Read the May 4 meeting.

Mayor Pro Tem, Ward, M.D.: Thank you, Madam Clerk, and welcome, everybody. Greetings to the Santa City Council meeting for May 4th, 2021. I can't help myself. May the 4th, you would follow me. So I just want to go ahead and call the closed session meeting order. But before we do that, let me go ahead and take care of a quick housekeeping verbal notice to everybody in accordance with Cal California Governor's 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 to the public. The public is accessing the meeting via the Santa Ana YouTube channel or the city's website. So please bear with us as the technology may disrupt the flow of the meeting at any time. We ask for your patience. Madam Clerk, I'll go ahead and uh send it back to you so you can go ahead uh call roll i believe we do have one yes councilmember

becerra also member hernandez

councilmember lopez here also member mendoza here councilmember fan

Mayor Potem Peñalosa. President. And Mayor Sarmiento.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

Hello. Good afternoon. My apologies for my tardiness. I didn't realize we had a passcode to enter the meeting.

Councilmember Hernandez is here as well. So thank you, councilmember, for joining us. Let me go ahead and bring it back to us. and let me ask if any council members would like to announce any abstentions or refusals on the closed session agenda. Seeing none, I'll go ahead and state my abstention. I'll be abstaining on item 1A. I received a contribution, campaign contribution from one of the parties that's involved in this lawsuit 2017 so out of an abundance of caution i will go ahead and recuse

myself from that matter but that aside i believe we are ready to go forward so madam clerk i'll go ahead and toss it back to you to see if there's any speakers i wish to address this before we

recess in closed session thank you mayor members of the council we do have several speakers on the speaker queue and we also received an email notification we received for closed session item number two six santa anna residents who state that the city needs to do better for unhoused and work with el centro cultura and then 15 residency not disclosed also indicating the same thing there's one santa anna resident that provided their comment and indicated that they

support the city to take action for closed session item number three cypress fire station there were seven santa anna residents that requested to not sell the property needs to be preserved as a historical landmark and not and allow for community input and one santa anna resident that indicated to sell the prop the property to a private sector with conditions to keep the historic elements and with that um zoom id benjamin vasquez if you would please select thank you you may proceed with your comment if you would please um state whether or not you are a santa anna resident

i'm a santa anna resident high school teacher in santa anna

I'm sorry, you have three minutes, you may proceed.

Okay, this morning we had a editorial written by Councilmember Phil Bassetta, attacking an immigrant-based nonprofit who does great work for this city and has done amazing work over the last 20 plus years in Santa Ana. Over this pandemic, we will have given over a million dollars to undocumented families for help. So when he says we are behind or we're not helping the community, I don't know what he's talking about.

When we're talking about criminalizing, the reason there is people, unhoused people, on 837 North Ross is because El Centro decided, El Centro had the courage not to allow police to come on. That is the only reason there are people on site, because we did not allow police to come on site. The city has threatened to bring police. The city has threatened to bring police and have an abatement to bring police. And that's more, that's what we call criminalization. I have no idea what the council member Bacetta is talking about, nor does he.

The camp began way before in March, but it really got big when the civic center, when the county during a pandemic decided to close down unsheltered housing at civic center. The county decided during a pandemic to close it down and many people came to a central. And then 2525 also had an encampment at its place, North Main to be specific. And when they broke that down, more folks came to El Centro. We hired two people to deal, to give services that was not criminalizing, but servicing people to get. We were doing tons of work, tons of work.

But the city kept denying services to these people, would not use. There is a program that the government uses, a federal government. FEMA will provide you reimbursements to the city to house people up until September. It could still be used. FEMA will reimburse the city. The city refuses to use this room key program. The city has constantly refused. And even in the middle of the pandemic, they closed down their own shelter links. They closed it down. Now they send everybody over to Fullerton.

What happens is they know because of the shutdown, a judge orders that they can no longer harass folks for vagrancy. The police cannot criminalize people for vagrancy. In order to continue to criminalize the unhoused people, the city decides, well, let's open up the links again, which is fine by us. Please open up the links. We have people ready who have been approved on site. And we ask that you open up links and give us 48 hours to move people into links before taking the abatement to court. You need to bring back the services and include use room key or find an encampment.

You need to find the courage within yourself to do the right thing and not continue to use police and these kind of issues. We can do better, Sanyana. Thank you.

Thank you.

Zoom ID, Tim Johnson, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device. Thank you. You have three minutes.

Hi, good evening, everyone. Tim Johnson, resident of Santa Ana.

I live about three quarters of a mile from what's being spoken about tonight. for three items, Santa Ana versus OC, both the cross complaint as well as the original complaint. There's a settlement hearing tomorrow at nine o'clock. Mayor Sarmiento, I believe you'll be representing the city, always sits with the court's request as well as Supervisor Doe. I urge the city to hold strong with the county and ask that the county make emergency shelter progress in other parts of the county specifically in South County. North County seems to be doing quite a bit

and stepping up and hopefully we can with your leadership we can get some movement in South County also. At present they still even have South County literature which I've provided to the council previously. You know sharing Santa Ana emergency shelters which is in violation of the

OCCW settlement. But regardless, we know that Santa Ana is disproportionately impacted by this crisis, and I hope that with your leadership, we can make some progress here. And it'd be interesting to explore whether the same constitutional arguments that Judge Carter just included in his ruling in Los Angeles with regards to due process and equal protection for minorities, but that would hold true in our case also. But regardless of the outcome tomorrow, please consider being transparent with the public and provide an update since we haven't really heard

anything on these matters for quite some time on these specific case cases with regards to the to El Centro I urge you to work with El Centro and not bring litigation against them in this in this matter I believe that litigation will only slow things down make it worse for residents in the area. At present, I don't believe that we have enough emergency shelter beds to be able to

enforce any anti-camping ordinances, which is to force these unhoused folks to move on to public property, most likely on the sidewalks, which is not good for the residents of the area because they know that the link is shut down, even though I believe the city is thinking about reopening it up. We've moved the shelter up to Fullerton, but we are in violation of that Orange County Catholic worker, which is agenda item 1C case. And so I hope that you work with El Centro on this matter instead of bringing in litigation.

I just heard Mr. Vasquez imply that they're willing to work with the city as long as policing is not necessarily involved and i urge the city to be able to take that path with el centro it's best for not only el centro not only of the area but also those that are struggling with housing in that area thank you very much and appreciate your leadership thank you

zoom id brooke weitzman if you would please select the microphone thank you

hi uh brooke weitzman i am a resident of santa anna um i am concerned when i look at the closed session what i see is a long pattern in practice in the city of making the wrong choices of the closed session items, at least four of them are obviously directly related to homelessness, that the city is kind of time after time advocating its responsibilities to either hold the county accountable or step up itself with its direct access to state funds as a city of over 300,000. And instead engaging in this pattern of criminalization historically against the homeless people and

now against organizations and nonprofits, that when the city chooses not to help the people who need the help the most, and instead spends our tax dollars litigating social issues, it's concerning. It's concerning to me as an attorney who represents the homeless people who are impacted by these choices, and it's concerning to me as a resident of the city. The city has used lawsuits over and over in the past few years to shut down entities that were providing help. They're suing against mental health services. They're suing against motels, against railroads, that every time there

is a congregation of unhoused people, instead of stepping up on housing, that the city is now taking that criminalization to a new level. The city's investing in policing and criminalizing the people and the entities rather than investing in the social services. So instead of filing another case against this nonprofit, I urge the city council to take an audit of yourself, to look at how you're spending this money, to see if maybe, and looking at how much is being spent on all of these lawsuits against those places where homeless people are found, and all of the

police money that is spent policing and criminalizing the homeless population, if we could maybe match or exceed that with investment in solutions, investment in housing, investment in health care if we were investing in those at the same rate in which we invest in police and lawsuits how many lives could we save how many people could we help so i hope that when you look at these closed sessions items tonight that you'll look at them as a whole and look at whether the city is making some questionable choices in its investment in in policing and in using the

litigation system to avoid real solutions and if instead the city is prepared to to really step up on housing and healthcare and look at models like CAHOOTS and Eugene, Oregon, like so many other cities in Orange County are starting to do to save money and save lives.

Thank you.

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

Thank you. Yes. Hi, my name is Pat Davis. I'm not a Santa Ana resident, but have been a long time advocate for the unhoused and certainly going back to lawsuits which appear to be in your closed sessions items for discussion. Again, the idea that the city has been unable to reach the number of beds needed for shelters and we're still the ways in which you have not used the federal money earlier mentioned by Mr. us is to house folks who are on the street. The ask to open a shelter to move people from El Centro, while I appreciate the gesture from El Centro, a congregate shelter is not the solution.

You know you can house these folks in motels, you know you can move forward with more conversions. I'm most concerned about the American Rescue Act money because you have not demonstrated the way in which you're using those monies and an unwillingness to use the room key resources. So I implore you to look more closely at why you need to involve El Centro in the dance that you've been doing with the county for some time. They needn't be in that model. They took a stand and created an environment which provided some protection where you would instead prefer to

criminalize those who have to live in poverty and have found the best ways to survive. Again, Santa Ana has had a brunt of situations, and I will recognize that. But again, to put a nonprofit of this sort who so well serves the community in this position with you is most unfair. So I hope that you will not pursue legal action. Look at options which include moving folks into motels and providing the services there. Again, step up and do the right thing by the unhoused. It's not going to get better, but you have many opportunities, and the resources are there. Thank you.

Thank you.

Zoom ID, David Duran, if you would please select the microphone icon. Thank you.

Yes, thank you. It is extremely upsetting to have to attend this meeting again.

To remind you that there is a word in the English language that you fail to recognize. That instead you've chosen not to recognize. The word is humanity. we're not talking about um you know people who are trying to uh take over the capital here we're talking about human beings who are trying to survive while living on the streets and in

this particular case, trying to survive, stay alive, while being temporarily allowed to be at El Centro.

Instead, you've chosen, apparently have decided that litigation is maybe the answer. Let me explain to you just briefly what the answer is, and then you can think about it and go into your closed session. The answer is humanity. You find somebody who's injured, you try and help them. You try, if you find someone who's poor, you try and share with them. You find somebody who's hungry, you should try and help feed them.

It's that simple. You have resources that have gone untouched, untapped by your own malicious neglect. That is so wrong. That is so wrong. You must be better than that. You must do better than that. After the election, this board was temporarily recognized, or this commission, excuse me, council was temporarily recognized to be a little bit more progressive, a little bit more caring.

Why don't you show it instead of doing what you do? Why don't you show the residents of Santa Ana that you're better than this? criminalization is not the answer. Putting people in a semi prison is not the answer. Helping them, that's the answer. Who needs help? Who needs health care? Who needs mental health services? Who needs food? Who needs clothing? Thank you.

Thank you.

Caller with the last three numbers, 477, if you would please select star six to unmute your call or select the microphone icon on your device.

Hello, this is Dale Helbig, resident of Santa Ana, and I just wanted to say a couple things. One regarding the old fire station house, hopefully the city can find something to do with that property that remains, or which keeps it a historical property. You know, I think we lose things when we start selling off public property to private entities, pennies on the dollar. And I would like to see that property remain intact as an historical landmark, which it currently is designated as on the city roster there.

The other thing is the El Centro issue. As people have said, it's not an easy answer, but I don't think the answer, and I don't think the charter of El Centro was to house people in their parking lot. I think they would prefer to have something else done. There was a 45-day moratorium essentially where they were given from the courts or through the legal process to help address the issue and get people housed someplace else. And instead, the encampments have just grown in size.

And it's an unsafe, unsanitary spot that they're in. And the city is doing things to try and address that. But we do have the Yale shelter, which is county run.

The courtyard facility, when it was closed down, people were directed to go to the Yale shelter or over to the link at the time. Link's now been closed down. So people have been bused up to Fullerton if that's still taking place. But to continue to have El Centro go against their charter of what they were designed to do, I think is wrong and we don't want to see police action taken against these people, but we need to find some other solution besides having them camp out in unsanitary and unsafe conditions at that

facility. Thank you. Thank you. Zoom ID, Karen Hernandez, if you would please select the microphone icon or the unmute featuring your device. Thank you very much. My name is Karen

I am not a resident of Santa Ana, but I am an advocate for the unhoused community in Orange County and throughout the world, really. This I just want to, you know, uplift and echo what what Brooke and what Pat also and Dave said is that, you know, what is happening here is that there is an idea with there's a fundamental disagreement with the idea that poverty is a crime. And, you know, yes, it is unsafe. Yes, you know, there are issues there. But

we there are solutions to this problem. And the solution is not placing the burden and the cost and El Centro and the community, nor is it moving them into congregate shelters.

We need to come up with solutions that don't criminalize or marginalize a community that's gathering there, add them, add any harm to the experience that, you know, that they are living. And we have to utilize the resources that are available to us. Those resources being Project Roomkey. You know, this, again, like I said, echoing the feelings and the sentiment that other folks have, you know, spoken about here is that there is, there are resources and they should be utilized. And it is an issue of humanity, as Dave said, that we are not able

to look inside ourselves as a city, as a council, as government leaders that have options to not criminalize this already very vulnerable community, vulnerable even before COVID-19. And I would just urge you to please not place the burden on El Centro to find a safe living find a safe place for people to live. You have to invest in the public resources, you know, especially with COVID-19 and with all the different money, federal money that's coming in

with this. And we should be working with community organizations like El Centro and not trying to, you know, force them into criminalizing poverty, which, you know, they are standing up for people, the most vulnerable communities. So please appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Zoom ID Esperanza de Rosas, if you would please select the microphone icon or the unmute feature on your Zoom device.

si hola voy a hablarlo en español está bien si está bien aunque buenas tardes a todos

no le oigo

esperanza de rosas

to make sure that we are in the street. And they are the only people that are worried about the people that deserteded, because the ordinance did not cover to all. And there are people living in hotels, people with complete families living in cars. So, I ask to the Mr. Becerra to connect with the community. I invite you to hear from each other. They are one of them, each one of them is abandoned, who is met in drugs, a family that was unedited, or people that were in large groups. Why do they do it? Because they are violent, those who are drugged. So they stay there and they don't get out of their trauma.

The solution is to look at them as something that is for you. When the solution is to seek help mental, help of resources, hay muchos lotes en Santana que pueden hacer mini houses para ellos una casita digna para ellos como algo feo pónganse a pensar que ustedes tienen familia, hijos, padres nietos, sobrinos cada uno de ellos tiene una historia y me imagino que usted como padre de familia tiene una familia se ha puesto a pensar si usted estuviera en el lugar de ellos que a usted lo atacaran

Why not put them in the shoes of them? It's not fair to do this when we work voluntarily, because we don't pay them, we're trying to help in the best way. There are resources, use them in the best way, for health mental. There are many hurt, they come from the families of workers, of domestic violence, of veterans of trauma, of war, that are going to face the war and give the face to all of us. They are in the street because they didn't have to overcome it. and now we see some of us rechazzed. No. Toquense the heart of compassion. They need dignity, dignity, peace.

Why are they looking for a place and they don't have it? Everyone looks like it's ugly, but nobody's going to say, what happened? Tell me your story. I invite you to go to the streets and see where they are. And listen to each other and listen to each other.

Empathicen. toquense el corazón son padres son tíos son abuelos tienen sobrinos no nos dan con algo algo yo todas esas personas tuvieron un problema que no pudieron superar y estamos para rechazarlos o para ayudarlos hay muchos lotes hay dinero hagan unas casas es la solución busquen que las people seek help mental.

Because they are alone. They feel like they are in the garbage. They feel like they are not able to protect us. So, what is the city? To protect their community? Or to attack? What is the police? To protect us?

They are in 10 seconds.

Yes. That is what I want to say. I hope there is a solution. Because the solution is to close the cultural center or attack us into culture no is no one

no no

no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no

good afternoon to all um

these are only people who have been evicted these are people who have live who are living in hotels there are entire families that are living in in cars uh like uh councilmember becerra I want you to listen. These are people who have been abandoned and they're into drugs. And why is that? Because they have been raped by drug dealers. They need mental health. They need mental health services and they need housing. There are many lots, empty lots in Santa Ana, and you can build mini houses there. These people need dignified housing for them. You have families.

Imagine your children, your grandchildren, your nieces, your nephews being in this situation. We need to find out what their story is. You are parents, your uncles, your grandparents. What if your family members were going through this? These people are being attacked. And put yourself in their in their shoes. We need to we need to try to help them.

You put yourself in their shoes and to try to help them. They need mental health services. and they're going through domestic violence, they're veterans, they're feeling like rejects. They're not rejects, they're human beings. They deserve dignity, they deserve peace. And we need to ask them what happened. Tell us your story. We need to empathize with them. You as parents and grandparents, we need to help them. There's lots where you can put housing and provide mental health services and the city is here not to attack them, but to protect them. The solution is not to close the center cultural. This is happening in all cities.

Thank you.

Zoom ID Pat Lennahan, if you would please select the microphone icon.

Did you want to provide a comment on a closed session item?

okay mayor it looks like that was the last one um the last public comment for closed session

thank you madam city clerk by the way is there anything that we can do with the sound i'm not sure if it was just me but i just heard a lot of um distortion i'm trying oh i'm sorry i'm sorry

Mayor, it looks like we do have one person who was able to unmute themselves. Pat, did you want to provide a public comment? Pat Yes, I did. Okay, for a closed session, correct?

Yes.

Okay, thank you. You have three minutes.

Okay. Today, a neighbor and I drove by El Centro Cultural again, and I was really dismayed, is a mild way of putting it to see that it has grown the area excuse me represents a public health issue it's a hazard i would suspect that there are used needles and drug paraphernalia there what i saw today were primarily young men in the 20s to 40s i didn't talk with anyone but i

suspect that what they're dealing with is either drug or mental health or probably both issues. I am a retired professor from UCI in the School of Medicine. I have spent much of my career working with mental health and substance abuse issues. To let this go without any action on the part of the city is it represent is is ridiculous something needs to be done as the as miss esperanza said there may be people who are victims of domestic violence i was part of the santa anna family violence emergency response team and i saw women who chose to live in the park because they had a

pet we now have shelters that will take animals um i also have worked with veterans and i know that many people who are veterans coming back have PTSD. What are we doing? There are services available for veterans. What kind of outreach is the city making? Why does not, why doesn't the city form a committee, a task force, something to address this problem? This is affecting the whole quality of life of the city of Santa Ana. If it's not here, it will be somewhere else.

I have seen the issues in Angels Park, that seems to be better, but homeless, the homeless issue must be addressed. And I compliment Councilman Becerra for citing some of the issues. Why, why, why does the city just ignore this? Why isn't the city doing something? I am totally disappointed in the city and not taking action to protect all of the citizens. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mayor, it looks like we do have two more who have raised their hand virtually. So let me see if they were not able to do it earlier or if they were having connection issues. We are having some technical difficulties. And so I wanted to make sure that they are able to connect.

Zoom ID Felicity, if you would please unmute your call. Did you want to provide a comment on closed session item?

Yes, please. I've been listening to some of the comments and I do agree that something should be done, but I certainly don't agree in the criminalization of people who are there because of the faults of the system and of the city and of the county, because of the realities of housing, of the results of COVID, the lack of jobs, the lack of opportunities. That's why people find themselves unhoused and often through no fault of their own.

And the designation of all of them as that they must be drug addicts or have mental health issues is just as criminal as the actions of the county, or rather the lack of action of the county and the city. There are programs like Roomkey. There are reimbursements from the state that can be used to provide supportive housing for people. I mean, this is just kind of a human response to a very human issue. and trying to criminalize and pit one marginalized community, the unhoused, against another

marginalized community, people who live in low-income neighborhoods, is just avoiding the real culprit in all this, which is the situation that's put all these people in this situation in the first place. And so that's why I think that instead of finding El Centro, who seems to be the only humanitarian response that this city has shown, and it's not even a city response, it's a

not-for-profit organization that has come to the rescue of these people, as well as other organizations that have been providing food and other means of support, that the city should take some responsibility, not pass the blame to the county or the county pass the blame to the city, but work together to find the solution to find the people who are there some decent housing to give them if they need it any kind of job training and other services that they might need and then you have more contributing members of the of of the community I mean I think that's what we all want

the community to be healthy and gainfully employed and and living lives that feel worthwhile and And that's why I'm hoping that instead of criminalizing the people who are out there or the central cultural who's the only one who seems to be doing anything, they would look to find long lasting solutions that would benefit the entire community. So thank you.

Thank you. And last caller, Eileen, if you would please select the microphone icon.

See, I get into partner will see see hi. Hola, mi nombre es Aileen y soy voluntaria del centro y yo creo que las personas que están utilizando el estacionamiento del centro y así como vemos personas afuera viviendo en la calle, pues es uno de los resultados de que la ciudad no está distribuyendo muy bien los fondos monetarios. and perhaps they are giving more priority to other things instead of being worried about opening more albergues.

We know that during the pandemic they have been throwing buildings and they have been selling buildings. Why are these buildings not used to be albergues? We know that they have been receiving more money aid in the city, but instead they are not giving priority to that they are going to be more shelters and just like they want to charge this guilt to the center. and it is not fair because it is mostly the responsibility of the center because, as I said,

it is not spending money in what should be. It is important to open more centers. We also know that the city has several buildings and could be a good option to use these buildings to move this camp to those places with the same services that can be used in public baths and all the resources for these people. And also, it is not only a right to them, but to all of us and our families

that there is more investment in mental health and more rehabilitation programs. And we want to see, as the center has formed a plan for these people, because we really believe that what human is that there is a humanitarian place for these people, We also want to ask that the city also takes responsibility and that they have a plan of how they will start to re-ubicar these people,

whether using more buildings, which they open as albergues, or let them use some of the areas that are empty, I think that we can continue to get more resources to have a better quality of life. Because if they are bad, we will all be bad. And I think that it's the responsibility of the city and we should do something. We don't need to, we should take responsibility. Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Eileen. I'm a volunteer at El Centro, and people have been using the parking at El Centro. And we who live in the streets, it's because the city has not distributed the monies the way they should. They are probably giving priority to other things and not to the shelters that they should. During the pandemic, we've seen that they've been knocking down buildings. there they have been selling buildings why don't they turn these buildings into into shelters the city i think has received a lot of money but they're not given priority to building more

shelters and they blame el centro for this it's not fair and this you should use this money for something that's going to benefit these people the city has lots of empty lots and we can use them to to move this the camps to these places with public restrooms and the resources that they need. Not only just this to serve our families, but to serve all our families. We need to invest in

mental health and rehabilitation programs. And just like the central has an exit plan to help these families in a humane way. The city needs to have a plan to help these families as well to use these open buildings to help the people with better quality of life. And we're not just asking, we're demanding that the city does something.

Thank you. Okay, Mayor, that was all the callers we had for closed session items.

Great, thank you, Madam Clerk. and before we recess into closed session i just wanted to ask the city manager a couple questions if she can just for clarity and for the record um madam city manager have there been you know police or people criminalizing anybody over at el centro

You are muted right now. I'm sorry, not you, Mayor.

I think the city manager is on mute still. Yes. You are correct, sir. We have not. In fact, we posted two resource fairs. We've done COVID vaccinations. We've done COVID testing. We've provided shelter for those that were interested in shelter. And we've helped 17 individuals from El Centro. We provide porta potty. We provided a washing station. And we provided an extra dumpster. And El Centro, we were working cooperatively with them. We had a settlement agreement. And they had 45 days to also offer services. And one of the terms of the settlement agreement was they were not to allow the encampment to grow.

um yes the council has changed over time so i believe it's a new attorney that they have representing them currently so they weren't coerced into entering any settlement agreement with the city um no i spent numerous times meeting over zoom with ben basquez and maria from el centro and we worked out the terms and they voluntarily entered into the agreement. So this is an agreement that they made that nobody forced them into entering? Correct. Great. And from what I recall, I think you had mentioned to me that there's been no

citations, detentions, arrests of any unhoused people since I believe last Thursday is what I I recall you mentioned it, correct? That is correct.

Okay. You know, and just a couple of other things. Has the city received any money to address specifically the unsheltered or the homeless?

I believe the speakers are referring to the rescue plan money, which the city has not received a dollar yet. Got it. And do you know of any other city in the county that's done more construction of new and rehabilitated affordable housing? No, we are one of only I think 16 jurisdictions out of over 500 that have met their regional housing needs. Got it. And do we do you know of any other city in the county that has more nonprofits that we partner with, provide support, resources and services to the unshelter.

you know i'm not aware of all the non-profits that other cities work with but i will say that we we spend an estimated 25 million a year on addressing homeless and we have a very robust non-profit network okay and we have a civilian task force that deals with the unsheltered and the unhoused we do we our outreach services are performed by organization called city net and most of their outreach work is done without police officers. And there's probably no other city that's done more to provide shelter bed places than placement for the unhoused.

We have a permanent shelter that's under construction.

We are hosting a 450 bed site over at Yale Street, is that correct?

Yes, but it's not operating at a full 450 right now. Understood. But that is the legal capacity without COVID restrictions, correct? Correct. And we have other bed space for the unsheltered, including Wise Place for women. We have other spaces over at the Salvation Army site as well. So Salvation Army site was a cold weather shelter, so it has been shut down. But the government provides a lot of shelters, but in addition to the government, there are a large number of nonprofits that do provide different shelter and housing options.

So right now we have available to us 100 beds, which are currently only at about 50% capacity. Okay, so my point is, I guess, city manager, I didn't want you to get as technical on it. The point is that we do quite a bit to make sure that we not only have placement options for our unsheltered, but nobody is trying to criminalize it. We're trying to match people up with resources and the right placement space. Does that, is that correct? Yes, sir. And long before I even came here, Santa Ana, out of all the cities in the county, has been the one that has carried the heaviest burden.

And you guys have been doing it quite well for a number of years. And these litigation matters that are on the closed session agenda, are they to criminalize the unsheltered or the homeless? Or are we seeking either reimbursement or responsibility from the county that's the best agency that's supposed to be providing these social services to the unhoused?

It is to fight for services for those that are in our city. So the ones regarding the county, it's a complaint against the county to do more for the homeless that are on the streets in Santa Ana. El Centro is to discuss the settlement agreement, which we entered into with El Centro for a 45-day period.

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but I don't think the city is adverse to that. If anything, I think that people are looking for a bad actor here. I don't think that's the case. I think all of us are trying to find solutions collaboratively and these matters that are before us, the majority of them are looking to work with the county or trying to find a way that we can work with the county so we can have that agency provide us the support that we need because we are spending $25 million dollars out of our general fund that should be rightfully spent on families, children, resources, and many other government functions that we have a responsibility to address.

So I just wanted to clarify some of those points. I didn't want them to go sort of, you know, unmet or unanswered. So why don't we go ahead now, recess into closed session for about four or five minutes, and then we're going to come back out into open session. But with that, We're going to go ahead and recess that in a closed session.

Okay. Thank you. One moment, please.

So you may begin.

Great. Thank you, Madam Clerk. And let me go ahead and call this regular meeting to order. And let me begin by apologizing because we, it appears we are having some technical difficulties that are going to prevent us from being able to have this meeting flow as smoothly as we'd like. I understand that the internet connection to City Hall has been compromised or maybe is down in some places. So it makes our connections a little bit more difficult and challenging. So please bear with us as we go through this meeting. This is the regular meeting of the Santa Ana City Council for May 4th, 2021.

Let me go ahead and call this regular open session to order and begin with some housekeeping language, which will reference exactly what we're experiencing right now. in accordance with the California governor's orders, executive order N- regarding Brown Act and guidance from the California Department of Public Health on gatherings. This meeting is taking place entirely now by teleconference via Zoom, and the council chambers are closed to the public. So as was mentioned by the Madam Clerk, we are having some difficulty for the access of the meeting to the public.

please bear with us as we correct these technical difficulties it will disrupt the flow of meeting just for forewarning for everybody but we have our technical staff working on trying to make those corrections and hopefully they're made as we're going through the meeting and hopefully we can go ahead and salvage as much of it as we can so let me go ahead and send it back to the clerk so she can

call roll madam clerk thank you and mayor i did want to announce that it looks like youtube is up and working again now so we're slowly getting our connections account a council member becerra here council member hernandez

council member lopez yes here council member mendoza

okay councilmember fan

mayor pro tem peñalosa here and mayor sarmiento here and go ahead madam clerk i think you also have some some additional housekeeping to take care of yes thank you the public was not able to

join us as early as we normally would at 4 30 p.m as i think the speaker queue opened up at 5 p.m in accordance with the council procedures calls will not be accepted after the public comment session has begun speakers who were not in the queue who are not in the queue by 6 p.m will not be permitted to speak to request to speak please dial star 9 from your phone or click the button label raise hand from zoom at this time you will be asked to announce your name and ward or neighborhood you reside in within the city of santa anna for the record thank you mayor thank

you madam clerk let me go ahead and begin our meeting with the pledge of allegiance and you all please join me in repeating i pledge of allegiance to the flag

one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all

thank you everybody so uh we're now to the invocation section of our portion of our meeting and i wanted to introduce a local talent who's going to be sharing a moment of reflection with poetry and he is a local product his name is gustavo hernandez and he comes to us by way of libro mobile that has a mobile library in the downtown and features a lot of talent uh literary people and artists that uh you know go and and share their uh share their wisdom and hopefully mr hernandez can share some wisdom with us tonight i hope he's able to connect

Madam Clerk, I know it's been kind of difficult to get everybody on, but to the extent that he's with us, we'll go ahead and give him an opportunity to share his thoughts and his poetry.

