Read the May 24 meeting.

Like I said, it's very critical that, you know, we know the statistics on Santa Ana for COVID. We know the statistics on, you know, essential workers and the barriers that we face. Let's use this money to make it easy to build a Santa Ana that we can surmount those barriers, really, you know, cross that digital divide. And, you know, that if people are afraid that they have to go out to work, make it easier for them to work from home. Make them easier to find resources that are available to them. A lot of, you know, resources are free online.

Even in, you know, like what would have been a $2,000 video editing program, you can get for free online. But if you don't have internet and you don't have a computer, you're totally shut out in recovering from, you know, expressing yourself. The arts are an important tool. I was a member of the Arts Master Plan Steering Committee. and there are some real ideas in there to help get out into the community, to do exactly what some of the other speakers are saying, to use the arts to help the community, to help them get better jobs, to get mental health resources, to express themselves. And I just really want to urge you all there

to use, like I said, use this for recovery and not relief and also to build something better. And I strongly urge you again to resist the temptation to funnel it to the downtown because you've gotten lots of resources over the past 10 years. And this is really an opportunity to put these resources and amenities and quality of life and health and mental spaces that are open to the community where people can heal and be de-stressed. So that's what I'd have to say. And like I said, it's a really great opportunity to serve the entire city.

Thank you for your comments. Thanks, Victor, and good evening. I love your idea about the technology piece. We had a very robust conversation with that brainstorming among the executive team, and our library director has some fabulous ideas in there, and he has already implemented quite a bit that I hope you're already aware of. Hotspots are available at the library, so anybody that does have connectivity problems can check one of those out, and there are hundreds available. He also has been working on an actual laptop kiosk disk dispensing where anyone can utilize laptops and use the Wi-Fi that is available at our library.

So the other ideas that you have I love, you know, job training space, a lab. We did just kick off at our workforce center a whole youth mentoring and youth internship program, but some really great ideas. So thank you.

Thank you. Next up, we have Cynthia Espinosa. Please go ahead. And just a reminder to please keep your comments and questions as brief as you can, because we have a lot of people to get through here. Thank you.

Unfortunately, the pandemic confirmed that our transgender community is the most marginalized, the most vulnerable, but fortunately, the pandemic gave us strength and value to go and do the work for our community to make us more visible and so exigir our rights. Now, we would like to be part of that help. Now the transgender community suffers problems with housing and mental health. If we as an organization received this help, we could support our transgender community. There is a question.

What probability is that our organization can be part of the help to help our transgender community to pay their rent?

Beth? Well, certainly one of the components under the guidelines is the assistance. And we currently have, I mean, we have a lot of other rental assistance programs, but these dollars can be spent on additional rental assistance program. So I think that's information that we can share with you. This, the entire proposed spending plan does need to go to Council for approval. But I will say that with more and more coming out on the guidelines and as things transition, we need to remain flexible and adjust this, the information and the spending of it. But I would love to hear from, and I know you're the third speaker

on this issue, is, you know, provide us some information. What exact program, I know you've mentioned rental assistance, but it sounds like there might be some other programs that you're interested in providing to this community. If you can let us know what exactly program that would be, that is something that will help us better build assistance programs and make sure that we equitably offer it to all of the segments of our community. So I would encourage you as well, you know, off the survey, if you can send an email to that email, that would be helpful for me to better understand in more detail the needs of your community.

Does that make sense? Yes, I think it's very good. Thank you.

Okay, now we have Manny Escamilla.

Please go ahead. Are you able to hear me there? Yes, we can. Okay, thank you. Okay, well, thank you so much, City Manager Ridge, and everyone else on the call. Appreciate the presentation. I just wanted to, again, I guess, think about this holistically in the sense of trying to figure out ways the city can be creative to reuse this money over time so that it's not just kind of a one-time use. So I believe if we invest in particular infrastructure items that will make the members of the city staff actually more efficient over time, that those are definitely worth considering.

