Read the February 16 meeting.

Yeah, we can do roll call to make sure it looks like everyone's on.

Are we live, Madam Clerk?

Yes, we are live.

Great. Let me go ahead and just call the meeting to order. Good evening, everybody. We're, apologize for the late start for our open session, but we are going to call this meeting to order. This is the City Council meeting for February 16th, 2021. I'll go ahead and And just start with a disclaimer before we call roll. This is the, actually not a disclaimer, but just the notice that we have to read before every meeting. This is in accordance, calling this meeting to order in accordance with California Governor's Executive Order N-25-20 regarding the Brown Act and guidance in the California Department of Public Health on gatherings.

This meeting is taking place entirely by teleconference via Zoom. The council chambers are closed. The public is accessing the meeting via Santa Ana YouTube channel or the city's website. And the council members and I, along with the city manager, the city attorney, the city clerk, and the executive team, are in different locations. Please bear with us as usual, as our technology may disrupt the flow of the meeting. I will now ask the clerk to call roll.

Council Member Becerra? Here. Council Member Hernandez?

David Penaloza

Here.

Council member Lopez. Here. Council member Mendoza. Here. Council member Fiam. Here. Mayor Pro Tempeñolosa. Here. Mayor Sarmiento.

Here. Thank you. And let me go ahead and turn it over to you, Madam Clerk, to go ahead and discuss the public comments and accessing the meeting, please.

Thank you, Mayor. Anyone who is wanting to make public comments, it will be held during the beginning of the meeting for all comments on agenda, non-agenda items. Comments for,

while we do not have any public hearings at this time, and to request to speak, dial star nine from your phone or virtually raise your hand from Zoom. Please do not call or Zoom to only listen to the meeting. Meetings are broadcast live on Spectrum Channel 3 and AT&T U-verse Channel 99 or youtube.com forward slash Santa Ana library. Thank you mayor. Thank you clerk.

I will now lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance so if you'll all please repeat after me. I pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, everybody. Now I'll turn it over to our police chaplain, Bob Barnett, to lead us in the invocation.

Chaplain Bob Barnett, if you would please dial star six to unmute your call or select the microphone icon to unmute yourself.

Chaplain Bob Barnett, if you would please dial star six or select the microphone, unmute feature on your device.

We're trying to communicate to him to remind him to go ahead and unmute his call. It looks like he has more than one device.

Madam clerk, do you suggest us maybe going to our ceremonial presentations and having the chaplain join us after that? Hopefully when he gets reconnected.

Yes, thank you, mayor.

Okay, let's go ahead and do that as we're connecting with our chaplain. But before I begin, let me go ahead and call on council member Fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 2

Thank you, mayor. As I've stated before in closed session, item two, I was recused from the Santa Ana citizens for responsible development versus city of Santa Ana as my longtime employer, Ratana Tucker represents the city. And so I did not participate in that item and had actually left the zoom call entirely.

Thai Viet PhanItem 2

Thank you.

Thank you, council member. Let's go to the ceremonial presentations. The first one is the oath of office, this video of the oath of office administered to Robin McNair. And this is a council member Becerra's appointee.

One moment, mayor, before we proceed with that, I do have Chaplain Bob Barnett on the line now. If you wanna proceed.

Let's do the invocation then, please.

Thank you. Lord God, we come to you tonight, ask for your blessing and guidance throughout the meeting. We pray for wisdom and the maps at hand, and we ask that, Lord God, you would clearly show great favor to our city, our community through the decisions made tonight and the weeks and months ahead. Thank you, Lord, to the city council members, for the mayor, and for all the public servants that care of our city. And Lord, tonight we particularly pray for our first responders, the police, fire personnel, the hospital staff, Lord God, that are so many people that have grabbed this coronavirus to the city workers and educators

who are so faithfully serving in this very difficult time and lord i do ask if you somehow cause this virus to become weakened in its ability to make people very seriously ill we ask that you cause it to go away in the name of the lord amen

thank you uh chaplain appreciate those words as we get started on this meeting uh let's go back to to the video oath of office for Robin McNair to the arts and culture commission appointed by council member Becerra. Thank you.

One moment as our video engineer shares the screen. And repeat after me.

Aye, please state your name for the record. I, Robin McNair, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies foreign and domestic that I will bear true faith and allegiance that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of...

Please raise your right hand and repeat after me. I, please state your name for the record. I, Robin McNair, do solemnly swear. Do solemnly swear that I will support and defend. that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of the State of California, and the Constitution of the State of California, against all enemies, foreign and domestic, against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States,

to the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of the State of California that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I'm about to enter. Congratulations. Thank you.

Great. Thank you for that.

Congratulations to Ms. McNair. Next presentation is the video oath of office for Isuri Ramos, who is appointed by council member Lopez to the planning commission.

I please state your name. I Isuri Isola Ramos. do solemnly swear i please state your name i israeli ramos do solemnly swear

I, please state your name. I, Isuri Saleramos, do solemnly swear, that I will support and defend, that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of the State of California, and the Constitution of the State of California, against all enemies, foreign and domestic,

that I will bear the true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California, that I will take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of invasion, that I will well and faithfully discharge, that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter. The duties upon which I am about to enter. Congratulations.

That's great. Congratulations, Isuri Ramos and welcome to the planning commission. Next up video of offices to Ylanda Martinez, who was being appointed by council member Lopez to the community development commission.

I please state your name. I, Irlanda Martinez, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear truth, faith, and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California

that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion That I will, that I will, well and faithfully, well and faithfully discharge these duties upon, discharge these duties upon, which I am about to answer, which I am about to answer. Congratulations. Congratulations.

Congratulations, Ms. Martinez. Welcome to the Community Development Commission. And our final video oath of office will be administered to Ray Diaz, who's going on the Youth Commission and appointed by Council Member Hernandez.

Please raise your right hand and repeat after me.

I please state your name.

I Ray Diaz do solemnly swear, do solemnly swear that I will support, that I will support and defend,

and defend the constitution of the United States,

the constitution of the United States

and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic,

that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States

and the Constitution of the State of California that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation,

without any mental reservation, or purpose of evasion, or purpose of evasion, that I will, that I will, well and faithfully, well and faithfully, discharge, discharge, the duties upon which I'm about to enter, the duties upon which I am about to enter. Congratulations. Thank you.

Great. Congratulations, Mr. Diaz. Welcome to the Youth Commission. And our final ceremonial presentation is is Mayor Pro Tem Peñalosa, who's gonna be presenting a certificate of recognition to the Santa Ana Cares Act team for everything that they did for us and continue to do with respect to this pandemic. So I'll turn it over to Mayor Pro Tem.

David PenalozaItem 4

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I am really excited to do this recognition tonight, recognizing our Santa Ana Cares team members that have done an exceptional job throughout the last year almost. It's crazy to think that it's been a year that we've been going through this. But tonight I wanna present to the San Anacare team, who on August 4th, 2020, the San Anacity Council voted unanimously to allow, actually before I begin this, we do have a presentation put together

David PenalozaItem 4

that staff was able to put together before I forget. It's just a quick, you know, a couple slides of that we put together to recognize some of our team members that, you know, were part of the Santa Ana care team. So staff, if you wanna start that slideshow while I go over the talking points. So on August 4th, 2020, the Santa Ana City Council voted unanimously to allocate $28.6 million in federal money toward a massive effort to provide financial and health assistance to members of the Santa Ana community.

David PenalozaItem 4

Affected by the pandemic, some profits and local artists. City staff established COVID-19 testing sites, handed out masks and rolled into neighborhoods and parks with a mobile resource center to bring this aid directly to the people. By December 31st, 2020, the city of Santa Ana had distributed $4,689,415 in business grants to 440 Santa Ana businesses, 2,985,000 in housing assistance programs, grants for landlords and tenants, a million dollars in utility assistance grants

David PenalozaItem 4

to nearly 2000 Santa Ana households, half a million dollars in artists grants to Santa Ana based artists and arts organizations, a quarter of a million dollars in childcare grants to over 220 families, $122,000 in isolation assistance for 81 Santa Ana households with COVID-19 diagnosis. Over 35,000 COVID-19 tests for at-risk populations were provided within the high-rated zip codes in our city is where we would do this.

David PenalozaItem 4

Over 300,000 face masks and other supplies at over 120 Santa Ana neighborhoods and parks and locations. Throughout this, Santa Ana CARES ambassadors were on the front lines in neighborhoods or staffing the CARES hotlines, which took more than 7,500 calls in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese, helping residents access these programs. The success of the Santa Ana CARES program was largely due to the courage, commitment, and outstanding contributions of the team members that are being displayed in the slides right now. We applaud each and every one of you.

David PenalozaItem 4

It was definitely something that was impressive to see. I went out about two or three times early in the morning to set up with the Santa Ana Cares team at a couple of their sites, and I was just impressed at how committed the Cares Ambassador team members were every single one of them would show up to work every morning without hazard pay, you know, and knew the risks that they were doing.

David PenalozaItem 4

We had a lot of Senate employees that turned down the idea of being out in our, you know, these communities and interacting with the public and offering services and tests. but we had many more employees that were willing to volunteer, to change during the day to help out these communities. I know that one of the most exciting things to see was how excited our code enforcement team was, to highlight a few of them.

David PenalozaItem 4

I mean, here you have a team that is constantly going into these neighborhoods for something negative, you know, to to enforce our codes and our laws into these neighborhoods. And now they were knocking on doors to provide services, face masks, rental assistance, COVID testing. So it was definitely a citywide effort, a citywide effort that I don't believe many cities around the country did. I don't know of any off the top of my head that really went to the great extent that we did, but we made sure that we were daily going into these neighborhoods, going into streets,

David PenalozaItem 4

making sure that we went to literally the front doors of our Santa Ana residents. And just to end the recognition, my computer's frozen here, I'm trying to pull up some, you know, the different apartments citywide that participated, you know, everyone from the city attorney's office, the city manager's office, the community development agency, the finance management services agency, human resources, parks and rec, the planning and building agency, public works agency, and the Santa Ana Police Department all played a key role into putting the CARES team together.

David PenalozaItem 4

Daisy Perez and Yesenia Cruz were a big, everyone in the, I wish I could name everybody, but there's over 160 employees. So we'd be here all night if I had to name every one of them. But just very proud to present all of them with the recognition on behalf of the mayor and the the entire city council, I'm sure they're all very thankful for the efforts and the 400,000 San Ana residents, thank you as well. So with that, I will turn it over to you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you for that presentation. Let me just say, look, not enough kind words or words of gratefulness can be extended to all of our employees whose names you saw scrolling on the screen. You know, they're part of our city family, but each one of them has a family of their own. So when they went out and did work, you know, they ran the risk of bringing something home to their own families. And so they really, you know, did something extraordinary. I think when we, you know, later when we reflect back on what was done, we'll reflect back on this

effort. And, you know, and thank you, Madam City Manager, for leading that really unorthodox way of approaching this problem. And I think, again, as was said, very few communities, very few agencies would venture out and do something as, you know, as challenging as this because, you know, the city was just so overwhelmed and it continues to be, you know, a very, you know, high hotspot for these cases of positivity of COVID-19. But to the extent that other communities have seen what we've done, I've seen others try to do the same. They've called me and said, how did you guys do this?

What was delivered? And how did you accomplish this? So I think this will live on as sort of a legacy and a testament to our commitment to our residents that we as a city have. So thank you for that presentation. And that's a nice lead in to the next item, which is the COVID-19 update for the community that'll be done by our city manager.

Thank you, Mayor and good evening, Mayor and Council members. I'm going to attempt to share my screen.

So if you would not, Can you see the COVID-19 update presentation?

Okay, now let me start.

Tonight I wanna give you an update on some partnering that we did with UCI where we did serology testing to get better information on our community. And then as always, I wanna give you an update on vaccination and testing efforts in the city.

So I'll start with the information with UCI. So what we did is we engaged an antibody and serology study and we did so that we could learn more about our community and how prevalent COVID-19 was in our community. This would accurately depict the true prevalence unlike the test because it's likely that individuals that had minor or no symptoms may never seek care or testing. So the antibody tests were done to paint a better picture as to how prevalent it was within our community. So UCI is who we partnered with, and they used a stratified random sampling

to randomly select households across our city and to gather a representative sample. That will allow for statistically significant findings. And this is how they went about recruiting the individuals that volunteered to have their finger print. They did mail postcards, door-to-door outreach, additional outreach through Latino health access they had community health workers to reach the Vietnamese community they printed handouts at targeted gathering places such as grocery stores and they definitely had a large digital presence as well and then utilized any news channels and public

radio they administered the antibody testing at four locations Santa Ana high school Valley high school Saddleback high school and Centennial Park The testing was available drive-through or walk-up, and it was a quick finger-prick blood test. And we did have them answer a few survey questions about their public health behaviors related to COVID-19 about the household demographics. Participants did receive a $10 gift card for participating in the study.

study. And over the three week study period, 3,218 Santa Ana residents consented into the study and provided the unique survey responses and blood specimens. The study population comprised of 88% adults and 12% children. 61% of the study population was female and 39% were male. All of the residents studied out of all of them studied 27% tested positive for COVID antibodies. This is significantly higher than what you find in the county which is a prevalence

rate of only 12%. We put together a map and it just shows where the prevalence of COVID by zip code the darker the color that is where there is a higher prevalence than the lighter colors.

Some of the data that we also learned is that the Hispanic residents had the highest prevalence proportion 29%. The prevalence of antibodies among those identifying as Asian was 15%. Among non-Hispanic white residents, it was 12%. And in Santa Ana, what this means is Hispanics are 2.24 times more likely to have had COVID than non-Hispanic.

They dove in a little bit further and got some more information and what it showed us in the study is that individuals that are working outside of their home, they have a greater risk of contracting COVID-19. When drilling down into the different work sectors, we saw that the critical manufacturing and food sectors have a higher COVID positivity rate when compared to healthcare and education.

Going a little bit deeper, among the children, those who had previously attended school but had stopped, less than half of the antibody prevalence of those who had not attended school at all during the pandemic. So in other words, children who had never attended school during the pandemic had 2.38 times greater antibody prevalence than those who had attended school, but then subsequently stopped. There was no difference in antibody prevalence for children currently attending school. So you might ask, what are we going to do with all of this data?

So the city is appreciative of the partnership with UCI Irvine, and the detailed findings from the study are going to help us guide through the COVID-19 recovery efforts, which include education and engagement to encourage positive public health behaviors, as well as effective resource allocation to make sure we reach our most disproportionately impacted residents. The results of the study will also help inform vaccine hesitancy. A real-time example is a COVID-19 online chat that UC Irvine recently launched for questions and general information about COVID.

One of the core components of the online chat is to share factual information about the COVID-19 vaccine and dispel myths. The online chat is available in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Hindi, and Korean, and is staffed by a live person seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

So we do have a full report from UCI that we will be making public if any member of the public wants to see it or if you elected officials, you would like to read more in depth of the study. It was some really fascinating information that I think will definitely assist us when we direct our future resources. So shifting over to vaccines, under your leadership, you gave me direction to roll out testing, but also do everything I could to try to partner to get vaccines to our city. And we now have vaccines happening in our city. I first wanna talk a little bit about how the vaccines get distributed into the county.

Just for those that are listening in that may not know, the city does not receive any vaccines directly. So the vaccines are coming in through the federal government directly, which has contracts with different pharmacy chains and does the vaccination of those individuals residing in long-term care facilities. Then also the state of California distributes vaccines directly, and they distribute directly to multi-county or the regional hospitals. And those hospitals can ensure that they get the healthcare workers vaccinated. And then the county of Orange receives a share of vaccine.