Thank you, Mayor. Can everyone hear me? Yes, yes, sir. Okay, thank you. My name is Gustavo Hernandez.

our mayor and the city council for allowing me to share in this moment of reflection with you. I also did want to thank very quickly Sarah Rafael Garcia and Libromobile. They are a wonderful institution who are uplifting the voices of our community, and I would like all of us as a community to continue to support them. I will be reading two short poems from my poetry collection entitled Flower Grand First.

The first poem I'm reading is called Carmen. It is for my sister and it is about labor, education, and immigration and takes place in the Casa Bonita neighborhood of Sumbana where I grew up. Carmen.

nights she and I met in the artificial glow of our television. Belts of stars soaked into the gold leg scrolls of the

syllables of my name maneuvering through the blades of lean foreign words. There was one night in July where a mute girl in the novela willed the words back to her mouth to tell Arturo Beniche that his fiance had been a terrible villain. I told you she'd get her voice back. Carmen's tone was tempered flat through repetition, bottles and bottles and plastic cereal containers evenly spaced on a conveyor belt. She motioned for me to join her at the open front door. From the street, she was fading red lipstick. I was an electric blue garage sale T-shirt. The moon played with the overgrown ficus.

June bugs spun around a porch light. But we looked past them and dreamt a far off language. And this last poem is called Santana First Street. It is for my father. And it's about how the legacy of a departed loved one changes a city forever, but also strengthens the connection we have to it.

Santana First Street. you. Because I think you must miss the dark morning train whistle through our almost empty streets above our houses its intonation becomes smoother maybe even a sugar. Let me not reduce it to its cargo. Let me not reduce it to box. Still glowing signs of the bakeries and the swap malls of the buildings that once fed us and once clothed us and maybe once let us dance inside

them thank you very much everyone thank you and listen i know those poems are very personal i can tell you they're very moving we appreciate you sharing those with us and you know you make us proud to know that we have a lot of indigenous local talent here in santana that we can all you know celebrate and sarah and her work at the libra mobile is um is certainly a space that we want to protect we want to celebrate we want to uplift so thank you for doing your you know such a huge part

on your end so thank you for joining us and uh and and setting a a good positive tone for all of as we venture into tonight's agenda. Thank you so much, Mayor. Thank you, sir. Thank you, everybody. And let's move along to the ceremonial presentation.

I'll go ahead and kick it off with a certificate of recognition to Juan Tarifa, a Bolan X financial group in recognition of their 30 year anniversary and their contributions to the community. You know, I know the Tarifa family a little bit. I haven't had the pleasure of knowing some of the individuals that work at Bolmex, but let me tell you a little bit about them. Bolmex Financial Group, excuse me, was founded in 1992 by Juan Jose Tarifa and a former partner, Miguel Jimenez. Miguel retired and sold his shares to Juan in 2005, and Juan has been a sole owner ever since.

Bolmex's responsibilities have been to prepare taxes, assist and conduct audits and reviews of personal and corporate businesses. Bolmex works in the field of business accounting and building for the past 29 years. Bolmex has worked with many small companies, startups, and notable brands in our city such as Baja Fish Restaurant, Marisco Sector, and just those are just to name a few and i know the tarifa family because juan and his family are originally from bolivia he studied economics and business management and we want to congratulate juan and bolamex and the

financial group there for 30 years of outstanding service and help to our community we are very very proud of the work that they do and the services that they provide to all our residents and this is a way to celebrate you know so many other businesses that um you know like bolamex that have that struggled through this really difficult year in the past, but yet have continued to provide services to our residents that have been vital. And it just shows the diversity of the businesses and the programs that people come from. Bolivia have been so far, and me knowing a little bit of the community,

we don't know each other personally as much, but to the extent that we have a lot of people that contribute to our economy, that come from very, very different backgrounds, and we all are able to help one another and create a community here in santana that's really what we're all about and that's what we're celebrating so thank you juan congratulations i'm not sure if you're uh online but you will get your certificate of recognition that is uh signed and autographed by every member of the city council here so congratulations thank you for providing a vital

service to our community uh let me go ahead and turn it over to mayor pro tem who's going to be recognizing uh may 9th through may 15th as national police week so uh go ahead

David PenalozaItem 2

i mean though um you know it's my honor to present this proclamation to the sanana police department in honor of national police week which in 1962 president kennedy proclaimed may 15th as national peace officers memorial day and the calendar week in which may 15 falls as National Police Week. By a joint resolution of Congress in 1962, National Police Week pays special recognition to those law enforcement officers who have lost their lives in the line of duty for safety and protection of others. In the state of California, we have had 17 police officer line of duty deaths

David PenalozaItem 2

in calendar year 2020 and 362 nationwide. Today, we recognize the men and women of the Santa Ana Police Department for providing our community with internal freedom from fear of violence and that's it Mr Mayor.

Thank you for that proclamation Mayor Pro Tem let me go ahead and now turn it over to Council Member Lopez recognizing the month of May as Drowning Prevention Awareness Month.

Jessie LopezItem 3

Thank you Mayor Sarmiento so the Orange County Fire Authority is launching its Drowning Prevention

Jessie LopezItem 3

and drowning is the leading cause of death in kids under five in Orange County. The three children die every day as a result of drowning and our goal is to help families become more aware of prevention measures so we can stop losing lives to drowning. Fatal and non-fatal drowning is a silent event occurring in as little as only two inches of water including swimming pools, falls, lakes or the ocean. So this year OCFA's water safety campaign theme is always watch your child around water and never swim alone which gives in-depth information

Jessie LopezItem 3

on what steps our residents can take to prevent drowning. Today we take this opportunity to increase public awareness about drowning prevention through a diverse community outreach campaign. We encourage all families, parents, residents, schools, recreational facilities, businesses, and homeowner associations to become partners and preparedness by increasing their knowledge of proper safety measures and drowning prevention. And this summer, I am committed to being a water watcher. Many thanks to Chief Henry.

Jessie LopezItem 3

And for more resources, please touch base with my office or contact OCFA directly. Thank you.

Thank you, council member Lopez. Moving along to the next item, which is the COVID-19 update to the community. I'll go ahead and turn it over to the city manager, Madam city manager.

Madam clerk, do we know if we have a city manager on?

Yes, sir. Thank you. So tonight I have a presentation for you. I will go ahead and load it up.

Give me just one second here.

Okay. So good evening mayor and Council members for tonight's COVID-19 update I want to talk a little bit about the recovery dollars that were expected. Some information on new guidance from the CDC and then talk about all of our vaccination efforts in our city. So starting with the recovery dollars we are anticipating the receipt of about 142.9 million from the Federal American Rescue Plan Act. and this is intended to help our community recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. With this funding, we plan to launch Revive Santa Ana, a comprehensive pandemic recovery

initiative that will also allow us to imagine how we provide services. Staff is recommending five focus areas. This has been shared with council. You'll briefly hear about it as well within the budget workshop, but much more details will be provided at the next meeting this month. because we do anticipate that we will receive the spending guidelines on those dollars by your second meeting in May. But we are focusing our resources and spending areas that we recommend that include recovery from COVID-19, more financial assistance and targeted programs, public health and safety, critical infrastructure.

We are soliciting a lot of input on how these dollars should be spent. and we need your help in making the decision-making process on how to spend them. So I certainly encourage all the Santa Ana residents to take our Revive Santa Ana survey. The survey is accessible online and on paper and it's available in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese. To take the survey online, you visit our website backslash Revive Santa Ana and to fill out a paper survey, you can pick one up at the city hall on the first floor you can also pick up a survey at both of our library locations

we are having an additional community meeting to give opportunity to connect with city staff about revive santa anna it's a town hall meeting it's one week from today on tuesday may 11th at 6 p.m and our staff will be available to answer your questions about revive santa anna and the residents will also have space to share their ideas on how we should reimagine our local government the meeting will take place on zoom and you can call in and the numbers are on the screen as long and the meeting id and we will also bring out additional information on that

next just to talk about since we do have a lot of people good news vaccinated within our community the CDC has issued some new guidance for those that are fully vaccinated. So in general, you are considered fully vaccinated if it's been two weeks since your second dose, if you receive the Pfizer or the Moderna, and two weeks after the single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. If you don't meet these requirements, you're not considered fully vaccinated, so you should be taking all precautions necessary until you have reached those milestones.

individuals who have been fully vaccinated should always exercise good judgment and take necessary precautions to protect themselves however fully vaccinated individuals on the recommendation of the cdc they are permitted to gather indoors with fully vaccinated people without wearing a mask or staying six feet apart they're able to gather indoors with unvaccinated people from one other household without mask or staying six feet apart and they can gather and first without wearing a mask except in crowded settings and venues and they can travel domestically without needing to get tested or doing any

self-quarantine what you should still keep doing is wear a face mask if you're indoor in a public setting if you're gathering with people that are unvaccinated from more than one and you should avoid indoor large gatherings and always wear a mask on planes buses trains and other public transportation and always watch out for coven 19 symptoms and then each of the workplaces as we return to normalcy will have guidelines that you should be aware of and be sure to follow those in your in your workplace.

So vaccines in Santa Ana. We are very excited with the progress that the city has made since January 2021. The number of vaccination sites in Santa Ana has grown to 38 different locations. Over 30 of those locations are private businesses and pharmacies. The other sites are public facilities that have temporarily been transformed into community vaccination clinics, including our very own Southwest Senior Center and our train station. Of these, the city has collaborated on seven first-dose vaccine clinics and seven second-dose vaccine clinics.

Through our collaboration with other organizations, we have made big strides in helping get the Santa Ana community vaccinated. At the 14 vaccine clinics, which the city of Santa Ana collaborated, we have vaccinated approximately 75,000 people. In total, through all of the locations, there are 135,437 Santa Ana residents are now vaccinated. That does represent 54.8% of the eligible population and 42% of our overall population. I know I spoke the last time about the vaccine hot light that we're running up in the city manager's office.

And it has been very busy. We've replied to 282 emails, responded to text messages from 846. And we have sent out over 32,000 targeted text messages to our hardest hit zip codes and to our seniors 65 and plus.

Johnson and Johnson, you probably have heard the vaccine has been reinstated and the CDC and FDA have recommended that it can continue as well as the other two, which are very popular, the Pfizer and the Moderna. We certainly are not a medical provider, so we do encourage anybody that is getting the vaccine to talk and consult with their medical provider. The vaccines are available for all people that are over 16. So anyone in the U.S. who's age 16 or older is eligible to get the vaccine. And the Pfizer one is for 16 and older with Moderna reserved for 18 and older.

And you've probably heard on the news within a short period of time, and possibly within the next week, there will be an authorization for a vaccine for those individuals that are age 12 to 15. Of course, parental consent is required for anybody that is under 18 and they need to be accompanied by a parent. And once again, just to encourage the other part of the population that is not vaccinated to call and make appointment. We are still running the appointment line that is special to our Santa Ana residents. we have received a lot of calls from individuals from different cities but it is targeted for Santa

Ana residents and on the screen you'll see the phone number there's a text number and also an email and we are manning all of these connections Monday through Friday from 8 to 5. And that concludes my presentation certainly can answer any questions that you may have

Thank you Madam City Manager and if we could minimize the screen great. So I see if there's anybody from the Council and I'll bring it back to the Council if there's any questions or comments on the presentation. Council members any anything you'd like to add or or ask about.

David PenalozaItem 4

All right. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you Mayor Sarmiento. So I just wanted to throw it out there, Madam City Manager, that if we move forward with this town hall meeting to consider an option for in-person. I know CDC guidelines say that we could have small gatherings, maybe outdoors.

David PenalozaItem 4

So we should make every option for our community to have input available, whether it's Zoom, phone, and in-person. So whatever option we could consider and look at to see if that's possible, I'd really appreciate it. And the community would as well.

Thank you Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you Mayor Pro Tem. Council Member Lopez, I see your hand raised. Oh go ahead. Go ahead Mayor Pro Tem.

David PenalozaItem 4

Mr. Mayor, Madam City Manager, is there any thought of having in-person townhouse for this?

At the time, the one that is planned is by Zoom, which would allow comments, but not in person. So I will strategize with our team and see if there's a way that we could potentially hold one, like you mentioned, maybe at an outdoor venue and maybe do a second one.

David PenalozaItem 4

Perfect. Yeah. I mean, our stadium would be a great place. You know, we could have many opportunities and possibilities. So thank you for that.

Great. Thanks for that comment.

Jessie LopezItem 4

um council member Lopez um quick question city managers

Jessie LopezItem 4

needed are essentially allowed to congregate

under certain guidelines but they still are saying avoiding large indoor galleries so there's um I don't need to put the screen back up, but if you are vaccinated, you are able to meet indoors with other vaccinated people without masks and without distancing. You are able to meet indoors with unvaccinated people without masks, provided that it's only individuals from one other household. But it still is important to wear a face mask if you're indoor public settings, and it still is recommending that you avoid indoor large gaps did that answer your your question council member

Jessie LopezItem 4

yeah and i have a follow-up so would the city be checking to make sure that people that are in these

closed spaces are vaccinated um i it would be difficult we certainly would within

libraries at our city hall if your question is in regards to private businesses or commercial businesses we have still on the books right now a mask order that is in effect in the city of Santa Ana so and we do remind people when we see them it's not something that we we police or cite for but we still have that as a citywide emergency order okay so another last question I think

Jessie LopezItem 4

you know the CDC came out and said hey if you're vaccinated fully vaccinated you don't have to wear a face mask what does that mean if we actually have an order in the city of Sanana saying that

you do excellent point council member I think it's time for us to take a look at all of the outstanding orders and see which ones where it's time to rescind those orders thank you city manager

Thank you council member and I believe council member Mendoza's hands raised.

Thank you mayor Sargento my question is in regards to the authorization for 16 year olds and above and I'm wondering whether

they should in a partnership with the Santa Ana Unified School District so that we can get out to the schools and start vaccinating the students and perhaps even capture the parents at the school sites so that we can get more of our Santa Ana residents vaccinated promptly.

We certainly can reach out to them. We have been in a routine conversation. I have been with the superintendent and we certainly cross share information on all vaccinations. So for instance the superintendent at san an unified school district would put out the flyers when we were hosting one so we would cross share but we can explore additional opportunities for collaboration

thank you appreciate it thank you council member and seeing no other hands raised um just a couple of things from my end so i just wanted to thank staff and specifically um daisy pettis with the city manager's office this past saturday we had a vaccine clinic at the second baptist church and that was in conjunction with the governor's office the governor's staff and it was successful there were a lot of people unfortunately there weren't the you know the 1 000 that we expected just because we're at that place i think that we all knew we'd get to at some point where

there is more supply than there is demand and we should be you know celebrating we should be very happy that we have uh you know over 50 of those that are eligible vaccinated in santa because there was a time when you know it was just difficult to acquire um the vaccine so there has been a very very robust effort by the staff and city council to make sure that that was corrected and it has been but now we're at that point where we still need to vaccinate more people we're at that sticky point where i think we've gotten everybody who wanted to be vaccinated

now it's a matter of talking to those people who may have some reluctance or some hesitancy because of information that's been misrepresented to them or they've been misled with so one of the things i was going to mention um you know madam city manager is just that we uh think about you know an education effort and campaign and we did this when the numbers were really really high

and unified school district and maybe we can collaborate with the other school districts that that we uh have in our area as well garden grow and others just to make sure that as we told people to protect themselves and started the Protect and Protege Santana campaign, we can do something around the vaccine hesitancy because we know that that is going to be a really difficult challenge to overcome because there's fear. But more importantly, there's just misinformation out there. So to the extent that we start pivoting to that because I think that there is inventory

now, there is plenty of supply, we just need to now connect people and engage people to the right providers. and as you said it looks like we have close to 40 sites that are now delivering vaccines so there is certainly uh there is certainly uh the the vaccine in the community we just need to make sure that we help people access those to the extent possible i'll take that silence as a yes so

i didn't think you wanted an answer but absolutely i think that's where our efforts need to shift now is educating individuals

nations great and as and you know just finally as we open let's just open up you know carefully i don't think you know uh you know everything all restrictions are gone you know everything is back to normal um we'd see some countries and some states that are just doing very very poorly um and it is it's it's stunning to see that as we are you know improving work you know california is you know got the lowest positivity rate in the country but we see other countries like India and Brazil and others that are just you know struggling quite a bit and and as I said other

states in the country so um did you have something further uh Mayor Pro Tem yeah Mayor Samiento

David PenalozaItem 4

thank you I I wanted to add that maybe if we could also look into ways where we could partner with other community organizations like the ones you mentioned but I keep thinking of the complete count committee that we had for the census where we had multiple non-profits and and different um places of worship that we were working with i know that that you know as uh as uh practicing catholic i've heard from numerous members of the catholic community and and my own relatives are getting vaccinated because of things that they're hearing from from the catholic

David PenalozaItem 4

church um so i know that that's something that we got to address as a community and and work and partner with uh different churches in our community to you know these are people that that our residents trust and if they're just like we did with the census if they're hearing it from uh their places of worship you know we could we could get more of our of our residents educated and vaccinated by going that route. Even, even, you know, I think back of not just the census outreach that we were doing, but the the cares program where we were going into our neighborhoods.

David PenalozaItem 4

I mean, we gotta, we gotta start reducing the, the mass size vaccination sites in the city and maybe just start hitting those, those little neighborhoods and door to door, just like we did with the cares program um i think it is it's gonna it's gonna be helpful uh because like you said the demand is higher than than our supply i mean lower than our supply and i keep hearing of vaccinations going to waste um at many of these vaccination sites so that all those are good points thank you

on to the next section of our meeting. I won't call on the city attorney because there isn't anything to report at a closed session because we didn't have a chance to really tackle anything. That's reportable. We're gonna be recessing back into closed session to tackle the items that we weren't able to get to, which is pretty much the majority of those. I don't think there were any abstentions with the exception of mine. and I'll be abstaining on item 1A and I gave the reason early in the meeting before closed session began. So I'll go ahead and move along to the public comment portion of our meeting.

And I'll just tell everybody that this is a time and place for the meeting, time and place for the portion of the meeting of the city council to receive comments from the public on agendized and non-agendized items pursuant to the Brown Act. The city council may not enter into discussion at this time. The comment line now is closed. you will have three minutes to speak and that manner if there's anybody wishing to address the council.

Thank you. And before I do start unmuting the callers that we do have on the speaker queue, we did receive written communication to non Santa Ana residents who spoke on agenda comments requesting to pass

information on community choice aggregation code of conduct. Item 21, the Assembly Bill 937. There were nine Santa Ana residents or organizations in support of the resolution. 23 non-Santa Ana residents and organizations also in support. Item 24, Senate Bill 2, support of the resolution. We received one residency not disclosed. item 26 project room key alternative housing one santa anna resident and support and in item 27 to santa anna resident supported resuming in-person meetings and with that um

caller with the last three numbers 209 if you would please select the microphone icon or the unmute feature on your device or select star six to unmute your call.

Caller with the last three numbers 209, please select the microphone icon on your device

or star six to unmute your call.

Caller with the last three numbers 209. If you would please select star six or unmute or the microphone icon on your device.

Unmute your call.

Caller with the last three numbers 00.

David PenalozaItem 4

zero um point point of order mayor sabmiento um if i can this is mayor pro tempeñalosa go ahead i just i just got a message from a couple residents that and i noticed myself that the youtube uh feed is is way behind i'm talking a minute or more uh in lag time between the zoom and the youtube so madame clerk not sure if we want to try to refresh or or give the callers more than a minute to connect because I'm watching on YouTube now as I am on Zoom and there's a big

lag time. Yes, and I am leaving it so that they can unmute themselves if they are able to come back. So that should not be an issue at all.

Caller with the last three numbers 073, if you would please select the unmute feature on your device or microphone.

Hello?

Hi, thank you.

I did my phones on mute, but I'm muted out in the system. All right. Hi, this is Victor Payan, the director of Media Arts Spana Anna. And I just wanted to reach out to you all to let you know that our OCD del Nino is in full effect virtually this year. It's an arts OC and Media Arts Spana Anna partner to present it. And we've got over 40 videos from groups throughout Santa Ana and Orange County. And we've got performances and youth arts workshops, some headliners, which I really hope that you guys will check out.

The Lucky Band, Muna Luna, Rio Eas, Twinkle Time are kind of stars in the kindy music sphere. I wanted to take a time to read some of the people from Santa Ana that are participating in the event because we do make a point.

Wide visibility and now is an international visibility. As we're promoting the event throughout the state and throughout the country, which you can see online at www.octsdelnino.org. So Santa Ana groups in this year's festival.

who is now living in the Bay Area teaching dance at I believe the Mission Cultural Center a really great organization up there so we're going to be online until July 31st so we strongly encourage you to let your you know residents and people in your districts your wards know it's a free resource we have about you know dozen videos in Spanish great for the family for all ages and being our first virtual festival very excited we were at the OC Fair for two years so then we were you know shut down for COVID but we were able to come back as a virtual event very

proud very excited about it very excited about the videos that the Santa Ana artists provided so ocd del nino org I do urge you to check it out and spread the word and we're also showing in conjunction with the consulate animated film called El Americano the movie that has the voices of Edward James Olmos, Cheech Marin, Rico Rodriguez, Adel Morrones, Fluffy, Gabriel Iglesias and we're looking forward to our OC Film Festival the OC Film Fiesta this October. This October virtual OC Film Fiesta. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

thank you good evening madam clerk uh mayor and city council um i do have comments this evening if uh i think my three minutes start i suppose that of course

please announce your name for the record and if you are a Santa Ana resident certainly my name is

Daniel Chanel I am a Santa Ana resident of Ward 3. my comments tonight concerns Santiago Creek which my home backs up to in McFishire Park neighborhood there's been an uptick in I think criminal activity as well as as well as transients coming through the creek and entering into people's properties. I myself had an individual enter my home over the weekend. Fortunately, we were not home at the time, but we found him there when we were returned to the house. I've spoken with many of my neighbors, and they've had similar experiences with people either attempting to get into their cars, successfully getting into their cars,

jumping their fences, knocking on doors. And in fact, just this morning at 3 a.m., one of my neighbors around the corner from me had someone in nothing but a backrobe attempt to get into their side of their property my comments tonight are to request the city council in conjunction with city staff and the police look into this matter and i believe they can do so in one of three ways

our street is west park lane and john cool avenue There are no street lights here and I believe this involves people that are opportunistic either attempting to find a place to sleep or easy property to try to take. Number two, the creek itself, as we all know, it's been slated for a bike trail, but no such trail exists. it's heavily overgrown with vegetation and there's again inadequate lighting and unmonitored pedestrian access so I think that's something that the council should look into I would request to try to keep keep that area safe keep the

vegetation down and remove the ability of people to make campments or traverse that area and jump fences into people's backyards and then third something that I heard quite a bit this evening in relation to a closed session item adequate services for the homeless I do think that a number of the people that are engaging in these acts are unfortunate homeless residents of the city and I would encourage the council and the city to take appropriate steps to try to position where they feel that they're able to go into people's homes or cars thank you those are my comments thank you

zoom id tim johnson if you would please select thank you you successfully unmuted yourself

hey good evening council um i wanted to chat on item number 26 i previously submitted a written comment so i was the one that the park was referring to but i figured to make a a public comment also so there's no arguing that this council knows that Santa Ana has one disproportionate impact from the homeless crisis in the county and state I know there are city leaders you folks desire to help our residents both housing and housed and I do believe that helping those who are struggling with housing involves not not congregate living quarters even in non-COVID times

but especially now but instead having housing with a lock from the inside to where those living there are the ones that have the key this is why I urge the city to pursue project room key funds this will allow those who are willing to receive congregant living situation or even worse on the streets and I the The project Roomkey was previously run, as you probably know, run by the county with funding from the federal government through the state. But for some unknown reason, the county ceased this program.

But they are indicating that those city, that pretty much any city that wants to utilize project Roomkey funds, they will assist with that process. And I urge the council to direct the city manager, I'm sure she's already probably looked into this and so hopefully it's a quick process, especially considering the program only runs through, I believe, September, might be end of August. So there's a sense of urgency on this to have any success to be able to help those on the streets right now, as well as hopefully transition them into more appropriate housing when the program

ceases. So in summary, I think what if you think what we're doing is working, then I suppose you can keep doing it. I think everyone would agree and those that are commenting would also agree that though it's time to change it up and try something new. Let's go after this project, room key funding, help those on the streets, help residents and at the same time possibly even help a motel owner that is struggling right now also. Thank you very much. I know you guys have the best intentions for our city. So I appreciate your hard work. Thank you.

Thank you.

Zoom ID, Jennifer Rojas, if you would please select the microphone icon.

Good evening, City Council. My name is Jennifer Rojas. I'm the senior policy advocate and organizer with the ACLU of Southern California. I'm based here in Orange County. I wanted to thank the City Council tonight for considering item 24. ACLU SoCal is a proud co-sponsor of SB2, the Kenneth Ross Jr. Police Decertification Act of 2021. The City of Santa Ana's endorsement would be tremendously helpful as the bill moves through the legislature this year. As you may know, California is only one of four states in the nation without a process

to decertify police officers in California. And police officers who have been fired or who resign while under investigation, we have allowed these officers to bounce from community to community while still being able to wield abusive and deadly power. A Yale study published last year in 2020 found that wandering officers who move from one agency to the next are significantly more likely than officers who have never been fired to incur complaints of serious

misconduct. Further, in states where there is no decertification process, one of the only ways to stop a police officer accused of misconduct from being rehired is a felony conviction that would remove the ability to possess a firearm. Yet, an investigation published in the SAC-B in 2019 found that officers that were accused of violent behavior routinely pled down to non-violent misdemeanors for crimes like disturbing the peace or vandalism or unreasonable noise. 15 percent of those officers are still working

in law enforcement today across the nation.

Tom Bain Act to its original intent. When the Tom Bain Act was adopted, it was intended to forbid anyone from interfering with a person's rights by force or threat of violence, including due process, legal protection, and protection from harm. Again, SB2 will restore our California civil rights law. The bill has been introduced because as the city and as I think the rest of California has seen, communities up and down California can no longer tolerate rampant abuse by police officers in our communities,

particularly against Black and brown people, disabled people, and LGBTQ communities. If the city endorses SB2, Santa Ana will join.

We have 15 seconds left.

Thank you. Santa Ana could join the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, community-based organizations up and down the state, labor unions and clergy. Thank you again for considering item 24 in support of SB2, the Kenneth Ross De-Certification Act.

Thank you.

Zoom ID, Rain?

Nice. Hi. I work for El Centro Cultural de Mexico in Santa Ana and I'm an organizer here that's trying to figure out what to do with the encampment that's here. And so I just wanted to talk about what happened Friday, May the 30th, that we had a lot of folks who were prepared and approved to go into shelters only to find out that they that there were no beds available the they were not taking in referrals and there were no beds anywhere and yet the city wants to pursue like an abatement or um try to sue and basically like bully el centro

into figuring out what to do with the homeless population here without also giving us more help and resources while there are no beds available and I wanted to directly speak on this statement from Phil Bracero's article that came out it says if the central have sought help from the city of Santa Ana the homeless individuals would have been offered services months ago that would have helped them improve their lives okay so if we would have seek help months ago well we're seeking help now Our goal is not to keep displacing these people. You want these people out of here without also offering any tangible solutions.

Especially during COVID times, but also during non-COVID times and traumatic.

It also is placing like blame and also like simultaneously some responsibility on this small nonprofit that's just made up of volunteers and parts of the employees to deal with the city's larger issue with its houselessness crisis. So we are asking that you do not further criminalize these people by allowing cops to come in here and arrest people and displace people even further and also allowing people to who cannot go into shelters because there's a lot of people who are not qualified to go into shelters um to have somewhere safe to go to like like a motel room so

kind of going off of what the other person tim johnson was saying that you should enact the room key to for other folks to qualify to go into a safe room and just be out of the street.

Also, there was a lot of landish things in that article being said. Some and I just wanted to say that a lot of the things said about what the home about the houses people here was just to

And that's all I have to say.

Thank you.

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

ZOOM ID INDIGO IF YOU WOULD PLEASE SELECT THE MICROPHONE ICON OR UN OH MY APOLOGIES ZOOM ID INDIGO Hello. Hi. Hi. My apologies. I accidentally muted you.