So I'm liking that Public Works is looking to see ways that they can actually invest in systems to make sure that Public Works projects don't conflict with each other, that they're done in the most cost-effective way, and that preventative maintenance can be done. So things like that I think are great. I really do believe, at least kind of listening in to the other residents here, that some point that was brought up in earlier discussions with outreach with the general plan team was that the city is still missing kind of a citizen relations management system to basically bring

in the knowledge that everybody has about how to contact people and how to get the message out with all the various language concerns and all the various kind of issues that people want to hear about that those types of systems are now in place. I believe there's a Project Bluebird in New York that helps the legislature over there kind of manage the entire state of New York as far as dealing with constituents that we might be able to apply here at a local level, which again, I think is money well spent that will make staff more efficient overall at their job.

And one thing I will argue for is looking to see how Santa Ana might be able to join the public banking movement that's kind of emerging out of LA and Southern California and other parts of the state. So with changes in state law that might actually allow us to have our own publicly funded bank that would help address maybe some of these issues in the sense of being able to provide a startup capital at low cost, individual training, and also kind of partnering with ways to make city assets more valuable. So if you look at a community center, you know, if we add one table here, it becomes a tax center.

If you add another table over there and some outdoor play space, it becomes a after school or during school, what do you call it, child to go center. So there are lots of ways to think about it creatively. But then while still minimizing the ongoing cost to the city and maybe being more proactive about leasing out spaces for these types of micro or cooperative businesses that have been proposed by other agencies. So again, I just ask that we look for ways to creatively leverage this money to create those systems, which will then allow us to be more efficient and provide for multiple unpredictable needs down the road.

So with that, thank you. Thanks, Manny. You always come up with clever ideas. I really love the multi-utilization of space. One of the challenges that will be with this money being a kind of a one-time opportunity for us, we do need to be very cautious and careful of using it for ongoing expenditures because there is a finite end date for the funding. So we expect to receive half of it any day now. The other half won't be received until about no sooner.

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Good afternoon. Thank you for all of us that have recently joined us by way of Zoom. If you would like to provide a comment on any special meeting agenda items, please dial star 9 from your phone or select the raise hand feature from zoom on your device.

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Testing, testing. Daisy, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you. Thank you so much. It looks like now you've got it working well.

Okay, very good. I'm using my cell phone for that then. Thank you so much. Okay.

Daisy, are we live? We're not recording, but we are live.

Okay, because on the YouTube channel, we're just getting music and lots of static. Thank you. I will let our video engineer know.

It's probably because the feed is delayed to YouTube, but it should get better, I think.

Okay, yeah, I think it was Council Member Mendoza's device. Thank you.

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For those member of the public that have joined us by way of Zoom, if you would like to provide a comment, please dial star nine from your telephone or dial raise hand from your Zoom device.

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Recording in progress.

Great. Are we live Madam City Clerk? Thank you. And good evening, everybody. Let me go ahead and call this meeting to order. This is the special meeting of the Santa Ana City Council for May 24th, 2021. Let me just say welcome back to those of you who are with us in chambers here. It certainly is an odd moment for me. I think this is the first time I physically presided over a meeting as mayor since since last year and being here with colleagues and having other colleagues on the line. I know that we're one step closer to getting back to a little bit of normal

and where we were pre-pandemic, but I just want to thank everybody for bearing with us as we've tried to make sure that we've included everybody and given an opportunity to everybody to be heard. So I have a modified notice and disclosure that I want to read before we get started. So this meeting is taking place with limited in-person attendance, and by teleconference via Zoom. The public may access the meeting via the Santa Ana YouTube channel or the city's website. Please bear with us, as usual, that technology, our technology may be disrupting the flow of the meeting, so we ask for your patience, ask for your indulgence in that.

As you know, it's an imperfect process. But what I did want to mention as well is that because we decided to have today's special meeting to allow the budget to be presented to the public and to the residents of the city. We had to bump the planning commission meeting that was already scheduled for today, and they will be meeting tomorrow at 5.30. So we apologize to those of you who expected to see the planning commissioners or listen to the planning commissioners and have those topics discussed, but we believe that the budget is equally as important, and hopefully you'll have an opportunity

to address the Planning Commission tomorrow. So with that, Madam Clerk, I'll go ahead and turn it over to you so you can call roll.

Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Becerra? Here. Council Member Hernandez?

Here.

Council Member Lopez? Here. Council Member Mendoza? Here. Council Member Fan?

Here.

Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa?

Here.

Mayor Sarmiento?