So there's already multiple people being distributed. So the county share of vaccines are limited by what the state has available. Through the amount the county receives, they do provide directly to those hospitals that are smaller than the regional hospitals that didn't get a direct allocation. They also supply the quantity to community clinics, independent healthcare providers, and local pharmacies. And then they reserve some of them, which is a smaller percentage than what you would think, for them to deploy at the county pods and to vaccinate the general public that meets the eligibility requirements

for the current phase that we're in. So right now, the phase that we're in, Anybody that is over age 65 is a healthcare worker or a long-term care resident. They're eligible to receive vaccinations currently. And how can you get vaccinated? So this is important instructions for everyone. Eligible individuals in Orange County, the county has its own app to schedule appointments. And that is www.authena.com. and that's where you can go on and you can make an appointment. If you're eligible, you will also get a notice as to a time and appointment and a location.

You can go on to Athena and fill it out if you're not eligible and they will notify you. But another step that you can do is if you're not eligible right now, you can go to myturn.california.gov. The state deployed an app after the county did and it's called myturn.ca.gov. And that's one where you also could register, even if you're not eligible. And when you do become eligible, when that phase opens up, you will get a notice for an appointment. So more locally, we have fabulous news. The county is doing a pod. It's not gonna be a super psych pod,

but it's about a thousand vaccines a day. It can accommodate and it will be open tomorrow. It is by appointment only, so nobody should just show up because you won't be able to receive a vaccination. It is at Santa Ana College. I was able to tour it today and it's pretty fantastic what they have set up. You might notice in the picture that that is our own Chief Henry. He is our chief that works for OCFA and he was the one that was sent down and helped organize the Soka University pod, but he's back now in our city and he is running the pod site at Santa Ana College.

A couple of unique things about it. They take individuals by walking through. These all have to be individuals with appointments. When you pull into the site, if you have an ADA placard in your car, you get directed through that second picture. Those tents, those are drive-through tents. So if you have ADA placard, you get to go through a drive-through site and not have to do any walking or transportation for a long period of time. If you do not have an ADA placard, you get directed to another parking lot. And that top picture with the orange gates, that's where you line up based on your appointment times.

And then you snake around the college. And if you're a walk-in, you will be taken indoors where after you check in, you will be vaccinated. So they are hoping they can do at least about 240 an hour. Their experience at Soka, they did exceed 300 an hour. And once again, the desire is to do at least 1,000 a day, provided that the vaccine quantities are available to them.

In addition, we also have other sites that are up and running in Santa Ana. And these are being conducted by the Tino Health Access. This is a phone number where you can find out more information. There are smaller sites and they really are targeting those age 65 and older that are in the immediate area. So if you want any more information on those, Latino Health Access, you can call. Once again, their site is also by appointment only. We continue to actively monitor vaccine distribution news and we will share updates as soon as more news becomes available.

We did have a very good call with Memorial Care, which is one of the healthcare agency that also receives a direct allocation of vaccines. And we're hoping that by partnering with them, we'll be able to bring even additional vaccination sites to our city. Now, I know you're going to ask about testing. So what we had to do is when Santa Ana College was selected to be converted to vaccinations, we shifted our testing contractor 360 clinic to five kiosks across the city for our residents to get tested. So the testing locations are listed on the screen. They do have different days and

different hours. So the best thing if you want to find out when there is one convenient for you to go get tested is you can call 1-800-446-8888.

They also do schedule appointments and to schedule appointments I know I've been giving you a lot of different websites but the website to schedule an appointment for testing at at one of these five kiosks is on the screen. It's sna.epiconnector.com backslash COVID. That is my standing update for tonight. Certainly if you have any questions, I'd be more than happy to answer them.

Great. Thank you, Madam city manager. So look, I don't want it to get lost in all the information that was provided to us, But it really is incredible news that we have as much vaccines now going to be coming into Santa Ana because for a while there, even as recent as a couple of weeks ago, it was a different story. And I know that to have the Santa College site open up tomorrow, over the weekend I was at Valley High School and they were vaccinating people there.

you know, more rolling out discussions with Memorial care hospital. And, you know, these are the things that I think we all were talking about. And I want to thank a lot of the residents and, you know, advocates who were out there, you know, on calls and just basically urging whoever we could, whether it was the county, whether it was the governor's office, anybody who could impact the ability to send vaccines to Santa Ana. I saw a lot of people write letters. I saw a lot of people speak out, go to meetings and just say and compel,

you know, those that had the discretion to help us at least provide the vaccines here in the city. So I just want to say thank you to everybody who did that, for everybody who wrote a letter, it for everybody who posted something for everybody who uh you know made their voices heard that Santa Ana needed to have vaccines well I think we you know people finally listened and I think um you know we're our residents are going to be for the better for it so um thank you for that presentation I'm not sure if anybody has any comment I wanted to you know bring in Chief

Valentin for maybe just a minute if he's on on the call um because I know that as we talk about just, you know, the impact of, you know, COVID, we still have very positivity in the city. It's still very dangerous. You know, things are looking better. There's vaccines now, but, you know, mission not accomplished yet. So I wanted him to talk a little bit about compliance because I know we had an issue over the weekend that many of us were copied with actually a weekend before last where there was an event in the downtown. And I think

You know, a lot of people were kind of alarmed and, you know, it was something that, you know, was unsettling. But I think it was, you know, hopefully an isolated case because what we want to do is we want to support businesses. And I think that's where, you know, the city manager and her staff have been trying to be as accommodating as possible to businesses to open up outside to, you know, try to make sure that they're able to conduct business and do commerce and be able to provide jobs for their employees. but we want to avoid large events and large gatherings where, you know, it could turn into, you know,

a more chaotic super spreader event. And that's not what we want. That's not how we help our businesses. In fact, we damage them that way because you know, we get people ill and numbers start going up and it makes it longer and more difficult to open up. So that and on compliance, how we're doing, maybe you can give us some, some of your thoughts chief on that real quickly.

Sure. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, City Council and City Manager and everyone listening. Great presentation as we heard. And I think we can't really move away from the fact that we're not out of this pandemic. And so we still have in place state orders, our own city orders that prevent some of this activity from occurring. And so we are responding to calls for service. If we receive a call, we encourage the public to call us We will respond. Some police agencies did not, we are. And we obviously seek voluntary compliance, educate folks.

But if not, we will move to the direction of actually documenting what has occurred. And we've partnered with code enforcement to make sure that we can address any concerns through the permit process, current and future, because it's important that we stay the course. And I think that's really the message here, you know, abiding by the orders and the medical advice that we need to continue, even if folks are vaccinated. The direction is to continue to wear masks, continue to social distance, and then the personal hygiene.

So I would encourage folks that, you know, we're all in this together, and so we need to support our commerce and our residents. And the way we do that is to comply with the existing orders that have not gone away because this is not over yet. So as great news as it is to have continued testing and now the vaccination, we need to make sure that we do our part individually and collectively. Thank you. Mayor, I believe staff does have leading right into that of Protect Santa Ana video if you would like to share that at this time.

Great.

Hi, I'm Vicente Sarmiento, Mayor of the City of Santa Ana.

Reminding you to put on your mask, stay a physical distance away from one another when in public, wash your hands completely, and please join us in protecting Santa Ana. Thank you.

Protect Santa Ana.

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Santa Ana for me. Protect Santa Ana for me.

This is our city. Protect Santa Ana. Protect Santa Ana.

Great. Thank you, Madam City Manager, and thank you council members for joining in on that. And one of the things I can say is that our partnerships with the school district and college board with Latino health access, with this network of people who are helping is incredible. So thank you all for participating and doing what you can to make sure we address the pandemic we're living in right now. And it looks like things are getting better. and thank you for that update Madam city manager and chief Valentin. So let's go ahead and move on to the next item,

which is Madam city attorney. Do you have anything to report out from closed session or any council members report any abstentions? I think council member fan already reported out her abstentions. So I think it's, if there's anything else to report out.

No, just the council did discuss two items in closed session and direction was given to staff, but there was no reportable action under the Brown Act.

Great. Thank you for that. And so now this is now the time for the city council to receive any public comments or any written communication. So I'll go ahead and turn it over to the clerk so she can go ahead and call on those who are waiting to be heard.

Thank you, mayor and council members. There are speakers ready to provide their comments to request to speak, please dial star nine from your phone or virtually raise your hand from Zoom. Please do not call or Zoom to only listen to the meeting. Before unmuting callers, I'd like to begin by reporting the following summary of emails provided to us as of today. For item number 19, we did receive one comment, parking structure operator against the two-hour free parking in downtown. Item 20, there were eight comments total, seven Santa Ana residents in support of the item and in favor of Athens services

and one by Republic services requesting that they be included as one of the vendors. Item 21, one Santa Ana resident in support of the item, non-agenda, three regarding the patches and pin event and one Santa Ana resident requested for moratorium on all parking citations. And with that, caller ID, Zoom ID, Gary Clifford, if you would please dial star six, if you're using a phone.

I've unmuted.

Wonderful, thank you. You may proceed.

And I'm on item number 20. So let me know when I can start.

You may begin, thank you.

Good evening, I'm Gary Clifford, and I submitted the Athens RFP to this city council. The Athens family of employees is proud of this opportunity and we work very hard to give you and your residents the very best deal. Your staff report indicates that Athens is the best value for Santa Ana when including our discounted street sweeping opportunity. Athens is the only company being considered that proposes the lower monthly rates for Santa Ana residents and the highest ranked company for services indicated by your reference checks. Athens has an impeccable service and safety record of one of the best in the industry.

Your city's waited 28 years for this opportunity, the opportunity to have competitive forces in Santa Ana. Athens, your current street sweeping partner has also been waiting for this opportunity to present to you, the city council, a reduction in your waste hauling fees and improvement in your service level. Athens is a local family owned company, one large enough to have the resources of a national hauler, but small enough to give you the white glove family service. Please take the time to look at the value Athens will add to your community.

We will improve your current waste hauling and street sweeping and by combining these forces, you will create a synergy that no other company can match. Remember, the RFP process is designed to reduce your citizens costs, not increase them. Athens is the only company that stepped up and did just that. By choosing Athens, you get the lowest residential rate and a great COVID savings for all your citizens, the lowest commercial barrel rate and organic rate, an outstanding community benefits agreement, coordinated waste hauling and street sweeping, which reduces parking restrictions and increases parking in your neighborhoods.

A fresh new look at waste and recycling by a local family owned company. Local customer service reps answering phones in Santa Ana and our customer service center is only 20 miles away. We are a hyper local company headquartered in Irvine. More attention for your commercial customers with an influx of 50 recycling coordinators and a focus on the 50 plus active neighborhood associations. outstanding environmental programs and outreach in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese. Athens is the best in putting our communities first.

We bring brand new equipment, lower prices, outstanding programs, jobs, and a fresh new perspective on serving your community. Remember, I'm not just saying this, our references prove it. Our Athens family of employees thank you for this opportunity and your consideration. We do it the Athens way, putting our service first by employing outstanding people and creating a dynamic, safe and clean environment. Please consider Athens. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Zoom ID, Andrew Blankenship, if you would please select star six or unmute your call. Thank you.

I am unmuted.

You may proceed with the comment.

So I have a notice that was given to me by the city for a notice to vacate for 316 West 4th Street. So we were notified of the building code enforcement shutting the building down.

and we wanted to know what our next steps should be for for receiving our

for receiving our assistance for moving and for expenses for not just moving but for finding

another place to run it.

Mr. Blankenship, this is your opportunity to address the council on any items and anything that's not on calendar as you are. This isn't really meant to be an exchange between the council or staff with you, but you can make your comments for the record. Please go on.

So I'm honestly not sure how to go about this, but this is my first city council meeting that I've attended. So please bear with me while I try to gather my thoughts.

So this notice says that the building will be hammer shut on the 28th at 4pm. So it's not enough time for us to vacate the premises. So I was wondering what we could do about that.

You know, if I could interrupt, because you only have three minutes, I don't want to waste any of your opportunity to speak, Mr. Blankenship. And I know there are some other callers that are calling about this item or this property. is there anybody, can I direct the city manager, if you can have somebody from planning and building, maybe contact the callers and members of the public who are reaching out for clarity or further information on this, if that makes sense.

That would be great. So city clerk, can you capture the names and the number and we will have someone follow up. We do have referrals and people that can assist the dislocated tenants.

So those members of the public who are calling in for the same item, if you would please send an email to city clerk at santa-anna.org. I do not have access to view your account information other than the name displayed on your Zoom. So I cannot contact you. You'll have to reach out to us. Again, if you can just send an email to city. Okay.

So it's city clerk at santa-anna.org.

Correct.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Zoom ID, Sandra, if you would please dial star six or select the microphone icon on your device.

Oh yes, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. If you have another device that you're listening to, please mute that device so that you can speak into the meeting.

Yes, thank you. We've muted that device. Is that better?

Much better, thank you.

Okay, wonderful, thank you. Yes, my name is Sandra Sion and I'm calling about the same issue. It's the order to vacate the property at 316 West 4th Street.

And the CDHF properties right now, to our understanding has other buildings that are in the exact same situation. You know, we feel that the owner and the employees of CDHF are not acting in good faith. There's continued harassment. There is attempts by the property owners not to tell the tenants what is, what they're actually legally entitled to. They'll say you're entitled to nothing or they'll try to give us less than they're supposed to under the law we we need a third party to intervene and make sure that we will get the payments that code enforcement has stated

according to California legal rental code that we are entitled to and we also need extra time to leave we've been told by management that the entrances to the buildings will be nailed shut with wood as of 4 p.m on February 28th it's not enough time we just found out about this late afternoon on February the 9th. And it's just not enough time to get going. There's there's we haven't even been given any money yet. I know that there are several among us who didn't even get our security or the last half of February's rent money back unless we were willing to sign a paper stating that we would hold the AHS.

They would not be responsible for any any other actions or the conditions they made us live in in this building. and another situation we have also is that we were told the building's being shut down for hazardous conditions according to my understanding of law the we are we are entitled to know what those hazardous conditions are exactly and exactly what hazardous instance we've been exposed to I've been here over two years and I'm very concerned what detrimental effects this might I'm out of my health.

Thank you for your comment. and caller with Zoom ID Elizabeth Ramirez, if you would please dial star six or select the unmute microphone option on your device. Thank you, you may proceed to speak. Can you hear me okay? Yes, I could hear you.

Great, good evening, honorable mayor and members of the city council. My name is Liz Ramirez and I'm the director of government affairs for Athens services. I'm here tonight to express my excitement and enthusiasm for the process you are embarking on in developing a new waste and recycling program for Santa Ana. As you all know, the city's waste and recycling agreement is probably one of the largest contracts the city has. There are so many aspects to a program like this, areas that extend beyond the actual act of solid waste collection, all that can have a major impact on your community.

We understand this at Athens and we put together a proposal that focused on how we can be the best community partner for Santa Ana. As your current street sweeping provider for the past nine years, we have become very familiar with your streets and different neighborhoods and believe that our approach and partnership will help improve the quality of life for residents. We recognize that the community is constantly faced with parking challenges. orchestrating the removal of waste barrels in the street and the immediate sweeping of debris all

managed by the same Athens staff will provide much needed efficiencies to help minimize parking impacts on service days we recognize that your community like many others in Southern California have been impacted by COVID and we approached our rate proposal with that in mind our proposal will put money back into the pockets of residents we want to be a strong economic partner for the city and are more than willing to discuss ways to partner to transform blighted areas in town. We are committed to opening a hauling yard and sustainability center in Santa Ana and are committed to creating local jobs by hiring Santa Ana residents first.

