members and I, along with the city manager, the city attorney, city clerk, and the executive team are all in different locations. Please bear with us as a technology may disrupt our flow. So patience, everybody. But I want to go ahead and have the Madam clerk call roll, please.

Thank you, Mayor. Council member Becerra?

Here.

Council member Hernandez?

Present.

Thank you. Council member Lopez? Here. Council member Mendoza? Here. Council member Fan? Here. Mayor Potem-Panaloza? Present. Mayor Sarmiento?

Thank you everybody. And thank you for everybody having your cameras and video on. I know the clerk and our IT team worked very hard to have the cameras functional so the public can see us. So thank you all very much. Let me just go ahead and make a quick note that public hearing item 23, if anybody is here to speak on that, will be continued to the March 2nd council meeting at the request of all parties. So at this point, Madam Clerk, before we proceed, Go ahead and make your announcement regarding public comments, please.

Thank you. Public comments will be held during the beginning of the meeting for all comments on agenda and non-agenda items for both the regular and special meetings, except for public hearings. Comments for public hearings will take place after the mayor opens the public hearing. To request to speak, please dial star nine now from your phone or virtually raise your hand from Zoom. by selecting raise hand. Please do not call or zoom to only listen to the meeting. Meetings are broadcast live on Spectrum, excuse me, Spectrum, Channel 3, and AT&T U-verse, Channel 99,

or at youtube.com forward slash Santa Ana Library.

Great, thank you for that. That brings us to the Pledge of Allegiance. So if everybody will please join me in pledging allegiance. I'm going to go ahead and just go there. And if you have a flag near you, if you'll repeat after me, pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Great. Thank you. That leads us to our invocation. And tonight we are very blessed to have Dr. Willie Holmes, who is going to be leading us in the invocation. And I should note that, you know, we've had guests come and do the invocation for us. Recently at our last three meetings, we had an imam from our Islamic Cultural Center. Then we had a Buddhist monk from one of our Vietnamese temples. And, you know, we've received some very, very nice comments from the public. that doesn't mean that we are not going to have our police chaplain back. Mayor Pro Tem reminded me that they are in the queue.

We want to make sure that we celebrate all faiths, all backgrounds and spiritualities. We have so much diversity here in the city, which is, which is really a blessing. So let me go ahead and turn it over to Dr. Willie Holmes to lead us in this invocation for this evening.

I would like to thank, I would like to thank you, Mayor, Mr. Monto, Pro Tem. Mayor Potem, David, and all of the City Council Chamber of Santa Ana. Shall we pray? Dear God, we pray for our nation. We pray for our workplaces, our churches, and our schools, and our communities. We ask for your help in being a light in every place you've given us to walk. Give us care and wisdom as we live and work with one another.

Help us to look to another's needs before our own. And to always be ready to serve those around us by the power of your love within us. Even in every dark and broken place, for the times we feel like we're barely making it through, give us your joy, Lord, your grace, and the powerful presence of your peace. Even as we are asked to keep our distance from others, help us to find ways to reach out to those who are in need and offer our support. We pray especially for those whose incomes and livelihoods are threatened,

for our children who will miss meals due to schools closures, for those already isolated, lonely, and scared. Loving God, give them your peace and through your hands ensure they have what they need. We pray for all those in authority, for every leader of our nation, that you would give them your wisdom and discernment as they lead. We pray that their hearts would be directed first to you, that they would recognize where their true help and strength come from. We ask that you guard their coming and going, that you would be their refuge, their peace.

We pray that you would surround every leader with wise counsel, that they would humble, be humble and kind, patient and loving through their actions and words. We pray that their faith in you would be unwavering, strong, resolute and firm. We ask that you surround this country and cover us with your mighty hand. We pray for unity in our land, that in spite of our differences, we would be willing to stand strong together and live out our days with compassion and grace.

We ask that no weapon formed against us will prosper and that you would thwart the attacks of the enemy hurled our way. Thank you that you are rich in mercy and full of grace. Thank you that you are forgiving and merciful. Thank you, you are strong and mighty. Thank you that you are for us and that you fight for us still today. In the name of our Lord, we pray, amen.

Amen. Thank you very much, Dr. Holmes, for those inspiring words. I think that's what we need, are words of wisdom and words of inspiration. So just to my colleagues for future invocations, if you know of anybody that you'd like to invite, I want to thank Council Member Hernandez for inviting Dr. Holmes. But anybody else, I know that we have a rich tapestry of faith leaders here, and we're blessed in this community to have that. So please let the clerk know if you'd like to invite somebody to present the invocation to us in the future. Let me go ahead and move along to the ceremonial. So thank you, Dr. Holmes.

Move along to the ceremonial presentations. And I believe the first one is going to be by Council Member Fan to Alice McCullough for her outstanding contributions in education.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. And thank you, staff, for helping me with this. So this is, yes, to Alice McCullough. She was a former founding board member for the Heritage Museum of Orange County. I had the luck of serving with her on the board of directors of HMOC. And for those of you who don't know, HMOC is definitely a hidden gem here in Santa Ana. Its sole purpose is to educate students, young people, any of its visitors about the history of Orange County specifically. And we focus a lot on ethnic history, Latino history, you know, API history, whatever is

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

is going to connect with our students here the most. So definitely when we open up again, and all that stuff, please come out and visit. So Alice McCullough, she made a true impact on the students in Santa Ana, but providing them with the opportunity to enjoy hands-on, minds-on educational field trips to HMOC. That's where, you know, not only do they get to learn about the history, but they actually get to do a lot of outdoors, hands-on activities because we actually have a wetlands that's protected on the grounds of HMOC, so it's quite incredible. She was truly pivotal in

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

bringing the historic Kellogg House, Kellogg fertilizer, not relation to the cereal family, to the museum grounds and participated in the founding of the Heritage Museum in the late 1980s, as I mentioned. So for four decades, Alice's passion for education and creating positive experiences for Santa Ana youth has kept her involved and proactive. And so I'm really excited to give her this recognition. As her professional term as a board member comes to a close, we would just like to honor her and recognize her for the care, time, and diligence that she shown throughout the years. And despite all this time, she's managed to maintain

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

the values and initiatives that she set in motion. And her legacy will really, you know, be truly felt throughout the city, but also at the Heritage Museum. So thank you so much, Alice.

Thank you, council member for that very nice recognition. I know it's a shame. I miss people coming to the council and actually seeing them and receiving the recognition physically and saying a few words, I can't wait till that comes back. That is definitely a missing element here. But the next one is a proclamation that's gonna be presented by Council Member Hernandez to Duane Shipp and the Shipp family honoring them during Black History Month for all their contributions to the community. So I'll turn it over to Council Member Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. So this is an important month for the history of our country. As we entered Black History Month, this is a month where we pay homage and we respect the elders and the ancestors of those who came here to make this country better. Those that are still fighting for freedom. Those are fighting for intersectionality. It is my honor today to introduce this proclamation. accepting the 2021 Black History Month proclamation is Dwayne Shipp, as Mayor Sarmiento shared. He's the president of the Orange County Heritage Council.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

Each year, the Orange County Heritage Council holds a Black History Parade to honor the history of African-Americans in the U.S. The first Orange County Black History Parade was actually held on February 9th, 1980, and it has taken place on every Saturday of February since then. to kickstart Black History celebrations. Dwayne's mother, Helen Marie Singleton, wife and mother of 10 children, is the founder of this annual parade. Originally beginning with only eight entries, the parade has since grown to hundreds of participants. Black History Month is a time to recognize and to pay tribute to organizations

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

such as the Orange County Heritage Council who have made contributions to the history, achievements and culture of African Americans in the United States. Black History Month also serves to remind us of the importance of ensuring African-American achievements are in our history books and our past to our future generations. Mr. Shipp's motto is a token of that very sentiment, honoring our heritage, praising our present and fortifying our future. Congratulations to the Shipp family. And we thank you for your black excellence and for doing great things in our community.

Thank you, Council Member. And yes, we thank them deeply. They represent us well. And so I remember, I think it was Dwayne's mother, mothership, I remember. And I remember when we hosted the Black History Parade here in Santa Ana. So something we need to always remember that We have deep roots and there's a legacy and a history of the African American community here in Santa Ana. So thank you for that proclamation, council member. Let me move along to the certificate of recognition

for the 2020 Santa Ana Historic Preservation Award recipients. And I believe our planning and building agency is gonna go ahead and present that.

Yes, this is Min Tai. Thank you, Mayor. Annually, the Historic Commission recognized historic landmark within the city that deserve recognition for their uniqueness as well as their standout celebration of our heritage and our cultural. So this year we have the winner of two and we're using the new format of presenting in a video format. And I believe our city clerk has the video ready and is a presentation winner.

Yes, we do it on the play right now. Thank you.

Hello and welcome. Today's a very special day in our city. And today I'm on the campus of Garfield Elementary School, which has a very special historic building on their campus. I am right here at the Pacific Electric substation number 14, which is on the campus to present the Santa Ana Unified School District with our award for best restoration of a historic building. The Garfield Wellness Center was originally constructed in 1907 to power the red car system

that actually used to be in Southern California. It fell out of repair. It sat for quite a long time serving as storage. The district acquired the property when it built Garfield Elementary School but never really found a good purpose for this building because it was a brick, unreinforced masonry building. This was, let me give you a little background, architecturally and historically significant as the oldest standing structure feature of the Pacific Electric System in Orange County. The district underwent a major renovation for the building. We actually did a new

roof, we rebuilt the tower, we removed and replaced the concrete floor. We also renovated two storage rooms into a restroom and also created a kitchen to be able to do food service and other types of events. This property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983 and is listed in the California Registry of Historic Places. In addition, this property is individually listed at number 355 in the Santa Ana Historical

historical register properties and it's categorized with our highest distinction the city has as a landmark. The Wellness Center actually was renovated for parents and created a space that parents and instructors could actually get together, talk about challenges and solve the dilemmas of children in the modern age. It gives us great pleasure from the Historic Resource Commission to present you with this restoration award, one of the highest awards we can give. You have set the bar high for restoration and we congratulate you there for preserving our history.

Thank you very much. On behalf of the Board of Education and Santa Ana Unified School District, I'd like to thank the city for this recognition. I'd like to thank our staff for the hard work that they put into this and just let everybody know that we are so proud of providing a space for our community where they can come together and meet and work on improving the academic needs of our students. Thank you very much. Again, on behalf of the Board of Education and the district, we really appreciate this recognition.

Woo!

And I'm here at this beautiful home where Marnie Schnabel lives at 2510 North Valencia. And I'm here today to present Marnie with the Rehabilitation Award that we on the Historic Resource Commission have voted this home, the Taylor Oglesby home that she lives in, for the year 2020. The house was built in 1910 for two sisters by their brother, the Taylor sisters. We bought the house in 2016. I lived on Valencia, just five houses down.

Always had loved this house when I walked by. It just had such a great character and great feel. Just a great historic home that was just magnificent. And I know it needed a little love and a little attention, so I just couldn't wait to get my hands on it. The property is individually listed on our historic register as number 386, and it's a landmark. And that's the highest rating that we can give for any historical property located in Santa Ana. It's just a labor of love, especially when you're doing all the detail that went into the craftsmanship that went into the homes back in that era.

We wanted to really make that shine and bring that out. And so with that comes a lot of time and effort and energy. And like I said, it was a labor of love from a lot of craftsmen that came. This home was selected for a series of extensive interior and exterior renovation and the original materials were preserved, reused, and replaced with the original matching materials. All the work on this house was finalized in July 2020. The house just has a great feel and a great openness and I'm just happy to to restore it back to its sort of original nature.

All of that work, what motivates you to do all that work to preserve this home? Well, I knew it was a great property. I love living in Santa Ana, and I knew that it needed to be rehabbed and reloved and to make it shine to what it is today. We thank you because it's this type of dedication and preserving the historical features of Santa Ana It's something that we on the Commission applaud to our homeowners to just maintain that tradition and history in our city. On behalf of the Historic Resource Commission,

Ann, let me say we want to congratulate and thank you so much for restoring this home. Beautiful home. And I thank you very much, and thank you to the City of Santa Ana and to the Historical Preservation Society for keeping the houses in this area pristine. So thank you.

Thank you.

Wow, that's all I can say.

Congratulations to both of those properties and thank you, Director Tai for bringing those to our attention. Those were incredible. So kudos to the Schnabel and the school district. Those preservations were outstanding and amazing. Just shows you the richness of the architectural history that we have and the fact that people preserve them and they mean so much today to have those still with us. So thank you. let's let's keep that effort going let me go ahead and move along to staff presentations and I think the first one is yours madam city manager on the COVID update um yes honorable mayor mayor

pro tem and council members I am going to upload and share my screen it looks like my screen's paused

Okay now can everybody see that?

Yes.

Okay, so this is the routine matter of the COVID update which was requested to appear on each one of your agendas. And so I'm going to walk you through a couple of the more recent happenings. So first the biggest news that we did have we received a little while ago on Monday January 25th, Governor Newsom and the California Department of Public Health did lift the state's regional stay-at-home order, and the state has moved back to the blueprint for a safer economy. For Orange County, that means we're still in the purple tier. It is one of the most restrictive

tiers, but it does allow some of our businesses to reopen as long as they're in compliance with the requirements that are stated on the state's public health website. And you can find out information if you are a local business owner and you want to see what's available to you to open you can look at covid19.ca.gov as requested by city council we were able to restart our testing the appointments opened up yesterday and the testing starts tomorrow uh wednesday february 3rd the appointments are required and the registration is available online and it's

It's going to be available Wednesday through Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Santa Ana College. We also are going to roll out additional sites, primarily community centers to also get closer to the community that may need those testing. For scheduling an appointment, if you visit the website, I will read the website. I apologize I don't have it on this slide but it is sna.epicontore.com backslash covid

now I know one of the the most most item that people are interested in is the state of vaccines. We continue to have weekly calls with the county. We are more than willing and able to collaborate and partnership with them on trying to bring additional vaccination sites to our city. I did participate in along with the Mayor Pro Tem and the Mayor on a call with Latino Health Access today and they're working very hard on it as well and Dr. Chow did talk about using the coalition of existing clinics and so that will hopefully bring vaccines closer to our community

but the the driving factor is the limitation on the number of vaccines that the county does have available to distribute but we are still working on it and ideally we would love to host and have another vaccine site in our city we were selected for a pilot program that we had one day at our senior center and we vaccinated almost 500 of our senior citizens mainly those that participated in the assistance programs that were offered out of that senior center so there is a follow-up schedule so that we can do the the second dose of the vaccinations for them but at this time we don't

have any other commitment for the county for a city at least collaborating and hosting a site as well but I do encourage everybody that's interested in getting a vaccine to go to the county's app the Athena app you can enroll in it and when you're ready for a vaccination they will let you know the appointment we are anticipating that the the governor is going to make a formal announcement where he is moving away from the different phases as to who's eligible to receive vaccinations and go to just a strictly age-based one. So right now we're at 65 and older. The next batch would be 55 and older and so on.

So we're waiting for that formal announcement to be made. In addition, based on some concerns we had with maybe potential community members being afraid of the vaccination, as part of our agreement with UC Irvine, we are gonna be doing a focus group and determine what is the best way to move forward on an outreach campaign to help better educate our residents on the safety of the the vaccination because it really is a promising vaccination that I don't want anybody and I know you guys don't want anybody to be scared to receive it other great news from the state governor Newsom

did sign the bill and he extended the statewide moratorium on residential evictions that is now extended all the way through the end of June 2021 and under the bill the tenants do have some payment requirements but landlords also have access to potential rent subsidies that will further prohibit evictions on those tenants that have fallen behind as a result of the impacts of COVID. More locally at Santa Ana we're very fortunate we still have a robust rental assistance the SAVES program, and that is specifically for our residents that are impacted by COVID,

who are behind on rent. They have the opportunity to apply for 12 months rent, and the program is geared towards and for very low income households in Santa Ana. And for more information on that, we do have the website on this slide, and it's santana.org just backslash SAVES if you're interested and would like to find out how you can apply for those dollars

at the last council meeting there was a question and and direction to make sure that we still were enforcing covid compliance we had established a compliance center with a dedicated phone line and i know we we won't be uh doing any compliance efforts as a result of the stay at home order but we still will do compliance efforts as a result of the restricted tier that we're in and you had requested that we continued with that and some of the stats from the program is we have issued 109 orders to comply those are mainly letters that were sent to businesses to cease their activities that they weren't allowed to

have open we have also issued 33 number of orders to comply letters since no December the first number was since March and then we have issued administrative citation fines only 18 of them we did follow through with the education first approach and we have our hotline and we have received it's been busy we've received nearly 560 calls for our COVID hotline although a large percentage of the calls that we are receiving they are for concerns of businesses that are outside of our city limits. So I do believe we're one of the only jurisdictions

that actually has a COVID compliance line and that's individuals are finding that and they are registering their complaints outside of our city jurisdiction. But we will continue with those compliance efforts and as they relate to what tier we're in and as to what the protocols are that the businesses need to have to protect our community. And that is my update for today. I'm certainly willing to answer any questions that you might have.

Great, thank you, Madam city manager. And I guess if we could come back to the council, if there's anybody that has any comments or questions for the city manager or staff.

David PenalozaItem 4

Mr. Mayor, this is Mayor Peltempeñalosa. Go ahead, Mayor Peltempe. Thank you, sir. I just wanted to thank you, Christine, and thank staff for the presentation. I know it's been interesting times. With the vaccinations, I would just encourage that we're reaching out to our private partners

David PenalozaItem 4

that are doing vaccination sites. I know this past weekend, Albertsons hosted one on 17th street. And if we as a city could at any of these provide, maybe some staff members to be out there helping or on a volunteer basis, or even just at a official capacity and just with logistics, I think that would benefit everybody and make these events and these pop-ups easier throughout the city because it is our residents that are being served. And in any way that we could help, I'd highly encourage it.

Great, thank you for that. I believe it was council member Hernandez next.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 4

Yes, thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. So thank you for getting this information over to us, Ms. City Manager. I guess one of the areas of concern that I have is, I guess this is a tough one because I guess it just highlights the digital divide that we have. I'm concerned about folks that don't have access to the internet and don't have digital devices not being able to access the vaccines or the testing. Have we taken into consideration how we're gonna reach those folks?

Excellent question, council member. And yes, as directed at the last, at a request from the mayor, is when we do the testing sites is to add on additional services at those testing locations. So we don't actually control the app. The app is a county app and the state is also rolling out a separate app. But what we plan to do at the testing site is to have kiosk and we'll have information on our rental assistance program. We'll also coordinate with our testing contractor for information on isolation services. If someone does receive a positive test, and then as well, we will have staff available,

bilingual staff that can assist people with signing up on the Althena app.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 4

Thank you, Mrs. Setti-Maranger.

Thank you, council member Lopez and then council member Grant.

Jessie LopezItem 4

Council Member Fan was actually first. I don't know if you want to go.

Go ahead. That's very polite of you. Go ahead, Council Member Fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

Oh, thanks. Thank you, City Manager. I guess my question is regarding the hotline, right? You said there were 556 folks who called, 70% was from outside the city and only a tiny number actually ended up, you know, with some type of compliance issue, where the compliant, I just, I think having a hotline is great, but if it's not actually being utilized to get our businesses and to comply with safety protocols, it might be a better use of our time to use those multilingual individuals to do something else,

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

rather than flagging these types of concerns. I guess, do you know what the percentage is of like the number of calls that actually end up in some type of compliance requirement or where those citations are compliance notice is related to the hotline or was it from elsewhere?

Well, if you consider 70% were out of the city so that did shave it down to what, roughly 200 and something. So I would say a large number of them did result in some type of educational outreach or a notice to comply letter. But thank you. We can certainly look at potentially scaling that down to the extent we need those resources to staff the testing sites to offer those other services.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

Right, or I think definitely signing up for the Othena app has everybody I know is confused, including young people. So I think that would be really helpful or having them staff. I know the rental systems, I've had several individuals, particularly in the Vietnamese community because the information they're getting is regarding the county rental assistance, which excludes Santa Ana. So there's a lot of confusion there. And they're not really sure where to call or where to go to get some of that information. Obviously our websites in multiple languages, but that may be a potential good use since we have all these extra services

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

I'd like people to be able to call into get help with or like help them go through the application.

Excellent suggestions and we can accommodate that. And Mary, if I may, I did forget, we have a little bit of a teaser to show you. So with the rollout of our cares, Daisy from my office worked really hard at doing a documentary on it. We just wanna show you a very quick clip, but it is something that we are gonna air after our council meeting tonight. And then we will ultimately roll it out in different venues. it really shows what Santa Ana stepped up and did. And I think it's an excellent reminder of the dedicated employees that you do have here working very hard for this community.

Let's do it. Let's see the sneak preview.

And give us one moment while we get that up.

Santa Ana has a really special element to it, which is the people and the culture and the pride.

We're the fourth densest city in the country. We have up to 18,000 people per square mile. And when the disease, the infection occurs in that environment, it can spread like wildfire.

March 15th is etched in my memory because I know that's when the governor issued the order that we had to shelter in place. And we all knew back then that as a community, we might be one of the communities that's hardest hit because we have so many essential workers here. And so that's the part that really was difficult for us to navigate was to explain to everybody that not all of us here in Santa Ana have the luxury of staying home and working from home virtually. So we had residents that were working in industries that forced them to be out of their homes. So they're working in hospitals, so they're working in supermarkets,

really making our economy continue to function.

One of the things that makes Santa Ana so great is the people that work here truly are invested in this community. I have never known a city or city government that works harder to try to make a difference for the people that we all work for. So the city manager did mandate us to come up with a way to go out into our communities. A really novel idea. Nobody else in the entire country that I'm aware of was willing to take on the risks associated with taking

staff out into communities to go door to door. Nobody was willing to do that but Christine Ridge our city manager was and she gave us a mandate. She told us what she wanted to see. I got to sit down with some absolutely incredible people. I think they are incredibly smart and then that gave me an opportunity to work with Daisy and together we came up with this idea that would came to be known as the Corona Cares Caravan.

Music for a planning event it takes months. Even for a really large-scale event with multiple components it could take even a year to plan. We only had weeks to plan this outreach so a lot of people came came to the table. We had police, we had traffic, we had city manager's office, we had parks and rec, we had public works. Definitely every department was essential in the planning of this outreach and we were able to do it in just a matter of a few weeks to get it off the ground. A lot of lessons learned. My hope is that as a police department and as a city that

we continue to invest in the leadership skill set that has been developed and is continued to be learned by various employees throughout the organization. Leadership matters and I can't say enough about it and what we've seen at every level in the organization, City Manager's Office, the various departments involved, really is an investment in making a difference, rolling up your sleeves and demonstrating genuine care for the people that we're here to serve. And that's my hope moving forward for this entire city.

Thank you for indulging me with that. And as mentioned, we're going to have it play at the end of your council meeting. And so any of those that are viewing that want to see the full documentary that have that opportunity. Thank you, Mayor.

Oh, it leaves you wanting more good stuff. Thank you. That makes us all proud. Anyways, I think council member Lopez had her hand up.

Jessie LopezItem 4

Yeah, thank you, Mayor Salmento. Thank you city manager for the presentation. I'm really happy that I keep seeing these. And I also just want to thank city staff for leading the pilot that we had here for our seniors. And I wanna thank you for fighting for the city and being in constant communication with the county and letting them know that we're more than ready to have a vaccination hub here. And Mayor Samantha, I just wanna thank you for your efforts too and your leadership during this time. It's something that I think most people, because the stay at home orders have been lifted, they feel like things are much better,

Jessie LopezItem 4

but I think that we still have to be really vigilant about our health. And so I feel that you've done an excellent job. So thank you.