Mary, thank you for giving me my turn. My name is Indigo Vu and I'm a resident of Ward 1 in Santa Anna as well as an arts and culture commissioner over the city. I'm in support of and ask that each of you vote yes on tonight's agenda item 21, the resolution in support of the provision act,

under current law, immigrants and refugees who enter the criminal justice system can be punished twice through voluntary and unnecessary transfers to ICE detention. Despite the fact that they have already been deemed eligible for release, while in detention they are at heightened end of deportation. This practice is cruel and serves only to splinter families and to further punish Black, Latinx and Southeast Asian immigrant and community refugees that are already harmed from left structural support. To quote Angela Davis, prisons do not disappear social problems,

they disappear human beings. We cannot disappear our people or be complicit in their disappearance. We must as a community and society recognize and create cultural shifts to honor and protect our immigrant and refugee communities. As an arts and culture commissioner, I feel it is essential for the voice that we in Santa Ana cannot truly have a thriving culture if we do not support our communities which in Santa Ana shines because of the work of immigrants and refugees. Santa Ana has already made history by passing the strongest sanctuary city ordinance in the country and you

can continue this legacy of immigrant rights advocacy by voting in favor in support of in supporting the vision act. Again please vote yes on tonight's resolution for agenda item 21. Thank Thank you for your local leadership, advocacy, collaboration, and time.

Thank you. Zoom ID Brooke Weitzman, if you would please select the microphone icon.

That's homeless individuals in an effort to reduce the criminalization of poverty in our community and hopefully increase access to resolutions like housing and health care. So I am here tonight commenting on item 26, room key. The state and federal

they're available through at least the end of September and we're hopeful that they will be extended beyond that. This is a hundred percent reimbursement for putting qualified individuals into non-congregate rooms. That means hotel and motel rooms. That means investing in our local businesses instead of investing in large companies that are in the business of warehousing human beings and shelters. That means creating humane conditions. And qualified individuals means anyone over the age of 65 or with a serious medical condition as enumerated by the CDC. So that includes things like asthma and HIV and diabetes.

It includes lung and heart conditions. And so there are a lot of people, and in many cases, a significant majority of people who are currently unsheltered, who are unable to go into congregate settings for a variety of reasons. The biggest one in Santa Ana right now being there is no congregate shelter in our city right now. The city opted to quietly close the shelter.

and not yet opened a new shelter the county does have a shelter here but the county shelter is full and on a good week there's one or two beds available so right now we have no options and we have a hundred percent reimbursement program we could be using it's not the time to start talking about looking into it that time was back in october when the county shut down the centralized program. It is an urgent matter. It is a matter of the city needs to act on today, not to pass just talking about it, but to pass doing it. It's something that is accessible through both the

state and through the county based on the size of the city. You know, when we opt not to take state and federal money like Project Rimke, we not only kind of leave the money on the table that could be coming into our community and benefiting our city, but even worse, we choose not to use solutions that could reduce the cost. So we end up spending more of our money on not solutions, on policing, on cleanup, on public works, instead of spending someone else's money on real housing solutions. We also saw that the cost of homelessness study done here, specifically in Orange County,

it costs twice as much to leave someone on the street than to put them in housing. And while yes, it takes time to build the housing and there's not enough housing for everyone right now, there are There are plenty of single occupancy room.

And people and making the problem worse. We could use someone else's money to real solutions to the community. So I encourage the city to act today, not just to approve looking into it, but to demand action.

Thank you.

Zoom ID.

Allison, if you would please select the microphone icon. Thank you.

Hi, can you all hear me? Yes. Wonderful. Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. My name is Allison and I'm calling on behalf of Viet Rise. Please vote yes on agenda item 21, the resolution in support of the Vision Act. We thank Councilmember Fan and Mayor Sarmiento for placing this on the agenda. Viet Rise has met and worked with immigrants and refugees who have been cruelly transferred from local jail and state prisons to ICE detention. Many have completed their prison sentences, yet instead of being able to return home, they are sentenced to immigration detention indefinitely and face the risk of deportation afterward.

Often, Vietnamese and other immigrants and refugees face the violence of racism and poverty while having limited access to structural support after migrating to this country as children, young people, and adults. In addition, there are countless domestic violence survivors who end up incarcerated instead of receiving support and who are transferred to ICE detention. Currently, there is no state legislation that recognizes the humanity and complexity of their lives and cases. The Vision Act would protect survivors and immigrants from the cruel double

punishment of their sentences. This bill also addresses anti-Asian violence and puts an end to the cycle of trauma for Black, Latinx, and Southeast Asian immigrants and refugees who are punished who are punished twice in California. Passing this resolution is a continuation of the city's commitment to defend our incarcerated immigrant community members who are excluded from the state sanctuary law. From passing the strongest sanctuary ordinance in the country in 2016 to your support of the California Values Act, passing this resolution will send a clear message

to the state legislator and the governor that California must uphold second chances, rehabilitation, transformation, and human rights for all immigrants and refugees. Please vote yes on the city resolution in support of the Vision Act. We thank you for your local leadership and setting a standard for bold and strong immigrant rights advocacy. And lastly, we are in solidarity with our allies at El Centro, and we echo their calls to action to the city. We hope the city continues to provide services that can be and have been helpful for our unhoused and shelterless community members.

We urge you to end any attempts for an abatement process against the people and to explore options that honor the wants and needs of the people directly impacted. Thank you.

Thank you.

Caller with the last three numbers, 010, if you would please dial star six. Thank you.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Pleasing pleasantly surprised and I think you'll know this in a minute. I continue to be impressed by the website for the COVID-19 enrollment. It's really a website that's actionable and I think Mr. Bristara mentioned how you know some cities can send a link it's a little confusing. well you can actually send a link from that website and it's very easy to navigate it's actually something somebody can act on so uh keep it up i really like what they've done with that and like i said the far cry from where it was a couple of months ago uh there was a comment by um

uh mayor protein penalosa about trying to get smaller clinics and yes star that idea that's the county wants to move as well and I think Santa is well positioned to do that at this time to move towards smaller clinics and I think it's going to be very important as we proceed forward to a higher vaccination rate and so again you're really set up to kind of get these vaccinate rates going that's kind of the positive side on the downside again I was well I was tweaking here about some numbers round back to 50 percent of the total population. When the state's running about

40 percent, the county's running about 40, and I think the country as a whole is running like about 41. So we're kind of behind. The other thing that's of concern is that of that 135, it's being skewed by the older population of 55 or over. About 80 percent of the population 65 or over has gotten vaccinated so there's a huge gap in the younger community on vaccinations I think the numbers are like 20 or extremely low so I don't know if outreach direct contact would be like a census approach I think social media texting with that link for the web page and

maybe some billboard advertising showing young people how important it is in that respect I'd really encourage you to take Mr. Penelope's idea and reach out to some community partners to get a strategy going on where we need to hit these what areas need to be concentrated on and get the right communication going. No doubt the city's set up to get this done right but right now those numbers are low and so along that way I somebody who's fully vaccinated and 62 I really would have be hesitant to pull back any policy at this point in terms of our masking policy if anyone comes

downtown at night on friday saturday night large concentrations of people no mask so we yeah it in respect to that uh there is um an issue of free parking that's been going on where it was reduced down to one hour i have asked uh counseling for sarah and councilman hernandez to look out for that I hope to hear back to you but the community the business community is a little bit upset about that in light of just the staff decision so please let's give that some theory for our small businesses and lastly thank you

hello yes yeah thank you but your time is out well if I I wanted to say that there are a lot of hazards out there and I'd like to thank councilman Hernandez for taking quick action on the hazard I encountered not too long ago and the staff

that for their accidents and injury the people thank you thank you

Zoom ID Carla Juarez if you would please select the microphone icon on your device

or select unmute thank you yes hi good afternoon my name is Carla Juarez I I reside in Santa Ana on Ward 5. And I wanted to speak.

I'm not sure which item in the agenda it is, but in regards to the homeless folks, our neighbors, our houseless, and also El Centro. I was out there this Friday trying to help folks. I volunteered to drive folks to shelters. And around one o'clock in the afternoon, The city next staff came back saying that there was no, no, no beds available. So it was kind of a bust for a lot of people. And it took a lot of work as well to get folks into the right.

So there was no, and over this weekend, I spoke with the bus that, uh, And he gave me a, um, um, guide me to the right person to contact, um, from the police department. Apparently there was only one individual in the police department that helps folks, um, because you can't just go to a shelter. You can't just pop in, in the shelter. You have to have a referral and you can't just, um, go to the door and knock. You have to be driven inside. Um, so there's a lot, like a lot involved also, like the folks our houses folks can't take um so their stuff they have to at least only have about

two bags of their stuff because the rest cannot go in they do have some storage underneath their bed and like a locker which i assume is kind of like the the one you get at school or at the gym but there's not enough space um and after numerous calls countless calls nobody wanted to give me that number for Sergeant Montiel. I spoke with the station supervisor to the watch commander, and I did finally get a hold, and it is Sergeant Montiel from the Quality of Life team, and his number is 714-245-8756.

So that's 714-245-8756.

Without a referral. also relocating uh folks is not the way to go it is pretty much just having someone else's you know becoming someone else's issue in their neighborhood having folks have a house as a human right is the way to go with including like medical services trauma services mental issues substance since abuse before they can't even get a job. A lot of folks, there are folks, I mean, we can't criminalize folks for not having a home because even in our own families, we have criminals or criminal activity.

So we can't expect others to be perfect or better than us. Though it's not okay to treat people as animals or unwanted or untouchables of society because it's all of us.

We have 15 seconds left.

And the last message is not to proceed with the abatement process against El Centro Cultural de Mexico. El Centro Cultural de Mexico is a community center that is much more than just about teaching folks about Mexican history. I'm from Guatemala and I'm an immigrant and El Centro has helped me whether people

and there are many lives that are going to be affected if the abatement process goes through. So please think of your residents. Thank you.

Thank you.

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

Hello? Hi, if you could please state your name for the record.

Hi, my name is Luis Samiento. I am a volunteer at the Centro Cultural de Mexico and I'm also part of our community land trust Thrive Santana. For this reason, I am aware of the fact that the city does have a lot of public vacant land that could be put to good use in our current situation with folks that are out here on these streets. And I am joining my voice with our friends today to ask the city to make the right decision, to make resources available to access

THE ROOMKEY PROGRAM TO USE WHATEVER RESOURCES

PEOPLE OUT HAVE A PLACE TO PUT A ROOF OVER THEIR HEADS.

I'M DISAPPOINTED THAT THE COUNCIL MEMBER, PHIL BECERRA, PUBLISHED A LOT OF FOOLISH THINGS ABOUT OUR COMMUNITY IN HIS EDITORIAL PIECE. I FEEL HE DEMONSTRATES THAT HE DOES NOT KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE HARASSED BY POLICE OFFICERS ON THE STREET.

AND SO HOPEFULLY HE WILL REFLECT UPON THAT. AND IF HE'S TRYING TO WORK WITH THE COMMUNITY, HE'S OFF TO A BAD START. SO PLEASE FREE UP THE RESOURCES OF RUNKEY.

YOU KNOW THAT THERE ARE OTHER SOURCES OF FUNDING.

CEDABG, AND OTHER SOURCES OF FEDERAL RELIEF THAT ARE AT YOUR DISPOSAL. AND THESE ARE POLICY DECISIONS THAT YOU, OUR PUBLIC REPRESENTATIVES, CAN MAKE. SO THANK YOU VERY MUCH. AND WE ALSO WANT TO SHOUT OUT TO ALL OF THE COMMUNITY MEMBERS WHO ARE OUT HERE PUTTING good work to help out our nation continue to put forward our best our best foot forward to to create a spirit of collaboration and problem-solving in in our community thank you

Thank you. Caller with the last three numbers 475, if you would please dial star 6 to unmute your call or select the microphone icon on your device.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Hi, this is Jairo Cortez. I'm the executive director at CHISPA. I wanted to call in in support of item 24 and thank council member Lopez for introducing or for bringing this measure forward. CHISPA is in support of Senate Bill 2, the Kenneth Ross Jr. Police Discertification Act of 2021. As an organization representing young Latinx members here in Orange County police accountability is by default here not

just in Santana but throughout Orange County as the two will ensure that officers we employ to uphold our laws are held to basic standards and removed from our communities when they violate them officers who have been fired for excessive force sexual misconduct and dishonesty should not be able to patrol our community and it's inexcusable for any city and any locality really to not want like what's best for their communities and to not want to hold like officers who have like histories of misconduct on their police forces.

Secondly I also wanted to take the this opportunity to support our friends at and to ask that the city work with the central and to ask that the city seek project room key funds to actually try to solve this situation and to try to help people.

Very little. I think to Council Member Becerra's op-ed today on the voice of the echo Luis's comment, like it was a very foolish off-ed and it kind of like what makes you wonder you know like whether the council member just wakes up every morning and asks himself how he can make life worse for

people who already have very little thank you caller with the last three numbers six to seven If you would please select the microphone icon on your device or dial star six to unmute your call.

Caller with the last three numbers 627.

Hi, this is Roberto with Resilience Orange County. I'm calling in support of the City Council's move to pass a resolution for

the statewide level has a lot of implications here in Orange County mostly because of it would mostly provide oversight to the Sheriff's Department currently the Board of Supervisors The organizers lack the leadership to kind of rein in transfers to ICE for deportation. About, you know, every year on average about 1,200 arrests are conducted by ICE here in Orange County. And 75% of those arrests originate from transfers with folks coming in contact with law enforcement.

And some of these, like, you know, it can be for petty things that they come in contact with law enforcement. They can have a past conviction of, like, 15 years, 10 years, 5 years. People can be totally rehabilitated. The current state law gives the power to the sheriff to decide who gets to be transferred and who doesn't. And more often than not, Sheriff Don Barnes transfers community members over time. time so much so that in 20

ice for deportation out of any other law enforcement agency in the state of California again in 2019 Don Barnes transferred the most amount of people to ice for deportation more than any other law enforcement agency in the state and so we have the highest the transfer rate and in Orange County and you know more than we transferred more people than LA and LA is three times our size and so the vision act at the statewide level would really really benefit Orange County residents, Santana residents and so I just really applaud you all for you know moving in this direction to pass a resolution in support of the vision act

in regards to the American Rescue Plan I know that there's going to be a community forum coming up I would really like to see direct stimulus checks for low income and immigrant families here in Santana. I think checks up to $500 would definitely help a lot of families that we do see on the ground that weren't able to benefit from the federal stimulus checks at the federal level. So using this money.

the county level you know they should have made you know santana a priority for vaccinations from the very beginning and you know having a health care agency for the city to kind of have its own jurisdiction to be able to make its own dishes addition of decisions for its residents would be important so i would support something like that i also support the also resolution for

and the police certification bill that ACLU and Chispa talked about and then also supporting El Centro with Project Wimki funds and that would be it. Thank you so much.

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

Hello, my name is Penelope Lopez and I'm the organizing director of Chispa. I'm calling in support of agenda item 21. I urge you all to pass the resolution in support of the Vision Act AB 937. The Vision Act addresses by the racism built into the criminal legal system and onto immigrant and refugee communities. Black, Latinx, and AAPI, immigrants and refugees should not be double punished through incarceration and deportation. Santana has the opportunity to end the shameful practice of transferring immigrants to ICE

and keep our families and communities whole by voting yes on agenda item 21.

Thank you.

Zoom ID Benjamin Vasquez, if you would please select the microphone icon. Thank you.

Hello, I'm Benjamin Vasquez, and I'm here because at El Centro, we do many things. We just celebrated El Dia del Niño. We started celebrating many years ago, but nine years ago, on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's March of Birmingham, Alabama, we started the Children's March. and this last uh saturday two saturdays ago we continued the church march where we

for immigrants rights and with that we hope you support uh we hope that the city council is in support of article 21 the support of the vision x and central not only has that he will continue to going during this times but we have funds of a million dollars that we've given now and we'll give out to undocumented families in Santa Ana we've also are signing up folks for COVID not only are we signing folks up for COVID vaccinations but we partnered up with the president of the school board to do a video with the mayor with the mayor of the city and and various other

community members so they will feel better about taking the vaccine we have spread those videos out wide so people will be vaccinated now i'm gonna go to article 26 we want we want the key the city to give us room key we entered a 45 agreement with the city in good faith in good faith we didn't know the county was shut down civic center we didn't know they were going to close an account at 25 25 but then the city closes down its shelter in the myth

and used to claim they came out twice they did came out twice we're out there 45 days we hired two people we're a very small non-profit not a big budget but we hire people every day we help every day we continue we support we bring other people the city continues to say that about port-a-parties and head washing stations they told the vendor to charge us the city has told the vendor to charge at central as the city says look at all this stuff we're doing well we're out here 45 days and we we've worked really hard in good faith to keep our end we're hoping that the

city in good faith does its part and has room key and opens up and opens up the links again and gives us more time at central to to organize these folks many who have been approved to go into shelters also we're in support of uh city bill 2. there are many conspirators here with criminal police on the council and we really got to check police we really have to make sure that the culture of police in santa yana is professional and they are not killing people as we've seen or stealing marijuana or kicking people kicking people on the leg who don't have you know who are on wheelchairs

We really have. Thank you very much. Thank you. Zoom ID, Jose Trinidad Castaneda, if you would please select the microphone icon. Thank you.

Yes, good evening Mayor, City Council and staff. My name is Jose Trinidad Castaneda. I'm here to speak on two things, but before I do, just that I'm in solidarity with all the previous speakers on the Vision Act, on the police decertification, on funding for homelessness. and for my first point, I wanted to address what is the city doing on climate change? Climate change is an existential threat. The summer has begun. Temperatures will continue to rise

and the state has entered a new period of drought. And so what will you do? Because other cities are moving other cities Fullerton for example have begun the process of an investment grade audit to look at energy efficiency across all their publicly owned buildings Orange County Power Authority to purchase clean safe renewable energy that doesn't emit harmful emissions other cities like Santa Monica have passed building electrification or reach code ordinances

to make sure that all the homes that they're planning for in their housing element are all electric so the city has many options to move forward and act but I'm just questioning where where has where has everyone been I mean climate change is not new we've known about it for a long time it's time to do something about it second thing i wanted to share a story that may help humanize what we may face in the summertime as temperatures continue to reach record levels we will have situations where people who are experiencing homelessness people living in

mobile home parts people in apartments with no air conditioning units are going to have greater challenges dealing with extreme heat waves and heat risk than others. And so I think about those who are most vulnerable who if they're out in

south on the sidewalks and they may pass out on Santa Ana streets and creeks and if they do and no one's around then there could be just huge it's just I I don't even wanna think about it. But planning for cooling centers, that'll have to come, making sure public safety and paramedic services are ready to bring people to those cooling centers, that'll have to come. But this is a public health crisis. If temperatures continue to rise and Santa Ana does not address the fact that the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative has named Santa Ana as one of the highest risk cities

for extreme climate events, mainly heat waves,

10 seconds left.

Then, you know, I just struggle to see what the vision is and what the leadership on climate looks like. And I really applaud any effort to move forward, coming forward, looking forward. Thank you.

Thank you. Zoom ID Felicity, if you would please select the microphone icon.

Felicity Figueroa, and I'm the chair of the Orange County Equality Coalition. And our vision statement is respect for all people, regardless of gender identity, sexual orientation, immigration status, or housing situation, and the search for equality and justice and recognition of our common humanity. So on that, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you. You may proceed.

I'm sorry, my unmute thing came on. So I'm calling today on behalf of my organization, first in support of item 21 the vision act precisely because we agree with justice for all people it's it's really unjust for people to be subjected to a second punishment after they have finished their sentences in the carceral system they've been rehabilitated they should be reunited with their families but instead as I think one of the prior speakers mentioned over 70% of the people in immigration detention attention get there because they've been transferred from either local jails or state prisons and

that's patently unjust and it just.

Qualification of our immigrant communities. I'd also like to speak in favor of your agenda item 24 SB 2. I think it's wonderful that you've put that on the agenda and it dovetails with some of the other items including including the vision act and item 26 to do with room key because what we look for is the respect of the common humanity of all people and to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to live a fulfilling life and the prevalence of police violence particularly of the

of marginalized communities latinx black and pacific islander asian communities just goes to show that there needs to be justice and that police officers who act in criminal fashion need to be removed from the police force because apart from the fact that they're dangerous for the community they undermine any respect that the community might have for the police and what happens is that people who might be victims of crime or survivors of sexual violence they are afraid to come forth because they don't trust the police because they think

in the case so 100 in favor of sp2 and lastly i just want to say that instead of just looking into project room key you should embrace it fully um you've talked about the fiscal questions of um housing uh people who are currently unhoused we've seen that it's much cheaper to house people than to criminalize them and in any event there's a hundred there's a hundred percent reimbursement from the state for project room key there are many empty buildings in santa and across the county

and they should be used to um help people get a head start and be able to live a life that's full and satisfying for themselves and their families so thank you very much

Zuma ID Mami Escamilla, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device.

Okay, hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Well, it sounds like it's a long agenda for everybody today. So, yeah, thank you, Mayor and Council. I know you all are wrestling with a lot of things on your plate. So I just wanted to kind of take a step back and talk more philosophically about the

they have I think what three quarters of a billion dollars that you're deciding on what to do. So it's the overall you know 643 or so budget that you know happens every year but a very unique opportunity with the additional American Rescue Act funds that are coming in. And I just hope that when we look at this, we do look at this as an opportunity for transformation and opportunities to have major investments that will have long-term payoffs for the city, both in terms of its efficiencies, how well-supplied staff are to use technology, how easy it is to get multiple languages

I was really disappointed to see staff that I know were needed, you know, this particular case, potential code enforcement.

And I was really disappointed to see staff that I know were needed, you know, this particular case, potential code enforcement. behind tables kind of racking up hours and I think on some occasions just kind of playing football outside. I don't blame anyone for being at a park and playing football, but it just seems like it was a misallocation of the money that was being brought in. And I'm really afraid that that might happen again. So I want to make sure that whatever we end up doing with these funds,

that they are used and invested properly and it's not necessarily just to kind of keep staff on, which we definitely want staff here. we want them doing things that are productive and not necessarily things that may might look good in a photo op but then don't actually do anything for our residents so i just want you know folks to kind of keep that in mind uh and then also it just seems that there's a lot of legislation uh before you today and i'm not quite sure if there is any forum where the city is getting together um and publicly discussing the various opportunities for legislation both at the

state and federal levels. So I'm just kind of curious about how public that process is, because I do feel that Sinai has a particular perspective that should be shared with those larger entities. So I appreciate you all for this time and wish you well on your decision-making

tonight. Thank you. Zoom ID, Steph Dorontes, if you would please select the microphone.

I wanted to address also Phil Becerra's article. I'm an organizer also at El Centro in Santa Ana and I wanted to say that Phil Becerra's comments on our misunderstanding of the city's response was completely false. We at El Centro know from talking and having our conversations with our or houseless neighbors that they are commonly harassed by police and by the city. And we know from the city's movement to get an abatement that their preferred response is to remove

and displace people by force from a place where they feel safe and comfortable. They are being criminalized for being houseless and Becerra's article is a clear attempt to misplace blame for the city's own failure to address the houseless problem onto a small nonprofit. And it's also a clear attempt at retaliation against El Centro for exposing the city's lack of helpful action. So I wanna just reiterate again, why doesn't the city enact room key? Because like other people

doing reimbursement. So it doesn't seem like it would be much cost to the city to just alleviate this problem for folks. And lastly, I wanted to say that we have a central stand in solidarity with the rise on the vision and then also in solidarity with cheese bus and they see you want to hold police accountable. And I also, I'm gonna have one of our community members here.

Oh, okay. Thank you. That's it.

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

Hi, my name is Katie N. I am a resident here in Ward 4. So I wanted to also address Councilmember Becerra's op-ed that came out and expressed my disappointment and my solidarity with El Centro as an asset to our community.

I learn more and see people in action and trying to assist those that are facing houselessness in our community. I trust people that are on the ground doing the work. and I've heard countless reports of police antagonizing and it's it's never seems like they are never the right people to deal with it and to deal with houselessness and they frequently are the people that are dealing with it head

on in terms of interfacing room in anyway removing people and it's been and brought up several times that I want to echo what others have said more eloquently than I am. And please look into alternatives to abatement for El Centro and look into things like project room key and there are alternatives that can that are more

there uh too i i wanted to also um echo support for item 21 the vision act and um i'm i'm really glad that it is on the agenda and i'm also uh very um excited to see item 24 on the agenda up regarding the city's endorsement of SB2 and I strongly urge the council to endorse this bill thank you and good night thank you

Zoom ID SG Sarmiento if you would please select the microphone icon or the unmute feature on your

device thank you yeah can you hear me now yes we could hear you thank you okay my name is salvador gregorio sarmiento i'm the national policy director for an organization called endalon the national day labor or organizing network and we're in a network of about 60 worker centers across the country and about 20 of them are here in california a lot of members and day labor community

Orange County and in Santana. You know, we've been through a lot these last four years. Santana has been through a lot over the last four years, dealing with Trumpism. Thank goodness most of that's behind us. Sadly, it seems like there's still a lot of work to do in terms of confronting those that want to pit our community members against each other, use immigrants as scapegoats for all sorts of issues that we need to address. So when we talk about it's time to bring human rights home, we definitely support legislation like the Vision Act, and it's powerful that Santana can send a message to the rest of the state

by supporting a resolution for the Vision Act to end the double punishment of immigrants. That's the first thing. Number two, about the encampment at El Centro Cultural. El Centro Cultural is a jewel of an immigrant's community center in Orange County, in the nation. And Santana needs to be proud of it. Shame on Philip Baquera, who tries to pick...

...beats that came out on Voice of OC. and it's as our community members have said it's really a sign of where becerra

philip sorry council member you know where what what a despicable world would be if that article reflects where you're at it's you know we should be thanking el centro for noche de altares for la jaraneros and the musicians and the artists for dia del niño for the relief in the middle of the pandemic they're doing the work and filling the gaps where our local state and federal government have left immigrants working and excluded from pandemic relief we should be thanking el centro cultural that has been a jewel is a jewel in our city so

let's stand with them um let's make it right let's do this right let's get the funding that we already know exists let's use the spaces that we already know that the city can count on and make it happen and not um do as vaquera is doing and pitting our own community working class communities against each other which is that's that's a trump trump remove and we won't have that in something obviously and lastly of course

some action for those police that can't um you know meet professional standards in every profession we gotta you know if you're not complying with what what what's demanded of you you get decertified you can't keep practicing if you're an attorney if you're a doctor the same needs to apply for the police and so also we applaud the courage of those organizers organizations community members and city council members that are pushing that forward so let's make this happen let's do it the right way let's partner with these community members and stop making excuses and for you know

it's a county issues that the county threw it on something that's not let's not throw you know our own community members under the bus this is not anybody you know it's not a non-profit's fault

and I'm going to go ahead and have them go ahead and proceed and speak so you may go ahead and you have three minutes please announce your name for the record and state if you're with us in the city of Santa Ana.

My name is Tim Rush and I live in Wilshire Square. I'm a 33.

Pauline. tonight primarily about this issue with El Centro Cultural de Mexico. It is astonishing to me that these folks who are calling in and wanting to advocate for El Centro never for a moment stop to make any accommodation for the folks who live in that neighborhood, not just in the entire neighborhood, but the people who live nearby.

I happen to bank at the Orange County Credit Union, which is right across the street, and I drive by there a couple of times a week and see the mess that has been made there. It is important, as you all know, to recognize El Centro had no business at all offering up their property as a homeless site. It's not zoned for it. They don't have accommodations. with the city. That means the taxpayers put up the money to haul in some

out in the open on both El Centro's property and other nearby properties. Imagine if you were living there and you had these folks who are hopped up on dope and alcohol and half crazy. And yes, my heart goes out to them, but there are lots of community resources available to them. And isn't it interesting that El Centro, after doing what they did illegally, they're not zoned for this. They don't have a permit for it. They didn't have permission to do it. Nobody asked them to do it. So they just on their own decide this is their opportunity

to sum their nose at the city of Santa Ana. And the residence of Willard neighborhood, which, by the way, is a beautiful, was a beautiful historic neighborhood before it was raped in the 70s by allowing a high-density development. That was the first rape that occurred to that neighborhood. our dear friend Rob Richardson who passed away last July

on the borders there of Willard Elementary School but that neighborhood's been over and over mostly by high density development which was not a benefit to the city or the people who live there it's been nothing but a slum since it was built. And now you add El Centro, who chooses to act like they're somehow the do-gooders, which is a lot of baloney, because they know they're operating an illegal facility.

You have 10 seconds left.

And then they wait until the last minute to do anything about it and want to make the city the guilty party. What a bunch of baloney. So hopefully you will see through all of that and do the right thing. Get rid of this homeless encampment. Thank you.