Athens takes pride in our employees, provides many opportunities for professional development and offers great benefits to employees and their family, such as full medical coverage for employees and dependents at no cost to the employee. We also believe that all purchases made for this contract should originate in the city. So the city can benefit from the sales tax revenue that will be generated from the major capital purchases under this contract. In fact, we would love the opportunity to collaborate and explore ways which we can develop additional community benefits. We are in it for the long haul.

And I believe the reference checks that were completed as part of the RFP evaluation are a testament to our commitment to the communities we service. There really are a lot of important and exciting opportunities for the city to consider in selecting your long-term waste and recycling partner. I really think that continuing to negotiate with Athens will be a big benefit to the city of Santa Ana. Thank you very much for your consideration.

Thank you.

Caller with the last three numbers, 063. please dial star six to speak or select the microphone icon on your device.

Caller with the last three numbers 063. If you would please dial star six on your phone

or select the microphone icon on your device.

Madam Clerk.

Yes, thank you.

Well, good evening, Mayor Sargent, and the Honorable City Council. Mike Johnson here, Government Relations Manager for Republic Services. I'm here to speak to item 20 on tonight's agenda. My company has also submitted a letter for public comment. We would respectfully ask that Republic Service be included with the list of companies to negotiate with the city for the recycling services franchise agreement. In doing so, the city and the ratepayers will benefit by negotiating with Republic Services. Two, the city and the rate payers will have the second lowest overall cost.

We propose that we'd be willing to move rates around within the framework of this pricing. We could adjust the residential rate, for example, to complement our low multifamily rate. And we are one of only two companies with available permitted transfer and processing capacity. In relation to cost, CRNR is currently being recommended as the top candidate with the highest cost. This has not been the best interest of the rate payers. We believe we should be given the opportunity to negotiate with the city, as we're the most viable provider with regards to overall price and available permitted capacity within the county.

Regarding cost, again, Republic Services has the second lowest overall cost at $58,108,000, as compared to the highest service provider, CRNR, at $60,799,000. If there's a particular rate the city thinks is too high, we did indicate in our proposal that we would be willing to adjust if the overall revenue remained the same. Republic services and waste management are the only companies with available permitted transfer and processing capacity in Orange County. One of the service providers being recommended to negotiate with the city, Athens, does not have any infrastructure in the county

and has not negotiated any terms at Republic's CVT facility as their proposal indicates. Is it feasible that Athens would be able to complete a transition of services for a city the size of Santa Ana given that they have zero current infrastructure by the July 1, 2022 date? One of the service providers, CRNR, is proposing to build a new material recovery facility which given the permitting and regulatory hurdles will certainly not be completed in the required timeline. The CEQA review alone on this could take years.

To close, Republic Services believes that keeping our company in the negotiation process will lead to the best possible outcome for Santa Ana residents. Both in regards to pricing and permitted capacity to handle the job. We have 10,000 permitted daily tons of capacity in Orange County. If nothing else, we ask that the city keeps us in the process to leverage this regional asset that we alone possess. Republic wants what's best for the city and the environment to meet Cal Recycle Requirements. Our dedicated local employees respectfully ask that the mayor and honorable counsel include our company in the final negotiations.

I'll be available for questions.

Thank you.

Caller with the last three numbers, 477, please dial star six on your device or select. Thank you. You've successfully unmuted your call.

Yes, this is Dale Heldig, 31 year resident of Santa Ana. Good evening, mayor, council members and city staff. I'm calling regarding item 21,

requesting that you create an ordinance for minimum security staffing for commercial shopping centers. Kathleen from the South Coast Neighborhood Association wrote a very concise observation, and hopefully you will have a chance to read it if you haven't already done so. It essentially details why this may need to occur in certain shopping centers throughout Santa Ana. Conditions down there sound pretty deplorable. I also request that you include

abandoned commercial properties like 2525 North Main Street, which also could use security. That building itself is, as you know, occupied right now by homeless people. They've broken the windows, the red tag building and everything else. And demolition by neglect is not an option. security should be provided for buildings like that and other facilities in Santa Ana that are also sitting there abandoned and in neglect. So please consider that tonight when you discuss it.

I also wanna put on your radar Senate Bill, State Senate Bill 9 and State Senate Bill 10, which deal with zoning changes, changing a single family zoning to a fourplex or an eightplex unit. I think we need to take a serious look at that before it gets too far down the road in Sacramento. So keep up the good work in addressing the COVID pandemic. Appreciate everything that you guys are doing and stay safe. Thank you.

Thank you.

Zoom ID, Sheena Inocente, if you would please dial star six or select the microphone icon on your device.

Hi, thank you. Appreciate it. Hi, my name is Sheena Inocente and I'm a long time resident. Hi, can I be heard now? Yes. Okay. Hi, my name is Sheena Inocente and I'm a long time resident of Orange County and a social worker and i have a friend that lives at the fourth street property where it's been deemed unsafe for residents to live so i've been doing some legal research on this and i'm concerned because i believe that the there was not a certificate of occupancy and there's some legal precedent in the case grusin versus henry 1978 where the landlord

could be liable to pay the tenants back for all the months they paid rent because the lease was void. I believe that the tenants would wrongfully assume that the accommodations were safe and there could be long-term detrimental impacts on their health because of the conditions. I am also upset that the city and the county has ignored affordable housing for so long that our residents are vulnerable to this type of exploitation. This property has been around for well over 10 years and there's proof that the city knew about it because in 2015 a woman was murdered there and And there was all kinds of newspaper coverage on that.

And it was listed as an apartment building. Even the police said it was that when everybody knew it wasn't, it was never meant to be an apartment or residential building. This has been under the city's radar for over 10 years. And all of a sudden now people are being displaced in the middle of a pandemic. And I believe the residents are owed a lot more than two months of fair market rent, which is what a letter that was sent to them said with council member Jonathan Ryan Hernandez, his name attached to it. And I think it's really shady that he would try to get these tenants to accept

maybe thirty six hundred bucks when they're owed a lot more than that. And I hope these tenants organize and get an attorney. And I hope that they take this landlord for all they can, because this is wrong. And the city knew about it. And there's proof of that. And this is really wrong. And people's lives are affected by this, their health. And we need affordable housing. We need affordable housing so bad and we need subsidized housing. This is a human right issue. and this is gonna continue to be a liability in the city as long as the issue is ignored.

That's all I have to say, thank you.

Thank you.

Zoom ID, Jim Smith, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device, thank you. You may proceed with your comment.

Yes, good evening, Mayor, Council members and city staff. My name is Jim Smith, political coordinator for Teamsters Local 396, representing waste and recycling workers throughout Southern California, including those who proudly currently service the city of Santa Ana, even at great risk to their own health and that of their families in this time of COVID. I come before you this evening to raise concerns that we have with two of the three finalists that have been recommended in the staff report for further consideration for the city's waste

and recycling contract. While we have no issue with Waste Management, who is the city's current hauler and who are a fair union employer providing good jobs at competitive wages and benefits, the same cannot be said for the two other finalists, Athens and CRNR. Unfortunately, those two haulers both have a long history of engaging in anti-union practices and of failing to provide decent wages, benefits, and retirement security for their employees. We ask that Athens and CRNR be replaced in the final round of bidding by Republic Services and where disposal, two good union haulers who like waste management

have a stellar record of serving the Orange County community for many decades. Thank you.

Thank you.

Zoom ID Victor Mendez, if you would please dial star six or select the unmute microphone option. Thank you, you successfully unmuted.

Yeah, am I unmuted? You're unmuted, you may proceed. All right, yes, thank you. Yeah, this is Victor Mendez. I'm calling mainly about the 316 West Forth building and the conditions, I'm a resident there. And I think I'm not gonna spare the council the details because I think most of you know what's going on, but I just wanna reiterate about the issue with this landlord. And we have witnessed the landlord or his representative taking away the letters that were sent out to us. This afternoon code enforcement came by to reissue letters again, and we saw the same thing happening. So we were not dealing with an ethical attorney.

You are also aware of the waivers that he's making people sign as a way to get them out of the building and avoid all costs. I think I heard the other caller about another situation. I too am wondering how this can happen, but we'll see the how and everything for later. We do need help and we do need action, namely around making sure our money's paid, getting any assistance from an attorney to oversee this process, case management, not just a referral on affordable housing and any other assistance and also trying to extend this deadline. I'm 62 years old. I don't got it. I can't move that quick. Okay.

And there's some other things going on, which I'll spare you, but the 28th is very, very hard. It's a very difficult thing, at least for me and our other senior citizens here as well. And we've been exploited. Along that way, I personally am pursuing criminal charges against this landlord for fraud against a senior citizen. And I do have a DFEH case against him for discrimination, which is filed before this all occurred. I do want to comment on some response from the city. I wish to actually thank Councilman Hernandez for what he's doing for us and trying to do and do right by these citizens and residents.

And we all appreciate his effort today. However, we do feel quote enforcement has been lax in this situation. And I'm frankly not impressed with a lot of things that have happened. Secondly, I tried calling police department on another matter related to this. And they told me they can do nothing until something does occur. That was the response I got from the dispatcher. I really need some help in trying to get the police more responsive to our circumstances. Lastly, I just like to comment on, so give me a little rope here Vince, on item 18, the pension fund. Please look at the city of Fresno.

They have their own employee retirement system and they also have pension bond obligations. Separated employee retirement systems are not unusual here in California. There are about 77 of them and with different sizes and representing different units. You know, Orange County Employee Retirement System is a separate retirement system. And with this, you can maybe control your investment strategy and try to get to that target of 5% versus having to accept CalPERS investment strategy, which is around 7% and try to avoid the risks that was talked about earlier. Lastly, the list of cities that were presented

to you, when I reviewed that list, that list, none of them really fit the risk profile of what the city's like. So that list may look compelling, but as you get behind it, and they're not really apples to oranges. So please proceed with due diligence and dispatch on this issue. We can talk about this, there'll be more to say on this, but please, Mr. Hernandez, thank you. Mr. Mayor, we beg you to help us. This is a very hard situation for a lot of people. I know a lot of people are having a lot of problems and are being harassed and their rights are bridged at this time.

And so we need some help to get through the next two weeks or perhaps beyond. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you. Caller with the last three numbers, 688. Please dial star six to unmute your call or select. Thank you. You've successfully unmuted your call.

Hello. Yes, my name is Alex Molinero. I also live at 316 West 4th Street. And I just wanted to add my voice to the other voices that are expressing their concerns in regarding to CDHF management teams, handling of the building's closure due to dangerous and substandard conditions. I myself was offered $500 to leave early, was asked to sign a waiver waiving liability of CDHF for any future or previous actions in which they have done. And I have refused at which case that's when they offered the $500 to leave early that happened.

So they, on the 11th is when I attempted to receive my security deposit and the money that was owed to me between the 10th and the 28th, as they had put in their notice that we were not going to be charged for that rent and it was either funded to us. And then that's when they offered the liability paper. when I refused. It didn't take until yesterday until the current manager, Pablo Zetina, came and we agreed to meet. And that is when he told me that they would offer me $500 to leave early. And he said, if I could just sign the waiver liability and just scratch it off where

it said about the liability portion and just say that I received my money back. I also refused because I did not feel like that would be a good idea. I told them they can make their own, a whole new one, not including the liability portion. I have yet to hear back from them. And then today I just received a notice stating that I am, I am, what's the word? Ode money for the cost and cost at the expense of CDHF. I should have received this the day of that the city red tag, the property on the ninth, but we did not. that we suspect that CDHF had their employees removed the notices,

enter the rooms with everybody unlawfully and remove the notices.

Somehow someone got wind of this, possibly told code enforcement about this issue. So they came today, code enforcement came today this afternoon, which I finally received this notice saying that I received relocation, owed money to me. And because of that, I have lost a week of money that I could have used to maybe find another place. Therefore, I think it would be fair to add more time past the 28th to compensate for CDHS bad faith actions and trying to keep this notice hidden from us as a tenant.

And yes, I also just want to echo that we'd like to have an overseer of this matter, making sure that we do get our money without having to sign anything. And to just help us out in this situation,

as well as, yeah, I just also just wanted to also express my discontent with code enforcement and that this was not addressed before. Thank you.

Zoom ID Perla Dionisio, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device. Thank you. You've successfully unmuted yourself. Thank you so much. My name is Perla Dionisio and

I'm a longtime Sanana resident educator, grassroots organizer, and a proud member of Chicanos Unidos. As always, I am here to remind you, our public servants, that you all have a duty to serve the people, not landlords, not gentrifiers, not developers, not money, and contract-hungry labor unions. And most definitely, not your pocketbooks. It is very obvious that city employees, city officials, and council doesn't care about the safety and ongoing brutal displacement of Santa Ana residents. The gross negligence that has been shown in the way that most nights,

Downtown Santa Ana restaurants and bar have been operating without a glitch. And regardless of the over 500 calls your useless COVID hotline has received, is what led to the super spreader event on February 6th, hosted by Patches and Pimps. The fact that their January 18th event brought over 5,000 people out is another example of how downtown lacks leadership, morals, and accountability. Tonight, I asked Mayor Sarmiento and other members of City Council to assist residents at the 312 to 316 West 4th Street residents. These residents have been given

until the end of this month to vacate 33 single living units. The reason for this is because the building has been deemed uninhabitable by the OC Fire Authority. Some of these residents have been living there for over 10 years and it is obvious that the city and fire department were aware of of these tenants as prior inspections have been done. Furthermore, there was a tragic death of a woman at 316 West 4th Street. According to an article by KTLA, emergency responders from OC Fire Authority and SA Pig D conducted an investigation to the domestic dispute that costed a young woman's life.

City and fire officials overlook the fact that these living facilities were not adequate and goes to show the gross negligence that Santa Ana residents face on the daily. A building with no windows, no fire alarms, no residential code permits was was the scene of a violent crime. And at that point, no one worried about the safety of these tenants livelihoods, much less their safety. Over three years later and in the middle of this brutal COVID pandemic, these residents are being evicted. I would like to point to a council member Hernandez's involvement in all of this as it has been brought to the community's attention

that he is involved in trying to get residents to take the two months of rent that the landlord is offering residents to vacate. Whereas on regard to the tenant relocation assistance, article 2.5 of the California legislation states that residents shall be entitled to receive relocation benefits from the owner. In addition, this article also states that local enforcement agency shall determine the eligibility of tenants for benefits pursuance to this article. This landlord actually spent today in the building offering residents $500 cash to move out. We urge that residents and communities concerns are addressed immediately.

And I would like city officials to invoke the Brown Act and obtain communication information that Council Member Hernandez has had with this landlord, tenants, and fire authority. given his problematic history with gentrification and labor unions and his disregard for Santa and residents who are negatively affected by the colonial violence that is gentrification.

Caller Zoom ID, Alberta, Christie, if you would please select the microphone icon. Thank you. You've successfully muted your phone. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you.

Thank you. Thank you all. Mayor and council members, thank you so much. I'm still getting used to this Zoom stuff. Now that's for sure. But anyway, I would like to talk on your item number 21 by Councilman Becerra. You know, we're getting back where we're trying to get everything back to normal. And one of the things that we're trying to do is encourage people to go out and shop in our Santa Ana, in our city.