Thank you, Madam Clerk. And you'll go ahead and explain to me if some of the other council members who I don't see want to speak. Maybe you can give me the heads up and we'll do it that way. I'll certainly be able to see my colleagues who are here next to me and on the dais to go ahead and see if they need to speak. So we'll do something a little different tonight. I'm going to turn it over to Mayor Pro Tem to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance tonight.

David Penaloza

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. So if you could all please rise for our flag and put your right hand over your heart and repeat after me. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. That was a flawless job. So, you know, I've got a card of speakers here that want to address the Council. Madam Clerk, why don't I go ahead and call on them, and then you can call on those that are waiting to address the Council on the phone, if that works for everybody.

So let me begin. I have Mr. Taylor Rudd. If he's in the audience, if you could please approach us here at the podium. Mr. Rudd.

Phil Bacerra

Mr. Mayor, before we begin, I just want to get clarification. So for those that are calling in to comment, is the line going to be continued to be open while folks in person are commenting, or has that line been closed?

The line will now be closed as soon as the first speaker is on, and then if we want to reopen it at any point, council could provide me direction. Okay, thank you.

Good question. Thank you. Mr. Rudd, please go ahead. You'll be given three minutes to address the city council.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

um to get construction going as quick as i can uh basically i i feel i'm be running against a time clock on this and the sooner we get it restored the more valuable this is going to be to the city the community. I've talked to neighbors that have been a little concerned about what's hanging around there. I don't know who the people are.

Neighbors are excited to see the building taken care of and restored. I've also talked to them about putting a monument plate. That's part of what the Historical Society wants, commemorating the fire department, fire station number and the firefighters that have worked there.

I just can't tell you how thrilled I am, at least to be in the process, to have actually walked in that building and seen it still there. I appreciate the construction style, being a contractor.

I've got nothing but admiration for it. I do own a historic building in Oregon that was built in 1899. It was converted to apartments in the 30s. I bought that almost 25 years ago. I've maintained that as low-cost housing. My tenants are paying probably on the average of about $500 a month. Everybody in the neighborhood is $8 to $1,500 a month.

Mr. Rudd, your time is, once you turn red, time has expired if you want to wrap up. Okay.

Yeah, I would just like to get in it, serve the community with it, do a little gift back, restore the building. It's not going to cost the city anything, and it will preserve it for the next 100 years, and that's my hope. Thank you. Thank you.

May I have Andrea Lee Harris?

And if you can, I'm going to mention to others that come and address us and those on the phone. We don't want to know your address, but just let us know if you're a Santa Ana resident or not.

Hello. Thank you for having me here today. I appreciate us all getting back together in the chambers. My name is Andrea Lee Harris, and I am a resident of Santa Ana. I'm also a new member of the Arts and Cultural Commission for the city. I'm very happy to be able to serve. I'm here today to talk with you about the budget. And what I'd like to say is that we have this incredible opportunity, as we always do with the city, to do amazing things. With the monies that are coming from the American Rescue Plan, We're looking at helping come back from COVID and helping to bring the city to a better level than we left it prior to COVID.

And what I would like to do is request on behalf of the commission, as well as many citizens I've spoken with, we would like to request a million dollars to be given to the arts and culture of our city to support out of the 124 million that we're getting. We would also like to request $100,000 ongoing support for the arts. In the past, we've had grants offered through the city, and that grant has gone on for the past five years. We no longer have funding to support our arts grant and our cultural grants. We'd like to reinvigorate that and re-support that. We'd like to also use that to have our outreach programs embolden

and through our nonprofit organizations and our artists in the community. We're all in place to do this work. We have an incredible commission in place. We have a master plan. We also have an incredible grants program that we'd like to continue.

Also, I'd like to talk about the arts in response to this idea of bringing back the city and reviving the city. Art is about healing. It's about educating. It's about bringing people back to a higher level, giving them expression. And so we really feel like our arts and our art programming will be something that really helps to cultivate growth and change and strength back in our community after COVID. Also unifying and building equity in the community is something we really want to see happen. Also, the arts are an economic generator. They're something that's going to help grow the city.

If we put the funding back into the arts and into our culture and into our community, it's going to be something that pays the city back, pays the citizens back. I really believe that the arts will help to heal us after COVID and really reunify the city. It'll help to bring back the energy and strength in the city. I just like to say that, you know, when it all comes down to it, it's like, how do we wanna be remembered? I know that this COVID relief money and I know that the budget for the city is a critical issue, but we wanna be remembered as a place that supports art and culture.