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

Hi, yes, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Great. My name is David Himes. I am a Santana resident here from District 2, and I am also a community organizer with clergy and laity united for economic justice as well as Santa Ana United Methodist Church also serving El Getzmaní United Methodist Church both in Santa Ana I just wanted to continue my support

police officers accountable here in Santa Ana knowing that in this country we are seeing continued ineffectiveness with police and we're hoping to see changes here in Santa Ana I also want to continue to to support those of our familia here in the central that are pushing to support not just the people that are like others have pushed down. These are our neighbors that are houseless and organizations like Encentro and even some churches are doing what they can to support the people. Like here in Santana, we do what we can to support them as well.

So we pray as we continue to ask that we be creative with some of these resources that we have in Santana. and one other caller did say about open available lots that need to be repurposed. The other thing I do want to support is the

which is highlighted several times already but I wanted to continue our support because a lot this will address anti uh it addresses anti-asian violence and puts an end to

these who are being double punished through the incarceration and deportation system here in california um i want to just finish to say as a not only as a resident but as a as a as a servant in the faith community um one of the things that uh our church santana united Methodist Church is doing to addressing houselessness and the lack of affordable housing is repurposing one of our downtown, excuse me, our downtown buildings and putting up affordable housing. And we also need to address that affordable housing and gentrification continues to be a high

issue here in Santana. And if we don't address this, we're going to continue to see some of the things that we're seeing now. And as a faith community, we also want to lift up the dignity of every human being that comes and is our neighbor. Part of our faith forms us to love our neighbor as ourselves. And if we're looking to each other to hate one another because of differences and backgrounds and situations in life, that's not how we're supposed to live. I grew as an immigrant.

Had seconds left.

As an immigrant, I came to Santana feeling as home. Even though I moved around a lot, I consider Santana my home. And as a resident, I want to see these changes done.

And that's Zoom ID caller, Claudia Lazaro, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

Oh, hi. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you.

Hi, I am calling from Santa Ana. I reside here around Fairview. And so I'm calling just to ask the city council to support SB2 and police accountability. I think that that's a very important thing that needs to be pushed and supported here in Santa Ana, especially due to the high rate of violence in comparison to other Orange County cities. I think it's important that the people have the ability to ask these police officers who have used their power to That they be held accountable

and so I think this is something that should be supported by all city council members because

Issue a lot of especially young residents here in Santa Ana and so I I am...

...three minutes. I'm just very passionate, and I know that a lot of people in my demographic are very passionate, and so we ask that you do the right thing and listen to us instead of the police unions because we are the ones who keep you in office.

Thank you.

Zoom ID Christopher Fortin.

Hello. My name is Christopher Fortin. I'm a resident of War 2. Just wanted to call in to support, extend my support for SB 2. Definitely supporting, holding police officer accountable. I also want to express my support for not moving forward with an abatement, not penalizing El Centro. I think homelessness is a really complex issue and groups that are actually trying to provide a haven

and a sanctuary for residents, homeless residents, that are dealing with a lot of different issues I walk by Ross all the time. I've actually talked with some of the residents.

They had lives, they suffer from depression and they feel safe at that place. So it's one of those things where we shouldn't be demonizing what Centro is doing. They are providing a wonderful service to really provide sanctuary for these folks right now and working with them to develop the solutions. Definitely support that looking at creative solutions like getting project group funds, but also using public lands. Those vacant lots, especially in Bristol, have been there for many, many years. They continue to be vacant.

We can use those lands in creative ways, you know, today, tomorrow. and I think working with groups like Thrive to see how we can use those vacant lots more creatively. I'd really love to see those kinds of solutions forward, but that's it for my time. But thank you so much for the time. Thank you.

Okay, Mayor, that was the last caller.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the council and we'll begin our consent calendar items. I want to ask any members of the council if they wish to pull any items off the consent calendar or abstain from any of the matters before us on the consent calendar. Mr. Mayor. Yes. I'd like to

Phil BacerraItem 5

go ahead and pull um items seven and ten. Seven and ten. Great thanks uh council member Hernandez

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 5

in there mayor protest yes thank you mayor salmiento i'd like to pull item 16.

David PenalozaItem 5

thank you uh mayor protest

David PenalozaItem 5

thanks mayor sabmiento i'd like to pull items 8 and 13.

got it um anybody else

Okay, seeing none, we'll go ahead and I'll go ahead and entertain a motion for the balance of the consent calendar. So moved. I'll second. Okay, we have a motion by Council Member Becerra and a second by Mayor Pro Tem.

Council Member Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 5

Yes.

Council Member Lopez.

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Go ahead, council member.

Phil BacerraItem 7

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Well, according to the report that's before us, we saw 14 applications this quarter for the down payment assistance program. Of those 14 applications, three were approved, which is great. I wanted to ask staff though, how is this particular program, the down payment assistance program being promoted?

Thank you, council member Becerra. I will ask Judson to answer that question for you.

Thank you very much, council member Becerra. To promote the down payment assistance program, we actually conduct a together with NeighborWorks.

And we rely on their efforts to promote the workshop itself, but we haven't sent any Nixle out in a while, but we used to send out a nixle before the uh before the workshop to try and promote it as widely as possible but the uh the attendance has been pretty good with uh neighbor works they've been pretty consistent to have uh several attendees at those workshops okay thank you for that judson

Phil BacerraItem 7

i look there are many folks out there that really would be homeowners right now if they had the benefit of down payment assistance so i think this is something that hopefully your staff will promote it via nixle or constant contacts get it on next door get it on the city's social media because i think this is something that it's a great program and with the inclusionary funds that we've got in our inclusionary account we need to do more to promote that program so i wanted to ask and i was also looking throughout the report here um judson if you could answer when was the original housing opportunity ordinance or the who adopted by

the city the original housing opportunity ordinance was adopted by the city in 2011 and then in november 2015 it was uh amended and then again in september 2020. okay okay um well

Phil BacerraItem 7

the report in front of us uh it shows that since the who's inception 21 million 510 000 has been generated for the inclusionary housing fund which is great because that helped

awesome i think he froze

councilman can you hear us

all right well i don't want to finish the sentence so we'll go ahead and let me let me go to council member Lopez and then we can bet we can come back to councilman uh Sarah when he unfreezes

Jessie LopezItem 7

go ahead council member Lopez oh thank you mayor so I have um a couple questions regarding the property located at 22nd street and so I'm not really sure who took to who to direct them to but I'll start with the first one um being um who maintains the property and what's the cost to the city for maintaining it.

The property listed in item number, agenda number seven?

Jessie LopezItem 7

Yeah, I believe it's exhibit two. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Lopez. That property is located at 302 East 22nd Street. And it is a property that's owned by our housing authority as acting as the former housing successor agency. The property is maintained by our colleagues in public works, but we do manage and own that property as the housing authority. The most recent effort we made to develop that property into affordable housing was about two years ago in an RFP that we issued. Since then, we have not been able to make that property again available for affordable housing development.

Jessie LopezItem 7

And what's the cost for maintaining the property?

Staff would have to return back to you with that information. I apologize, they don't have that often.

Jessie LopezItem 7

I wouldn't be probably supportive of maybe developing it into some sort of housing thing, but I do think that we should consider possibly maybe selling the property to the homeowner there so that they can extend their yard. If they're not interested in doing that then maybe creating a greenhouse with a access or a garden. I think that we should begin to strategize if we can rewild it, create a native restoration, plot of land, maybe a butterfly refuge, something that can be done within the current zone designation, maybe a pocket park just so that we don't have an empty

Jessie LopezItem 7

the parcel of land that is essentially costing the city money to maintain and it's being unused. So I just wanted to throw that out there. You know, maybe it can be a conversation for later down the road so that we can really think about how to use this piece of land.

Thank you, council member. Let me go ahead and go back to council member, becerra to see if he's unfrozen are you uh are you with us

councilman sarah

well i he was there for a while i saw some movement and then uh and then he froze all of a sudden um

do why don't we do this if it's okay with the council why don't we go to the next item we'll come back to this one so the councilman can get have an opportunity to comment so let's go ahead and hold this one uh just uh put it on hold in an abeyance and uh until the council member gets uh you know gets himself connected i think the next item was um item number eight that was pulled by mayor let's go ahead and move on yes i'll come back to set

David PenalozaItem 8

Go ahead, Mayor Proton.

David PenalozaItem 8

Thank you, Mayor Sambiento. I pulled item 8, which is receiving file standards and guidelines for wireless telecommunication facilities in the public right away. The reason why I pulled this is because I just wanted to highlight a couple of things that I saw in there. And first of all, thank the Director of Public Works for bringing this forward. I am happy in the direction that we're going with this item in regards to, you know, having guidelines and trying to preserve the historic nature and character of our neighborhoods.

David PenalozaItem 8

I've heard from Washington Square, Worcester Square, Park Santiago about these small cell antennas going up in our neighborhoods and how much of an eyesore they are. director Saba or the city manager not sure who would want to answer these questions but are there guidelines in here that will protect not necessarily historic neighborhoods but neighborhoods and residences that aren't historic for example I'm not in a historic neighborhood or home but

David PenalozaItem 8

these small cell antennas have been and have also caused issues with the neighbors because of that of aesthetics and how much of a nice or they are um are we are we doing just uh uh are we involved in the design are we making these companies design their small cell antennas for specific neighborhoods?

Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem. We are working with them on implementing a design that's compatible to the street that we're working with. If it is a historic neighborhood, yes, we are requiring them that they use freestanding antennas rather than the wood poles or installing their own of a different kind so yes we are working with with the providers to to make those antennas compatible to the to the area that we are

David PenalozaItem 8

installing these antennas does that answer your question well well no i i i understand we're doing that for historic neighborhoods but what if your neighborhood isn't historic we we have a lot of neighborhood historic what what are the guidelines for these neighborhoods like i said i specifically don't live in a historic neighborhood and i've seen them pop up off of uh flower and saint andrew and flower and warner and they are a nice sword they're they're not pretty they're not nice to look at you can see it from neighborhood streets and residents don't like it, don't like how they look.

David PenalozaItem 8

That's right, if we have guidelines for just regular neighborhoods.

We do. The highest priority is to go on a street light. Those, what we call the Cobra heads, that's our first priority. If we don't have street lights that looks like that, then the other alternative is to go on an existing wooden pole. and we've changed the design by updating the guidelines. Instead of having a cross arm now, we're only allowing a cantilevered one-sided antenna to be installed only on one side of the pole. We're not doing the cross arm anymore. So that's one of the improvements. We can't prevent them from not using the power pole itself,

but we are working with the providers to reduce...

David PenalozaItem 8

Thank you for that, Director Saba. One other sentence that I saw in your staff report that I just wanted to get clarification on was provisions have been made to allow the director to consider such requests for changes to guidelines, including the provision of new polls in the public right away so if a company wants to come in and they do want to they or they need to install a their own pool it's at your discretion or is it at at the at the lower level staff level it would be at my discretion as it's all

David PenalozaItem 8

and then then at that time you would consider those you know guidelines for what the neighborhood looks like and how we could fit and blend into that neighborhood yes okay just um i'll i'll end my comments there director saba but just know that that this continues to be a very sensitive issue with numerous neighborhoods across the city um and i think they're they're rightfully so you know wanting to preserve um the the neighborhood you know i i came in with the idea of wanting to put all our our our what and infrastructure that

David PenalozaItem 8

we see on poles underground and then i realize how expensive that is and and how near impossible it would be for a city art that's as old as us um and every time i look we just keep on adding more things to our poles and and uh and and and wiring so so um whatever we could do to just keep this maintained and and have these antennas fit each individual neighborhood and not just have one um Design for all the neighborhoods. I just the reason why I so sensitive about this as well is because I've.

David PenalozaItem 8

Seen presentations where we, we approve these antennas and we show we get a mock up design of what they would look like. But when they're installed, it's a lot. Bigger than what we were shown, what what the exhibits showed. So, so as whatever we can do to keep this. Say on top of this, I'd appreciate.

We do. Thank you for those comments. Any other comments on item number eight? Seeing none, that's a receive and file and I understand the prior item that was pulled by Councilman Becerra was a receive and file as well.

Councilman Becerra? No, thank you, Mayor. Great. Thank you both. I think you have the next item in any event. you have item number 10 which is to which is a purchase order uh for a contract uh of 100 uh combination waste recycle receptacles for the city trail so go ahead that's your right

David PenalozaItem 10

mr mayor really quick do we need a motion on those other two items uh they were receiving

files on mayor pro ten so okay so as part of the consent they wouldn't need a motion right Madam City Attorney, do you need a motion from us on those? Those are normally just matters that we take as being advised, right? Yes, exactly. Just receive the file. It's up to you. Okay. But you don't have to. Not necessary. Okay. Well, let's go ahead and move on since we're

Phil BacerraItem 10

already on. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So this item is regarding the purchase of the 100 waste recycle receptacles for the city trails i wanted to ask uh director rudloff so are these the receptacles these are the same ones that have been recently installed along the pacific electric bike trail correct that is correct okay and will these receptacles be exclusively placed

Phil BacerraItem 10

be placed in our parks as well?

We will place the majority of them on the bike trails and whatever is left over. We think that about 50 will be on the bike trails and then we will put 50 into the parks. And then next year we are proposing to complete all of our parks with the same trash receptacles.

Phil BacerraItem 10

Thank you for that. And they look great. and they i was asking just because uh as you know recently um your staff placed some what's called the temporary trash cans along the west side of thornton park along the douglas street to address some of the litter problems that the neighbors were complaining about along that area and those temporary trash cans you know helped reduce that litter in the area but i'm hoping that we'll see THE PLAN. SO YOU CAN SEE SOME OF THESE RECEPTACLES PLACED OVER THERE ALONG THAT WESTERN EDGE IN THORNTON PARK.

YES, ABSOLUTELY. THAT IS THE PLAN.

Phil BacerraItem 10

FANTASTIC. UNLESS ANY OF MY COLLEAGUES HAVE ANY COMMENTS ON THIS, I'D LIKE TO GO AHEAD AND MOVE THE ITEM.

I'LL SECOND.

i'm sorry uh that was a motion by council member sarah a second by council member hernandez uh madam clerk will you please call roll council member becerra yes council member hernandez yes

Council Member Lopez.

Phil BacerraItem 10

Yes.

Council Member Mendoza.

David PenalozaItem 10

Yes.

Council Member Fan. Yes. Mayor Pro Tempena-Losa.

Yes.

And Mayor Sarmiento.

Yes. Thank you for letting me know I was on mute. It still happens, by the way. We're not that used to this as we think we are. Anyways, I think the next item is, I believe, item number 13, and that was Mayor Pro Temp, that's the contract Pacific mobile structures for a modular restroom at Centennial Park. Go ahead, Mayor Proton.

David PenalozaItem 13

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I just wanted to thank the city manager and Chief Valentin for getting me the sitemap on this item. It was very, definitely, very informative of what exactly or where these modular restrooms will be. However, I had a couple additional questions. it's not sure if the city manager wanted to handle them or wanted a man city manager um

David PenalozaItem 13

i'll direct them to would be best okay i i was just wondering um what i know that for and correct me if i'm wrong at any point but for the last 30 years we had deep restrictions at this location um correct that is correct and those deed restrictions are now uh lifted uh director

redlock do you know the exact date that the last restriction was lifted uh yes i believe it was

march 7th or something close to that i'd have to check okay the deed restriction was uh lifted um

David PenalozaItem 13

early March so we no longer have to use this area for for any educational purposes correct okay and the reason why I'm bringing issues up because I know that that in the staff report there was a sentence where it says that the police department training division plans to conduct future

David PenalozaItem 13

structure offers flexibility in future improvement design and layout um i i'm questioning this because i wanted to see if we could maybe continue the item for two weeks because i'm not entirely

David PenalozaItem 13

I know that this comes with a cost and I don't want to green light restrooms without knowing exactly what we're going to be doing in regards to training. Because I could see, you know, down the line a year from now, this coming back to us with a cost to it and saying, well, you approve the restrooms and then you're going to be doing that. There's where we started building the infrastructure. This is what we're gonna do with it. And that's not being entirely comfortable what the land's gonna be used. And I'm all for our police department having areas to train and continue their education.

David PenalozaItem 13

And I know Chief Valentin's doing a great job at that across the board in numerous different areas. But I wanted to see if we could, I don't know if you had any.

So, Mayor Portem, I don't believe there are any concrete plans as to what future improvements they may want to make for the training facility. That is why they were proceeding and recommending approval of a lease restroom so that it gives them a greater flexibility. The new lease restroom is intended to replace a current modular one that was installed over 15 years ago and it has lived its useful life. So the facility is in need of a restroom.

David PenalozaItem 13

So I think what I'm just trying to understand is, can any of these educational things that the police have there, can they be done at another location within the city?

I wouldn't be able to answer that tonight. I certainly could look into the extent that they're utilizing it and what the requirements would be and see if we can locate it.

David PenalozaItem 13

Because I believe they're just two modular classrooms, correct?

I do see that those facilities are exactly for their training purposes.

yes thank you uh city manager uh mayor mayor pro tem and uh city council uh so the centennial training facility is actually used by several departments uh the police department parks and rec orange county fire authority public works department to train personnel so it's not just the police department there are a couple of modular classrooms where in classroom instruction is provided and then on the current imprint of the facility then demonstration of those skill sets

are performed people are evaluated and then they come back into the classroom we have training facility and classrooms within the police department where we have our de-escalation forced options training. There's also weaponless defense training that occurs there. This centennial training facility provides us the flexibility to do other types of training that are required outside. And so we can drive on the tarmac there. Variety of different types of training. And you are correct. The modular restrooms really, again, provide us flexibility depending on what we want

do in the future there is going to be no any plan of any kind to extend what is currently the footprint of the centennial training center so the we're simply replacing what's there over 15 years old and literally the floor is falling out from some of these facilities

David PenalozaItem 13

okay thank you for that chief valentin i just have these questions because you know as we keep thinking and as we look at an overview of our entire city and how park poor our city is and limited in green space and we think of Centennial Park that over the last decades you know it's been kind of just taken piece by piece by piece whether it's the the high school or the Santa and educational center and then the fact that most of the park is a lake that really can't be used by residents soccer fields

David PenalozaItem 13

that need reservations so it you know park but with very limited really open space um so i just want that to throw that out to to my colleagues and the public that you know there's opportunity to now that the restrictions have been lifted and we no longer need to use it for educational educational purposes, but we look at ways where we could maybe expand the park and whatnot for the public to use as open space. I know it's a large piece of the park that we could continue to use.

David PenalozaItem 13

I know that for a lot of these educational components for not just the police department, but public works and OCFA, there's other areas in city-owned buildings where we could potentially use and be creative and accommodate these types of training just an idea so I'd like to get more clarity personally on what what departments not just PD and what exactly what types of trainings that take go on in this place before I'd like to you know put the cart before the horse and install new restrooms when we

David PenalozaItem 13

We don't know what kind of cost is coming down the line for any expansion, not expansion, but modernizing this training area. Just my thoughts. I'm not sure if my colleagues had any other comments.

Thank you, Mayor Brodnam. As you know, the council approved, I think almost a year ago, that a lot of that space, once the restriction was lifted capture a capital improvement project for a dog park so there will be additional green space added in that that area it's a part of our capital improvement program but we certainly can provide more information on the specifics of the each department utilization of that other space adjacent to the space that will become increased open space but i again the

item before you is to replace some restrooms that are in dire need so final question if these

David PenalozaItem 13

restrooms would they be accessible to the public for public use when they're not used by any of

the various departments well at this time it's not the restrooms would be located in an area that isn't open to the public so the answer would be no to that any future development i can't answer

that okay thank you

i know that council member lopez has her hand up but i heard you say that uh you wanted to put the matter over and i was just going to ask the city manager is there a time sensitivity on this item as the manager i mean is it something that can be brought back to us and if it's your desire to continue the item we will um that that's fine well i'll i'll defer to mayor pro tem if he wants some additional information and there's no harm in putting it out uh an additional two weeks i'm not sure if anybody else has any thoughts on that let me go ahead and call on councilmember lopez

Jessie LopezItem 13

who has her hand thank you mayor sermanto so um you know one of the things that i read in the SO THE FIRST REPORT IS THAT THERE ARE BATHROOMS ON SIDE BUT THEY ARE UNUSABLE. AND SO MY QUESTION IS WE'RE SPENDING $126,000 FOR FIVE YEARS. IT'S ALMOST 24,000 A YEAR FOR BATHROOMS THAT THE PUBLIC ISN'T GOING TO BE ABLE TO USE. MY QUESTION IS WE WANT TO USE $126,000 FOR MAYBE A ONE-TIME RENOVATION SO THAT WE'RE not having to consistently pay any for restroom?

Council member, I believe the existing restrooms, they're modular as well. So it's really not a building that is conducive for a remodel.

Jessie LopezItem 13

So nobody uses that specific building?

it's a restroom right now there is a modular restroom building that was installed over 15 years ago and this new modular restroom would replace that okay okay thank you

thank you council member lopez any other members of the council council member becerra yeah i

Phil BacerraItem 13

apologize for some reason i do not have the raise hand feature on on here but i like that that's

Phil BacerraItem 13

I got a mirror pro Tim Penaloza brings up some good points and I think you know as we're looking at that area and we're talking about the dog park we're talking about the existing police facility it just would make sense to try to kind of coordinate what what this area all would potentially look like and I don't think it's a bad idea to have a couple more weeks for staff to come back and kind of give us a preliminary idea because you know with these restrooms you it's kind of like what we see in these joints.

Phil BacerraItem 13

We've got these restrooms set up where they're positioned to really work just for the school during the day, and then you lock one door, and then you unlock another door, and then all of a sudden you've got it where it's, you know, where you can use it for the field. So my hope is that we can, you know, look at something where this modular restroom, rather than being placed somewhere that it's inaccessible to the public maybe it's something where it could be accessible to the dog park because looking at the aerial view there's some sort of structure next to the soccer field just to the north and I'm not sure if that's

Phil BacerraItem 13

a storage shed or if that's a bathroom

director Rudloff are you there or I think the chief might know what the building is as well

so there's the modular bathrooms there's the modular classrooms and then there's another modular trailer if you will um and i believe that's either public works or parks has has a principal control of that is that correctly uh that is parks and recreation yeah our reservation office is located classrooms. They house two Santa Ana Police Department employees or temporarily house them and then we have our reservation staff in there.

Phil BacerraItem 13

What I'm referring to though it's a little structure if you're looking at an aerial map it would be immediately to the east of the soccer field that's north of the dog park site.

Okay, so that may be a conal box, which we use for training tactical emergency casualty care that we train not only Santa Ana PD officers, but officers from across the county.

Phil BacerraItem 13

I'm not sure if that's the right building. This is one that's more closer to the soccer field, not on the side of your facility.

I don't know what it is.

Phil BacerraItem 13

Yeah, that's why I was asking you. Do you have an idea what that is?

I would have to find out what that is. It might be our parks, you know, corporation yard at Centennial Park. We have some storage there, but I'd have to take a look at it and get back to you on that.

Phil BacerraItem 13

To Mayor Pro Tem's point, I think this is something we're talking about. you know we've got pd and parks and everybody's um weighing in and it doesn't seem like everybody's cohesive on what's going on over there so i i really support uh pro tem's idea of continuing this two weeks having staff come back and hopefully you guys can put your heads together and you know just really help us understand what's going on because i know this is just the modular restroom i get it but idea of putting this investment in there and maybe there's a better

Phil BacerraItem 13

way to do it in the sense that you know if we're going to invest in this dog park and we're putting in restrooms again maybe there's a way to have a dual purpose i don't know maybe not but right now i'm a little concerned in the fact that there doesn't seem to be uh complete concurrence on what's going on in that portion of centennial park all right well thank you council member

David PenalozaItem 13

mayor pro tem do you want to make your motion to yeah yeah um mr mayor i'd like to make a motion to continue and i'll i'll ask the city manager if if if uh two weeks is enough or maybe 30 days but just to to uh and first let me thank the chief uh chief valentine your map was very clear and i understand 100 what the the the map is um but now i'm just not concerned but just kind of curious as what future training um uh ideas we have for pd but public works and parks and rec and OCFA. I mean all of our all of their names should be on this staff report and signatures

David PenalozaItem 13

because it encompasses various departments so um Madam City Manager is two weeks enough to gather that info of what each department what kind of training they each do in this area? Certainly

Mayor Pro Tem but I do want to point out they are listed all in the staff report but we certainly can have more detailed information available for you in two weeks and it would probably be a better approach than um us attempting to answer your questions on the fly so we will we will have

David PenalozaItem 13

that ready for you within two weeks perfect so motion to continue for two weeks and i'll second

that all right we have a motion and a second on the floor uh madam city clerk if you'll please

call roll council member becerra yes council member hernandez yes council member lopez yes Council member Mendoza yes council member fan yes mayor Tempeñalosa yes and they are starting

in them yes thanks everybody on to the last item that was pulled this is item number 16 it's a resolution an appropriation for the homeland security grant program funding in the amount of $4 million, $4,993,750. So I believe that's Council Member Hernandez's item. Council Member, go ahead.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I pulled this item to have discussion and to get more clarity on the necessity behind the need to have a program like this. In doing some research, and I was able to find that there was a report from the U.S. Senate. And this report, which took place in 2012, found uncovered staggering deficiencies, rampant secrecy, and violation of civil liberties. More than seven years later, the open government has concluded

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

that not much has changed with this program. Some of the top-level findings are, despite strong criticism and recommendations from the U.S. Senate, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 2012, the fusion centers and federal agencies providing so much of their funding have made few, if any, meaningful improvements to effectiveness and public accountability. The centers, including those in Chicago, Memphis, and Boston, continue to conduct monitoring on activity that should be protected by the First Amendment, including free speech, freedom

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

of religion, freedom of assembly, and freedom of press. Intelligence shared by the fusion center continues to be unreliable and ineffective. do. Rather than limiting the use of sensitive and even potentially abusive new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, facial recognition software used in 10 of the centers, and automated social media monitoring tools, quote unquote, to reduce the risk of terrorism in America, what is done is it's increased the risk of violating Americans' privacy and civil liberties.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

fusion centers and other federal information sharing programs will such tools irresponsibly and far beyond traditional counterterrorism softwares and platforms that we've seen before. So I would like some clarity, Madam City Manager, on what exactly this program will be doing for us.

Council member, I will ask the chief to take that over. It is UASI grant money and your jurisdiction does have a, you receive funding based on the relative risk of your locality. I will mention that when Homeland Security first issued the UASI money, it had substantially

SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPRESS SUPPR or the as known urban area security initiative grant program was established after 9-11 and it

is a regional platform to assist law enforcement local state federal to work together to prepare respond, mitigate, and recover from acts of terrorism. That's its core mission. And so the operational area that we are in is the Santa Ana, Anaheim operational area. So we managed the grant for the entire county. So we are the managing We shift that responsibility every other year.

And so there's training involved. There's tabletop exercises. There's equipment that is provided. Again, there has to be a nexus to preparedness and mitigation response and recovery of terrorism incidents. And so as City Manager said, there was threat assessments that were done across the county, including various facilities that we have here in our city being the core of the county. We have state, federal, and of course our own city government buildings. So that's the purpose of the program.

I will share also that every dollar of the grant is highly scrutinized and goes through a exhaustive approval process counted for. And so that's in summary, that's what the program is. the amount of the grant itself has in fact been reduced significantly. I believe we were in the area of about 15 to 20 million dollars for the operational area,

and that keeps reducing over time. And so if there's any other questions that I can answer, I know you've done some additional research. Fusion centers are a standalone entity. They work obviously together with the Urban Area Initiative and we also have our intelligence centers as well that we work with.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

Thank you. Police Chief Valentin, could you tell me what exactly, in the simplest terms possible for our viewers what exactly will what we get out of this grant yes so Santa

Ana Police Department they actually the grant pays for a sergeant's position that helps me it also covers another civilian staff member assigned to this initiative and then we receive the monies for the training that is provided i mentioned the tactical emergency casualty care the cost for the instructors and then also the equipment that the officers are provided come from this grant and so and then other assets that we need including

any tabletop exercise, those are very exhaustive initiatives that need to be funded, planned and funded correctly with facilities and staff and equipment. And so that's what we receive. We've been a participating partner since the inception of the operational area along with Anaheim.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

Thank you, Police Chief Valentin. will there be with this program increased surveillance for residents in our community

so um i can provide um exactly uh what uh every every dollar is spent here in our city and again um

with the regulations of the grant. And so I definitely can provide you that.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

Thank you, sir. I had a number of concerns and all of them stemmed from data, not because of biases, but because of the facts that I was able to find. The facts were so staggering that we had our senate do an investigation on the effectiveness of this program and in conclusion via the the report it found that a number of these fusion centers continue a cycle of racial and religious profiling and criminalization police chief and instead of

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

addressing problems at the root and when a suspicious activity report is made via law enforcement agency or a private sector or citizen seeing something and saying something this report paves way for law enforcement for this report to investigate and suspicious activity reporting does not meet the standards for search and seizure under the fourth amendment law and law enforcement and citizen bias can guide suspicious

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

just people in law enforcement. My concern is that the very people this target are our most at risk parts of our community where people are, there's not a big difference between being poor and being at the bottom of the pay scale. I mean, that's really is a reality in a lot of our neighborhoods. There's families that are living in poverty and there's families that are low income and it's separated by a couple hundred dollars and um i i would hate to see innocent people be targeted because of a grant like this is that something that you can assure me um

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

you guys will be extra vigilant about or or will there potentially be additional incidents of of increased harassment because of this grant.