I don't know about you, but in my neighborhood over here by Valley Avenue, I have had more Amazon Prime deliveries in our neighborhood area, more UPS, more FedEx. And so I look at it and I look at our population over here and we do have seniors. And I asked them, why are we having in my neighbors so many deliveries? They would say, number one, we don't feel safe in shopping in some of the areas in our centers. There's not enough security.

And I'm saying, well, wait a minute. Well, how do you feel there? And they just said, you know, we're afraid to go and support the businesses in our community. That's why we order from Amazon, UPS, and FedEx. And I, you know, I know that Amazon is hiring because there are so many people hiring through them. But once again, we're losing that revenue. And one of the things that we can't afford to do is our people, our residents in our community, to not feel safe.

And the ones that do, you know, are shopping in other cities because they feel safe. Now, that's a slap in our face. I don't know. I'm very upset with that. And we have got to do bring everybody together and especially these large areas to come in and say, look, you're gonna have to beef up your security because when you do that, people see that force and they're going to come in and support you and build up your business.

So that few extra dollars that you're going to be laying aside for security, it's going to pay back tenfold because you're going to have people coming back. And one of the things that's chair of the historic resource commission, we're very concerned about historic buildings that are abandoned. We already lost the church

and we don't want other of our historic buildings to be left. So we do need an ordinance to protect not only our shopping centers and get people back to shopping with us, but also some of these abandoned buildings and especially if they have an historical label to that particular building. So we do hope that you will consider this ordinance in order to get us back and bring the economic boom back into Santa Ana. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Zoom ID, Robert Podlasny.

If you would please select the microphone icon. Thank you.

This is Robert. I'm off mute.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we could hear you. You may proceed.

Hey, I'm speaking on item 20 on the trash contract, and I don't work for a trash company. Although I appreciate the presence of Athens Services on the call and the fact that they came in with the lowest bet out of the gate. I think it saves quite a bit of time that way. But, you know, as a member of the community, I have a presence in three cities that all use CRNR. And the only purpose for me here tonight is to tell you that, you know, I'm urging the council to remove CRNR from the RFP and choose a more competent and reputable company.

You know, the service at CRNR is beyond frustrating and frankly untenable for any company in any industry, let alone one with the rates they're proposing. Their safety record is, you know, impossibly bad. Their service is inconsistent and lacks basic operational oversight. And in the most recent news, as many of you may have saw today, their driver was charged with manslaughter given the actions that resulted in the death of two in the Cali Mesa fire. I don't think it's a company that any city can trust. So, you know, CRNA's mismanagement has driven up insurance costs across the industry.

And ultimately, no matter who the winner is of the RFP, it's going to be passed on to cities and residents. So I think it's, you know, the most sensible solution to pick a company that's more reputable and more consistent in their products and services and more willing to support the community. and then just urging the council to make that decision to remove CRNR so that you can show that the change is truly in the best interest of your residents and businesses. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Caller Zoom ID, Jose De Leon. If you would please select the microphone,

option on your device to unmute your call.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, you can hear you. You may proceed with your comment.

Great. Good evening, honorable mayor Sarmiento and members of the Santa Ana City Council. My name is Jose Luis de Leon and I am an assistant general manager at Athens Services. I was born and raised in Santa Ana and a current resident for over 35 years. I'm here tonight to talk to you about Athens Services and the strong commitment we have for our employees. For more than 60 years, Athens Services remains family-owned and operated. Our company's success is dependent on creating the best environment for all employees. At the core of our success is our philosophy, the Athens Way.

In the Athens Way, we believe in providing exceptional customer service. We celebrate our employees while promoting a safe workplace, and we embrace our environment stewardship through the use of clean technology to increase recycling and landfill diversion. At Athens, safety always comes first. We are committed to proving a safe work environment for our employees, our customers, and the communities we serve. We are known for our impeccable safety record. Municipalities, OSHA and CHP have all recognized Athens as a safety leader in waste and recycling collections. We welcome the opportunity to partner with Santana

and are committed to hiring local. We will engage and recruit the best Santa Ana residents to become part of our Athens family. I can say that we are committed to working with the city to develop a waste and recycling program that meets the unique needs of our community. I am excited that Athens is being considered as a waste hauler for my hometown. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you.

Zoom ID, Nathaniel Greenside. If you would please select the microphone. Thank you. You've successfully unmuted your call.

Hi there. My name is Nathaniel Greenside's Ward 5 resident. I'm calling in support of the tenants at 316 West 4th street who are being bullied, harassed, and now displaced as a result of yet one more example of unscrupulous landlords deliberately attempting to make people homeless. It's also shameful that we have some residents calling in tonight who proudly associate with various neighborhood associations requesting that the city enact more security around the city because they themselves are afraid of homeless people while simultaneously sharing their worries about increasing the housing supply here in Santa

via some of the state laws that are being proposed to more easily rezone. Relatedly, further criminalizing homeless people via increased security not only normalizes this idea of has versus have nots, but will also reduce the quality of life for everyone here. Just the other night at Cabrillo Park around 9 p.m., when I was finally able to visit the park after working all day, the Allied security person kept his lights blaring while sitting at the park entrance as if to scare away any people when the park signs state that the park is open until 11 o'clock at night.

this city council has the power to ensure that residents not landlords with access to resources not absentee landlords and individuals hiding behind their corporate entities whether it's llcs s corporations or otherwise this city council has the power to ensure that residents can remain i think it's so sad that a resident who's 62 years old and living in downtown is being displaced you know who else in our city is going to be displaced all the same senior citizens who live in mobile home parks which get sold to profiteers who then scare and bully tenants and mobile home owners

into leaving our city when those residents are directly responsible for making Santa Ana such a desirable place to live in to begin with. I actually just saw online as I was listening to the comments that the property at 316 West 4th Street was actually advertising studios for rent as late as February 6th and then I hear tonight that they removed the listing on February or they removed the listing and then I hear tonight that all the tenants got noticed on February 9th to vacate by the 28th. And now I'm hearing that some court that code enforcement who's supposed to ensure that all buildings in our city

can remain habitable is further assisting in the displacement of our residents. There are state laws which entitled residents to low relocation costs when the eviction is as a result of a habitability issues, such as the case at 316 with West 4th street. This council has the power to enact stronger protections at our city level.

There not only ought to be bigger payouts to tenants who have contributed to the equity and wealth of these so-called property owners and investors, but also this city should institute big fines to property owners who blatantly have been defying basic habitability regulations to send a loud and clear message that these so-called investments that they have in their portfolios in real estate aren't just perpetual profit at the expense of the people who contribute to our community and want to remain here.

I sincerely hope that the tenants are able to find a good attorney who will ensure that they not only get what they're entitled to under state law, but also more due to this emotional distress that they're being put through. And I pray that this council stands with tenants and ensures that our city can remain as beautiful as it has always been.

Thank you so much.

Zoom ID Mike Silva. If you would please select the microphone icon on your device.

Did I unmute?

Yes.

Zoom ID Mike Silva. I think you muted yourself again, if you would please.

There you go. Okay. This is Mike Silva, myself.

President of CRNR. I just wanted to state that we support staff's recommendation and the consultants after their hundreds of hours of work and interviews with our company and our competitors. So that's really all we have to say tonight.

Thank you, Mayor. That was the last caller.

Great. Let's wait till everybody turns on their video.

Great. Thank you for that, Madam Clerk. So now I'll go ahead and move along to the consent calendar items and see if there's there's any items that council members would like to pull, or if anybody would like to abstain from any items.

David PenalozaItem 4

Mr. Mayor, I will make a motion to approve the consent calendar.

Jessie LopezItem 4

No, Mr. Mayor, I want to pull an item.

David PenalozaItem 4

Oh, sure.

Go ahead.

Jessie LopezItem 4

I would like to pull 17.

Okay. Anybody else?

Okay, seeing none, I believe there's a motion for the balance of the consent. Is there a second? Second. Okay, we have a motion by Mayor Pro Tem, second by Council Member Becerra. Madam Clerk, will you please call roll?

Council Member Becerra?

Yes.

Council Member Hernandez?

Yes.

Council Member Lopez? Yes. Council Member Mendoza?

Make sure she's not, okay, she's absent. Council member Fan? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempeñolosa?

Yes.

And Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes. All right, moving along to item number 17, pulled by council member Lopez. Please go ahead.

Jessie LopezItem 4

Thank you, mayor. City Manager, I had three short questions. And the first one, I was reading the program guidelines and I read that for folks that can't fill out an application via mail or via email, they're being referred to the Salvation Army in Anaheim. Is that correct?

Jessie LopezItem 4

You're on mute, City Manager.

Thank you council member. If you don't mind, I would like to have Judson who is available by phone. He does have a presentation, but I think if you go through your three questions, he'd be more than capable of answering those. And then if need be, he can also show a mini presentation related to this item. So Judson, if you can join us.

Yes, thank you so much, Christine. And thank you council member Lopez for that question. and applicants who do not have access to the internet are able to fill out a physical application and submit it directly to the Salvation Army and Catholic Charities as our two current partners who administer our Stairs for Tenants program. When we relaunched the program with approval by city council on March 1st, we're actually expanding our partnerships to two more organizations, including Families Forward and Latino health access. So applicants who do not have internet access to complete the online application

will be able to drop off their physical application to those four locations here in the city of Santa Ana. And all four locations are here in the city.

Jessie LopezItem 4

Okay, perfect. And so we would have seen that prior to the March 2nd meeting.

The application itself?

Jessie LopezItem 4

the new process of where people are gonna be able to drop off physical application?

Yes, we're planning with approval by city council, we are planning to relaunch the program on March 1st. Yes.

Jessie LopezItem 4

Okay, thank you so much. And then for the second question under option two, can we add a mail option where people can return their applications via USPS?

Absolutely, yes.

Jessie LopezItem 4

Thank you. And I just wanted to confirm that we're moving away from a lottery system. I was reading, going through the program guidelines. I kept seeing that. And so I didn't see any new changes for first come first serve. So I just, I know Mr. Mendoza and I had a conversation and I just wanted to confirm that.

Yes, we, so the little bit of detail there. So we are changing the, we recently changed the lottery system to move from a lottery system to first come first serve, based on feedback that we heard from Tenants United at the last meeting, where applicants are waiting a very long period of time, and we were basing it on based on a lottery. So we're continuing with that process until March 1st. And then on March 1st, we have to sort the applications first by income, as required by the Department of Treasury.

and then we're intending to stick with that, that first come first serve application process while keeping the application open. It's been important for us as staff to keep the application open for our residents to apply.

Jessie LopezItem 4

Yeah, I agree. Okay, thank you. That was it. Thank you Mr. Brown.

Any other questions from the council?

David PenalozaItem 4

Mr. Mayor, I have a question really quick. Go ahead. Not a question, more of a suggestion. If we're gonna do the mail option for these applications, Judson, if you're still on there, I would suggest that we also include a postage in with the applications when they do request the application. And we make that option available because I mean, every little bit helps and postage is expensive. So if we could, and I know that, I'm not assuming these applications are one page. Is it a larger package, Judson?

Yes, thank you, Mayor Portem. It is a larger application. It's about eight pages, I believe. And that's great suggestion to include the postage return.

David PenalozaItem 4

Okay, awesome. Thank you for that. Not sure, Councilwoman Lopez, if you wanna make a motion, but I'll make a motion to approve the item.

Jessie LopezItem 4

I can second.

Great. We have a motion and a second. I just had a quick question for staff. And I know that the option that staff is recommending makes sense because we already have a wait list of people that we're going to be working with so we can exhaust the funding source that we have. Although I think there'll be a delta of, I think our wait list is about 1100. And with the additional funds, we may have some additional tenants that we can work with. So I was glad to hear Judson say he was talking with Tenants United because I think what my conversations with the

city manager have been that we've almost exhausted a lot of what, I never heard my voice do that. So we've had a lot of success working with landlords and we may have almost, you know, maybe exhausted that, but to the extent that we can work with some of the local network of tenant advocacy groups like Tenants United, they might be able to identify some of those tenants and maybe some of those landlords that might be helpful. Does that make sense?

Absolutely, yes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And we are actually gonna begin meeting with Tenants United every two weeks

So that we can put as efficacious as possible.

Excellent. That's all I had. So we have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, please call roll.

Yes, and thank you. And just for the record, council member Mendoza did send me a message that she was participating in the meeting. I think she was listed on the attendee side. So she did vote yes. Wanted to make sure that that was noted for the record. And council member Becerra.

Phil BacerraItem 4

Yes.

Council member Hernandez.

Phil BacerraItem 4

Yes.

Council member Lopez. Yes. Council member Mendoza. Yes. Council member Fan. Yes. Mayor Prochan-Panielosa.

Yes.

Mayor Sarmiento.

Yes. Okay, moving along to the business calendar, item number 19, which is the mid-year budget update. and I guess I'll turn it over to Madam city manager.

Thank you mayor and council member. This item is before you. It's really with two recommended actions. The first one is to merely receive and file our mid-year budget update, including revised revenue estimates. And then the second would be to approve the recommended mid-year appropriation adjustments and our executive director of finance, Catherine Downs does have a brief presentation on the item. So Catherine.

Okay. Can you see my screen?

Okay, great. Thank you. Good evening, mayor and council members. During budget preparation each year, we use the best information available. After six months of actual results, the mid-year budget update provides you with the latest information and recommended adjustments. Our mid-year budget update focuses on the general fund as it is the primary operating fund of the city.

This table summarizes our update for the general fund. The first column of numbers reflects the original budget. This included the expected beginning balance, estimated revenues, and city council appropriations. We expected revenue to decrease with the pandemic and the city council adopted a budget using 18.5 million of available fund balance to preserve existing service levels. The budget also preserved the city council policy operating reserve and one million dollars for economic uncertainty. The second column of numbers reflects items approved by city council during the first half

of the year. One example is the October approval to carry over unspent budget from the prior fiscal year. This resulted in a larger beginning balance offset by spending in the current year versus the prior year. The next column reflects adjustments with this mid-year update. The revenue estimate has increased by 15.7 million. Sales tax and cannabis tax are the standouts. Ordinance NS 2959 requires us to transfer two-thirds of the additional cannabis tax revenue to the public benefit fund, which is why you see the large net increase

to net transfers. The last column in this summary reflects our current expectations for the budget. We closed the books for last fiscal year in November and our beginning balance is no longer an estimate. Instead of using 18.5 million of the available fund balance to preserve service levels, we now expect to use only 10.9 million. The operating reserve is a percentage of annual revenue. When revenue increases, the required operating reserve increases as well.

That's why you see the increase from $51.2 million to $53.8 million.

We're able to fully fund a 1% economic uncertainty reserve and have an updated estimate of ending fund balance at the end of June, which is $13.8 million. Now this is a one-time resource to help balance the budget for future periods.

Next, I would like to offer a closer look at general fund revenue. The city's revenue has benefited from an increase to online sales, and expected sales tax revenue is $12.5 million more than projected in May last year.

Although our original revenue estimates reflected the expected effect of the pandemic, several revenues are coming in less than projected. These include hotel visitors tax, paramedic service charges, and park and recreation fees. In particular, the decrease in paramedic service charges was surprising and primarily driven by overwhelmed hospitals unable to take transports and residents less likely to call for transport for fear of contracting COVID at hospitals. Cannabis tax is doing much better than expected. And our revenue estimate is increasing by $8.6 million across the three categories,

medical, commercial, and retail. Overall, the general fund revenue estimate has increased by $15.7 million.