We wanna be a place that is actually here for our community and our community needs us more than ever now. and so I'm hoping you guys will consider it. I thank you so much for your time and have a wonderful rest of your meeting.

Thank you, Ms. Harris. Appreciate your comments. Jessica Flores.

Necesita un interprete o lo va a ser en español o en inglés?

Si, en español.

Adelante.

Okay, buenas tardes. My name is Jessica Flores. I'm here supporting my community, which is the community transgender. I'm supporting the Trans Latinx because I think it's necessary a housing program for everyone. We pay taxes. We don't have the help of anyone. I've seen trans and sisters who are in the street. We need the housing program for the pandemic that happened.

And what happens is that they have left in the olvido. There is no clinic, no services in Orange County. I personally need my treatment hormonal. no, no tengo la, la clínica o la persona, el doctor que me de mis hormonas. Se necesita un programa de vivienda específico para las personas transgénero. Muchas gracias.

Gracias.

Thank you, our interpreter will go ahead and translate.

Good evening. My name is Jessica Flores, and I'm here to support our transgender community. I am a member of TransLatinX, and we need housing programs for transgender people. We pay taxes, and we don't get any help from the government. The trans people, our trans brothers and sisters are living on the street, and during this pandemic, it's been even worse. you have forgotten us. We need, I don't have a clinic. We don't have a clinic, health services in Orange County for us. I need my hormonal treatments and I do

not have a doctor to give me those. We need housing that is specific for transgender people. Thank you.

Julie Castro.

Thank you.

We have received so much support and we would like to take care of it, because we are a community that we are conviviendo with all of you. We ask that we support that we have clinics here, that we are closer. A living place would be good for us to develop more, because today we are a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a living place, and if we would like to have a community for us, where we can do this project, it would be good for all of us. Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Julie Castro, and I'm a Santa Ana resident for several years, and I'm a member of the TransLatinx community, and we need for you to open a housing specifically for us. We do not have any support, and we haven't for years. We are part of the community. we are here with you. We need clinics that are close by and having a program, a housing program for us so that we can develop ourselves. We are not really welcome where we live now, so if you can help us with this housing program it would be great. Thank you. Leslie Jimenez.

Thank you.

Good evening, I'm Nancy Jimenez, and I'm here asking for support for our transgender community. We need help for us to get the services that we need, and thank you for listening to us.

Cynthia Espinosa.

ofrecemos muchísimos servicios y últimamente estamos dándole a nuestra comunidad los lunches y hemos visto mucha comunidad transgénero en las calles y nos han platicado las terribles experiencias que han tenido que prefieren vivir en la calle que ir a un shelter porque desafortunadamente no tienen buen trato y existe mucho la transfobia. También eso es algo para empezar, yo creo que teniendo ese cimiento podemos seguir a ellas encaminándolas empoderándolas so that we can do something better. I am also a woman transgénero who is living in Santa Ana four years permanent

and we have no service specialized for women transgénero. Unfortunately, if I live in Santa Ana, I have to go to San Diego, I have to go to Los Angeles, I have to go to other condados to receive these services. and I think it's just when we are in the community here in Santa Ana. And so, you can prepare them because every time there are reunions, we're going to be here present to see that we are here and that we are not going to go there. If you want to know about our work, please follow us on our Facebook page

and there will be a lot of work that we are doing. Thank you. Thank you.

I'm Cynthia Espinosa, and I'm here from Alianza Translatinx, and I've been part of them for a year since the pandemic. And we hope to be part of these federal funds, federal help you're going to receive. We need housing. We don't get housing. We don't get these services. The transgender community that are living in the streets, they have had horrible experiences in shelters so they don't want to be there. People there are transphobic.

We need help. We need to help them, to help these women to be empowered, to be better, to do better in the future.

transgender women I've been here for four years and in Santa Ana and I don't see any special services for transgender women I have to go to San Diego to LA to other counties to receive these services and that's not fair because we are here we are in the community we're part of Santa Ana so we will be back to these meetings so you can see us so you have to listen to us we are here We're not going anywhere. And if you want to follow the work that we're doing, we can follow us on Facebook and social media.