Thank you, council member. And there's no other comments. You know, I just want to wind up by saying, you know, thank you to all of you who are doing everything in your own way. And I know some of you participated on a video that the, as we call it the COVID campaign that we partnered with the school district and the and Latino health access. And it's basically just to push out the message that I think council member Lopez just said, it appears that things are getting better, but they're really not great. Or maybe better than where we were a couple of weeks ago, because it looks like

things are either plateauing or at least trending in the right direction. But that doesn't mean that numbers are still not, you know, very, very elevated. So, you know, just to bring it back to what everybody's been talking about. One of the things I think that's a little, that's very disturbing, I should say, is, you know, our health equity metrics is really low in the county, meaning that those that are most impacted, especially Latinos here in Santa Ana who have, you know, live in some of the four most impacted zip codes are not really getting vaccinated at

the rate that they should be, right? So what I was really pleased to hear about, and I'll kind of report back to you guys, I think, you know, Mayor Pro Tem was on the call, and so was the city manager. But the public health director, Dr. Chow, relayed this test, and I had heard this last week from the CEO at the county, was that the governor is now going to be really compelling counties to dig into their equity metrics. In other words, those that are most impacted are the ones that are supposed to be vaccinated at a very high rate. And unfortunately, if you've seen the numbers,

we're like impacted at 40 or 50%, and we're only 10% of the people that have been vaccinated so far. So there's a disparity in how many more people we should have vaccinated. But the governor has caught on, And Orange County is not alone. Other counties are not doing as much as they should to vaccinate their most impacted and their most vulnerable seniors and especially communities of color and especially communities like ours that have been disproportionately impacted.

So I know that the state is going to be now basically telling counties, if you don't do this and improve your health metrics, we're going to withhold vaccines, right? Or they're going to go through a third party. So that's got everybody very nervous. So I think my message to the county and the public health director and the CEO was, we're ready to help you. Our council has been so proactive. We've set aside funding. We've already secured sites. We have the personnel and the staffing and our experience from delivering more than 35,000 tests during last year.

So we're fully equipped and we even want to help them at some of their super pods. So I don't know how much more compelling of an argument we can make to say that we want to partner with you. But I guess what's most difficult for me is that we see our people still dying at a very high rate relative to the rest of the county and getting, you know, having high positivity rates. So, look, we just, you know, need to keep that, you know, message going amongst all of us that, you know, we need the we need a vaccine site here. whether it's, we don't, we can call it a moderate site or a, you know, a sub site. It doesn't have

to be a super pod, but just some sort of secondary site that provides these vaccines to our, to our residents. So, but the last thing I'll say is I'm very excited about the rental assistance program, because I know that we have a robust amount of funding and that will help tenants and landlords, right? And property owners. So it cures a big problem. The state is actually modeling their their efforts to ours. So when we rolled ours out and kind of negotiated these things, they're doing the same thing it appears. So, you know, really big props to the staff for doing that. You know, that's, I think that gives so many people

just some calm to know that that's gonna be addressed. So anyways, there not being any other comments, let's move along to the next item, which is item number five, the community choice aggregation. and I believe that's with Public Works.

Certainly, I'll introduce it. Honorable Mayor, Mayor Potem and Council members. Nabil Saba, Executive Director of Public Works, and he also has our consultant available. He has a comprehensive presentation for you. It's gonna talk to you about community choice aggregation. It's gonna talk to you about actions that the city has taken in researching this area and really bring you up to date with the last work that was performed by our consultant. So Nabil, take it away. Thank you, Christine. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and members of the council. My name is Nabil Seba, executive director of Public Works.

I have with me here is Christy Kendick, our Public Works Project Manager. And also I have Ed Ajayan, our energy consultant that will help me answer some of the difficult questions that you may have for me to start community choice aggregation is a customer choice program that permits cities counties and joint power authorities to buy and sell electricity on behalf of utility customers within their jurisdiction and transmit electricity over South in California Edison's lines.

The CCA was adopted through AB 117 on September 2002.

It allowed city, counties, and public agencies to buy or generate bulk power. Investor-owned utilities, IOUs, will continue to serve and be reimbursed for all non-power supply services, such as transmission, distribution, metering, and billing. In our area, in the city of Santa Ana, South in California, Edison, is the IOU. Rules and approvals of the CCA are set by the California Public Utilities Commission. All electric customers will be assumed to desire service from the CCA

unless they elect to stay out of the IOU. This is an opt-out option for the customers that is available to them. How does the CCA work? The CCA buys electricity supplies, power, and delivers that to the utility, in our case, again, Southern California Edison, which will continue to maintain the lines and the billings to the customers, the end users, which will have options of energy choices.

Billing details. The South in California Edison bill that customers receive will have a different look to it. It will look like this. We'll have a section on the delivery component from South in California Edison. and that's for distribution. In addition to that, it will have a generation component from the CCA and that's the box on the bottom.

What have we done? In 2007, the city worked with energy consultant at no cost to the city to study forming a joint power authority for eight cities including Santa Ana. The consultant's report questioned the financial viability, direct energy. The consultant did not pursue the next steps. But however, from that study, there was one conclusion. CCAs are more attractive for cities that have higher usage residential customs, bigger homes.

In 2018, we examined the viability of the CCA. However, we found that impending increases in power cost, indifference adjustments, and resource adequacy were called in question by the examination of the CCAs. And since 2018, we continue to monitor the CCA activity and financial viability as profit margins dropped for most of the CCAs. Now, what are the benefits of a CCA? Potential benefits

is lower rates. That's a possibility. Maybe cleaner energy supply solutions or options, and reduced greenhouse gases. To a lesser degree, some of the benefits are it will fund local energy programs, maybe job creation or economic development. I just wanted to note that South in California, Edison's mix of power right now is 51% clean, 35% renewable. That's what Edison is providing us with right now.

Areas of concern is the shrinking profit margin due to two factors. resources, resource adequacy costs and power costs and difference adjustments. Also projected long term cost of wholesale power, which is a factor for both CCAs and Southern California Edison. Regulatory and legislative proceedings have been in flux and changing. That also is a concern. And one of our major concern here in Santana is the JPA partners business model and policy compatibility.

of the gpa on revenues of the gpa revenues must stay within the cca it's not a money making a initiative for the city the rates must match or will match and and should meet the se rates Repay of startup debt is and will be used from the profit or the reduced rates. Increased rate stabilization fund would have to be established to run the CCA. And the CCA will be funding local energy programs in future years.

In Southern California right now, there is about 22 CCAs serving about 10 million customers in again in california for examples clean power alliance desert community energy western community energy san diego energy and energy authority county of santa barbara north san diego authority and also the last one is the orange county power authority opca

Orange County Power Authority is an initiative started by the city of Irvine. It is a JPA through an agreement. It is a CPU filing for the JPA for the OPCA included Irvine, Huntington Beach, which voted on it last night, by the way, Lake Forest, Fullerton, and Buena Park. The timeline for the OCPA is to hopefully be in the power business in December, October of 2022.

Yeah, they hope to serve commercial industrial customers in March or April of 2022, in residential in October of 2022. Irvine conducted a few studies. EEC Consulting did a study in January 2020. MRW, which is the most recent peer review study that was done in June 2020. The initial studies included a margin of benefit for the CCA. EEC was 4% and MRW was 2%.

Customer rate advantage below the SCE was for EEC was 2%, and MRW is half a percent. OPCA, 10-year pro forma in OPCA application to the PUC, uses the EEC spread of 4% for generation rate and 2% for rate benefits below SCE. The 10-year OPCA pro forma predicts zero money available for local energy programs until 2027.

The agreement was filed with the CPUC in December 2022. Each five member cities has one member on the board, except for Irvine, which has two until 2027. When size of membership reaches nine members, executive committee will be formed, and the original five members will be named the founders of that GPA.

The agreement, again, has provisions for the withdrawal of the GPA, which requires approval of the board and payment of financial obligations. upon a vote of two members of the board. Important votes would be made on weighted average of electrical load rather than a numerical majority. Irvine, to upfront preliminary costs and provide credit guaranteed for the working capital, the CCA will have to pay Irvine back through 2027.

issues that requiring due diligence is we would like to see a 10-year performer financials power cost and difference adjustment that is a big factor for us in santana and where cost may be prohibitive to the to the residents rose resource act equity

The rate is also a concern. A future power supply cost for the CCA and SCE is also a concern because power supply is in flux right now. And the GPA membership policies issues are of a concern to us.

What are our options? We remain with the Southern California Edison and continue evaluating the options as power cost and difference adjustment, which are exit fees phase out and resource adequacy stabilized. Or we could join an existing CCA or develop our own single city CCA or develop a multi-city JPA with cities with similar energy goals and policies.

Next steps is to continue to monitor, evaluate active CCA programs, track and study the CCA financials and risk variables, identify key goals for Santa Ana energy programs, and consult with other cities for JPA opportunities, identify and evaluate energy programs of interest to the community. That concludes my presentation. I'm open to any of the questions you may have.

Great, thank you, Director Saba. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the city council. If we can pull that slide down.

There we go. Thank you. So let me bring it back to the council. Anybody have any questions or comments on the presentation?

Council member Pham.

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

Thank you. I guess the first thing is I noticed some attendees raised their hands. Are they supposed to make comments on this first or do I just go?

You know, they can probably, why don't you go ahead and go and they'll be able to make comments if they want during the public comment section.

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

Oh, okay. So I guess Nabil, Bill, the first thing I wanted to bring up is, you know, we are not sure about the rates or the savings, but I guess I keep hearing this $92 million revenue benefit by 2031, where is that coming from? Or where are we seeing this potential savings? Or I guess, no, sorry, not savings, but generating some type of profit or income for the city if we joined the CCA?

I believe that the assumption is that the Joint Power Authority would go out to the market of the energy market and land a cheaper contract with generators and the difference between Edison rates and what the GPA would be charging is amount to that much money in savings. However, even if they achieve that amount of money, that savings is not going to go anywhere and will have to stay within the GPA.

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

So what do you mean by it has to stay within the JPA? Does that mean residents are not saving money or it just means that the residents would be paying less and so that's where the savings are?

The residents would be in comparison to Edison that the assumption is the resident would be paying less and that's what the savings are. But those that funds will have to be used to run the GPA land more contracts for power and possibly use for energy incentive programs of such.

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

Got it. And then when you mentioned that, I guess some studies pretty a while ago, 13 years ago, 2007 mentioned that it would really benefit larger homes. Do you know what, I guess the kilowatt usage is, you know, for considering large or heavy usage?

Let me try to answer that. The study at the time took a look at the structure of how rates are distributed among usages. And as you may know that Edison has an increasing cost per block of rates. So the more you use, they even tell you how much you're going to pay for the next group when you when you get your bill and what what that consultant found um and by the way it was the same consultant uh direct energy was a a private company was trying to put together a jpa of which

they would be involved but the consultant that did that analysis was mrw which is the same consultant that did the peer review study for uh irvine and also did a study for huntington beach as well. But what that showed was that under the best of conditions that there would be no

margin in terms of going to community energy and under the worst of conditions, the rates could be considerably higher than the local entity, and then Southern California Edison. One of the concerns that you want to have is you want to try to target your rates so they're below at or below, usually below Edison's rates, because customers have a right to opt out. We talked a little bit about that opt out option. So if your rates rise above Edison's, they can just simply leave you and go back to Edison.

Consequently, OCPA, the Irvine JPA, is targeting in their 10-year projection that their rates would be 2% below Edison. now that's a target that they use but they have that money has to come from the difference between what edison pays for its power and what the uh the jpa pays for its power so uh in that rate that's only about four percent there's not a lot of money to play with it's very very tight and it looks like it's going to be tight for the next uh two or three years i hope that answers

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

your question. Yeah it does and the my electric bill I know has been a struggle because I'm working from home we're here 24 7 so it's way higher than I've ever personally experienced but you know COVID season is has been crazy so that's I was curious about that the other thing is regarding a lot of the savings that our low-income families and seniors receive from SCE so for example, I know my mom as a senior and whatnot, she gets some discounts or whatever. Is that

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

taken into account regarding the savings that our residents would get or would it end up being a

wash? The answer is yes. The JPA or the CCA will have to or will provide similar programs, incentive programs like Edison right now. However, in the situation with the Irvine CCA, those programs would not be available at the start of the CCA because there's debt to be paid first. So there will be a few years before the debt is met and taken care of. And after 2027, that's when those programs would start kicking in.

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

Got it. And then, sorry, I have a lot of questions, but the other question was, you know, we talk about kind of the startup costs and the city, I guess, if Santa Ana then would be paying to the JPA to make up for that debt? No. Okay.

The city government will not be paying for that debt. The debt would be paid by the savings through the JPA.

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

got it okay um and then the other thing is one of the talking points i've heard a lot about was you know the green energy uh clean energy what is the difference between clean energy and green energy

renewable because i thought they were the same thing um you know i i spoke with our city manager about that recently and uh i'm still confused about it but i'll try to explain it maybe christine can chime in. I know that Edison has 50% of their energy is clean energy and 35% is renewable. There is a distinguish between renewable energy and clean energy. Renewable considers biomass,

geothermal, wind, solar, and small hydro. Clean energy includes those plus large hydro and nuclear.

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

Got it.

So LSN has 51% clean. The 49% is fossil fuel based.

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

Got it. And so if, you know, one of the talking points I mentioned was that, you know, this is going to help us greenify and be a little bit more environmentally friendly. So what is, you know, how do we control that? Because if we're purchasing, this JPA is purchasing from let's say, but it's going through Southern California Edison, doesn't that all get mixed in the washing way and when it's distributed?

No, you know, Edison does the same thing as a CCA does, right, and will be doing. They shop for power and they are mandated to meet certain criteria like clean power, renewable power, and such. So Edison is doing the same thing a CCA would be doing. However, in a CCA, there will be options to select as an individual user the kind of power you like to purchase at a price. So let's say you want 100% green energy, but there's a price to that.

So you could select that option, but there is a rate that comes along with that, correct? So, you know, there is options, and I think the CCA will have to establish these rates as they go forward. Well, if I could answer that.

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

Yeah, I guess my question is more, you know, if I'm buying a bunch of clean energy stuff, but it's all going into the same basket and then I distributed blindly, or is there a way for them to know Santa Ana only wants clean renewable resources?

I let me try to answer that council member Fann so you're absolutely right a CCA or Southern California Edison they're obligated to find power purchase contracts to cover what their usage is in their city and they have to ensure that they have added that to the grid to meet their energy needs but once it's all mixed on the grid and coming down the transmission line yeah So you can't tell what's coming down the pipeline, it's hydro or if it's coal, but it's what you're purchasing is your share to cover your usage needs. So if your goal of a CCA is to be completely green, then you would only purchase and make up a portfolio

of energy purchases that meet that criteria or similar if you wanted to do a combination or a mix. There is a regulation requirement in the bill, if you can mention it by a certain year every energy energy purchaser has to meet um or ed maybe you have the answer yes i i think i i did talk to ed earlier and the requirement right now is for um edison or for power providers is to provide 50 green energy by 2025 which edison

has already met and 60% renewables and by 2030. Right now it's 35%. Right now it's 35% renewable. So there is about 25% to get to 60% by 2030. For the most part, the CCAs and Edison for that matter, offer basically for residential three different levels of clean energy. One is the standard lowest cost, which is right now Edison is 36%. They're a little bit over the 35.

Then they offer customers, individual customers, an option of for a little bit more money, you can get 50% renewable energy. And for even a little bit more money, you can get 100% renewable energy and your city manager is completely corrected all those electrons get mixed together and they don't identify where they came from but it does affect where where where you buy your power and how that power comes into the system so if half your customers are at the low end at 36 and the other half are at 100 100 renewable then the city as a whole will be

receiving renewable energy that's a difference of divided that by two so i think my concern lies in

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

you know southern california edison serves la county orange county i think in the empire maybe even san diego i'm not sure but if santa anna or the jpa says you know we want 100 renewable only right small hydropower and windmills so we're purchasing only the high-end renewable but then And if all of that gets put into the Southern California Edison bucket and LA County is like, you know, we don't care, let's go fossil fuels all the way. We're essentially subsidizing the purchase of renewable energies into this basket and what we're getting out that's delivered, you know, delivered to the residents is, you know,

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

whatever's purchased by all Southern California Edison, you know, required.

That's why the PUC has mandated certain levels of renewable energy by certain years. You cannot go below those, that 50% renewable or clean energy by 2025 is the minimum that anyone can go. So there is a limit.

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

So if Santa Ana or the JPA says we want 100% renewable and LA County says, you know what, we're gonna do the bare minimum. Does that mean that now we're subsidizing a greater amount, right, of the renewable purchases because we're going 100% and they're going 51%. I don't know if I'm making myself clear on this.

That's your choice. And there's a price for that. And you're not really subsidizing. There is a menu of energy sources that you can select from.

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

Are we able to guarantee that if a Santa Ana customer or a JPA customer says, I want 100% windmill renewable, you know, pay me top tier fancy electricity that they will get fancy electricity or are they going to get whatever electricity is mixed in the bag?

Well, once again, once it's mixed together but you would be supplying your entire usage for your CCA from whatever source you select. So they would be, you would be putting out on the grid the power choice that you negotiated. One thing that is important for them and maybe I can talk a little bit about this is one of the key things for any CCA is negotiating their power purchase contracts. And they're typically not short-term. They're usually a little bit longer. And in the past, your renewable and sustainable energy was more high priced. It is coming down in price, but you're making a long-term commitment

to those power purchases, which you need to factor into when you're doing a risk evaluation of the CCA. if customers do opt out and you're stuck with these, this requirements and maybe you can speak to the Irvine model. I know that they were generous. They fronted all of the costs and they're anticipating payback from any savings in the beginning. But should you choose to exit that JPA, you will have amounts owed from your city to do so. Can you touch on that, Ed?

Well, Irvine has up fronted the cost of doing the studies, which were primarily for Irvine's benefit, but they still wanted to get some money back for that, as well as some working capital and then for ongoing working capital costs. So there's three levels of money. They agreed to pay an additional $250,000 for the preliminary studies, which have to be paid back by the members.

In addition to that, there's $2.5 million, which they put into the bank account of the CCA as of the 1st of January of this year. And they are also willing to put up an additional $5 million to credit guarantee a line of credit from a bank. There's some question as to whether or not that will be enough to get a credit guarantee, because the CCAs don't have, except for one or two CCAs in California, they don't really have credit ratings.

They don't have the same assurances of revenue that the private utilities have. So the money has to be paid back. And in the JPA agreement, the members as a whole agree to repay to Irvine that sum of money, whatever they put forward in terms of their initial studies and then their working capital, up to what they think about 10 to 12 million dollars in total by the time it gets through. There is some question, and I know that MRW, which has done a study for Huntington Beach, and I was just reading this yesterday because Huntington Beach had their meeting last night

as to whether or not that will be enough. They think that there may be as much as 25 million dollars needed for working capital. And that's until you start to get a flow of money or revenue from your sales. There's a couple of months involved between selling the power and getting the revenue. So there's some question as to whether that'll be enough. But Irvine has, at least in the JPA agreement, has agreed to find a way of resolving that problem. But they'll still have to be repaid as we go along. And that's one of the reasons why there's, if you look at their 10-year pro forma, they don't have very much money in there for energy

They have zero for energy programs until the year 2027, which is the date they wanna be repaid by. And at that point, they will have some excess money for city energy programs as they move forward.

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

Thank you. I think that's all I have for now.

Thank you, council member. And I see council member Lopez's hand up.

Jessie LopezItem 5

Yeah, thank you. So, you know, the conversation with Council Member Han answered a couple of my questions, but I really wanted to start off by thanking all of the residents that sent us emails. You know, I think, you know, it sounds really great. I am supportive, of course, of, I really like that it's supposed to allow you to have local control and all the things that were detailed in the emails. And I just have a couple of questions for Director Saba. And so can you talk to us if there's any impact on solar panels?

Again, you know, any incentive programs that the solar panels is incentivized at that, if we continue to stay with Edison, that's not going to change. However, if we join a CCA, it depends on the priority of the CCA. Like Ed was mentioning, in the case of the Irvine one, they're looking at paying off the debt first before they start their energy incentive programs like the solar. So that may be delayed. If we stay with Edison, the solar program will stay the way it is right now.

But if we join the CCA, that may change.

Jessie LopezItem 5

Okay. And am I understanding that those benefits, it would be up, they wouldn't necessarily be still available until 2027?

Right. That's the Orange County Power Authority is they have their priorities to pay the city of Irvine for their investment in the GPA first. And once that is met, then the money or the funds will start funding other programs like the ones you're looking at. So let me try to explain that a little bit differently because it's confusing, I know.

The amount of money that Edison gets as part of its payment for delivering the power includes all of the existing programs that Edison have for energy efficiency and other activities. whatever program they have right now that they offer their customers customers would continue to get um even if they're in a cca however the plan has always been in the cca is to put money aside for particular solar programs or other programs that you may want in your own city so that energy

program sum of money that isn't there in the first six years would would have been used would like to be used for specific programs that the CCA comes up with that are above and beyond the

Jessie LopezItem 5

Edison programs. Okay thank you and so thank you for also clarifying that it's not you know 100% renewable unless that is a request that that a Santa Ana resident can make but that comes essentially with a higher price, which I didn't know. And also it's good to hear that Santa Ana residents have the option to opt out.

Jessie LopezItem 5

And let's see, what other questions did I have? So, Director Sapa, this is probably really premature, but just, I wanted to know if, we're talking about a 2% savings here. If my bail is $104 now,

what could it look like with a CCE? If your bill is $100 right now, I'm going to assume that half of it would be transmission and the other half would be generation. So $50 would be generation and 2% on the $50 is $1 savings. Okay. So it could be anything like from $100 to $103, right? That's correct.

Jessie LopezItem 5

Okay, thank you.

Jessie LopezItem 5

And did we clarify how much we would have to pay Irvine to join?

There is no cost to the city. That's why Irvine, the city of Irvine is funding the GPA or the startup cost. And that loan to the GPA will have to be paid by basically the customers that are being served by the GPA.

unless we wanted to opt out if we wanted to opt out we would have to pay all of those right oh i

see okay thank you that any uh power purchases that were made while we were a member and so if we entered into a 10-year contract we would still owe that money unless they were able to sell that energy to someone else right christy is is is mentioning that if the city ups out of the gpa as a whole, then there's a price for that. However, if a customer in Santa Ana opts out, then there is a small fee to that.

Jessie LopezItem 5

Okay, thank you. How was it?

Sure. Thank you, Council Member Mayor Pro Tem.

David PenalozaItem 5

Nevermind, Mr. Mayor, my question was answered. Thank you. Great.

Seeing no others, is there? Yeah, I think that was it. Unless council member Mendoza, did you have a question?

Yes, I do. Thank you, Mayor Sardegel.

Director Saba, there's a lot of information that we heard tonight and definitely our intent as representatives for our city, We want to bring clean energy, renewable energy. However, we do not want to increase the rates for our residents. And it is my understanding

payable to the city of Irvine.

However, I think I heard that there is a fee if you opt out, is that correct?

Yes, there is a fee to opt out of the JPA after you have joined. Yes. Your question has to do with individual customers rather than the city dropping out of the JPA. If you're saying if an individual customer wants to go back to Edison, for the first 60 days after service has started, there is no fee. But after that, usually it's about $5 a charge for opting out of the CCA and going back to Edison.

In your opinion, what is the best approach for the city of Santa Ana? Is it going through, staying with Edison or is it going with the city of Irvine?

My opinion right now is that we should wait a couple of years before we join SCCA. And that's because some of the long term contracts that Edison has engaged in will come to expire and we will evaluate at that point of time to see if joining an existing CCA or creating our own. and we have plenty of options, but I don't see us needing to rush into joining a CCA.

Thank you. I agree with that.

That's my questions. Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento.

Thank you, council member. Was that your hand raised, Mayor Pro Tem?

No, I was just kind of, yeah, fixing your time.

in any event I think that that's all the questions I had the only thing I was going to say for next steps I think Director Sal I think your point is well taken but you know I guess what I was hearing is you know there is a cost for you know clean or renewable energy right obviously but this appears in this situation it's a deferred cost because we wouldn't realize any of these savings whatever they are, whether it's half a percent, two percent, till post-2027. So that's a ways off, which is a problem.