With a few exceptions detailed in the staff report, general fund spending is expected to stay within budget. The net $2.6 million increase of recommended adjustments to expenditures and transfers to other funds is primarily driven by the required cannabis tax set aside.

The last slide is the vacancy report as of December 31. This is for full-time positions and reflects the hiring freeze. We have 133 funded vacancies primarily comprised of police and recreation positions as well as public works positions funded with restricted money. That concludes my presentation and I'm ready to answer your questions.

Great. Thank you, Director Downs for that presentation. Let me bring it back to the council for any questions or comments.

Council member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 4

Hi, Director Downs. Thank you for the presentation. Just a suggestion for what I would like to see with when we're talking about or reading budget articles. I'd like to see the Bradley Burns specifically for this one be separated from the Measure X money. I think it's helpful for me to have those two be separated. And then my other question would be, are we allowed, actually, what is the number of online sales for the city?

Okay, so I'm happy to separate those items, Measure X versus the Bradley Burns in your next budget report, which is expected to come to you on March 16th. That'll be your first budget report for the upcoming budget season for fiscal year 21-22. And then as far as the number of online sales, I don't have that data, but I know that online sales has increased significantly since the last before the pandemic. And that's really the driving factor behind why our sales tax revenue is doing pretty well.

Jessie LopezItem 4

Okay, thank you. And looking at the chart of how, of the breakdown of what is generating revenue and not, I wanted to ask you, does the jail make or lose money?

I'm sorry, does the what lose money? The jail. Oh, the jail?

If you include the debt service on the facility, which includes the entire police building administration and the jail facility, the expenditures are more than the revenue that is taken in. That debt service is set to sunset within just a few years here. I believe it's 2028 that we are no longer paying that debt service. and then the jail at that point, if all things remain equal, the revenues will exceed expenditures. Okay.

Jessie LopezItem 4

And let me see, that might be in here.

Jessie LopezItem 4

And my other question is,

Jessie LopezItem 4

I guess how much is it costing us to operate the jail?

I don't have that figure handy with me, but I can certainly follow up with the city council and provide that information.

Jessie LopezItem 4

Thank you, I would appreciate that. And you know, what is the long-term plan for the Santa Ana Transportation Center?

You bring up a very good question, council member, and we're gonna need to talk about that when we go to develop a budget for the upcoming fiscal year. There are very few train stations around the United States that actually operate in the black. That's primarily why government actually runs them as opposed to the private sector. But we are seeing an increase in the deficit as a result of the Sardic operation. So I look forward to having an in-depth conversation with you. Okay, thank you. I appreciate that.

Jessie LopezItem 4

And my last question,

Jessie LopezItem 4

I'm understanding that most of the money is going to the restricted cannabis fund. and so what is the spending plan for that?

Do you wanna go ahead and go ahead? Okay.

The spending plan was included with the adopted budget, but this additional transfer that we expect to make because of the increased revenue will simply sit in the fund balance and we'll be ready for you to appropriate with the 21-22 budget, unless you ask us to bring it back earlier than that. But I'm sure that the directors involved with that budgeting will be happy to bring forward some suggestions on how to spend that additional revenue.

Jessie LopezItem 4

Thank you. Thank you, I appreciate it.

Thank you for those questions, council member. Council member Becerra.

Phil BacerraItem 4

Mr. Mayor. First of all, I want to thank staff for that presentation on this item. I agree with my colleague that we should in the future separate Bradley Burns from the measure X items and future reports. You know, the slight adjustment upward of the business license tax is definitely great news as far as what we're collecting. It's unfortunate what we saw as a drop with the hotel visitors tax, but yeah, we're very fortunate here in Santa Ana that as far as our economy goes, we have a diverse economy and while other cities that are more reliant on that tax are suffering,

Phil BacerraItem 4

fortunately for us, we're not as we're not as dire straits as they are. With that, I wanted to my question was, so in regards to some of the vacancies, I know that because of the pandemic and And with the governor's orders, we've not been able to offer as much recreational services as we have in the past. And so we haven't had as many employees in that particular arena, but I saw 50 vacancies in public works. And so I just wanted to ask where those are coming from.

Nine of them are from the general fund and 53 of them are from restricted monies. Director Saba, do you have more information about specifically which funds or which positions those are?

The positions vary from water resources to administrative services, street maintenance. So we have quite a bit of vacancies and we're gradually trying to fill those as we go. So it varies on where the vacancy is. I don't have an exact number where they're at right now, but I can provide you with that information soon.

Phil BacerraItem 4

Okay, thank you very much, Director Salva. That's all I have, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Council Member. Mayor Pro Tem.

David PenalozaItem 4

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to thank Catherine for that presentation. It was very informative and I know we're not out of the woods yet and still six months into this, we have six months left for this, approximately for this fiscal year.

David PenalozaItem 4

Also, I do wanted to echo my colleagues in having information available for our residents. That's a little easier to see in regards to the breakdown of the Bradley Burns and the Measure X revenue. I know that you did include that information in exhibit two of the staff report.

David PenalozaItem 4

On page one, I believe it's broken down in different, I see sales tax, Measure X, sales tax. And so it is included in there, just not in this, in the first presentation, which, you know, I just wanted to point that out.

David PenalozaItem 4

Those vacancies do concern me. I know that we had a hiring freeze, but vacancies in public works and police department. I know the parks and rec vacancies are there because we laid off a lot of them unfortunately and do have a hiring freeze. But in regards to the public works, I have similar questions of where those positions are at because I know it's, you know, public works projects didn't slow down. If anything, we increased public works projects over the last year.

David PenalozaItem 4

And I know I had some phone calls with you, Madam city manager this morning and some emails with the executive director of public works about the need for having more inspectors out on the street, looking at the work that's being done across the board of any contractor that's doing work in our city. Cause it's just, I mean, I know that this isn't a public works discussion, but if any of those vacancies, you know, our inspectors, I mean, I would hope that we fill them quickly because our residents are suffering and driving these streets. I mean, it's embarrassing.

David PenalozaItem 4

I would never see this type of patchwork in other cities and whatnot. I mean, you could drive down any street and you see the absence of, you know, you could see those 58 vacancies. I could see the result of that driving down our streets. I know our executive director is working so hard in public works and all those years that we did nothing. But if we could address that, that'd be great. With the police department, the 30 vacancies, Madam City Manager, I'm a little confused because I believe we had filled a lot of those.

David PenalozaItem 4

And I mean, are those because of retirement or what exactly is the breakdown there?

It would be a combination and I don't know if the chief has the exact information, but I do wanna point out that the general fund vacancies and the non-general fund vacancies total a lot higher than what the hiring freeze column indicates. So of those positions that you just spoke about, I don't have a hiring freeze on them. So Nabil is working through the recruitment process and attempting to fill many of his vacancies as would the police department being. So I would imagine the 34 vacancies in the police department that are general funded are across the board and a combination of retirements.

And Chief, if you wanna add something to that. No, that's it. I think the last number I had was about either 12 or 14 sworn police officer vacancies. That includes the 10 that were added on the grant and then the remainder are professional staff, correct?

David PenalozaItem 4

Oh, okay. That makes sense. Thank you, Chief. I know you've also been working really hard to fill those vacancies and reduce the response times, which I've heard, you know, per your metrics and I've heard from the public as well, that they have seen a performance increase. So thank you for that. And thank you Nabil for your leadership in public works. Those are basically it. The questions I had at this time, looking forward to see what the budget looks like as we move through this budget conversation, which I'm excited for. Thank you.

David PenalozaItem 4

Thank you for those comments.

Council member Fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

I echo my colleagues. Director Downs, thank you so much. I definitely nerd out with all of these charts and graphs, and I really appreciate getting all these different categories. One that I really felt truly stood out was the cannabis tax revenue, the adult use retail cannabis. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Is it just maybe a result of the shutdown and everybody needs to relax a bit? Because it just seems like a fantastic opportunity for Santa Ana to do more and really capture a bigger chunk of that industry and really be at the forefront like we have been.

Do you want me to take that one?

So very astute observation council member fan, and the increase was predominantly from adult retail area. But in regards to also promoting that industry, we do have opportunities and staff is exploring those right now. As you're aware, the retail sales is just one component of that industry. There is also the testing, there's the cultivation, there's the manufacturing. And while we permit that in our city, we are taking a look at the tax rate associated with those others, because we do think we have the ability to lower them to stay competitive with cities that are already allowing those types of industries

like Long Beach, but then also for the cities that may attract and try to get into those lines of business, we wanna remain competitive.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

Thanks, cause I was looking at exhibit two And the actual permits, the safety permits related to adult use cannabis as well as commercial cannabis are quite low, it seems like, compared to what we could be doing. But that was really helpful to kind of see where staff is going and what we can do to work with this new budget. The only other comment I wanted to make was I, like my colleagues before, am concerned about the public works item.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

In fact, one of the residents, she mentioned street, and maybe this is OCTA, but street stripping, right, with a street car and, you know, whatever they're doing to fix the streets there. And it's construction and it's confusing. And sometimes the stripping isn't exactly brand new like before. And it's a safety issue. And, you know, public works is really the core of what we do here as a municipal government. So I really hope that our director and all of us can work to hire more folks, get involved, folks who can get into the community and provide these resources. So thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Any other comments? Questions? So just real quickly, I did want to go back to a couple of things, Director Downs. I thought that our debt service was going to expire with the jail in 2024, not 2028. Did we extend at some point?

No, you are absolutely correct. It's 2024. As the other council members were discussing, I looked it up and it is 2024. You are correct.

Gotcha. You got me nervous there for a little bit. So thanks for the clarity. The other one was, I agree with what the city manager said on finding a way for, you know, and right now is not the moment, but, you know, eventually we need to have that conversation about the tax rate for cannabis because we got into this very early relative to other communities. And so there was really no market, I mean, to be thought of or to be compared to. But now there is an industry market that has sort of grown up in our shadow because we went out so early.

And to remain competitive because we came out, we started out with a relatively high tax rate. And so you see other communities that are undercutting that. And that means that a lot of what we saw and a lot of what helped us during this budget cycle or mid-year budget cycle was because of that industry. And to the extent that we can keep it healthy and sustainable and competitive, it makes sense to revisit that. So I completely wholeheartedly agree. And my last question was for you again, Catherine.

So what was the, so was it conservative, prudent forecasting that led to like this, you know, larger, you know, expect, you know, well, not expectation, an actual increase in sales? Did we forecast a little bit too conservatively? What was it that, you know, or did everything just outperform what we expected on sales? And, you know, more, I guess I'm more looking at sales than the cannabis.

Right. Understood. And thank you for the question. When we were forecasting revenue for the current year budget, we were in unprecedented circumstances. And the only thing that we had to look at in history to kind of help guide us for projections was what happened in the Great Recession. And in the great recession, sales tax decreased quite a bit in the city.

And so we applied those similar kinds of modeling to our sales tax forecast, because quite frankly, we thought we were heading to another deep recession as a result of the pandemic. But as it turns out, the sales tax that we collect for the city has not really been impacted as much. And we don't have the same kind of deep recession that we did after, at least during the Great Recession of 2008, 2009. So it really is a very different circumstance. I do feel that it was the right thing to do to be conservative,

you know, to make sure that we didn't over promise for the, for the budget and our residents. But now that we have this new information and we've seen how the economy really is doing during this pandemic, at least in terms of sales tax salesable transactions for the city of Santa Ana, it's quite different than what we were expecting.

Yeah, listen, don't get me wrong. I think being prudent, especially in a moment of crisis and, you know, having lived through that, you know, recession of 2008, you know, they're similar, but they're not, right? I mean, so, you know, we didn't have the sort of relief that we're seeing now. The relief that was given back then was to, you know, large industry that, you know, local governments like ours didn't. And I think here people just continue to, you know, conduct commerce in a different way. So anyways, look, I'm glad because this was a good surprise, right?

It would have been worse to not forecast this or forecast this less conservatively. And we're looking at different numbers and a different outcome. Council member Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 4

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I had some comments and some questions on the cannabis taxes. I wanted to echo very similar to council member fans comments that I think that there's a lot of opportunity in funding essential services and being innovative with those funds as well. I think that it's worth looking into if we have perhaps any permits that we've given out over the last couple of years that have not been utilized. I know that there's folks that hold on to permits for whatever reasons.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 4

I think it would be wise for us to look into that and see if there's anybody that has not opened up. I suggest we follow up with them and see what their plans are, because those are funds that we can certainly put to use.

Great comment. Yeah, we've talked about that, I think with the city attorney's office, right, as well on, you know, how long you can kind of sit on these permits. And usually there's some trigger that, you know, you have to be operational at some point. So anyways, so this item, I think everybody has had a chance to speak, or most everybody, this item is a receive and file as well as the approving of the recommended mid-year entertain a motion. I'll make a motion Mr. Mayor to approve or receive and file. I'll second. Got it. So we have a motion and a second to receive and file and make the adjustments because they're two separate

sub items. So with that, thank you. With that, Madam Clerk, please call roll.

Council Member Becerra? Yes. Council Member Hernandez? Yes. Council member Lopez. Yeah. Council member Mendoza. Yes. Council member Fan. Yes. Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa.

Yes.

Mayor Sarmiento.

Yes, thank you. Moving along to item number 20, negotiations with solid waste proposers. I'll turn it over to the city manager.

I'm certainly mayor council member. This is the next step in the RFP process to look for a solid waste provider. We issued an RFP on March 24th, 2020. It's a long lead time as it is a very large equipment, heavy type of a proposal to prepare for. The proposals were due on September 15th, 2020. There were five proposals that were received. One of them was deemed disqualified as it didn't address all of the areas that we were looking for a proposal on. With that, the consultant and public works staff and Steven Mendoza did a panel interview

and they ranked the firms. And there is the four proposals, there's the ranking that are included in the staff report. And what staff is looking for tonight is just the authorization to proceed to negotiate with the top three rank. That would be CRNR, Waste Management and Athens Services.

Thank you for that. So no presentation, we just can go straight into the item.

Myself as well as a public works director can answer any questions that you may have.

Excellent, thank you. Let me go ahead and bring it back to council with any comments or questions. I know this was a lot of reading and it's a big item. So go ahead, I'm sure there's some questions.

Maybe not.

Council member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 4

Sorry, I'm talking all the questions.

Jessie LopezItem 4

So I just had a question regarding the legal question that we have on the proposal summary, but I'm assuming that it's also on the RFP. Are we not allowed to ask about all legal issues or are we just limiting it to government entities?

I'm sorry, council member, I'm not sure I understand the question.

Jessie LopezItem 4

So we ask a question now, right? That for whoever's applying to disclose any legal issues, in my understanding, it's just with government entities, but is it a best practice for maybe for us to ask about all legal issues regarding if it's private or public essentially.

Oh, okay. I do believe I understand your question. I know that we worked exclusively with a consultant that helped draft the RFP. So I'm sure that the focus on any outstanding legal issues, it was probably narrow to relative to governmental entities as we are looking for a solid waste provider that has experience with municipalities and other governmental entities. I'm not a lawyer, but I want to imagine that asking for a further expansion of that would violate anything as it is our request for proposal.

Jessie LopezItem 4

I would, you know, I would actually like to see that just because I think it's important to know the history of the companies that we want to work with.

Okay, I believe that if authorized to begin negotiations, that is a further piece of information that we would be able to seek. Thank you.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

Mayor, I have some questions.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

Oh, sorry, I think-

Mr. Mayor, you're muted.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

I think Mayor Pro Tem had his hand up.

Sorry about that, everybody. Mayor Pro Tem and then Council Member Fan. You can go Councilwoman if you want, Councilwoman Fan.

