Read the April 6 meeting.

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Lisa Orozco, if you would please select the unmute feature on your device.

Hi, did you want to speak on any closed session items or did you want to speak on the open session items or general public comment? Oh, I just wanted to listen in on the meeting. Okay, thank you so much. I appreciate that. If you had any time at the meeting, when the public comment period is open, if you want to speak, please select the please hand feature on our screen. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you.

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If you want to see, make sure you select the Raising Up feature on the Zoom. Thank you. Thank you.

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David Penaloza

We will be in a closed session meeting to order at 5.10 p.m. February 6, 2021. In accordance with California Governor's Executive Order N-2520 regarding the Brown Act and guidance from the California Department of Public Health on gatherings, this meeting is taking place entirely by teleconference via Zoom. The council chambers is closed. The public is accessing the meeting via the Santa Ana YouTube channel or the city's website. The council members and I, along with the city manager, the city attorney, city clerk,

David Penaloza

and executive team are in different locations. Please bear with us as technology may disrupt the flow of the meeting. Madam Clerk, please conduct the roll call.

Councilmember Becerra?

Yes.

Councilmember Hernandez? Yes. Council member Lopez.

Yes.

Council member Mendoza.

Council member Mendoza. Thank you. Council member Fan.

Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa.

Mayor Sarmiento has still not joined us yet. We have a quorum.

David Penaloza

Thank you for that, Madam Clerk. Any member of the council would like to take this time to announce their abstentions at this time?

David Penaloza

Anybody? Nope. Okay, Madam Clerk, do we have any speakers for closed session items?

No, Mayor, we do not. um i'm sorry maya pretend we do not have any

okay thank you for that uh we will be recessing this portion of the meeting to consider the items listed on the closed session agenda and we will be joining you guys back shortly

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Place Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ

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Thank you for waiting. We're still waiting for the mayor to join the meeting.

Thank you, Mayor. We are ready for it.

Great. Can everybody hear me okay? Yes, we can hear you. Excellent. I think everybody is on from what I can tell. Let me go ahead and call this regular meeting to order for April 6, 2021 of the Santa Ana City Council regular open session. And let me go ahead and begin with just, as we always do with this housekeeping language. So in accordance with the California Governor's Act Executive Order N-25-20 regarding the Brown Act and guidance from the California Department of Public Health on gatherings,

this meeting is taking place entirely by teleconference via Zoom. The council chambers are closed. The public is accessing the meeting via the Santa Ana YouTube channel or the city's website. The council members and I, along with the city manager, city attorney, city clerk, and the executive management team are all in different locations. And as we always say, we please ask for your patience as we go through this meeting and the technology that we use may disrupt the meeting at some point. So let me go ahead and have Madam Clerk please conduct roll.

Councilmember Becerra? Here. Councilmember Hernandez?

Here.

Councilmember Lopez? Here. Councilmember Mendoza?

Councilmember Fan?

Here.

Mayor Potempeñalosa?

Here.

And Mayor Sarmiento?

Here. And before I turn it over to the clerk to go ahead and also give instructions to the public for them to be able to access the meeting. Let me just say good evening to everybody. I hope everybody is doing well. Everybody is safe. We received some incredible news from the governor today. So it looks like things will be getting back to normal very soon. And we will be coming back to the council meeting in person very soon as well. So those are all good things that we have to look forward to, as well as just being together and opening up our local economy as well as our state

and national economy. So those are all good things. We'll get into those with a little bit more detail maybe on our COVID-19 update as we go through the meeting. But let me go ahead and turn it back over to the clerk so she can go ahead and give some instructions to the public

if they wish to engage. Thank you, Mayor and Councilmembers. The public was able to join the speaker queue at 4 30 p.m. today in accordance with the council procedures calls will not be accepted after the public comment session has begun therefore you must join zoom or the conference call by 6 p.m. speakers who are not on the speaker queue by 6 p.m. will not be permitted to speak to request to speak dial star 9 from your phone or click on the button labeled raise hand from zoom

thank you mayor great thank you madam clerk and uh before i begin with the pledge of allegiance I also want to just remind the public or let the public know that the council will be limiting its comments to three minutes as we do with the public comments. So hopefully this will be a little more of a rapid fire meeting. We'll be able to get through this fairly quick, I hope, but also give an opportunity to the public to address us as well as the council members to address the items, but in a timely way. So that being said, let me go ahead and begin with the Pledge of Allegiance.

so if all of you will please follow me in pledging allegiance to the flag by placing your right hand over your heart and repeating 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. And let me begin with our invocation section of the meeting. And I want to turn it over to Council Member Hernandez because we have a special guest that will be addressing us. And as you all know, we've begun a practice here for our invocation section where it is to celebrate the different faiths that we have that bless us here in the city, but also to reflect on words of wisdom and folks that can invoke some hope in all of us as they address the council. So, Councilmember Hernandez, do you mind introducing the invocation for

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

tonight's meeting? Absolutely. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. It is with great honor that we introduce Ms. Sandan Goad, who is the Tribal Council Chairwoman of the Cabrelino Tongva Nation. And she will be doing the honor of providing our invocation slash reflection. And without further ado, welcome, Ms. Goad.

Thank you.

My name is Sandanay Goad. Don't stress over the pronunciation. I wanted to start with in Native American country, prayers, blessings, and ceremonies are a taboo to record. I've spoken with the clerk about this, and that's why you will only see my picture on the screen. And I don't have a problem with my voice being recorded. I just wanted to let you know that. during the prayer you'll hear the word COVID.

Understand that you will also be hearing

the mass shootings, the homeless, poverty, and mental illness. You just won't understand those words. And because you cannot see me and because I will be doing this in Tongva, the word Aho is the last word. and that will be the end of it. So that way you'll know that I'm done. And without further ado.

I o kiha naro.

I o tiyei hanuka pa yamea.

I o kiha naro.

I o tiyei hanuka tumewe ki maa. I o kiha naro. .

Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ

. . . . Ah-muh-yah. Hamapi. Mori. Vetch. Wik. Chot. Niki-ayin. Anai. Kain. Mohaki-poha. Po-ri. Nok. Tarahim. Hiyammar. Reiki. Niki-ayin.

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Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Iqwawe mi teema.

Ti haf ko poha. Ti haf soner noc.

Ha ki owe ich pe'e ki ma. Iqwawe yao ki ha ki ya ra vit.

Apoen ti haf soner poko si roi chum.

Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ

Thank you, Ms. Goad. You know, I just wish I knew more languages, but it's interesting how even though we're not fluent in all languages that we've been addressed in at the council, sometimes, you know, words just penetrate our souls. So thank you, I'm sure that those

words and your prayer and the feeling behind it, we're well received and know that they are well received by this council and the residents here in Santa Ana. We celebrate all faiths and those who don't practice faith as well. We want to make sure that we are as inclusive in this moment as we possibly can. So we thank you for that. And we thank Council Member Hernandez for inviting you to address us in sharing your words of wisdom. You know, I would love to have that translated. So if there's any way that you could send us something, if not, we will take those words and use them as inspiration for our meeting as we go forward.

So let me turn the next part over to Council Member Hernandez as we begin our ceremonial presentations. And I believe he has an oath of office that is going to be administered to Ms. Turtle Heart Legaspe as the new personnel board member for Ward 5. So council member, the floor is yours once again. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. As we all know,

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Santa Ana is a diverse city, rich in history, and it is with great honor that we are presenting you the oath of ceremony of Nellie M. Turtle Heart Legaspe, who I'm not sure, clerk of the council, if you can confirm this, but I would like to say she's the first full-blooded Native American on our commissions. So that's a big win for the Native American community. And without further ado, that is correct. Thank you. History is being made in the city and we are here to celebrate it be a part of it. Here's to making more history.

Please raise your right hand and repeat after me. I state your name. I Nellie Ann Mya Turtle Heart Legaspi. 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 to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California and the Constitution of the State of California.

That I take this obligation freely. I take this obligation freely. Without any mental reservation. Without any mental reservation. Or purpose of evasion. Or purpose of evasion. That I will well and faithfully discharge. I will well and faithfully discharge. The duties upon which I am about to enter. The duties I am upon to enter. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember, and congratulations, Ms. Turtle Heart Legaspe. Welcome to the personnel board. We are grateful to have you. And more importantly, that was probably the most unique oath that we, I believe I've observed on my time on the council and it's beautiful to see. It's incredible to see the diversity and celebrate the different cultures, but especially the Native American culture and the indigenous culture here. And this council continues to make firsts and to break patterns and practices. And for that, I applaud you

wall. So thank you. I'm very proud to serve with all of you and to see new ground being broken almost every meeting. So that those are good things. Let me now call on Councilmember Fan as she introduces her Ward 1 commissioners. So Councilmember Fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 2

Thank you, Mayor. And hi, everyone. I am so excited to share with you and introduce you to the Ward 1 representatives on our boards and commissions. So I'm going to be sharing my screen And so if anything goes wrong, please let me know. All right.

Thai Viet PhanItem 2

Okay. It should be good. Hang on.

Thai Viet PhanItem 2

All right. All looks good?

Looks great. Perfect.

Thai Viet PhanItem 2

Okay. Okay. So I didn't get a chance to attend any of the ceremonies or swearing-ins because, you know, I personally was just trying to be very careful. So without further ado, these are board one representatives, commissioners, and board members. For the Community Development Commission, we have Dang Lei. He is a loan officer. He works in the real estate industry, helping families purchase homes. And so as a member of the Community Development Commission, he's very enthusiastic and really committed to ensuring that everybody

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has access to housing affordability, and particularly accessory dwelling units. We actually met at a presentation for OC Yimby, yes, in my backyard, and he really helped educate me on accessory dwelling units in the city and in the county. He is also obviously a San Ana resident. Gary Wood is, some of you might know, was a previous commissioner and he's been in Ward 1 for a very long time. And he will be joining us to represent us on ETAC, a position that he has been on before. So I'm very excited to see him fulfill that position again here, especially

Thai Viet PhanItem 2

on the west side. Next we have Carlos Perea who is speaking of history, he I believe the first undocumented commissioner in the city of Santa Ana serving on the Measure X committee, oversight committee, and so he will be continuing with that position and continuing to serve the city of Santa and residents in reviewing how measure X dollars, tax dollars will be spent. Next we have Isabel Ortega who is on the Youth Commission. Some of you may remember I had asked the commission for an exception because Miss Ortega is 16

Thai Viet PhanItem 2

but she's attending college in the fall and at the time the Youth Commission required that students be between seventh and 12th grade. I know that she's going to be really an incredible voice for young people in the city of the Santa Ana and particularly those who want to get involved in the city because she is also involved in some other groups like Santa Ana Youth Ballet.

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Next we have Bao Pham who is an architect by trade and he actually did not apply for a commission position when the city went to seek applications. He was filing an application for a client at City hall and wondered how does one person as like an architect get involved in serving the city so he actually had applied just because he wanted to know how he can help residents and work on these kinds of issues so i'm very excited bow and i actually when i interviewed him found out that we went to los amigos together and he was a grade below me um so i'm very excited to have a fellow

Thai Viet PhanItem 2

Lobo serve in Saniana. Next we have Gabrielle Gutierrez. She's going to be in our Parks and Rec Commission. Gabrielle has a lot of experience working with many cultural groups, arts groups, and she wants to bring that into our Parks and Rec and the services that we provide to youth and our family. And so I'm really excited to see what she does there. And I think she brings a lot of knowledge and experience to the city.

Thai Viet PhanItem 2

Next we have Indigo Vu, who is our Arts and Culture Commissioner. They are someone who's lived in Santa Ana, particularly Ward 1 for a very long time. They have helped set up a number of events with Viet Rise, a local Vietnamese organization to help get residents involved in immigration and refugee issues. So they have experience setting up events and bringing in the Vietnamese community, and that is something that I think I and many of my colleagues would like to see as we help bridge cultures in our city and make sure all of our residents feel involved.

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And Indigo and I both believe that arts and culture is one way to do that. Next, for our personal board, we have Valerie Huyen, who is, again, a resident of Ward 1. She's a federal employee with experience managing other employees and reviewing and things like that. So really her experience in that space is really perfect to be on the personal board as they're charged with looking at and reviewing discipline and employee issues.

Thai Viet PhanItem 2

And last slide. We have Keith Carpenter who will be serving on Historic Resource Commission. He was previously a chair of Measure X committee, and we actually met at a Riview West neighborhood association meeting. We were just being involved, and Keith is just a wealth of knowledge and really committed to working with residents in Santa Ana, particularly those in the west side, and talking about historic resources. And we do feel that a lot of that emphasis has been kind of on the north end of the city. we really believe that the entire city has a number of historic resources that really need

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to be highlighted. And so we're excited to work on that. And last but not least, we have Yesenia Cruz, who is an executive assistant in the city manager's office. She is my executive assistant. I wanted to make sure you all knew who she was, as she is my right-hand person. She is the one that many of you would interface with as you set up meetings with me for office hours, or just, you know someone who can help be a liaison to the community and I'm just really excited that everybody is on the team. So with that thank you so much I hope you all welcome them and if you

Thai Viet PhanItem 2

have any questions please feel free to reach out to us we're all here to be a resource for you. Thank

you. Thank you Councilmember Fan I think you started a good pattern there you were able to introduce all of them in a really really efficient and effective way I feel like I got to know all of them. And you're right, Yesenia is awesome. She is. So I think we can all vouch for that. And so good work there. So let's move on to the next item, which is a proclamation that we're going to be presenting to Casa de la Familia, recognizing this month as Sexual Assault Awareness Month. And I'm doing this in conjunction with Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa and Council Member FAN,

as I'm sure all the council members also will join us in recognizing this month. I'm going to turn it over to them, but what I'd like to do is just thank Dr. Ana Nogales and her staff and her clinicians at Casa de la Familia. They've been offering cognitive, emotional, and psychological support to many in our community at a very, very affordable rate, but more importantly, in an effective way. And so I know that she and her staff have been longstanding members of the community and have become much, much more trusted during this

period of this pandemic where many families and many children of those families have sought support. So I don't think there's any organization more fit to receive this recognition en Casa de la Familia. So thank you, Dr. Ana, for everything that you do. And thank you, Councilmembers. Let me go ahead and begin with Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 3

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Sarmiento. And I, you know, it was very important for me to join and my colleagues here at Councilmember Fan for bringing this forward and the Mayor, because Sexual Assault Awareness Month is something that oftentimes isn't talked about in communities like ours, in communities like Santana, where there's a lot of stigma around the idea that this happens. As a man, I want to be able to advocate

David PenalozaItem 3

and show my support that we, this is a problem that happens too frequent in many industries, in work, in the workplace, at home. And we should be able to call it out and let people know that it happens. I don't know how many times I've been myself, again, as a guy, walking through a parking lot at a mall. And I find myself walking behind a woman. And I feel uncomfortable because I can only imagine how this woman feels when there's a man walking behind her, when it's a dark parking lot.

David PenalozaItem 3

And I feel helpless because I'm like, I know that that's probably going through her head.

David PenalozaItem 3

Today I'm wearing teal, as well as some of my colleagues are as well, and the city attorney's wearing teal, to bring awareness to sexual assault. Day of Action, which is today. And I'm happy to recognize Casa de la Familia. And not just recognize them, but just a little bit ago, I was able to donate to their efforts online. So if you guys are, whoever's listening, if you guys could donate to their organization. It's a nonprofit that does a lot of good work in our community, stigma reduction,

David PenalozaItem 3

mental health treatment that focuses on Hispanic populations and trauma in communities like ours. So very happy for their effort. I just want to let everybody know that I stand with you, and I stand in support of bringing awareness that this is a real problem. And I want to give a little shout out to Mayor Pro Tem Kim Nguyen of Garden Grove, my plus one for advocating this issue throughout our county and being a fighter when it comes

David PenalozaItem 3

to this. So thank you. And I will hand it over to Councilmember Fan so she could finish it off.

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

Thank you, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem. I was very excited to bring this forward. I, too, am wearing teal. It's not a color I normally wear, so I bought it on Amazon. Yeah, so thank I, you know, thank you so much for recognizing Mayor Pro Tem Kimbernees Nguyen. She was the one who originally had reached out to me and told me about Sexual Assault Awareness Month. And she was the one who shared her story and her story of survival and being a survivor in Orange County and really been the one to bring this issue forward and talking to the various communities in our county about it.

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

I do want to share some facts about sexual assault because I think it's really important that we recognize how pervasive this is and how underreported it is. So a few facts. Statistics show that one in five women and one in 67 men will experience sexual assault at some point in their lives.

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We have three women on the council and our city attorney, city clerk, and our city manager are women. Statistically, one of us is a survivor. That's the truth. And it's so hard to hear because we don't talk about it enough in our city or in the media. And the numbers are even worse for the LGBTQ community. They experience sexual violence at similar or higher rates than their cisgender and straight counterparts, but 47% of transgender people are sexually assaulted

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

at some point in their lifetime. That's almost one in two. Sexual assault remains dramatically underreported with less than one-third of cases actually being reported to police.

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And what's worse is that those are the ones that, once they get reported, it doesn't mean they're gonna get investigated, it doesn't mean that they're gonna go to court, it doesn't mean that once they go to court that the assault assailant will be convicted. So the numbers are even smaller. And finally, in light of COVID and the pandemic shutdown, that's really isolated survivors of sexual assault and made it even more difficult to identify folks who need resources. So I know the mayor, Maripold Tam and I are very excited to present this proclamation

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to Casa de la Familia because on top of the work that they're doing, on top of the language barrier and on top of everything else, you know, they're serving our community. their nonprofit organization founded in 1996 by clinical psychologist Dr. Ana Nogales, whose vision was to create an organization dedicated to ensuring the long-lasting mental health and success of individuals that have experienced trauma. And finally, I want to say that we're wearing teal because today is the National Day of Action. And so for those of you who have teal or something similar, please wear teal, post a selfie on Twitter, Instagram,

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and use the hashtag SAAM2021 to show that you're standing in solidarity with us. So thank you so much, and I'm really excited to present this proclamation.

Thank you, Council Member, and go ahead, Mayor Pro Tem.

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Really quick, Mr. Mayor, I just wanted to add and point out that one thing that's very troubling is that in Orange County, a county with over 3 million people, there's only one rape crisis center in our county, and it's in Anaheim. So these are things that aren't, you know, talked about, which leads to not having these crisis centers available throughout the county, because people would rather not talk about it, shy away from it. it's usually men that are in these positions of power to make these things available throughout areas.

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So just wanted to point that out, that that's something that we need to collectively work on as a city, as a county, to be able to address that, that there needs to be more of these rape crisis centers throughout the county available for our community. I hear it too often of just getting emails from our police department.