The other one is that it seems like this system does really benefit larger homes is what I hear. And so I don't know our higher energy consumption homes. So that seemed to be contrary to maybe our community where we have smaller homes, maybe high rates, right, where we have multiple people, multi-generational households. So, you know, one of the things I was going to say, Director Saba, can any of this be used to maybe leverage or negotiate with SCE some better existing terms or some benefits for our residents? You know, are there any programs that we may not be taking advantage of,

or they may have available that we can say, look, to the extent that we, you know, you don't offer these or make these available, we may walk, right? And my thing is, you know, to the extent we can always step towards renewable and cleaner energy, yeah, that's a good thing, right? And we may not see that benefit around the corner, but if there's some real benefits, it makes sense. I mean, we're going through this whole environmental justice question. We have to realize at some point, a difficult decision has to be made whether we want to stay

with something that we know may not be clean, but is cleaner, is something to consider. So I was just going to say, you know, that's a rhetorical question that maybe we can ask. And also for those that represent CCA, look, what I think is fair is, you know, they've heard a lot of questions. There's now, you know, sort of a study that we conducted and some findings that we have. I think it's fair for them to go ahead and maybe send us something if they want to rebut those or maybe provide some explanation. Might not be a bad idea just to keep that open. And staff, Director Saba and City Manager,

if you see those and you see there's some compelling information there, please bring it back. I think it's still worthy of an ongoing discussion, but I think this isn't going away. We're going to have this discussion again where there are going to be options to our traditional energy source. and that energy source is, you know, it's kind of a dinosaur, right? It's eventually going to morph and transition into something different. So we want to make sure that we do something when it's necessary. So that being said, why don't we go ahead and move along? Seeing no other questions

or comments. So I'll go ahead and ask Madam City Attorney, do we have anything to report out from closed session, even though we recessed early? Anything you want to report out on the first item?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 5

No, I just want to say we had our several closed session items and it's my understanding we will reconvene in closed session at the conclusion of this regular session.

Thank you. And just for the public's information, we decided to not conclude all the closed session items because we wanted to come out as timely as we could for public session. So I want to thank my colleagues and thank the staff because we're trying to set a good tone of being respectful with the public's time. and we will reconvene a closed session once we're done with the public session. So let me go ahead and move on to the public comment section. So this is a time for public comments for members of the public to address the city council. You will be given three minutes to speak and I will turn it over to Madam City Clerk

to go ahead and call on people from the public to address us. Madam Clerk.

Thank you, Mayor. For those who are attending through Zoom or by phone, you would please dial star nine from your phone or virtually raise your hand from Zoom. Please do not call or Zoom only to listen to the meeting. And before muting the callers, I'd like to begin by reporting the following summary of emails provided as of today. Did receive 10 Santa Ana residents in support of the community choice aggregation item to residency not disclosed in one Sierra Club, all in support.

And then opposed to the removal of handball courts for Santa Ana residents on the Santa Anita Park Improvement Grant application. Item 22, the hero pay resolution. I have one from UFCW Local 324 in support. and several organizations in opposition, and they are California Retailers Association, California Grocers Association, Family Business Association, California Business Roundtable, CA Fuels and Convenience Alliance, Cal Asian Chamber of Commerce,

CA Black Chamber of Commerce, Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, Latin Business Association, LA Chamber of Commerce, OC Business Council, Valley Industry and Commerce Association, Greater Riverside Chamber of Commerce, LA County Business Federation, West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, National Diversity Coalition, Torrance Area Chamber of Commerce, Si Se Puede, Foundation of Fresno, Kern, Kings, and Two Layer Counties, North Orange County Chamber of Commerce, San Gabriel Valley Economic Partnership, with Latino Restaurant Association, Southwest,

CA Legislative Council, Latino Food Industry Association. And then on non-agenda comments, Santa Ana resident issues with towing company operating in the city, a former El Monte issue, Santa Ana resident street racing issues on Penn Way, and two Santa Ana residents addressing better options for COVID rental assistance. And with that, if again, any member of the public would like to provide a comment on agenda or non-agenda items, please dial star nine on your phone or raise hand from Zoom.

And the caller with the last three numbers, 268,

please dial star nine to speak. Thank you, you may proceed, you have three minutes.

Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we could hear you. Please don't hear me for the record and you may have, you have three minutes.

Hi, my name is Yoselinda and I'm a resident of Santana and I'm urging you all to take the necessary steps to make the rental assistance program more accessible. Making repercussions makes it easier for our community to try and complete the application, ensuring folks that receive the financial assistance to keep them housed. And this could also further limit the spread of COVID-19. I volunteer as a Tenants Rights Counselor with others from the community where we have encountered many issues with the application process when supporting ventures complete the application.

Some ways to make the application process more accessible includes first shortening the response time frame while letting people know whether they receive the funds. People shouldn't have to wait more than four weeks to know that they have received the funds or not. And second, implementing an appointment system for those that need in-person assistance. So for example, those that do not have internet or computer devices at home. Third, updating the requirements to write a letter to the landlord and instead giving the tenants the opportunity to send a letter to the city to avoid potential retaliation from landlords.

And fourth, creating a how-to video in Spanish, Vietnamese and English about how to complete the application step by step. And finally, since landlords can apply for rental assistance themselves, there needs to be an accountability process in not having them overcharge their tenants. And thank you for your time.

Thank you.

So caller, Zoom caller, Christina Sanchez, if you would please select the unmute feature on your device.

Thank you, good evening. Mayor Sarmiento, Mayor Pro Tempeña Loza and honorable members of the city council. My name is Christina Sanchez and I speak for the Latino Food Industry Association. As you consider a special item 22, I humbly ask that you please take into consideration a few points. As a leading national organization representing Latino owned grocery and food industry businesses, both large and small, LFIA is seriously concerned over the move to impose an additional $5 per hour increase in grocery worker pay because it only targets one industry engaged in public retail interactions.

and it imposes additional costs to smaller family and Latino owned grocery stores already spending exorbitant dollars to keep employees and customers safe. And it would significantly increase the cost of food and groceries for local families and communities, especially for those low income people of color and disadvantaged communities. With all due respect, it is unfair to single out an industry for such significant economic impact without a full understanding of the situation. We believe more time is needed to assess the consequences of extra pay increase motions before causing unintended consequences

for our member grocers, their employees, and the community that relies on them to feed their families. Most of our members impacted by the ordinance are already operating on razor thin margins and have already spent considerable resources to keep their employees and customers safe during this current pandemic. Our members recognize the sacrifice of their employees that work on the front lines, providing customers safe access to food and other products during this incredibly difficult time and have gone to extraordinary steps to protect them by spending millions of dollars to purchase personal protection equipment,

plexiglass barriers, changing the store filtration systems and other safeguards, enhanced safety protocols, extra pay and bonuses and additional health benefits for grocery workers. We all want to see our community do better, but if a local grocery workers gets $5 more per hour, why wouldn't the big guys like Walmart, Costco, Amazon, Sam's Club be included? The companies with e-commerce platforms were the winners. The brick and mortar companies, local family owned grocers, they bore the brunt of these costs. Higher costs would force our members to reduce the number of workers available hours and store locations.

Many of our members may find it too difficult to remain open, especially independent family owned grocers located in disadvantaged communities because most operate on razor thin margins already. We urge you to hold listening sessions with the business community and other stakeholders to allow an opportunity to discuss the impacts of the hazard pay and possible solutions we can support as partners in addressing the impacts of this pandemic. I thank you for your time.

Madam Clerk, are there any other public speakers?

Yes, thank you, Mayor.

Okay, Zoom caller, David Carvajal, if you would please dial or select the unmute feature on your device.

Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we could hear you.

Hi, good evening city council members, Mayor, my name is David Carvajal. I am a lifetime resident of board two and a volunteer tenants counselor here in Santana. I'm calling in tonight to ask that city council make the rental assistance funds through saves more accessible to the community. As a tenants counselor, I've supported tenants through the pandemic who have applied for these funds and myself, as well as other tenant counselors, one who has already spoken tonight. We've noticed a trend of issues that create barriers in accessing

these funds. Among these barriers are not having a computer device to apply, not having things like a scanner and a printer. And so a solution would be to establish an in-person appointment system where tenants can get one-to-one assistance in a socially distanced manner where they could have access to computers and other devices that could facilitate the process of the application process, as well as perhaps having tenant advocates who are knowledgeable in tenants' rights to help guide them through the application process. Another solution would be to increase the visibility of the already existing tenant support line.

Just last week while navigating the online resources, it was difficult to find the right number to call. For someone that knows how to navigate the internet, I can only imagine how hard it is to navigate this if you're not tech savvy. Another opportunity that we see is really increasing the city's outreach efforts. We saw several really amazing videos tonight that the city either created or collaborated in. We'd like to see that amount of effort being put into the outreach done for tenants. I think it's worth reminding us all that tenants make up over half of Centana residents. And so investing in culturally competent outreach

is critical. Another thing that we've seen is that through the previous rental assistance funds, landlords can apply for rental assistance for tenants. How is the city ensuring that landlords are then not coming back to tenants and still charging them twice? So there's a lot of room for improvement when it comes to the rental assistance funds. And so we're asking that we work through these different barriers so that Santa Ana residents have easier access to rental relief.

Thank you.

Madam city attorney, do you mind just maybe just speaking to that about maybe that speaker didn't hear, maybe other speakers didn't hear during your COVID-19 presentation, you said that we would have staff at the testing site that would be, you know, with a kiosk would be able to help and help provide information on the rental assistance. Can you repeat that?

Certainly mayor. Yes. I did mention that we would be going out into the community. We would also provide that type of assistance when we roll out the testing at the individual community centers, which are more in the heart of the individual communities. I am taking notes on all of the feedback. And what I will promise to do is after we're done with the council meeting, meet with our housing authority and talk to Judson. who's the director of that to ensure that we are we have a robust site we have trilingual language and that we're doing everything we can in outreach in addition to providing the rental

assistance kiosk at our testing sites. Excellent thank you for that go ahead madam clerk.

Thank you caller with the last three numbers 239 please dial star 9 to speak or select the microphone on mute option on your device.

Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Thank you.

Hi, good evening. My name is Meshlee Lopez and I'm a resident of Ward 5. I'm calling in today also to speak on the lack of accessibility we've experienced and helping residents navigate the rental assistance application. And I'd like to echo what David and Yusabinda have already mentioned. And then also highlight that the response time so far, we've seen that there's been some tenants. It's taken more than four weeks for them to find out whether or not they were approved. I know that recently there was some extra funding that came down

So to San Ana specifically for rental assistance. So hopefully those funds help increase capacity and that trickles down to a faster response time. And since that is an issue at the same time, we'd like to recommend that there be a separate addition to the requirement where tenants are being asked to provide a letter to their landlords, letting them know that they're not going to pay rent. A lot of tenants are afraid to do this because unfortunately many landlords in Santa Ana

are very retaliatory and kind of abusive to their tenants. So when tenants try to open an open line of communication, then it ends up backfiring on them. So many of them are afraid to do this. And we have seen instances where tenants have complied with this requirement and then the landlord has used that to kind of intimidate them for being unable to pay the rent. So in response to that, we'd like to recommend that the city allow for there to be a second option that is made public because we have worked with you all to allow for this requirement for a couple of specific isolated tenant cases.

But we think that it would be beneficial to open this up for everybody where tenants can have the option of writing a letter to the city instead where they're saying that they're unable to pay rent. And this will make even more sense seeing that sometimes the response time has taken more than four weeks because sometimes within that four week period, they haven't heard back from the city. So then the tenant just ends up finding out a different way to pay for the rent.

We'd also like to push for more videos, like the ones that we saw today, not just talking about the program of its existence, but maybe a how-to video that walks residents through step-by-step. 15 seconds. That's all I have to offer. Thank you.

Thank you.

Caller with the last three numbers, 377.

Please dial star six to unmute your call or select the microphone, unmute feature on your device.

Caller with the last three, thank you.

Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Can you guys hear me? Okay, okay. My name is Courtney, I live in Ward 5. I've lived in Santa Ana all my life. I was initially going to appeal to your empathy by sharing an immense responsibility and guilt that I felt when my little sister tested positive for COVID-19 on Saturday morning, assuming that it was me who brought it home since I start work at 9 a.m. and go from client home to client home and interacting with families and their kids for in-home services until I get home at 8 p.m. But on Monday when I got my test results back, they came back negative.

So I decided to instead of trying to appeal to y'all and get you guys to empathize with me, I'm gonna talk about a little bit about how y'all been campaigning for like y'all campaigned for a whole year during this pandemic. So this pandemic already existed. And now that you guys got the job, holding you accountable to the struggles of your constituents is important.

And many of us, including myself, who has showed up for you, maybe not donated money or like a cool van with your face on it, but we did give you time by volunteering and advocating for you and for those that have the privilege, they're both. So for many of those people, you aren't doing enough to protect the lives, not only of the people that live here and work here, but also of the people that come to work here in our city.

And while programs like the SAVE program do provide real help for people, means testing it means that there's a lack of accessibility as the callers before me have stated. having people prove their hardship as if COVID-19, again, didn't exist in 2019. In 2019, people have been struggling for over a year. And so responding to these things as if the struggle hasn't been elongated due to a lack of leadership is a joke. Mayor Terramiento, you referred to some of your newly elected officials, including yourself, as genuine homegrown products of the city.

and that y'all are going to meet the moment and keep us and everyone around us safe. Are you guys really needing the moment? Are you guys really providing the help that SANA residents need? Like, how is it that you guys value profit over human lives? The fact that the rollout for the vaccine has been disastrous, not only on a federal level, but on a local level, and you guys are not addressing that and still forcing people to go out to work? Like, how did you guys come to these organizations, our local organizations, and tell us to vote for you and advocate for you when you guys are not showing up for us.

Like the minimal like stay at home orders that were put in place were not even followed by downtown Santa Ana. Like the calls that you guys got for the phone line that you guys created so that people could call in, there was calls from outside of our city. And then Heroes Pay, we saw that Ralph and Food for Less decided to close some stores in Long Beach and then claiming that it was because of Heroes Pay. Our essential workers deserve more pay. And for so many people to be calling against it, it goes to show people that would want to get higher pay are in the stores right now working. Thank you, bye.

Zoom ID Tish Leon, if you would please dial or select the unmute microphone featuring your device.

Yes, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you, thank you.

Okay, thank you. I actually like to speak on two things. One on the item number 24, the strategic plan for senior citizens and advisory council. I belong to a couple of major senior organizations where I've been a member for at least three, four years. has been a senior a lot longer than that, but been on these two organizations. But one of the things that I have learned on these sitting on these organizations is that the city, our city, Santa Ana is not prepared for what is being called the silver tsunami.

And in 30 years, maybe a little bit longer, there's going to be a majority of seniors living in Santa Ana and this city is not prepared for that. Having a strategic plan would be crucial to get this started now. So when the time comes, we'll be prepared. And to have an advisory council, and I know that the two senior centers that we have do have advisory councils already, but all they do is just plan events for their particular centers. The advisory council that I would love to see

in the city are ones that would advise the council. And these people would be appointed by you and maybe even by their peers. But it'd be, like I said, it's really important that you really start looking ahead. Santa Ana is the younger population is growing older every day. Before it was in the 20s, now it's more like in the 30s. And so before you know it, it's gonna be in the 50s and the 60s. And so I really, really urge for you to really seriously consider this. Irvine has an amazing strategic plan and advisory council.

And I know that they would be more than happy to help guide this, you know, guide any of you or listen to, you know, they're up to helping. So I really wanted to urge on that. And one other thing that I wanted to speak on is the fact of Section 8 and the Housing Department. And I know I sent you all an email earlier regarding how a senior needed to have internet to do a virtual inspection. And this woman was so intimidated by the staff member.

And I really do appreciate for the city council members. Okay, just really quick, please. I just wanna make sure that the seniors are checked into and not forced to do things online and to close this technology divide. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Zoom ID Victor Mendez, if you can please select the microphone feature on your device.

Yes, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you. You may proceed.

Oh, great. Yeah, I'm gonna try to ramble through a few items here that came up in this conversation. My main comment today is around the proposal to reduce the city deficit via the pension fund bonds.

Basically, I've studied this through. I do have expert credentials as area and have sought other experts in this particular field, particularly public pension benefits. And what it comes down to is that this is really too much of a risk at this time for the city to absorb. And it really, while, while it's well intended, it really needs to be deferred at the very least and become more information becomes available. You know, basically some of the assumptions in the report are a little bit off. For example, they talk about a 20 year horizon at around a 5% rate. And if we hold that, we'd be okay.

But if it goes above that, the city could pay more. Well, the reality is over the last 20 years, we had to endure the mortgage crisis and a huge drop in stock. So if the city's wanting another mortgage crisis where residents lose their home, that's what you're betting on. The other thing is that over a 30 year period, the CalPERS has gotten an 8% return. So I don't know how that plays into this, but over a 30 year period, they're at eight, which is much higher than five. The other thing to remember here is they have a probability of about 80% of capturing the savings. Well, that 87% needs to be applied

about the expected forecast, which I think was like 3.8 million. So if you take 87% of 3.8, you're really down to about 3 million. So these margins now are just down significantly more than what's being represented. And that net needs to be flushed out. The other thing to remember here is that the cost, upfront cost, and we were talking about upfront cost with respect to this power GPA, there's no specification for the up cost for bond issuance. The advisor, the bond council, other writers, this is not specified at this point. And therefore that's why you need that information before you begin the decision on this.

You know, again, we have to remember what you're doing here. You're betting against people's 401ks and hoping that they'll be at five or below when most of the time they'll probably be at eight. So you're hoping to save money that working people's 401ks are gonna perform more than expected so the city can relieve this debt. Now, the other problem is the use of the city's $13 million cash fund. Right now, I think that fund is being tapped out. You already have about $30 million commitment by the water meter system was approved under the prior council. I just think there's capacity there to borrow

without going into debt for future projects. Bear in mind that $40 million belongs to the people developed by their fees. They talk about public participation and certainly I would recommend a vote versus going to court. And they also talk about public meeting. What? I'm sorry, you have 15 seconds left. All right, and they also talk about a public meeting that they don't think can handle. The other thing is we don't know about the amount to be financed and that as we speak now, the actuaries are uncertain as the effect of COVID-19 on the overall outstanding funding or the outstanding liability that may have been incurred

as it is due to mortality, layoffs and furloughs. Thank you.

Thank you.

Caller with the last three numbers, 870. Please dial star six to speak or select the microphone icon on your device.

Hi, can you hear me? Yes, hi, we can hear you. If you could please announce your name. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Linda Kramer. I'm a resident of Costa Mesa. I was actually born in Santa Ana. I am a clean energy advocate, but also real strong on financials and I like to support business solutions. and I just wanted to mention a couple of things. I've been very interested in CCA. I've attended multiple state conferences. CCA is a proven model. It's 10 years old, 10 million customers, over a hundred cities and counties, and all of them have made more money than the current utility.

It has a 94 to 97% retention rate of customers because they're happy customers. But I wanted to talk, I'm gonna focus on financials here because I didn't hear a lot of that mentioned. The feasibility study for Irvine estimates after all costs, all expenses, that they will get about $3.4 million a year back to the city. That money is now going to the investors of the utilities. So with that money, we have five JPAs in California

that had increased credit ratings this year during COVID. One of them, Peninsula Clean Energy, that's been in operation for four years, has in June reported an expected $186 million net position at the end of 2020. They have 20 cities. They're a little bigger than we are, but for the last few years,

What the CCAs are doing with this money, it's energy related, but they gave over 6,000 businesses, a $250 bill credit during COVID, 34,000 customers, $100 bill credit, that's Peninsula Clean Energy. East Bay Community Choice was in October on its third round of community grants for workforce development for people that lost their jobs.

Here's an example of how Peninsula Clean Energy uses their money. They, most CCAs double the electric car infrastructure. They have more energy efficient. All the MCE programs that are available now are also available to customers, but CCAs add more. They have a $300,000 over the next three years electric bike loan program for low income residents. That was authorized July 23rd of 2020. It's at a board meeting. There is total transparency of all the CCAs.

And I'm sorry, and you can go to cal-cca.com and go under impacts and go to any CCA website and see their financials. It's all on the website. So I don't know if I'm out of time. Just let me know if I am. But there are many other programs. Okay, okay, thank you very much. Please look into the CCAs yourself. It is worth looking into. Thank you.

Zoom ID, Kaylee, Lovett, if you would please

select the microphone.

option to unmute your call.

Okay, Kaylee LeVette, Zoom ID. I am not able to unmute you. It looks like you have an older version of Zoom. And if you could please try by calling in, going to santa-anna.org forward slash city-meetings and you may call in. I am not able to unmute your call. Thank you.

Zoom ID, HOI. Hello, you've successfully unmuted your call. You would please.

Yes. Right. Hi, good evening council. My name is Hwayan. Yep, I am with the Sierra Club and I have a comment on agenda number, item number five, community youth energy. So first I really want to thank the city for the extra heavy lifting you have been doing since COVID started. Thank you so much. This is really difficult. Also mayor, I want to thank you for a point about environmental justice during the discussion on CCE. And I also want to thank council for your desire to be greener. Well, of course, you know, I want to urge you

to start the CCE program ASAP. So one reason is that we get a lot of blackouts. The CCE would allow the city to invest in micro grids to have local power. So when the Santa Ana wind is blowing somewhere outside Santa Ana, and then they have to shut the power off, Santa Ana, why not go dark if we have microgreets local power? Well, so-called Edison also invest in microgreets too. But the thing is that they put the microgreets where they want it to. So this is when local control is particularly important for a city like Santa Ana.

So that's my two cents. Thank you so much. Bye.

Zoom ID Manny Escamilla, if you would please.

Okay. Hello. Can you hear me there? Yes. Thank you. Perfect. Well, hello. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Just a couple of comments today. The first one on item 12. I know this is a fairly routine item which will get approved with no problem. But I do ask that moving forward, there might be a consideration to have some sort of archival review. So like someone from the Sydney and history room to look to see what records are being destroyed by the city to see if any of them have enduring historical values.

So there are some cities that essentially kind of put an archivist be there at the end of the records retention cycle in order to review the items to see if there's anything that might be worth keeping for the long haul. In this particular case, there's some film permits, and a lot of folks here are local film buffs, and it's really cool to have information as to what was film where when. So that might be useful if there's a summary sheet in there or anything like that, but again that's going to be at the discretion of our local archivist, which we do have someone

in the Sanana History Room that's supposed to be responsible for our long-term records collection. On item 16 with Santa Anita Park, I'm really glad to see the upgrades being done there. I do think that there is still though the possibility to either retain the handball court or to actually supplement it with an additional basketball court. If the orientation is done east west rather than north south, so there is things like about 120 by 120 square feet of space to work with. It might involve removing some of the palm trees, but if anyone knows me I'm not necessarily a fan of palm trees when you can have shade trees instead.

or when you have a basketball court. So I think that might be making the area more useful. In the long term, I think though that the Santa Anita Park is really more of an issue about permeability. It's really hard to get into the park. There's only one entryway with a gate and then another one that's kind of a sketchy entryway. So figuring out ways to either provide more access to the mobile home park via a gate that way that gets closed at night or something, whatever works for the folks over at the mobile home park. And then long-term with any development on Harbor, you know, in order to include some access

from that side of the, from that direction as well. Supportive of item 21, I think it's, you know, something we'll need to take a good close look at. The municipal bond market is not necessarily something that we're all experts in. So I wanna make sure that we take a good hard look, but it is remarkable the amount of money that you can save potentially. So supportive of that. And then just a quick update on some statistics. So this is, we are actually now the sixth most dense city out of the hundred largest. So we went down from four to six. We're number nine if you count the 300th largest cities, but we are still number five if we

only count cities with a population over 300,000. So just a little update there. And I just hope you have a good night and thanks for that.

Zoom ID Carl Benninger, if you would please thank you. You may proceed with your comment.

Thank you and good evening to the mayor and city councils. I was one of the fortunate ones that by word of mouth I found out about the Albertson vaccinations on Saturday and my wife and I were able to get our first shot and I scheduled our second shots. And while I was there, I share the concern that I hear here tonight, and that's the fact that we're all in this together and we need to get everybody immune, get to the 65%. And unfortunately, when I looked around Saturday, I saw a very large Asian crowd and I seen a lot of old Polish guys like me.

But what I was missing was our Hispanic brothers and Afro-American brothers. If there's anything we can do to encourage them to sign up and get their vaccinations, this may require us to have somebody available by phone that can go on web for them and sign them up that way. Maybe we can get more of the older populations. If you also at the testing sites have someone there from the city who can sign them up, that would be great. But also what dawned on me was Saturdays was a special event. I don't know how far the city knew in advance that Albertson was gonna do that. And I don't know of any other that have been planned

right now, but somebody has to get approval, has to plan these things, they just don't happen. So if there's a way that the city can get that information out before finding out word of mouth, that would be greatly appreciated. And maybe at the senior centers is where we can let them know, have your people call here or there to get these vaccinations set up. Because as I said earlier, we are all in this together and we don't get to herd immunity unless everybody gets there. So with that, let me just also say I dispute what the lady said earlier.