David PenalozaItem 4

Good.

David PenalozaItem 4

Thank you, I guess I'll go. Thank you to my colleague, Councilwoman Lopez for bringing that item up about just the history of the different companies as we were, going through the presentation last week that the executive director, Nabil Salva, took the time to give me. When I got home, I had those same questions and curiosity of just the history of the different companies. And I just started Googling each one of them. And you'd be surprised what you find through Google.

David PenalozaItem 4

So it was nice to get an insight on just the history of the different companies in the conversation.

David PenalozaItem 4

I was just gonna suggest, Mr. Mayor, because of what, it's our trash contract and it's one of, you know, very lucrative contract for whoever we were to choose. I would suggest, and my colleagues are gonna hate me for this, that the city manager, you know, where they show the presentation that we, that it's a couple slides that public that works put together just to go over the process so that the public understands what we're doing here. And just for the public sake, if that's okay with anybody, I believe it's like seven or eight slides.

David PenalozaItem 4

I saw it attached to staff report.

Let me ask executive director of public works. Do you have that PowerPoint available that you can share? Yes, I do.

And I know you're going to go through it really fast, right?

Good evening. Members of the council. I have a short presentation for you on the solid waste RFP request for proposal as an update.

I will give you a little background and talk a little bit about the waste management agreement, the current agreement that we have then go over the state mandates in terms of regulations coming down the pipe to the city and the waste haulers then we'll touch on the request for proposal and the new services that will be included in the rfp and then we'll talk a little bit on the timeline for the selection a background a solid waste agreement was entered with waste management

in july 1 1993 it was amended and restated a few times over the years the current agreement will expire on june 30th 2022 there is a new and ongoing mandates coming from the state that we need to comply with on on march 17 2020 you city council authorized us to issue an rfp which was actually in the street on March 24, 2020. We received five proposals on September 15, 2020.

Out of the five, four were qualified for review. One was disqualified because it didn't meet the minimum requirement of the RFP. The current agreement is with waste management. Like I mentioned earlier, it will expire June 30, 2022. There is a new mandate, AB 1594, which ended the alternative daily cover and ended the diversion credit. If you remember, we came to the city council for an increase for composting due to that mandate, which was not approved due to COVID.

And now we are operating under a compliance mandate from CalRecycle that we will comply with their requirement with a new contract. State mandates, there is a few of them. Integrated Waste Management Act of 2000 and so forth. So these mandates and assembly bills and Senate bills are rules and requirements that are included in the RFP. And our new or existing provider will have to comply with all of these mandates coming in the future. So request for proposal.

What we included in the RFP is expanded bulky item collection. We included a weekly alley cleanup, compliance with all the mandates, compost giveaway, events and shredding events, residential food waste collection, curbside used oil, motor oil and filter recycling, sharp disposals and battery collection. All these new services are included in the RFP. So we will get all these with a new contract.

In terms of timeline, March 2020, like I mentioned earlier, the RFP was approved. Then proposals were due September 2020. We evaluated the proposals. And then February 2021, we are here right now. We are asking for you to let us negotiate with the three top candidates. we will go through the negotiation in the timeframe of March to May of 2021.

June 2021, we plan to come back to you with three agreements that you will look at as a menu item that you will get to select. Once you select an agreement, then in the summer of 2021, and because of Proposition 218, we will notice a public hearing to adopt the new rates. And we're hoping that by July 1, 2020, we will have a new contract for new services. Again, I just wanted to make sure that we are adherent to this schedule

because of the compliance mandate from CalRecycle. we need to develop a new agreement and start the new service on July 1, 2022. That concludes my presentation.

Thank you, Director Saba. Let me bring it back to the council, Mayor Pro Tem and then council member Fan.

David PenalozaItem 4

That's it, Mr. Mayor. Just wanted to thank Director Saba and Christy

David PenalozaItem 4

for the presentation and for allowing us to share it tonight. Thank you. Great, thanks for that.

Council Member Fan and then Becerra.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

Thank you, Mayor. So I guess I had, I do have a few questions. Obviously we had a lot of people call in regarding this item and I understand why, right? We all have to deal with trash. It's again, a crucial city function and this issue has a long and storied history in our city. And so I guess some of the questions that were raised was

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

Republic, because they're not part of the top three, right? So how, I guess if I may ask, what was there one thing that knocked them out of the top three for contention or for negotiation? because some of the comments at least that we received was that, you know, they were second lowest in pricing and things like that. And I think one of the other issues that was specifically brought up in a comment letter was that some of the other providers don't have infrastructure necessary apparently to provide some processing or transferring capabilities. I just want some

clarity on a couple of those issues yeah thank you council member fan we we had a rating committee that consisted from of public works individuals and city assistant city manager steven mendoza was with us and also members of the community development agency and so we had criteria to go by and then we we rated the four proposals and the rating came to be the top three as such and then

we felt that you know we need to negotiate with three the top three and that would give us a good leverage to get the best service for the city price was a factor but that was not the only factor and our rating. Like I mentioned earlier, all of the four providers can serve the city in a high quality, but we had to draw the line and that's what the committee rated the four at and we would like to request that you allow us to negotiate with the top three.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

If I may ask, was it close or?

It was close. Yes, it was close. Like I mentioned, they all are qualified and it was close.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

Okay. So the second part of my question, which is these comments, obviously it's from one of the proposers. So take everything with a grain of salt. But one of the comments indicates that a different service provider, I think it's CRNR, is proposing to build a new material recovery facility,

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

which, you know, there's no citing permitting or, you know, even CEQA compliance yet. So how is that taken into account when we looked at their proposal or, you know, was that actually not as big of a deal regarding what kind of services they can provide to our city? Because I guess the issue is we all know CEQA is a long process building and permitting anything like So if that was a major boon to their proposal, you know, it is a concern if let's say two years from now, they just don't get the permits and nothing gets built and they can't actually provide the services we need.

What they're proposing in that is not really necessary. They can haul the waste or solid waste elsewhere and deal with that same thing with the other provider. So that was not a concern. It may be an option, but I think, like I said earlier, all three of them can provide without having to have the infrastructure in Santa Ana.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

Okay. And then my last question is, you know, one of the comments was regarding Athens and again, not having infrastructure in the county at all, apparently, and not have been negotiated with Republic CVT facility as their proposal indicates. I mean, that sounds like a pretty big red flag to me, but if you can help explain that comment or clarify.

It can be, but the proposal as it exists right now is for them to take the waste elsewhere and deal with it and comply. And that's what we're looking at. The details on how they plan to comply is really up to them. And I think their proposal is as good as the others.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

Got it. So if let's say that party is selected and they say, you know, we're going to make sure we send that trash to X location or wherever location, we don't really care how they do it. So long as it's done in accordance with RFP, they can work it out with Republic or some other party on their own time.

I believe so.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

Got it. Okay. Thanks.

Thank you council member fan. Council member Becerra and then Mendoza.

Phil BacerraItem 4

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I just want to begin by thanking director Saba and his team on preparing this for us and his consultants and everybody. I mean, nobody really was clearly number one. Everybody as I'm looking through the consultants report everybody shined in a different category so my hats off to staff and to the consultant for putting this together and attempting excuse me to rank everybody at this point obviously we're looking to further negotiate and so I think I want to center my attention really towards things that

Phil BacerraItem 4

I hope that we'll continue to look at as we go forward with the negotiation one thing that comes to mind at least that's important to me and i know many others is the on-call bulky item collection for apartments and multi-family units folks have mentioned that to me in the past prior to this being an issue i mean prior to this trash contract and i'm glad that this is something that along with a bunch of other items staff has taken into account and rolled them all in to these negotiations So I just want to say thank you. What I read was pretty clear to me as far as what you're presenting.

Phil BacerraItem 4

Lots of statistics to pour through. So again, that's where my hat's off to you guys. But I just want to add that I think it's important that as we further negotiate this, there is varying degrees of what each of the folks were willing to offer in that particular category. So that's just something that I want to express publicly. that would be something that I hope that as we do further negotiations with the top three that we select to move forward, that would be something that we definitely pay attention to. Thank you.

Thanks council member. Council member Mendoza.

Yes, all these concerns and issues that my colleagues are mentioning are very good. And my question is, are these concerns and issues that our city manager will take into consideration and evaluating the three entities and then come back and make a recommendation as to one, or is it going to be recommendation for the three?

Ideally council member, very good question. What we would do is we would go into negotiations as requested with the top three so that we could get the best possible services for our community. Then hopefully if it all goes well, what we would do is we would return to you seeking approval to enter into an agreement with one provider.

Any other questions, council member Mendoza?

No, that was it. That was my main question. Everything has been pretty well explained by director Nabil and city manager. Thank you.

Great, thank you for your question. Seeing no other questions or comments, I just wanted to make a few comments, I guess I have one, well not minor, but a question. So just for everybody who's new to the council, those who are relatively new, this is probably the largest contract that we will issue or many of us will issue on our time on the council. So it's basically giving this to a vendor to provide a core municipal function, right?

So this is more complicated because I believe it's a 10-year with a five-year renewal. I think so. Not only is it very expensive, but it's also a very long-term contract. So we're basically going to be living with this vendor and our residents, more importantly, will be living with this vendor. So it is a very tricky contract that we got to spend a lot of time on. And I was almost, you know, considering creating an ad hoc of the council because it is that complicated of a contract. Right. You know, and so I'm still kind of thinking about that.

I'll sit with, you know, the city manager a little bit more and director Sabah just to think about that. But I do want us to think about how we can tackle this and it just not be considered a waste contract because it should be larger than that. The way I see it is that, you know, compliance with state mandates, picking up solid waste, you know, making sure that our employees are treated fairly and have benefits. Those are baseline considerations for me. Those are things that just everybody has to come to the table on. And I do respect all four vendors. They're well known. They provide service to many large cities.

I've even toyed with the thought of doing multiple vendors. I know that makes Director Saval very nervous because it's difficult to administer a contract this size, let alone multiple vendors doing the same service. So I'm backing off from that. But other cities have done it, right? Some do commercial, others do residential. It's tricky, but it can be done. I'm just sensitive to our employees. I don't want to, you know, layer on to the work that they have. But I want us to think about this a little bit broader, because this is our opportunity to, you know, create sort of a

clean city effort, right, not just waste, but you know, alleyways. And you know, somebody said, you know, bulky, you know, trash items, when you see bus stops that are full of debris, when you see, you know, areas that are within our city, you know, lots that are just covered with literally, we should have a service provider that's going to address all that. And this is the moment to negotiate those terms. And if we don't, they're gone for a while, right? So we need to step back on this and really look at how we can use on-call services, maybe having an

annual evaluation period for, you know, whatever vendor we decide to go with and say, look, we're going to evaluate your performance in the past year and make sure that, you know, you comply with some of the provisions and terms that we set for them now. So all those things I think are really, really important. You know, power washing our, you know, sidewalks, you know, doing things. I mean, you know, I see kind of two incumbents here because I know we've been doing business with waste for a very long time and they've had the contract. But we've also been doing business with Athens.

So we know these two vendors, you know, for the most part, they've been good actors. They've, you know, done what they could, but they're, you know, operating under existing contracts. I just want to make sure that, you know, we negotiate the best terms with all of them. And I always see that, you know, economies of scale are very important to me because, you know, when you have somebody that does a lot, you can kind of make them coordinate. And, you know, maybe, you know, as we have somebody who, you know, makes people move their vehicles during street sweeping day or somebody else who does trash pickup on another day.

I know other cities have vehicles move like three times a week. And that's something we want to avoid because we have a very, you know, parking sensitive city. So if we can coordinate that with whatever vendor we go with, that everything is done on one day, you know, that would be great for our residents because we, you know, site them less. It's just less of a headache for people.

The other comment was just revenue sharing to the extent equipment is going to be purchased, and it should, and it should be new. It should be done here. We should capture some of that revenue here in the city. And anything, you know, sales should go through the city as much as possible. So look, enough said. I just want us to see this a little bit more globally than just a narrow waste contract. I think we can do a little bit more with this. And I guess my question is kind of to piggyback on what, you know, Council Member Pham was saying.

What I've seen in other cities is that normally what you do with RFPs or any procurement is you start off with a big number and you reduce it down to maybe three or four. And then you move forward kind of negotiating with them and seeing what proposals, you know, are beneficial to the city or the agency. But here, you know, I guess I'm kind of confused is that we started with five. One was, you know, disqualified. And so we went from four to three. That just didn't seem like a huge, like we're just losing one. But what's the benefit in, you know, negotiating with three rather than four? To me, that was sort of an arbitrary line.

I would think that if we have four credible vendors, why not negotiate with all four? Would the cost increase that much more to include one more vendor that we'd have to receive proposals from or discuss these terms with?

I don't believe it would, sir, but I will defer to Nabil. I think they had a difficult time and they left three in because each one of those had some unique qualities about their RFP that they didn't want to stop the conversation with. but to add a fourth, Nabil, can you speak to, would that create a hardship on doing the valuation or is that something that is doable? That's something we can do. Just, we felt that three will give us enough leverage to get the best deal for the city. But four will take a little longer time and a little bit more effort

and the consultant and staff to negotiate, but it's doable.

Okay, and on your deadline, I know we worked backwards from summer 2022 to have things operational and online. And that's because of the Cal recycle requirement for us to be composting, right? And we should have been doing it by now. Is there anything punitive or if we violate that or go beyond summer of 22? Does that I mean, are there fines involved? Are there you know, Is there anything punitive that the city would face at that point?

CalRecycle can impose fines on cities that are out of whack with compliance with the recycling mandate. So you are at risk. As of now, CalRecycle seems okay with the fact that we're in the RFP process, that we'll be awarding a contract that will meet all of the compliance. But that is a risk.

Got it. Great. Thank you for that. Those were my questions. I appreciate the presentation. Again, I think that, you know, for my colleagues, look, again, this will probably be one of the biggest contracts and decisions we all make together as a group. And I'm glad that we're going to be together during this time. And it's great that I think, you know, the staff has brought this before us. There's a lot of individual questions that I think all of us should look at and maybe relate to the director of public works and Madam City Manager on things that we'd like to see. And I think the sooner we get those, the better.

They'll have some more criteria to work with. But I just see this as an opportunity for the city to look at community benefits, look at new equipment, look at efficiencies and how we can create a cleaner city for our residents. And it's not about just picking up waste bins anymore. It's about are you going to be able to do something comprehensively to make our city look better? And I think we all deserve that. and our res I mean our residents deserve that most importantly so I just wanted to stress the you know the significance of this decision that we'll have so you know my only thing is I would say you know

if we can stick with the four just because again they're they're credible vendors doesn't sound like it's going to add a whole lot of stress hopefully to our I promise I'll withdraw the multiple vendors for the city if we just you know deal with maybe all four and that way it gives us a better perspective, but that would be my only recommendation to this. And I see councilmember

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

Phan's hand up. Thank you, mayor. So I really, I'm really glad you brought up all those points. That was really fantastic. And I guess one thing that I noticed also in the, I guess not the staff report, but the eval was regarding labor and it was discussing, you know, who is, or I guess, which parties had labor unions or who they're working with. And if we're going to go with all four of them, I really like for us to investigate or see what we can do to have local hire or prioritize local hire or have more local hire, right?

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

Because one of the items that I saw was them talking about buying new resources in the city, bins, carts, things like that. But again, we know that local hire is going to make sure our own residents are benefiting from something like this. and that would be really fantastic. And I do put high emphasis on a livable wage, just because those are the people who are gonna be servicing us and they need to be able to afford to live here when they work here. And so I really hope that as you negotiate, that is a major point in the negotiations.