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I could tell that sexual assault cases on not just women or men, but children, have sadly increased over the last year because everyone's working from home, doing at-home learning, where people, there are safe spaces for kids, for schools. the safe spaces for women and men were their workplace. They were able to get away from whatever they had going on at home. So it's something that we need to continue to talk about, continue to address, continue to advocate for funding our county representatives to make these things more available. And that's it, Mr. Mayor.

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Just wanted to add to that bit.

Great, thank you. Thank you both for that. But I think this is the real teal. I had this on earlier. I don't know what you guys are wearing. Your guys is kind of a dark green, but I think this was the real teal. So actually I was wearing this today to a court hearing I had this morning, but it got a little warm and I just took it off for a while. But in any event, I think we're all in this with the spirit of making sure that people understand what we're trying to bring attention to. And I thank you both. And I thank you all for drawing attention to this. You're right in communities of color,

especially these concerns are really suppressed, which is troubling. And I think the more we speak about it, the more we bring it out. I think we normalize the ability for people just to share their experiences as unpleasant as they may be, because that's the only way we're able to, you know, address the underlying problem. So the only thing I would leave us with before we go on to the next item is, Madam City Manager, I know we have a Family Justice Center, and maybe what we could do is we can make sure that the Justice Center reaches out to families and provides

information and support specific to this, especially this month, but really year round, just because I know that this is one of the items that people may seek some relief on. But since we do have a Justice Center that addresses different issues and there isn't anything really specified, I think this should definitely be one of those, which it probably already covers, but maybe we do a little more in multi-language efforts like Spanish and Vietnamese, and we reach people and just let them know that there are materials and people that are available

for their support. So I'm sure that'll be where no response needed. I see you nodding your head. So that was all I wanted to say on that. Mayor, I'm sorry for interrupting. Before we proceed,

um gabriela gonzalez is on the line and she would like to share a few words oh sure

go ahead good evening buenas noches my name is gabriela gonzalez and i'm the communications and development director for casa de la familia we're a non-profit founded by dr nogales as you mentioned um that provides critical mental health services to children and families in orange county our main office is based in santana and this year we are celebrating 25 years of service to our community. I want to take this time to thank you Mayor Sarmiento, Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa, and Council Member Fan for the presentation of this proclamation recognizing April as Sexual Assault

Awareness Month in the city of Santana and thereby joining the county and at least 10 other cities in Orange County, maybe more, in doing so. I think this year we're really creating history. This pandemic, you know, as you mentioned, and thank you so much Council Member Fan and and Losa for bringing this up, but the pandemic has pushed survivors of sexual assault further into the shadows, especially women and girls. Our statistics show that nine out of ten victims of rape are women, and more than half have suffered sexual violence by an intimate partner.

So here at Casa de la Familia, of the survivors we served last year, 74% were women and girls, and almost 50% were children between the ages of five and 10. Unfortunately, sexual assault remains dramatically underreported. As you said, council member, Fan, with only one of four cases reported. I talked to Commander Brown last year. We have a new commander at the Family Justice Center, but he also has these same concerns that we have. I can't imagine how many unidentified survivors there are out there. They need our help. Therefore, Casa de la Familia strongly supports

proclaiming April as Sexual Assault Awareness Month and all efforts to reach unidentified survivors and increase access to services. We invite the community of Santana to join us this month on our social media accounts. We're hosting awareness activities in Spanish and English. And for more information, you can call 877-611-CASA or 877-611-2272. Thank you so much,

Mayor Sambiento and council members. Thank you, Gabriela, and thank you all for everything that you all do there, please give our best to Dr. Ana. We're big fans, I know. So we appreciate you joining us and sharing those thoughts and words with us. Moving along to item number four, I believe we're going to see a video that is presented by Councilmember Becerra Toyama Karate Do for their 30-year anniversary. So, Councilmember, I'll let you kick it off.

I think we have a video queued up. Looking forward to that playing.

Phil BacerraItem 4

She and Rodolfo.

Phil BacerraItem 4

Cazales, his wife Araceli, and their son, Sensei Jerry Cazales, are celebrating the 30 year anniversary of Toyama Karate. Together, they helped to make this business successful and thrive in our community. Toyama's motto is changing lives through martial arts. Toyama Karate Doe USA started offering martial arts here in Santa Ana back on March 16th, 1991, right in the Jerome Community Center. It was part of the Parks and Rec Leisure Services Program at that time. Over the years, the program was offered at the Logan Community Center, the Southwest Senior Center, Santa Ana Senior Center, and the Santa Anita Community Center.

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In 1995, Toyama opened its first karate studio as a business here in Santa Ana with over 100 black belt graduates. And now in 2021, with over 350 black belts. In 2001, Toyama was given the opportunity to provide a karate after-school program for the students in Santa Ana Unified to teach them character development, goal setting, discipline to influence positive academic achievement. This program was formerly known as Youth Developing Self-Discipline Through Martial Arts, which is now known as Sidekicks for Life, a youth mentoring,

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a youth mentorship program and has served over 34,700 students here in Santa Ana since 2001. All this has been made possible because of the vision, loyalty, and commitment of Shihan Rodolfo Gonzalez who as a member of Toyama International and who took the initiative to expand to the United States and established Toyama USA back in 1991. Toyama USA is now one of the top 100 martial arts schools here in the country. Toyama has participated for 30 years as community partners, volunteers and providers of services to the youth and families of the city of Santa Ana. Through such programs as the Santa Ana Relay for Life,

Phil BacerraItem 4

Santa Ana Fiestas Patriots, Santa Ana Public Library Kids Day, Santa Ana Youth Expo and many other Santa Ana civic events. So today it is my honor on behalf of the city of Santa Ana to congratulate Toyama Karate Dio USA on their 30 year anniversary and thank them for making a positive impact in the lives of the youth here in our city.

Thank you. Okay, thank you so much, City of Sarama,

Mayor, Council Members, and especially Council Members, because this congregation is for everybody. And also, and behind the Karate Dio USA, Santa Ana, my family, my students and parents. I want to say thank you so much. Don't worry.

Would you like to say anything? Okay. My name is Saraceli Casales. I'm very happy that my husband and also my son are recognized for all the community service that we provide to the city of Santa Ana. And we will continue with the same mission, you know, to support the community, support the city and we are here and thank you Phil for doing this for Toyama Carabito the parents and kids who represent this great organization thank you very much. Jerry? Yes sir so first of all thank you to the city of Santa Ana especially to Councilmember Phil Bacetta for honoring my

parents they're great leaders in this community you know being raised in the in the family that we were raised it was always about helping the community whether it was just to you know serve as a volunteer or to give them our time doing what we do, which is martial arts. We're very happy and honored to be part of the growth of the youth in this community. You know, 34,700 kids seems like a, you know, a big number, but it's been a blessing to be able to impact the entire community families and to be able to be partners with the city of Santa Ana.

We're definitely looking forward to another 30 years, and I definitely want to congratulate my parents for doing a great job and being role models, not just to, you know, to myself, but to a lot of families out there to get their kids involved, to stay away from all the bad habits, bad things. So definitely thank you very much, the city of Santa Ana, for allowing us to make this impact with the community and through our programs. And looking forward again, like I said, to a couple more years, and we're here to continue to serve. Thank you very much for this great honor. It's a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Becerra. Congratulations to Toyama for 30 years. Hopefully we have another 30 years from them as well, providing great work to the community. And you guys wearing teal inspired me, so I put this tie on just for you. I'm dressing up for you guys and doing something positive. And as Councilmember Fan said, we'll be posting that photograph soon. Moving along to the last item on the presentation, I'm going to call on Councilmember Mendoza to recognize Alan Gersten from Santa Unified with the Teacher of the Year Award and his outstanding

contributions to the community. So Councilmember Mendoza, go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I am honored to present this certificate of recognition to a fellow teacher of the Santa Ana Unified School District. A 30-year teacher and former Golden Bell Award recipient, Mr. Alan Gersten was recently selected as the 2021 CACTE Teacher of the Year. That's the California Career Technical Education Teacher of the Year. A very high honor. He currently serves as the Business Technology Department Chair and Program Director of the Business Academy at Century High School in Santa

Ana. Mr. Gersten prides himself in creating a fun, engaging, yet rigorous learning environment for his students. A few of the creative ideas that Alan has provided to his students is working with local businesses to provide mentors for students, providing valuable opportunities to get the real world experience by posting job boards for his students and immersing his students in personal finance through tools such as virtual, bi-weekly paychecks.

Alan also runs a blog and a website for teachers with a volume of resources that are used by teachers and students across the nation. He is thinking about starting a podcast to share best practices for business teachers. His students compete in local, state, regional, and national competitions and has won over 350 awards over the last five years. And his competitive teams rank regularly in the top 100 schools nationally for the business. We would like to thank you, Alan, for the significant impact you have had on our lives

of the young people in our schools and in our communities. Your contributions to educate are truly inspiring. Thank you for all the work you do and keep on doing what you do. And if Mr. Gersten is available, I'd like to give him a moment to say a few words or his boss, maybe Don Isbell or the chancellor, or maybe even be listening in. It looks like we have a video here.

Council Member Mendoza, I do not see anyone listed of the names you indicated.

Is the district's chancellor on the line?

And we do not have a video as well. Okay.

Very good. Well, congratulations, Mr. Allen Gersten. And we look forward to another 30 years of incredible work with our students.

Thank you, Council Member. And I'm sure Mr. Gersten is very glad to receive this from you and from the entire council. And congratulations to him for his great work. So moving along to the next section of the calendar, which is the staff presentation, and we only have one this evening. I'm going to turn it over to the city manager to give us an update on the COVID-19 status here in the community.

Good evening, honorable mayor, mayor pro tem, and council members. I do have a brief presentation to update you on the latest COVID efforts. As the mayor mentioned earlier, we did learn from the governor's office just today that the state intends to fully reopen by June 15th. And with that, the governor has made this determination using COVID-19 public health data, particularly vaccine availability and distribution. So it is a move away from the county specific four tier blueprint for a safer economy system.

And the City of Santa Ana will work closely with our state-level partners to quickly access and share more information about the reopening as it becomes available. As we wait for the June 15th opening, we are in the orange tier, which is important for a lot of our businesses. As going into the orange tier, it's the second least restrictive tier on the state's blueprint. And that means more of our local businesses and activities are allowed to either to expand capacity or to resume operations. We do want to reopen safely. So we are encouraged everyone to continue wearing a mask and get vaccinated when it's your turn

so we can all get back to normal. On the slide, you will see some of the examples of what the changes are when we entered the orange tier. And basically it did increase capacity for a lot of our businesses. And then for the first time it did open up churches, movie theaters, museums, zoos, and aquariums. up to 50%. So talking about vaccinations, getting vaccines to our most vulnerable residents is a priority that city council you directed us to achieve. And I want to call out a special thanks to Daisy Perez from the city manager's office. She has been working tirelessly in

collaborating with a number of different organizations to make sure that we have vaccines available to those in our community that need it the most. Just the most recent efforts includes Santa Ana residents that are age 16 and older who live in the zip codes of 9271 and 9273. They can make their appointment and receive a vaccine now. This is in advance of other individuals in the county that are 16 and older. Their opening won't start until April 15. So we are excited that we're able to accommodate this and to make appointments we also are providing a

lot of assistance to our Santa Ana residents they don't have to try to do an online app to set up that appointment we actually can assist them and walk them through that so for our Santa Ana residents you can call you can text or you can email and we will walk you through in order to get that appointment scheduled for you. So on this slide, I do want to just read out loud the the number that you can call to make an appointment. It's area code 714-667-2273. Now talking about assistance, there still is a lot of financial assistance that

is available. And I know at the last council meeting, we talked about the 143 million and federal stimulus money that was approved that we will be receiving as direct funding. We don't have guidance on how these funds can be spent yet. However, we are already planning to invest those dollars in our community. With this, we hope to launch Revive Santa Ana, a comprehensive pandemic recovery program. We also soon will be rolling out a community survey to seek the community's input on how these dollars can best be spent. We have already introduced it at the city council meeting as well as at one of our community meetings.

And we will continue to do that so that we can engage the community to answer questions regarding the federal stimulus as well as to get some valuable feedback on what our residents are seeking. One of the questions came up in one of our community meetings was on funeral assistance. And with one individual in the community asking that question, it certainly did remind us that COVID-19 pandemic has brought overwhelming grief to many of our families, and there might be others who need assistance in this area. So while additional guidance is being finalized, but there

will be funeral assistance available from FEMA to potential applicants and community partners as soon as possible. So in the meantime, the individuals who have needs for funeral expenses are encouraged to keep and gather documentation, and we will certainly provide more information as the details come out. There is a phone number indicated on the slide if anyone has direct questions to FEMA.

Business loans, just starting today, this U.S. Small Business Assistance is raising the loan limits for COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program up to 24 months with a maximum loan amount of 500 000 and this will be a great help for businesses in our community and for more information on that type of a loan it's best to just visit the sba website which is www.sba.gov additional funding for shuttered venue operators and some of the businesses most hurt by the pandemic have been event type venues which have been closed for a significantly long period of

time and now sba has a new grant program to assist the shuttered venue operators and it will start taking applications in just a couple days on april 8th and for information on that it is best to visit the sba website as well so those are my updates for this time and to look forward to presenting more information and overall you know i'm very excited that we have been able to be successful with getting the vaccination rates up in our community. So thank you.

Great. Thank you, Madam City Manager. So yeah, exciting day. I want to see if anybody on the council has any comments. I know I have a few thoughts. Council members, any questions or comments? All right, don't all jump in and jump out at once. But I don't see anything and I don't hear anything. So if I bypass you, if there's something you want to say, please feel free to jump in. You know, just a couple of thoughts. I know when the governor was here, when he did his

press conference here in Santa Ana and spoke about April 1st, relaxing the ability for people 50 and over to get the vaccine. And then after April 15th, everybody 16 and over, he had talked about something called the green tier and I didn't know what that was, right? But this is what he, his prelude to that was that once he saw that the healthy place index, which are, which is an index, basically an equity index for those hard hit, hard impacted communities, where there was a disproportionate, the high rate of COVID. Once those hit a certain threshold,

which they did, and which they seem to be trending in a much better direction, he was going to go to this green tier, which is a relaxation. I think it's a relaxation. I don't think it's an abandonment. I think there still is going to be masks that are going to be required of us to use. And I think there's still going to be healthy protocols or safe protocols that are still going to remain in place. But I think this gives an opportunity for our economy to open up to a degree that I think is important. And we see that in many school districts throughout the state.

I'm really encouraged to hear that Santa Ana Unified, as well as others, some of them are opening up now and very soon. Santa Ana Unified is going to be opening up in summer, which is very encouraging because I think that all we want is to make sure that what we just spoke about earlier in the presentations, the anxiety, the depression levels, the difficulty that families and children are experiencing during this time, I think for those children to revisit their classmates and their teachers and their counselors and just their normal environment, even during the summer.

And if it can be as robust as possible, that is really going to be a great transition to the fall because this disparity in learning has really, really increased over this past year. So I'm really encouraged about that. I just want to give a quick shout out to our newest supervisor over at the county, Katrina Foley because when this was all rolling out there was a real real difficulty with people logging on to the Othena app and there wasn't even any way for zip for those in uh living in zip codes 92701 and 92703 to bypass and go in as somebody under 65. She and her staff as soon as uh as soon

as she took a call with us, she and her staff got busy, spoke with the HCA and Dr. Chow and got that fixed. She was able to communicate information to the nonprofit partners to allow them to assist many residents in Santa Ana in those two zip codes to be able to log on quickly. So big props to her. I think she's a game changer at the county. She is somebody who understands this as a former mayor. She's a former executive who had to deal with this in her own community and continues to do so as a supervisor. So I really want to thank her as well as our staff. I came

in last Friday on Good Friday and I saw staff members there working very hard just trying to connect our residents to appointments, which kind of brings up something that I'm a little concerned with is that I heard that appointments for our two impacted zip codes were already exhausted and were already filled. And, you know, unfortunately, there were only appointments available through Thursday of this week, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, because what we want to do is use this opportunity before April 15th, before everybody in the county becomes

eligible to really make a dent and reduce the number of people who haven't received vaccines in these two HPI zip codes. So if we can, maybe staff reach out to Supervisor Foley's office once again. I think she will be very receptive to help us see how we can open up some appointments beyond Thursday. I know that they go out only two or three days in advance, but that really does make it difficult because from what I understand, we did a text message outreach to those zip codes and we got a huge response, right? We had about 400 waiting to get appointments, which is a great thing. But it's a great problem to have,

but it's also a problem that we can't get them appointments. And our staff has been so effective and efficient on our hotline. I really want to compliment them because they've been able to assist and provide relief wherever they could. Even if those sites at Santa Ana College were taken, they'd move them to or find spaces for them at the Latino health access sites. and it's been just this incredible effort. So I really want to take this moment to applaud them. And so this hotline has been so effective that I don't know if we can keep it going for assistance

to businesses, for assistance to tenants who need access to that rental assistance, but maybe there's a way we can roll this. Once we get a handle on these vaccines, we know that people are still going to be seeking relief through the rescue plan or business grants or rental assistance. And maybe we found a great tool to use for our residents to be able to access relief and support. So, you know, again, big props to the governor, obviously, for helping us get to this point and for designating 40% of the vaccine to these HPI zip codes. So with that, I just,

want to say this is a very hopeful day. I see that things are improving. I see that things are trending in the right direction. That doesn't mean mission accomplished. It's over. Let's go ahead and begin the roaring 20s of the 2020 era or the 2021 era. That's not where we're at. And I don't think that's what people are saying. We just see that we can now begin to see hope on the horizon. So anyways, let me go ahead and turn it over to somebody's hands raised, Council Member

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

pan hi thank you mayor just a very brief comment and of course as soon as you were starting your comments i remember what i was going to say um a city manager i just wanted to ask you really quickly so right now the counties the various vaccines it seems like most of them have been pfizer or moderna

that's correct however we are doing a partnership that will be a johnson and johnson vaccine perfect

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

And I wanted to ask, because I really wanted to bring this issue up, you know, there's a lot of misinformation that's out there regarding the efficacy of these vaccines. And I wanted to reiterate that the CDC, the FDA, and every public health official has said, you know, all three vaccines are 100% effective in preventing hospitalizations and death. That is really what we are trying to do here, prevent people from being hospitalized on ventilators and dying. I would also like to share that I actually was very lucky, got one of those trash or arm type of doses and got my second shot today. So if you see me doing this, it's because

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

I'm trying to prevent my arm from hurting too much. But my family lives in three different states. We have family members who've had Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson. If this was not safe, I would not be okay with my family getting it. So I really hope that all of you out there sign your family up as soon as there's an appointment. The best vaccine is the one that you can get into your arm. So please don't hesitate, get vaccinated. We're all in this together and we can only reach herd immunity and start hugging each other, start traveling, start being in school when we get to

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

that point. But we cannot do it if there's vaccine hesitancy. So I just wanted to reiterate that

facts. Thank you. Excellent message. Thank you, Councilmember Phan. On that note, seeing no other comments or questions from the Council, let's move along to the next item. And Madam City Attorney, do we have anything to report at a closed session?