Santa Ana has done more than spare share helping out during this pandemic. In fact, I'm very proud of the city of all they have offered and how they went backwards, bent backwards to help the citizens of Santa Ana. And you guys should be proud of that. Thank you, good night.

Thank you.

Caller with the last three numbers, 423, if you would please dial star six to unmute your call. Hello? Hi, thank you. if you would please state your name for the record and proceed with your comment.

My name is Carolyn Torres, and I'm requesting that item 16 regarding the company at the park be pulled from the consent calendar. So there can be a public discussion, a public council discussion on the matter. I believe the resolution should not be approved unless the handball courts are added to the project plan. The staff report shows that the city considers the removal of handball courts to be an improvement. And I don't actually believe that many of you on the council feel that way. I know a lot of you have grown up either playing or watching folks play handball. I think most folks in Santana would agree to handball

the cultural and historical part of Santana, just as we honor historical buildings. These handball courts could be honored 50, 60 years from now, but only if they still exist. It's kind of frustrating to see that the lesson from Chefa Park is being ignored. Those courts are taken down, and a lot of folks are caught by surprise and now folks want them back and that's currently an issue that I know you all are dealing with right now. So why would the city now propose to remove another set of handball courts? Handball courts do not take up a lot of space, specifically the ones in San Juanita Park that only have one side.

So it seems like it would be pretty easy to add that back to the plan without having to take away from anything else that you're adding to the park. We can't let our handball courts disappear. We can't buy into this anti-homelessness or anti-tough on crime rhetoric as a reason to get rid of the courts. The courts are not what's enabling some of the issues in the city. Those are structural and economic issues, and they're not going to be alleviated by tearing down handball courts. I hope you all do the right thing, because in this case, it's really easy to do.

I hope after the pandemic, the city will support handball leagues and tournaments. and that the city and the school district can work together to increase recreation for our youth and their families. I envision a lot of really cool stuff that can happen with handball. I think I've talked to some of you about this. There's a lot of opportunity here. That opportunity is not gonna start by removing our handball courts during the pandemic. So once again, please add the handball courts to the Santa Ana Park Improvement Plan before approving it. Thank you.

Nathaniel Greensides, Zoom ID. If you would please select the microphone icon on your device.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you. Thank you.

Thank you. So my name is Nathaniel Greensides. I'm a Santa Ana resident of Ward five. And first, I just wanna start with, I'm glad to now have a council rep representative who not only represents me, but also those of current residents who live in our ward. Secondly, it's that I'd like to start with some others who have made public comment thus far, have made excellent points regarding the current inaccessibility of the rental assistance programs and applications. And so I wanna add my support to all of that, which they've already stated, and we'll refer you to the soon to be published YouTube

video for this meeting. And so I call the council towards this, be different than past council members and start by making the current rental assistance programs to tenants, not only more accessible, but also more apparent. I want to remind everyone here that in Santana, not every resident who lives in Santana has stable internet access, especially during this pandemic. And that's apart from the issue to begin with, of not even having a smart device to connect to the internet to begin with. People have resorted here in Santana to living in commercial units

which are not protected under current COVID protections either at the city, local, or state, or even federal levels. And so everything that you can do within your power to extend all eviction moratoriums to all units where people in Santana are currently residing given that the affordability of residential units has been out of control since long before this pandemic ever began and is now only being exponentially exasperated. One thing I want to offer here additionally is that as a tenant a volunteer tenants rights counselor is that tenants should not have to wait four weeks

to know if they will get assistance especially in Santana where far too many of the calls we've received have been because landlords are abusive and harassing of tenants who live here especially if you're undocumented. And to that point, I wanna ask that the city council do all that is within their power to increase support for existing tenants rights lines, you know, invest in the professional videos that y'all had created for this CARES Act. I think that was pretty cool. And I think we can extend that to other sorts of city programs as well. I remember seeing the RFP for that. And so in creating such videos or info

made available to the public about city programs and assistance programs, make sure that it's not only being advertised, but also that the city is putting not just their mouth out in the world, but also their money where their mouth is. So please make sure you're providing financial support and backing, such as, you know, increased grant agreements to organizations, such as public law center, which specifically don't care about legal status, a very important factor for a lot of folks who live here in Santana. If you're not having some sort of legal status here in the U.S., certain organizations will not see you.

15 seconds left.

And so once again, just wanna reiterate that you should serve the people as we're all elected to do and ensure that residents who have been here in Santa Ana and wish to stay here can remain and prosper. Thank you.

Thank you.

Zoom ID Virginia Bernal, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device. or unmute. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we could hear you. Thank you. You may proceed with your comment.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Sarmiento and council members. I am Virginia Bernal, a long time resident of Santa Ana District 5. Thank you for the report on community choice aggregation and consideration to joining VOC power authority. Upon hearing it, I am moved to make these following comments and questions. It seems to me that payments to Irvine to cover for their study and initial investment in the program would be equivalent to costs of studies and initial investments our city would incur anyway, should we consider starting our own GPA.

Does the report show actual numbers that were not shared during the presentation? Because the generalizations made insinuated that the program will be to our disadvantage. Is a report public so we might study it? It seems to me short-sighted to wait more years for observation and study. Edison gets profits for their investors. Our city should be the ones earning that profit, even if it may be delayed a few years for repayments to Irvine. No mention was made of the experience of the many JPAs that have years of experience around California. as a previous caller mentioned,

it would be worthwhile to study how much they have benefited from the program. Has the staff looked into that? And lastly, in weighing the pros and cons, monetary costs were given priority. There are great costs that climate change is imposing on us and low income families are the most impacted. We have to have the long view and we have to take part aggressively in the transition to clean energy. Thank you very much for your attention.

Thank you so much.

Caller with the last three numbers, 465, if you would please dial star six to unmute your call or select the microphone unmute option on your device.

Thank you. Caller with the last, thank you. You have successfully unmuted your call. If you can please announce your name for the record and proceed with your comment.

Caller with the last three numbers, 465, you have successfully unmuted your call. If you would please announce your name for the record and proceed with your comment.

Yes, members of the city council, Mayor Sarmiento, thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Jose Perez. I'm a union representative for United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local 324. I represent many of our union members in the city of Santana. I want to thank you all for your interest in the Hero Pay Ordinance. Since the beginning of this pandemic, many of the employees working in the grocery and drug stores I represent have unfortunately contracted this life-threatening virus and sadly we have lost some of them. What it is very frustrating to see is that in addition to workers dealing with some of

the lingering side effects after their experience they must also deal with the financial burden because they end up losing income for the time that they must be quarantined for. It is so sad to hear that after their terrible experience with the virus they must worry about how they will pay their rent, utilities, or buy food for their families. These workers work for these employers who have seen their profits go up by double digits since the beginning of this pandemic. You would think that these employers would take care of their employees since they put their

health and their families' health at risk every single day they show up to work. Unfortunately, greed is what drives these employers, and they choose not to do the right thing. To date, we have had 111 members who have been confirmed positive for COVID-19 in the Santana stores. That is roughly about 20% of the workers we represent. I would also like to mention that it is imperative that the retail drug stores are included in this ordinance as they will be directly involved distributing the vaccine to combat this pandemic. We know that Walmart, CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid will be charging

in the government for each vaccine they administer. There are some estimates that CVS and Walgreens could make up to $1.5 billion for administering it. So on behalf of all essential workers in the grocery and retail drugstores in Santana, especially our members, I ask that you please support this ordinance. Keep in mind that this ordinance is only for four months and taking in consideration the millions of dollars in profits these employers have made since the beginning of this pandemic, it is only fair to have them share a small portion of this profits with the workers who have been risking their lives daily for them.

Again, please support this ordinance and please also include the retail drive stores. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Zoom ID Francisco, if you would please select the microphone icon or unmute feature on your device.

Hello everybody. My name is Isaac Manzo and I'm calling in regards about the Santa Anita handball courts. I just encourage that the city council be a considerate of its constituents and and serving everybody around that area. Unfortunately, the handball courts at Jeffress Park were taken down because enough research wasn't conducted to gather input from the community. And I asked that the city council be transparent with the community and ask them what they want done. They did elect for you, so they should be given a chance to elect or vote for what they want in their community. Thank you.

Thank you.

Caller with the last three numbers, 266. If you would please dial star six. Thank you. Please announce your name for the record and proceed with your comment. Can you hear me? Yes, he can hear you.

Yes, my name's Matthew Bell. I'm secretary treasurer of UFCW Local 324. Jose Perez just spoke recently and he covered a lot of the issues that pertain to agenda number item 22 and why we're in favor of it. I just want to hit on a few more points. Clearly, these essential workers in the drug retail and the grocery stores have been on the front lines of this pandemic since March 19th, since the shutdown last year. They did get some hero pay at the beginning of the pandemic, where the companies decided that they would give, some of the companies gave $2 per hour.

But in June, they decided to retract that. And even as the holiday season hit and the numbers spiked incredibly in the stores, we've even lost members. A member recently just passed away at the Vons on Bristol due to COVID. So as these numbers spike, the companies have refused to put hazard pay back, despite the fact that they've raked in millions of dollars. Kroger, the parent company of Food for Less, has seen a profit increase of 90% or $960 million since the onset of COVID. So these companies can clearly afford it. The other thing about

this ordinance too is this is not meant to target small bodegas or mom and pop family run shops. Those folks clearly do what they can to make ends meet. The purpose of this ordinance is to target the grocery workers that are putting their lives on the line for these large companies that are making millions and millions, almost billions of dollars. While other industries, such as the restaurant industries, are hurting, the grocery stores and the retail drug stores are booming. They definitely can afford to do this. In fact, other cities have recently passed this,

Long Beach. In fact, Los Angeles today passed the same very resolution to move forward with hazard pay for the city of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berkeley, Seattle, other cities are looking to do this because they definitely understand that this is needed and that these grocery workers and retail drug workers have put their lives on the line and, and deserve this pay. So I'd ask you to support this measure for these grocery workers and retail drug workers. Thank you.

Thank you.

Caller with the last three numbers, 034. If you would please select star six to unmute your call. Thank you. You may proceed with your comment. Hi, this is Kaylee. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Thank you so much for calling back.

Great. I just wanted to call about the rental assistance fund. Thank you very much for all the great steps towards increasing accessibility that the city is taking, like placing kiosks at the testing centers and during the dispersal of vaccines, as well as looking towards providing trilingual support. Those are huge benefits. I just wanted to speak towards my experience being a part of Tenants United Santana and the types of tenants that we've been helping.

Usually when people apply towards the funds, it's for upcoming rent where they don't want to tell the landlord that they won't be able to pay because then it flags them for retaliation from the landlord. So I just wanna echo the earlier concerns around asking that tenants write letters to the landlord saying that they won't be able to pay, especially because we've been seeing that tenants haven't been receiving funds by the time the next rent is due. So tenants maybe find a way through borrowing money or some other way to pay rent that next month.

And so they've been experiencing weeks of harassment just by trying to open that line of communication with their landlord. Also in the past with CARES funding, there were certain restrictions that involved having the landlord participate in the application process. So we just wanna, at any point that the city can limit the landlord having to participate, it makes the funds more accessible. I also wanna echo the concerns around tenants navigating the software. If they cannot use a computer or a scanner or something to get through the software,

that's a big barrier for a lot of people. So we would like the city to allow tenants to make in-person appointments where they can use copying and scanning devices, as well as perhaps have someone help walk them through the software. I understand that the kiosk will help with that, but if they could also actually make appointments to come in, we think that would really assist tenants. And then lastly, for tenants who've made it through all of these hurdles and actually were able to apply, they've been waiting for months to actually receive those funds. So whatever the city can do to make the dispersal of funds more efficient

would greatly help with this pandemic because people are just in the dark and also not receiving funds or knowing that they will. So efficient dispersal of the funds would greatly help. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

Zoom ID, Carla Juarez. Please select the microphone unmute feature on your device.

Hi, good evening. My name is Carla Juarez, long time resident of Santa Ana. So I wanted to call in regards to the housing. I wanted to echo what all the callers have pretty much said their stance against displacement. I would like the city of Santa Ana to also make a firm stance against displacement. I've been helping out a couple of people trying to find a room for rent. especially older people who are having an issue. Just today, somebody that I called to see if the room was available to rent, they said that they wouldn't rent to an older person

because the liability is for them to die. And they don't wanna take that risk or that responsibility of that person dying on them in their house. So that was very disheartening. and it's happening a lot. Also the affordable housing that you guys were very proud of is not affordable to people. It seems that we need to have a section eight for everybody in order to be able to rent at an affordable housing apartment because by themselves, they won't be able to rent out. The rents start at 1,600

and that's usually for one bedroom. And they're not able to afford 1,600 on a minimum wage unless they have section eight. So I'm not sure if that is the plan that every single person that wants to rent an apartment and affordable housing has to have section eight because that's not gonna be feasible. Affordable housing has to be affordable for the residents of Santa Ana. Also the same people that I'm trying to help, they don't have a laptop. So I'm echoing the need for laptop, unless they have a child that goes to school, which then they have to share that laptop with their kid.

So for this older lady, she doesn't have any kids and she doesn't have a laptop. And I've been trying to search the city. I haven't been able to find a program that is renting out laptops other than like from school or from like college, which she clearly is not going to college anymore. And I also wanna echo the need of respecting the residents and their decision. So if they wanna handball in the park where they live at, then I think the city has to respect that.

and the city has to respect what the residents want. I can slide. Because anything else that goes against the residents, it's not okay. It's just not okay. Then this city is not run by the residents for those that have the power and obviously have the money to put them there. Thank you for my time.

Thank you. Mayor, that was the last caller.

Great, thank you, Madam Clerk, and thank you to all the speakers. So just one takeaway, I'm sure that we heard loud and clear. We're blessed to have the rental assistance and we're happy to use it and we need to, but let's do as much as we can to be effective and efficient with the delivery of that. So there's plenty of good people that called that belong to nonprofits. Maybe they can help us come up with some good ideas and some good procedures. I'm sure that we'd be more than available to field a lot of those opinions. So moving along, now we're at the consent calendar items,

items six through 20. Are there any items council members would either like to pull or abstain from? Now would be the time.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 6

Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes, council member.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 6

I'd like to pull the item for the Santa Anita handball court.

Item 16.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 6

Item 16, that is correct.

Okay, thank you. Anybody else? Council member Pham?

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

Sorry, may I pull item nine please? Thank you.

Great, Mayor Potem. Yeah, Mr. Mayor, I'd like to pull item 20, please. Thank you, council member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 6

I want to pull item 21. Thank you.

Any others? I don't see any hands be any other virtual hands raised. So that being said, I'll entertain a motion for the balance of the consent calendar. I'll make a motion to approve. This is Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa.

I second that, that's Council Member Mendoza.

Great, thank you. We have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, will you please call roll?

Council Member Becerra? Yes. Council Member Hernandez?

Yes.

Council Member Lopez? Yes. Council Member Mendoza? Yes. Council Member Fan? Yes. Mayor Potem-Panielosa?

Yes.

Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes, and I realize somebody pulled item 21, and I think that's a business calendar item, so we're going to take it up anyway. So no worries. Thank you for pointing that out. We're going to get to it. Let's start with item number nine. I forget whose that was. Was that yours, Councilmember Phan?

Thai Viet PhanItem 9

Yes. So I am so excited to finally nominate some incredible residents to various commissions in the city. I know many of our commissions went dark, but they are coming back per our city manager. Thank you so much, City Manager Ridge. So the reason why I'm pulling this is really specific to my youth commissioner nomination. Of course, I hope that all my colleagues will support these nominations, but the youth commission requires that a nominee be enrolled between seventh and 12th grade for the time that they

Thai Viet PhanItem 9

serve on the commission. However, Ms. Isabel Ortega is an incredible young woman in our city, and she is actually going to be starting college in the fall at the tender age of 16. And so I really believe that we should not penalize someone who is so incredible, who's such a go-getter from serving with the city because obviously she would not be eligible to serve on the other commissions being a minor. And so what I would like to ask is to move to approve my nominations for the other four nominations, Dang Lee, Valerie Huyen, Balfam, Carlos Perea,

Thai Viet PhanItem 9

and also waive the seven through 12 enrollment requirement for Isabel Ortega to the youth commission.

Great, is that a motion?

Thai Viet PhanItem 9

Yes, that was a motion.

I'll second. Got it. I think we're good. I think that's a great motion. Madam city attorney, we're good with that, right?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 9

Yes, we advised on this process and to seek a waiver in these very unique circumstances. It's a pretty good reason to make the waiver.

Great waiver, great selections. We have a motion and a second. Madam clerk, please call roll.

Council member Becerra?

Yes.

Council member Hernandez?

Yes.

Council member Lopez?

Yes.

Council member Mendoza? Yes. Council member Fan? Yes. Mayor Potempo-Nalosa?

Yes.

Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes, thank you. Moving along to item number 16, I believe that's a council member Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

Yes, thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I want to thank the residents that took time out of their day today to talk about this very important topic. I am not in agreement with excluding the handball courts. I grew up at El Salvador Park, and I am a testament of what these handball courts produce. I and many of my friends grew up playing handball, and they kept me away from making bad decisions. It kept me and my family together, and it was very cost-effective.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

I mean, we had handball courts at our school, at Spurgeon Intermediate, and this is very much a staple in Chicano and Chicana culture and community. and the Santa Anita community, it would be a shame to see them go through what the Logan community is going through. I think that if there's anything that we should do is that if there's dialogue to be had surrounding the consensus of the residents, I think that that is much better fit for us to do is for us to gather that consensus to see what it is that we feel about the handball court situation. I have a strong sense that residents

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

are going to be in favor of keeping these handball courts. And I do agree with one of the callers that mentioned preserving these handball courts. You know, many of us that grew up in communities like that, our family members, our uncles, our aunts, spent a lot of time at these handball courts. And I know for certain, my father and my uncles did. And it would be a pretty difficult process for someone to try to take away my handball courts at El Salvador Park. I can only imagine in the fight I'd put up. So I'm going to stand by the residents in Santa Anita and ask for more dialogue to be had for us to take the

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

efforts to actually reach out to residents to see what it is that they, what they would actually like. It would be a travesty for us to take away these handball courts without consulting with the residents that live there.

Great, thank you for those comments. Council member Becerra.

Phil BacerraItem 16

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and thank you council member Hernandez for pulling this item. And I just, as we go through the park master plan and we start to look at how we're going to improve our parks. I believe Lisa Rudloff, our executive directors on the line, I would just ask her. So could you elaborate a little bit as we're, you know, cause we're now about to begin this park master plan, which I'm so excited and appreciative of, because this is what we need. I think something like this would address these concerns that we're hearing from our residents in the community. But if you wouldn't mind just sharing with us

Phil BacerraItem 16

what you envision as part of that process. So whether it's Sampanita, whether it's Thornton Park, what kind of process should residents expect from us as to how they can help us shape the park's future?

Yes, thank you for that question, Council Member Becerra. The parks master plan, we have just embarked on that. And that's really a comprehensive evaluation of all of our parks and facilities, our park system. And so what that does is it goes to each park, it rates each amenity, it involves the community. It asks if they want handball courts, if they want skate parks, if you want pickleball courts and such, and so that process is taking place.

The community will be engaged probably probably within the next month. We're just, like I say, we're just starting the process. The, can I add one more thing about this project? This project, we have a grant for synthetic turf to be installed and it's a very small park. It's very hard to get in and out. and so we needed to expand the parking. We went to the Neighborhood Association. We got, I think there was a meeting in November. I believe Council Member Hernandez and Council Member Fan was a part of that. I believe there was only seven to 10 people there.

Felipe, the president of the Santa Anita, Mr. Guerrero, excuse me, is the president of the Santa Anita Neighborhood Association. Two weeks prior, we tried to get people to participate in the meeting. It's a Zoom meeting, it's the pandemic, we understand. But my administrative services manager was trying to move forward with what the community wanted. And this handball court, it's not handball courts, it's one handball court is not utilized at this part. And I don't have anything against handball courts. If it was a basketball court night being utilized, I would get rid of it. And so the basketball is going to be expanded

because that's very popular there. So that's where we got to with this. So going back to your question about the parks master plan, everyone will be engaged for all the parks, all the amenities throughout our park system.

Phil BacerraItem 16

I hope I answered. No, no, you did. Thank you very much, Lisa. I just, as much as I appreciate folks calling in and letting the council know their wishes, my hope is that I don't feel the need to rush to call in because they haven't been given the opportunity to provide their input on what their parks should look like. So it sounds like from what you've described, this park master plan will be an upcoming opportunity for folks to really engage us as to how they wanna see their parks designed going forward. So thank you for that Lisa. And thank you, Mr. Mayor, that's all I had.

Thank you, council member Fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

Hi, thank you. So I was at the Santa Anita Neighborhood Association meeting when Ron Ohno, one of our great staff members brought this item forward and there wasn't, it wasn't something where this is what we're gonna do. You're gonna have to go with it. He definitely asked for input, what people thought, what was going on and things like that. And some of the major issues that I heard, Lisa, please correct me if I'm wrong, is one parking, right? There's a lot of folks who do use the community centers, but have a hard time going because there's not enough parking. Two was that, you know,

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

obviously the homelessness crisis and drug use is not borne out because of handball courts, but handball courts, the one handball court there is facilitating that activity and is not being utilized by the residents for handball. And then three, like you said, they wanted more, the bigger tot lot, something for families to congregate. Am I summarizing that correctly?

That is correct.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

Okay, so my question regarding the basketball court, cause I'm looking on Google maps, trying to look at the plan that was on the agenda. And I think it was mentioned that the current basketball court is a half court and not a full court. It looks like a full court to me, but I'm not a basketball player. So.

That is correct. It is a half, it is not a full court. and the proposal is to put in a full court running North and South, because if we put it East and West, the ball will go into the neighbor's home area. Got it. Along with lights, we're putting lights on there, on the court also.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

Got it. So, okay. I guess I didn't think about balls going into the yards, but that also makes sense. And I guess, I don't know if you know, but what is a typical number of folks who play handball at any given during a handball game. My experience was like two to four at a time.

Right there's there's singles and there's doubles um so there could be two two to four.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

Yeah two to four um okay because I mean one of the things that I heard was that basketball would facilitate more people utilizing the space at a given time um and that was one of the issues with also expanding the basketball court and adding lights. I think one of the, I have lit dropped in there, I've been down there and at night it's quite dark. We did our turkey giveaway, gosh was it two years ago? Or I think the the county of Orange did a turkey giveaway and it's quite dark because there's not enough lighting so families aren't utilizing the space. Now how big are we extending

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

the tot lot and like kind of I know we're adding some I think benches or something like that? or just based on how we hang out?

Yes, the tot lot, I may need to have Ron Ono chime in. I know the tot lot needs to be redesigned a little bit. So I would like to ask Ron Ono, our administrative services manager, to talk about the tot lot, please.

Can you hear me? Yes. Yeah. On the tot lot, what we're doing is we're expanding it just maybe another third to accommodate the larger equipment that will have to be relocated because of the basketball court. And the other item is the basketball court, the existing one is actually a smaller basketball court. It's not a half court, it's a smaller court. So in this redesign, we're trying to make it a high school court to accommodate the high school court and make it more usable and provide better LED lighting for the basketball court.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

Got it. So if the community center neighborhood association decided to have some type of youth program, I guess high schoolers would be able to play more consistently with what they would get on school campuses?

That's correct.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

Understood. And then the other question I had was, we do have a number of palm trees that are decorative. Is that just a style choice? Is that up for discussion? Is that just what we'd like?

Let me answer that. The reason for the palm tree to give it a stately entrance from the parking lot into the soccer field. And also to provide a linear landscape. Because if we do put in a large shade tree, which I'm also for a large shade tree. But if you do put in a large shade tree, it's going to impact the basketball court and would require more space for the basketball court. and it'll minimize the space for the hot lot. As you know, with basketball, the balls are thrown back and forth and the overhanging branches will impact the game.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

Got it. And palm trees seem not to have too many of the uprooting problems from my experience. And then I guess, so along the walls, going north and south, obviously there are a lot of trees there. It's a screen tree. So I imagine that's to protect the privacy of the neighboring single family homes.