Great, thank you. Thank you for those comments, council member, Mayor Pro Tem and then council member Hernandez.

David PenalozaItem 4

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Councilwoman Fann. I was just thinking the same thing when it comes to whoever we do end up choosing, you know, that they do pay attention to the workforce that is out there daily picking up, you know, people's trash. Because that's definitely going to be important to go higher, focus on just the quality of the work environment that they live, that they work in. In regards to, I wasn't sure if this, are we gonna, and this is more a question for Nibir,

David PenalozaItem 4

are we gonna have a chance to see what deal points, what negotiation points you guys come back with, with all four, or is it, we will get to see that, correct?

Yes, of course. We will have a, I believe, somehow we will present to you, before you get to vote on the agreements, a preview of the agreements ahead of time. This way, when it comes to vote, you know what you're voting on. So there will be an intermediate step before the actual vote on the agreement.

David PenalozaItem 4

Okay. That's good. And I know that it was mentioned, but I also, I know that if there's a way where we could expand our alley cleanups, our bulk item pickups, where we could include all our apartment communities in the city to have bulk item access. because that's one of the problems that we've seen is that we currently don't have that service available for apartment communities. So whoever we end up going with, if we're able to negotiate that and make sure that those programs are expanded

David PenalozaItem 4

so that our entire community and entire city could use those services and have access to those because the reason why it leads to to bulk items being, large bulky items being dumped in our alleys and our roadways, it's because they have no other way to get rid of them. I mean, how do you expect a family to get rid of, you know, a giant mattress or a couch when it's served its use if they don't have another way? So any way where we can expand all the different services that could make our city

David PenalozaItem 4

you look better and clean aside from just the trash haul from the residents home would be appreciated and important to consider.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem.

I forget who was next, I'm sorry. Was it council member Hernandez?

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 4

Yes, that is correct. Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I just wanted to reiterate and emphasize the importance and making sure that during negotiations, we place a lot of emphasis on community benefits, on having strong language on labor protections. And outside of that, I think that we should also have a percentage be dedicated to local hire. That's the only recommendation I have at this moment, but I feel a lot of the points and questions that I had were already addressed earlier.

Thank you council member for that. Council member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 4

Thank you, mayor. Director Saba, my other suggestion would be, you know, not just talking about being labor friendly, but also keep in mind the environment. And so any entity that wants to partner with the city of Santa Ana should not negatively impact the quality of our air or have any other negative impacts because I deal, you know, it's gonna be the residents that live in the city that are gonna have to deal with those negative impacts. And so I want that to be a very high priority. Thank you.

Great. Thank you for those comments. I think I don't see any other hands raised. Anybody else willing to comment? I'll entertain a motion.

David PenalozaItem 4

Mayor Pro Tem. Mr. Mayor, I'm sorry. Councilwoman Lopez brought up an excellent point and I did wanna just echo that sentiment because we have seen numerous neighborhoods on the east side of the city that are being impacted, severely impacted today by everything from storage facilities, storage lots, landfills within the neighborhoods. And that needs to stop. I mean, whatever we can do to improve the quality of life of these neighborhoods and not continue to just, hurt them would be appreciated as we move forward in negotiation.

David PenalozaItem 4

So thank you, Councilwoman Lopez for bringing that up. Great, thank you, Mayor Proven. Make a motion to move forward with now four, right? We're including all four in the negotiation process.

Yes, and if that's a motion, I'll second that. And I see council member Becerra's hand up as well.

Phil BacerraItem 4

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'll end up supporting the motion as well. I just want to thank my colleagues because I think it's great to hear this entire council talk about the type of workforce we want in providing such a vital service here in our city. And I think there was a comment made earlier about as far as legal disclosures and what these bidders are able to disclose. One thing I'd like to make sure that they disclose is their labor practices. I'd like to know that they are being fair to their workers and treating them well. You know, in looking through the materials that staff provided us,

Phil BacerraItem 4

I know that there was issues with some of the bidders when it came to the way that they interacted with governmental entities. But again, I appreciate my colleagues' concerns about the workforce because I want to make sure that we aren't eventually going to be with, an entity that has smoke and mirrors when it comes to how they treat their workforce. I wanna make sure that we have somebody with a proven track record when it comes to who they employ and how they treat them. Other than that, I'm happy to support the motion that's on the floor right now, thank you.

Great, thank you for that. Seeing no other comments or questions, I'll have the clerk call roll.

Council member Bechera? Council member Hernandez.

Yes.

Council member Lopez. Yes. Council member Mendoza. Yes. Council member fan. Yes. Mayor pro tempeñolosa.

Yes.

And mayor Sarmiento.

Yes. Thank you everybody. Moving along to the council member requested items number 21 to discuss and consider directing the city manager to research and bring to the city. the city council within 60 days, an ordinance creating a minimum security staff standard or commercial shopping centers brought by council member Becerra, I'll turn it over to him.

Phil BacerraItem 4

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I brought this item before us this evening in response to numerous concerns that have been shared with me where residents just aren't feeling safe at various shopping centers here in Santa Ana. In this day and age, we're used to seeing private security around the shopping centers, whether they're in Santa Ana or in neighboring cities. So there are some centers here in Santa Ana where they are providing, I would say, a sufficient security presence by the management of those centers. What comes to mind are South Coast Village down at Barron Sunflower and the Main Place Mall up on the north side.

Phil BacerraItem 4

Then unfortunately though, there are shopping centers where you have one security officer for a center with over half a million square feet. A local example for Southside residents is the Bristol Plaza at the northeast corner of Bristol and MacArthur. That shopping center only has one security guard on duty. One security guard is not enough to patrol a center that stretches from MacArthur all the way up to Alton. One email that we all received from a Southside resident that was referenced earlier, Ms. Kathleen, who described avoiding that particular center because of people urinating and defecating

Phil BacerraItem 4

in broad daylight with no security guards in sight recently though when a hotel over on the north side near park santiago became crime-ridden and a nuisance our city's code enforcement police and city attorney stepped in and required that the hotel change its operation in order to address the situation at hand previously this hotel had one uniform guard patrolling an entire 55 000 square foot property one of the changes though that the city demanded from this hotel was to increase the amount of uniform security guards on duty and in speaking with our city staff

Phil BacerraItem 4

they attributed the drop in crime at that hotel to the presence of those multiple uniform security guards now our city already requires a minimum number of uniform security guards for instance at concerts where i believe the ratio is uh one security guard for every 100 persons in attendance what would be the appropriate minimum amount of these security guards at each shopping center could easily depend on their square footages shopping centers at 17th and fairview or first and townsend which are anywhere between 150 000 and 200 000 square feet would probably require

Phil BacerraItem 4

less than say a shopping center that's larger like at 17th and bristol or down on the south end at bristol and sunflower where those centers are more than a million to a million and a half square feet I think there are a lot of factors to consider in crafting standards like this that would be most effective in making sure that our residents feel safe while shopping at these centers. So that's why tonight I'd like to ask staff to, or see staff, consider some of these issues, review other city standards to see what other best practices are out there, and then return to us within 60 days with an ordinance for us to review and approve.

Phil BacerraItem 4

That's all I have right now, Mr. Mayor.

Great, thank you, council member. I'll go ahead and bring it back to the council for any questions or comments.

Mr. Mayor, if I may.

David PenalozaItem 4

Yes, please. Thank you. I would be interested in seeing something like this Madam city manager to look at what, you know, what really is done in other cities, you know, when it comes to having shopping center these private shopping centers enforced and protected. I think it opens up the opportunity to have a larger conversation of educating these property owners and business owners to themselves be out there and taking responsibility and ownership of their property.

David PenalozaItem 4

I always use this example and I'm tired of using it is when my first job was at Disneyland and I wasn't a custodian, but we were trained, you know, that's why it's so clean. You, if you're walking down Disneyland, whether you're just there as a guest or working and you see a piece of trash, pick it up. And I think if there was a kind of an educational component to all these businesses, you know, brings into the broken window theory, a lot of these businesses allow their trash, you know, litter to not be picked up and don't upkeep their properties and don't repair their properties and

David PenalozaItem 4

allow their buildings to debilitate and whatnot. There's no urgency to really take care of these buildings. And it just, it's a million little things that add to this never ending problem that we're seeing. So I would like to see something, don't know what it is yet, but I I mean, that's the point of this is to look at what ways we can do to increase visibility at shopping centers, let our residents feel safe when they're shopping at our local shopping centers and generating tax dollars and bringing the city revenue because, you know, if aside from, it brings it back to the conversation,

David PenalozaItem 4

I had a couple of residents have to pay the highest sales tax in the County and then have to deal with all the nonsense that they deal with in parking lots, getting robbed every time. I feel like every time, it's been three times now that I'm at the shopping center on Fairview and Edinger, and I always see the Stater Brothers employer running out the store, chasing somebody that stole alcohol or whatnot. And it's just, there's a lot going on and whatever we could do to make sure that property owners and private businesses take care of their business and whatnot, I appreciate. Thank you, Madam City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Council Member Phan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

Thank you, Mayor. I really appreciate my colleagues bringing this issue up. However, I don't believe that it's the right thing for our city right now. As we've talked about, we're all going through a pandemic and there are a lot of expenses and costs that our businesses are dealing with. And we know that if we increase the security guards throughout the city, right? Kind of carte blanche and maybe base it on just the square footage or something like that, rather than say evidence of high criminal activity, which is something we do look at when we,

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

you know, when those items go toward a planning commission, then we're just increasing costs. And it's not really clear whether that will actually deter anything. You know, maybe other options are have lights or if the security guard is paying attention at the actual store or something like that, or lock up your liquor behind a locked cabinet rather than leaving them out. And that would be a much more affordable way to deal with something like this. And I agree with picking up trash. I mean, I live near enough to several shopping centers to walk around and I do walk to these stores.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

And that's something we like our main pro tem mentioned should educate our residents about, but you know, for me, tax dollars or dollars from these employers going directly to residents who are working in their stores or employees who are risking their lives is frankly a higher concern for me than making all of these business owners subsidize something like security when it's not clear all of these locations may need it. I mean, that is up to our city attorney to craft something, but I don't believe that something like that throughout the entire city is going to be effective.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

What it really lead to is just now requiring private businesses to subsidize policing in our city. And part of what we've done with policing is we have already increased the wages. We've increased the number of people who are policing, and we have increased the number of code enforcement officers. That is what they should be doing when necessary. And I just don't think putting this burden on private businesses makes a lot of sense everywhere.

Great, thank you. Thank you, Council Member Fan. Any other comments?

Phil BacerraItem 4

Mr. Mayor, I just like to address a couple of the comments Council Member Fan made. The idea of this ordinance is not to come in and say that we're going to draft an ordinance that's purely based on square footage. In fact, that was really the intention was to give it to our staff and have them come back with something for us. We may not ultimately move forward with it, but I would love for staff to take a crack at it, see what other best practices are happening and bring something to us. And in regards to paying for folks to do jobs, I agree. And in fact, I would ask that staff not have robots

Phil BacerraItem 4

doing the security work, but rather people, and then we could pay for folks to be employed to do the job. I don't wanna limit staff too much as to what they may wanna explore, but I don't envision them looking at requiring armed security guards or anything of that nature, but just rather, I think someone earlier talked about, you know, broke, or maybe it was you council member, broken windows theory and just eyes on the street. It's just having an extra set of eyes in the shopping centers. I think sometimes these property managers, you know, they've got a large portfolio and I think they don't respect Santa Ana enough

Phil BacerraItem 4

to give the properties in Santa Ana enough attention that they would give properties that they manage in other cities. And so what I'm asking for staff to do is just to take a look at what other cities are doing and bring back some ideas for us to consider at a later date.

Any other, thank you council member. Any other questions or comments?

David PenalozaItem 4

Yeah, Mr. Mayor, I just wanted some clarification because councilwoman fan threw me a little off. This isn't, you weren't asking for an ordinance, right? Council member Becerra?

Phil BacerraItem 4

I'm asking for an ordinance to be drafted and brought before us, but I mean, I'm not laying out the hard line parameters tonight. I'd like to have staff take a look at it and bring something back to us. If they need more time, that's also fine. But I threw out 60 days as a potential timeframe. But again, I don't want to put something on the books out of haste. I'd rather it be something that something that's more of a model for other states to look at rather than us just knee jerk to the situation at hand.

David PenalozaItem 4

Okay. Yeah. Well, just to clarify, I'm personally not interested in an ordinance at the moment, but more if we do have ways where we could look at what's going on in the city and ways, different ways that private businesses and these private properties could start taking care of their own properties, because there's a lot that don't. I mean, and I think that's where the problem starts is these negligent property owners that are just neglecting their properties and allowing anyone to loiter around and, you know, never take a broom to their parking lots is what I constantly see and I think what causes these problems.

David PenalozaItem 4

So I know that the CVS shopping center on Main and Warner, for example, I was just there last week picking up a prescription for my mom and getting the Pokemon Happy Meals at that McDonald's, which I found just a side note, they added a little security cart with cameras and a light and every like 20 minutes, it goes off a loud speaker and it says this, you know, attention, this parking lots being monitored 24 seven by security. Is there somebody there? I don't know, but you know, it made me kind of be like, oh shoot, you know, someone's watching.

David PenalozaItem 4

and it has, and I've noticed, because I frequent that CVS often, I noticed that just the activity has decreased and it's cleaner now than it used to be. So a lot of little things help, not necessarily bringing an ordinance forward, but if staff could look at what different ways where we could educate them, I'd be very supportive of that. That is it.

Thank you for those comments. So city manager and staff, I think you heard kind of the direction. I think I agree. I think the intention is good. And I know we probably have some things already on the books as well to kind of motivate,

some of these bad actors and absentee shopping center and owners that just neglect their properties. So, you know, absolutely. I think we need to, you know, we need to be stronger. And I think we've done that, Madam City Attorney, I know on other properties where we just have nudged them, but aggressively nudged them. And, you know, again, maybe maybe what can be done is, you know, maybe some options brought back, whether it's, you know, good language, good practices in other cities, good things that have been done to address this problem.

I'm sure it's not unique to Santa Ana. It's probably, you know, something that happens elsewhere. but you know, whatever, maybe other communities have been able to do effectively with things on the books, introducing new efforts, but look, I'm open for that. So seeing nothing further, I'll go ahead and move it along to city manager comments and I'll go ahead and turn it over to her.

Thank you, Mayor. I do have a few items. I will go fast though, I promise you. And so just a reminder, I know you all received a report on February 1st, but to call attention to it, it's the police department's year end report. And as was mentioned earlier, there was a 1% increase in overall reported FBI uniform crime index, but the police department during this time was able to lower all response time levels to calls for service throughout the year while still facilitating their community engagement and following CDC guidelines. so just a shout out for our police department um the other thing is you may have noticed an addition

that's attending the meeting Jason Motzik our executive director of human resources today was his first day and he started on a council day so he was joining us as well to listen into his very first council meeting so I I welcome you and encourage you when you're in city hall to pop in and introduce yourself to him and certainly we can schedule some one-on-ones as well if you're interested in that. The other item is with regards to the callers in regards to the building that was red tagged due to building and fire code violations. Basically the owner never

went through the needed modifications to convert what was a commercial building into a residential building. Judson from our housing department is scheduling a workshop with the Fair Housing council of orange county so that all of the tenants can be educated on what their rights are and in addition to that i know some of the speakers did speak to it most definitely the owner of the building under the california health and safety code section is required to provide relocation benefits to those individuals that are being displaced we also are assisting as many as we can

as well because for those that are facing homelessness they are of the highest priority with our housing and some of our affordable housing projects that we have. So help help underway for those tenants that are unfortunately impacted by this. And the very last thing, if you will entertain me, we had some questions on permit parking and have we studied it? Have we not studied it? How many do we have? So it's just a little three or four slide if that's okay, Mayor.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Okay, are you able to see that screen?