Thank you. Next is Chloe Rios Wyatt.

Hello, good evening. My name is Chloe Rios Wyatt. And I was a long-time resident of Santa Ana. I am now working for my community here. I had to leave Orange County because of all the lack of services when I started my transition four years ago. The Revive Santa Ana federal funding is looking to help our community get back up on their feet after a devastating global pandemic. My question to you all is how are we ensuring that the transgender community is being included?

For decades, and even today, the transgender community no-see has been excluded from decision-making and strategic conversations around medical services, socioeconomic topics, and even the provision of basic services. We are demanding that with these federal funding or aid, our community receives the funding necessary to create a shelter, which should include programs and services to help houseless transgender community individuals get back up on their feet after a devastating destruction from the COVID-19 pandemic. This revived Sanana plan shouldn't just focus on helping cisgender people.

we need the city to begin tending the needs of the transgender community now and helping Alianza Trans Latinx build a shelter where trans people are not discriminated based on their name, based on how they look or sound. Housing is one of the most basic needs that any individual in our society must have in order to have stability in all aspects of our lives. I want to remind you that housing is important to also ensure overall health and well-being, which our community has not had for decades, and even now with the COVID-19 pandemic. We need a transgender-specific shelter, and we need you to help us fund it now.

Sparing $10 million from the revived plan to invest in the transgender community is not enough, but it's a good start. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Frank Gutierrez.

Hello. Mayor, Sarmiento, chairs, I am here, I have a speaking for the sale of the firehouse. Being Latino and growing up in Santa Ana, knowing that I grew up zero, poor, from a father who was a cook at the labor camp of Sheffery Street up in Irvine, and knowing that most of my community goes from zero, no houses, no nothing. There's a mentality that I've learned from being a business major from SC, okay, and having a business, okay? You learn that you don't sell because like real estate, and I can imagine all of you have made some decent money on your real estate. You think you would have made it if you would have sold it?

I doubt it. If you look at the value of my house on Washington Square, you'd say, wow, if I would have sold it two years ago, I would have lost about 300,000 bucks. So why are we gonna sell the fire station? Why? Because you wanna sell it? because you're not thinking about the benefit to our community? What? Things get difficult and we sell out? Is that the face we're going to give to the Latino community and the community in general? We don't do that. We have to teach that we don't sell. We keep, we fight, and we figure it out. That's what we're taught. If we're not taught how to figure things out,

what kind of business people are you? What kind of lawyers are you? I did go to law school for a year, so amen. You know, Sarmiento, we have to IRAC things, you know? You have to IRAC. Well, you know, we get the facts. We get the facts. And we get the rules. And that's the way we go. And no BS. We do not sell. And if somebody wants to come and buy it, we're business people. We're not done. You pay us what is worth it. We're not going to sell it cheap. And on top of that, there's going to be conditions. You're going to respect our community and you're going to give it back.

Otherwise, go home or go wherever you crawled out of so we don't sell. We need each ward needs to have a place for each person who represents that ward to represent their efforts of what they can do and not do. We cannot centralize on 4th Street as being our focal point for anything that happens in this city. We need to distribute. we need to have centers on the six wards that we have because that challenges each of you to see what you could do what kind of a program you could do what kind of results you could do

and if you can't do it honestly you shouldn't be there so i leave you to think about that one

thank you thank you sir you just brought chills up my spine when you mentioned iraq That's issue, rule, analysis, and conclusion at Taichung Law School. So it brings back nightmares.

Natalie Romero.

Buenas tardes. Mi nombre es Natalia Romero. I want to thank the United States and the people concerned about the support that is given to the organizations. I want to thank the support for helping those who are behind them. but also I would like to point out that if a organization can be able to

visualize these points, how the funds go to what is in reality, what is in reality, what is in reality.