That's correct.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

Understood. And the other question I had was regarding the soccer fields. I know we got the grant for the turf. Does it expire or is there a time period by which we have to use it?

Yes, it has a short time period. We've got us, I don't have the date in front of me, but it was It's like a couple of years that we had to get that project done. That project, by the way, is completely already designed. It's going through a plan check. It's ready to release for bids. We wanted to include the parking lot expansion with that project so that we would have a better bid if it's a larger project to bid. But if the council desires to hold up phase two, we can hold it up. we just need to go out to bid a second time for phase two.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

Okay, understood. So from clarification, which is the grant would apply to the turf, which is phase one, but then phase two is the hardscape. I would just call it that. And the reason why we're talking about redesigning that right now is so that we do it together and actually maximize savings based on whoever will go out and bid for it.

You're absolutely correct.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

Okay. And what would you say is, I guess the timing it would take to, you know, wait for, you know, if we decided to separate them out and go for a second bid, what's the delay there?

Right now the project, the sacrificial project will take about a year to complete, but the timing really is based on the funding of phase two. Phase two, part of the funding is CDBG money, and we really cannot start phase two until the summer. That's when the CDBG money is going to be submitted to the council for approval. And also the environmental documents would be completed by summer and we'll be ready to go out to bid. Now we do have cannabis money that we can start the design work early, but not actually go out to bid on it.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

I guess my question is more, you know, we have to use the phase one money within a certain window. And then if we delay the phase two and do separate bids, you know, what's the timeline for all of this to actually get completed? And I guess how much would it cost us if we had a delay?

Right now we're estimating phase two to cost a little over a million dollars. And as I indicated earlier, what's actually delaying that project is the CDBG money that needs to get approved before summer. Other than that if you look at the plan that's attached to your staff report, it identifies exactly what phase two is by the red line. And everything within that red line

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

is what's going to be improved. Yes, okay. And so we please talk a little bit more about you know community outreach because you know obviously we had a number of folks call in and again my experience with the neighborhood association or the folks who were able to attend was that it was very exciting because they've been looking for updates to the city for a while but can you speak more to that or is there any anything else what was the approach to community outreach here

Actually, what started the whole design for phase two is two reasons. Is we knew that phase one is going to require some type of a staging area for the contractor. Because if you look at the plan, most of the area for the soccer field is going to be developed. So there's minimal staging area. We felt that the contract would probably use where the proposed basketball court is as as a possible staging area or the exit by Gunther as a proposed staging area. We don't know yet until the contractor gets on board, but if he does use an area where the proposed basketball court is, he's gotta improve that anyway.

So that's why we felt that if we included phase two, we may have a better bid on both projects. And then the community input was really needed because of the expanded parking lot that's needed to accommodate phase one. If we don't expand the parking lot, the improvements of the soccer field is really going to impact parking along Gunther because the existing parking lot is only around 18 spaces, maybe 18 to 20 spaces. A soccer game, at least the players are 11 players on each side.

So we've got 22 players on the field plus the coach and spectators. So it's really going to impact parking along Gunther. It's going to impact parking along Figueroa, which right now is posted no parking. So there's no real parking area for, to make the best use of the soccer field project. The ideal thing is we've discussed several times is to purchase property and enlarge and open Santa Anita Park to first street or to Harbor Boulevard.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

Got it. So part of the, um, okay. So when you say the staging area, that's where they keep all of their like construction equipment basically. So essentially when they're updating the turf area, they would be, well, I guess the park would just be closed because their construction equipment would just take up that space.

You're right. He'll, he'll probably either use the existing parking lot or, or the grass area where the proposed basketball court is located.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

Okay, got it. You know, this was really helpful to just kind of understand why we're doing this, why this timeline and what's going on. I guess, again, like I said, from what I've personally heard, folks were really excited about this, particularly for the bigger basketball court for people to use, but I will leave my comments later. Thank you.

Great, thanks Council Member Fan. I think it was Council Member Lopez who had her hand raised.

Jessie LopezItem 16

Yeah, thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. Hi, Director Rudloff. Thank you and your team for your work. I'm happy to hear that there is a concrete plan in place to engage with the city residents and with the parks master plan. It's something that I'm personally really excited about. And I know that Sanana residents are too. It's something that we've been talking about for a really long time. And I am happy to see the parking expansion here. I think that it's a really good use of the space. And as so many folks have said, it's something that is needed.

Jessie LopezItem 16

But one of the things that I'm hearing is that there was community outreach and that there was about seven to 10 people. And I just don't know how representative that is of an entire neighborhood. And so what we're hearing today is that people aren't necessarily ready to depart with the one court that is there. And I understand that there are timelines in place. But is there anything that can be done prior to phase two to engage with the Santa Anita neighborhood and let them know that this is going on? that way we're not seeing this like post reaction

Jessie LopezItem 16

to what is being shared on the agenda today. Because I feel like we're being very reactionary now, as opposed to like giving people the information. And so I think thinking long-term, how can we avoid that?

Mayor, if I may attempt to answer that. So first I wanna clarify that the item that's on the agenda before you tonight is merely adopting a resolution that allows us to apply for the state grant to receive 177,000. That's what you're considering tonight on this item. With regards to the plan for the park, it had been revealed before when they were starting with phase one. Certainly if you want modifications of minor scope modifications and us to attempt to reach out to the community again, we certainly can do that. What I would prefer not to happen, and I hope I recommend that you will adopt the resolution

so at least we can get the application in so that we can receive the $177,000 from the state of California.

Jessie LopezItem 16

Okay, thank you for that clarification, city manager. So we can adopt the resolution and still, you know, have there be a pathway for people to like give their feedback is what I'm understanding. Okay, thank you.

Yeah, thank you for that comment, Council Member Lopez. I think that makes a lot of sense. You know, with all these new boundary lines and everything, I'm not sure whose ward this is. Is it Council, okay, Council Member Fan. So look, maybe if this works, Madam City Manager, maybe somebody wants to make a motion that, you know, we adopt the resolution subject to going out and speaking with residents around the park, because I think they're really critical. But also, I think handball courts have now become kind of a sensitive item, right?

Whether it's at, you know, Chepas Park, whether it's, you know, here at Santa Anita or anywhere else. So we need to be aware of that, that people have strong feelings about them for a lot of reasons, historic reasons, cultural reasons. and I just think we, you know, it needs to be on our radar that we need a little bit more robust discussion when it comes to that. So maybe if it ever comes back, and it's funny because I love basketball, but I know my, you know, I used to play handball as well. I would go to play at San Anna High because they have a lot of handball courts there, but they started locking the schools.

And so that's a conversation we need to have, right? We need to open up some schools so they it can be additional park spaces, open spaces, so we can use that and we can have more of an abundance of options for us. So that's a whole other discussion, but I think we can get there. I think as school board member Torres said, there's a lot of good things I think that we can work on together. And those are things that we can really increase the open space that we have. And we're not, because I see that to Ron's point, we're doing a lot with a very little space. So I know he's, you know, ideally, yeah, we push it out to, you know,

first street, but yeah, those are, you know, that's, that's, that's difficult to do right now. So I'm not sure if everybody's okay doing that, which is having another effort, maybe a council member fan, maybe you can lead that to kind of bring in those people, bring in those voices and those residents of people who feel strongly about, you know, the, the courts and, and then, and then canvassing one more time. But I think this way, we're able to get the resolution adopted. We're able to get the application and, and we still, it's subject to change in the event that there's, you know, strong opposition or, you know, I've

seen courts where they're creative. You get these sport courts, you can do full, full court basketball and you know, a handball, maybe it's not a three wall, but maybe it's a one wall. So anyways, Yeah, I'm not sure. Is there any other comments?

David PenalozaItem 16

Mayor Pro Tem, is that your hand up? Yes, Mr. Mayor, thank you. I just pretty much wanted to kind of echo what you said, Mr. Mayor, it's important that we, you know, let the community know that a lot of times these decisions and recommendations by city staff, they didn't just fall out of thin air or weren't driven by one certain council member or city staff, you know, it's years of meeting with the people that live directly next to these parks. I think that's an important just suggestion to the councilwoman representing this ward, that as we move forward with this resolution

David PenalozaItem 16

and outreaching and input with that community, we make sure that we're careful to listen to the people that directly live up against the park. I know to the north of it is all industrial and commercial. To the east of it, it's all commercial. So you have a single family homes to the right and then a mobile park residences to the south with very limited parking at this park, making it a community neighborhood park like Chepas Park. And Chepas Park, we might've met half a dozen times about this very issue with numerous residents

David PenalozaItem 16

in the Logan neighborhood and how we got to that decision there. So I like that suggestion, Mayor Sarmiento, that we move forward with that in mind, that the people that live around the park need to be brought into the conversation so that things like this, we're sensitive to these changes.

David PenalozaItem 16

I'm also very aware that there's a lot of, I grew up in my teenage years playing handball and MacArthur intermediate. They still have the handball courts, but like you said, they're closed to the public. And in a very park poor city, it's important that we start having these communications with the school district to see how we can make these amenities available to their city residents you know, during when schools are closed, if we really want to make his amenities accessible. So with that said, Mr. Mayor, I will make a motion to approve the item.

Great, and it's with that subject to language, right? Mayor Pro Tem? Yes. Got it. Is there a second?

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

I'll second.

Great. We have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, will you please call roll?

Council member Becerra? Yes. Council member Hernandez?

Yes.

Council member Lopez? Yes. Council member Mendoza?

Yes. Council member Fan? Yes.

Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa?

Yes.

Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes. Okay. Moving along to item number 20. That was, I believe was that yours mayor pro tem?

Jessie LopezItem 20

Mayor Pro Tem, you're on mute.

David PenalozaItem 20

Sorry about that. I was just saying that I have 57,000 windows open. Let me find the one with my item 20 notes. So item 20 is, this is actually very exciting. And I pulled it because this predates me, my time on the council. I know that the residents in the Pacific Electric neighborhood, East side neighborhood, have had numerous safety concerns with Standard Avenue, going all the way south from Warner, all the way north to Chestnut. I would say even further than that to First Street.

David PenalozaItem 20

Standard Avenue has been a safety concern to the residents that live along Standard Avenue. This is years in community input and meeting with those neighborhoods, cars. I know that even my predecessor, Councilwoman Martinez, is that if you build a road the size of a freeway, people are gonna drive it like it's a freeway. And we see constant accidents on the street and on standard, no crosswalks for people to get across. So there's a lot of safety concerns.

David PenalozaItem 20

I'm happy that this is finally in the design stage

David PenalozaItem 20

that we're moving forward in that direction. And we're gonna be seeing bike lanes and the street reduction and trimming the street down so that there's, you know, people aren't driving as fast on standard. I just would like to ask Mr. Madam City Manager, I'm not sure if the Director of Public Works would like to answer, but I know that we have previously discussed of how difficult the parking situation is in this neighborhood and along the East Side neighborhood and how Standard Avenue is used for parking for a lot of those apartment complexes

David PenalozaItem 20

that are on the, it would be east side of Standard. I wanna be mindful that when we're installing these bike lanes and we're not reducing parking spots along Standard Avenue, I know that's a huge issue and concern in that neighborhood. I work in that area. So I see it daily and can you speak a little bit to that Mr. Saba?

Sure, we are in the design stages. We're retaining a design firm right now for the bike lane along standard from Warner to first street. And we are very mindful of the parking along a standard, the entire stretch of it and during design we are targeting minimizing the loss of parking due to the bike lanes and that's that's my our objectives and our plan is to go to 30 design and then meet with the community and get their feedback and then meet again at the 60

and make sure that we are engaged with the community on the design aspect of the bike lanes and all the improvements along standard and before we reach 90%. So that's the plan. And we will be looking at reducing the loss of parking spaces along standard. That's our objective.

David PenalozaItem 20

That's great to hear. And that was one of the main concerns that I had I know we're gonna be reducing the lanes as well, which in on a street like Standard, like I said, that the traffic there is very light and it is people drive extremely fast on Standard. There's a school at Chestnut, our community center and forget what the street just south of that is where the Kobe mural is for those listening just to get a general idea of where this is at. And one more thing in regards to the contract where the recommended action in the staff report,

David PenalozaItem 20

it says that it would be for a total amount not to exceed $820,000 for a three-year term beginning February 2nd, 2021 and expiring February 1st, 2024. That is three years away.

David PenalozaItem 20

Mr. Saba, you know how impatient I am coming from the private sector with seeing how just glacial space things moving. And I keep just thinking of Bristol Street and how I was a baby when that project started. And I know it's completely different because we had to acquire properties. But does that mean that this design process alone is going to take approximately three years before we even start moving towards construction phase?

The answer is no. We just cushion the contract for three years just in case we need construction support and design support during construction. However, we don't anticipate the design effort to take that long. At best, it would be probably nine months to a year. Yeah, a year and a half. And that's also to accommodate any changes that the community might want at 30 and 60. So just because we are going back and forth with the community, we need that cushion. This way, it will allow us a little time to go back and forth and still be within the time frame with the agreement itself with the consultant.

So it will not take that long, but the process, the design process doesn't take too long, but sometimes going back and forth and making changes does. So this is just a cushion for us to be able to deliver the project within that time frame, maybe a lot shorter, by the way. So I'm looking forward for that project too, just like you. Good.

David PenalozaItem 20

One final comment as we move towards the design process. I want to also be mindful of, I know that this is what this consultant's job is doing is the designing of it. But I keep, you know, we set the bar high with the protected bike lanes by Santa Ana College, how there's green landscaping as part of these protected bike lanes. And then we see the protected bike lanes on Edinger Avenue in the central part of the city, how they're just cement, ugly lanes, protected bike lanes with no landscaping, no nothing.

David PenalozaItem 20

And I see the difference in quality of work that we focus in areas surrounding the college in the north, and then I know that the Eastside neighborhood is a historic neighborhood and there isn't much landscaping there, much green space. Not that this is green space, but in a way where we could make sure that we start with including nice landscaping along these as part of these protected bike lanes in that neighborhood, that would be all I ask. And those are my final comments, Mr. Saba,

David PenalozaItem 20

if you wanna respond to that, you're more than welcome to, but that is it, Mr. Mayor. Great, thank you.

Yeah, seeing Mr. Saba, I think he's satisfied with that.

We will do every effort to include landscaping, like similar to what we have on Bristol Street. Again, landscaping in the medians is a function of the width of the street and what we have to work with in terms of street width, sidewalk and such. There's a curb extensions and there's a landscaping. But we are doing bulb outs and some of those are curb extensions and those will include landscaping to make it a more aesthetically pleasing project. So we will consider that in the 30% design, like I mentioned, and we'll take it from there,

get the community back and go from there.

David PenalozaItem 20

Thank you for that. Standard is very wide, so I'm sure you'll have no issue doing that. So thank you, sir.

David PenalozaItem 20

Council member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 20

Yeah, quickly, Director Saba, I just want to reiterate what Mayor Pro Tem, Mr. Pinelo said, just said, we really love seeing these projects so thank you and public works for continuing your work on this um and i just i have two suggestions that you address the parking situation in the east side neighborhood with north of mcladden because as um mayor pertumb just said and as you know it's a it's a neighborhood that's highly impacted with parking so thank you for taking that into consideration um and and moving forward i know that this has been something that's been in the I worked for a long time, but if there's any possible way

Jessie LopezItem 20

that you can work with like local bike advocacy groups in the city, like Tanana Active Street, that would be really cool too. And we would appreciate that. That's it, thank you.

Okay, great. Seeing no other comments, does anybody want to move this item? I'll make a motion to approve Mr. Mayor.

I can second.

Great, we have a motion and a second. Madam city clerk, will you please call roll?

Council member Becerra?

Yes.

Council member Hernandez?

Yes.

Council member Lopez? Yes. Council member Mendoza? Yes. Council member Fan? Yes. Mayor Potem Pinalosa?

Yes.

Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes, thank you. We're now at our first business calendar item number 21. Is that you, Madam City Manager?

certainly I'd like to introduce the item honorable mayor mayor pro tem and council members this is a presentation that's going to be given by our finance director Catherine Downs and she also is supplemented by our consultant that would be available to assist with questions at the end of her presentation some time ago one of the directives of the council was to ensure our fiscal sustainability and look at ways where we could greater balance our revenues and our expenditures And one of the ideas that was talked about at that time was potentially refinancing our existing pension debt.

And so with that, our finance director has done a lot of legwork on researching it, and she has a very comprehensive presentation to show you what she's found and to look for your direction on next step. So with that, I will turn it over to Catherine Downs.

Great. Thank you very much. Can everybody see the PowerPoint presentation?

Okay, good. Good evening, Mayor and City Council. In April, City Council directed staff to prepare a feasibility analysis for pension debt refinancing. The city retained a financial advisor to help us work through the analysis. Mike Bush of Urban Futures is on the line tonight to to help answer your questions. Tonight's agenda includes the analysis and recommendations for moving forward. There will be an opportunity for questions at the end of the presentation.

Tonight is the first step in the city council's decision-making process. If city council direct staff to proceed, staff recommends adoption of the proposed policy, establishing guidelines, lines and staff will return with a proposed contract for specialized legal counsel. Tonight's decisions will not obligate the city to issue refinancing bonds.

So why should the city consider a refinancing? The required contributions to CalPERS have been growing faster than the city's revenue. The city can cut its interest cost in half and create a more predictable level debt payment schedule. There is a risk to address. When CalPERS outperforms its assumptions, the pension debt decreases. If the city council refinances the debt with bonds and CalPERS outperforms over the long term, the debt will not decrease. CalPERS assumes it will earn 7% on its investments.

CalPERS's average investment return over the last 20 years has been 5.8%, and CalPERS own actuaries have freely stated that they expect the long-term rate of return to be closer to 6%, not the 7% built into the valuations. Even though the risk is very low, it can be mitigated by refinancing less than 100% of the debt. This is an overview of our process with UFI. We have worked through many models and much analysis to develop our recommendations. Tonight we are in the purple band, which includes publication of our results and this presentation.

Our next step will include nailing down specific amounts for City Council decision making.

The proposed policy document ensures the City Council is making an informed decision and establishes guidelines for a comprehensive approach that considers the budget, various strategies, contingencies, and cash reserves.

Next up is an overview of the existing pension debt.

There are two plans, one for sworn safety employees and one for all other employees. Combined, the city's existing pension debt is 707 million. In fiscal year 1819, the city's pension debt grew through 3.8% or 26 million, even though CalPERS earned 6.7% on its investments and the city made a payment of more than 37 million.

The purpose of this slide is to illustrate that the pension debt includes layers for each year of actual results, including CalPERS investment portfolio earnings and retiree activity. CalPERS spreads the impact of each new layer over 20 years. Older layers were originally amortized over 30 years. In this chart, positive numbers are increases to the pension debt, and negative numbers are reductions of the pension debt.

This is a visual summary of the pension debt. The miscellaneous plan liability is $948 million, dollars but the plan only has 645 million dollars or 69 percent of that liability in cash which means there is a net debt of 302 million the safety plan has a total liability of 1.2 billion dollars and 787 million or 66 percent of that liability in cash leaving a net debt of 404 million. This is another visual summary of the same pension debt information. The colored bars

represent the total liability and the solid color represents the money in the plan to cover that liability. This is the CalPERS estimate of the city's debt payments over the next 25 years if if all CalPERS assumptions are met. Now this was based on information at June 30th, 2019. We already know that CalPERS did not meet its investment assumption for the following year. CalPERS only earned 4.7% during fiscal year 1920 instead of its 7% assumption. Based on historical performance, there is a very real probability

that CalPERS will require larger payments than what is reflected here. You can see that payments continue to grow over the next seven years to $73 million. This does not include the city's normal cost for ongoing new employee service credit.

Now that we've seen what the existing debt looks like, let's talk about the tools city council has to manage that debt.

Staff has already allocated the pension debt to funds that have personnel costs and the city has already established an irrevocable trust to set aside additional money. After an initial deposit of $500,000, the budget has not allowed for any more deposits to that trust account. The city council could choose to use reserves or one time money to make additional payments. but the budget has not allowed for that either. Tax-exempt exchange is an option to issue debt at a cheaper rate than pension refinancing bonds, say 2% versus the 3% to 4% for pension refinancing,

but that option is limited to the amount of cash on hand and commitments to future projects. And then finally, the toolbox has the ability to issue taxable bonds to refinance the debt at a rate less than CalPERS 7%.

First, I would like to discuss the strategy behind additional payments.

When making an additional payment, we can choose which layers of the debt to pay. If the city makes an additional payment of say $1 million and targets one of those layers that that you saw in the earlier slide with a short amortization period, say 10 years, the city could save theoretically 413,000 of interest costs. However, if we target a layer with a long amortization period, say 30 years, the city could save 1.7 million of interest costs. This is why the proposed policy document

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

includes a provision to target layers

with longer amortization periods when making additional payments.

This is a specific example. The water fund pension debt for current and former water employees is $13.5 million. If the water fund pays off its debt and applies the payment to a base with a shorter amortization period, $11.3 million of interest is saved. However, if the payment is applied to a layer with a longer amortization period, the savings increases to $17.5 million. This is a visual representation of that theoretical $13.5 million payment to layer number 16.

Instead of paying $31 million over time, the water fund will have only paid $13.5 million up front.

Next, I would like to show what other cities are doing.

These are the recent pension debt refinancings that have been completed. In addition to the highlighted agencies in Orange County, the list includes Riverside and Pasadena.

These are the pension debt refinancings that are currently in progress. We can see the cities of Orange and Huntington Beach are moving forward with their refinancings.

Earlier in the presentation, I indicated the city can mitigate risk by refinancing less than 100% of the pension debt. We have a model for refinancing 50% of the debt, primarily targeting safety layers, and a model for refinancing 90% of the debt, leaving only a couple of miscellaneous layers outstanding.

Let's look at the first scenario. The red dotted line represents CalPERS current estimate of the city's future payments. The solid bars represent payments if the city refinances 50% or $358 million of its debt. there would be 183 million of payment savings with a net present value of 144 million or 41% of the refinanced debt. If the city refinances 90% of its pension debt, the payment savings grows

to $254 million with a net present value of 217 million or 34% of the refinance debt. In the previous scenario with a 50% refinancing, we would target the layers with the longest amortization to maximize savings. In this 90% scenario, we would also be refinancing layers with short amortization periods and the overall savings as a percentage of the refinance debt decreases from 41% to 34%. Now these are only sample models and we would return to the city council with more fine

tuned numbers based upon updated market conditions before you are asked to approve refinancing documents.

This table is simply a summary of the model numbers presented on the previous two slides. In both scenarios, you can see the true interest costs or TIC is slightly more than 3% versus This is the 7% currently charged by CalPERS.

This is a summary of estimated total payments. If the city does not move forward with the refinancing, CalPERS estimates the city will make payments over the next 25 years, totally nearly $1.3 billion. Of course, this number will grow with CalPERS next estimate as the most recent numbers from CalPERS do not factor in the 4.7% investment return for fiscal year 1920. Our model indicates the city may save $183 million with a 50% refinancing and nearly 254 million with a 90% refinancing.

Let's talk more about the risk associated with pension debt refinancing. This is a summary of CalPERS investment returns over the last 28 years. The red line represents the CalPERS investment assumption of 7%. Sometimes they do better than assumed and sometimes they do worse. A refinancing will help avoid increases to the city's pension debt when CalPERS investments earn less than the assumption.

At this point in the presentation, I'd like to turn it over to our consultant, Mike Bush from UFI. he's going to talk a little bit more about the Monte Carlo simulation, which is a tool to predict the probability of success with a refinancing. So Mike, can I have you jump in at this point? Sure. Thank you, Catherine. I appreciate it. The Monte Carlo simulation is a statistical method for analyzing random phenomena, such as market returns. A computer will randomly select annual returns based upon a given statistical parameters, in this case, the 7% return that CalPERS assumes, some assumption for volatility,

and a correlation to past experience. This process is then repeated thousands of times to allow one to see the range of possible outcomes. While not a perfect tool, we believe this is the best way to evaluate issues such as appropriate asset allocations. Traditionally, practitioners have what is known as straight line estimates of returns to calculate pension liability payments. Unfortunately, this method has three flaws. It ignores the importance of return sequences, specifically low average returns in the early years, combined with portfolio withdrawals, it can have a devastating impact on the plan.