Good evening, Mayor, members of the Council, members of the public. We do have some reportable action this evening. On the first item that we discussed in closed session, it was a claim from all state insurance for recovery of $98,384 in relation to a damaged vehicle. The settlement was approved unanimously by the city council with the mayor absent and that's all the reportable

action I have. Great, thank you for that Madam City Attorney. Moving along to the public comments section of the agenda, let me go ahead and just say this is the time and place for the meeting of City Council to receive comments from the members of the public on agenda and non-agenda items pursuant to the Brown Act. The City Council may not enter into any discussion, so this isn't a dialogue, but the public comment line is now closed, but it's been open since 4.30. So, Madam Clerk, let me go ahead and turn it over to you to see if there's anybody in the queue

wishing to address the City Council. Thank you, Mayor and members of the Council.

So there are speakers ready to provide their comments. To request to speak again, please dial star nine from your phone or select raise hand from Zoom. Please do not call or Zoom to only listen to the meeting. Before meeting the calls, I'd like to begin by reporting the following summary of emails provided as of today. We did receive non-agenda comments. One, Santa Ana Creek Greenway Alliance comments on the general plan update related to Santiago Creek. One Santa Ana resident comment on speed automate camera system.

Five non-Santa Ana residents requested to pass a climate emergency resolution. One Santa Ana resident commented on the public safety posts on next door app. One residency not disclosed comment on communication and spending for TCA toll roads, One Sierra Club information on organic waste reduction campaigns, and on item 21 the Kennedy Commission they're in support of the item. And with that again those who would like to make a comment please select raise hand on your Zoom feature. Caller with the last three numbers, 477.

Please select the microphone icon or the unmute feature on your device. Thank you. You have three minutes.

Good evening, Dale Helvig, Ward 3. First off, I'd like to say thank you to the Parks and Recs Committee for item number 16 on getting the vast amount of money needed to implement the Lincoln Avenue pedestrian pathway from Park Lane to Santiago Creek. I hope the project goes well, and I hope it solves more problems that it creates. So again, my thanks for that. The other item I'd like to talk about is item number 22, the Illumination Foundation lease

or whatever. I'm kind of puzzled on that in a couple respects. And the fact that we were able, or the city was able to build the link in 28 days. And it looks like we're allotting almost five months, if not more, to get the Carnegie Navigation Center up and running, which is going to cost us $230,000 per month to rent the facility up in Fullerton. I don't know why it's going to take so long to get that in place, and it's kind of disturbing

that we'd be spending that kind of money versus taking that money and expediting the building of the Carnegie Navigation Center. The other thing is I didn't see anything that addressed an exit clause in the event that we are able to get Carnegie Navigation Center completed before the September 30th deadline. Are we still going to be on the hook to pay through September 30th? It's not addressed in anything that I read. So hopefully we can stick something like that in because we should protect ourselves in the event that we're very efficient in getting the navigation center up and running.

The last thing I'd like to talk about is the 2525 demolition. As you know, the demo permit was granted. They started demo work on Monday. But it took over an hour of flight time for the helicopter to circle the property. evacuate the building. Police cars were there most of the day. And then we had the fire that night, which caused 32 fire engines to be dispatched to address the problems. I think it's almost criminal that we let property deteriorate to the point where we have to have

city resources expended to this degree. And I'm wondering how many other properties in Santa Ana we're letting go for multiple abatement issue problems before we actually step in. There ought to be some type of progressive disciplinary action on these property owners and not allowing to languish for years before it becomes a problem. I hope that the city can recoup some of that money that they spent because not only did they spend money on Monday. The police again were out today because the property owner failed to secure

the construction zone for demolition and people are coming in and out of the property. I walked by and saw people exiting the property today, exiting the building while demolition was still going on. So evidently they're not evacuating the building before people or before, you know, they start work. So hopefully that gets remedied fast before someone gets injured. Thank you. Thank you.

Caller with the last three numbers 010, please dial star six to unmute your call or select the microphone icon on your device.

caller with the last three numbers 010

please dial star six to unmute your call or select the microphone icon on your device can you hear me

yes we can hear you now okay uh good afternoon or good evening council uh vince i hope you can Again, this is Victor Mendez. I hope you just give me a little discretion here because there are some really important points that were discussed on the COVID scheduling of vaccination. And I've gotten a lot of information just coincidentally on it, and I hope this helps in your discussions going forward. It is a matter of broader public interest that I provide this information. For one thing, you could register if you were under 65 at any time. The issue was that you were put in queue.

What Christina was able to do was allow you to update your profile so you didn't have to wait for the queue. And once your profile is updated to meet eligibility, you would be redirected or get an email to schedule your appointment. This is what I did. It was in five minutes of updating my profile, I got scheduled and there was tons of availability with respect to the super sites. The individual locations are very difficult to find. As soon as spots become available, they get filled.

What this really means with the city, if they really want to push this date and be successful, is really drive Athena. It's really simple. It's easy to do. And yes, people 16 and older, irrespective of current eligibility, can register. The trouble is right now is they'll put in queue. And if you're in queue, you have to wait for Athena to respond. I would recommend, frankly, wait until the 15th and just make a mass effort to get everyone on board on that day and soon thereafter so they're immediately eligible and they don't get caught up in the queue.

So once they're eligible, Athena recognizes it, and then we'll start allowing the schedule. But frankly, these super sites have been very, very easy to get into and have tons of availability. So please take this from the standpoint of someone's experience and someone who's kind of observed from social media posts on other experiences. This is a good process that we need to take advantage of and use it right. Along that way, there's signage out there from the Santa Ana Police Department on Maine that talks about vaccination for 65 and older.

it's completely outdated, but that's a way you can maybe get this message out to use those mobile signs electronically and just get them all over the city to start getting this vaccination up and running. The benchmark for Vaxit to ensure your recovery is 80 percent. So I don't know where the city stands at that time, and that information is certainly not available or not visible to me. But please look at Oceana as a great tool to get this thing done, and we can move forward a lot better with as many vaccinations by that July 2nd deadline or timeline we're looking at.

But the individual providers, like I said, are difficult to access because as soon as they open up, they get filled very quickly. A quick mention here, though, the city manager mentioned things that she mentioned things twice. She said it's open to 16 and over now. But however, it is not 16 and over now. You have to have a medical condition now to be eligible. On the 15th, you'll be, anyone 16 and over can get registered in Athena. But right now, if you register, you'll simply go into two, and that may not be all that effective. So I hope this helps out. Some very brief remarks on the COVID recovery.

The only thing I can say on this money, I really hope it gets targeted to our preschool children who are really, really suffered through this epidemic. What? Vince, can I have another minute here? Vince, can I have another minute here?

Just wrap up, Victor. We got a lot of people in the queue. Go ahead and just wrap up.

Okay.

Yeah, that's fine. I understand. Thank you, Vince. Bye-bye. Thank you.

Thank you. Zoom ID, Manny Escamilla, if you would please select the microphone icon on your Zoom device.

Are you able to hear me?

Yes, we can hear you now. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you for that. Hello, everyone. Mayor and Council. Just a quick comment totally in support of item 14. So I'm really glad that we're adding some additional book capacity over at the Police Activity League Center, which for a lot of us we used to know as the McFadden Library. So I'm glad that books are kind of going back into that center. But I do wish that, you know, with everything kind of going on when we're talking about strategic reinvestments into hard hit communities, that we do take a look at the McFadden site as a potential location to bring back a library.

You know, this is not to say that, you know, against the Police Activity League, I just think that we might be able to move it over to the old fire station along South Broadway. I believe there's some extra space there that's not currently being utilized, so it might be a better utilization of space. We can actually even probably expand the amount of folks that can make it over to the Police Activity League activities, while at the same time reinvesting in bringing back a library into the central core of the city. So I do hope that we take some time to consider that as the budget moves forward.

And there's some additional opportunities for reinvestment into early literacy. I myself was someone who attended that library just about every day after school. So it does hold a special nostalgic place, I'll admit, in my heart. But it did help in kind of impact the direction of my life. So I do think that that would be a worthwhile investment as we move forward. And, you know, everything just kind of with COVID going on, I do think that, you know, we probably are maybe at the point where we're realizing the scale and kind of being able to breathe a little bit to reflect on the sheer calamity that's occurred, the number

of people that we've lost in our community. You know, I myself lost two relatives. And, you know, it's been hard to just sit back and have time to mourn those losses. So I do hope that as we move forward, we set aside some time to discuss maybe a memorial, some form of public remembrance, and something that lets us as a community kind of heal through this tragedy that we've all lived through. So with that, I wish you all well and all the best, and I hope that you all wrap up pretty early, or at least early compared to some of those 2 a.m. meetings that you all have. That's it.

Thank you.

Zoom ID, Jeffrey Katz, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The fire 2525 was not the only fire that hit War III this week. There was a fire in Santa Ana Triangle at a transitional home for violent felons who are now on parole. And this is a particular site that I brought to the attention to the council. And it was a matter put, it was an agenda item introduced back in December by council members Penaloza and Nelly Mendoza. And I asked for you guys to take the time to revisit that and take action above and beyond what was considered back then four

months ago, which was simply a census. As of now, the situation in Costa Mesa, where their ordinance has been challenged, they prevailed at the Ninth Circuit in 2020, where a denial of an injunction brought by a sober living facility was affirmed by the Ninth Circuit. You know, Jennifer Keller won her trial. That's up on appeal, where Buck Halter is now representing Costa Mesa. and Costa Mesa has also won five out of six, I should say there are five motions for summary judgment that they prevailed upon this year. And speaking with the attorney who represented

the city, Costa Mesa on those motions, Seymour Everett, he has told me that the city has seen a remarkable reduction in the number of these sorts of facilities, which quite honestly is for the benefit of the neighbors and for the benefit of the people who need to utilize these sober living facilities because they were not being run well at all. So I urge the city not to wait any longer. I think the writing is on the wall. They have not lost a single case yet, and we don't need to wait for one more appeal to be ruled upon. If an ordinance is being effective in Costa Mesa, it means one thing to me.

It means that these people, these business owners that are setting up these irresponsible civil living facilities are turning to cities like Santa Ana, where there are no regulations, where we do not have a department overseeing these sorts of institutions. So I urge you, the simplest thing to do is just to adopt the Costa Mesa Ordinance, which has already been proven to be constitutional. And please protect. Santa Ana Triangle is a very, very small neighborhood. Spurgeon is already recognized by our gang task force as a Logan Street epicenter.

And now you have Bush, which has this transitional living facility. The quality of life there is suffering dramatically. We can't wait for census anymore. Please, please take action. Thank you.

Thank you.

Zoom ID, N-O-N-A-M-E. Please select the microphone icon on your device or unmute.

Greetings and salutations. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Thank you. Excellent. I know I only have three minutes, so I'm going to go ahead and put my timer because I'm going to want to speak in English and in Spanish. So first and foremost, I want to thank everyone that is a city council member because you have a heavy burden on your shoulders, especially at this time, in this situation that we're in not only as a city, as a county, as a state, and as a country. And it's come to my attention that the city has essentially received $143 million from the federal government.

And my situation is, I think it's disingenuous for people to say, or for politicians to say, that $200 can help a family.

A lot of us are essentially back late on rent for eight months. $200 is a portion of what the rent is. and what I want to bring attention to the city council members is that you guys have an amazing opportunity

to leave a legacy for yourselves, for the city, and for the country.

With that being said, I would like for you guys to consider where this country is going and to take an economic position and invest in the city, not by giving us $200, because it's hypocritical to say that that will help us. I can't even take eight of you out to lunch to McDonald's with $200. That is a fact. You guys have the opportunity to invest in something greater than all of us, which the future leads to the point

of electronic panels, solar panels. I am tired of buying things that are made in China. I want things made in the U.S. of A. This city has hardworking, honest people with a lot of integrity who's willing to put sweat behind good morals.

And for people to say that $200 is gonna go ahead and help us, as opposed to investing it in a business that can go ahead and manufacture solar panels and will not only feed us for today, but will feed us for the rest of the future. We have a great opportunity, an amazing opportunity, once in a lifetime opportunity where we can literally, Santa Ana could be Santa Ana, the sunshine city, where Santa Ana can be the number one city in California where we can literally go ahead

and start manufacturing solar panels. We can bring good, hardworking, blue-collar jobs back to the city because we need jobs. That's what we need. We don't need a handout. We need a hand up. And you guys are sitting there

in, dare I say, in a hypocritical fashion, when you guys probably spent $200 in your dry cleaning bill and they have the audacity to say that that's gonna help us, while you guys have the power, not only the power, but you guys have the money to invest in the city.

Your time is up.

And you can go ahead and you can work out a great business deal where that same manufacturer.

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

Zoom ID Paulusion.

Okay. Hi, thank you. Yes, you may proceed with your comment.

Good evening, all council members. Thank you, very ceremonial, to give me this time to talk. I live in the Park Santiago, and I live on Lincoln Street, where they're going to have the Lincoln Pathway Project. I totally, totally do not like this project. $1.5 million for this project is a bad investment.

And there are, we have about 60 people have signatures that are totally against it also. Just today, you know, because of the fire and the demolition of 2525 building, we already having homeless people on Lincoln Street. You know, living in Santa Ana is very beautiful. You know, it's a very beautiful city. And I just wanted to, you know, tell you, Mayor Ceremono,

and direct this to Dale. Dale, you are not the speaker of Park Santiago because you didn't even come to us and tell us what you were doing with the Lincoln Pathway Project. And you've been to our meetings and seen 60 people at Mandaloris' house. You've been there to our meeting. You knew what was going on. how could you be a speaker of Park Santiago and not even come to us? You have my phone number. You know where we live.

So that's, you know, I want to end there, but we are going to, all the 60 people, and we're going to have more now, we are going to stop this project. You know, and because it's a beautiful Lincoln Street and Park Santiago is beautiful and we want to keep it that way. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Zoom ID Irvin M, if you would please select the microphone icon or unmute from your device. Thank you.

Yes, am I on?

Yes, you're on. You may proceed with your comment. Thank you.

Okay. I guess I'll keep it short and sweet, first of all. Of course, thank you for taking the time to listen to this. I'm sure we all have our busy schedules. I myself do have a day job. I guess my comment is actually more of a general state of affairs. You know, the goings on Santa Ana. And I've actually just wanted to air out a disappointment that I actually personally had. Was actually communicating with Councilman Becerra, I'm a Ward 4, by the way.

And I was communicating to him, basically asking him in Memorial Park, simply soliciting either from the mayor or anybody in the, what do you call it, the city in general. Just to simply take a tour of this neighborhood. I know yesterday I also jumped onto the environmental justice panel. I did give a quick summary. But yeah, it's basically my concern is to add on to, I guess the concern right now is

also the homelessness issue, which unfortunately Memorial Park does seem to suffer, especially the stretch from Warner Street on Main all the way up to, I'd say, McFadden over by Lathrop. We do seem to have that problem going, and I believe that's simply because of the concentration of when the National Guard Armory used to be used as a temporary shelter. I don't know what rearranging took place during COVID. But basically, I'm concerned about the trash. I know we're concerned about the air quality and whatnot. But also, I'm very concerned about, you know, when I take walks in the afternoon,

I actually do take a garbage bag with me and some safety gloves just to do simple pickup. And, you know, sometimes you do find things, you know, like drugs or other random paraphernalia. And it's, you know, I'm concerned about the lack of people picking up trash at the park. I mean, I see children over here. I mean, I've grown up in the city all 32 years of my life. And I'm actually rather disappointed at how horrible this situation's gotten. And, you know, we also do want to have some sort of solutions.

So, yeah, I mean, if Councilman Becerra, you know, I'm going to ask this in the best of faith. If you mind hosting some sort of get together when we're doing vaccine distributions or what have you. And, you know, just so we can. Yeah, I'm almost finished. Just so we can have a sort of get together. something just to air out our beliefs, obviously, social distance and whatnot. I guess that would be it. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Zoom ID, Tim Johnson.

Zoom ID Tim Johnson, if you would please select the microphone icon or unmute from your device.

Zoom ID Tim Johnson, if you would please select the microphone icon or unmute from your device.

Okay, Mayor, looks like that's all the speakers we have that wanted to speak.

Great. Thank you, Madam Clerk. If we can go ahead and move on to the next portion of the meeting. I believe we are now on the consent calendar portion of the meeting, so I'll ask any council members if they'd wish to abstain from any items or pull any items off the consent calendar, and I'll turn it over to Councilmember Fan to begin.

Thai Viet PhanItem 7

Thank you, Mayor. I would like to abstain from, oh shoot, I lost the number, from item number 23 regarding Orange County United Way. My employer, Rattan and Tucker, represents, United Way is a client of my firm. I don't work with them at all, but I am recusing myself of that item. Secondly, I would also like to pull item 21, the Habitat for Humanity of Orange County item. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Council Member Fan. I believe Council Member Lopez was next.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. Can I pull item 16, please?

Yes. Followed by, I believe, was that it, Councilmember Lopez? Great. I'm not sure who came in which order, but go ahead, Councilmember Becerra and then Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I was just going to also pull item 16.

Great. Thank you for that. Mayor Pro Tem.

David PenalozaItem 7

Thank you, Mayor. I would like to pull items 13 and items 19, please.

Great. Any other members of the council wishing to pull or abstain on any items on the consent calendar? Seeing none and hearing none, I'll go ahead and entertain a motion for the balance of the consent calendar for those items that weren't pulled or abstained from. So moved.

Second.

We have a motion by Councilmember Becerra, second by Mendoza. Madam Clerk, will you please call roll?

Councilmember Becerra? Yes. Councilmember Hernandez?

Yes.

Councilmember Lopez? Yes. Councilmember Mendoza? Yes. Councilmember Fan? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa?

Yes.

Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes. Yes, great. So let's go to the first item that was pulled, I believe, by Mayor Pro Tem, that's item number 13.

David PenalozaItem 13

Yes, thank you, Mayor. I pulled item number 13, which is to approve an appropriation adjustment for capital improvement program and award construction contract to Big Bang Inc. for the Baker Glenwood sewer main upgrade. I just simply have some questions for staff. Madam City Manager, did you want to answer? Did you want the Public Works Director to answer?

I will have Executive Director Saba answer your questions, and he is available right now.