Yes.

Okay. So a few questions have come in and I know a council member Lopez had some specific questions on this. And you may have been getting requests from constituents on this, this very issue. So just a little primer on it. Some background information that I kind of tell you where staff is headed. and we certainly can return to council with more information. Permit parking, it's certainly, we're not alone in this issue. Your older urban cities have been dealing with this for some time. And the idea of a permit parking district was going to be the solution for the problems that we had regarding to parking.

Unfortunately, a lot of the solutions of yesterday create unintended consequences for tomorrow. But citywide, we do have 27 permit parking districts. We have issued 7,000 permits citywide. The permits are not free. There is a fee, $74.94, and it's valid for two years, and then the residents would need to renew them after that. The permit fees, everybody's on a different cycle because it depended on when the area did become a permit parking district. The city did conduct a pilot parking study to find out, you know, what were some of the

solutions that could address some of the issues with the shortage of parking throughout the city the study found that there were things that the owners of the property could do and there were things that the city could do and explore so some of the recommendations relative to the multi-family complex owners and just as a reminder the types of residential properties that can apply for parking permits include single family homes and then multi-family complexes but no greater than four units in them so some of the recommendations is using the parking lifts to increase on-site

parking this actually can double the amount of parking on site and we do have one success story of a complex that did in fact install those to add for additional parking there may be opportunities for re-striping of existing on-site parking to maximize parking other options would be exploring agreements with nearby commercial properties for added overnight and weekend parking spaces and then one i definitely know mayor that you we've discussed before about maybe we could take a lead and do this but potentially energy agreements with san anna unified school

district they do have a lot of elementary sites that are spread out through the neighborhoods and some of them do coincide with neighborhoods where we do have very tight parking the recommendations that the city should explore from this study, we're including maximizing on-street parking to the greatest extent that we can, potentially exploring the use of our city parks, parking lots for overnight. And then one issue that we've heard a lot about is allowing the renters to vote in place of homeowners for single family homes. So the first vote would go to the homeowner. If the homeowner doesn't participate that vote,

then the renter would have a voice on that. and then looking at other permit parking programs to understand how they're managed also obviously for for future development we need to be very much aware of what the parking ratios that are required so we don't continue to to add to this problem in the past staff was headed down a path where they wanted to engage in a city-wide parking study it's a 400 000 endeavor to do so and they have not been provided the budget to exercise that. I think by myself and also in conjunction with Nabil, we are rethinking that because for the $400,000,

you're basically gonna be able to get identified in the city where there are parking issues. I think we all pretty much already have a good handle on where we have parking issues and maybe that $400,000 could be put to greater use to helping to solve the parking issues. The reason these studies are so expensive is the amount of detailed work that goes behind them. To embark on a citywide parking study, it actually entails identifying all the vehicles registered in a certain location. It entails measuring the streets and the available existing street parking. So it's very, very intensive to do so.

so i know that's just a basic primer on it but the direction that staff is heading in is similar to what was just discussed with security in the parking lots or shopping centers we want to look to see what are the absolute best practices in this area that are being implemented by other older urban areas and see if we can't add to the toolbox on things that we can do and then i I certainly would, we'd be able to return and bring that back to you. So just a brief update, because I know a lot of you were getting questions on this issue and that's all sir.

Great, thank you, Madam city manager, excellent presentation. And you're right, parking, I think is one of the most common, you know, questions that we have asked. And I really, really liked the suggestion of the parking lifts or staff parking. I think I know, I think it's Vista del Sol that maybe, I'm not sure which one of the multi-families that has implemented stack parking, but it was much, it's very common in, you know, urban areas, busy areas that, you know, don't have any parking. You just double your inventory with that. And then working with commercial property owners and the school district,

I think those present some viable options for us. So thank you council member Lopez as well for, for discussing that. Let me go ahead and go to the council for its closing comments. Council member Becerra.

Phil BacerraItem 4

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Christine, for that presentation on parking. Our parking permit program is like a twisted hunger games out there. It's just a terrible program the way it is today. And I look forward to the day that we have a completely different system. And I would support you on pushing for a study that gets down to that level of detail that you were just describing. You know, the pandemic just kind of shifting here, you know, the pandemic is really shined a real bright light on the digital divide that we have here in many of our underserved communities.

Phil BacerraItem 4

We have a lot of residents here in Santa Ana that don't have broadband services available to them, whether it's a lack of affordability, whether it's infrastructure, there's definitely a need to expedite getting broadband service and infrastructure deployed to these residents in these neighborhoods. On February 4th, I, along with my colleagues on the SCAG Regional Council, voted to adopt a resolution that would establish a region-wide broadband action plan that will help assist us in bridging that digital divide. Now, why does that resolution matter? Because it would

Phil BacerraItem 4

enable SCAG to pursue grant funding opportunities and then be able to partner with local member cities such as Santa Ana in trying to implement broadband service and work with our state and federal partners to get that done. And speaking of federal partners, I met virtually with our Congressman Lou Correa last week and I'm very happy to report that bridging the digital divide is also a priority for Congressman Correa as well. Let's pray that he can bring back some much needed resources from Washington DC so that he can help us here in Santa Ana to really expand broadband services and that infrastructure that many of our

Phil BacerraItem 4

residents and neighborhoods need. I wanted to conclude my comments this evening with yet another reminder to please download the my Santa Ana app and use it to request city assistance and service on various needs such as graffiti abatement and other items that the city can help you on. Just today, my wife and I were out on a morning walk. I must have reported five different pieces of graffiti. Honestly, I got service back on my, my Santa Ana app, show me that those items have been taken care of within four to five hours. So I strongly encourage everybody to download that app and use it where you can.

Phil BacerraItem 4

Thank you very much.

Thank you, council member. Council member Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 4

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I just wanted to take this opportunity to connect with the residents at the building on fourth street. I wanna let them know that I am deeply concerned about the situation and how it was handled, the mismanagement from the landlord. And my heart and efforts are gonna be centered around helping these residents up till the 28th. So I will be working very closely with our city manager and our city attorney to make sure that we offer support beyond just referring them to our affordable housing units.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 4

So I'm gonna work very, very hard to make sure that residents are protected from displacement. Furthermore, I wanted to provide some clarity to some of the comments related to the Brown Act and me having conversation with the landlord. I couldn't tell you who that landlord's name is. I've never met the individual. I've never come across him. My first introduction at this unit and this property was in learning about what's been happening to the residents. And it was brought to my attention by our resident, Vic Mendez. And I thank him for his efforts and fighting for his neighbors because that's what we need.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 4

We need to come together right now and we need to collectively as a city, make sure that we all use our power to help each other out. So I'm with you through and through and I'm gonna make sure that we do whatever we can to support you and help you throughout this process. And lastly, always make sure to practice good hygiene, wash your hands, wear your face masks and take care of one another. Thank you.

Great. Thank you for that council member Hernandez. And yeah. And thank you for staff for working with those tenants there, you know, difficult situation. And I know involving the fair housing council is going to really help. I think a lot of them may need some individual council as well. Some sounds like there's just a lot of civil litigation that's involved in that also. So thank you for that council member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 4

Thank you, mayor. I just, hi everyone. Thank you for tuning in tonight. I'll keep this short. I just wanna echo what Council Member Hernandez said about practicing good hygiene, wearing your mask and staying socially distancing as well. Continue to socially distancing. And if you need to get ahold of me, my email is jessielopez, jessielopez. at santa-ana.org. I've noticed a lot of people have gotten the email wrong. So you can email me there or text me or send me a message on social. Thanks, have a good night.

Thank you, council member. Council member Mendoza.

Thank you, Mayor Sarnanto.

You just muted yourself.

There you go.

I want to update my colleagues on some of the issues of the Orange County Water District. There's a lot of stuff going on, a lot of great work. And so the highlights are extensive. So I will just attach, I'll ask Daisy to attach it to our minutes in case any of you would like to read it in more detail, but just a few things. For example, there's a registration is open for the district's next water webinar,

which is entitled 2020 Retrospective Wildlife Populations Thrive on OCWD Lands. The webinar will be held February 23rd at 10 a.m. and features speakers from the National Resources and guest speaker Dr. Peter Bloom from Bloom Biological. Planning continues for the Youth Environmental Summit. And I submitted several of our classrooms from Santa Ana Unified to see if our youth would be willing to participate in this Youth Environmental Summit.

and this is going to be held virtually April 19th through the 23rd and the website is on the highlights that I will be providing Daisy and and the rest I will just have have them attached to the minutes and lastly I want to close our meeting in honor of sheriff Sandra

Hutchins who passed away January 4th and I have a few a few comments some information about her here and oh I've lost those but um Sandra Hutchins was our sheriff for many many years and she did many great work she even while she was ill with the and receiving the treatments for for cancer she continued

to work. She was born March 18, 1955, and she passed away January 4, 2021. She was an American law enforcement officer who was a sheriff coroner of the Orange County Sheriff's Department. She was appointed to the position on June 10, 2008, and she replaced acting sheriff Jack Anderson, and who had left the department since January 14th of 2008 when at the resignation of Mike Corona. Prior to her appointment, she was retired from the position of division chief within the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

She was elected in 2010 and then again reelected in 2014. In 2017, Sandra Hutchins announced that she would not seek re-election for a third term. She endorsed the successful election bid of Under Sheriff Dawn Barnes. She was raised in Long Beach, California, where she graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School. Shortly after graduating from high school, she was hired as secretary for the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, and she graduated from the Academy in 1978. She was a graduate of the University of La Verne with a bachelor's degree in public

administration. She also attended the FBI Academy. So she was a very impressive human being running an incredibly tumultuous Sheriff's Department and she did it well. So I'd like to honor her by closing this meeting in her name as she passed away January 4th from breast cancer. Thank you.

Thank you, council member. I'm sure there'll be no objection to adjourning in her memory. And I know she passed away in early January. I don't, you know, I don't think we had the opportunity to adjourn in her memory soon after that. So thank you for bringing that to our attention. You know, just a brief story on, you know, Sheriff Hutchins. She was the first female, you know, sheriff in Orange County. and she worked her way up because she began in LA County Sheriff's Department and she actually worked with my brother-in-law and she started at a very, very low level, you know, sort of an entry

level position there and worked her way up. So it made her story even more compelling when she ran. But, you know, my brother-in-law passed away and they knew each other. He passed away as a young deputy sheriff at the age of 33. And, you know, Sheriff Hutchins would often tell me that they would bump into each other and they were just both really, really gentle, decent souls. And so, you know, she will be missed because she followed a very difficult period here in Orange County where Sheriff Corona had left that department in shambles, right? And so, you know,

there was an acting in between Sheriff Corona and Sheriff Hutchins, but really it was Sheriff Hutchins who kind of rebuilt that department. So, you know, thank you for reminding us, council member. Let me go ahead and move along to council member fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

Thank you, mayor. And CJ's making an appearance today. It's her scritches time. Oh, camera shy. You know, I think the only thing I wanted to say was first, please wear your masks. I've been walking outside and I know when you're just walking with your partner or spouse, a lot of people say there's nobody out there, so I'm not wearing a mask, but it's still really necessary for all of us to wear a mask outside at all times, whether or not you're vaccinated, whether or not everyone in your family is vaccinated. That's really crucial. And if you can wear two masks, that's the current recommendation today.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

And the only other thing I wanted to say is you have another hour and 45 minutes to Fat Tuesday. So please enjoy. And to those in both the Vietnamese and Latino community who are Catholics, although I was raised Buddhist, but I do wish you a solemn and thoughtful Lent leading into Easter. And I hope that this year we can all really reflect on what we've had to sacrifice during COVID and the past year and really recognize our strength and moving forward. And with that, thank you.

Great comments. Thank you, council member. Mayor pro tem, then Yadosa.

David PenalozaItem 4

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Councilwoman Fan stole my thunder. I just wanted to, I have no updates, no personal updates, no city updates, but just wanted to remind our community that tomorrow is at and marking the beginning of Lent. 40 days from now is Easter. So I just wanted to, even if you're not Catholic, use this time and period to find healing from all the trauma that many of us have experienced over the last year, you know, because I mean, it is, it's, it's basically, you know, rising from

David PenalozaItem 4

ashes, you know, use it as a time to reflect personally. There's, there's a couple of things I read a couple days ago that, you know, it's basically, it's show us how to rise, shows how of bloom from barbed wire is what I read. And which was, you know, it stuck with me because there's so many things that go on and are going on in the world today and that are traumatic for everybody and personal experiences that one experiences. And there's a perfect opportunity to reflect

David PenalozaItem 4

on what's going on and rise above it. I mean, you know, use that to build that strength and rise. So I'll stop now before I ramble too much and not make sense. But the point is, you know, wish everybody a nice evening, a good night.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Listen, just a couple of things. Was a busy weekend, you know, having, you know, Tet on Friday, you know, Valentine's Day on Sunday, and then President's Day yesterday. So it was busy. Hopefully everybody got some rest. Thank you to staff for the presentations. I mean, we didn't have a long agenda tonight, but there were some very significant things that we addressed tonight. So really appreciate your work on that. Just, you know, real briefly, I know that, you know, I'm excited about the vaccines and the COVID presentation that we received, you know, how they're now, you know, coming to our community.

And I just, again, want to reiterate, it's a result of many voices that just kind of stood up and said, hey, we need these in Santa Ana. Because, you know, we were looking at a much different February and March had we not really kind of gotten assertive. So I just want to thank all those voices. And for staff, I know that we're still doing testing at some of our mobile sites. But I know we had a lot of those signs that said protect Santa Ana, protege Santana. And if we can have those at those sites and give those to everybody who receives either a test and hopefully, you know, vaccines where we can.

And I'm sure the district will allow us to do that because they were partners with us. And they can put those signs up either in their window or on their lawn. And I see them all over and I think they're helping. And, you know, to everybody's credit, I think you all are saying the same thing. We're speaking under the same script and telling everybody, you know, we're close, but we're not there yet. So thank you all also for participating in that video that is going to be circulated on a lot of different platforms, just to remind everybody. And the last thing I had was something that the city attorney just circulated to us.

And real short story on this, we had a site in the city, El Centro Cultural, that you guys probably know on 4th Street right by a civic center. There was a large homeless population and encampment on that property.

You know, the folks are at that nonprofit said, hey, we didn't want to be punitive or harsh with them. We wanted to somehow figure out how we can provide them services without citing them, detaining them, arresting them and criminalizing them. And, you know, what could have turned into a very litigious situation turned into something I think that was resolved in as amicable as, you know, as positive a way that we possibly could imagine.

And I know that the city attorney circulated something on that. And I think the more we think through these things, not everything involves, you know, being aggressive that way. I think there's good, intelligent ways and really, you know, civil and humane ways to deal with this because I think there's an MOU now that's being drafted amongst the parties that will allow for, you know, service providers to help, you know, this population of homeless people. But hopefully if that model works well, maybe we can see it replicate in other parts of the city. But with that, that's all I had to say for tonight.

We are going to meet again on March 2nd. So have a good night, everybody. We're adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.