Second, annualized returns may be less than estimated. In the third issue, straight line estimates by definition assume no volatility, but in reality, and based on the slide that Catherine just showed, returns vary from year to year. Monte Carlo simulations assumes that returns are volatile. This causes the annualized return or the portfolio growth rate to be lower than the expected annual return. Monte Carlo simulation helps eliminate the above problems that was discussed.

Instead of using a single point estimate to calculate plan value, it uses a range of postal returns and therefore it produces a range of values instead of a singular value. In preparing the Monte Carlo simulation for this specific refinancing or the options presented by Catherine, we came up with a success probability of 87 and 84% respectively. What this means is if the city were to issue bonds of 50% of its current UAL or 50% of its current UAL, that the portfolio 87 and 84% of the time would have more money in the plan than if it just made its UAL payments.

A big driver to this is the CalPERS assumption that every year CalPERS will earn 7%. In fact, as Catherine pointed out, the last 10 years, they have not earned 10% or 7%. So we come up with this to make an estimate on what will happen in the future. The understanding is very simple. When you issue debt for pension obligation bonds, you're issuing the debt at a very low rate and you're fully funding the plan. If that rate in this case is 3% and you're earning on average that 5.8%, you're still going to have more money in the plan at the end of the pension bond period in this case 25 years

than if you were to make just UAL payments and to add a little color to this conversation a few slides back Karen or Catherine referenced a pension obligation bond for the city of Monterey Park today that bond priced and the TIC for that bond it was a double-a bond was 2.6 percent over the last four or five months, we've seen the market accept pension obligation bonds for those cities with high credits. And each time we go forward, the spreads are tighter, producing better results and providing the clients that have issued those bonds, some cushion should CalPERS not meet its actuarial returns and,

or if there's any policy changes by CalPERS.

Okay, thank you, Mike. The next I would like to cover the proposed policy document. The policy addresses two basic strategies that can be applied to any debt, increase payments to pay off the debt faster or refinance the debt at a better rate. The proposed policy sets guidelines for applying additional payments, setting aside money in the irrevocable trust, tax exempt exchanges and debt refinancing. Specifically, the city can mitigate risk by ensuring the refinancing debt interest rate is at least 30% less than the CalPERS rate.

Limit refinancing to 90% of the debt. Refrain from extending the life of the debt. The current amortization is through 2046 and we would not change that. And finally, performing a risk analysis to ensure the council is making an informed decision.

Key decision points for the City Council include adopting a policy, retaining specialized legal counsel and starting the validation process with Orange County Superior Court. While the team is working through the validation process, the City can hire an underwriter via a competitive process and develop the plan with specific dollar amounts based on current market conditions. The City Council will need to give final approval to the preliminary official statement and other bond documents before the City can complete the refinancing. At this time, we expect total professional fees for the bond team to range from 1.3 million

to 2 million, depending on the size of the refinancing. The fees will be paid from bond on proceeds if the city refinances. So that concludes my presentation and we are ready to answer any additional questions you may have.

Great, thank you for that Director Downs. Somebody could bring down that screen. I'll see if there's any council members that have any questions or comments.

Anybody want to venture with a question? That was very clear, I think. It's obviously complicated information, but in the end, I think what it is, it's a path to save us, save the organization and the city quite a bit of money, realizing that these pension debts are just continuing to increase. So I think I want to thank staff for doing their best to give us options here. So Councilwoman Lopez, go ahead.

Jessie LopezItem 21

Yeah, thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. And I just want to preface my comment by saying that from everything that we were given to review, it looks like it's a really good time for, you know, to refinance our debt. The trend looks really good. So I am supportive of this. But I just had a quick question, Director Downs. And I could have misseen this. but I thought that I saw in your presentation that at 90% refinancing it'd be 2.54 million and I was reading the fiscal impact in the report and it says you could use 3.8 million

Jessie LopezItem 21

annually by refinancing at 90% of the pension day the debt so if you could clarify

I just want to make sure I understand your question. So the 90% refinancing, we showed that we would save

almost 254 million of payments over the next 25 years. So could you clarify or could you repeat your question please?

Jessie LopezItem 21

I think you clarified it because you're saying 2.54 million of payments. And what the report says based on the current market conditions, the city could save 3.8 million annually by refinancing and 90% of the pension debt. Yes. Okay.

Great. Thank you. Council member Fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

I have so many questions. So I was waiting to see if anyone else had them. So first I want to preface that. I really do believe everybody deserves a dignified retirement, especially folks who obviously have dedicated their lives to public service. And especially for us millennials on this council, this is not something we, that's not us. We never benefited from this, right? If any of us were actually working with the city and we are, we kind of got or inherited something that wasn't great. we're kind of stuck in a situation where we have to fix, I guess, you know, sins of the father

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

or whatever the situation is, right? Nobody except those who were working with the big banks realized that, you know, Wall Street was going to crash in 2008 or the housing market would crash. And that's a huge part of what's going on. But I understand that CalPERS has become much more conservative in their investments. Therefore, their, I guess, yearly profits or losses would be more consistent than what we saw, which it seemed like, you know, swings left and right, like crazy, or up and down, I guess. Okay. I see you nodding your head, so I assume that's a yes.

Yes, that is correct. CalPERS did make some changes after the Great Recession, and they have a much more conservative mix in their portfolio. So you're absolutely correct going forward. I wouldn't expect to see the swings that we've seen in the past, but they're still going to swing to a degree, maybe just not as much.

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

Great. And I guess the other thing I want to, for you to verify is, you know, in reading the staff report, you do list four areas in which the city has taken positive steps to prevent, you know, further pension debt. And because, you know, I know a lot of residents are concerned. I think some residents I had seen were saying, you know, well, why don't the employees pay for their own retirement? And the employees currently are paying their full employee contribution. Is that correct?

That is correct. All employees make a contribution to the plan. It's fairly sizable. Miscellaneous employees pay 8% and safety employees pay 12% of their paycheck into the plan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

Right, so we've taken multiple steps. The state with PEPRA has taken a very big step. And so really what we're at is, we're kind of at the last few options available to decrease debt for our residents.

That is absolutely correct. After statewide pension reform back in 2013, I believe that this that's basically a reform where we're going to see the benefits of that over time. We already have seen the benefits of it in the last seven to eight years. In fact, CalPERS expects that our our classic members will be fully retired in the system by within 15 years. And so we will only have what we refer to as PEPRA members at that point, which earned the lesser benefit.

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

Got it. And I think one of the callers did talk about, you know our assumption being over a period of 25 years instead of 30. Can you just explain a little bit more of that? and why we're choosing that assumption. So that when we're making this decision, we know that we're getting great data.

Sure. So CalPERS has currently estimated that we're gonna be making payments on this debt for the next 25 years. Now you might remember in one of my slides, I showed that the debt is comprised of a bunch of different layers, layers for each year of actual results. Each of those layers has a different amortization period, A few years ago, CalPERS amortized these layers over 30 years. And just recently they've changed their policies to shorten that amortization period to 20 years. So we have some layers from several years ago

that have amortizations of more than 20 years because they were originally set with 30 year amortizations. So if you look at the entire global payment debt schedule that CalPERS has laid out for us, at least in their estimates as of June 30th, 2019, they have us scheduled out for payments for the next 25 years.

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

Got it. And then, so one of the things I'm really curious about, and if you can clarify, is if, you know, CalPERS has set their expectation to be at 7%, which sounds reasonable, right, if you are a regular investor or you're 401k, but their actuaries are telling us it's only going to be at 6%. Can you explain to me how that is? Or if you have a sense of how that might be?

So the actuaries, they do their work, they create their models, and they try to predict the future. Of course, nobody has a crystal ball, but based on their predictions and their modeling, they do believe that CalPERS will earn 6% on its investment portfolio over the long term. Now, that's not 6% every year. It could be more one year, less another year. but on average 60% or 6% over the longterm. The CalPERS board sets policy. And so they can listen to the,

their actuaries which act as advisors to the CalPERS board and then make a policy decision based on that. And at this time, the CalPERS board has set the discount rate or the assumed rate of investment return at 7%.

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

Got it. So I guess it seems like if our city attorney was giving me legal advice and I decide to say, you know what, I'm just going to go with my own policy decision or that's essentially what's happening. Kelper's board decided, you know what, we don't agree with our professionals. We're just going to go set our own policy. So I guess, you know, with that, it's hard because, you know, they're painting a pretty rosy picture, a potentially rosy picture, but we know based on the actuary saying that you know that the 6% return and then on top of that I think

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

in your presentation you mentioned or maybe it was in the staff report that it's highly unlikely that they'll even hit the 6%. So essentially we'll be likely if we're investing in CalPERS without the refinancing we're not going to actually make that return. So every year the debt grows larger and larger and larger because our assets are not growing.

That is correct. And if you look at the example that I gave of that, the, the payment schedule that we currently have from CalPERS or the estimated schedule of payments is, is based on information at June 30th, 2019, the following fiscal year, fiscal year, 19, 20, the end of June 30th, 2020 CalPERS only earned 4.7%. So not their 7% assumption. So there's a perfect of how they did not meet their assumption. And therefore the next time that we receive updated information from CalPERS,

which will be this fall, we can expect to see those schedule estimated payments to increase.

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

Got it. And the other thing I wanted to ask about was the fees. You know, obviously there's going to be legal counsel costs, cost to the actual underwriting and whatnot. What is your general estimation, I guess, of that ballpark, I guess?

It ranges from about 1.3 million to 2 million. Keep in mind, it's based on the size of the debt issue, whether the city council elects to move forward with something like a 50% refinancing or something closer to a 90% refinancing. And keep in mind that this is a large team of professionals. So not only is there going to be bond council, disclosure council, underwriters council, there's also our financial advisor. There is going to be the underwriters themselves. There may be a team of underwriters.

That is, there is that potential. We would like to do a competitive process if the city council directs us to move forward so that we can get the best pricing available. but you will have a rather large team of professionals working on this financing because it is a very, very large refinancing.

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

Okay, and then I guess my other question is, you know, you have this 50% refinancing and 90% refinancing, you're talking about this risk. And I think a lot of folks in the public, and I know I didn't understand, you know, well, if I refinance my mortgage, I would just do the whole thing. And so I guess I want a little bit more clarification, right? but you said, the way I understand it is if you only refinance 90%, but CalPERS happens to do really great, let's say for the next 10 years, it does 10% return. As our assets grow, it covers that 10%. So we don't lose out. But if we refinance all 100%, we're stuck at $707 million

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

and we don't benefit in lowering our debt burden, even if our assets grow.

You have a very good understanding. Thank you.

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

So if our assets grow, cause you know, in my mind growing assets sounds good. But for clarification, if our assets grow, it stays with CalPERS. We can't take the money out or anything like that, right? Okay.

That is correct. We could theoretically hire another plan administrator. CalPERS is just simply the plan administrator that we've contracted with. But there isn't another plan administrator who has the ability to do what CalPERS does. And that's why just about every city in the state has its plan administered through CalPERS.

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

Okay. And if we overpay, our assets grow way more than what we're required to have, we can lose that money. Right?

I'm trying to repeat the question.

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

So if our CalPERS assets grow, it fluctuates because it grows with the market or loses with the market. So sometimes you think, oh, overfunding CalPERS doesn't sound like much harm. But really what happens is we could actually lose that money in the future too. We don't decrease our debt, but our assets are fluctuating based on the market.

That is a potential scenario. Yes.

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

Okay, I just wanted to make sure I understood the 90% refinancing. Again, this issue is just such a big concern for the public and a lot of folks are looking at, are we being fiscally responsible with what's going on? And I wanted to make sure I understood. So thank you so much. Those are all the questions I have.

Thank you, council member. Any other questions? I know I have a couple, but they're very, I guess they're more comments rather than questions. So thank you, Director Downs for that. And thank you, Council Member, for those questions. I think they were very thorough and I think answered a lot of what we had. So I know we had this conversation, I think it was last year when we first started talking about what do we do with this increasing debt

that continues to grow our unfunded liability and the pension costs. And one of our basic functions as a body is to be responsible fiduciaries, right? So we are not only trying to generate revenue as we're always looking at different ways we can do that, but we also have to be responsible with our costs. And so what I didn't see on the chart is I know that, and Council Member Mendoza will probably see this, at the Water District, we refinanced a lot of our debt that we had because the time is so ripe right now. We are kind of at a moment in time when we can do that.

I don't think we're carrying a lot of debt and maybe that's something that we haven't asked Director Downs. I don't know if we are, Madam City Manager, if we are carrying a lot of debt. So I don't know what our current rating is with any of the agencies. Do either of you know that just offhand?

Do you know what our current rating is?

I believe our last transaction, Catherine, was the refinance of the gas tax.

Yes, it was. And we got a double A rating. All right. It was a single A for the gas tax, but our 2018, so each, in short, to answer your question, each debt issue has its own separate rating. The 2018 refinancings that we did for the former redevelopment agency, those got ratings of AA. In general, the city's credit rating is double A. The gas tax refinancing was a single A.

Got it. And so tonight you're just asking us to adopt a resolution

so you can come back and select bond council on this.

Right, give us more direction.

No, no adoption of a resolution necessary. What we're looking for is your guidance and direction to allow us to proceed with the refinancing and then adopt the pension liability cost reduction policy as presented by your finance director.

All right, well, I think, you know, the recommendation from staff seems clear that this, we have a lot to save, but if we don't go down this path, we could possibly lose those savings, right? The ability to save this money, right? In essence, that's what.

That is correct. And this process, you're going to have, you're going to, it's going to be in front of you multiple times if you direct us to proceed. Tonight's first step of adopting the policy basically lays out the guidelines for us so that we know how to proceed. And then we're ready to go So if we received the direction from tonight to bring back to your next meeting, a proposed contract for bond counsel to start that validation process. And then in a subsequent meeting after that, you'll be asked to adopt a resolution to actually authorize that court validation process.

But we need that, that specialized legal counsel on, on, um, staff, on contract first, so that we can get that unique resolution prepared for the city of Santa Ana.

Got it. So I guess, you know, basically what we're looking at is a possible lost opportunity cost, right? So to the extent that we do nothing, let's just say we decide not to refinance, you know, any of this, any of this pension debt, then we have to, we possibly lose out on these potential savings that we're looking at that look very responsible on the forecasting. And that's the decision that you're asking us to make tonight, correct?

That is correct.

All right. Well, I see a couple of other hands raised. So I think it was council member Becerra and council member Lopez after that.

Phil BacerraItem 21

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just I want to applaud my colleagues. I think I had some questions but they were all asked and answered. So I want to thank my colleagues and I want to thank staff for the presentation and those answers. I just you know it's more of a quick comment that I'd like to make and that is you know we're in this position because of increasing costs when it comes to our pensions but we need to understand as we go forward this discussion tonight is symptomatic. We as a city We need to remember this item tonight. Remember this discussion when we have opportunities to grow revenue. So every time we hear folks say,

Phil BacerraItem 21

oh, you know, this isn't what we want. Well, we have to really look at the fact that right now, this situation that we're in, we have not done enough to grow revenue. We haven't. And I don't want to increase taxes. We already have the highest sales tax in all of Orange County. And even with that sales tax, we still are in the position of talking about refinancing our debt. So I just, it's more of a comment to just say, I hope we all remember this item in this discussion as we go forward. And I hope that in addition to this, I know our staff's very creative and

Phil BacerraItem 21

they'll come to us as they have more ideas and ways that we can grow our revenues and balance our budget. But again, it's just, it's in our face. We have to realize that this is something that we've really got to make some possibly painful decisions, but we've got to think about how we do it. So again, thank you everybody.

Thanks. Council member Lopez and then council member Mendoza.

Jessie LopezItem 21

No, thank you, Mayor Sargento. City manager, do you know if the capital improvement bonds are going to require voter approval?

So no, this action would not require any voter approval. This is refinancing an existing debt that is already recorded on our books.

Jessie LopezItem 21

Okay. And in speaking about the timeline of this, would it be possible for us to kind of just meet maybe like every six months just because it's such a large amount of money that we're speaking about and and be updated on what is happening that's an excellent question council

member because the process does take quite a while as um catherine mentioned all the steps we must go through i mean it could take up to november of 2021 so if you would like this as a standing item i don't think any of your colleagues would object to that and we could provide you a report of all substantial actions at future council meetings thank you i appreciate that great thank you for

to that council member Mendoza.

Thank you. My question is, do we have an option of doing the 50% refinance or the 90%? And if so, which one would be the most feasible and more beneficial to our city?

Thank you for the question. Our model indicates that we would save more money with a 90% refinancing, but again, this is based on market information back in December, it changes all the time. As you heard our financial advisor mentioned, there was a issue that was priced today that has a better interest cost than what we have in our models here. And we expect to get some updated information from CalPERS as well. And so based on that, we're gonna try to fine tune and find the sweet spot of what is going to save us

the most amount of money. What is the right recommendation to make the city council? So the options before you tonight were just simply two options that we modeled just so that you could get an understanding of what we're looking at and the concepts, but we may end up bringing back a recommendation to you to refinance something like 78% or 83%. So it's really gonna be based on fine tuning those numbers.

Thank you.

Great, great questions, council member. So yeah, so we're just simply asking, we're just simply directing staff to bring back some more information by bond council so we can maybe specify a little bit more which path we wanna go down, right?

Absolutely. And to adopt the policy to set those guidelines for us. And then we will return with the legal, the proposed contract for legal services to start that court validation process.

Great. So we'll see this again in more detail. So hopefully not as long a presentation, but more

detail. Not as long of a presentation. There we go. No, thank you for that. We needed to be thorough.

Okay, it looks like everybody's had a chance to comment and ask questions.

Anybody wanna move the item?

I'll move. Second.

Okay, we have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, will you please call roll?

Council Member Becerra?

Yes.

Council Member Hernandez?

Yes.

Council Member Lopez? Yes. Council member Mendoza? Yes. Council member Fan?

Yes. Mayor Potempo Nalosa?

Yes.

Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes, thank you for that. And moving along to the special meeting item number 22, this is the only item that was done on a special. And let me begin this by kind of falling on my sword. I didn't see this item when I did my review and it was something I know that, you know, council had wanted to come back. So we had it added on as a special item. So, you know, thank you to staff for including this as well and doing it on short order. I know that this was based upon a council directed item by council member Fan and I, so council member, do you want to go ahead and discuss or does staff have any,

Madam city attorney, do you have any comments before we begin?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 22

No, I just can tell you that it's presented as a request from the council members as an originally an 85A item. And the recommendation is to discuss the resolution. If you decide to adopt the resolution, then we would move forward in doing some further research on the legal implications, the impacts and what's happening at the city of Long Beach and bring back an ordinance for your consideration.

Great, go ahead, council member Pham.

Thai Viet PhanItem 22

Thanks, I really appreciate staff doing this. And I know there's a lot of moving pieces right now, especially with the news stories.

Thai Viet PhanItem 22

I am very frustrated by the news of record profits and $2 billion in profits with a B. and, you know, we can't pay our frontline grocery store workers a wage to live on. And, you know, I think some folks have brought up the Long Beach or there was an article at Long Beach with two stores that closed or Ralph's and a Food for Less. But I think what a lot of people ignored was the fact that in the article itself, it stated that those stores were already underperforming.

Thai Viet PhanItem 22

So using Long Beach's hazard pay or an NSEM a bit fishy, I think, or a little bit opportunistic, I understand that our grocery stores are also, you know, implementing safety precautions and things like that. But as we heard from some of the callers, you know, you're getting up to 20% of these grocery store workers coming down with COVID and they are not making the big dollars, right? And often many of them are, you know, single family income earners. So I am still supportive of this project. I want to, of course, follow what's going on with the case. I know we received several correspondences.

Thai Viet PhanItem 22

So I think this resolution to ask that the city attorney's office look into this further and bring back something for us to vote on, I think is a good step.

Thank you for that. And I'll call upon myself just because both council member and I brought this before us. And I know that we had, I think, a choice or an option that Madam City Attorney and I were speaking about, about bringing back an ordinance. But what I suggested was this resolution because it's a non-binding instrument that won't commit us to anything, but yet will capture the intent of the council when we brought this before the council and we supported it. So what I thought would be a good idea is to have it on as a resolution while there's still litigation pending with the city of Long Beach.

So we can kind of see and analyze and review what the results are there. And also have an opportunity for some of those who are concerned about this potential adoption of the ordinance to speak to us at the city. I think there was some interesting arguments that were made about there being a lot done and a lot of the equipment being sent to PPE, sent to employees. But I guess all the evidence aside doesn't really tell that story. Or else, I mean, what's difficult for me is I don't even know why we should have to do this. I think it should be the industry who should have taken that first step like they did early on

and just make that commitment to their employees. Right. And they did that and then they withdrew it. So I think it left a lot of communities like ours to say, you know, was that fair when, you know, we saw a lot of our, you know, not only employees that work in our city, but residents that are employees of these businesses that have to go out. So I kind of put the onus and the burden more on the industry that they should have done the right thing and not sort of force cities to have to take these corrective actions, I think.

So, again, I hope that this resolution will give us time to study the litigation while at the same time show that our intent is that the industry should be responsive to their employees and responsible in going forward. So, you know, it's sort of a holding pattern, I think, while at the same time allowing, you know, whether it's a grocer association or other chains to maybe contact us and give us their compelling reasons why. But, you know, my response is going to be or, you know, I guess our response should be, well, what is it that you have done and what is it that you are doing?

You know, we certainly see a lot of various, you know, a lot of people and a lot of families are struggling. I mean, stores are struggling. But when you see profit margins at the level that we see with some of these publicly traded chains, boy, it's hard to ignore and it's hard to be sympathetic. And I'm glad that we all believe we're going to carve out, obviously, smaller stores that really don't have the means that maybe some of these other larger chains have. So basically that's why, you know, I think the resolution is, is sort of, um, again,

sort of a subtle step forward where it, it really doesn't, um, you know, put us in litigation nor, um, you know, have the threat of a lawsuit that an ordinance would. So, you know, at least it allows us to have that discussion time and to study what, uh, uh, uh, consequences are in the other cities while at the same time, continue discussion and support for this effort. So that is kind of it in a nutshell, unless anybody has any questions or comments.

Seeing none, I will entertain a motion or council member Mendoza and then mayor pro tem, I believe.

Yes, thank you, mayor Sarmiento.

I have several concerns on this issue.

The first one being that is for a special meeting, this is normally reserved for an item that is an emergency. And so I just want to be sure that we're not setting any kind of precedence here that if we forgot to put something on the item, on the regular agenda, that we don't call a session. special meeting and because it's this could I think this could have waited for our next council meeting it's not an emergency item and so there's not really

that urgency the next concern I have is it's a matter of authority what authority does the city have over grocers or pharmacists this seems to be an issue or for state and federal government. We cannot enforce this. So the city doesn't have the authority to make grocers comply with this. And I understand it's just a resolution, but if it's moving forward and we do support it as an ordinance, it's gonna be really, really opening up

a can of worms because there's gonna be lawsuits, maybe we're gonna have how are the business is going to be impacted I mean there if they are forced to pay their employees more and understandably I agree that our frontline workers should be compensated but I don't know that we can enforce it and what happens with the current grocers are they going to be grandfathered in is this for new grocers that come into the city or is it all existing roasters

so why create an ordinance if the city cannot enforce it um i know that covet has affected uh communities worldwide and i would love nothing more than to have workers paid premium wages however we need to ensure that we have the authority to enforce it This seems to be a state and federal matter. And if we continue with this, I believe it's just going to be very disappointing to our workers because they're getting their hopes up for some kind of premium salaries.

And we as a city cannot really promise them that. So it's there there's unintended and avoidable negative consequences if we proceed with something like this Uh, yeah, and it's going to bring increased grocery prices and we're going to start seeing stores closing for the ones who cannot really afford to to pay this premium premium salaries

So that was my concern is enforcement and the consequences.

How are we going to enforce it? And we probably cannot. This is not a city issue that we can enforce. So it's going to have to be state, state or federal. And those are my comments.

Great. Thank you for that council member. I think it's a mayor pro tem and then council member Lopez or excuse me, council member Becerra and then Lopez.