David PenalozaItem 13

Perfect. Thank you for that. Good afternoon, Executive Director Saba. How are you doing? Doing good. Thank you. Good evening. Good. Thanks. Basically, the questions I had for this, and I didn't see it in the staff report, was construction timeline, approximate project construction start date. How long will this take

for this area or this project? I'm sorry. It's typically a year to 18 months. And that's the timeframe for this one from the time we award.

David PenalozaItem 13

So when do we expect construction to start on this?

Usually, I would say within a month to 45 days, 30 to 45 days, we would start construction. Prior to construction, we have what we call planned review, but also the submittals. The contractor submits to us for approval the type of materials he's using, the valves, the pipe, and all that is ahead of the construction. And then once we approve all the submetals, then construction starts.

David PenalozaItem 13

Okay.

30 to 25 days.

David PenalozaItem 13

So let's say two months, and then the project timeline for this will be about 18 months, you said? Yes. Okay. The reason I'm asking is because along Baker, between St. Andrew and Annahurst, there is severe traffic issues, which we've discussed previously, due to the modern-day parking structure exit and entrance. And I want to make sure that we're communicating with Modern A High School and the neighborhood

David PenalozaItem 13

over any disruptions on Baker Street. I live just about three streets north of where this is going to happen. So I know that there will be a lot of traffic issues while this is going on. So have you guys done any outreach to that neighborhood and modern day in particular to see how they could divert their drop-offs and pickups?

No, we haven't, but we will. And once the contractor submits traffic plans for us, we'll review those. And upon the approval, we'll meet with the neighborhood association and, in this case, the school to coordinate and make sure that traffic is not disrupted and we continue a flow

David PenalozaItem 13

of traffic at all times okay because it's baker is a very narrow street in that area it's only two lanes um sorry i is it gonna be a thing where all of baker is completely shut down for a period of

time or is it just one side it will be we will always provide with one lane of traffic at all times and only during construction at the end of the day traffic would resume by plating back to the trench and the next day we'll pick up again and do the construction but we'll always maintain one lane of traffic at all times with access to all driveways and and access to the schools and

David PenalozaItem 13

everything else okay great thank you for that uh executive director saba and um one final question and and this is in regards to awarding this um i have no uh issue with big big ben inc which is a contractor but uh per the staff report i read that there were approximately

David PenalozaItem 13

17 Santa Ana-based vendors that this was sent out to, but zero of the Santa Ana contractors submitted a bid. And I know we've had this conversation numerous times. I've brought it up a number of times. I know my colleagues have. Do we know why none of these Santa Ana contractors

bid for this? Director Saba? I don't have an explanation at this time, but I will connect with staff and see why we did not get any bids from a Santa Ana contractor.

David PenalozaItem 13

Don't know. Okay. We're going to have to eventually have a conversation in regards to this. I know some of my colleagues have more further questions and about Santa Ana contractors, you know, and us not awarding or them not submitting bids, which is problematic.

David PenalozaItem 13

But I will let my colleagues dive into that later on. But thank you for that, Director Saba. And with that, if none of my colleagues have any comments, I will make a motion to approve the item. I'll second that.

Great. Thank you. We have a motion by Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa, a second by Becerra. Madam Clerk, will you please call roll?

Councilmember Becerra?

Yes.

Councilmember Hernandez?

Phil BacerraItem 13

Yes.

Councilmember Lopez? Yes. Councilmember Mendoza? Yes. Councilmember Fan? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa?

Yes.

And Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes. Thank you. Moving along to item number 16, which I believe was polled by Councilmembers Lopez and Becerra, and I believe this is the budget allocation for an award of a construction contract to right construction in the amount of $1,099,000 for the Lincoln Avenue pedestrian pathway from Park Lane to Santiago Creek. So I believe it was Councilmember Lopez that pulled it first, and then it was Becerra after that. So I'll turn it over to you, Councilmember Lopez.

Thank you, Mayor. You know, City Manager, I just had a couple questions, and if you'd like me to direct the new Director Sava, you can do that. If you'd like, Councilmember, I know he has a brief presentation on this item. Would you like to see that first or go ahead with your questions? Yeah, my question was going to be there's been a couple of concerns from the residents in the immediate area and so I wanted, those were going to be my questions, but I think that if Director Saba does the presentation, they may address concerns. We'll do that first, thank you. Thank you.

Can you see my presentation?

Yes.

Good evening. This is Nabil Sabah, Director of Public Works, City of Santana. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and members of the council. Lincoln Avenue Pedestrian Pathway is a project that has been in the planning for a few years now. and I have a presentation for you on that. We will discuss project information, timeline, area, and project maps, security enhancement, project elements, and also the next steps. Project information, the project will reestablish the ability for pedestrians

to cross the Metrolink railroad tracks at Lincoln Avenue and Furhaven Avenue. The project is funded mainly by active transportation funds. In 2012, the California PUC Public Utilities Commission completed the closure of the railroad crossing at the intersection of Lincoln and Furhaven Avenue. Staff sought to reestablish the pedestrian crossing and held four community meetings together, input and information to implement the design. In 2018, staff completed the original design of the project.

Four community meetings were held in 2019. We met in June, July, August, November, and also again in November 14, Parks and Jaco Neighborhood Association was provided with a handout for their newsletter to share about the project. Based on the community's comments, the project was revised in the fall of 2019 to accommodate security and operating concerns. On December 3rd, 2019, City Council awarded this project for construction. Due to the added concerns with landscaping,

with the landscaping plans design projects was given a revision and which included california native plant species planting the contractor attempted to acquire railroad permits but couldn't the contractor also had difficulties with labor compliance in fall 2020 it was mutually agreed upon to cancel the construction contract and rebid the project. The new contractor recommended for award Wright Construction Engineering Corporation has experience in

railroad work and has secured permitting from Metrolink. Some of the insecurity enhancement that is included in the project is a taller and more aesthetically pleasing eight foot green screens with vine along the existing residential walls, extended and tall Metrolink fencing barrier, a new nighttime safety lights, lockable and more aesthetically pleasing gates to regulate access. In addition, park security will be unlocking two gates on a daily basis. This

is a plan of where the project is approximately. The project starts in Park Lane and Lincoln. The green line is the pathway. It will end about where the walls of the residential neighbors will end, which connects the path to an existing regional path and an existing path that takes us back to Fairhaven Avenue. Some of the project elements or the improvement is a new locked gates

and taller fences, entry monument, colored concrete pavements, landscaping, DG or decomposed granite pathway, some planting, fencing, privacy wall with taller green screens. These two depiction is a cross section of how the pathway would look like. This is the trains, two paths, the wall, NitroLink wall, and then the screening wall here and the security lights throughout the

project. The next steps is to award the contract hopefully tonight and then we would have a planning a May 2021 a community outreach event prior to construction kickoff and then we would go to construction from May to September 2021 and we're hoping to finish this project in the fall of 2021. That concludes my presentation.

Thank you, Director. I'm going to yield to Councilmember Becerra.

Thank you, Councilmember Lopez. So I wanted to begin first by congratulating our staff for securing the Active Transportation Program grant, a million dollars for this project. I mean, it's a great award and it's funds that are outside the city's general fund that staff work to bring into the project so with that i wanted to congratulate you nabil and your staff um a question though i had for you was uh wright construction engineering the the recommended contractor are they compliant with the community workforce agreement they will be yes okay and and

how will they comply um the community workforce agreement requires that they employ local hire in a certain percentage, and veterans. So we have a consultant that will be monitoring their hiring processes or practices to make sure that is complied with. Okay, good, good. And then as far as the funds that we're talking about programming, so in the staff report it talks about funds that were unspent from the Bristol Street Rehabilitation Project from 17th to Santa Clara. Now, that

project, that doesn't involve the widening, does it? Because I would say that there's a lot more funds to be spent if we're still widening that area. So where are those funds specifically coming from as far as what was that project involved with? The project that the money or the fund is coming from is the recent paving of Bristol from 17 to Santa Clara. We allocate what we call M2 fair share funds that come to us from OCTA through the Measure M2

projects. So we, at that project, we allocated more funds that we needed to complete it and there was some funds left in the project after it's complete. So we are moving that money or those funds from that project to this project. And the fund that was not allocated for the widening of Bristol. The widening of Bristol will take about $37.8 million to accomplish and it is not an approved project yet. So yeah, so we're talking about two different things. So this project is not related to any widening then? It's not related to any way.

Okay. Another question in regards to, and Mayor Pro Tem brought this up on another item, regarding what we do in regards to bids and trying to attract Santa Ana-based vendors to bid on stuff. So looking at the staff report, utilizing Planet Bids, our website, we were able to reach 1,204 regional vendors. We got 52 vendors that requested bidding docs and a total of four bids were received, but none of them were from any of the Santa Ana contractors. And so it's really not much of a

question. It's more just something I want to express, and that is, you know, I get it. We're all busy, and we're, you know, especially our public works staff. Thankfully, they're busy because that means they're building stuff. They're improving our infrastructure. But at the same time, whether it's public works or any other department, it's really important. We sit up here on this dais or this virtual dais, and we talk about trying to buy in Santa Ana, shop Santa Ana, really build up Santa Ana. And here we are meeting after meeting, we're not approving contracts that

involve our own local contractors. And so I would just ask our staff, I mean, get out of City Hall, go out there, knock on some doors. I get it. Not every contractor is interested. Sometimes it's just a small dollar contract. They're not interested. But let's find out why we're not getting the interest from our Santa Ana contractors. Because it's painful to see these bids come in. And when we read the staff reports, none of these folks are from Santa Ana. Sometimes they're not even from Orange County. But my concern is not the 33 other cities in

Orange County, it's Santa Ana. So that's something I'm very concerned with. And the last thing I want to touch on is, you know, in regards to this project, you know, the pedestrian connectivity is very, very important. And I think for the folks east of the train tracks, this is a great project. And even for folks west of the tracks that, you know, God forbid, would actually like to walk that other direction. But the concern I have, and I remember this project had originally come to the council a while back, and I expressed the same thing back then, which was having security

features. And given the volatility of the Santiago Creek as of late with homeless activity and God knows what else, I have a significant concern for the folks that live over there that here they were now where they don't have an open pathway. We're proposing to open it up, which I could see the value in it but at the same time i don't know that lighting is really gonna solve that problem um i know in some of the other hot spots in the city we've had security cameras and other tools

that we've incorporated uh i would feel much more comfortable if that was part of this project i i don't think lighting and you know the locked gates i think is a great addition but i i just have some hesitation approving this right now with just lighting as the security future. I think that we've really got to look at what could be done to really give these adjacent residents some comfort and some security. That's all my comments right now, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Councilmember. I believe I see Mayor Pro Tem's hand raised.

David PenalozaItem 16

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento.

David PenalozaItem 16

And thank you, Director Saba, for answering those questions, which is why I didn't really dive into too much detail about the San Ana vendor part of this, because I knew that similar concerns were going to be brought up. And I have to say that I agree when it comes to this. One of the things I remember when I first got on the council is we were purchasing vehicles, Chevy vehicles, and we awarded the purchase contract, or we wanted, the staff was recommending awarding the purchase contract to a Chevy dealer in Folsom, California.

David PenalozaItem 16

and we were saving, I believe it was $66, if I remember, on the Chevy truck, which to me was, you know, I personally paid those $66 so that we could use the dealership in Santa Ana. And, you know, and we ended up awarding the contract to the Santa Ana dealership, but things like this happen frequently when it comes to awarding contracts. We go with hundreds of very talented and capable companies and dealerships, if we're talking vehicles, that are Santa Ana businesses that never get these contracts.

David PenalozaItem 16

We're talking millions and millions and millions of dollars that we're giving to other cities in the state and not necessarily keeping those dollars in Santa Ana as much as we would try. So I would hope that we work on that, we build on that, not just with this item here, but with any contract that we're out there. Council Member Becerra is right. We should be knocking on these businesses' doors and asking, hey, why didn't you put in this bid? Why did you ignore it? There are many companies here that are capable. And I mean, I don't know why they're not submitting the bids.

David PenalozaItem 16

I mean, if we could offer some kind of program or maybe they don't know how to fill out these bids. And maybe we could have areas where we could train them or a class or something where we could, a community forum where we could teach these companies how to put in a bid when these RFPs are out. Those are my comments. It's just kind of general, but it pertains to this item as well because of the amount of Santa Ana contractors that did not, not just didn't get awarded, but did not bother submitting a bid.

David PenalozaItem 16

You know, are we finding out why they're not doing this? And if we are awarding a contract to a vendor that's not from Santa Ana based, what are are we looking at if they're using Santa Ana vendors for their supplies and their community workforce agreements, if they're using our Santa Ana residents as their employees? I mean, I know that we're doing some of that, but if we could reach out to these contractors and say, okay, you're based out of Pomona, but we see that 50% of your supplies that you use are from Santa Ana, that's great. We're still keeping some dollars here.

David PenalozaItem 16

So that's it. Just wanted to double down on that because it is important that we keep those dollars here. Thank you, Director Saba.

Thank you for those comments. Councilmember Lopez.

Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Becerra, maybe you and I can work together to add an item on the next council session to develop a report on the increasing the number of businesses that bid on government contracts since it's a concern that I know we both share. But in terms of staff recommendations,

I'm going to move to approve. Great. There's a motion by Council Member Lopez, a second by Mayor Pro Tem. Any other comments or questions from the Council? Seeing and hearing none, the only thing I was going to suggest is as we look at these contracts that we go out and award, let's look at everything, right? Not just obviously that they're from St. Anne. We all want them to be local businesses because there's a multiplier effect that occurs when monies are awarded to local vendors. They employ and they spend money here in town and reciprocate the funds that they receive from us. Those are good practices.

Let's look at a lot of other things. And I know we did this in the past. I know we had a policy where we'd look at some of the practices that they had with respect to labor violations and labor conditions. Were they offering living wages? Were they treating their employees well? Did they have benefits? But I think we can even go further. I think that we're a community of color, predominantly, you know, Latino, Asian, and we want to make sure that we look at firms that are minority-owned as well, and women owned. If you look at the numbers, we have very few bidders that come from firms that

are owned by women and owned by people of color. I think that's another thing that we can do as a progressive step forward to make sure that we look at all firms. And as somebody said, look, we can help these firms. Maybe they're not as familiar with filling out an RFP, which is a very difficult, extensive document. And sometimes when you haven't done it, it's overwhelming and you just get discouraged by the length. But to the extent that we can encourage these firms that are owned, again, by folks of color and women, I think we can get some really strong partners here in the

city. So that being said, I think there's a lot of good improvements that we can make in this space. I'll go ahead and turn it over to the clerk to call a roll.

Councilmember Becerra? Yes. Councilmember Hernandez? Yes. Councilmember Lopez? Yes. Councilmember Mendoza? Yes. Councilmember Fan? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempina Lusa? Yes.

Mayor Sarmiento? Yes. Thank you. Moving along to item number 19, I believe, and that was, I believe, Mayor Pro Tem's item.

David PenalozaItem 19

Yes, Mayor, that was another item that I pulled. Item 19 was a custodial services at park restrooms and facilities approving amendment to add a one-year extension to the agreement with Valley Maintenance Corporation for custodial services at city park restrooms and facilities. I pulled it, I had a couple of questions of, you know, reasons of why I pulled it.

David PenalozaItem 19

I, you know, walk, Memorial Park is a park that I visit almost daily and walk through daily. I live in the neighborhood, I represent the neighborhood, I represent the park, and I'm not blind to the amount of trash that is seen, not just at Memorial Park, but at every park, all of our parks. The trash lingers. Trash cans linger, overfilled. You know, I try to pick up as much as I can, but, you know, I could only do so much. I poke my head into the restroom every now and then,

David PenalozaItem 19

at Memorial Park specifically to see the conditions of these restrooms. And I know they're scheduled to be replaced soon. I believe this summer is what I was told last week by Parks and Rec. And please correct me, Lisa, if I'm wrong. But the restrooms are horrendous. I would never want to even use them. They're not clean, they don't smell good, they're not. So my question here is I'm seeing, and there's also a way that we could, as we start, as we have these

David PenalozaItem 19

conversations, have campaigns throughout the city that could encourage our residents of how to pick up, you know, not litter, and pick up their trash and whatnot. I was just in Mexico City for a family emergency last month, and driving through, I was surprised that, not surprised because I had seen it before, but the cleanliness of these parks and the city-sponsored banners and campaigns that advocate and promote picking up your trash and cleaning up after yourself and protecting the area where you live in.

David PenalozaItem 19

So there's also an area where we could do that. But what I want to ask, Madam City Manager, is what exactly are we paying for when we see these contracts worth hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of dollars in custodial and maintenance services, but I don't see the reflection of that when you're walking through our parks and how filthy they sometimes are frequently. So do we have, I know we do have city inspectors that are frequently inspecting, whether it's a public works contract

David PenalozaItem 19

or a parks and rec maintenance contract, but how often do we go out and inspect to see whether these contractors are doing the job that we're paying them?

a lot of money to do. Well, you're correct, Mayor Pro Tem. We do have as part of the services, there are scheduled activities that they do a number of times that they clean the restrooms, a number of times that they pick up the trash. I will have to defer to our Parks and Rec Director, Lisa, as to how often her staff goes behind and does a checkup on them. So, Director Rudloff?

Absolutely. Good questions, Mayor Pro Tem. And yes, trash is an issue. We don't have enough trash cans at our parks. And so we're trying to make sure we order those and put those in our parks. Right now we have plastic tubs. Those don't look great. So we have some really nice trash cans that we're planning to install throughout our park system and our trail system. The restrooms are clean between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. So the contractor of Valley Maintenance will go in, they'll clean the restroom, they'll lock the restroom up.

The next morning, the park inspector will come in, they'll inspect the bathroom to make sure it was clean per the contract. If it was not clean per the contract, then they receive a failure to perform, it's deducted, and they're penalized, and so on. So it gets cleaned at night between 10 and 2, and then it also gets cleaned between 2 and 4 p.m. The problem typically is once they're cleaned, we have people go in, they take a bath, they misuse the bathrooms, and it's trashed immediately. So then you don't have it clean until 2 p.m. again. Our restrooms are also very, very old.

We have, I think we have 41 restrooms right now. We need to replace probably 13 of them. We've been putting in some prefab bathrooms, restrooms throughout our parks. And yes, we will be putting one in at Memorial this fiscal year. So anytime we have additional money, any funding, any grants, anything that we can use to put new restrooms in. We really need new restrooms and they're just dingy. They're, you know, they're very old and they need a new update and style and a lot of them just need

to be demolished. So to go back to your question about the park inspectors, they're inspecting and so it's a pay for performance contract and if they don't perform then they don't get paid

David PenalozaItem 19

the full amount. Thank you for that, Director Rudloff. With that said, so how many inspectors do we currently have that go out and check up at our city parks? I believe we have five inspectors.