So if I may, council member, if maybe you could provide us exact information as to what you're reporting, it sounds like it was almost an audit done of specific localities. So it would be beneficial to us to answer your questions if we knew what report you were referring to.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

Absolutely. The report is called the Federal Support for Injured. It was a majority and minority staff report under the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations through the United States Senate. And this was conducted October 3, 2012. I'd be more than happy to forward it to you, but it is a 141-page document. And it says a lot that this audit, it includes 141 pages of extremely alarming and concerning risk factors.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

I mean, the fact that we could potentially be violating our residents' First Amendment rights, it's a concern that is worth having additional dialogue about.

So if I could just add, if I may, so I think fusion centers are a central data assessment collection point. All right. This urban area security initiative grant, again, is preparedness training equipment personnel to respond, mitigate and recover from acts of terrorism. So those are separate. What you're referring to, Council Member, is a separate standalone platform.

do exist across the country and i'm familiar with the some of the audits that have been done and there's also the orange county intelligence assessment center that we have here in orange county those are separate and aside from from this grant and to your comment also i can assure you that that this grant will not lead to um uh you know surveillance um and these other activities

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

that you mentioned thank you police chief valentine um at this moment um is there any way you can tell me um essentially what the service would be um because i know you mentioned it earlier but i'm still struggling to understand exactly what the grant will accomplish for us so in a nutshell

So this grant is an ongoing initiative to prepare for that unfortunate, and we hope we don't have to live through that again, a potential 9-11 that may occur. And to respect to me to be, well, why do we have to spend all this money, right? And why does it take all this effort and time? because there is extensive exhaustive preparedness that goes into place. There's research that is done. This grant pays for that. There's mitigation plans in the event that were targeted by one of these events again.

So that's an ongoing effort. And I would simply say that it would be responsible for us to continue to invest in this effort, in this initiative. Again, this is separate and aside from your reference to the fusion centers, which are intelligence assessment central points across the country.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

Thank you. That clarification is exactly what I was looking for, Police Chief Valentin. My apologies, Mayor Sabiento. So they are separate, but at any point, will they be working together?

So there is information sharing that occurs from staff that are assigned to the Uwasee grant. They can report information to assessment center. Yes, that certainly can occur. And that can occur by any police officer on the street, by any probation officer, really by anyone who has information thank you police chief valentine thank you council member and um you know just want to remind everybody i i know that these are every issue is complex before us

but maybe um if i could i don't see any of their hands raised but i know that we've received uwasi monies for years right these have been you know especially after uh you know 9 11 they became very a recurring sort of appropriation that most centers like ours uh anaheim because it's a resort area santa anna because it's the county seat we have the federal state and you know governments that are located here in our civic center but i'm sensitive to what the council number was bringing up and i don't mind moving the item but maybe if we can make an amendment um and maybe chief this

is something that can be incorporated into the planning organization equipment training exercise and maybe if there could be an audit or something similar to just a review of how, even though, you know, you said every dollar is...

Because I know that some of the equipment that's used is intelligence gathering, right? Because that's what you do to prevent terrorist acts from happening. I mean, we need to do that. And we know that any efforts like that used for a good purpose lead to good results. to prevent dangerous things from happening as a function. Unfortunately, when they're misused or they're abused, they could be infringements on people's liberties, right? And that's where I think the difficulty or the tension is, but if there's a way that, and I don't know if we've ever done this, reviewed our own practices with these funds.

And I know when, I'm not even sure if it's our turn or if it's Anaheim's turn, but to the extent that we can incorporate that additional element of these funds to kind of revisit what we do and to make sure that everything that we do isn't misused, right? And I'm not sure if that's the point I think the council member was making. I know I tended to hear that. And again, we've never done that with these funds. So I do think that if there has been this much research gathered, we may not find anything, but it just shows the purity of money that is being used solely for that purpose of preventing any terrorist acts or any dangerous

conditions from being in the city as opposed to using it for misuse right or for other purposes that do infringe upon people's liberties that makes sense um i see i see uh what i'm council member fannan maybe uh council member uh hernandez if you want to go ahead and make a motion maybe with that amendment if you want to consider that yes i i would like to make a motion with that

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

MENDAN. HI, THANK YOU SO MUCH MAYOR. I THINK COUNCILMEMBER HERNANDEZ, I THINK THE REPORT THAT YOU HAD MENTIONED WAS ACTUALLY A REVIEW OF DHS AND ITS FAILURE TO CONDUCT OVERSIGHT OVER DIFFERENT FUSION CENTERS. SO IT'S NOT A DIRECT COMMENTARY ON OUR FUSION CENTER OR THAT WE'VE DONE ANYTHING WRONG. IT'S JUST SOME FUSION CENTERS OUT THERE, MAYBE IN IDAHO, IS NOT not doing its job or is lacking capability. I think to the mayor's point and your point, Chief, I would like to see maybe a report. It might be confidential in the sense that there might be security issues,

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

but just to get a sense of how we're using it. I know that there's been, for example, law enforcement does check public accounts unless there's a judicial warrant that permits it. THAT'S NOT A VIOLATION OF ANYONE'S FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT. IF IT'S OUT THERE IN THE WORLD AND WHATNOT, BUT THAT'S A PART OF SECURITY THREAT ANALYSIS. IF IT'S, YOU KNOW THERE'S GOING TO BE A KKK, A NEONAZI RALLY LIKE IN HUNTINGTON BEACH, THOSE ARE THREAT ASSESSMENTS THAT THESE KINDS OF PROGRAMS HELP PAY FOR IN CASE THE HUNTINGTON

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

Beach Police Department needs our help in making sure, you know, any crime or the protest gets out of hand. So I think it'd be really helpful to see that. But I did want to mention that, you know, the report, I think, was more about the failure of DHS to oversee what, you know, how they're spending federal funds. But because they're out there and because, you know, again, we want to use the Fed's money rather than our own when training and cooperating with other agencies in these threat assessments um i'd rather be spending someone else's dollars rather than our own and if we want

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

to have more stringent policies on what we want to be able to use it for i think that's something as the mayor said we can look into and i'd like to see that or options for for doing that would

be really great thank you for those comments council member uh council member hernandez do you wanna craft your motion?

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

Yes, I would like to present a motion with the amendment that Mayor Sarmiento had proposed.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

That is all.

All right, so I'll go ahead and second it. And basically I think is inserting into the elements of the UASI funding, it would fund a report that would maybe review the use of the funding. And again, to Council Member Fant's point, I don't think there is a direct link in any report showing that there's been misappropriation, misuse, or abuse of the funds. But I think what it does is it has us go back and reflect how are we actually implementing these funds. And I think since we haven't done that in a while, maybe it's not a bad moment to do that.

so um that would be my hopefully my my clumsy way of um trying to tailor that uh that that motion but uh seeing no other hands unless there's any other comments i'll go ahead and ask the city clerk to

go ahead and call roll council member becerra yes council member hernandez yes council member lopez yes council member Mendoza yes council member fan yes mayor pro tempeñalosa yes

that goes ahead that goes ahead and that brings us to the business calendar items uh starting with item number 20 which is the fiscal year budget workshop session and i'll turn it over to the

city manager okay um thank you mayor council members so for this item and it is certainly not the first time that the budget's going to before you this is the first of many times that will return in front of you um we first brought the budget before you in march with just some preliminary numbers your finance director katherine's down is going to give a presentation and she's going to walk you through our best projections briefly touch on arpa and tell you what all the next steps are as with always anytime we are discussing the budget in front of you

we certainly are looking for your direction on it and as mentioned you will have multiple times also in the future to provide detailed direction but with that i will turn it over to katherine downs

madam city manager good evening mayor and city council members and the public On March 16th, we presented preliminary expectations for next fiscal year. This agenda item includes more developed information,

additional opportunity to provide us with direction with the draft budget. The city council can expect to receive the detailed draft budget document with your May 18th agenda.

My presentation tonight includes updates for the American Rescue Plan Act and the current year budget through March 31st, information for the fiscal year 21-22 draft budget, and the status of the pension debt refinancing project.

public outreach this year includes gathering public opinion for the city's 142.9 million allocation from the federal american rescue plan act there was a community budget meeting on march 25th in compliance with the sunshine ordinance an online survey went live on april 23rd and as the city manager mentioned previously, the public...

We have another community meeting planned for next week and we will follow the city council's direction on improving our public outreach during the rest of this process. In addition to that, the city council will have had five public meetings with budget items on their agenda.

So as you heard from the city manager earlier this evening, we expect to present a proposed split spending plan for Revive Santa Ana on May 18th after we have guidelines from the US Department of Treasury and public input from the public opinion survey. We've divided the proposed spending plan into two expected allocations of approximately at least $71.5 million each.

At March 31st, we have typically received between seven and eight months of general fund revenue. Therefore, our year-to-day receipts are in line with our expectations. As part of the report, we provided updated revenue estimates. We have only one update from the mid-year report. More than one-third of business tax revenue is collected in March of each year, and receipts were better than expected. So as you can see on this slide, to date, we've actually collected more than $10 million

dollars of business license tax revenue and we had updated our revenue estimate previously to 9.3 million so we're going to do better than that

at march 31st we could expect spending to range from 67 to 70 percent of the budget considering we continue to pay invoices after june 30. however we do make advance payments to Orange County fire and the pension debt which means the year-to-date general fund spending at 72 aligns perfectly with our expectations

at march 31st we had 133 vacant positions there are 101 vacant positions allocated to the general fund but 37 of them are subject to the hiring freeze therefore of the 133 funded vacancies 64 are allocated to the general fund so you can see in this slide the general fund vacancies of 101 less the hiring freeze of 37 is how i get to the 64 vacancies in the general fund

In summary, we expect to have 12.8 million in general fund available at June 30 to help balance the fiscal year 21-22 budget or next fiscal year's budget. Now that's the estimated general fund balance in excess of the policy reserve requirement. So we expect to end with 70.9 million. Our reserve policy requires 18% of our revenue to be set aside.

Our annual revenue, that's 58.1 million. And so we have an estimated available balance for helping to budget next, or helping to balance next year's budget of 12.8 million. Now this, there are three factors that drive the estimated available balance. $3 million of favorable budget variances from last fiscal year, $2.7 million of unspent general fund money that was previously set aside in a fiscal year 14-15 aims fund,

and the increased sales tax revenue estimate that we provided you with the mid-year report in February, mitigated by the increase to the reserve.

Many of our capital projects require multiple years to construct. It is completely normal to have large unspent appropriation.

The expected carryover from the current fiscal year to the next may be as much as $200 million, and we expect to request City Council approval in September.

The next part of the presentation shifts focus to the next year's fiscal budget, 21-22. We have an estimated structural imbalance of more than $14 million. Now, this means that we expect our recurring revenue to be $14 million less than our recurring costs to maintain service levels and comply with contractual requirements. As noted previously, we expect to have 12.8 million available at June 30 to help balance the budget. A proposed hiring freeze smaller in scope than the current year hiring freeze will help

close the gap. The draft budget includes a 4.5% increase for Orange County fire.

and the cost of redistricting.

The draft expenditure budget has been set at pre-pandemic spending levels, but we have assumed only a partial recovery of revenue losses due to the pandemic.

The draft budget includes a $1.1 million subsidy for the train station, as well as new park facility attendance and a new platform to communicate with our residents. We have included the increase to the pension debt payment as required by CalPERS. However, we have not yet included any potential savings from the pension debt refinancing. The refinancing is likely to take place in the fall and we need to move further through the process before we can provide more accurate savings estimates. It's important to note the

draft budget does not include any increases for employee compensation that come from future labor negotiations. This is our draft 10-year outlook for the general fund. Staff will update the outlook as the draft budget evolves over the next several meetings. We take the draft budget and apply quantifiable future impacts and CPI increases as forecasted by the California Department of Finance. You can see the impact of paying off the police building debt in 2024

and the measure X rate reduction in 2029. In the short term, we can continue to expect a small budget deficit of roughly 2% to 4%, which can be offset by actual revenues in excess of our conservative estimates, an increased tax base from new development, and spending less than the full amount of each adopted budget.

Your Measure X oversight committee met on March 10th and developed their annual recommendations for the budget. The overarching recommendations are included here and your printed staff report includes detailed versions of these recommendations.

So in general, the committee recommends favor one-time spending for Measure X revenue, consider pilot programs to reduce reliance on swarm police for some types of response and community cooperatives for economic development prepare a long-term plan to prepare for the measure x rate reduction in 2029 shift measure x revenue to fixing streets Use Measure X revenue to increase or, I'm sorry, use the Measure X revenue increase to reduce the reliance on the general fund reserve to preserve service levels.

Use the pandemic as an opportunity to identify lessons learned and shifting priorities. And finally, the committee supports dedicated Measure X spending accounts within the general fund and we'll be set we've already set those up for the next year budget to make our reporting and auditing process

each year we propose a budget with spending aligned to the measure x ballot categories now we expect to receive 65 million of measure x revenue next fiscal fiscal year but the measure Director X aligned spending in the draft budget, total 78.4 million.

Our draft budget also includes 78 million of new capital spending. More than half is for utility drainage and lighting improvements. And a quarter of the spending is for street improvements. Staff based the proposed spending on the availability of restricted revenue. The city council will have more detailed information on May 18th.

This is a status of the pension debt refinancing project. We've already completed the light gray steps on this slide, which include the competitive proposals for underwriters, filing for the judicial validation and interviewing potential underwriters. At your next meeting, we will ask the city council to consider proposed underwriters for the refinancing.

For the next steps in our budget process, the city council can expect to see the detailed draft budget on the May 18th agenda, as well as the proposed spending plan to revive Santa Ana with the city's American Rescue Plan Act allocation. The City Council schedule includes the budget public hearing on June 1st and adoption of the budget ordinance on June 15th. And that concludes my presentation and we're ready to answer your questions and take any further direct from the City Council.

Thank you, Director Downs. let me go ahead and bring it back to the council that was an excellent presentation i think it was high level enough for us to understand um there's a lot more detail a lot more um minutia involved in that but i think what it does is it gives us a broad high level understanding of what funds we're looking at and and that so let me go ahead and bring it back to the council to see if if there's any questions from members. Colleagues, any questions for Director Downs?

I wasn't sure if I was on mute, but I think everybody heard me, so. Council Member Lopez, go ahead.

Jessie LopezItem 20

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Director Downs, to the presentation. This is a very big item. There's a lot of things here. And I saw your presentation on Comlink, and I thought you did a really good job as well. I guess, you know, starting with the American Rescue Plan, you know, I've said this before, I'm supportive of the Public Health Agency study. I would want to hear a little bit more about the equity and inclusion potential hire here. I think that sometimes it's very easy for corporations to hire, you know, with the best

Jessie LopezItem 20

intentions um but achieving equity is something that um can be incredibly hard if there's no real uh strategic plan for it and so um i do want to know you know if if there's going to be an anonymous survey that's going to be distributed to staff so that city staff like at the at the highest levels can understand what about the workplace culture needs to change what how equity needs to be achieved here in the city um so i think that there's a lot of questions and concerns

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around that um specific uh role um in terms of the digital billboards i do i'm supportive of it you can make some money off of them um in terms of sanitation i would like for the city to kind of pivot instead of spending money on sanitizing spaces maybe we can invest in getting some n95 masks um you know just reading things online and don't know how effective sanitation um is and i think that the n95 mask is probably a better investment for the city and probably a

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better resource for our community as well and let's see I would like to know I saw that there was a line item regarding replacing park restrooms and that's really nice to see I was wondering if we can possibly loop in maybe building a restroom in the parks like Marbury Park it doesn't have one and people need to have the ability to wash their hands and use the bathroom when they're enjoying the public spaces also i think um the other line item regarding the new library um i think that we should work to restore the mcfadden library i think it's probably the most cost-effective

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option that we have it's already built um if we're serious about creating other um outlets for people who for people who participated with the library to run out of space um and bring a library to them on I think that that would be a really great attraction for kids as well and we need to work with SAUSD so that we can use the resources that they have and they have a lot of libraries and so I'm looking forward to hopefully building that partnership and also for the community center renovations that's really important but we need to also make sure that we have the staff

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to actually be present at the community centers and on the jail director downs I I have a couple questions and I'm actually not even sure if you're the appropriate point of person for me to direct them to, but I'm going to ask them.

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When we ended our ICE contract, essentially that left an empty module, did it not?

I am going to let the chief jump in here to answer these questions, but in short answer. and used uh module at this point but i'll i'll let the chief finish that up with a fuller answer

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okay um so is there any staff in that empty module

okay uh councilwoman lopez if i may uh i can jump in here uh so there is no staff in in the one empty module and um so our goal is is to hire the staff that we need to open up that module that has been our our ongoing goal and we have um a working relationship with the u.s marshals to house those individuals once we hire the staff needed and we've hired staff and what's happened

as there's been this natural attrition that's gone on and so that's that's where we are okay

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and um i we're expanding the jail correctly or what i'm sorry what did you say we're expanding

the jail expanding the jail uh so the staff so that we can fill the last remaining mod which would bring in additional revenue so they the we're not expanding the

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imprint of the jail itself okay are we creating any more modules we're looking

to fill a module yes and in order to do that we need to hire the appropriate staff ratio to do that so the imprint of the jail is what it is we cannot expand it any further in terms of the total capacity right we have one empty mod in order to fill that mod with inmates we need to hire the appropriate ratio of staff to do that safely okay thank you

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because i did hear that we were expanding it and i was um i was a little concerned because the jail doesn't make any money for the city of sanana it's basically a money pit and any fiscal watchdog would tell you that so i was concerned as to why we would make take that step because it wasn't a financially responsible thing to do and I do think that the jail also contributes to our quality of life issues in terms of you know how people are released into our community oh I don't think that

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we should be expanding in the jail but that is because I heard it was being expanded so thank you for the clarification um i also just like you know um don't think that we should be in the for profit profit prison business um and i think you know the number one concern for me um looking at the financials is again that the jail it doesn't make any money for the city of sanayana and it's actually really concerning to hear that it may pay off um that we may break even which is not good

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And so I think, you know, it's concerning for everyone to see that we're going to pay it off in four years. But even then, right, as I said, we may break even. So I think it's financially concerning for me. And this is why I keep talking about this, because if you ask anyone, you know, I think the resounding answer would be why are we in this.

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Chief, do we at this moment contract or do business with the U.S. Marshals?

With the U.S. Marshals? Yes. Yes.

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And so do the U.S. Marshals essentially hold people that are waiting their immigration cases?

No.

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So what do we use the U.S. Marshals for?

So they're either pre-trial or already convicted.

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Okay.

We don't hold anyone for any immigration status violation.

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Okay. Thank you for clarifying that for me. Yes. And let's see. Another thing that I read in the report, and Chief, I think that's going to be the end of my concerns regarding the jail portion in the stock report. And so the Measure X committee made a recommendation that we should be working with local cooperatives and I fully

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are a federally recognized legit business. They were the probably the only business that was able to withstand any, you know, any revenue loss. and they were actually some some cooperatives were able to hire people so i've said this before we should be working and partnering with our local cooperatives here and so i'm very happy to see that the measure x committee made that recommendation and also um i think that when we talk about there was a line item in terms of of supporting our businesses i think that we should hire an

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economic development specialist that will focus on all Santa Ana businesses that is not the model that we work under right now we're very much focused on downtown Santa Ana and I don't think that's very fair to be honest we have great businesses all over the city that need our support that need us to uplift them that needs that need you know that that needs the city support to share them and so I think that and I talked about this before so many people rely on Facebook to sell their goods and I think the city is missing out on a

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great opportunity to help build out our local market we have an opportunity to create spaces you know in public spaces right now that are not being used to create Microsoft throughout the city. We can use the Santa Ana Regional Center, we can use the Plaza and the Riverview Marketplace. The corner of Bristol and First has huge unused lock next to shopping centers and we can make use of that space to bring in you know Santa Ana residents that are essentially trying to build out their small businesses and they too need our support. And so we have jurisdiction over these locations.

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And I think that our local Santaneros who are trying to make a living, we should help expand their business. And I think that we also need to expand how we think of our small businesses and what businesses we deserve to,

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and what businesses we deserve or choose to support.

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Education, Mayor Samantha talked about this earlier and the caller Victor, if I'm not mistaken, also mentioned the rates, how high they are for our elderly population, which is really, really fantastic to see. But the county data does show you that when you look at the breakdown of 18 to 24 year year-old people here in the county, it's the lowest. And people between the age of like 45 to 60, it's also very low. And I definitely understand the low breakdown, like the low percentage for

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18 to 24 because they were the last population to essentially have access to the vaccine. But when we're doing this targeted outreach, or when we're doing this outreach, we should really target these populations um and so that that really means doing meaningful targeting that way we're getting to as many people that we can that have not chosen to get vaccinated for whatever reason and i think that's going to be my commentary for now thank you thank you council member and i

know that um you know we impose limits on ourselves this is a bigger item just because it involves a budget it's you know it's got it's so multi-layered right so um let's let's give each other a little bit of let's indulge each other a little bit more and give each other a little bit more space see it again and again um you know this is first impression stuff so uh let's let's go ahead and be flexible um so uh councilmember fan go ahead thank you for saying that right before the

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lawyer. Just kidding. First of all, Director Down, thank you so much. I always enjoy your presentations. I definitely know it out. So just a few things. I really appreciate the ARPA spending plan kind of outlined here. I want to say that all of these are great ideas. I know we're not going to be able to do all of it, but just to have ideas on paper that we can talk about is really great. But I want to reiterate, as I've stated before, both in public and in private, that

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none of these can truly happen in a way that is reflective of our community, the diversity, the equity that we're fighting for, the inclusion that we're fighting for, if we can't who don't speak English. And, you know, for a long time in Santa Ana, we didn't have Spanish translation for a lot of items and the community fought for it and I was elected as the first Vietnamese American on this council to fight for the Vietnamese community, the Asian community, and so I would hope that as we move forward in looking at how to use these dollars that we also

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invest in staff who are capable of you know speaking the language, reading, writing, translating on the fly. I think that city staff has been incredible with all the additional duties that you've been taking on to deal with COVID and financial assistance programs, rental assistance programs, partnering with organizations and universities and schools and all of that stuff. But at the end of the day, there's a big language gap because that is not historically something we have prioritized not with malicious intent it's just sometimes if you don't see it you don't do

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it and i really hope that we do invest in that language capability and someone who's able to do outreach

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you know san yana probably has the highest concentration of vietnamese buddhist temples potentially vietnamese catholic churches do we have relationships with them are we going out there to help vaccinate folks who go to those locations? Are we working with Vietnamese language organizations? How much are we working with the Cambodian family located here in Santa Ana? How much are we working with, you know, all of these API organizations? Because I know we work a lot with Latino health access, OCORD, OCO, and all these other organizations that have been incredible

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with doing one-on-one, you know, individualized community outreach to our Latino populations. So I really hope that both staff and my colleagues support an individual or many individuals who are capable of doing that work because me alone is not going to get to the 25,000 plus Vietnamese residents in our city. So that's, you know, my first and you will hear me make that call time and again because I do think it's the right thing for us to do. THE SECOND THING IS I AM QUITE WORRIED ABOUT THE MEASURE X FUND.

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I REALLY APPRECIATE THE MEASURE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE KIND OF LAYING OUT SOME IDEAS FOR US. IT'S NO SECRET I DIDN'T VOTE FOR MEASURE X. I DIDN'T THINK IT WAS EQUITABLE AND I DIDN'T THINK THAT IT WAS PUT TO THE USES THAT RESIDENTS THOUGHT THEY WERE GOING TO BE USED FOR NECESSARILY. and now we're kind of in a bind, right? Where we committed short-term funding for funding increases for something that was perpetual. So I do support ideas such as community-based professionals to respond to, for example,

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our houses' residents, residents who need mental health services. So hiring social workers instead of police officers potentially or social workers who can be trained in a way to address, you know, significant events. That is something that does occur all the time. And I think that that's something we can definitely do.

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I think other things, I would like us to avoid using Measure X revenue to fix streets. I get where that's coming from, but I think ARR funding is pretty, seems pretty clear that dollars might be coming down the pipeline, whether through the infrastructure plan or potentially through ARP.

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So that would be, you know, something I want to avoid with measure X. I think it's, it'll also behoove us to look at how to deal with a structural deficit. I am really concerned about that because it'll only get worse. And I know it's not fun. It's not fun to say how do we balance this budget, but I don't want the next council to come in five or 10 or 20 years, whatever, you know, down the line and then be stuck with a sack of rotten potatoes. I don't say potatoes because everyone

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loves potatoes. And I think finally, I want to really reiterate the emphasis for open space and facilities funding. You know, we've spoken ad nauseum on this council and residents have spoken ad nauseum about the need for open space and how rare that is in our community. We had a caller talk about climate issues. We have residents talking about overcrowding. And you know, open space is really something that is going to address both of those mental

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mental health for our residents, physical health, psychological well-being, and the future of the city. And I'm really glad that while we've gotten some grant dollars to work with Santa Anita and some other parks, I really think that if possible with these ARP dollars to really invest big in purchasing land or upgrading facilities because that I feel is what I've heard our residents time and again ask for. Because with high density that wasn't planned,

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you know, through overcrowding or cost of housing, open space is truly a rarity here in our city. And just because it was mentioned earlier, Centennial Park, which is in Ward 1, I don't know what our plans are for that pond. But just to throw it out there, I'm not against filling it to make it actual green space. Because right now I don't think it actually serves any purpose. And even if we, you know, updated or renovated it, it still would be unusable space, because no one can actually go there and swim or feed something like that.

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I guess finally with staffing, I'm really concerned with the lack of public works staff. I feel like in our city, you know, we hear time and again problems with the streets, problems with graffiti, problems with the pipelines and, you know, all of the things in public works is really a core function of what cities do. and I'm worried that we don't have investment in our employees and staff. That's yes, the highest cost, but also the thing that is going to ensure we provide the services that we need. So I would like to see that so that we can actually,

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make the improvements that we need to see the city move forward. So with that, I will turn it over back to the mayor. Thank you.

Thank you, council member for those comments. Let me go ahead and see if there's anybody else that would like to ask the question or make some comments. Council members, anybody else?

All right, seeing that, let me go ahead and a couple of quick comments. I appreciate the remarks that were made before. Please, Daisy, cut me off if I'm going too long because I can be long-winded. I appreciated what was said earlier by both council members. Mine are more kind of broad. On the American Rescue Plan funding, I just want us to go back and think about what these money help those communities that were impacted by COVID and the pandemic and the consequences. So we should be looking at

to make sure that those parts of our city, and we know what they are. I mean, we can go down the census tracts to the neighborhoods, to the zip codes that were most impacted. So to the extent that we deliver these resources to those families and those communities, I think that's what the, you know, this isn't being compassionate. This is the legislative intent behind this stimulus from Congress. so um that i think is something really important to do i really appreciated the comments on you know what we might be able to do is you know with these one-time monies is you know acquisition of

property for underperforming hotels that can be turned into housing those are two huge purposes that the city can benefit from you know not only in this market but having these one-time funds available um the i know that we aren't considering what the impact is of the pension refinancing on the budget but i do think it will have a positive impact going forward so um i know that it's good not to include it because hopefully that'll be a net benefit to what we're doing as we go as we go

down the line i did see um an expense of potential future expense for redistricting um so i'm glad that was included one thing we might want to consider is we know that there will be a recall that is going to qualify on the ballot coming before us on in the fall we may want to budget and it's not going to be that large for that special election to see if we want to include some charter amendments on that i know we've discussed that before but maybe there's you know there's an a line item there that we can include for that because it is something that um you know we've tried in the past.

This time it'll be less expensive to move on that, knowing that there is gonna be a ballot before us. So that's something I would have us consider. My question, I guess, would be, as we talk about infrastructure, and I think it was mentioned before, we have it included in the recovery rescue plan, a spending plan. And, you know, there is an effort, obviously, in Congress. It's probably going to be less than what was proposed, but there'll be an infrastructure, it appears.