David PenalozaItem 22

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Sarmiento. I had a couple concerns with the resolution, the way it's written because I'm not a hundred percent clear on the definition of what exactly is defined by grocery retail stores. I know that in section one paragraph A, it says requires that grocery retail stores located within the city and are private or publicly traded with at least 300 employees nationwide and more than 10 employees per store site pay all their workers an additional $4 per hour in wages.

David PenalozaItem 22

The reason why I have concern with that, because why are we singling out grocery stores? I'm not sure exactly what is defined by that section. I know that there are tons of workers in our city that should be getting this premium pay, not just grocery store workers. I know that we here at the city of Santa Ana, we have a ton of frontline workers that have been working without any extra pay over the last year.

David PenalozaItem 22

You know, I know that many of our employees on the ground floor at city hall have been working for over close to a year without extra hazard pay. You know, they've been putting themselves at risk too. And they're residents that live here in the city. I know that our fast food restaurants in the city as well, we have a community that unfortunately relies on fast food restaurants. And those employees have been exposing themselves in this pandemic.

David PenalozaItem 22

Everything from, you're talking our retail stores, our cell phone provider stores, our Walmart. there's a lot of other fields and stores in our community that have been exposing themselves and working to provide for our community. With the, what concerns me is yes, we did see that article that Kroger decided to close down two stores in Long Beach as a quote unquote, because of this ordinance. And yeah, the article does state that these stores were struggling.

David PenalozaItem 22

I am also mindful that here in Santa Ana, we have many grocery stores that we know have been struggling for the last couple of years. Early last year, pre-pandemic, Stater Brothers on McFadden and Standard, very popular store among the neighborhood, closed down because it was underperforming and it was struggling for a long time. Stater Brothers on Fairview and 17th Street just recently closed late last year, a couple months ago, because of struggling and underperformance.

David PenalozaItem 22

A lot of the Stater Brothers on Fairview and Edinger is hanging on by a limb. And I know that because we've had meetings in regards to that store and that plaza and how it is struggling because of not the price of groceries, but just the theft that's going on in that store and the littering. And there's a lot of reasons why many stores in our city we know have been struggling. The Food for Less on First Street by the McDonald's off of Main Street, First and Main.

David PenalozaItem 22

We also know that's a store that has been struggling with just the environment that they're in for a while. I would hate to mandate this and just isolate it to grocery store workers because of the amount of essential workers that have been exposing themselves in our community that should be eligible for this hazard pay. in particular our city employees. We should be able to provide that for everybody. If we're gonna mandate for an industry, we should practice what we preach and do it ourselves here at the city, as well as mandated for other industries. So those are the concerns I have.

David PenalozaItem 22

Madam city attorney, can you go over what exactly that clause in the resolution, what is defined by grocery retail stores in section one, paragraph A?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 22

So I can tell you that we have definitions of grocery stores in our land use code, also under our business licenses, and we know what retail stores look like. So right now this resolution just states your intent of what you might want a potential future ordinance to cover, but if it were to cover the grocery retail stores as defined in this resolution, we would have to first look to those companies that have more than 300 employees nationwide and that in your city have more than 10 employees. My understanding is that staff may have already taken a look at how many stores would be impacted using this definition alone.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 22

And I guess we could ask them about that. But so what you're doing here in this resolution is if you decide to adopt it, you would be giving us direction that you would want any future ordinance to apply to these workers only.

David PenalozaItem 22

So this would be something that we have to decide at the future resolution that we would want it only for these workers? Is that what you?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 22

If you adopted this resolution, you would just be giving us direction that this is who you might want the future ordinance to apply to it's within the council's discretion, whether you would want to broaden this definition or to narrow the definition, the direction that we were given under the 85A the last time was simply to take a look at what other communities were doing, Long Beach, city of LA County of Los Angeles, and to try to keep it consistent with them so that the industry was not having different standards in all different types of cities. So that's where we got this language from.

David PenalozaItem 22

Okay. And that's something that I would want to definitely broaden because I know we have a couple, I mean, the Targets and the Walmart in our city sell all the groceries that these grocery stores sell. They sell all and more, you know, they should be considered retail grocery stores and I don't think they are. Also, in regards to the billions in record profits, that is true. But are those billions in record profits necessarily happening to these stores in Santa Ana?

David PenalozaItem 22

Because if we're including nationwide record profits, but we still have stores that in Santa Ana have been underperforming for a long time, how can we mandate that they increase the pay of their grocery store workers? and not mandate under industries to do it. I think that's where I'm struggling is, is having an equal approach to all the workers with large companies that have been exposing themselves in our community. I want this to be a fair approach and not just single out one industry is where I'm coming from. Madam city attorney.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 22

I just wanted to say, I think that's one of the reasons why the direction was to continue to have us look at the issues, not only because we already do see litigation in this area. So far, the court did not agree to the temporary restraining order, but there is a hearing coming up. And we will be looking at, for example, exactly the argument some have raised. Is there an equal protection problem? Are we treating people differently? Is that something we can justify? Can we justify this ordinance? Does this ordinance impact or affect, or is it illegal under the national labor relations laws?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 22

And then does the city of Santa Ana under its charter have the authority to do this? And we do know that charter cities have been able to establish what we call living wages. So we believe that there may be authority under the charter, but we wanna go back and make sure we research all of this. And that's why it was directed that we prepare the resolution and not go forward with the ordinance, because I think there's some questions we still need to answer.

David PenalozaItem 22

Okay, so this, so, but even in this resolution that it's narrowly defined to isolated to just grocery stores in what we would think of as Food for Less or Albertsons or Stater Brothers, correct?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 22

Yes, as currently defined it is, yes.

David PenalozaItem 22

So would it include Target's or Walmarts or,

David PenalozaItem 22

I guess it would include the Trader Joe's down on Bristol.

David PenalozaItem 22

And that also of course, El Suped and Suped and Northgate markets as well.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 22

Yes, if it's a definition. And I think when we come back, if again, if the council directs us to do this, we would of course want to come back and describe in the staff report exactly the implications that it's going to have on the city, how many businesses will be impacted. And then at that time, you'll have a better idea of who it's gonna affect.

David PenalozaItem 22

Okay, will we be able to look at, you know, if we were to expand it to fast food restaurants in our city, is that something that could also be looked at by your office?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 22

Yes, if we were directed to do that, we would look at any other categories that you would direct us to take a look at.

David PenalozaItem 22

Okay.

okay all right Tim I can the information you requested about the number of businesses shortly after the council meeting where the item was discussed we did just a quick look at our business license database and at that time we were looking at the grocery stores that we know are large and national we also looked at the pharmacies as well and we identified 55 potential businesses in our city and that would include businesses such as because we included pharmacies cvs

you have right aids walgreens albertson's all these big saber l super food for less

mother's market northgate stores ranch market stater brothers super king superior bonds trader joe's smart and final walmart and target um so rough estimate that was 55 businesses

David PenalozaItem 22

Okay. I just have, I mean, I just think of the, what these businesses, a lot of them have to deal with, to use the example of Stater Brothers on Fairview and Edinger again, and the blight that they have to deal with, the drinking in their parking lot. I don't know how many times I've been in that parking lot where I see a Stater Brothers employee sprint out the door chasing a transient for stealing alcohol and them saying that, you know, that's something they deal with daily in that area. Having to hire security guards

David PenalozaItem 22

because of the constant theft and the loitering that we're seeing citywide as a result of numerous other issues. I think it's just it's underhanded to now on top of extreme business fees that we charge because we have never really been a business friendly city. I know that's improved.

David PenalozaItem 22

But on top of that, they have to deal with it. You know what? Now we're going to, you know, make you pay this, you know, hazard pay to your employees. I just want to be careful that we don't cause these struggling businesses already to close down because a lot of them are struggling here in our city. And those record profits that they're reporting nationwide are necessarily trickling down to the local stores here on First Street or Fairview. but I think I've spoken enough. I will mute myself and allow some of my colleagues to chime in.

David PenalozaItem 22

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you.

Council member Becerra and then council member Lopez.

Phil BacerraItem 22

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I want to thank you and council member Finn for what I believe is your good intentions. And I think that, you know, we collectively as a council and as a city have been looking for ways, I mean, constantly to try to help our residents, our businesses, workers. It just, it's really, I feel blessed to be part of this council because of just how much we really look for ways to help. We're not just sitting here waiting. I mean, we are proactively trying to do that. So with that being said though,

Phil BacerraItem 22

I wanna applaud some of the comments that I heard from my colleagues, in particular Council Member Mendoza and Mayor Pro Tem, you know, a couple things that I heard that were things that were important to me were, you know, for instance, as we as a policymaking body look to enact, eventually enact an ordinance, how can we enforce it? And you know, one of the things that, you know, we always have to consider is as we're putting laws on the books, are they going to be able to be enforced? Is it something that we can reasonably expect because I don't want to give folks, I think one of my colleagues said,

Phil BacerraItem 22

you know, false hopes that this is something that they can expect if we can't reasonably enforce it. And so that's one concern I have. Another which, and this is a personal thing for me, you know, my father was a UFCW grocer and he worked at a small grocer later on in life. And you know, I'd like to think that if my dad were alive today, working at a small grocer, I couldn't in good conscience say, well, sorry, dad, you didn't, you know, you're not working at a place that has a certain record profits or, or employs enough people.

Phil BacerraItem 22

So you don't get that extra boost in pay. You're not a hero. You're not a hero. Just, you know, you're on the front lines, but you're, you don't get hero pay. And for me, that's personal. I mean, that's really a kick in the shins for me and a lot of other folks, because we talk about small businesses. Every one of us at some point has said we want to encourage small businesses, but yet here we are for the workers of those small businesses and we're basically discluding them from this. So it really, it just, it kind of hits me, you know, close to home. The other thing that, you know, we're talking about the duration of this.

Phil BacerraItem 22

You know, we talk about this thing only going for, I think it was, if I look here, it was 120 days. And so, you know, we're not going to be out of the pandemic in 120 days. I mean, God willing, we will get the vaccine out there distributed quick enough. But, you know, I'm looking at other cities here in California that have already passed something similar to what we're considering tonight. And you look at a place like San Francisco where they adopted a resolution where they they asked for their brochures to pay their employees

Phil BacerraItem 22

this additional hourly pay through the end of the state tier system. So not just simply when we're in the purple tier, but as we go through the colors and as we get to the end, which would make more sense if we're truly trying to help those frontline workers and we're trying to augment their pay because they are doing us a service. They're putting themselves at risk on the front lines to make sure that we continue to still have the ability to purchase essential groceries. So with that being said, and one other thing I just wanna add is that, or two things I wanna add. One is being that, you know, we do have some stores locally

Phil BacerraItem 22

that have been providing additional pay throughout the pandemic, Trader Joe's being one of those stores. And so I feel like what we're proposing or at least discussing here, really almost becomes punitive to them because, I mean, I'm sure if they had known that they didn't have to provide this because at some point they were going to be required to, maybe they might have held off. And in the meantime, their workers wouldn't have received that additional pay throughout the pandemic as they have. So I feel like that might, what we're proposing is dangerously

Phil BacerraItem 22

close to becoming a one-size-fits-all approach that really has a lot of moving parts that I think it'd be difficult to really adequately do that. So one thing that, or last thing I would say is that I would like to ask us to do is rather than look at Long Beach, who's currently facing litigation and probably at some point Los Angeles will be the test case. You know, I would ask us to consider a resolution that urges the brochures to pay the additional four bucks an hour and that our resolution cover all grocery outlets here in San Ando. I don't want to disclude any of our workers, but I think as it was Councilmember Mendoza that

Phil BacerraItem 22

mentioned, you know, what we're witnessing right now is this patchwork throughout the state. In fact, I'd say throughout the Western United States from Seattle on down to Lake Beach where you've got some folks or some jurisdictions that want to do $5 an hour, some that want to do $4 an hour. or maybe it's 120 days, maybe it's longer or shorter. And it's just, it's this real weird patchwork of different policies and something like this and the litigation may ultimately prove this, is that it may not be something that a city can mandate. And so what I would ask us to do in crafting a resolution

Phil BacerraItem 22

is that we urge all grocery outlets to provide this hero pay. And then I would ask this to urge our state legislature to take this issue on. To put it on cities, as we're sitting here tonight at 1030 at night after having a long discussion about refinancing employee pension debt, I think we really need to think about where our priorities are. And as much as I want to help our workers, and again, this is a very personal issue for me, but I wonder if what we're doing is the correct thing to do. So that's why I began my comments and expressing my appreciation because of where I think our hearts are and where we want to go.

Phil BacerraItem 22

But I'm just, again, wondering if we're going the right direction using the right tool. And that's my comments. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Great, thank you for those comments, council member. Council member Lopez and then council member Fan.

Jessie LopezItem 22

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. You know, I just want to reiterate that we're not talking about your small mom and pop shops. You know, this is the conversation that we had when this item was brought forth a couple of weeks ago. And so I wanna ask the people who are still on this call listening to not buy into the false rhetoric that if these big box chains corporations, temporarily give the people that we are calling heroes $4, that prices are gonna go up. We need to move beyond those false rhetorics.

Jessie LopezItem 22

And I find it completely irresponsible coming from members of this body, to be quite honest. And also what Kroger is doing in Long Beach is a capital strike. Let's just be clear about that. They are trying to manipulate other cities that are looking into this and to not doing that because of the potential risk or scare of litigation. And the same people who are having such a hard time with, you know, supporting our essential workers, members of our community, you know, family.

Jessie LopezItem 22

I've shared with this before, like, this is such a personal issue because my father works at a big box grocery chain. You know, the same people who are having such a hard time with that are not the people who are risking their lives. And so I, you know, and hearing comments that were said, I don't know what ceiling has to do with this, quite frankly, or what the business fees have to do with this at this exact moment. If this is an issue that has been ongoing and that previous members of the council have known and have done nothing about, then that is on them.

Jessie LopezItem 22

And, you know, I just don't think that it's the moment to use those excuses. by the people who have provided us with basic essentials and that continue to do it. And so, this is a life and death choice for so many people in our community, people in our families. And,

Jessie LopezItem 22

you know, I just, those are all the comments that I have for now. Thank you.

Great, thank you, council member. I know we have a council member Fan and council member Hernandez, and I wanna squeeze in here somewhere. Go ahead.

Thai Viet PhanItem 22

Councilman Hernandez, you wanna go first since you haven't gone yet?

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 22

Sure, thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Phan. Yeah, this is certainly a touchy subject for all of us. Partly because a lot of us grew up in communities where, for me, I along with my cousins, our first jobs were working as card attendants and as bag boys at the Santa Ana food market. And I have a lot of cousins that did that throughout high school. And we weren't amidst a pandemic. Right now, major corporations are making tons of profit during this pandemic,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 22

especially grocery stores. That's like therapy to me, is going to a grocery store and buying groceries for my family because we're never out. But the one thing I do is I make sure to spend my money at grocery stores and I spend it here locally. And the challenge that I see here is I can recognize that Kroger is certainly, they're making sure to stake their claim by intimidating cities from creating these types of ordinances. But at the same time, you have workers that are working while being exposed to COVID. They deserve hero pay.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 22

And I believe that although this is a very tricky and complex issue, I think that we should be on the side of labor. I can assure you that these CEOs are working from home while people that are living below the poverty line are leaving their kids at home and leaving their loved ones and putting themselves at risk every single day. And that's heartbreaking. So I always have to put myself in the shoes of the little guy, no pun intended, because I'm five, seven, but I am, I am that little guy. All of us here on the diets are still, we're part of that issue. We are the little people.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 22

We aren't sitting, you know, fancy in these, you know, high rise, you know, beautiful buildings, like a lot of these CEOs, these are billionaires we're talking about. I think that we can send a strong message by standing with labor. And if there's ever a challenge we need to take when it comes to greedy corporations, I think now's the time to do that.

Thank you. Council member Hernandez, council member fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 22

Thank you. So I just wanted to address some of the things that, you know, have been brought up here. And one of the first things I wanna say that this is exactly what cities should be doing. We are directly responsible to our residents more than any other elected in America. So I'm not gonna wait until the state or Sacramento tells me that this is okay to do. They can't get anything passed, despite the fact that it's a supposedly democratic majority or whatever, whoever has the majority. So two years from now, we won't have anything. It took some months to look forward to extending the eviction moratorium because they couldn't

Thai Viet PhanItem 22

figure it out. So our residents need help now. They don't need help six months from now or a year from now. In fact, we should have been looking at this when the pandemic started and we didn't. We should have been looking at this when hazard pay stopped getting paid to our residents. And the thing that I'm most upset about is the fact that I can't help all Santa Ana residents for grocery store workers working in other cities because other cities are too afraid or whatever it is that they're doing without looking at this issue. Because we know that Latinos in Santa Ana are working in these other cities,

Thai Viet PhanItem 22

in Tustin, in Orange, in Fountain Valley, in Westminster, in Irvine, in Costa Mesa, and they're the ones at the front lines. We see the news every day. And I worked at In-N-Out for six years on and off. I know what it's like to work at a fast food location. You do not have the same type of foot traffic as you do at a grocery store. Go into Trader Joe's, even when they limit the number of people who come in, you are packed. Folks walk down these little aisles, you know, they cross by each other, it's not six feet in between the aisles. So there's no social distance that's even possible.

Thai Viet PhanItem 22

You can't, you know, they're not limiting people to, you know, 50 an hour. I have been in there when, you know, I'm in my double mask and my helmet because I'm so afraid. So I think that's really important to look at. And the other thing I wanna just point out is, some of these stores in which they're dealing with, you know, vacancy or folks going in and stealing stuff. Well, who's the one who's chasing back, you know, after these folks? It's the grocery store workers. They're the ones who are not only putting themselves on the line to work there to service all of our residents.

Thai Viet PhanItem 22

They're the ones chasing after the people stealing the goods. So for me, I get the businesses feeling, you know, You know, it's hard, but it's also really hard to be a frontline grocery store worker right now. In an ideal world, I want everybody to get the hazard pay if they have to go out there and put themselves at risk. But I think what we're looking at is we're saying,

Thai Viet PhanItem 22

for a small market when it's just, you know, two mom and pop, literally a mom and pop and a couple employees, they can't make the margins meet. And so to make great be the enemy of good and saying, you know what, some of these folks are not getting it, so we're not going to do it for anybody, I think is really not a great position because there's lots of things we want to do that we can't get to everybody. But I think whatever help we can give to our residents, whatever help we can give to these folks who are really putting themselves out there at 20% COVID rates is really important.

Thai Viet PhanItem 22

And, you know, I think that taking this as a first step just to say, what can we actually do? What would this actually look like and have something more concrete? It's not a bad thing. We're not holding anyone to anything. We're not forcing them right now. And even then, you know, with the, when we're talking about ensuring compliance, well, we have code enforcement officers.

Thai Viet PhanItem 22

We have, you know, requirements for business licenses. If you're not complying with city laws or city ordinances, and that's a problem, we should make sure that people do that. And that's finances for our city, right? I don't think saying, well, you know what, a lot of people are drug addicts or drug dealers, they're not complying with the law. Are we not going to have laws against heroin use or whatever it is, right? You pick your poison on whichever law you want people not to break. So really here, I think that it's incumbent on us for 120 days to just say, hey, let's just help them.

Thai Viet PhanItem 22

And, you know, if we want to extend it, we can based on the situation. But maybe in 120 days, 80% of the population is going to get vaccinated and we're not going to need it anymore because that danger is gone. So, you know, I just really hope that our council says, we're not saying no, and we're not exactly saying a hundred percent concerns, but just to say, let's look into this, let's do something about it because we care about those folks who are there and we're gonna do the best that we can, even though it's not a perfect solution for everyone. So those are my comments.

Thank you, council member. So I think we've kind of spoken this quite a bit. I think everybody's had a chance to speak, you know, at least, at least once. So I want to squeeze in here if that's all right, just to say,

number one, Madam city attorney, can you explain, was it proper to have a special meeting? Was there anything that was nefarious or somehow violated our rules to be able to add something on when there's, I think, an inadvertent oversight to include it on the agenda?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 22

Thank you, Mayor, for giving me the opportunity to answer that because I didn't want to let that go unresponded to. Under Government Code Section 54956, a special meeting can be called at any time by the presiding officer or a majority of the legislative body for any reason whatsoever. I think perhaps maybe where the confusion is, is if you add an item to the agenda after the agenda has been posted, you have to use the emergency findings. but in this case, we did not rely upon that. You use the special meeting and you do not need an emergency to put on a special meeting item.

Understood, so, okay, so we're fine there. We're not setting any bad precedent or doing anything that violates any of our government code sections, correct?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 22

Correct, you are in full compliance with the Brown Act.

Great, and so, you know, simply this is, you know, what's interesting is that we're talking about another resolution. So the resolution really isn't binding again to restate sort of the obvious. Basically what it does is, you know, hopefully it keeps us in a holding pattern to see what is going to happen in litigation that's being done in other cities, right? To the extent that Long Beach comes back or the court comes back in the Long Beach case and says, look, it's unenforceable. We just can't do that. And it doesn't withstand challenge.

Well, we're going to reevaluate whether we put an ordinance out there because we'd be inviting litigation. But if the court in that case says, yeah, this is a totally fair, permissible thing to do, that they're completely within their municipal rights to propose this ordinance, then yeah, I think we should bring it back because that is the intent of this resolution. Obviously, you know, right now, all we're doing is basically capturing, hopefully, if there is a majority of intent, this is what we'd like to do.

But to the extent we see other cases that are being, that are being, you know, other ordinance excuses, excuse me, that aren't being upheld, then, you know, we could go ahead and withdraw ours and not go forward. But I think we've tried to narrowly tailor this as well, because I think all of us would like to help all essential workers, but not all essential industries have done as well as this industry, right?

So that's the difference, I think, here, because, you know, to hold some industries to a standard that we're holding this one, again, this at the beginning of the pandemic, I remember the hazard pay that was extended to the employees. Why would they do that? They knew that they were asking their employees to take on a very dangerous role, right? And they knew that it was a difficult thing to do.

But for whatever reason, and that's what kind of bothers me, is that why do we have to be here compelling an industry that has done well, you know, under these conditions for a very finite period of time to say, take care of these employees that you've been exposing to harm, many of which live in our community, and many of whom bring it home to their families. and have to do this. I think it should be a good faith effort that they should come forward and say, we've done well during this pandemic. Unlike many industries, probably 80% of industries have failed or are doing much, much worse than they were pre-pandemic.

This one has it and God bless them. Great for them, but they should extend that to their employees that help them make those additional revenues and quite large. So I like the idea of expanding it to not just grocery stores, but also pharmacies and big box stores. We don't have many, but I think that's what somebody said. And I think when the city manager was talking about 55, I think she incorporated pharmacies and big box stores. I think the way this was worded was it was limited to just grocery stores, which is a much smaller number. So to the extent that we make those changes and include these others that have done well,

Also, I'm not opposed to that. And again, when this comes back to us, and hopefully it's post, you know, the resolution of the case in Long Beach, because that'll probably be the first one that we find a result on, then we can go ahead and reevaluate our position. But at least this gives us a path to proceed to be able to go ahead and adopt an ordinance if, in fact, you know, the courts agree with the cities that are proposing them, like ours. So I think that was, do you guys want to discuss this a little bit further? I see a couple of hands going up. Mayor Pro Tem and council member Becerra.

David PenalozaItem 22

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to, you know, state that we, I would like to personally expand this to include, you know, the targets in the Walmart to the world, but our fast food restaurants, because we do want to stand on the side of labor. And that's the whole point. We can't single out industries because there are many industries that have been exposed and have been risking their lives this whole past year. I want to expand it to fast food restaurants, our frontline city employees here at the city of Santa Ana. I also want to expand it to you're talking 7-Elevens stores, Dollar Trees.

David PenalozaItem 22

The reason why is because all those stores take CalFresh and food stamps as a form of payment, meaning that people could go in there and use their food stamps and CalFresh that they get from the state of California to buy essential goods. I mean, they might be overpriced, it might be smaller stores, but these are big chains that have more than 300 employees nationwide and individual stores that have more than 10 employees as part of what was originally the resolution. We shouldn't just tiptoe around the idea just to try to feel good at the end of the day. There are dozens of industries in our city

David PenalozaItem 22

that are struggling, not struggling, but their workers are struggling and exposing themselves every single day. And I would like to see if that would be entertained. It's just when over the last two years, there's been a movement for people to not shop in Santa Ana because of the highest sales tax in the county, which is an unfortunate thing that we had to burden our residents with that. You know, it's something that I proudly voted against as a voter when it was before us on the ballot.