We do need a few more, but as the hiring freeze and the budgets get a little bit better in the future, then we plan on hiring more people so we can inspect the playgrounds and inspect our restrooms and the work that our landscape contractors provide.

David PenalozaItem 19

Okay. And this contractor is just strictly emptying trash receptacles and washing, power washing our restrooms?

Yes. They clean the toilets, the urinals, the sinks. They use an industrial antibacterial citrus cleaner. If the toilets are clogged, they will try to unclog it. If they can't do that, then they bag it and then they call one of our staff to call someone or fix it. Sometimes when our contractors go in to clean the restrooms, they can't get in there because of the

people misusing the restroom. So they will call our staff and have them try to get them out of there, then they'll circle back around and clean the restroom again. So if it's power washing, if it's graffiti that needs to be removed, they just try to blitz the entire restroom to make it

David PenalozaItem 19

clean before they leave. Okay. And any other park amenities that require cleaning is not necessarily this contractor, correct? Or do they do, I'm talking swing sets, play sets, basketball courts, any power washing on that is that a separate contractor that's separate yes correct okay so they're strictly restrooms and and trash yes okay um you did mention that it the 10 p.m to 2 a.m window where they where they clean the restrooms is that nightly is that every night at 10 p.m yes

between 10 and 2 a.m and that's at every single park yes really okay

David PenalozaItem 19

And seeing that, every once in a while, I'll walk the dog pretty late, depending on, like, tonight. If we get home late, I'll probably walk the dog. And I'll keep an eye out. I've never, I can't say I've seen them before. I've seen Allied Universal patrolling the parks. I personally never seen them, maybe because it is, because it's 10 to 2 a.m. I'm usually sleeping. But I want to make sure that we're, inspectors are really, you know, being thorough in their inspections of these park facilities. And we're saying on top of this, if we can, is there a schedule available

David PenalozaItem 19

of this maintenance and cleaning? Madam city manager or Director Rudloff?

Yes, I can check to see if there is a schedule. or report for like a weekly report of what time they cleaned, what time it was inspected. I can certainly get that for you.

David PenalozaItem 19

That'd be good to make available, Director Rudloff, and maybe make a portion of it public, a summarized version of what these custodial companies are doing at the park each night, what they're cleaning, what they're not cleaning. because there's a lot of concern that our park amenities are not clean, are not safe, are not various different things that I've heard. So whatever we could do, I'd appreciate it. And final question, and I'll turn it over. Is this going to be put out to bid anytime soon?

David PenalozaItem 19

Are we doing this while this year extension is going on?

Yes, yes. As soon as this ends, we're going to put it out to bid. And so we'll be preparing that now and putting it through the process and other people will be able to bid on it for sure.

David PenalozaItem 19

Okay. Thank you, Director.

Yes. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, for those questions. I just want to give a gentle reminder to everybody that we do have a three-minute rule for everybody just so we're respectful of everybody's time. time. I think we all have a lot of questions. I want to remind everybody to make sure they meet with the city manager and staff in the interim between meetings so they can ask some of these questions. They're all very important questions and I think we can get a lot of that addressed in advance. But thank you for all those cogent questions. I think I saw Councilmember Lopez's hand and then Councilmember Becerra.

Oh, thank you, Mayor. Just very briefly, I wanted to, you know, Director Ruloff, I thought you talked about something really important, which is the infrastructure of our restrooms, and how old they are, and how really unsafe some of them are, like, in terms of, like, how the salt stays, the doors, the gap. So thank you. It was really good to hear that from you. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Becerra.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mayor Pro Tem actually asked some of the questions that I was going to ask, but remind me again, Director Woodlock, so the contractors going out there between 10 and 2, are there any times during the day that there's another follow-up as far as cleaning of the restrooms? Yes, between 2 and 4 p.m. So the same routine that they do at night, same thing happens between two and four. Right, correct. So I don't know how feasible this is, but just as you're looking at issuing the RFP for the contractor going forward,

perhaps there's a way to somehow, maybe it's staggered, but to try to get, I guess, a quicker, not quicker, a more robust rotation when it comes to the contractors addressing these restrooms. Because I think one thing that would hopefully deter some of the folks that are misusing our restrooms is the unknown of knowing when these folks, our contractors are coming out to clean the facilities. And I think for our residents to know that there will be more attention paid to these restrooms rather than twice a day. And I understand with limited resources, it's hard to

do that. But again, that's what I'm saying. Maybe it's not three times a day for every single restroom, maybe it's twice a day for all restrooms, but maybe certain restrooms that are more hot spots are getting it at other times. Utilizing the My Santa Ana app and the data to kind of see where the reports are coming from for requests for service and trying to direct maybe that third or fourth potential cleanup to take place at those hot spots. I think that might be something to introduce them to the RFP when you release it. Other than that, that's all I have. Thank you,

Mr. Mayor. Great. Thank you for those comments. So I wasn't sure if I heard a motion or if there is a motion on the floor. I'll make a motion to approve. Is there a second? I will second. This is Council Member Hernandez. Great. Thank you. Motion by Mayor Pro Tem, a second by Council Member Hernandez. The only thing I was going to mention, Madam City Manager, as we're talking about just efforts to increase rotations, have more of a presence, make sure that these spaces and these restrooms, really the entire city is in better condition. I know that a lot

of cities are looking at using some of their rescue plan money for clean and safe efforts. So that's what I would like us to also continue to think about and see what we could do to augment our efforts and maybe look at some of those, especially because I think there is a nexus to COVID and the pandemic where, you know, we're going to see heavier use as we transition out. But let's talk to some of the other cities I know, speaking to the mayor of Long Beach and Oakland, and both are starting their efforts. And I thought that was something that would work

really well for us, because it seems like they're experiencing the same conditions that we are. So just something to think about as we go through the discussion on that. So in any event, I'll turn it over to the clerk for the roll call.

Council Member Becerra?

Yes.

Council Member Hernandez?

Yes.

Council Member Lopez? Yes. Council Member Mendoza? Yes. Council Member Fan? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempeñolosa?

Yes.

Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes. Thank you. I think the next item is item 21 and that was pulled by Council Member Fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

Thank you so much, Mayor. So I pulled this item because I was quite shocked when I was reading the staff report. I'm very familiar with Habitat for Humanity. As a law student, I volunteered to help build habitat homes. There are actually a number of habitat homes on McFadden, just less than a mile from the house I grew up in. And they're incredible. They're amazing. And the things that Habitat is doing to help low-income, working-class individuals to get

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

into home ownership, build wealth, and really set themselves up to succeed, especially in a community like Santa Ana is amazing. But when I read this staff report to amend the amount of money, the conditional grant agreement with Habitat for Humanity by $333,777 because the historic French park and the

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

architecture committee wanted the design of two homes, a single family one-story home as well as a two-story home to look a certain way. Not just the architectural style, kind of more Victorian or craftsman that fits with some of the other homes in French Park, but also the material used. From my understanding, they were not okay with materials that are plastic or manufactured, but wanted wood. And I think many of us know as we're following development and what's going on

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

with COVID, wood right now is incredibly expensive. The cost has really shot way up. And on top of that, you know, wood is very difficult to maintain. It's very expensive. It has a lot of issues. It's subject to weathering more so than a lot of these manufactured materials, which is used a lot actually on the East Coast as a result of severe weather, rain, et cetera. I'm really worried about the amount of money that we as a city has to take from the Inclusionary Housing Fund used for affordable housing to add to a contract to help

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

Habitat build because of aesthetics. And I understand the desire to have beautiful homes. Like I said, I've seen the homes down the street from my mom's house. They're incredible. They're beautiful. They're so nice. Frankly, I don't know if I'd ever be able to afford one of those. I'd be so lucky. But the idea of essentially spending the cost of a condo to a project in order for it to look pretty is really frustrating to me, especially because the designs that Habitat normally uses is already incredible in itself. And so, you know, I wanted to raise this issue because it seems like this project has been

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

pending with the city for over two years since 2018. And that due to an old ordinance, I think it was originally approved in 87 before I was born and then amended in October 1996, that it requires certain architectural review by the neighborhood. And that is, you know, I understand we want community buy-in. we want to have all of that but at the same time what is the cost for over 300 000 we can pay 1500 to 18 families for an entire year for them to afford rent for 333 000 we can buy a whole

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

condo unit and put another family in there and help them get housed so while i'm supportive of this project because i do not want to punish habitat for humanity for the incredible work that they're doing, for the way that they're accommodating the architectural desires of the community. I want to say that these kinds of issues drive up affordable housing development, the cost of affordable housing development. It makes it more difficult for well-meaning developers to come in and help our community, especially in a development like this. And I also understand that originally they wanted four developments, but now they're

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

limited to two in order to mollify the neighborhood association. So as all of us grapple with affordable housing and housing affordability in our city, I really hope that communities welcome this kind of development. This is not a high-density apartment. It could be, but it's not. And so I really wish that these demands were not made. But now that it's here, I want to make sure that we do approve it and hopefully Habitat for Many can get these developments up. Thank you. Great, excellent points. Thank you,

Councilmember. Councilmember Becerra. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate Councilmember Fan's comments and, you know, it is egregious to think that we would spend over $300,000 to doll up a house to, you know, fit a certain criteria. But two questions I have is, is one, it seemed like that what I heard was that the standards were driving the cost up. But, you know, how do we know that it's the standards? Maybe Habitat for Humanity, for whatever reason, is not producing what they need to in a more economical way. So I mean,

I think before we, you know, accuse the standards, I get it, because there's a lot of policies throughout California, the United States, that really are a burden on housing production. But the other thing that I thought was important that was brought up was the fact that these standards have been around since the 80s. It's not a secret, it's not an unknown fact that French Park is a historic neighborhood. In fact, to French Park's credit, they've always been this neighborhood that is taking in historic properties that were endangered in other areas. So places where

affordable units were constructed elsewhere in the city, you had historic structures transported, moved into historic French Park. And so historic French Park, I think, has done their part to help. And I appreciate what Habitat for Humanity is building here because these are two for sale affordable units. It helps to create neighborhood stability. I just, what I would like to know from staff, if they're able to answer it tonight, is who's the culprit here? Is it really that the standards from historic French park are too onerous, or is it the fact that Habitat for Humanity somehow, someway, couldn't figure out how to

comply with these standards that have been around since the 80s for two units to do it under $300,000?

hours. Council member, that's a very good question and I will answer without laying blame with anybody. Habitat for Humanity is an excellent organization and they have built a lot of houses in our city. This particular location, as you mentioned, it is within the French Park community, which is a very tight-knit community. They have their own architectural review and they have certain standards. So I think the community is right to want those standards upheld and I applaud a habitat for wanting to you know proceed with the project and what we do want is we do want

affordable houses and we want them also to be accepted into whichever community we choose to

put affordable housing in thank you for that and i just again i i still reiterate the fact that right now we don't know whether there is an issue on habitat for humanity side when it came to being able to, in an economically reasonable way, comply with French Park's standards. So I just want to point that out that I don't think that these standards are so onerous that nobody can comply with them. I know a lot of the folks that sit on that architectural board over in French Park, and I know that they're not unreasonable folks, and I know that they do a lot to work with

folks in that community, because here's the reality, and I've worked on historic preservation zones up in Los Angeles and you have some really difficult standards to meet. I mean, wood frame windows are more expensive than vinyl frame windows. But, you know, I know that a lot of these historical zones where you have folks that are really pressed when it comes to their budgets, you know, they work with them to try to come up with something that meets the standards and continues that feel of a certain neighborhood like what Historic French Park has. So I just

hope that we don't point the finger right away at a neighborhood's desire to protect a look and feel. It's one thing if they were rejecting the project outright, but as the city manager said, for them to want the project to work within the fabric of their community, I applaud both Habitat for Humanity and the Historic French Park Committee.

Great. Thanks. Thank you for those comments. I think I see two other hands raised. And again, And just a gentle reminder, and I know this is sort of the transitional meeting where we're going from sort of open-ended comments to maybe more timed comments. So I know the clerk will be giving you guys gentle reminders. I want to be fair because I told Mayor Pro Tem, he went a little longer, so I want to make sure all of us, and please, I've already been told by the clerk that I went a little too long on my comments as well earlier. So let's not take it personally.

this is a way to kind of get us into this pattern of being as concise and as clear and effective as we possibly can. So let me call on Mayor Pro Tem and then Council Member Hernandez.

David PenalozaItem 21

Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to thank staff for bringing this forward and Habitat for Humanity. I think it's definitely something that we need to really take a close look at as we're sitting here representing our city. We need to collaboratively work together to protect the integrity of a lot of our neighborhoods. A lot of neighborhoods that are hundreds of years old. I think it is expensive, but it's a price that we should be willing to pay to protect the integrity of these neighborhoods. So I applaud the French Park neighborhood for wanting to accept this affordable

David PenalozaItem 21

housing, but that it looked a certain way. I know that just because it's affordable housing doesn't mean it should be built on the cheap or not be something desirable or be of high quality. It's important that we build affordable housing that is of high quality. And one thing that I've always discussed with this neighborhood is the concerns they have is the parking issue. So it's great that this affordable housing project is being built to match the neighborhood and not add on to the parking burden that they have. So I'm very happy with this.

David PenalozaItem 21

I think it's a great project for everyone to look forward to. And just wanted to state that, again, with the French Park, this is something that we should make sure that all our neighborhoods continue to do is protect the integrity of their neighborhood. You know, not everyone could afford HOA fees a month, you know, to have their neighborhood look a certain way. So we got to do it for them. We got to protect for them. So those are my comments, Mr. Mayor. I will make a motion to approve if that is needed now.

Second that. Great. So we have a motion by Mayor Pro Tem, a second by Councilmember Becerra, and we have a Council Council member Hernandez that would like to comment.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 21

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm gonna be very brief. I just wanted to thank the council member, council member Fan for bringing it forward. I think that that dialogue is important. It's needed, but more importantly, I support this project. I know Habitat for Humanity to do really good work and French Park to be a great association. And I'm happy for whatever family's gonna have the honor of living in that beautiful home. So with that being said, let's go ahead and move forward.

Great. Thank you for those comments. Any other comments or questions from the council?

Seeing none and hearing none. So the only comment I would have is I certainly appreciate, and Madam Clerk, please start the clock on me. To council member Phan's point, I think none of these things that we're seeing are mutually exclusive. If you look at some of the previous homes that were built throughout the city by habitat, they're really, really 100% excellent properties and design. We do have some districts that are a little bit more demanding, and we want to make sure we protect those. So to me, I think the point of Councilmember Fanns was, you know,

what it cost the builder habitat to get to those standards was fairly expensive and it came out of a source of funds that is intended to build more affordable housing. So I just think maybe we look at some things like, you know, maybe a different source of funds that we, you know, if they do, if it's not for the construction of the unit itself, but it's for the enhancement to meet the standards within that district. Because I certainly don't want the funds that were intended to build new construction to be exhausted on improving the aesthetics of a design.

And as the owner of a historic property, I know that a lot of those standards are imposed upon existing historic structures that are set by the Secretary of Interior. New construction normally going in to a district, there's rules that are a little bit different. But look, we're trying to balance the interests here. So I agree that we have to be judicious in the way that we use such scarce funds, right, to the extent that we had an abundance of those monies to go a long way, then I'd say, you know, no argument here, but we just have to be very

careful with the way we balance those and make sure we expend those intelligently and thoughtfully. So that being said, there is a motion and a second. Seeing no other comments, I'll go ahead and turn it over to the clerk to call roll. Council Member Becerra? Yes. Yes.

Councilmember Hernandez?

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 21

Yes.

Councilmember Lopez? Yes. Councilmember Mendoza? Yes. Councilmember Fan?

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

Yes.

Mayor Fritz-Empenalosa?

Yes.

Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes. Thanks, everybody. And you know, so when Councilmember Fan pulled item 21, I thought she was pulling 22 because that's what I wanted to pull. So I don't want to change my vote on 22, but Madam City Attorney, is it okay if I just ask a question on it, just because I did have a question on this item, not to change my vote, but I just wanted some clarity from staff.

I think as the chair, you can take that as a privilege to ask a question.

and with the council's indulgence. I just wanted to ask staff on this, and this is the item where we're going to be transitioning some of our homeless beds that we were using at the link. And as the link closes down, and there's gonna be a gap period before we open up to Carnegie, which is gonna be the permanent site, we're gonna be using some of the beds and space over at the city of Fullerton, which they've been so gracious and helpful to extend to us. My only question was, and I've been doing some pretty rough math and I'm not very good at math, so maybe staff can help me out,

but it appears that we are expending about $230,000 a month for about 75 beds. Is that what

the math is there? I will turn it over to Steven Mendoza, but I believe it's for more than 75 beds.

Yes, Mr. Mayor and members of the council, it is for a top rate of 100 beds. The flat rate is for the first 75 beds.

Phil BacerraItem 22

After 75, it's a per diem rate.

Got it. So for those extra 25 beds, I think there's an additional, is that $55 per bed? Yeah, but it's per bed per day. Per bed per day. So what's the, I guess my math is 230,000 divided by, let's just say the flat rate of 75 beds. We're looking at about, is that 3,000 and change or something? Yeah, just about. Okay. So my only comment was, staff, let's make sure we fill these beds as much as we can to provide people help and provide people support. Because that's, again, to Council Member Fan's

point, we are expending precious monies. These are ESG monies. We don't have a lot of them. We obviously hope to get more, and I believe we will. But to the extent that we can make sure we provide people help, there's obviously people out there that need it. Let's be assertive in the way we do this, because now we are looking at expending monies for these beds outside of town. And yeah, that was my only point that I wanted to make, because I know that these are really important in this transitional time. It would have been terrible not to have a site to be able to

provide as we're going through this transition from the Lake to Carnegie. So no need to change any vote or take any vote. Thank you for answering that question. And thank you, members of the council for indulging me with that question answered. That ends the consent portion of the agenda tonight. We'll move along to item number three, which is the beginning of the business calendar and that is for the discussion on the agreement for our advocates both at the state and federal level and i'll turn it over to the city manager for our presentation um thank you mayor

merpotem and council members daniel soto from the city manager's office has a brief presentation about basically we're asking for three things from you with this item that's before you one is to execute a three-year agreement with a state lobbyist of townsend public affairs One, and the second one is to extend the term of our Holland and Knight Federal Lobbyist. And then third, we're going to give you information on all of the memberships that you have, and just to make sure you still want to continue with those programs in the budget for the next year.

So those are the three items, and I will turn it over to Daniel to walk you through those.