I want to point out a friend who is an activist, of an activist community that has suffered a accident. I think an activist person is always perceptible to any success. I would like to ask, in some way, a movement that can be done to these points of work to understand what is beyond that if it was a accident or something else

because as an activist it is always perceptible to anything. So I would like to really support to what it is Because we're not that one thing, we're not that other thing. And one can give an order, but those who execute it really don't know if they do it with honestness. So I think there's a way to have an organization, or I don't know how to call it, that we can really visualize this and that we can always clarify

that the support is truly what it is. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Good evening. I'm Natalie Romero. And thank you to the United States and everyone who helps people who are really needed and who people, their support for organizations, and they are watching that these people are really helped. The people who have less are really helped. And I hope that, I'd like to suggest that you can have an organization that really sees these things, that sees how things are being helped and that the money goes to really help people. And for example, I have a friend who's an activist in the LGBT community,

community and she had this she had an accident and this as an activist you have to see what's really going on to see things that's really are so I'd like to suggest I don't know kind of a movement for these items to take place and maybe to have someone because it happens that if this was really an accident or there was more behind that because I say as an activist you're susceptible to things like this. So I like to use the money to support, to get help, for the money to really help people. Because we complain and there are orders, but we don't know if the orders are fulfilled in an honest way.

So have an organization to see these things and to clarify that the money goes to help where it's really needed.

Great. Thank you for those comments. That concludes the comments, in-person comments from members of the public wishing to address the city council so i'm going to go ahead and turn it over to the clerk of the council to go ahead and call on those members of the public that are on the phone that wish to

address us thank you mayor and members of the council to request to speak on the special meeting items only dial star nine from your phone or select raise hand from zoom caller whose phone number ends with the last three numbers or the zoom id pepe santa maria if you would please select the microphone icon thank you you may proceed with your comment you have three minutes

good evening everyone i would like to thank you for opening up this conversation to all of us and creating this opportunity i myself am a mia alumna of mcfadden intermediate as well as century High School. I have younger siblings in Santa Ana Unified School District right now. And I just wanted to say that it is a little disappointing to have to advocate for basic public assets and amenities to be properly protected and properly stewarded by our city government. You know, I would like for you all to, you know, really consider how you're going to

steward our resources and to reflect upon the deliberate neglect on behalf of the city staff. I think it's an issue that needs to be addressed so that we can continue to protect our resources. Our youth elders and residents of Santa Ana deserve for our fire station to stay a resource. So I'm asking you to please not sell our public assets. Do not deprive our residents of our own resources. This is our affarstation and we want you to take care of it so that all of us can have a little space to thrive. I'm in solidarity with Alianza Trans Latinx and I believe that

there should be a way for us to meet everyone's needs. I know a lot of my compañeras, compañeres and compañeros trans are very artistic and I know we can have arts residencies cultural workshops other kinds of programs that can really benefit our community as we come back from covid and recover together in a space where we can belong create art create visions for a better future for our community thank you thank you

caller with the last three numbers three four zero if you would please dial star six to unmute

your car select the microphone icon thank you good evening everybody mayor sarmiento and council members this is irma how do you resident of ulcer square for the last 41 years um i also uh thank you again uh for listening to us for the people i've talked to but we are strongly advocating to keep our resources, to keep our historic firehouse. The potential that that has, the ramifications it can have in repurposing it or multiplying as we can think of so many ideas and have the time.

We have to step back and have the time to think of the issues that affect the neighborhood, the lack of technology, the lack of tutoring space, the possibility of a program for PALS and the safety of a police substation and the old ways where the people would know who's there and always feel safe and secure. And also there's enough space to do multiple type of uses. In the past, it was used for a senior center. That means people went walking. As far as parking, talking to the owner of the property next door, see what can be accommodated. Also changing parking instead of having it horizontally

doing a diagonal that would accommodate more both on the side of the fire station and across the street. So there's multiple uses and many ways of repurposing, but the minute we lose an asset, it is lost forever. Any hope of helping the neighborhood in that area, there will be only private property and higher density. So the benefit to the community will be lost. A private investor, as good as he may be, as excellent as he may be in protecting and have a love of history, will only be a benefit to the private investor. Visually, we'll see it pretty. Yay. But the community will lose a treasure forever.

Please keep the firehouse. And now with the chance of the revived Santana, the opportunity is phenomenal. Absolute phenomenal. And the contrast of the loss, I can't even think. Thank you so much and wish everybody well.

Thank you. Zoom ID, Miguel Pulido. If you would please select the microphone icon on your device.

Thank you, you may proceed with your comment.