So to the extent that we expend money on infrastructure, can we have any of that reimbursed or recovered if we do get some monies intended specifically for infrastructure from Congress? So that's just something we could, you know, if we can research. I know the guidelines are going to be, we're still waiting for the Department of Treasury for those to be handed down, but that might be a question for us to consider. The other one is I think, you know, what was mentioned on staffing, you know, staffing for a person who can, you know, reach all our diverse communities, but I just think staffing

for the council is really in need of some improvement because I know that, you know, we lean on our executive assistants pretty heavy. And that's their role is to be policy analysts. And we do need to have other staff that are exclusive to the council because directors have to take care of their departments and answer to the city manager. But the council really does need to have staff that can help us navigate some of these really complex issues. If you check cities of our size, either they're fully, you know, council member positions

and or staff, right? They have staff members assigned. So I think, you know, I'd be willing to forego with the compensation just so long as we get some help because I know that many of us have, you know, day jobs and are, you know, have other responsibilities. And to the extent that we want to make well-informed decisions and good things happen, you know, we need to have that ability to do that so um you know on measure x thank you to the oversight committee i really like point number two and point number five um so uh those i'm very um you know

i'm very supportive of and i really appreciate uh you know the time that uh the committee took to do that so last item is um on tca on the transportation corridor agency i know that we've been a member agency or a member city of that agency for years to Foothill and the other one, I forget what the other one's 241, one's 261, I think, Foothill East and then the other one. But we pay into it. And those toll roads don't go anywhere near our city. So I know we have development impact fees that we pay and others have to pay into that.

So if we could, I know, I think some of the things that we're going to do is San Clemente is looking at also pulling away from that. And I'll defer to Mayor Pro Tem because I know he sits on that board, but it's not a reflection of anything except for, is that money well spent? Is that something that our residents benefit from? And I think it might not be a bad idea for us just to revisit our relationship with the agency and make sure that whatever fees we pay into, whatever benefit we garner makes sense. So just something for us to consider. And that'll be the end of my comments on that. So let me go ahead and bring it back

to see if there's anybody else. If not, I'll go ahead and entertain a motion.

Or is this just simply to provide direction? Do we need an item?

Yes sir, you do not need to take a motion. It's just to conduct the workshop. So no motion needed, but I certainly appreciate all of your input and I think your past leadership and what we've heard from the community certainly did help to craft the areas of focus. I do want to caution I'm a little bit nervous in the Treasury. I'm just hoping that some of the ideas that you do agree with and you want us to pursue will be in compliance with those spending guidelines but we hope to know

that information by your next meeting well we know this is all conceptual and it's going to be it's going to depend on what the you know what what's handed down from you know from the department treasury we'll we'll go ahead and you know uh overlay that with you know some of what's been suggested so we appreciate the advanced uh notice on that so uh i hopefully you know those the direction that was given by council members was clear obviously other council members should be continuing to review and comment to you and your staff so let's go ahead and move along to the next

item which is item number 21 that is the resolution on the vision act and i'll go ahead and bring it back to the city manager and if there was any any comments you'd like to make on that well no

actually sir this was your requested item um we do have a presentation on it or if you you wanted to just introduce and talk about it yourself because i know it was through your request that we were able to get this resolution

but he wants to see a a presentation on this or is everybody comfortable with just going straight

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into discussion any any thoughts and mr mayor i i'd like to see a presentation please got it

go ahead madam city manager if you have a brief presentation on it that's great

Okay. Daniel Soto will be providing the presentation.

Thank you, Christine. And good evening, Mayor and City Council. Just a second. We have a brief presentation for you tonight on a resolution supporting Assembly Bill 937, also known as the Division Act. This resolution was brought forward to the City Council at the request of Mayor Sarmiento.

The Division Act, which stands for the Voiding Inequality and Seeking Inclusion for Immigrant Neighbors Act, would accomplish the following. It would prohibit any state or local agency from arresting or assisting with the arrest, confinement, detention, transfer, interrogation or deportation of an individual for an immigration enforcement purpose. It would prohibit state or local agencies or courts from using immigration status, denial of probation or participation in any diversion or rehabilitation program or to lengthen the portion of supervision serving custody.

The bill would authorize a person to bring an action for equitable or declaratory release against the state or local agency or official that violates the provisions of the Vision Act. It would also repeal provisions that require the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation or the state's prison system to identify inmates who are undocumented and subject to deportation. And finally this bill would repeal provisions that require a record, criminal record information systems to collect place of birth of individuals. How is the Vision Act similar

to the Santa Ana Sanctuary Ordinance which was adopted by the City Council in January 2017? Similar to the Santa Ana Sanctuary Ordinance, the Vision Act prohibits local law enforcement from arresting or assisting with the arrest confinement detention transfer interrogation or deportation of an individual for an immigration enforcement purpose. Our sanctuary ordinance generally prohibits the use of city resources for immigration enforcement and specifically this includes arresting these two provisions overlap.

And how are they different and how would the Vision Act impact Santa Ana? Unlike our sanctuary ordinance, the Vision Act does create a private right of action. This means that a person may bring an action for equitable or declaratory release against the local government or official that violates the Vision Act. And that means that agencies or officials would be liable for damages and reasonable attorney's fees. From time to time, the City Council may take positions on legislative bills, so long as they are consistent with the legislative platform.

And this bill does align with our platform on the Immigrant Rights Initiative, which reads, support state and federal legislation that recognizes liberty, equal rights, pathway to citizenship, and due process for all individuals, regardless of immigration status. and we're going to be able to do that. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Daniel. And so let me go ahead and bring it back to the council. And thank you all for indulging me and bringing this before us. I know that it's making its way through the different committees up in Sacramento. I want to thank Councilmember Fan for help drafting some of the language,

looking at some of the legislative history and intent. we were both at a press conference earlier today supporting you know the public's effort to bring this forward this is really an effort that was brought by the community so i don't want to take any uh you know uh you know more credit than anything else i think this is more the public's outcry to make sure that good legislation is passed and this is very consistent as was shown with our sort of legislative history with sanctuaries, with the sanctuary city policy. And what we can't do as local government, the state legislature,

simply want to be supportive of those legislative efforts. I should mention that I did, I think, make a comment at the last meeting that I want to create a legislative ad hoc for these very reasons, because a lot of bills, grants, monies are going to be made available to us as a city and i want us to have a legislative ad hoc that can be a little bit more nimble on some of these and be able to support oppose pursue monies that are available at the federal and state level so i do have one taker i think uh council member fernandez responded and said he's willing to join me on that legislative ad hoc

so if anybody else wants to join please

I don't feel that committee until somebody else comes on board if there is any intent. But I'm certainly supportive of the efforts of this bill. I think what it really articulately by members of the public

penalized twice folks who have been incarcerated. and you know it it does prevent families from being separated harsh deportations and this is consistent again with another policy that we have which is you know funding our deportation defense fund which provides due process for many of our families that are facing deportation and we know that as a community this is an immigrant community more than 51 percent more than 50 of our residents are foreign born so we know this will have a positive impact in their lives since the sanctuary city policy has been adopted by this council we know that people are

living in less fear they come forward to be witnesses to also go forward and you know make uh complaints when they've been um when they've been assaulted as well so these are all good things that we want our community to not live in fear to not feel that they can't um you know

to rely on the same protections that everybody has so to the extent that uh you know i wanted it to come before us so we can take action consider it um i certainly appreciate the opportunity to bring that for us i see a couple of hands raised let me go ahead and go to the go to the um council for some additional comments i'll start with council member fanden and your

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Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for agreeing to put this on the agenda. I know that, again, it was definitely community-led, and I am fully supportive of the Vision Act. I have worked in the immigration space as an attorney doing pro bono work, and I know firsthand what it feels like to be afraid of being deported or wonder what your family WILL LOOK LIKE IF YOU WERE DEPORTED BECAUSE MY PARENTS AND I ARE NOT, YOU KNOW, WE WERE NOT BORN HERE. WE WERE GREEN CARD HOLDERS UNTIL I WAS 16, BUT MY SISTER WAS BORN HERE. AND SO IT IS NOT BEYOND THE

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REALM OF POSSIBILITY THAT IF MY PARENTS HAVE DONE SOMETHING WRONG OR WHATEVER THE SITUATION MAY BE, THAT WE COULD HAVE BEEN SEPARATED. SO I'VE BEEN IN THAT SPACE. AND I WANTED TO ALSO TO MAKE A comment on the presentation. Thank you so much to Daniel for doing that. Also add that under current law, state law and local sanctuary ordinance, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is exempt. They are currently free to work with ICE and transfer people TO ICE. AND THAT IS WHY WE HAVE EXPERIENCED DEPORTATIONS OF, YOU KNOW, CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS

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WHO ARE EITHER UNDOCUMENTED OR GREEN CARD HOLDERS WHO HAVE COMMITTED CRIMES. ONE EXAMPLE IS ANG TAN WU ING, WHO IS A VIEUTENAMESE REFUGEE WHO SERVED 20 YEARS IN PRISON. HE SERVED HIS ENTIRE SENTENCE. HE SERVED HIS TIME. HE CORRECTED HIS ACTIONS AND HE WAS REHABILITATED. But instead of being reunited with his family who lived here in Orange County, he was transferred to ICE detention and subject to removal to a country, to Vietnam, where he hadn't been since he was a child.

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where his father was imprisoned for four years for fighting for the South Vietnamese Army and fighting alongside American soldiers for the ideals of freedom and democracy. And where his family fled to give them an opportunity and a better life. I CAN'T IMAGINE A CRUELER PUNISHMENT FOR SOMEONE WHO HAS IN FACT PAID THEIR DEBT AND DONE WHAT WE'VE ASKED OF THEM ONLY TO BE SUBJECTED TO POTENTIALLY LIFE-THREATENING SITUATIONS IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY. So I want to make sure that the Cal Free Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation as well as the

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juvenile system are also beholden to these rules that we say it is not okay to expend state tax dollars to do the federal government's bidding which sometimes if it's under someone like you know our former president is cruel and other times sometimes maliciously so and sometimes you know, ultimately so. And I also want to say that for those who are, you know, concerned that this will be an increase in crime, I don't think we've seen any statistic to say that is true. In fact, it's the opposite where people can

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are willing to report sexual assaults, are willing to report wage theft, are willing to report crimes, you know, gang crimes and things like that. That ensures our communities are safer. And so I really urge my council colleagues and especially our state, you know, representatives, our senator and assembly members to support this item because it will make Santa Ana and the state of California safer for all residents. And really I think make us the golden state that we claim to be. Thanks.

Thank you, council member Pham. Thank you for those comments. Mayor Pro Tem.

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Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento and councilwoman Pham

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for the comments. I wanted to see if I could add a section to the ordinance or the resolution, I'm sorry,

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that highlights that the city of Santa Ana has been and is a sanctuary city that already,

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locally, I don't think we give ourselves credit in the resolution. I think we should. There should be a section in there that you know talks about that maybe something that is in like whereas the city of san and as a sanctuary city and it has been since i believe 2017 whereas because of our sanctuary status the san and the police department does not cooperate or work with any immigration enforcement agency something along those lines that could highlight the fact that we are this this is consistent with our practice here locally uh would be um nice to add

MR PRICE, Great comment, Mayor Pro Tem. I think that makes a lot of sense because it shows that there is – this isn't a departure from what we've done, and if anything, I think it highlights the fact that this is done to the benefit of our community and we haven't seen crime spike as a result of anything. We've had people, I think as was said, come out of the shadows and be witnesses, is feel much more comfortable

with law enforcement when it comes to reporting the crimes. So that would be, if you'd like to move or make a friendly amendment, I don't think there's a motion on the floor. I would defer, unless there's any other comments, let me go ahead and just circle back to the council. Any members of the council wish to comment further on this? Council Member Lopez. Yes.

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Thank you Mayor Sambiento and thank you Council Member Fan for your work here, your leadership and supporting the vision act. And I just want to say that I support it as well. Thank you.

Great, thank you Council Member Lopez. Any other members of the council wish to comment on the side?

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

Mayor, if not, oh, I was just gonna say, if not, I would love to make a motion and incorporate Mayor Pro Tem's wonderful comments. We should definitely highlight the fact that we are a leader in this space and that we have you know the defense fund and that we are the best sanctuary city in the state and the first ones to do it that's what i'll claim the city

attorney can check me on that there we go that's a great motion with the amendment offered by mayor pro tem mayor pro tem do you want to second that yeah i'll second mr mayor okay sounds good we have motion and a second with the amendment made uh uh madam clerk will you please call roll council

member becerra yes council member hernandez yes council member lopez yes council member mendoza yes council member fan yes mayor potent penalosa yes and mayor sarmiento yes thank you everybody

Thank you for that item. Moving along to the next section and portion of our meeting, the public hearings. Let me go ahead before we move on item number 22, let me go ahead and call on Madam Clerk to provide some instructions to members of the public who wish to comment on these public hearing items only.

If there are any members of the public who would like to make a comment for only public hearing item 22.

from Zoom now. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. So this is a time and place for the public hearing to approve the fiscal year budget 2021-2022 annual action plan and budgets for the community development block grant, home investment partnerships grant and ESG and authorized submission to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. So we will now go ahead and I'm going to do things a little out of order. Madam Clerk, I'm going to go ahead and just open the public hearing at this point and ask the city manager or staff if there's a presentation to be made to the council.

Yes, Mayor. I will turn it over to Judson who will provide the information on this public hearing item.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. We do not have a presentation on this item, but this is the annual approval of our annual action plan submission to HUD. The deadline for the submission is 45 days before the end of our fiscal year, which is May 15th. We approve the annual action plan tonight. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Judson. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the council to see if there are any questions or comments on this item.

Council member Lopez, I see your hand raised.

Jessie LopezItem 22

Yes, thank you, Mayor. I just want to say, thank you very much for all of the work here. I think it's great, but as we begin to prepare for next year, even though we're, but anyways, yeah, as we begin to prepare for next year, one of the things that I would like to discuss or have a conversation about is how we can move like some of this TDPG money around. I really am interested and, you know, targeting the neighborhoods in our city that have consistent issues. I'm sure that I'm not the only one that's very frustrated with the violent crime in our city.

Jessie LopezItem 22

And I think that there's enough data out there for us to really support, you know, crime prevention programs and really target um you know perfect folks that are out committing crimes but also the victims of crimes and um unfortunately people's realities it has an impact in their in their future um and we need crisis intervention here um we need to target neighborhoods in collaboration with with chief valentine i am hoping chief that he will be open to this and and working with us. And so, we need to get kids at a very young age.

Jessie LopezItem 22

And so that they understand that they have options in life. And so, this is gonna hopefully be an effort that everybody is supportive of because we need to save lives here. And so I am interested in having that conversation to see how we can shift money around. Thank you.

Thank you, council member. Madam clerk, I should have asked you this before I brought it back to the council because I always feel that the public should be.

So maybe we can move that around for the next, I'll do that for the next public hearing that we have before us. But are there any members of the public that wish to address this on the side?

Thank you, Mayor. So you're opening the public hearing at this time? Is that correct?

I opened it before, you know, staff even made a presentation. I'd rather open it so the public hearing incorporates the presentation, incorporates the public comments, and incorporates the comments from the council.

okay thank you so we did not receive any written communications and there are no speakers currently um stating that they would like to speak on this item thank you madam clerk so let me go ahead and

bring it back um are there any other uh members of the council that have a question or comment on the side all right seeing oh go ahead council member fan sorry just a quick question for staff um thank

Thai Viet PhanItem 22

Thank you so much, Council Member Lopez for asking questions about communities. Because I did, you know, CDBG program can be complicated and going through our community development commission. But do we have any, you know, organized neighborhood associations coming funding or anything like that? Do we encourage it? Is it allowed?

Thank you council member fan we have an external process where nonprofits are able to apply for funding for 15% of our annual allocation of CDBG program funds and that's a two-year application cycle next year we will be opening that application process again but in terms of in terms of neighborhood associations applying directly for the city for capital improvement projects in their community. We more do it through a feedback basis where, we seek feedback from those neighborhood associations and from our community and they inform us on the projects that we select for funding each year.

Thai Viet PhanItem 22

Okay, got it. So it's not as formalized as the nonprofits. uh no it's so you would say it's a little bit easier to go neighborhood association route

Thai Viet PhanItem 22

yes okay thank you i just didn't see it listed so i wanted to make sure they were getting those

ones too appreciate it thank you council member you know the only thing i would add judson and the staff is um you know all all these non-profits that we're supporting through cdbg are extremely worthy and they do you know they do great work but one of the things I've noticed as a result of you know COVID and the consequences and everything else is you know these food pantries that have been providing food and you know help to our community since March of last year I mean I you know the Sikh Center you know United Cross Borders power one just an incredible effort that I've

never seen before obviously you know a crisis brings out some really

maybe if there's a way we can invite them to apply and provide some resources i think there'll be some arpa money as well for them but to the extent that some of them would like exhausted their own funding

incredible to see you know when we take a final tally of how many actual meals or how many bundles of food were provided it's in the millions right so it is it's incredible that people were able to provide that service the other one was if you could focus in on mental health just because I know that we have a lot of young people and adults that have just suffered you know devastating impacts as a result and just dealing with these conditions right so those two areas that you can focus in others but you know that was the only those were the only comments i

had i'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing seeing no other hands raised or comments from the from the council and bring it back to the council and i'll entertain a motion to adopt the

Thai Viet PhanItem 22

I'll move.

I'll go ahead and second. So there's a motion from council member Fann, a second from me. Madam Clerk, will you please call roll?

Council member Becerra?

Council member Lopez?

Yes.

Council member Mendoza?

Council member. Council member Mendoza.

Was it yes. Okay thank you. Council member Phan. Yes.

Mayor Pro Tempeñolosa. Yes. And Mayor Sarmiento. Yes thank you. Now before moving along to item number 23 the next public hearing madam clerk will you please go ahead and give the same instructions to the public on their ability to go ahead and comment on this public hearing.

Thank you, Mayor. Members of the public who would like to make a comment for only public hearing item 23, please dial star nine from your phone or select raise hand from Zoom now.

Great, thank you, Madam Clerk. So this is the hearing on a zoning ordinance amendment. to amend section 41-472 and 41-472.5 of the San Aan Municipal Code to require a CUP for a light processing facilities as defined by 41-1250 subsection D. I'm gonna go ahead and open the public hearing and ask staff if there's a presentation that they wish to make. And I think that's you, right, Director Tai? Is this your matter? Yes, good evening Mayor, Mayor Portempo and member of the council.

I do have a brief presentation on this matter tonight. Let me just go ahead and share my screen.

Tonight the matter before you is zoning ordinance amendment

2021-01 as you mentioned this is a proposal to amend the M1 zoning district to require light processing recycling facility to have a conditional use permit prior to locating in the M1 district. A little bit of background, beginning in 1988, the city council adopted an ordinance to implement the California Beverage and Recycling Container and Litter Reduction Act. This ordinance was then amended in 1997. In 2007, the ordinance basically established a framework for approving recycling facility from collections,

small collection facility all the way to heavy processing facility within the city in order to implement the California Beverage and Container Recycling Litter Reduction Act. There currently exists 12 light processing facility in the city. 11 are within a thousand feet of property zone for residential. Six are located in M1 zoning district. And the remaining location are in heavy M2 zoning district or have non-conforming status in other zoning districts throughout the city. This map here shows the 12 locations. While they look like they are dotted throughout the cities,

If you overlay this with our neighborhood maps, you will see that these locations are located either within or very close proximity to many of our environmental justice communities and neighborhoods such as Santa Anita, Artesia Pilar, you know, the Lacey Logan French Park, Cornerstone Centennial Park, Sandpoint and Dale High. So they are all located, as I mentioned, very close or within environmental justice neighborhood.

So light processing facility are currently permit by right under our existing zoning code. While there are operational requirements and one of which residential purposes. However, because many of our industrial areas are located in proximity to residential neighborhood, very established residential neighborhood, they can actually locate within a small distance, basically one property away, which could be as little as 50 feet away from a residential development.

So there is a loophole there that really create additional impact for many of these neighborhoods should and where these facilities located adjacent to residential uses. The urgency ordinance would amend the zoning code to require a CUP for light processing facility in the M1 zone.

With the absence of the conditional use permit process, we will not be able to exercise the city's zoning intent, which is to review uses for ensuring that there are compatibility and reduction in impact to adjacent sense of land.

The proposed ordinance would on an interim basis provide the city with an ability to evaluate conditional use permit for consistency with our zoning code general plan and ensuring neighborhood compatibility while we're waiting to input a following permanent regulations within the next 30 to 45 days.

In terms of CEQA and fiscal impact, the project is not considered, this ordinance is not considered a project under the CEQA regulation in accordance with sections 15.0.61B3, therefore is exempted from CEQA requirement because it is not considered a project. The notice of exemption will be filed upon adoption of the ordinance and there are no fiscal impact with this proposed adoption. In terms of the next step, as I mentioned earlier, we are in the process of preparing a permanent ordinance to follow on this interim ordinance,

tentatively scheduled for May 24th to the plan commission and will be presented in 2021. 21 staff recommendation tonight is to approve for the council to approve zero a number 21 20 21-01 and to adopt the urgency order in amending session 41-472 and 41-472.5 for requiring a condition of use permit for light processing in the light processing facility in the light industrial zoning district that concludes the staff report thank you thank you director tai

Let me go ahead and ask the clerk if there are any members of the public that submitted any written correspondence on this or are there any members of the public that wish to address the council?

Thank you, Mayor. We did not receive any written communications and we do not have any members of the public wishing to speak at this time.

Great. Thank you for that. Let me bring it back to the council now. we can minimize the screen and that way I'll be able to see if there's any visual hands raised if not

Phil BacerraItem 23

thank you mayor um I appreciate that staff brought this uh to the council uh with the urgency that they did uh this is something that obviously will protect our neighborhoods we have a lot of industrial zones adjacent to residential properties and this mechanism is fair it you know it does it it's not anti-business but it's definitely pro-resident it gives um our planning commission and the council the discretion to you know make sure that if these facilities or any further facilities are proposed uh make sure that they are

Phil BacerraItem 23

a residence in these areas. So with that, I would go ahead and move the item.

David PenalozaItem 23

I'll second.

I'm sorry. Twice in one night. So let me go ahead and take that motion and second as soon as I close the public hearing let me just go

Jessie LopezItem 23

member lopez i see your hand raised thank you mayor sardinando uh no questions um i agree with councilmember becerra i fully support this i think it's about time that we actually have this in place um and so looking at the sense looking at the map and seeing where these facilities are located and you know again it's in the central area of the city of sanana and um so anyway thank you for this

for your work i support this great thank you seeing no other comments um uh the only thing i'm going to add is that you know i appreciate staff bringing this for us um on an urgency matter we know it's important we know we need uh you know immediate relief and until this we you we can handle this permanently but also through the general plan amendments as well so let me go ahead and close the public hearing and i believe we have a motion by council member becerra and a second by mayor pro tem madam clerk will you please call the roll council member becerra yes

council member

council member mendoza yes council member fan yes mayor putempeñalosa yes mayor sarmiento

yes great work everybody thank you for that moving along to the council member requested items starting with item number 24 which is to discuss and consider directing uh city manager to prepare rezzo declaring the city of san anna support for sb2 for consideration by the city council i actually am not the lead author on this i just kind of tagged along with council member lopez and fan so let me go ahead and toss it over to them and uh and they can go ahead and summarize councilmember lopez do you want to start off on this one yeah yeah not an issue i can start

Jessie LopezItem 24

off um so so i guess let's just uh for for some clarification this piece of legislation is authored by state senator stephen bradford the current chair of the black caucus um and so i think that for many years we have seen issues with police misconduct and this issue is important areas of the city and i do believe that war 3 families do not tolerate a lack of accountability and I also believe that they would agree that there cannot be two sets of laws

Jessie LopezItem 24

um and so you know in speaking of accountability we um we must begin to to be open-minded about the opportunities to change the current system we cannot continue to rush into this crisis we need to be proactive and we need to help save lives and so you know for the people of our community we need to help them survive violence and harassment and that I do believe is part of like transformative justice and so when we think of the generations of people who have never been

Jessie LopezItem 24

able to rely on institutions of power to attain safer communities um sb2 is one small step and in attaining that accountability and there is no mechanism in place currently right now to hold law enforcement officers accountable and so this is why i support sp2 um because it allows for the decertification of you know individuals within within these uh you know bad cops essentially um based on a criminal conviction so that they're not being hired at different agencies

Jessie LopezItem 24

And so, you know, I do believe that no family in War III benefits from bad cops getting to act with impunity. So I do think that we have to fight to preserve our democracy and we must help build a system that is truly about justice. So this is one of the reasons why I partnered with Councilmember FAM to support this bill. And I do ask my colleagues to stand with impacted families and communities and support the fight to save lives. Councilmember Pham.

Thai Viet PhanItem 24

Thank you so much, Councilmember Lopez. And I do see the chief is on here. You know, both Councilmembers.

Thai Viet PhanItem 24

That is still pending. And there will be amendments made to it. But, you know, I brought this forward because I am very concerned by the fact that California is one of four states that does not have a decertification process for peace officers who have committed wrongdoing. You know, here in the city of Santa Ana, we have experienced a council member who committed wrongdoing, who committed felony crimes, and he has prohibited for life from running for public office. That is a standard that we held a former council member on.

Thai Viet PhanItem 24

This is the same standard we must hold our peace officers, who are the only people in America who have the ability to arrest, take a life without repercussion because they have the onerous duty to make those decisions. And I think that it's just important for all of our residents to feel safe, for all of our officers,

Thai Viet PhanItem 24

that they're working with and the person patrolling our community is not someone who has committed crimes before. AND SOMETIMES VERY SERIOUS CRIMES THAT THEY MAY HAVE BEEN ABLE TO EVADE CERTAIN REPERCUSSIONS FROM. SO THAT IS WHY I WANT TO SUPPORT SB2. CHIEF, I DO WANT TO ASK YOU A FEW QUESTIONS BECAUSE FROM OUR LAST CONVERSATION, I DO KNOW THERE WERE SOME MOVEMENT ON THE ISSUE OF QUALIFIED community and the Bain Act. So I wanted to see from you if you've heard of any additional amendments or updates on that.

Yes, thank you. And so with the city manager's concurrence, I can answer that. So this bill, as Councilwoman Lopez indicated, is authored by Senator Bradford and Senator Atkins from San Diego. And it currently made its way out of committee and with the direction and agreement that they would continue to work on the language.

The portion on decertification is widely supported by police chiefs, by working groups that are working on police reform, by families that have been impacted by incidents resulting from police conduct. So that's, I don't know if that's in question, certainly not from my standpoint either. I am on the record supporting that portion of the bill. The issue is the way that it's

currently written. It does eliminate certain immunity provisions for peace officers for incidents arising out of the course and scope of their employment. And so that's really one of the sticking points and that's why it's back continue to be worked on i don't think it's anywhere near a stage where um legislator is ready to take a final vote uh and so as i shared with you i i did call in uh when this was being heard at the state and um very clearly stated my position that i

And I firmly support decertification and the bill as it's written currently.

Thai Viet PhanItem 24

Thank you, Chief. And it's really important, you know, I think for all of us to get your perspective, because I think that you really stood up when former officers did something wrong and made sure they were held accountable. And that's the kind of leadership I think we need. I am supportive of decertification. I am supportive of reforming issues and qualified immunity. It was originally created to be a shield of officers who were doing their job.

Thai Viet PhanItem 24

And across the country, wrongdoers. So I think there are many iterations I will go through. But I think in particular, you know, this council, we've seen officers who've done bad things. We don't want those officers to be going to our nearby communities and wrecking havoc there.

Thai Viet PhanItem 24

Urge our council to support.

Thai Viet PhanItem 24

Look, yes, on this item.

Member Lopez and chief for your comments. As the council member said, your comments are really important chief to us. We need to...

with balance, we hope, but you know, and we know that this isn't the final version of the bill that will eventually be discussed in, you know, on the assembly floor and on the Senate floor. But I think the premise of the bill is important. And I think that's what all of us are saying is something that I think the council should consider. And we should also clarify that this, because it's a council led item, I don't think we'd want to get into too much of the detail because we're simply asking that it gets brought back to us with so we can have a more robust

discussion of exactly those things maybe it changes between now and the time it comes back to us so we can review it and have a you know a more full-throated discussion but i think the premise of the bill making sure that you know officers like any other profession are held responsible and accountable it troubles me that the state is you know only one of four usually california is on front end of things like this and we're really on the back of things um and normally it's you know this isn't meant to be punitive i think there's just some parity that needs to be done here um

but i think you're right i think on on some some of the language i did hear that the author may adjust those but again i don't think we'll take away from what the premise is um you know which is trying to just create some fairness and some balance with with our officers but but this is simply a request to have this brought back to us so we can fully consider and take a position on a reso that would be drafted in support of the bill. And hopefully in the meantime, the council can also be briefed by our lobbyists up in Sacramento to make sure we see who's in support, who's opposed, those always help make decisions.