And City King Mayor and City Council, we have a brief presentation for you. The first part of the presentation is an overview of a competitive RFQ or request for proposal process that staff completed for state legislative advocacy services.

What's wrong?

Are we good?

Daniel, you're a little muted so maybe you can get either closer to the microphone owner, your connection may be a little compromised. I apologize. Can you hear me now? Much better. Much better. Go ahead.

Thank you. So staff recently launched an RFQ process to solicit state legislative advocacy services. We used our online, its portal called Planet Bids and reached out to 250 firms, one of which was a Santa Ana firm, and we had 16 firms download the RFQ document, five of which responded.

So of the five who responded, one voluntarily withdrew from the RFQ process and decided to submit their service offerings with another firm. and another firm was disqualified because they did not submit a full proposal. So what you see on your screen in the order of how the proposals were ranked, we received proposals from Townsend Public Affairs. That's our current state lobbyist. And we also received proposals from Rene Public Law Group and Edelstein, Gilbert, Robson, and Smith.

Staff composed of four representatives from the city manager's office reviewed all of the proposals and selected tentatively Townsend Public Affairs to award a new agreement to continue providing state legislative advocacy services. Townsend Public Affairs, or TPA, has served the city for more than 22 years and during their tenure they have demonstrated

their commitment to advocating. Daniel, you're kind of going in and out. So maybe, I don't know if there's anything that you could do with the mic. I'm not sure if everybody's getting the same sort of high tone, low tone that I'm getting on my end, but maybe there's a way you can adjust your audio a little bit. I apologize. Is this better?

That's better now. Okay. I apologize. So staff recommends that the city council approve an agreement with tpa based on the firm's experience the availability of their staff to discuss legislative matters with the council members and city staff as issues arise and the overall satisfaction of the city utilizing this firm since 2004. for federal legislative advocacy services the city entered into an agreement with Holland and Knight or H&K back in 2013 and H&K was

selected as part of a competitive RFP process for federal advocacy services. Their agreement, the existing agreement expires on March 30th, 2022 and the existing agreement provided for compensation for three full years. Based off of staff's satisfaction with the services that Holland & Knight provides to the city, staff recommends that we amend their agreement to allow us to pay Holland & Knight for an additional one-year period to continue federal advocacy services.

The amendment will provide the same monthly payment of $9,800 to Holland & Knight for services, And this extra 12-month period will allow staff sufficient time to complete a competitive RFP process for the next cycle.

The third element of tonight's presentation is regarding our local, state, and federal government associations, all of which we have memberships to and which are voluntary. The first of four is the Association of California Cities Orange County or ACCOC. This organization is an association of Orange County cities that represent the interest of our cities and counties on regional public policy issues. And currently Mayor Pro Tem Pagalosa serves as the Santa Ana representative to the board of directors.

We currently spend about $52,800 a year for membership dues, and this cost is calculated based on our city's population.

The next item is the Orange County Council of Governments, or OCCOG. They are the regional governing and coordinating body that offers planning, coordination, and technical assistance to the orange county sub-region to administer programs at the regional level oc cog also acts as the intermediary between local government and state or federal government oc cog was established as a joint powers authority the santa and representative to the oc cog board of directors was councilman purpose oil and the

annual membership dues is approximately $26,700.

The third is the League of California Cities, also known as CalCities. They are an association of California cities that advocates for cities at the state capitol to expand and protect local control for cities through education and advocacy to enhance the quality of life for all Californians. Their annual cost, which is calculated according to population, for Santa Ana is approximately $63,000 a year.

And finally, the city also pays dues for the U.S. Conference of Mayors. This is an official nonpartisan organization of cities with populations of 30,000 or more, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors exists to accomplish the following, to help develop and promote effective national urban survival policy, to build stronger federal city relationships, to monitor the effectiveness of federal policy, to serve, to help mayors develop leadership and management, and to create a forum in which mayors can share their ideas and information.

This annual dues is calculated based on membership as well, and is estimated at $20,500.

Staff shares these items with the City Council to provide an opportunity for the Council members to give their input on legislative advocacy service delivery as we prepare our departmental budget for legislative advocacy for the next fiscal year.

Staff presents two options to the City Council tonight for the different government associations. One is to affirm interest in the city continuing membership in one or more of the following, Orange County Council of Governments, the Association of California Cities, Orange County, the League of California Cities, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors. And option number two is to direct staff to return with more information.

Staff also recommends that the city council authorize the city manager to execute a three-year agreement with Towns of Public Affairs for state legislative advocacy services and to approve an amendment to the agreement with Holland and Ike for an additional one year for compensation. and three, to provide direction to staff relating to memberships in local, state, and federal government associations. I'm available to answer any questions you have.

Great. Thank you for that. I apologize to the public and to the council. And it's not your fault, Daniel. We just had kind of a faulty connection. So I think we got every other word that you said, but luckily you had a really effective PowerPoint that we could read off of, so that was helpful. But thank you. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the council for any questions or comments, and I see Council Member Mendoza and then Council Member Becerra.

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I just want to say that I've had experience working with Townsend, and when I was on the board of trustees for Orange Centennial Community College and they've always provided very reasonable contracts and detailed work and their staff was always very professional. We had in Sacramento and the town stand always prepared us incredibly well when we went up to lobby for certain issues that were

important in our communities. And one of my questions is, so how many bids did we get, and who was the lowest, and is there any kind of compensation from an existing contract if we continue to renew that one?

Council member Mendoza, I just want to confirm that you can hear me okay?

Yes, I can hear you.

Thank you. I can share my screen one more time. On the screen you'll see the three full RFQ results that we received. The lowest proposal came from Townsend Public Affairs with their average annual price at $62,000. The second item, or the second firm on the table on your screen is from Rene Public Law Group. Their annual price was almost double what Townsend Public Affairs had proposed at $120,000. And then the third firm, Edelstein, Gilbert, Robson, and Smith, their average annual price

was a little bit higher at $144,000. The annual price is for the scope of services for state legislative advocacy services, and the amount that you see on your screen is a fixed price.

Very good. So Townsend Public Affairs provide the same services at the least amount of dollars, correct?

Yes, that's correct.

Well, I'm in favor of the Townsend Public Affairs because I know their work, and I know that they're very successful. They've been around for many, many years, and whenever we've had any questions, they always come back with a very thorough explanation of any pending bills, and they do a great follow-up on anything that's coming up, and really do, they do a lot of digging and are very thorough in the governmental area. And so with my experience in the last eight years with them, they've done a wonderful job.

And seeing that they are the least expensive, I think we need to continue. And I ask my colleagues to support because as we were put on this seat, it was to look out for the best interests of the public and saving them tax dollars. And this is a very good example of how we can save money for our taxpayers and still getting the high quality service that we are accustomed to. Thank you very

much. Thanks, Councilmember. Councilmember Becerra? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I would agree with Councilmember Mendoza and that being in the seat, we need to be very cautious and protective of the public purse, but in regards to our state legislative advocate, the lowest bid was 50% of the next highest bid, and the next highest bid above that was just about another 20,000 more. I'm a little concerned with that because sometimes the lowest price isn't always going to provide

that service. Now, having said that, I've known Townsend for quite some time, and they've been around and they've done a lot of work up in Sacramento. But, you know, we are one of the top 11 cities in the state. And I'm, you know, this is like something I said about another item earlier in this meeting. I'm a little disappointed that we didn't have more in the pool. Now, in this case, I'm not saying that we were going to have, you know, 20 Santa Ana firms. I get that. But in this particular case, in looking at lists that are out there of these advocacy firms that are in

Sacramento, you know, we should have had more of these top 10, top 20 firms in this pool. And the fact that of the three other than Townsend, only this other one of the three are actually in that caliber. So I think just like we were doing with the trash contract, we want to make sure that we have an RFP that's attracting a real good pool. So I would ask my colleagues actually if we could put this out to bid again. I mean, with everything going on in Sacramento these days, we need some advocates. And talking about some of these membership organizations that we're a part

of, like the League of Cities, you know, advocating for local control, because every time Sacramento issues another bill proposal, I cringe because I'm wondering what are they going to take off our plate now? So with that being said, looking at the federal legislative advocate, I would, with all the funding that's coming out of D.C. these days, all the activity in regards to funding, I would recommend that we keep our current legislative advocate out for the feds. But what I'd like to ask Daniel Soto is, so right now, staff's recommending for the one-year extension

for them. I, at some point, would like to see this one go out to bid as well. But with everything going on, is it feasible to put them, I guess, extend them for maybe a year and a half or two years? Because I think with all the activity in D.C. right now, I would hate to have an RFP process for the federal advocate begin midstream. Thank you, Councilmember Becerra. Actually, because the legislative advocacy service is a professional service, we are not required to to engage in competitive bidding. So the city may engage in preparing a new contract for

city council consideration to award a new contract with Hall and a Knight after the existing contract were to expire. Okay. And Daniel, thank you for clarifying that. We're not required to go out for bid, which also means that we're not required as we are for, say, certain public works contracts to accept the lowest qualified bid. And I think that, again, this is not a slight against Townsend Public Affairs, but I would just feel more comfortable given everything going on in Sacramento. We have an advocate that's been our advocate for 23 years. That's a long time. And I think that,

you know, right now what we need to, again, make sure, you know, and possibly if we go out for bid again, Townsend may be number one again. But I just would feel comfortable if we put it out to bid And when we saw the next staff report, we saw firms that we go, wow, okay, these are some heavy hitters that are going to be advocating on behalf of the residents and the city of Santa Ana. So that's my thought right now would be put this out to bid for the state legislative advocate, possibly extend a little bit the Holland and Knight contract just because of what is coming out of D.C. right now.

And as far as the membership organizations, I think the ones that you present, Daniel, I'd like to maintain our membership in all of them. And one last thing would be with OCOG. I believe we need to maintain our membership in OCOG as it relates because it's parallel with SCAG. And I serve as the representative for Santa Ana to OCOG as well as the SCAG Regional Council. So I believe those two are kind of tethered together. That's all I have right now. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Councilmember. I believe it was Councilmember Fan and then Councilmember Lopez.

Thai Viet PhanItem 30

I think it was Councilmember Lopez first.

Sorry, Councilmember Lopez, go ahead. You guys are too nice.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilmember Fan. You know, I actually have a question about the associations that we're part of. And like Councilmember Becerra said, because OCOG and STAG are kind of a one-bundle thing, like I understand why we have to participate with that. But Daniel, I had a question. In terms of the benefits that Santa Ana residents are getting in return or the policy that we're championing or supporting when it comes to the Association of California Cities, can you please let me know what exactly are the benefits that we're receiving?

Councilmember Lopez. We work with these different organizations and associations to further some of the city's policy goals that provide some sort of community benefit to Santa Ana. An example of that may include grant funding opportunities at the state or federal level. And if the city is successful, for example, we may receive such funding to expand our service delivery here in the city. Right. So I guess what is one of the things that we've helped champion

with that particular award? If I may, you're speaking to the Association of California Cities, Orange County? Yes. A few of the other benefits, they do also provide some educational opportunities, training opportunities for elected officials. Some of the things that they have championed in the past was intervening for the regulation of taxicabs. That was something they've done. They've been a resource for information on cities. For example, one of the items that was brought up earlier was on sober living centers or homes such as that. So they're a great resource for more local issues.

That was one of the reasons why they were formed. You have the League of California, which is more at a statewide level, but then you did have the Association of California Cities, Orange County formed because of issues that seem to be unique to Orange County. But they do work on special projects. They're a resource for information. And then they do offer some really fabulous training and educational opportunities, in addition to what Daniel said. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Danny and City Manager.

Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Fan.

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Thank you, Mayor. And Councilmember Lopez had pretty similar questions to me. I was interested, well, first regarding Townsend, I do echo Councilmember Becerra's concerns and thoughts. You know, we've had them for a couple decades now. It's been a long time. I am disappointed that only we only have three options to look at. I think that we can do better than that, especially since I know the mayor and the other large cities have been working really hard to lobby the state, lobby the federal government to get us funds. And I would think

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that we can use that as leverage to get more bids and folks who would be willing to advocate for us in Sacramento. I think that Santa Ana is pretty unique compared to the other cities in Orange County with regards to our needs, our demographics, and our politics. And so I would like to also see an advocate who reflects that part of our city and has really great relationships because, you know, frankly, Santa Ana today and Orange County today is not the same Santa Ana Orange county of 20 years ago or even five years ago and i want to make sure that whoever we get is able to

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keep pace with that um my main comments are actually also regarding accoc you know i am familiar with their organization i've seen i checked out their website and their boards it does say the association of california cities but really all of their members are from orange County. So like, you know, City Manager mentioned, it's local. I'm very concerned with the cost of this at $52,000. The League of California Cities is a well-known statewide entity that's been around for a very long time. I went to their training. I think some of the other new council

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members have gone to their training. And I know they're of value because they also produce a lot of education material, amicus briefs, and all of that stuff. I'm not exactly sure with the extent of what ACCOC is doing for us, especially at $52,000 a year. I know some of it seems pretty, how do I say this, duplicative of what the league is already doing for us in regard to, in regards with advocating for local control, advocating for local issues. And again, you know, I'm looking at the representatives of the board for ACCOC,

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and I feel like there's a disconnect with who Santa Ana is, where our council and our city and our demographics are going, and how that would advocate with the state. You know, frankly, California has a Democratic majority, supermajority sometimes, and that's what I want. I want an organization that can speak to those lawmakers. And it seems like a lot of the members on ACCOC may not have, or may not be simpatico with that. So I would like to receive, we can get a cheaper amount or, you know, rethink that relationship. And just one last thing, you know, ACCOC,

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not every city in Orange County is a member, only about 18 out of 34, I think. So I think that's another issue that we would want to address in looking at how to spend this money. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Councilmember Pham. Councilmember Lopez, is that your hand?

Yes, it is. And for staff, everything that Councilmember Pham just said is where I'm at exactly. And so I really want us to, you know, the dollar amount is super high, so I really want us to come back with other options because I don't necessarily, I don't think that there's like a real clear outline of what are the benefits for us in terms of this membership. Thanks.

Great. Thank you. Seeing no other comments, let me go ahead and just make a couple myself. So I do agree with a lot of what was said by everybody. I think they were all really good comments. I think Council Member Becerra's comment about H&K and where they are in their contract, I think, It makes a lot of sense. And let me tell you why I'm a little reluctant to maybe go out to bid again and recirculate on the TPA contract is that what we all are understanding, which is whoever we would work with has to get up to speed with us, right? There'd be an adjustment period. And right now we have some really immediate needs.

I mean, it's the rescue plan. It's the potential infrastructure bill. It's the surplus at the state government. it's all these other resources. It's the earmarks that we're going to have to be working with Congressman Correa's office on. There are so many moving parts. And I can tell you, I've seen some of the firms and worked with some of the firms that bid. Edelstein, and I believe the Gonsalves firm had bid with us earlier. And I think they withdrew sometime during the process for the state contract. Really excellent firms. I mean, Edelstein is top-notch, so is Gonsalves. TPA, I think the benefit is obviously the cost, and

I don't want to say you get what you pay for, but I think because we were one of the early cities and public agencies that they worked with, I think that's why their numbers came in low. They're giving us sort of their early cities numbers. But I do think that they have a relationship with the Discovery Cube. They represent them and they represent agencies and other entities around us, which helps us when we go out to apply for these grants. A lot of times we do it in conjunction with the Cube for some of those efforts. I know we're looking at potential earmarks that might be

available for Discovery Cube that would benefit the city. So all those things I think are important. I just think changing midstream, I see all of yours concern about going out. I think we do need to go out and have the incumbents sort of develop and explain to us their value. It's really important, especially now. But I think right now we're like right in the middle of things. I mean, and so a lot of what we're doing would get lost if we transfer it to another firm, if we kind of change midstream. The other thing, and clerk, Madam Clerk, please make sure I'm

within my time. The one thing I would say about advocacy firms is they're only as good as we make them be. So in other words, if we don't demand things of them, look, they'll just send us memos about what's going on in D.C., what's going on in Sacramento, and that's it. The more demanding we are of them, I think the better service we receive. So what I would say, and this will be maybe a conversation that I'm thinking about, I want to have an ad hoc committee or maybe a standing committee, that's a legislative standing committee. We don't even have a legislative

platform. And those are things that we need to set up. Are our priorities homelessness? Should we be seeking grants for parks and open spaces? Should we be doing all those things? The one we have is pretty dated. And I think what we need to do is update it for now, this sort of post-pandemic period of what we're going to be looking at. I think it would be helpful to have that. And that That way we can make a lot better demands of our advocates. But on the associations finally, I do think I would prefer to set that one aside and maybe revisit that and have that come back to us once we understand the value.

Because I think the Councilmember Fan's point and Lopez's, a lot of these smaller agencies while you know like ACCOC and the league, they provide lobbying services to cities that are smaller that don't have their own independent lobbyists. We have our lobbyists. So it is really replication of work that's going on. You know, we don't need that. We have our own advocates that we pay for. So let me wind up, and I see Council Member Hernandez's hand up, and I think Council Member Becerra may have some time left as well to comment.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 30

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. A lot of what I wanted to say was echoed by Council Member Lopez and Pham, but I think that's the challenge is identifying what are the demands that we can make and having a really clear outline bless you having a really clear outline of of what the services they're providing um and then lastly i just wanted to follow up i really love the idea of a legislative ad hoc i think that would be uh that would be extremely uh useful for for our community thank you council member i think

was council member becerra then mayor pro tem i think um that was the order thank you mr mayor

just real quick point in clarification legislative platform it may be a little outdated i think it came to us during my short tenure on the council uh for approval so we do have one um i think the idea of possibly going in and and updating it or modifying it that that could be done and i think that would be a great idea um i'll just take the remainder of my time to just go ahead and put a motion out on the floor that we put the state legislative advocate out to bid and that we extend Holland and Knight to a two-year term. And as far as ACCOC, that we have staff bring that

back to us at the next council meeting for possible departure from that group. That's my motion. May I ask a question for clarification purposes, Mayor?

Yes, please.

So the contract is expiring with your state advocacy group. So if we do put it out to bid, there will be a period of time where you will not have one in place. So I was just maybe a suggestion if you want to grant them a shorter term and then we could redo the RFP. Or you could coincide the two of them together and we can go out and do an RFP for both of them. Remind me again, I think it's in the report. Is TPA's contract up in May or June?

I believe it's this month, but Daniel, can you verify? Yes. Thank you, Councilmember. The agreement with Townsend Public Affairs expired on March 31, 2021.