David PenalozaItem 22

And even though grocery stores are not taxed goods, they're essential services that are not taxed, people are not shopping in our city. People I see on every Facebook group, social media page, emails, they it's you know, it's I do all my shopping and testing because I'd rather save that percent that, you know, half a percent sales tax. people are doing that. And if we're gonna, on top of the highest sales tax in the county and having people leave in droves to shop in other cities, going to now burden the grocery stores with having to pay employees an additional $44,

David PenalozaItem 22

you know, we should not just, just because some industries are not unionized, we shouldn't ignore them. I mean, there are lots of industries in the city that have been exposing themselves and they're not unionized and they don't have these protections of people to advocate for them. We need, I think there should be applied to numerous industries, not just the grocery store workers. And that's kind of where I'm at.

Great, thank you for those comments, Mayor Pro Tem. Council Member Becerra.

Phil BacerraItem 22

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just, I want to caution my colleagues here when we talk about what's before us. This is the resolution is a gateway to the ordinance. So this is not a resolution like what we saw in San Francisco where it was a resolution. And then that was it. We are saying, I mean, in looking at the resolution, we are asking for, let's see, that they come back to it. that staff comes back to us prior to March 2nd and that it contains a proposed urgency ordinance. We're asking for staff to put us to the point that this is something in our code, we're gonna codify this.

Phil BacerraItem 22

This is something that we're not really waiting and seeing. If we were waiting and seeing, there wouldn't be a date certain. We would say, well, let's have a report come back by March 1st and let's see where we're at with Long Beach and other jurisdictions. We are on track to adopt something. I mean, it is a course that is, once we say yes, we are going to be on track to do. So I just want to be clear that we're not just simply throwing a line out in the water and waiting to see what happens. And I know that some of my colleagues really want to get it done ASAP.

Phil BacerraItem 22

So I just, but for anybody that thinks that this is really just a kind of a wait and see, it's not truly a wait and see. That there's a little bit more to it. But another thing I'm gonna say is that, you know, here we were tonight talking about the state of our budget, the state of our financial infrastructure here in Santa Ana. And so on one end, and I was the one saying that we do need to grow revenue, but then we take actions where there are grocery stores that probably will look at us and say, wow, not only do they have the highest sales tax, but look at these other onerous regulations

Phil BacerraItem 22

that they're singularly placing on us. I love that we have probably more compassion than most cities around us. I love that about Santa Ana, but we also have to be a little smart about it. And we can't always put our hearts in front of our brains. And we have to sometimes really think about how we are gonna be a resilient city. And resilience includes being able to be financially prosperous, to be able to make sure that we help our residents by doing what we were elected to do, to make sure that they receive the basic services at the best quality possible. And right now we are struggling. And so I just, I really, again,

Phil BacerraItem 22

I love that we are compassionate and we wanna do the right thing. I just, again, I don't think that what we're talking about right now is probably going down in the right direction. Thank you.

Great, thank you for those comments. and we got to wrap this up pretty soon.

Just one point of clarification. So last I heard or last I understood a resolution doesn't bind us even if it has directive language and a date certain. So to the extent there is a date that we would revisit this, that doesn't mean that the resolution binds us to do that. We don't have, there's plenty of resolutions that we haven't followed. They're more intent language. So to the extent that we can include that to say, we want to also see what the findings are in litigation in other cities. We can include that as well in the resolution if you want, Madam City Attorney.

The date certain is just so it comes back to us at some point post the conclusion of the hearings in Long Beach. So, yeah, I mean, again, this doesn't bind us, which I wish it would, but it doesn't, right? It just gets us to a point where we actually capture the intent of what was supported a few weeks ago when this was brought before the council.

Council member Fan, and then I think we need to wrap this up with either a motion or something.

Thai Viet PhanItem 22

Yeah, I'd love to make a motion on this, but actually the one thing I wanted to bring up is, I think council member has said, I've made a really good point regarding some stores that have been continually paying hazard pay or doing the right thing by their residents. You know, I think you mentioned Trader Joe's. And I think, you know, for stores like that, Madam City Attorney, if you can work in some language regarding a discount or something where if they are in fact providing those benefits to their workers, we don't wanna punish them, right? We're saying good job on you. We're not gonna make you do more.

Thai Viet PhanItem 22

but if you can explore that, I think that would be helpful too, because that way you're not like the council members said, you know, doing a double whammy for businesses or grocers that are already employers that are already doing that. So, but with that, I would like to move to adopt the resolution with that additional caveat of adding a potential discount language for employers who are already providing benefits.

So I'll second that with the additional language that we will also, if you can include some language, Sonia, to say that we're also gonna review what happens in litigation in other cities with a similar ordinance.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 22

I will add both those items based on that motion.

David PenalozaItem 22

All right, so there's a motion and a second. Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a substitute motion that the grocery retails section of the resolution is expanded to include fast food restaurants, frontline city employees, and more than just the grocery stores. I'm talking like, because I know that that's going to be, it's going to come back and it's going to be very narrowed and defined to just big box grocery stores. I'm talking the 99 cent stores in our city, the Dollar Trees, because those are,

David PenalozaItem 22

And the 7-Elevens, those are industries that do take CalFresh and food stamps as a form of payment. So those should be considered as grocery stores. And then, you know, like I said, it shouldn't just be grocery stores. There are many people risking their lives out there in our city pharmacies. And our frontline city employees is what I really want to make sure is included in there. because we've also been operating essential services on the ground floor,

David PenalozaItem 22

and they should be entitled to any hazard pay. If we're mandating industries to pay hazard pay, we should step, we should be in front of this and do practice what we preach. So I'd like to make a 7-2 motion that that is included in that section of the resolution.

Is there a second on that?

All right. It appears there's no second. So that motion, that substitute motion will fail, which comes back to the original motion.

So Madam Clerk, if you'll please call roll.

Council member Becerra?

No.

Council member Hernandez?

Yes.

Council member Lopez. Yes.

Council member Mendoza. No. Council member Fan. Yes. Mayor Patan Pinalosa.

No.

And Mayor Sarmiento.

Yes. Thank you everybody. Moving along. I think item 23 was, was that the one that was continued?

I believe, got it. That public hearing was continued to the following meeting. So moving along to the council requested item. This is item 24. This is to consider directing the city manager to explore the options of a senior advisory commission and implementing a senior strategic plan. This is council member Hernandez and Lopez.

Council member Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 24

Yes, thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. Would you like to start Council member Lopez? I know that this was something that you were really passionate about.

Jessie LopezItem 24

Yeah, I can, thank you.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 24

Absolutely.

Jessie LopezItem 24

So this item was brought forth because as we heard, you know, from the public comment earlier today, there seems to be some sort of need. And I just think that it's for us, creating this advisory commission, which would have folks appointed, potentially appointed by the council, would be a great way for us to reduce any, or close any gaps in services and emerging needs for our seniors. And I also think that the strategic plan is something that would be smart for us to work towards

Jessie LopezItem 24

like other cities as Irvine or the city of Ventura really to help us really gain a better understand better

Jessie LopezItem 24

like social within our senior community and how we can build relationships with them. And I think that the advisory council would help in this too, so that we can really help to reduce isolation, which is something that I have heard over and over that our seniors are experiencing, especially now with COVID. And so I think that it would give our community, it would provide our community also with opportunities to give back to our seniors and to work in tandem with them, as opposed to having them be a separate group of folks here in the city. And so, you know, there was a caller that

Jessie LopezItem 24

mentioned the silver tsunami wave and that a majority of the seniors, a majority of the folks here in the city of Sanana will eventually become seniors. And I think that in terms of being proactive, this is a really good measure for us and a good way forward. And so, yeah, I'll Council Member Hernandez, if you want to add anything.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 24

Thank you, Council Member Lopez. One of the things that was, I felt crucial about having a senior advisory council is that, as we talk a lot about the demographic of our city and how young it is, but seven years ago, our median age was younger than what it is now. And the trajectory is that our median age is getting older. Um, there's, there's a lot of folks in, in, in my, um, in my generation that aren't becoming parents like the Gen X folks were, and we're starting to see a shift in, in, in the, in the age demographic of our city.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 24

So I think having a senior advisory council is going to be important as it's going to allow them to act as a liaison for seniors in the, in the city. and it's gonna be able to have cohesive direction on ways to enrich and enhance the health of our seniors. I think it's important for us to have qualified experts that can help us solicit input and enact as a public forum for issues that affect seniors in the city. One of the things that I'd be most excited about about having a senior advisory council is that we would have folks that can provide advice based on lived experiences. based on input received,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 24

in turn that would help us improve our programs. It helps us improve policies. It helps us improve services provided to seniors. And more importantly, all of us here are not seniors yet, but this is important because it's gonna help us identify barriers to access to seniors to city services and programs. So I think this is important moving forward that we have something like this in the city of Santa Ana. This I think would be a very important commission for the city.

Thank you, council members Lopez and Hernandez. Let me bring it back to the council. If there's any questions or comments, anybody else from the council wish to comment? Mayor Pro Tem.

David PenalozaItem 24

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to thank Councilwoman Lopez and Councilmember Hernandez. Definitely an important group of population in our city that we need to keep in mind when we're making decisions. And I know they're constantly being overlooked and it's important that we bring them into the fold. One thing that I was going to ask or kind of suggest, I know that right now, currently our commissions have not been meeting Madam city manager, but maybe there's a way so that we don't start creating these different numerous, just additional bodies of government.

David PenalozaItem 24

Is there a way since we already have a...

David PenalozaItem 24

Did he phrase on us?

I think so.

Mayor Proton. Red Commission, this would probably be something. Hello? Yeah, you froze on us for a little bit, so you may want to repeat what you just said.

David PenalozaItem 24

All right, can you hear me now? Yes. All right, I was just going to say that I thank my colleagues for bringing this forward because it is a group of our residents that should not be left behind and should be included in conversations

David PenalozaItem 24

and brought into the fold. But I was gonna suggest that rather creating additional layers of government and bodies. I know that our commissions have not currently met Madam City Manager, but the Parks and Rec Commission, am I frozen again? Can you hear me? We can hear you. So because I know that we have the two senior centers that are under parks and rec as part of our community centers. And I know that when they're operating, unfortunately right now, because of COVID they have not, but when they were, I mean, there's so many great events and activities

David PenalozaItem 24

and programs that are part of them. I would like to see if maybe in the parks and rec commission, we could, I don't know if it would to, I know it's an even number of seven, but I mean, even seven is not an even number. It's clearly past my bedtime. It's a body of seven. And I know that I even, I thought of maybe we could add an additional seat to the parks and rec commission that it would be representative of a senior citizen, but I know that would make it an even number. So maybe go as far as to even add two seats, additionally to the parks and rec commission

David PenalozaItem 24

to incorporate that. a large group of population in our city that could advocate and bring into the conversation numerous things that our senior citizens in our city that's important to them and that would want to bring forward. If we were to include that, I mean, is that a possibility? I don't know how that would work. Mr. Mayor, maybe it's a seat that is appointed by the mayor or the entire council, but that is included as part of the parks and rec commission that is already in existence, working with Lisa and our community centers

David PenalozaItem 24

so that we get something up quick and then have that conversation as part of the parks and rec commission for senior citizens and just include that in our overall plan. I'm not sure if I'm making sense. Not sure if Madam city manager, that's something that you could comment on.

Well, certainly. So just first Mayor Pro Tem to speak to the dormant commissions, all departments have been directed to re-institute those meetings. We have the technology nailed down to the extent they have a quorum, they will be resumed at their regular scheduled meetings to make a change to any existing commission that would require if it's a commission that was established by resolution or resolution to add a body. If it was a commission that was established by municipal code, we would need to do an ordinance, but it is something that could be done.

David PenalozaItem 24

Okay. That would be my, my personal suggestion is, is as well as looking at what an additional body would look like, maybe seeing if there's a way that we could add seats to the already established commissions that under parks and rec, where we could add, you know, two senior citizens. I know we have the youth requirements and on the youth commission, I mean, we could say, you know what, we have two seats that are for, you know, residents 60 and up and give them a seat on these boards. Maybe there's another board that could be included

David PenalozaItem 24

in the conversation community development board is a possibility to make sure that there's advocacy for senior citizens at these commission levels. Just an idea, but I'm happy to see numerous different versions or ways that we could include our senior citizens into our program and commissions.

Great, thank you for that. Council member Mendoza.

Yes, included in the direction for staff to further investigate this issue. I want to let you know, and perhaps my colleagues are not aware that the County of Orange Office on Aging has a subcommittee, the Senior Citizen Advisory Committee already established, and I am the representative for the city. So I represent you on that Senior Citizen Advisory Committee. And to the extent

that that's already in place and addressing senior citizen issues throughout the County of Orange, not just in Santa Ana, perhaps we could maybe have another staff on the Senior Citizen Advisory Committee to see about specific issues underlying senior citizen groups here in in santa ana but i just want you to be aware that we already have such uh an advisory committee

and i will report back to to council as soon as we have issues that are that are of significant important importance to the senior citizens here in santa ana so far they've been doing a our our advisory committee has been doing some great great progress in several areas such as making sure that they're not being taken advantage of financial issues and fraud

helping to to sign up for covet testing even though they may not be computer savvy

referrals to for for food for financial assistance for rental assistance and so all of those issues are being addressed and so to the extent that maybe you want to be a little more specific to just santa anna seniors um we could we could have another advisory committee but i just want to ensure that you know that I will be bringing you information on issues that are coming up with our senior citizens through the Office on Aging

and this advisory committee that I sit on.

Great, thank you for those comments, council member. Seeing no other hands, I'll go ahead and say that,

I'm very supportive. Thank you council members Hernandez and Lopez as we're bringing this forward. Why don't we do this? I think you've heard some direction, Madam City Manager, and maybe what you could do is bring back some options, you know, whether it's expanding an existing commission or it's introducing a new one, you know, just seeing what those alternatives would look like. I think we always work well when we have different options to review.

All right, great. Thank you for that. And I think, I guess it's your turn, Madam City Manager, I'll go ahead and call on you for city manager comments. Thank you Mayor just two very brief ones

first I know that we are planning a closed session item so that we'd have the opportunity to sit down and work out priorities for the immediate future just want to let you know that I'm really looking forward to having this meeting and receiving direction on your important priorities and working with all of you to accomplish them. The second announcement is and I know most of you know this is more for anybody else listening but we have extended an offer and it has been accepted so we have a new HR director that will be starting with our city on February 16th and he has boatloads

of government experience from both sides of the negotiating table he has a bachelor's degree in political science a master's degree in negotiation and dispute resolution and if that's not enough he he is also pursuing his PhD. So he'll be coming in on the 16th. So I look forward to introducing him to each one of you. And that's all sir.

Great, thank you, Madam city manager. Let's go on to council member comments. Council member Becerra.

Phil BacerraItem 24

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just wanted to announce that I'm gonna be holding I'm holding my monthly office hours via Zoom this Saturday morning at February 6th at 10 a.m. An email's gone out. I'll be posting it on social media for the Zoom link, but I just, it's a very casual opportunity to chat about any and all city issues that you wanna discuss with me.

Phil BacerraItem 24

I also wanted to congratulate the 2020 Santa Ana Historic Preservation Award recipients and give a shout out to my appointee to the HRC, Alberta Christie, who also serves as the chair. I thought she did a fantastic job in the video and staff did a great job of putting that together. And since we are not gonna meet again until February 16th, I just wanted to conclude my public remarks tonight by wishing my wife, Wendy, a very happy Valentine's day.

Thank you.

Thank you council. Thank you council member. Very smart. Council member Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 24

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I wanted to take this opportunity to just check in with everybody in the city of Santa Ana. I know that we're amidst some very challenging times, and I ask that you remain hopeful and be as patient as you possibly can. And I know that there are some good people here in the city of Santa Ana, our staff and here at the dais that are looking to introduce intersectional good public policies that are going to address the root causes of what we're experiencing today.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 24

This is a process that is going to be rooted in transparency and the responsiveness to residents. And I just wanted to share that those are my priorities for the people here on board five. and I look forward to doing good things in the early first quarter of this year.

Council member, did you want to adjourn in memory of Ms. Edith Gomez? And I know there was, or excuse me, Edith Guzman. And I believe there was somebody else as well. You may want to take this opportunity.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 24

Absolutely, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to take this opportunity to adjourn this meeting in honor of a young lady that I had the honor of growing up beside. Her name was Edith Guzman. She was 23 years old. And I want to send my love and condolences to the Guzman family who live here in Ward 5, right by the Our Lady of the Pillar Church. I grew up playing video games with this family and playing music at their household. And for a lot of us, we came from broken households as kids. So all we had was each other. We'd spend, you know, lots of our days out,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 24

you know, playing Super Smash Brothers, playing video games together. And on January 14th, her life was tragically taken from her. Unfortunately, she was a victim of an attack and was murdered by the 22 freeway. And she was one of my best friend's little sisters. and you never envision seeing the people that you love on the news and getting, you know, a door, you know, your door knocked on at the wee hours of the morning. And it breaks my heart to adjourn this meeting in honor of her because no one should ever have to go through that.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 24

And I also wanted to just send my love to my good friend George and his family. the city of Santa Ana stands with you and we love and we care about you and everybody else who's ever experienced this. I know that grief is not linear. And lastly, I also wanted to adjourn in honor of Kenny Lau from the Santa Ana food market. A lot of people forget that downtown Santa Ana at one point had a beautiful Chinese history and it is often overlooked and forgotten.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 24

And unfortunately, the council that we had in the early 1900s voted unanimously to burn down the small Chinatown that we had due to infection. Folks had contracted the flu, and the council at that time were worried about contracting it to other parts of the community, and they voted to burn it down. And unfortunately, that is a painful part of our history. And the Lao family migrated here from China in the 1930s, and they opened a business here that has been a staple in our ward, Ward 5, and that is the San Ano Food Market.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 24

This location of Bristol and First Street is recognized all across our city.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 24

The Lao family gave many people that I know their first job, and they fed our families. And unfortunately he passed recently and he will, he is gone, but he is not forgotten. And he is a Santa Ana hero in my book. And it is an honor to honor he and his family and adjourn in his memory.

Thank you, council member for that. Council member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 24

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. Well, first and foremost, I just want to send my condolences to the Guzman family and to the Lau family. I would also like to unfortunately, you know, post this meeting in the memory of David Vasquez. David Vasquez, his life mission was to preserve the mother language of Nahua, and during his long journey, he impacted thousands of people of all ages through his Nahua workshops and conferences in churches, community centers, schools, and universities. And for many years, he served as a Nahuatl interpreter

Jessie LopezItem 24

in courts across the country so that people, mostly farm workers had access to a fair trial in their mother language. He always defended the rights of indigenous communities. His contribution was essential in several ways that helped change campaigns to bring dignity and justice to the indigenous community. And David Vasquez spent his last days at home, surrounded by the love of his family. He was proud to call Santana his home since 1989. And so, rest in power, David,

Jessie LopezItem 24

and my condolences to the Vasquez family.

Thank you, council member. Council member Mendoza.

I guess, first of all, condolences to my colleague, Hernandez, on the loss of his young friend. And condolences to the Gomez family, the Lau family, and the Vasquez family.

There's been so much death around us, so tragic. And also I want to shout out a message to all the people of Santa Ana to continue to wear your mask, be safe. And our message is protect Santa Ana. Protege a Santa Ana. Thank you.

Thank you, council member. Council member Pham.

Thai Viet PhanItem 24

So I definitely want to share my condolences with you all and the community. In Vietnamese we have a saying, it's called,

Thai Viet PhanItem 24

which means I share in your grief. I share in that burden and you do that with the community. So I share that. My comments are a little bit more upbeat because as many of you may know, February 12th is a lunar new year and in Vietnamese culture we call that That is our new year. It's our birthday, Christmas, New Year, Hanukkah, all the holidays put into one. It's the most important one of the year. And really what it is about is the celebration of rebirth and spring and joy and good fortune and good health more than anything else. So I want to say, you know, chúc mừng năm mới cho cộng đồng Việt Nam và cộng đồng Santa Ana.

Thai Viet PhanItem 24

Và hy vọng mọi người được sức khỏe dòi dào và làm việc tốt đẹp. like a month and that's it for me.

I love it. Thank you.

David PenalozaItem 24

Mayor Pro Tem, try to follow that man. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Councilwoman Ben for that kind of, you know, sad that all the fun celebrations aren't happening this year. I know we've all participated in them in the past years and definitely looking forward to it next year. But with that said, you know, my condolences to the families of those that we lost. It's been just the last couple of months. I feel like just it's every day I hear of someone being, you know, passing away and it's always a sad, sad situation.

David PenalozaItem 24

But with that said, I have nothing else. Good night. There are, Phil saw his shadow today. So there are six more weeks left of winter. Phil's the groundhog's name, not this Phil, but just see you guys next meeting.

Great, thank you. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. So brief comments on my end. Thank you to staff for everything. A lot of good stuff. Tomorrow we open up our testing facility. Once again, we're going to be helping a lot of people with rental assistance. And so all that is very, very good stuff. I did want to just inform the council that I know that I've been contacted by some of you and members of the public on some issues that we have. And normally we would go to our committees and address some of these issues, but because we don't have them in place,

I'm going to call for a few ad hoc committees to be formed in the interim as we go into our retreat and as we go further in this calendar year, having to do with issues involving housing. One of them, which we know is going to be upon us when we start dealing with the housing element, start dealing with the general plan amendments and start dealing with revisiting things like the housing opportunity ordinance and others and rent stabilization and other topics. The other one is on issues. I know having to deal with the Santa Santa Unified School District.

I know they've been meeting on their end on weekends to talk about issues that they're facing. I know we used to have a joint policy committee with them. So I've contacted a couple of the school board members and they're eager to work with us. So I'll be looking at an ad hoc on, on that issue as well. Hopefully we can revive that so we can have a standing committee. Once again, a joint policy standing committee with the school district, but to the extent that we start off with an ad hoc for a limited purpose and a limited scope, I think that will help. And I think there was a mention by one of the council members

on homelessness as well. So let me know, council members, colleagues, if you are interested in serving on any of those, I'm happy to go ahead and entertain that to make sure nobody's burden is too heavy so we can kind of share that weight amongst us. and see what subject matter areas are of most importance to you. They're all important to all of us, I'm sure, but if there's a special niche area. So that being said, I do want to reiterate and adjourn this meeting in memory of David Vasquez, Edith Guzman, and Kenny Lau. We are adjourned for this meeting, but I believe we are going to reconvene

and actually convene the Housing Authority meeting. So I'll go ahead and adjourn the city council meeting, call the housing authority to order. And I'll ask that Madam Clerk, if you'll please call roll.

Authority member Becerra. Here. Authority member Hernandez.

Here.

Authority member Lopez. Here. Authority member Mendoza. Here. Authority member Fan.

Vice Chair Peñalosa?

Here.

Chair Sarmiento?

Here. Madam Clerk, do we have any speakers for the Housing Authority?

If any member of the public that are listening and would like to speak on the Housing Authority items, please select dial star nine or raise your hand by selecting raise hand on Zoom.

Okay, Mayor, looks like we do not have anyone.

Great, thank you. I'll go ahead and entertain a motion for the consent calendar items. I'll make a motion to approve. Mayor Cervantes.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

I'll second.

We have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, please call roll.

Authority member Becerra. Yes. Authority member Hernandez. Yes. Authority member Lopez. Yes. Authority member Mendoza. Yes. Authority member Fan. Yes. Vice chair Peñalosa.

Yes.

Chair Sarmiento.

Yes. So I will adjourn the housing authority agency meeting is, I guess, are we reconvening the closed session, Madam Clerk?

Yes, Mayor.

And do we shut down on this and then just sign on to the previous Zoom or do we how do we do that just technically?

Yes, that's correct. I think Sonia, city attorney will go ahead and have to open it.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

I will reactivate the closed session Zoom meeting if there are any problems. I will send out a new number but but I believe the one that you had earlier this evening should reopen that meeting.

Very good, thanks. We'll see you in closed session.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

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