So hopefully when it comes back to us, it has an analysis from our lobbyists in Sacramento as well. Are there any other members of the council that wish,

Phil BacerraItem 24

uh go ahead council member sarah uh thank you mr mayor i i support this bill um i i too have talked with the chief and i i shouldn't think concern but really just more on a global level i think overall we would hopefully all agree that yes we don't want officers uh out there uh that are committing the heinous acts that they have that some have committed and and not have to face some sort of decertification you have that in a whole wide variety of professions and so why would you not expect it in such a profession as law enforcement but having said that if you look

Phil BacerraItem 24

at the legislative calendar this item sometime in the late summer early fall so what i would ask is that you know the chief mentioned there are still discussions being had about certain aspects of the bill and so i hope that when this item comes back to us it'll be closer to when we have a final draft because as a council i don't want to write a blank check in support of something that we don't know what it looked like so my hope is that the timing of when it gets brought back to us will be closer

to when the draft is final great thank you for those comments i think you know by the way you you were just the third member of the legislative ad hoc that was selected here. So you'll be on this ad hoc, hopefully looking at this a little closer and maybe we could determine how quickly it needs to come back or how much further in the future. But I think again, when we used to have a legislative ad hoc and we had a bill that we supported or opposed, let's say we opposed the bill and it was amended, we would come back and immediately, bring it back to the council and say, hey, the language was adjusted.

we can take a support position or a neutral position whatever the case would be but maybe that's something to your point if it does get adjusted to the good you know we you know we bring it back it just remains a support if it gets adjusted to the bad we can bring it back and say hey this is a problem right and we can always you know we can always amend our position it's not stone but this is simply just to bring it back i think and i think all of us want to see it come back with a more robust discussion and a little bit more background so any other members

of the council wish to make a comment or ask any questions madam clerk do you have any um have you captured the council direction i'm madam city manager i'm sorry it's getting late uh yes sir

i do believe that there is no objection to returning the item great thank you for that

let me go ahead you know if if you all don't mind i'm going to go ahead and just pass the um the chair uh to mayor pro tem i need to uh step out of the room just for a second um i've got my daughter who's outside i need to go open the door and um and if you don't mind mayor pro tem if you can go ahead and share for this portion i'll be right back as soon as i can not at all mr mayor take your time

David PenalozaItem 24

Okay, Madam City Clerk, the next item I believe, item 25 is Council Member Lopez's item?

Thai Viet PhanItem 25

That's correct.

David PenalozaItem 25

Okay, go ahead.

Jessie LopezItem 25

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem.

Jessie LopezItem 25

So, have gotten us this far, you know, these, the Sunshine Ordinance was something that was established in 2012, was revisited in 2013, and I do believe that it is because of them and the willingness of a few council members at the time that were willing to fight for better access and the distribution of crucial information is why we have what we have now and whether people know that history or not i think it's important to discuss it and to acknowledge it and it's one of the reasons why i'm able to now call to amend the sunshine ordinance

Jessie LopezItem 25

so thank you for your relentless work um in the midst of so much criticism you know and corruption in the city um you were you know sanana activists were able to accomplish a lot of really good things and so for the sunshine ordinance i have four policy proposals and i believe um a city manager i do have some questions as well and so i don't know if you would like me to direct those to you or to sonia our city attorney um but i will just put them out there and you can

um defer if you don't mind council member i would like to remind the elected body that at least um it's not an opportunity to really question or um ask staff questions regarding the items um it is an item to determine if there is a consensus among the council to have staff spend any time on them so just just a gentle reminder of that i know the the police chief was questioned on the last item and per protocol it is an opportunity for the items to be discussed

Jessie LopezItem 25

among yourselves thank you for that gentle reminder i do appreciate it i um i forgot

Jessie LopezItem 25

so you know colleagues i um i do think it's time that we consider expanding the sunshine ordinance AND I THINK THAT, YOU KNOW, ONE OF THE THINGS THAT WE COULD DO IS ADD AN ADDITIONAL COMMUNITY MEETING. RIGHT NOW WE ONLY HAVE ONE. AND I THINK, YOU KNOW, ADDING A SECOND ONE SO THAT DEVELOPERS AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS CAN BUILD RELATIONSHIPS AND REALLY HAVE TIME TO ADDRESS THE CONCERNS THAT ARE RAISED. THREE IN THE FIRST INITIAL MEETING IS MORE THAN FAIR. AND WE OFTEN, YOU KNOW, HAVE to hear about these concerns so I think it's important that we add a second additional

Jessie LopezItem 25

meeting and I don't think adding projects or plans that could be brought forth. I also think that we should consider including tenants and in the way that we notify people. Right now we only notify homeowners that, you know, one of the things that we know and I've heard Maya Pro Tem talk about this is sometimes the homeowners present, right? Sometimes they're renting out their homes and so I think it's more than fair to include tenants in this in this ordinance.

Jessie LopezItem 25

And I also think that, you know, we should consider expanding the 500 feet requirement to 2000 feet. You know, I actually, without getting into the weeds of details, there was a project that, you know, that they were abiding by the sunshine, but because of their location, there was no homeowners or any, within the 500 feet so people weren't notified and so I don't want people to feel that they are left out or excluded out of this process I do think that 2000 is more than fair

Jessie LopezItem 25

and that they can do intentional engagement we have new technologies in place we can do text messaging we can do Nixo next door and we always talk about doing more so I would ask you to consider as well you know including nixon notifications um and and you know as part of how we do outreach um you know and so um and then the last uh thing that i would consider my colleagues um to consider is to really you know uphold the values of transparency that we discuss

Jessie LopezItem 25

and talk about at the dais and virtually nowadays and I think that it's more than fair also to

Jessie LopezItem 25

have a lobby have lobbyists register with the city clerk there was I believe language that was possibly discussed in 2012 and so considering that would be useful for for everyone I think that we need to ensure public's confidence and the integrity of local government and that is why

Jessie LopezItem 25

the scope of the sunshine ordinance um you know and i know that so those are those are the considerations that i'm asking of my colleagues and so i hope that everyone's open to discussing it

thank you thank you council members so thank you mayor pro tem for holding down the fort any other comments from the council

Phil BacerraItem 25

go ahead councilman sarah thank you mr mayor and uh thank you council member lopez for uh bringing this forward uh i i think it's an excellent idea to include residents in the dish or depending on the terminology occupants residents but basically someone that's not the property owner that's on the site that's living on the site a lot of times we do have absentee landlords and so for folks that are going to be impacted by a project day in and day out they should be notified and have that opportunity to voice their concerns to the respective commissions and this city council

Phil BacerraItem 25

The idea of expanding the radius, I also think is a fine idea. I think that's great. And as far as it's fun, we should have been doing that already. I mean, that's easy. That's something we should be doing. But I think to memorialize it in our procedures is excellent. In talking about the history of the Sunshine Ordinance, I was in the audience the night that the Sunshine Ordinance was adopted. I remember one of the big issues was the community meeting component and the idea of timing,

Phil BacerraItem 25

because you wanted to have this meeting, but at the same time respect the existing process. And so how do you make sure that folks get a good idea of the project, but at the same time, you know, at the very beginning of the project, it's really conceptual, because by the time it's evaluated by staff, potential applicants going to go back and forth with the staff to hammer out certain details, make modifications. What was remarkable was the former planning director back then kind of split the baby. said well let's have this sunshine meeting but let's do it within that 30-day window between

Phil BacerraItem 25

the time that an application is submitted and by the time it's deemed complete and so that was a chance for the uh the concept to the community and then at some point down the road to bring it back i think the only challenge i see would be just you know and this would be something maybe for planning staff to come back at a later date to advise us on but how the a secondary meeting would impact the project because usually by a certain point that's you know i know everybody tends to kind of wag their finger at oh well by the time he gets to commissioner council we don't really have

Phil BacerraItem 25

a say but that's not entirely true and we've seen projects come before the council even in my tenure here on this council where it was approved and then it wasn't um so i i would say that you know the community and folks that show up to to speak to the council definitely have an impact and we can't diminish the value of public hearings that's why they're there they're we shouldn't treat them like they're just a box to check they are something that we open the hearing we take in testimony we all consider it and i think i want to believe that all of my colleagues take it very seriously so

Phil BacerraItem 25

i think a secondary meeting i would defer to staff as to how it would impact the process i'm not opposed to taking in more input and in fact frankly i think the more successful projects in town didn't need the community and get the input and those those projects are the ones that succeed because you know the best projects is when a decision maker is sitting on the dais and the applicant saying this is a good project approve it and the surrounding community is saying it's good project approve it so um i i would defer to staff to maybe report back to us in some way

Phil BacerraItem 25

about the impact of the second meeting but um your other proposals councilmember lopez i i think are excellent and i'd be happy to see those come back to us thank you councilmember

Jessie LopezItem 25

becerra i appreciate your support mayor you're muted

i'm going for a record tonight um so council member thank you for your comments council member becerra and uh let me call them council member fan and then uh hernandez uh thank you

Thai Viet PhanItem 25

mayor and thank you councilman below this for bringing this forward i do have a couple questions or not questions but comments and staff please don't hate me but one is regarding the 96 hour agenda publication I think that we've heard comments by many residents and folks just saying you know they just don't have enough time to review a thousand page agenda 500 page agenda and sometimes even for me I you know it could be difficult because you're we get you know POTENTIALLY A DRAFT AGENDA OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT. BUT I WOULD LOVE FOR US TO CONSIDER, YOU KNOW, PUSHING THAT OUT TO A WEEK.

Thai Viet PhanItem 25

I KNOW THERE ARE OTHER CITIES THAT DO A WEEK OR TWO WEEKS. THAT DOESN'T MEAN WE CAN'T AMEND THE AGENDA. IT DOESN'T MEAN WE CAN'T CHANGE THE AGENDA UP UNTIL THE BROWN ACT REQUIREMENTS OR EVEN THE DAY OF. BUT THIS WOULD, I THINK, GIVE US BUT ALSO COMMUNITY MEMBERS AND INTERESTED PARTIES AN OPPORTUNITY TO REALLY REVIEW, DIGEST, AND POTENTIALLY EVEN TALK TO SOME OF US IF THEY WANTED.

Thai Viet PhanItem 25

AND I THINK THAT THAT COULD HELP DEAL WITH, YOU KNOW, ALLOW US TO HAVE MORE ROBUST CONVERSATION OR ANSWER A LOT MORE QUESTIONS THAT COULD HAVE BEEN ANSWERED BEFORE. SO THAT WOULD BE ONE THING I'D LIKE TO PUT OUT THERE. THE SECOND THING IS, WHEN I WAS LOOKING AT THE SUNSHINE ORDINANCE, YOU KNOW, FOR EXAMPLE, THE MEETINGS, DESERT PARK PUBLIC MEETING, AND I KNOW THAT THINGS HAVE changed a little bit under um you know the executive order of covet and things but i would like to

Thai Viet PhanItem 25

person and virtually i know that for many of our residents including myself often it's very difficult to make it out to one of these meetings in person say for example you're a santa yana resident your property your home is going to be impacted by a project but you work in south county and you just can't make it. I think that it would really help us and developers and anybody trying to do a project in the city, make that available. So whether that's two separate meetings or at the same meeting to just make it available so that residents can do both in person and virtually. And those are all my comments. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, council member Fan. Council member Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 25

Thank you Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to thank Council Member Lopez for bringing it forward. I fully support the proposal and I think that it would add another layer of engagement that

residents will certainly benefit from. Great thank you all. Seeing no other hands, you know, oh go ahead Mayor Pro Tem, I see your hand.

David PenalozaItem 25

Sorry Mayor Sambiento. I also just wanted to add that over the last couple of years on here, that was always my concern is expanding that radius of notices sent. I know that we've had these issues where neighborhoods, you know, only a couple houses in a certain neighborhood will, that are on the edge of the neighborhood would receive notices of projects and not the entire neighborhood and i would always say you know if if there's one or two homes in a neighborhood that have received the notice the entire neighborhood should be aware of it um so

David PenalozaItem 25

definitely uh supportive of expanding that radius um maybe not 2 000 feet but definitely more than 500 feet um which is that that's also up for discussion i mean i know we're not going to make that decision tonight but uh there there is areas of the of the sunshine ordinance that could be expanded most definitely and i look forward and you know having this discussion um when it comes

before us by staff great thank you mayor pro tem and i'll just say i'm sure that uh madam city manager you received all the uh direction you need and um an input you need from the council the only thing i would say is i would concur with council member becerra he's right that when this was adopted there were a lot of compromises that were made um but this was always intended to be a living document so evolved much right just because sometimes you get stagnant and you don't revisit things but i think it's a good time you know we have a new council looking at things with fresh

eyes and you know they can now adjust and adapt based on what's worked what hasn't and so um you know i think we'll be able to make much better decisions as it comes back to us so hopefully that's sufficient input for you uh mr mayor if i could just add one last thing

Phil BacerraItem 25

you know when i served on the planning commission one thing that was always frustrating is to see in the staff reports that staff had got comments from the neighborhood and what they meant was they called one person in the neighborhood association and said you're good you're good okay and that was it um i would think possibly depending on what staff comes back with regarding that second meeting if a project is within a recognized neighborhood association perhaps that second meeting somehow is hosted or in conjunction with the neighborhood association not just the president or the vice

Phil BacerraItem 25

president but the the neighborhood association leadership with an invitation to the neighborhood it as well.

Got it. Thanks for that. Go ahead, Councilmember Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 25

Yeah, thank you. And I definitely, you know, neighborhood in the city of Santa Ana has an active neighborhood association. You know, there are neighborhoods and in War 3 that don't have active neighborhood associations. So I don't know exactly that that would be the best way, but I'm definitely open to exploring all items. And I want to say that I definitely support, you know, Council Member fans' recommendation of making the meetings virtual as well as in person.

Jessie LopezItem 25

And you know, in trying to just disseminate information, we should also think about adding an audio recording to the city's website and so that people have access to it as well thank you

great thank you so madam city manager i think you have sufficient comments on that item

to move forward yes i do ma'am i may just make a suggestion there are a lot of different concepts discussed so what i would recommend is that staff will return with the staff report discussing each one of those concepts uh giving you background on what we currently do and then maybe a way to go forward and potential pros and cons before we actually draft an ordinance i think we need to do probably a two-step process for this that makes sense a little bit if we see some things that need

to be adjusted so um great that's perfect so let's move along to the next item that's item number 26 that's a discuss and consider directing staff to look into project room key or alternative housing and that was brought by council member hernandez so council member i'll go ahead and let you take this

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 26

thank you mr mayor um this has been a a ongoing discussion for for several months now um i've grown accustomed to getting messages from residents in the willard community and and providing updates to the surrounding neighborhood associations about the status of the encampment And as our agreement ended on April 30th, I felt that the most responsive thing for us to do would be to have a discussion about directing our city manager to find a way for us to gain access to Project Room Key.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 26

It's a program that I think would be a good fit. There is a dire need for people to be housed. And I don't think that, that although shelters is an immediate and emergencies.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 26

The end all be all the housing crisis, we are still going to continue to have people that need to be housed. And I believe in the city and I believe in our residents and and I believe that people deserve to have dignified housing, regardless of where they're at in life. It's the fundamental right that I live by. And I hope that tonight we're able to find some sort of alignment between each other. I know some of us are on the opposite sides of the spectrum when it comes to this particular encampment.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 26

But if there's one thing that we can all come to terms with, it's that nobody by any circumstance should be living on the street. It's a very harsh reality and I want to see these folks get the supportive services that they deserve rather than just going in and clearing out this encampment. So with that being said, if anyone else has any anything that I'd like to say that that's that's the proposal I'd like to make is for us to go forward with project room key or look into utilizing public land and in creating time.

permanent supportive housing alternative. Thank you council member Hernandez let me go ahead and bring it back to the council.

Phil BacerraItem 26

Council member Becerra. Thank you Mr. Mayor and council member Hernandez thank you for bringing this up because obviously it's a very timely issue. I wish we had talked about this during the homeless ad hoc that you myself and Mayor Pro Temp sit on because I think that would have been a a great place to flush this out but um in doing it you know here with all of our colleagues uh i know madam city manager you don't want to be called on or have staff called on because this should be a council you know discussion but i think it's important for

Phil BacerraItem 26

you to weigh in on this because it's frustrating to hear so many people with a misconception of what project room key is and i i feel like people are just going to drive on the flat tire as long as they can until hopefully someday they realize it's flat or maybe they won't but project room key from what i've had discussions with steph about this is not something that we can just offer to anybody who is houseless or homeless this is something that is very targeted during covet but rather than me pontificate on it i would like to ask you madam city manager if you

Phil BacerraItem 26

myself and my colleagues what is truly the limit and the scope of Project Roomkey?

Certainly after I just gave you the gentle reminder, but I'm more than happy to. So FEMA does, they used to reimburse 75%, but they did increase to a 100% for Project Roomkey, but there are there's very strict criteria so FEMA will only reimburse for individuals who test positive for COVID that don't require hospitalization but need isolation or quarantine for instance those exiting hospitals FEMA will reimburse for individuals who have been exposed

to COVID-19 as documented by a state or local public health official or medical health professional professional that do not require hospitalization but need isolation or quarantine. FEMA will reimburse for individuals who are asymptomatic but are at high risk such as people over 65 or who have certain underlying health conditions, not all underlying health conditions but particularly respiratory and compromised immune systems.

they will so they will reimburse for the safe and secure housing for those that includes food security of that nature there is zero reimbursement for any support services such as case management mental health counseling or similar services they are not eligible for reimbursement that's what does make project room key a bit of a challenge because the support services would have to be deployed at a decentralized basis but certainly the city can access project room key if we encounter an individual that meets the strict criteria of being up thank you madam city

Phil BacerraItem 26

manager for that clarification so I just I'm glad you said that for everybody to hear because people keep bringing it up like it's the the hip buzzword but I I don't think everybody truly understands that it has a very limited scope and it's not the city. That's limited the scope. This is what the program coming down from other branches of government. That's what they've limited as. And my last comment is going to be, you know, we talk about equity on this council. We talk about equitable solutions and fairness and. And, you know, we talk about because as a Santa Ana City Council, we talked about within Santa Ana.

Phil BacerraItem 26

County, we are 1 of 34 cities in Orange County and part of equity can't just be. Someone lands in Santa Ana, it's our responsibility. We can't sustain that. It's not sustainable. We want to be a resilient city. We can't continue to take the shoulder or we can't shoulder the burden. all on our shoulders alone. And I've heard some of my colleagues here that have said, well, if they're here in Santa Ana, there are responsibility. No, I respectfully disagree with that. We cannot continue to have that mentality. You know who wants us to have that mentality? 33 other cities. That's what they want. We can't continue to do that.

Phil BacerraItem 26

I appreciate how compassionate my colleagues are. And I too want to help these folks get off the street and improve their lives. But we also have to understand that these folks have the choice to accept services and to accept shelter. And many of them choose not to do that. But also, too, we have to understand that, again, there's only so much that Santa Ana can do. We are in a county of 33 other cities. Unfortunately, many of them turn. It's awful. But as you can talk to any of our staff, that will tell you, we do so much for the homeless.

Phil BacerraItem 26

have we solved homelessness have we taken everybody off the street no but we do so much here in town that we can be proud of we have you know what close to well no actually over 400 permanent supportive housing units that's wraparound services things that project room key do not cover it doesn't cover so again i i'm really appreciative that i serve on a body with you know many compassionate individuals but we have to be conscious of the fact that we are representing a city that that has shouldered a lot of the county's burden and we've got to look out

for our residents and their quality of life great thank you for those comments council member any other members of the council wish to comment on this item thank you mr mayor um council member if you don't mind let me let me go ahead and comment before you do and see if anybody else has any comments on this so so i think you know a lot of what was said was true we do a lot um but we've we've not only been compassionate we've been aggressive the reason why there are spas in

this county is because we stood up and said we can't absorb everybody's south spa there's a central spa there's a north spa that's why there's litigation that's why there's people now building spa building shelters in south county in north county uh you know we have ours in central so look this hasn't been just you know hey let's we want to save the entire world we've actually been very very assertive about saying everybody needs to do their their share to make sure that you know we cure this problem collectively but you know just getting back to this issue

I think that I've seen and I meet with big city mayors on a bi-weekly basis and many other cities have been able to use room key and home key really effectively to rid their communities of the consequences of those people who are homeless and the houseless. So what I saw them doing is they're using this third prong, which says you're either 65 or you have some underlying, again, enumerated health condition.

But that's sort of a catch-all, because if you look at a lot of those who are unsheltered, they're already suffering some pretty dire conditions, health conditions that they have, and many of them meet that criteria. So to the extent that we have to have a continuing continuum of care, whether you want to call them Santa Ana houseless, houseless in general, there are people that have conditions that meet this criteria. I think we need to make sure that we have options and it can't just be congregate care because not everybody fits into a shelter where there's a curfew because people have

mental illness, people have other disabilities that will prevent them from being in that sort of setting and we need to figure out how we can provide again a continuum of options for them whether it's permanent supportive housing whether it's transitional housing sheltered congregate non-congregate and this is one more element and i think we can make a strong arguable case that we can recover these funds and get reimbursed when we find these people with respiratory problems i mean if you look at many of the population that's out there they're on the street they're they do have

conditions they had conditions you know prior to the pandemic they i'm sure have conditions now so um i think that we can make a real strong argument of many many people on the streets of our city that could benefit from this i just don't want us to look back after september and say oh you know what all these other cities use these monies effectively and we said no and all we needed to do was inquire and figure out who needed this and we could have made these available to them We have a lot of hotel rooms that are, look, not only underperforming it, but they're performing not as hotels, but as, you know, really bad things.

And we could possibly turn that around for them as well. So in any event, I just want us to take a deeper dive on this. I'm not certain on how cut and dry this is. I think the criteria is really fluid. I think courts are going to interpret this. i think you know fema and the federal government especially now that we have a much friendlier administration is going to look at this with a lot more flexibility and with a lot more support towards local communities that are trying to tackle this overwhelming problem so um you know i would say look i think we need every bit of ammunition in our tool belt and this is one more

of those and i just think i want an analysis i want to see something in writing that says we are not eligible we cannot get reimbursed for any of our people who are out on the street I you know yeah I have an interpretation of it you know somebody else may have a differing one but I want some finality to this I don't want people just speculating because I'm speculating that we do have many people that qualify prove me wrong prevent you know prepare something for us so we can review and say specifically we have nobody in the community that would to qualify for these programs. So in any event, those are my two cents.

Let me go ahead and bring it back to some of the others. Council Member Lopez and then Mayor Pro Tem.

Jessie LopezItem 26

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I won't take long. I think you said some really important things in terms of people on the street, they have medical conditions and so they would qualify for Project Room Key. And essentially what I'm hearing from the conversation is that nobody at a different, you know, lots or encampments in the city qualifies for project room key and that's a little hard to believe for me and so, you know, I definitely share in the public's frustration. I think that when we talk about the tool belt, we have to explore every

Jessie LopezItem 26

single tool on the belt. That way we know that we have exhausted every single avenue. I don't think I THINK IT'S WE LOSE ANYTHING IN EXPLORING ALL OPTIONS FOR THE CITY OF SANTANA TO FIND SOLUTIONS AND THEY'RE NOT PERFECT SOLUTIONS. WE UNDERSTAND THAT, BUT THEY ARE SOLUTIONS THAT CAN PROVIDE THAT CAN POTENTIALLY LEAD TO, YOU KNOW, PERMANENT SUPPORTIVE HOUSING FOR FOLKS. WE DON'T HAVE ANY HOTEL VOUCHERS. WE DON'T HAVE EMERGENCY SHELTERS. WE KNOW THAT THE WAY THAT PEOPLE GET REFERRED TO SHELTERS RIGHT NOW ISN'T WORKING. And so we need to do something differently.

Jessie LopezItem 26

It's what we've heard from Santa Ana residents from all over the city tonight. So what we have done is not working. And fiscally, they're frustrated because they know how much money the city is spending on just shuffling people around. And we don't want people in parks. We don't want people in our neighborhoods. But where are we going to move people to? So I think that's something that we're all being confronted with now. AND I AM SUPPORTIVE OF FURTHERING, EXPLORING ROOM KEY. I KNOW THAT I'VE BEEN ASKING ABOUT THIS SINCE MARCH, AND IT'S REALLY UNFORTUNATE THAT, YOU KNOW, MONTHS LATER,

Jessie LopezItem 26

HERE WE ARE STILL IN LIKE THE BEGINNING STAGES OF ASKING, DO WE, CAN WE, OR DOES THE CITY, IS THE CITY WILLING TO REALLY EXPLORE THIS? SO THANK YOU FOR BRINGING THIS FORTH, COUNCIL MEMBER HERNANDEZ.

Thank you. Let me go ahead and pass it over to Mayor Pro Tem and I think Councilman Hernandez,

David PenalozaItem 26

you had another comment. Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I just wanted to also kind of, you know, remind our colleagues that we created an ad hoc, a homeless ad hoc for a reason, and is to have these conversations and dissect them before they come to the City Council. But in regards to to project room key, I guess it's true that the city has a lot of underperforming hotels, but these underperforming hotels exist throughout the county, and I think that's where the problem is not so much that we want to we don't want to to do something or or make resources available.

David PenalozaItem 26

but the fact that all the other 34 cities in the county or 33 do not ever take that step. And it becomes a constant, constant burden on Santa Ana and our residents are fed up. Our residents have said, you know, these things are great, but it's time that we take a regional approach. Working with our board of supervisors. I know that that's a very

David PenalozaItem 26

difficult conversation at times, but you know, we need to continue pressing and work in this regional approach because it can't continue to be Santa Ana's burden. We're burdening our residents and that's not something that we want to continue doing. So, you know, I'm supportive of looking at alternative ways and methods, but, but, you know, they should have come to the to the homeless ad hoc. Firstly, but it's, it's definitely a I know that the city manager has, has presented

David PenalozaItem 26

this information, you know, a dozen times before that, you know, this is this is not what it people think it is. But, you know, I would be interested to see further information

on it. Great. Thank you, Mayor Pro Temp. Anybody else that hasn't spoken? I see Council Member Lopez.

Oh, sorry. I forgot to lower my hand. Okay. Well, Council Member Mendoza or Fan, if nothing further, I can go ahead and bring it back to Council Member Hernandez if he wants to make another comment.

I'll just say real quickly that I'm open to exploring the room key project and based on the results then I will take a stand but we need more information for sure.

Great. And I think that's what that's what council member Hernandez is simply requesting just some additional information so thank you council member Mendoza for that council member Hernandez go ahead.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 26

Yes, thank you to be on the side of transparency project room key is something that we've discussed.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 26

On many occasions, we've talked about it amongst residents. We've talked about it with the city manager and I did bring it up at the ad hoc but to be in the side of transparency I felt like this should be a conversation that the public has access to. because there's a lot of uncertainty behind if whether or not these folks are eligible. I do think that the individuals at this encampment do meet a lot of the requirements. And my ask today is that we have something definitive that will definitively tell us

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 26

whether or not these individuals will qualify. There might be 10 folks that qualify. I feel more comfortable at least getting some of these folks that help that they deserve than getting zero people help. That's the side that I wanted to bring here to this dialogue is that, hey, if we can have some sort of progress with Project Roomkey and look into it, then it's a win. And, of course, we will continue to explore different options, but there needs to be a solution to this problem, and we can't just put a Band-Aid on this.

Great. Thank you for those closing comments. Seeing nothing further, Madam City Manager, were you able to capture some direction on that?

I believe so, and it's consistent. I never said we could not implement Project Roomkey. I've consistently stated there are some strict qualifications. What I read to you is those qualifications straight from Robert Fenton, who's the regional administrator for the FEMA region that we reside in. It does not mean that we cannot add it to our outreach as we encounter individuals to see if they are qualified. But I, I do have concerns regarding the lack of support services for someone in a hotel room. That is a remaining concern of mine, but I've never said it's not something that could be added to.

I think council member Lopez used the word the toolbox.

We do have the whole homeless ad hoc.

Phil BacerraItem 26

Okay. Just just for clarification. Is this just going to return back to the full Council?

Phil BacerraItem 26

Because as Mayor Pro Tem emphasized, we do have the all homeless ad hoc. Homeless ad hoc. And so I mean to me, if we're gonna jump ahead and just circumvent the ad hoc, that's fine. I mean, and I understand the urgency, but it would just be good to know what we're doing because, I mean, I know myself and Mayor Pro Tem take the time to participate in it and homelessness. We know there's a lot of folks that need help yesterday. I mean, they need it, but we're trying to develop longstanding, you know, long-term solutions.