Okay. So I guess now I have another question. Why didn't we wait this long to bring this item before us? That's a great question. That is partially my fault in bringing the agreement materials together along with the RFQ process. So I take responsibility for that delay. At this point, we're already out of contract. So I mean, we technically don't even have a state legislative advocate at this point. If Townsend was willing to entertain it while we go out to bid, I'd be happy to, as part of my motion, grant a six-month extension of their contract.

So that would be part of my motion as well.

Thank you.

All right. I see a couple of other hands raised, so let me go ahead and call on Mayor Pro Tem.

David PenalozaItem 30

Thank you, Mayor Sabmiento. I just wanted to also point on clarification as well that we do have a legislative platform and it was adopted in June of 2020. So it should, we should, you know, that was a 2021 and we've had one, but we should be seeing that 2021 legislative platform come before us soon. So I just wanted to point that out. But I also wanted to sort of echo a little bit what Councilmember Fan and Councilmember Lopez said with these different associations that we

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belong to, it's definitely important that we aren't, you know, members of associations that are duplicative. I know that I'm the board member or board rep of the association, ACCOC, and it is fairly new membership. I believe we joined early last year, early 2020, or late 2019. And so we're still fairly new to that one and still trying to really see what benefit we get.

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But from, you know, whether it's our legislative platform or League of California Cities or ACCOC, I notice very similar advocacy initiatives that we're doing, what each association is doing and our legislative platform is doing as well. Local control, pension reform, fiscal responsibility. So I'd be very interested for the moment remaining in these associations, but making sure that we get a timely report back as well of what the benefits are of each one, what benefits

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we've seen over the last year, what benefits we potentially see over the next year, because those are important because of the amount of money we're spending, important to see before us. So definitely supportive of seeing that. But with that said, that's it, Mr. Mayor.

Great. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. So I know we have a motion by Councilmember Becerra on the floor. I don't think there's a second yet. But you know, one thing I would just again mention, one of the options was maybe to bring back the associations. Was that, is that correct, staff? That that was one of the options of maybe bringing that discussion back about what associations are. Because I think everybody's kind of, you know, looking at ACCOC. I'm also looking at the league, which is even higher and more expensive. And I know that their

advocacy, I'm still unclear. I mean, we used to be members of, actually, the league started and then ACCOC splintered off from the league. So I'm not sure what the difference is between the two of them. Maybe one's more valuable than the other. And just to clarify, I misspoke. I didn't say we didn't have a legislative platform. I meant we didn't have an updated legislative platform. A lot has happened since we adopted that platform a year ago so um i think we need to you know make those adaptations but um so maybe if everybody is willing to go ahead and kind of put the discussion

on the association aside the associations and maybe that can come back to us with a little bit more detail from staff as to what they do and what value they bring what grants or what what

have we benefited from there we could we could do that easily as part of the budget process we can provide you a lot more information on all of them and what the upcoming dues will be and it can be made as a budget decision as to whether you want to allocate those funds so we certainly can return

at a later date with that great and with to council member of the sarah's motion six months i think is um you know i get the point but i think maybe what we do is again six months goes by in a blink of an eye in our world, right, in government. So to the extent we maybe look at a year extension for those and then go out to bid, again, the only thing I would implore my colleagues is that we're right in the middle of these sort of applications. And I mean, I know staff has been trying to pump out projects and push things out and, you know, define what we're going to use,

the rescue plan and find out what the guidance is on that, just so many things. I just think we're to be right in the middle of this discussion again with a new firm and getting them up to speed. So I understand the concern with going out and rebidding this. I think it makes, it could make sense. But I just, you know, again, midstream changing horses at such a vital time that puts us behind other cities that have firms ready to submit things on their behalf. So.

Mr. Mayor, I'd be willing to amend my motion to have an extension of TPA for a year if that would garner any more support from the council. I appreciate it, council member. I would second

that with the added, I guess, change of having the association discussion come back to us when we look at that during the budget to see the value of the associations, all of them. I think I think some of them have value, some of them may not. And maybe ACC is more valuable than the league, I don't know. Those are just between the two of them, that's about 110, 115,000.

So there's a motion and a second. Any other comments or questions for the council? Are we clear on the motion? Would anybody like to have us recite it back or would staff want to recite that back to make sure they're clear?

So my understanding is that there's a motion on the table to execute an agreement with Townsend Public Affairs for a one-year period, not the three-year period. And the motion also wanted to lengthen the agreement with H&K from more than a year to 18 months. Is that correct, Councilmember Becerra? I had said two years, but do you want to do 18 or 24 months? I think 24 is good. So, okay. Yes. So, Madam City Manager, you're correct. So we'll We'll do the one-year extension for Townsend with the idea that we're going out to bid,

and 24-month extension for Holland and Knight, and per Mayor Sarmiento, we'll punt the discussion on the associations towards the budget discussion.

Thank you, Councilmember. Thank you, Madam City Manager, for the clarification. Any other questions or comments? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call roll?

Councilmember Becerra?

Yes.

Councilmember Hernandez?

Yes.

Councilmember Lopez? Yes. Councilmember Mendoza?

Yes. Councilmember Mendoza? Yes. Thank you. Councilmember Fan? Yes.

Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa?

Yes.

And Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes, thank you, everybody. Moving along to item number 31, which is a resolution condemning racism, racism, xenophobia, and hate against Asian Americans. And I'll turn it over to the city

manager. Certainly. And thank you, Mayor, Mayor Protem and Council members. This item was requested by Council Member Fan, and she did assist staff in the development of the resolution. And I want to thank the efforts of Daniel Soto in our city manager's office. But it is a full resolution that is condemning activities such as racism, xenophobia, and hate against Asian Americans, I would like to turn it over to Council Member Van to see if she would like to say anything or point out anything specific with it since this was a request made by her.

Thai Viet PhanItem 31

Please. Thank you, City Manager. And I also wanted to echo that. Thank you. Thank you, Daniel. Thank you to the mayor for actually being supportive of this item and of the community, and also Councilman Vecera, who also had a hand in working on the resolution.

Thai Viet PhanItem 31

It's been a really rough year for all of us, and it's been particularly difficult in the last month or two or three. As many of you who watched the meetings regularly, I was the one who wrote the news to this body at the last meeting about the murders in Atlanta. And, you know, since then, we've just learned so much more about what happened and the murderer and the families that were affected as well. and then seen more and more cases and learned more about it.

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I do want to highlight a few areas in the resolution because in particular, I added a lot of facts that I thought was really poignant and important for our community to know and understand. The first is that approximately 40,000 residents in Santa Ana are Asian American or Pacific Islander. That's a lot of people. And while in Santa Ana that makes 12%, that's larger than many cities. So you can have entire cities made of Asian American Pacific Islander residents. And so it's really important that this community in particular is being affected by COVID,

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by the former administration's use of words like, or terms like Kung Flu or the China virus, and the history of being professional foreigners. What a lot of people don't know is the first Asians, Filipinos, arrived in the United States in the 1500s, in the 1580s. You know, that's before the founding of America. That's before Jamestowns and all of these colonies. And since then, you know, we've helped build the transcontinental railroad. The first Chinatown in Orange County was in Santa Ana. and I didn't know that until a couple years ago.

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And what's worse about the history is that Chinatown didn't disappear. It was because there were lies and rumors, xenophobic rumors that there was a case of leprosy in Chinatown. And instead of treating that issue, the city council at the time decided to burn it down, the entire Chinatown. And apparently it is the only example of local government sponsored vandalism in the history of the state. And that's truly egregious. And the fact that many of us don't know that is also egregious. So I do want to also call out that Downtown Inc., Santa Ana Business Council, and local

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historian Dylan Almendral are working to create a plaque to memorialize that area. and I'm really excited that's happening, especially in light of this resolution. Some other facts I want to really bring up and relate to my own life is I personally have experienced racism and xenophobia growing up here in Santa Ana. When I was in high school, our lockers were painted and tagged, graffitied with the C word, all the lockers. And so we can't We can't think that xenophobia is only happening in other cities, in South County, or in other states.

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It's happening here at home. And we really have to reconcile that with the fact that even though I speak English, even though I'm a council member, I was a victim of racism even during the campaign. And even though we had Asian Americans, Asians in America since the 1500s, since we have laws throughout our history that other, that made Asian Americans unwanted, said that we're not welcome here. Whether it's the Chinese Exclusion Act, the PAGE Act, you know, the term of Japanese Americans, and then the murder of Vincent Chin. All of these issues really culminated in what's

Thai Viet PhanItem 31

happening today. And I also finally wanted to address the issue of the model minority myth. A lot of people look at Asian Americans and say they're so successful, they're going to college, they're doctors, they're lawyers. And that is just not true for the vast majority of those in my position. Vietnamese Americans in particular have similar rates of high school graduation or college attainment as black and brown communities. But we don't talk about that. And so racists use the model minority myth to pit communities of color against each other.

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And we're not going to stand for that. And I believe that's what this resolution is about. It's not only about condemning racism and xenophobia, it's about standing in solidarity with BIPOC, Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color and saying we're not going to allow racism to divide us. And lastly, and I know I'm coming up on my three minutes, is I want to talk about the fact that it was six Asian women who were murdered because this man decided that they were objects of sexual temptation for him. And he went out and looked

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for Asian-owned businesses and murdered Asian people, Asian women. And that is an experience that many Asian women have experienced in this country. And so we can't forget that xenophobia and misogyny go hand in hand to police and to otherize and sexualize and fetishize Asian women's bodies. And so I hope that the Council support this resolution. I hope that we not only support a resolution condemning hate, that we take action in the city, whether it's to have community liaison to the Vietnamese or Asian American community to look at other ways so that

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we take concrete action to fight this kind of hate. So thank you and I will pass it on to the next person.

Thank you, Council Member. We appreciate those comments. I see Council Member Becerra's hand up.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. As Council Member Pham mentioned, you know, Santa Ana had a Chinatown that was burned down 115 years ago. Now fast forward to 1971. On this very date, April six, 50 years ago, Santa Ana actually elected its first Asian American city council member, in Harry Yamamoto. His vote total was that of the candidate who finished behind him. Now, today we have two council members of AAPI descent serving right here today. And, our city, like our country, just hasn't always respected and treated our Asian brothers and

sisters with the respect they deserve. But as history has shown, though, our city has evolved and has made great strides and progress towards standing against racism in all its forms. And today with this resolution, we're standing with our AAPI community because of the increase in hate crimes that we've been witnessing throughout the country that have been committed against us. And I want to thank my colleagues for their, hopefully, will be their support for the AAPI community and condemning these hate crimes that have been happening against Asian Americans, whether they're in Santa Ana or throughout the United States. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. And thank you both, Council Member Fan and Council Member Becerra. I know both of you helped draft and made some edits to the resolution and added your perspectives and points of view and so we really appreciate that and yeah, let me go ahead because I have some comments at the end but I see Council Member Lopez and then Mayor Pro Tem's hand up.

Council Member Lopez. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, you know, I just want to express my support for our Asian and AAPI residents. I strongly condemn the physical and the verbal acts of violence that Asian Americans are experiencing. You know, the Asian community should not fear for their lives while they're living their life, running errands, working or walking in their community. And we cannot simply just move from the fatal shooting in Georgia. We need to have this conversation. And so I want to thank Councilmember Fan and staff and Councilmember Becerra for bringing

this up and really helping to address the issues of racism, misogyny, and xenophobia. I think that it is our responsibility to collectively come together as a nation and a community and to consider the pain of the Asian community. And so, you know, my commitment is going to be to do everything that I can to ensure that Sanana is welcoming, inclusive, and an equitable place for Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember. Mayor Pro Tem and then Councilmember Hernandez.

David PenalozaItem 31

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I just also want to express that I wholeheartedly stand in solidarity with our Asian American community here in Santa Ana and happy to support Councilmember Fan and Councilmember Becerra in this resolution. It's definitely something that is very problematic and isn't new, as we stated in the resolution language. This has been going on in the United States and around the world for centuries. Here in the United States, the history of how we've treated Asian Americans in this

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country is so problematic and definitely something that needs to be talked about and shed a light on to know the history that has happened here in our country. So very supportive of this. Thank you for bringing it forward. And happy to support. The one question I had, Madam City Manager, was, and you know me, I'm always going to have questions on process. I don't remember this coming forward before us as any council item? Am I mistaken? Was I asleep? I know that we've had some long meetings, but was this before

us before? No, Mayor Pro Tem, your memory is correct and intact. It was not a council member requested item on an agenda. It was mentioned during comments from council member Phan, and then the mayor did request us to move forward, and he is able to put an item on the agenda.

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Okay, good. And I just wanted to, because I was like, thinking back, I was like, Was I sleeping through? I mean, I probably was because of how late our meetings have been going, but I wanted to make sure I didn't miss this item before us. But thank you for that. Very supportive. And thank you, council members.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah, yeah, you're right. Thank you for keeping us up on our toes. I forgot those comments as well, but that was the origin of it. So council member Hernandez and then council member Mendoza.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 31

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I just wanted to express my solidarity and support to the API community and thank Councilmember Fan and Councilmember Becetta for bringing this forward. We as a city absolutely should condemn hate and white supremacy. And I think one of the things that really stood out to me last year in light of George Floyd and as we are seeing what's been happening over the past couple of months with the hate and racism, misogyny

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and xenophobia toward the API community is that there's a coalition of minorities that are coming together to dismantle hate. And here we are yet again having to fight in the trenches, but we are going to do that together and we will come out on top and love will always prevail. In the words of Dr. King, hate can't drive out hate. Only love can do that. So here's to loving and embracing the API community that we have in Santa Ana. And as the council member of Ward 5, we have downtown Santa Ana where there once was a Chinatown. I've always echoed it. I would love

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to see that Chinatown be brought back. Downtown Santa Ana is a home for everybody and it's a place where we embrace diversity. So I would certainly love to get the ball rolling there and I would invite any of our community leaders to reach out to me so that we can start discussing ways to do that. Thank you.

Well said. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Mendoza?

Yes, thank you. I want to echo the comments of my colleagues as well. You know, Santa Anna has always been tolerant of all peoples, and so this is no exception. It's a great way to show our sister cities that we must come together and not tolerate this kind of behavior, and that there is a sense of togetherness no matter where you come from.

And so it's a resolution that I definitely approve of and wholeheartedly support. So definitely it's a good thing for us to continue to do this for our fellow mankind. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Yeah, I just briefly want to say obviously all of us are in support of this. To me, a resolution just doesn't seem strong enough. I support it, but I almost think, okay, is it a hollow gesture because it's a non-binding intent document? And I know all of us feel so strongly about this issue. And you know what's interesting is as we reflect on tonight's meeting, we had somebody give us an invocation or reflection coming from the Native American community. Many of us speak Spanish, Vietnamese, have different

backgrounds and so we celebrate those things so i see this more as an embrace rather than a tolerant you know tolerating um communities we embrace communities and that's what we're doing and we're embracing them in a moment that's really really difficult especially for the um you know asian community so to the extent that we um do as much as we can i think this council i think has been said we're very compassionate but let's not be uh you know let's not simplify it too much because these are not just measures of compassion. To the extent that Little Saigon was born here in Santa Ana, right?

Right on first and near Sullivan was where it started. We have to ask ourselves, why has Little Saigon moved west away from Santa Ana? And so there is an economic nexus that we have to really figure out. Why is the community moving away from us rather than becoming more embedded in Santa Ana? So that is something that's very tangible. That's something that's quantifiable that I think we can tackle. But we do have to write this horrible legacy that the city has. And we have to be honest, as many of us here on this dais, Latinos, we have to make a lot

better effort to have cultural understanding and sensitivity amongst those of us who are people of color. because it's not just sort of white hate or hostility from the white community, but it is sometimes amongst people of color, and we need to be able to sit down and realize, obviously, to many of us, we have a lot more in common than we have differences, but sometimes that doesn't permeate everybody's reality, and I think it's these moments that we can do that and set examples. But one tangible example that we might want to do is there was a monument years ago on one of the medians that said, welcome to Santa Ana,

and it was a Vietnamese thing, and it said Little Saigon. It was struck and knocked down and destroyed by somebody, and it was an accident, and it happened, but it never got rebuilt. And I always felt that that was an offensive gesture. It was maybe not overtly, but it was one that was sort of disregarded. And I remember discussions before I came on the council where a lot of people opposed that monument being themed in an Asian or Vietnamese style. So to the extent, Madam City Manager, we can revisit that and look where it was historically, but I believe it was on First Street as you drive from Bolsa, and it converts to First

as you're driving east on First. I think to me that is the very least we can do to make sure that people understand we We are a diverse community that celebrates what so many contributions that have been made from the Asian community. So look, I'd like to do more, but this is where we are on this resolution. But thank you all for your comments, and I'll go ahead and call on Councilmember Pham.

Thai Viet PhanItem 31

Thank you, Mayor. I would definitely be supportive of that. And definitely want to talk about the community liaison that we should have, because we have twice as many Vietnamese residents as they do in Fountain Valley. But with that, I would like to move to approve this resolution. I'll second it. Great. That's very appropriate. We have a

motion by Council Member Phan, second by Council Member Becerra. Madam Clerk, will you please call

roll? Council Member Becerra? Yes. Council Member Hernandez? Yes. Council Member Lopez? Yes. Yes. Council member Mendoza? Yes. Council member Fan? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempeñolosa?

Yes.

And Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes. Thank you, everybody. And I was just going to remind the clerk, when you text me and tell me I'm going over time, please put it in all caps, bold, a lot of exclamation marks behind it, please, because I'm not paying attention. So with that, let me move to the only council member requested item that we have for this evening, item 32. And I believe this is from Council Member Becerra and Council Member Fan. I'll turn it over to both of you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You know, I think it was very appropriate that as we were discussing the previous item you'd mentioned, there needs to be more than just a gesture. And I think, you know, it's like what they say, oh, wait, there's more. So in addition to the resolution, we have this item that both myself and Council Member Pham brought forward. You know, in addressing a problem, the first thing you have to do is assess it and diagnose it. And I think what's appropriate here is because as we're talking about hate crimes against the Asian community, I think it's very important that we understand how many hate crimes are

being committed here in our city. And we don't get that data as instantaneously as we should or as we would like. And so what this item is, and we're hopeful that it's a very easy accommodation, and that is to take hate crimes that have been reported to our police department and have that data posted on the police department's website on a monthly basis. I think it's important because, again, as I mentioned, we want to show where we have problems, but also because I think this council has been a very big champion of transparency,

and we need to make sure that we understand what it is that we're facing in order to address the problem.

Thank you, Council Member. Let me go ahead and turn it over to Council Member Fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 32

Thank you, Mayor. And I want to thank Councilman Becerra for actually asking me to join him on this item. I really do appreciate it. And I think all of us, whether we've asked for, you know, fought for police reform, advocated for whatever it is, you know, this, I think, issue, you know, regarding more data, more transparency is the thing that we can all agree on. I don't think that there's a partisan bent to it. I don't think that there's anything other than wanting to know what's going on in our city of over 330,000 people. And we know hate crimes, particularly hate crimes against Asian

Thai Viet PhanItem 32

Americans are underreported. Just a couple facts, because I love that. Hate crimes during 2020 actually went down overall, but hate crimes against Asian Americans went up by 150%, particularly against the elderly and Asian women. I don't know how many have occurred in Santa Ana, But what I do know is that until I shared my story about racism, my cousin who lives in LA told me that as she was working and doing a photo shoot, a man on his bike rode across the street to come up to her and tell her to go back where she came from. A college classmate of mine was walking with her friend in San Francisco and got spat on

Thai Viet PhanItem 32

and yelled at to also go back to where she came from. She's a healthcare worker. So, you know, these were not crimes that were reported. These were not incidences that were reported. These are incidences that were shared maybe with tight family members, spouses, partners, and we need to know. We need to know what's going on so that we can address it. And so we can look at, well, what do we need in our police department so that people feel comfortable discussing this with our law enforcement? Is it because we need to hire more officers who speak Vietnamese or are in the community

Thai Viet PhanItem 32

or speak Chinese, what do we need? And so I really want to thank Councilmember Rosetta for bringing this forward. I hope that we can do the very least, which is just to collect some data for now to see

how we can move forward to address this. Thank you. Thank you, Council Members. Mayor Pro Tem.

David PenalozaItem 32

Thank you, Mayor Salman. I just wanted to show my support for this. Madam City Manager, it's important that our police department, as we move forward, we make this data available publicly so that we not only the city council knows, but our residents know what's really going on in our city. Because we know that these hate crimes are happening a lot. Lately, the last three, four months, I feel that every time I watch the 10 o'clock news or the 6 p.m. news, whatever time it is, there's always another crazy attack on an Asian American resident here in the United States.

David PenalozaItem 32

And there are always elderly people, which is even more troubling. So it's not even, you know, dealing with hate crimes against Asians, but elderly people. That's just a whole different thing. And it's all problematic, all of it. It's terrible what we're seeing, the increase we're seeing against Asian Americans. And we need to make sure that we know what's going on and our police department makes this data available. When that is made available, I'm hoping soon, I'm not sure if my colleagues had a timeframe, but I don't want this to also turn into,

David PenalozaItem 32

because I know we've done this before with the police department. Last summer, we all directed the police department to come back and provide quarterly or monthly data, I believe, on helicopter responses because we were seeing the helicopter hover over the city all night long, every single day, and nobody could ever tell us why. But we never seen any data. I think it was provided once within a month and never saw it again. So I know that the police department, you know, they're busy. They have a lot of things going on. But it's important that when we ask for this data,

David PenalozaItem 32

it's provided to us and it's made public, whatever type of data it is. But just wanted to let you guys know that I'm supportive of this. I want to see it. And yeah, that's pretty much it.

Thank you, colleagues. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. And look, for the, I think we kind of had this discussion in the previous item. I don't think anybody is going to be opposed to this. And I see the police chief on, and I believe that a lot of this data is already provided maybe to the Human Relations Commission at the county level, but to the extent that it's made available to us and really easily accessible, I'm sure there won't be any argument from him. And I don't see any of us being adverse to this. I think it's actually a very, very good thing. The only question I would

have for the city attorney. Do we need to bring that? I don't think we need to bring this back. This looks like pretty clear direction of what we want to do. There doesn't need to be a follow-up staff report or is that for purposes of satisfying notice? Are we fine with this?

Thank you. It'd be fine. And then I would just check with the city manager to make sure they feel like they have enough information to prepare what you need. Thank you, city attorney. Absolutely. This is information that's already collected by the police department it's publicly available on the doj's website and the police don't share they do share it with oc human relations so it's very easy just to take it and to be more transparent to put it on the website and i see the chief is engaged and he's nodding his head as well

so very easy information to share great so this won't be coming back to us and i i you know i'll just go ahead and be as bold and say nobody on the council is opposed so your direction should be very clear information is already made available and thank you council members the Sarah and fan for bringing this forward so moving along to the next item we're actually gonna we're actually gonna go ahead and pivot to the housing authority so I'll go ahead and recess the city council meeting and convene the housing authority meeting and call the housing authority meeting to order and ask

Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Chair Member Fan? Chair Member Fan?

Chair Member Fan?

Vice Chair Peñalosa?

Chair Peñalosa?

Chair Peñalosa? Chair Sarmiento?

Chair Sarmiento? Chair Sarmiento?

Yes, thank you everybody. So let me go ahead and before the hearing on, before the public hearing item number two, I'm going to ask the clerk to provide instructions to the public who would like to make any, if they would like to make any comments on this item. So Madam Clerk, I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you. For any member of the public who would like to make a comment for public hearing item two, please dial star nine from your phone or click on raise hand from Zoom now. The lines will close once the chair opens the public hearing.

Great. Thank you, Madam Clerk. So this is a time and place for a public hearing to approve the Housing Authority plan and I will go ahead and open the public hearing and ask if there are any council members that have any questions or comments. And ask Madam Clerk, are there any members of the public that would wish to address this?

No, Mayor, we have no one.

All right. Seeing none and hearing no members of the public, let me go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to the council and ask the council members if there are any questions or comments from the members of the authority.

Seeing none, I'll go ahead and entertain a motion.

All motion to approve.

Second.

We have a motion by council member Hernandez, a second by Mendoza. Madam Clerk, will you please conduct roll?

Authority member Becerra?

Yes. Yes.

Authority member Hernandez?

Yes.

Authority member Lopez?

Yes.

Authority member Mendoza? Yes. Authority member Fan? Yes. Vice Chair Pinalosa?

Yes.

And Chair Sarmiento?

Yes.

Thank you, everybody. Let me go ahead and adjourn the Housing Authority meeting and reconvene the City Council meeting and come back for closing comments. And I'll start with the city manager.

Thank you, Mayor. Just two items, tutoring and trees. So I wanted to announce that in the month of March, the Santa Ana Public Library conducted over 630 tutoring sessions for Santa Ana youth from kindergarten to 12th grade. Services like this provide students in the community an important opportunity to get extra assistance with homework. Many of these youth may not have otherwise had access to one-on-one tutoring elsewhere. For just a quick story as an example, we recently had a Vietnamese speaking parent contact staff very concerned about her child falling behind in school.

And staff told the parent about the library's online tutoring service and showed her how to sign up for the free service. And she was very delighted and relieved and grateful that our library is offering this service. Students and families that are interested can visit the library's website at www.santa-anna.org backslash library. And then Santa Ana has been named Tree City USA for a 22nd consecutive year. The Arbor Day Foundation has named Santa Ana a 2020 Tree City USA in recognition of the city's commitment to effectively incorporating urban forest management in the community.

As I mentioned, it is the 22nd consecutive year that we have received this honor. Santa Ana met the Tree City USA program's four requirements by establishing the Environmental and Transportation Advisory Committee made up of council appointees who provide oversight on tree planting programs, creating a tree care ordinance all the way back in 1999 that provides guidelines for maintaining a healthy urban forest, and establishing a community forestry program with an annual budget of at least two dollars per capita the city's fiscal year 2019-20 fiscal year budget far exceed that several times over with funding of 4.1 million and of

course celebrating arbor day observance annually the city of santa anna tree program purchases plants and maintains all city-owned trees to keep our urban forest of 50 000 street trees healthy and attractive. Tree planting usually is scheduled in the fall to provide the trees with optimal weather for successful growth. And if anyone, any member of the public has any questions or needs assistance with City trees, please contact our Public Works Maintenance Services Division at 647-3380. And we do have on our City website a lot more information about our tree program should anybody be interested in learning more.

And that's all, Mayor.

Thank you for those announcements, Madam City Manager. Let me go ahead and bring it to the council and ask them if they have any closing comments. And I'll start with Council Member Becerra.

You're on mute.

Sorry about that. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You know, this week happens to be Library Week, National Library Week, I wanted to wish everybody a happy library week, April 4th through 10th. It's quite appropriate that we're having library week this week because we're seeing the reopening of the New Hope Branch Library on Friday, April 9th from 10 to 6 p.m. So hopefully everybody can come out and take a look at all the renovations that have been done at that library. And other than that, I just want

to wish everybody a good night. Thank you, Councilmember. Let me call on Councilmember

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Hernandez. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to take this opportunity to share a moment of reflection. As we discuss a lot of heavy things in our council meetings, of course, and all of us at the end of the day are people too, and we experience adversity and challenges in our own right, but recently I just learned of some really devastating news of a family member or a family friend that had passed with COVID and it was quite tragic and very, very expensive and

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

we just never know the effects of how it impacts our residents and our family members. So I wanted to take the opportunity to share that FEMA does have funds available to reimburse families if they did lose a loved one to COVID. There are qualifications for that. It's that if your family member did pass a COVID, it would have to be within the United States. And number two, the result of death would have to be COVID on the death certificate. So So just wanted to share that information because I know a lot of beautiful people were impacted by this pandemic and by the virus.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

So I hope that that is helpful. And however I can be of assistance to residents within my ward, I'm always a message away. Feel free to reach out and I'm here to be of service to the residents. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Hernandez, for that. I appreciate that. Council Member Lopez.

Thank you, Mayor. And I do have a couple of announcements, so please bear with me. I wanted to directly speak with the residents of Saddleback View, Marbury Park, and Lyon. Please save the date. We're going to be having a meeting discussing our environmental concerns. It's going to be Thursday, April 29th at 6 p.m. And as most of you know, the Lyon neighborhood and the Saddleback View neighborhood, they deal with bad air quality, which is the War III issue. So it is something that I will continue to address. And we are in the process of updating our general plan.

And my job as your councilwoman is to hear your thoughts and concerns regarding our quality of life issues. So please, as I said, save the date and I hope to see you Thursday, April the 29th. My second update is going to be regarding the 2525 site. Due to the demolition work and the fire that happened last night, city staff did reach out to the developer and he has agreed to one, secure the site with additional funding, two, provide four guards that will be on site overnight and at least one during the demolition and staff just confirmed that there are lights and that there are guards there.

and third, provide lighting as I said and place them at the back corners and along the park overnight. And finally, I just wanna thank Parks and Tiago residents for their continued patience. I know that it has not been an easy situation. It's been very challenging and I wanna thank you all for keeping me involved with the day-to-day and please continue to reach out and please know that we're here to help. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Lopez. Great work out there. Let me go ahead and now go to Councilmember Mendoza.

Thank you. I would like to request that our meeting be closed in honor of another of our veterans who passed away, not from COVID. He was a Korean War hero, a sergeant, Salvador Lujan, who was born in Santa Ana, in Delhi area, and has lived in Santa Ana for the better part of his life.

He was 90 years old or 90 years young, very active, and a true hero to our community and to, for his service to our country. And so we would like to just honor his memory by closing tonight's meeting in his honor,

Sergeant Salvador Lujan, U.S. Army. Those are my comments.

Thank you, Councilmember. We'll do so. Absolutely. Let me go now to Councilmember Fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Thank you, Mayor. And Councilmember Bissetta stole my thunder about New Hope Library. That's my home library. I grew up obviously on the west side right off New Hope. I would walk there with my class. That was my after-school babysitting. That was the place where I discovered the world with all the fantastic books and snuck in hot Cheetos. Please don't do that. So I hope that those of you who are able to visit, especially in the limited hours, please do so. Please use the services. I know all of us are very enthusiastic about bringing these resources to the community. And it's not just books. We have audio books. We have e-books.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

you can learn new languages with these different programs. There's so many things available for everybody to, not just for kids, but for adults, to enrich ourselves, our learning, and all of that. I do want to mention, I probably should have mentioned earlier, but I was recently appointed to a one-year term to the Community Services Policy Committee with the League of California Cities. It ends kind of mid-summer, early fall. But really the goal is to advocate for issues that affect parks, families, and things like that, and how the state has laws and issues that affect those of us here at the local level.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Finally, I just wanted to remind everybody that even though we're all getting vaccinated or getting in line and there's openings and we're going to this new green tier, to please still stay safe. You know, the CDC still recommends wearing one or two masks, still recommends social distancing, still recommends that once you're fully vaxxed, which means if you were like me and got Moderna, it's two weeks after the second shot that you're fully protected, that you still limit your contact with those who are unvaccinated, especially those who are more at risk.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

I want us to stay open. I want to be able to see my mom. I want us to really rev up this economy. But in order to do that, we all have to stay safe, and we want to make sure that, especially those who cannot get the vaccine, are still protected. So stay safe, take care.

Thank you. Thank you for those comments, Councilmember Fan. Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 1

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I also just wanted to encourage residents to head over to the New Hope Library and my colleagues. If you haven't seen it, please go and tour it. I was lucky to visit it during construction and it was looking really great then, so I can't wait to see it now.

David PenalozaItem 1

And since today, you know, we're wearing teal to bring awareness to Sexual Assault Awareness Month, I want to remind everybody that April 28th is Denim Day. So don't forget to wear your denim on April 28th. And that stems from back in the 90s, an Italian Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a 1998 rape case because the victim wore tight jeans. And it was argued that the jeans were so tight that the only way to have gotten them off was if she had helped her attacker remove her jeans, does making the act consensual.

David PenalozaItem 1

That's the type of garbage that women have had to deal with for centuries in this world. So just wanted to remind everybody to wear denim April 28th. And that is it. I have no further comments, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, everybody, and good night.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Man, I wear denim every day, so I don't know. I guess I'll just continue the pattern. But thank you for those comments. So really quickly, I just wanted to mention a couple of things, and then I'm going to kind of shift in with your indulgence, council members, in a very difficult task of adjourning in memory of a couple of people that is going to be very difficult to describe their loss to the city. I just first want to thank the residents in the Santa Anita neighborhood, Del High Memorial Park, and soon Windsor Park. I'll be addressing some of them and just

listening and inviting some comments from them on how we should be looking at prioritizing funding for the American Rescue Plan. So I guess the goal here is just to go out to the public and hear as much as possible from them, or at least encourage them to maybe think about it and send us comments later. But the idea is to engage the public on this as much as possible. I don't want this decision to be made in a vacuum by anybody. We need to make it with as much public input as we possibly can. That's one. The second thing is to reiterate what Councilmember Fan said. Please,

please get vaccinated. We have a very short window here in the 92701 and 92703 zip codes to be able to get people vaccinated before the onslaught of everybody in the county getting vaccinated once they're 16 and over. So that is everybody. So we have this window of time. So let's try to go ahead and do and be as efficient as possible to vaccinate our folks first. That was the goal of these HPI index areas was to give us priorities in those areas to get those people that have been hard, you know, hardest hit to get priorities. So we don't want to wait and defer this and then that

opportunity goes away and it's made available and everybody's edged out, elbowed out. So So with your indulgence, let me just go ahead and begin with these two folks that we're going to be saying goodbye to tonight. And one of them is Arthur Sandoval. And I don't know if any of you knew Arthur, but he was a resident here, but very, very involved in the community. He was a city commissioner and a public servant here in Santa Ana. He graduated from Century High School and was really involved in campus activities, including Model United Nations. That's sort of a debate, speech and debate program.

He went on to study international relations at UC San Diego. And soon after his graduation, he came back and landed an internship with then State Senator Correa's office, where he quickly proved himself to be a model public servant and became a top district representative for more than six years. Arthur worked tirelessly to support and represent the Santa Ana community. He was engaged with Connect to Council. Again, as I said, served as a city commissioner and vice chair to our Community Redevelopment Commission. He dedicated hundreds of hours to helping our residents navigate and access state government.

He resolved issues and identified resources for small businesses, seniors, students, local government, schools, veterans, parents, kids, with special needs and dreamers. Arthur was passionate about helping people. He worked to give voice and access to those with disabilities, mental health needs, and children with special needs. Many in our community have fond memories of Arthur's reading books in classrooms, organizing toy distributions, mentoring high school students, and he is universally known to be a young man of great kindness, humility, loyalty to his family, colleagues, and his community.

And again, just somebody who devoted his young life to helping residents here in Santa Ana. And he passed away. And many of you may have known him in then-Senator Correa's office, just helping and being one of our city commissioners. And he was a very bright, very energetic and the most decent young man that I've had the pleasure of meeting. And so we adjourn in his memory and say goodbye to Arthur for all his good work that he did for our residents

here. The next one is for somebody even younger. And many of you may have heard the story of the mass shooting that occurred last week in the city of Orange and the four lives that were taken. And one of those lives was the very young boy that was killed during that incident. And that young boy was Matthew Farias. And Matthew was a resident of Santa Ana. And so his image

is right now on screen for all of us to hopefully look at and remember fondly because in his very short nine-year-old life, he was the victim of one in a series of mass shootings that occurred and affected this country. And this one really hit us close because it was right next door in the city of Orange. And as many of you know, with your consent, I sent a letter to Mayor Murphy in the city of Orange offering our sympathies for their loss in their community. But Matthew was one

of hours. And he lost his life on Wednesday, March 31st. And the entire Santa Ana Unified School District community is heartbroken as we are by the senseless act of violence that took the life of Matthew Farias, who was a third grader at Hoover Elementary. And so our thoughts and our sympathies and our love is with Matthew's family, along with the family with everybody in the school district and in the community. From what I understand, Matthew was an avid lover of soccer. He loved riding his bikes, playing games of tag.

He loved playing with his dog Ruby, which was a boxer, which is a boxer, and he loved playing video games on his Xbox. He was competitive, athletic, and bright. And look, just looking at him, you know, not only evokes sympathy for his loss and our loss, but also just for me, it really does bother me that what's been consistent with all these mass shootings has been one thing, which is weapons. And, you know, this young man had a bright future. This young man had many things to look forward to, and many of us are the lesser for his loss.

And so I just want to adjourn in his memory and adjourn in the memory of Arturo Sandoval as well.

Mayor Pro Tem, go ahead. Justin, if you could indulge me for two seconds.

David PenalozaItem 1

Just wanted to, you know, thank you for that. The day after the shooting happened, I also found out that my cousin, who's a teacher at Hoover Elementary, was Matthew's teacher. So she, I mean, was devastated beyond belief because, you know, she spent a year with Matthew, you know, as his teacher. And very sad situation. And thank you for closing this meeting in his honor.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah, some meetings are tougher than others to close on. This one is difficult. This one is one that hits home to all of us. and let's just be kind to each other. Let's care about each other. Let's remember that these things happen to people who are right next door to us and we need to be gentle with each other. So with that, I'll go ahead and adjourn this meeting in his memory and in Arturo Sandoval's memory and the next meeting will be on April 6th, 2021. Thank you, everybody. We're adjourned.

Thank you.