Phil BacerraItem 26

So just for clarity, is this something that we would see at the ad hoc or are we going to continue to deliberate these items in the full council?

well good question i think that's where you know we want to i think the full council should comment on this um now that it's been brought to all seven of us um does it need to go back to the ad hoc can it be brought back to this council as you said there's an urgency to this um i don't think it bypasses unless you guys want to maybe meet on on this maybe between now and the next meeting uh give some maybe more thought take a deeper dive into this but look this program is going to end really soon so then it dies by just its own slow death that we won't even be eligible to use it

and that's an opportunity lost which is you know which is tough to swallow so um you know

Phil BacerraItem 26

Mr. Mayor I just what I want clarification on is I've got plenty of meetings to attend and if there's one less one that I can uh you know move on from that that's fine I really want get to the bottom of homelessness and i know because i've been around a long time here in town and i know i mean it's just it isn't something that popped up last month it isn't something that popped up 45 days ago so it is something that isn't going to just you know be solved in 90 days or you know as far as the city-wide or county-wide um issue but i just as far as the ad hoc and i'm

Phil BacerraItem 26

not trying to be a stickler into it having to go to the ad hoc but i just want to understand for the sake of process because if we're always just going to jump right to the full council then then do we really need the ad hoc if we're just going to go ahead and come back to the

council that's just what i want guidance on all right um well look i at this point i think it's the pleasure of this body because i think this trumps the ad hoc i mean it's all seven of us now discussing this so if we want to send it to the ad hoc as a group we can um will that achieve anything further than what we're asking for now which is more information and rather than you know the three of you on the ad hoc now it's the seven of us um it's here i think that you know there are very few items that are so urgent that they need to be brought back but i would also say

to any ad hoc member or committee if there is something that is extremely time sensitive that you want to bring to the council because it's just look and this is you know pretty urgent um propose it, bring it to the council because you need some action on it quickly, right? I don't think any of the ad hocs are dealing with anything that exigent or that urgent. So, you know, but look to me, I'm open to the sponsor on this, council member Hernandez, if he wants to bring it back to the ad hoc or if he wants to bring it back to the council. I mean, I think there's a few of us who've said, yeah, we want to see it.

and I'm sure you ad hoc members want to see it as well. But I know we have a couple of other people who want to comment. So I think it's Mayor Pro Tem and then Council Member Hernandez.

David PenalozaItem 26

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just want to also mention that back in 2018 when the riverbed was cleared and the county housed a lot of the individuals living in the riverbed into hotel rooms for 30 to 45 days. I forget the exact number. It was followed by a lot of these hotel owners suing the County of Orange over the mess that was left behind and the destruction that these hotel rooms saw. So it's a messy avenue, but if the idea is to see what that looks like,

I mean, let's consider it. You know what I was thinking though, Mayor

protein this is already available i don't know why we're saying it isn't i think it's a matter of now just saying can we can we give direction maybe say if we can use it already why are we giving direction to use something we already have the discretion to use in other words well not us but the city manager and her team why not just say okay for those cases that do meet the criteria whether you know you're COVID positive, whether you've been exposed or whether you're 65 or older, or you have some conditions that, you know, that are underlying and that compromise your health and expose you to COVID,

which I would think there's a lot in the city. Why don't we just say, that's just an obvious thing. I think the city manager just told us, this is already something she can do. I think there are some of us that just start asking why i mean is there nobody that qualifies in the city for room key i guess that's my question but i guess i'm not sure and that wasn't that was a rhetorical question i want to call you on it but that's just more again i i would just think in a city of ours with you know our last point in time count was i don't know how many homes but uh look somebody's

to qualify for for room key and and you know i just don't like to deny it when we have that available to us but um go ahead uh councilmember nantes thank you mr mayor um that that's precisely

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 26

why i brought it forward i i thought you know what we need to absolutely try every avenue that we have to see how many folks can qualify we have nothing to lose in doing that um and with that being said I would like it for this conversation to be revisited by council.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 26

All right. Rather than going to the ad hoc. I just think that it's a conversation that needs to be made public.

Council member Van.

Thai Viet PhanItem 26

Thanks y'all. So listening to all this, I think there are a couple items just maybe I needed some clarification with my colleagues on one is you know we're not here trying to just put any person into a project room key because you know we obviously know other cities should be doing their fair share but if we do have san anna residents who qualify for a project room key as the mayor mentioned and because it is a tool in our toolbox why not use it especially for this interim time when we are being forced to open the link at a very very very high rate because of some

Thai Viet PhanItem 26

misinformation regarding our fullerton partnership and in the interim when we are waiting to build our other permanent facility so it seems like it could be a decent stop gap for those who qualify And if you know I don't have a list of enumerated issues in front of me, but I imagine HIV AIDS, hepatitis, you know, sleep apnea, lung disease, all of these are potential issues that, you know, would put someone at risk for COVID in addition to being 65 plus.

Thai Viet PhanItem 26

SO IN MY OPINION, IF WE ARE GOING OUT THERE SPEAKING TO FOLKS, YOU KNOW, I DON'T KNOW IF OUR CITY NET FOLKS HAVE ANY TYPE OF MEDICAL TRAINING OR MAYBE WE CAN CONTACT MAYBE A CARE PROVIDER FOR THAT INDIVIDUAL IF THEY HAVE ANY OR ASKING THAT THEY HAVE ANY UNDERLYING CONDITIONS THAT THEY'RE AWARE OF AND IF THEY SAY YES, THEN WE SHOULD JUST PURSUE THE PROJECT ROOM KEY AND IF WE CAN'T THEN THEN WE CAN'T. BUT I THINK I AGREE WITH SOME OF MY COLLEAGUES THAT WE DON'T HAVE ANYTHING TO LOSE BECAUSE WE NEED A PLACE TO HOUSE THEM. AND IF WE DON'T DO THAT, WE CAN'T ENFORCE OUR ORDINANCE.

Thai Viet PhanItem 26

AND NOBODY WANTS THAT. I KNOW FOLKS ALL OVER THE CITY WANTS US TO BE ABLE TO ENFORCE OUR ORDINANCE. AND I THINK THIS IS JUST ANOTHER WAY TO DO IT. SO I DON'T REALLY KNOW WHY WE WOULD HAVE TO BRING THIS BACK TO THE COUNCIL. If we can get consensus here to say let's use this tool that whether you know it's been underutilized or whatever other reason, let's get people into housing and see what happens when we open our permanent shelter.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 26

in that case i i would like to make a motion to use project room key where applicable well

so we can't move anything right now on this because it's not it's not properly agendized for a motion but i think there's i think there's sufficient direction to say this is something that we can use um maybe what's easier madam city manager is if you can report back to us and And now that you've kind of seen that the council would like us to deploy this and activate this where possible, where, you know, where, where, where we can, then, you know, then you can let us know. Maybe you can, you know, just give us an update. Hey, we've canvassed these many folks and maybe we start with El Centro.

And I think Council Member Fant's point is right on point. We have kind of a tricky period for the next two or three months. this might be one way to, you know, to address that, at least alleviate the pressure. So does that make sense to you, Madam City Manager?

Yes, Mayor. It's very clear. And once again, I just want to say, I said we would utilize Project Room Key where we could. So I don't believe I need any action from the City Council. We just need to incorporate the qualifications and determine a way to see if those individuals meet them. otherwise we will just be using general fund dollars for the program got it got it and we may

be able to get a lot of that reimbursed because i know that there's some money up at the state that we're aggressively fighting for you guys saw the uh the uh press conference with the big city mayors that are advocating for 20 billion dollars to be dedicated to addressing the uh issue with the houseless and uh and affordability so hopefully there'll be some additional funding coming from Sacramento as well. Great. Thank you for that. Let's move along to the last council led item, and that's item number 27 to discuss and consider directing the clerk to take necessary actions to

resume the option of in-person participation for members of the public at council meetings to have a formal and robust participation during the budget process. And I think that's yours, Mayor

David PenalozaItem 27

hotel. Yeah, thank you. I'm mayor. Submiento. The reason why I placed this item on today's agenda is because I've been, you know, receiving a lot of correspondence from numerous members of our community informing me about their desire to participate in person, especially now that we're moving into the budget cycle. As we saw earlier in the presentation, there was there's planned workshops and and most of them are virtual. All of them actually for now are are scheduled to be virtual and via zoom um which is disappointing given the fact that you

David PenalozaItem 27

know we we are able to now um somewhat meet uh in person uh you know at a small capacity and socially distance but a good way to expand even the sunshine ordinance what we just discussed earlier tonight and further expand transparency and public access is to allow the option for limited in-person participation and attendance at our city council meetings. Given the large digital divide in our city, many of our residents have not been able to engage and participate in their local government. As we've seen tonight, for the sake of our city, it is vital

David PenalozaItem 27

that our residents are provided multiple options and participate in democracy, whether that is Zoom, YouTube phone or in person. We should be able to accommodate according to county data over 135,000 sent and residents have been vaccinated. Dining at restaurants is allowed and movie theaters are open and I believe we should be able to allow limited members of the public to come into their council chambers if they wish to do so and face their elected officials. There is room for social distancing in the chambers. We've installed pexiglass between staff and we have installed a high definition screen and projector outside that

David PenalozaItem 27

is available for outside viewing for anyone who wishes to socially distance and come into the council chambers when they want to address us other i have heard from dozens of san anna residents about wanting to participate in person and it is time to make that option available one thing that that i mean even tonight i i received this text message and i'm going to read it from a resident So I've been on the phone now for nearly two and a half hours. I just got disconnected. I called back in and was told that the host has locked the meeting. And then my phone call was disconnected. So I can't log in over the internet.

David PenalozaItem 27

I've tried every which way, can't get it to work, and I can't call in right now. I love this technology. Sarcasm. This is not democracy at work. This is bullshit. And excuse the language, but I'm reading verbatim what the residents sent me. And I'm a little bit pissed off, as I bet many of your other viewers are. Every meeting for the last year, we haven't been able to get this right. Technology never works, as we saw tonight. Half the people can't call in, and there's always something going on. So we need to give, did I freeze? No, you're good.

David PenalozaItem 27

We need to give residents that option to come in person and participate in person because this whole waiting on the phone for two, three hours and getting locked out and whatnot and it isn't working. And residents want to be able to participate and engage in person. They should be given that option. And I think it's time that we do it. I mean, like I said, movie theaters are open, indoor dining, Disneyland is open. You know, when Disneyland is open, that's the light at the end of the tunnel.

David PenalozaItem 27

So I think it's time that we give them the option. I'm not asking for full 100% open capacity, but there's room to social distance. And I hope the clerk is listening because it's time. And I know that we've had prior discussions in the past, small, a few of us, and I'd like to hear some thoughts.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Let me go ahead and bring it back to others. I see Councilmember

Thai Viet PhanItem 27

Phan's hand raised. Thank you for bringing this, Mayor Pro Tem. I am supportive of some type of in-person commenting for the public, because as you mentioned, there is a digital divide. However, personally, I am concerned because indoors in chambers, while it is large and there's room to social distance. It really just depends on how many people show up. So I know normally we'd have to have some list of capacity and then the rest would have to wait outside or if we can do something like the lobby or outside and connect it to chambers. I know we've done that before.

Thai Viet PhanItem 27

I've been to council where we've had 200 people waiting and that would be my biggest concern because we're still not in the yellow tier if I recall correctly. And we're still not fully open. And frankly, the CDC is really thinking we're not on track for herd immunity due to a lot of vaccination concerns. I hope that's not the case, at least here in Orange County. But that is a concern. And so I would be supportive of this, but I would like for us to have some type of guidelines in place. AND I THINK STAFF CAN WORK IT OUT SO THAT WE DO HAVE DISTANCING BUT ALSO LIMITED CAPACITY AT LEAST

Thai Viet PhanItem 27

INSIDE THAT WAY WE DON'T PUT STAFF IN DANGER ESPECIALLY WITH THESE NEW VARIANTS THAT WE SEE ARE JUST REALLY DESTROYING A LOT OF YOU KNOW CITIES ACROSS THE COUNTRY AND THE WORLD AND THOSE ARE MY

THOUGHTS THANK YOU THANK YOU COUNCIL MEMBER COUNCIL MEMBER HERNANDEZ AND THEN LOPEZ THANK YOU

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 27

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem for bringing this forth. I think that this is something certainly worth having dialogue over. I've seen a number of residents ask when we are going to open our council chambers. I've received emails. And although I do think this is a good conversation to have, I think it is a bit premature. I know that Disneyland opened up, but Disneyland also isn't, it's pretty well known Disney on a day's notice will put profit over people any day of the week. So that's that.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 27

But outside of that, I'm worried about people that have relied on their civic participation. Because of the fact that we are in a pandemic, there are some folks that have been able to be more civically engaged than ever. I'm worried about those folks, folks that are compromised with conditions like asthma,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 27

I want to make sure that those individuals are easily able to participate without having to put them in any positions where they have to take public transportation to get here, or, you know, put themselves in positions where they can be compromised. So with that being said, if this is something that the Council did support, I would want to push that we still allow for remote participation in some form going forward. And then lastly, I have concerns for city staff.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 27

I know that there's city staff that have been able to do their job efficiently because of the fact that our chambers are not open to the public, and because there's limited staffing in our building on the eighth floor. I would be concerned about the public health of City Hall. I wouldn't want to rush into this. I'm fully supportive of seeing us open our chambers. I just think right now might be a bit premature.

Thank you. Council Member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 27

Thank you, Mayor Samantha, and thank you, Mayor Pro Temp, for bringing this item forth. I do share some of the same concerns as Councilmember Fan and Councilmember Hernandez. I'm not opposed to having, you know, the public participate from the outside as it was done last year, if I remember correctly, during the budget hearings, especially because the chamber, you know, in regular times, the chamber would be full and I don't think that we can and operate in the same capacity. So even then it would limit how many people can be in the chamber.

Jessie LopezItem 27

And so is there going to be some sort of rotation system? Again, what safety measures are going to be put into place to make sure that people coming into the chamber are vaccinated? Are we going to, I guess I have many more questions and concerns. So if staff can maybe come back and address them, that would be great. But, you know, Council Member Phan brings up a good point with talking about, you know, experts now just talking about we might not reach herd immunity.

Jessie LopezItem 27

And, you know, we talked earlier about the vaccination rates in Orange County and younger, the younger population being very low and like that middle age group also being very low. and people are traveling and so that's also a concern and something that we have to be realistic about. And so, you know, I think that even with CDC saying you don't have to wear a mask, I'm going to continue to wear a mask. And so I also want to make sure that we take staff's input into consideration because they're in the room with us and I want to be considerate of everyone.

Thank you. Thank you for that. Council Member Becerra.

Phil BacerraItem 27

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I agree with Mayor Pro Tem. I think, you know, the sooner we can get back into chambers, the better. Obviously, we want to make sure that we follow the essential protocols. Right now, the the Council Chamber looks like a hockey rink. I mean, it's got plexiglass everywhere. There's definitely been a lot of changes in the chambers to be sensitive to public health. Obviously, I think that the audience would be at a lower capacity than what it would have normally been pre-March 2020. But, you know, we are seeing things open up again. Take Disney out of the equation. Restaurants are open.

Phil BacerraItem 27

And for most of the pandemic, they've at least been offering, you know, reduced seating, but outdoors. You know, and I think for what we have at our facility at City Hall, we've seen it during the pandemic when we were experimenting with different ways to be open to the public in a safe manner. We had, you know, one point we had like a boom mic that was in the foyer of the in the chambers. And so you have this ability for folks to go in and circulate out to make comments. The other thing you know and I want to make participating in our government as accessible and easy as possible.

Phil BacerraItem 27

But let's be honest the calling in feature. I would say the text messages that Mayor Pro Tem has received, I've received as many, if not more, that are just frustrated that it just hasn't worked. I mean, it just, I mean, there have been a lot of folks that thankfully have been able to get in, but it hasn't worked. And so I, frankly, I look forward to when we can all be back in the chambers and go back to a conventional meeting where folks come in and we can see them and they can speak to us. So I support what Mayor Pro Tem is proposing. And I think like with all my colleagues, we have concerns.

Phil BacerraItem 27

And I think our staff has been excellent when it comes to addressing issues related to the pandemic. So I would expect them to come back to us with a plan, recommendations for how we would get back into chambers and when we would.

Great. Thanks for that comment. And I know Mayor Pro Tem has his hand raised. I think everybody hasn't had a chance to speak except for Council Member Mendoza and I. I'll just briefly say, look, I think what we're simply asking for, and it sounds like this is what, you know, maybe everybody is saying, is that there's still some concern, but yet we need a path to at least get to this point at some point. I think June 15th is going to be a big date just because the governor is going to be lifting a lot of restrictions and these tiers start going away.

So I don't know what that means legally with respect to the Brown Act and a lot of things that have been relaxed as a result of the pandemic. So what I would like is maybe, you know, the clerk to work with the city attorney and bring back some guidance on, you know, what the timeline is and how we can come back and how we can open up to the public. You know, and again, I think it'll be some personal choices from council members. I don't think the remote or virtual attendance is going to go away. So I think the technical difficulties we have now are going to continue in some fashion.

You know, some people are going to be frustrated that they can't be in the chambers are going to be outside. So but I just want us not to forget, man, we have done a lot as a city to try to make things as accessible to our public as as much as as difficult as it's been. We've done a lot. When I look at other cities that they just take emails that they read themselves and people can't call in. people can't you know uh you know speak it it's just really amazing to me i'm always stunned but i think we've tried to do as good as we can as difficult and clumsy as it's been at some times

uh and challenging we really try to make sure that people have an opportunity to comment and be heard so i just want to thank staff for all the effort that's been made but yeah i think a path and a plan a blueprint plan to get us back what that looks like yeah that would be great to hear because especially with you know governor's orders being relaxed tears going away all those things impact our decisions so council member mendoza i think i see you on screen do you want to make a

comment yes um i concur and i think it's a good idea the only concern is that i want to be absolutely I'm absolutely sure that there is almost a zero percentage of people being infected from coming to our meetings. Maybe we have some kind of requirements that they have. you know, we've got to be doing the health checks, just as you do at other places and temperature

checks. And also that, that for them to come to council meetings, it's not going to result in a spike right here because of we've come back too early and maybe even have a team or several teams of health people to come and do the vaccinations during the evening so that we can get more people to accept the vaccinations and that way we can do our part as city council people

in providing a public forum for our residents, but not exposing them to the risk of contamination. Because there's still a lot of people who are reluctant to get the vaccination. So we've got to go. We've got to take it easy. So for my part, I'm still going to be participating virtually. I'm not quite ready to come back. And in person, it's it's a big risk. I have a lot of elderly people in my family, and I don't want to risk it.

And so but I do want the public to have that option of coming in person.

Thank you, Councilmember. So I think everybody's had a chance to speak. Mayor Pro Tem, you want to wrap it up?

David PenalozaItem 27

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Councilwoman Mendoza, just let me remind you that you did the last council meeting from Cancun. So just throwing that out there. But with that said, I don't think any of my colleagues listen to what I said. Nobody wants to come back 100%. This is a situation where we would give the residents the option to participate in person if they'd like to. Nobody's saying that they shouldn't wear face masks in the council chambers. They should absolutely be wearing face masks. And I hope that people continue to wear face max face

David PenalozaItem 27

masks when in our council chambers. And like we did last year, it would be obviously first come first serve 25 people out in the chambers and the rest seating outside, uh, socially distance as well. Uh, I don't think it's, uh, it's it's not rocket science. I think we could follow the guidance of everyone else that and every other business in the state that's going this direction. It's not too soon. I just clearly see that there's no effort to return to some level of normalcy and be more transparent with the public. This would be the perfect opportunity to expand the sunshine ordinance, which we clearly

David PenalozaItem 27

don't care to do so disappointed, but not surprised. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

great thank you for that um madam city manager did you get uh an accurate summary of where the

council is um i believe this direction was at towards the city clerk sir i'm sorry um

madam city clerk are you are you uh sufficiently um informed of what we'd like you to have brought back to us?

Yes, Mayor. I have sufficient information from all the council. Thank you so much for all your input.

Great. Thank you for that. All right. Well, that was the last council led item. Let me go ahead and recess that city council meeting and convene the housing authority meeting.

And let me go ahead and hereby call the housing authority meeting to order. And Madam Clerk, will you please conduct roll call of the housing authority members?

authority member becerra your authority member hernandez here authority member lopez here authority member mendoza here authority member fan here vice chair penia loza here chair sarmiento

here uh madam clerk do we have any members of the public wishing to address the uh address us

on any housing authority items if there are any members of the public who'd like to speak at this time please dial star nine from your phone or select raise hand from zoom

and we did not receive any written communication um and i do not see anyone uh wanting to speak

great so i'll go ahead and bring it back to council uh bring it back to the housing authority I'm sorry. We have we're on the consent calendar items one through five. I'll go ahead and entertain a motion to adopt or pull any items off the housing authority agenda or recusals. Councilmember Pham.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Thank you Mayor. I just like to recuse myself from item number five. The City of Anaheim is a client sometimes of my employer, Rattan and Tucker, so I will be recusing myself from that item. Thank you.

Great. Thanks for that clarification. Anybody else willing to abstain or willing to make a motion, abstain, or pull an item off the consent calendar?

All right. Anybody want to make a motion? I'll motion to approve.

Second.

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

Authority member Becerra?

Yes.

Authority member Hernandez?

Yes.

Authority member Lopez? Yes. Authority member Mendoza?

Jessie LopezItem 1

Yes.

Authority member Fan? Yes. Vice Chair Peñalosa?

Yes.

Chair Sarmiento?

Yes. All right, let me go ahead and adjourn the Housing Authority meeting and reconvene the City Council meeting and I'll turn it over to the City Manager for any uh final comments or announcements

in the interest of time sir i will skip any comments very wise very wise um thank you

city manager let me bring it back to the council members uh council member becerra

Phil BacerraItem 1

thank you mr mayor just two quick things on may 17th uh the ed arnold golf classic is going to take place. The event is hosted by a gentleman who's a well-known sportscaster and anchorman. He was on KTLA Channel 5 for many years and he's the Santa Ana College alumnus, Ed Arnold. And so this event raises scholarship funds for Santa Ana College's student athletes. So it makes sure that no student is denied educational opportunities because of any sort of financial constraints. So just wanted to put that out there for everybody. May 17th, the Ed Arnold

Phil BacerraItem 1

Golf Classic for SAC. And lastly, I wanted to highlight that May is Oncology Nursing Month. Oncology nurses, for those that don't know, care for cancer patients. They're there to explain the diagnosis, guide patients through all the treatments that they go through. They're there with them to celebrate the victories and then unfortunately they have to be there to comfort them through some very tough times oncology nurses you know they provide a firm commitment throughout and they are dedicated to their patients every day and i i know that because my wife wendy is one so

Phil BacerraItem 1

i i gotta give a shout out to my favorite oncology nurse but uh to all the oncology nurses out there I just want to wish you a happy Oncology Nursing Month here in the month of May. And good night, everybody.

Thank you, Council Member. Great comment. Council Member Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to take this opportunity to shed light on on May being Mental Health Awareness Month. This month is a month where we raise awareness and educate the public about mental illness, such as the fact that 18.1% of Americans suffer from depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. The reality of living with these conditions and the strategies for attaining mental health and wellness is the purpose of this month. It also aims to draw attention to suicide, which can be precipitated by some mental illnesses. Additionally, Mental Health Awareness Month strives to reduce the stigma, the negative

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

attitudes and misconceptions that surround mental health and mental illnesses. This month came about by a presidential proclamation. And lastly, I wanted to shed light on that in 2019, our Congress designated May 5th as National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Native and I just wanted to shed light on the needed dialogue around protecting women and natives. Thank you.

Thank you, council member. Council member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 1

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I do have a couple of announcements. I know it's teacher appreciation week, so I wanna thank all of our Santa Ana Unified School teachers. You really have shown how much our society depends on you, and relies on you. And like so many of us, you have to pivot and learn how to be digital teachers and much of the work that comes with that goes unnoticed and acknowledged. And so I just wanna thank you for all that you do, for always prioritizing the wellbeing of our kids. It's been a difficult year for so many of us. And through all of that criticism, you managed to help children grow, learn,

Jessie LopezItem 1

and feel cared for. And I think that that's really important. I also really want to highlight that it is Municipal Clerks Week. So City Clerk, I just want to thank you for all of the work that you and your team do. We have a very small but mighty team, and the clerk's office serves as an information center, providing a vital link between our residents, local governing bodies, and agencies at all levels. And so on behalf of our three residents, thank you for your hard work. And next week, I know we're not going to be, you know, we're not going to have a council session, but next week is Public Works Week.

Jessie LopezItem 1

And so I really want to give a shout out to our Public Works Department for their dedication to our city. On behalf of War III families, thank you for working behind the scenes, maintaining the city's infrastructure, and providing us with essential services that are critical to our community. We have a dumpster day coming up in Marbury Park this Saturday. We will be there from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. at Marbury Park. We had one at Edda Park this past weekend and it was very successful. And lastly, and actually that was it. So thank you everyone, have a good night.

Thank you council member. Council member Mendoza.

Aye. Aye, thank you. Thank you, Mayor. I'm just having a little bit of trouble with the phone. It's it's not charging, but we hear you. OK, good. As your representative on the the Office on Aging, the advocacy for senior citizens, I want to mention that the Orange County Community Resources Office on Aging is releasing a request for proposals. RFP seeking applications to provide the county of Orange

aging program services funded by the Older Americans Act, the Older Californians Act, and other available funds for the beginning of 2021-22. And this program is has to deal with It deals with the dignity of at home fall preventions and also includes residential repairs and modifications for senior citizens.

So I'll keep you updated on training or programs that are available to our senior citizens here in in Santa Ana. And also just last thing that. Thank you to Councilwoman Lopez for acknowledging our teachers. I am a teacher I teach at Middle College High School and it's a privilege and an honor to be able to inspire and motivate and guide our students into positions of leadership

here within our city and into careers of professionals. So thank you for that acknowledgement. It's hard work, but it does make an impact. And I will certainly pass that message along to my fellow teachers when we have our next meeting. And just one last comment is that May is bike month. So encourage everyone to ride a bike to wherever it is that you want to wherever it is that you have business.

And at one point, while I was still working with the county of Orange off of Main Street, I did bike once or twice a week from my home in Ward 6. and it's actually it actually was a faster commute because on the bike trail there aren't any stop lights and save gas and got some exercise and the good thing about that is that my employer the county of orange had a nice gym set up for us that we would take a shower

before work so national bike month in may that is it thank you very much thank you council member

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

busy month in may um council member fan thanks mayor so the first thing is i'd like to mention that um as we know the police chief said that they would have the hate crime reports on the website on the city of Santa Ana website that Councilmember Bercera and I brought forward and it is up there and it's available in various languages so anybody can go and see what types of hate crimes have occurred and I think that's just really great support for our city so thank you to the chief and his team. I'd also like to just a little bit of a public service announcement.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

I know it's getting really hot. We're all starting to use our AC more. And for at least we are in our family. It was 80 degrees out here today. I do recommend checking out SCE website regarding how you might be able to lower your electricity bill. My family went to time of use electricity and I think we're saving about $100 from our most recent electric bill. So please take a look at that. I think residents can really benefit from that or for our low income residents to get discounted or free newer appliances that are energy efficient.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

The last thing I do want to mention is I believe it's mosquito time. I think some of us are starting to get mosquito bites and those can be very dangerous. So please turn over all your standing water, even a tiny little bit. These tiger mosquitoes or ankle biters are really proliferating. And I just want to make sure that we all stay safe as we spend more time outdoors, as we're able to start to do things in person that we all take care of ourselves.

Thank you, Council Member. Mayor Pro Tem.

David PenalozaItem 1

Thank you, Mayor. I just want to keep it very short and sweet. Want to wish all the the mothers out in Santa Ana a happy Mother's Day. Felicia de las Madres. It's this Sunday coming up and Monday, May 10th is the other as Madres in Latin America. So happy mothers to all of you. All of our staff who are mothers. none of us would have would be here without any of you as always much love and thank you good night

great thank you mayor protem thank you for reminding me man that is that would have been a huge oversight so uh felicia de las madres a todas las madrecitas uh to my mom but also my wife two very very good strong women um that i love and admire um just two things on my end um i want to recognize, you know, public works in the city, all our team for Arbor Day Foundation, again, has named Santa Ana 2020, this past year, Tree City USA in recognition of the city's commitment to effectively incorporating the urban forest management into the community.

This is a 22nd year in a row that we've received this honor as a city. And I think Mayor Pro Tem was with me on Arbor Day over at the zoo. And we were told there's 600 trees just on that site. So we have turned our urban area into a much softer, safer, cleaner place that provides shade for many of our families that live in crowded conditions inside and very hard elements in the city. So good work, great work, public work staff and city team.

The last thing was I just wanted to thank Chief Valentin and all his staff for helping coordinate the May Day March and providing support. There was close to 500-600 people who marched from the Mexican Consulate's office down to the downtown on May Day, the 1st of May, celebrating and supporting immigration reform. so it was a great day everybody was safe everybody felt very protected so thank you chief uh please pass along our thanks to all the staff there so i will now be recessing us back to closed session

and um and we will come back after we're done i'll come back after we're done to go ahead and adjourn the council meeting which uh will be adjourning to next tuesday may 18th uh when we uh resume the following meeting. So right now we are recessed back to closed session. Madam Clerk, do we sign off and go back on originally or do we stay on? What would you suggest?