Hi there, this is not Miguel Pulido Sr., which is probably obvious from the sound of my voice. But I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the things going on in the city. And I'll try to be brief because I know there's nothing less effective than a person who thinks he knows something. So I think it goes without saying that most of you took the oath of office to help with the prosperity in our city. And whether that prosperity is economic or psychological or even spiritual, if such a thing could be measured, it's obvious that all prosperity is the result of reinforcing addressing feedback loops that build on top of each other.

Now you can have positive feedback loops or negative feedback loops. The pandemic locally has been a negative feedback loop. It has affected lots of things economically, as I'm sure you're aware of.

In order to turn a negative feedback loop into a positive feedback loop, we have to look at the underlying systems which support that loop. And this is according to operations theorists such as Russell Ackoff, Peter Senge and Don Donnella Meadows, who are probably the most intelligent minds who have considered how to manage systems. It seems that oftentimes we think from the perspective of divide and conquer. We have a problem here and we think, okay, if we divide our resources, we take care of it, we can move on to another problem. That's the way everyone works.

But sometimes it's better to try and kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. So if there's ever an opportunity to handle multiple feedback loops of our city system, whether they're economic or cultural, and recognize that these are all intertwined, then there's an opportunity to move things forward in an innovative way. Now, I agree with everything that people have said so far. And specifically on the arts, I do think that given my experience as an independent artist in the city, I don't always feel that the arts funding for the whole city is managed as optimally as it could be. So if we're going to move forward,

We need to consider all aspects of how these things feed into each other, as I'm sure you all have been doing. And we really need to look, instead of parts, instead of thinking of agencies, which are, okay, this agency is going to handle the arts, you know, or this agency is going to handle mental health and divide and conquer in that way. I think there's an opportunity to really innovate and move things forward into a new era and try to pool our resources and solve multiple problems at once. And I'm always, many of you know me, I'm always happy to bend your ears. So thank you for your time. Thank you, Mayor Salmanto.

And thank you, City Council, for your time.

Thank you. Zoom ID, Media Arts, Santa Ana. If you would please, thank you. You've successfully unmuted yourself.

Awesome, can you all hear me?

Yes, we could hear you.

Okay, wonderful. Well, thank you, Council. It's good to be talking to you all again. I want to talk about a couple of things on the budget. One is that I emailed you all on Friday a copy of the Otis report on the creative economy for this year. If you didn't receive it, I'd be happy to resend it. My email is Victor at MassaMedia.org. And just to reiterate what was said previously, the arts are an economic generator, which translates into city revenue, jobs for today's artists, and jobs for today's youth who will be tomorrow's professionals and innovators and people who will be creating new

projects and organizations and industries. An Arts OC survey found that the OC arts community lost $121 million during the COVID and the sector needs your support and federal funding from Revive Santa Ana would support this. The arts took a major hit due to COVID and let's not forget how important the artists were in getting us through the pandemic. Filmmakers, actors, musicians, comedians all played a vital role in getting us through the quarantine. So I'm requesting $200,000 for the arts. We were all there when the council directed the city manager to find funding from the surplus to fund the arts grant again.

And now we're told that there's no money allocated for it. So I hope the city didn't walk back on its commitment, but there is a need and it will return dividends for the community. So that's it. And also, you know, funding from the Revive Santa Ana Fund, I think Andrea Harris talked about a million dollars. I think that's reasonable and what we could do with that is tremendous. So in the second item, the fire station, I want to just reiterate a couple of notes from the conversations that have been happening in the community. One is the fire station was occupied by a non-profit

that provided valuable service to the community until 2013 and that it went from a fully functional, fully operational state to the state that you guys are saying that it needs to be sold at fire sale prices in only eight years. Think about that. That's ridiculous and not a reason to reward kind of a snafu by selling the building cheap. Tim Rush says the city invested a million dollars to maintain the building and selling it for $300,000 is losing $700,000. That's fiscally irresponsible and is sure to be a campaign issue in the next election. I want to point out that

nobody has spoken up in support of the sale except the guy who wants to buy the building. That's something that should say a lot to you. None of the constituents I've heard, community leaders, organization leaders, arts leaders have said that selling the building is a good idea. And I believe you can use funding from Revive Santa Ana to save this building either through programs or services, if not in finding ways to repair and revitalize and recover the building, which is what this is supposed to be about. It can be used as a community technology center, a digital library, an artist residency,

a space for community meetings and classes. and as people have said there's many uses but selling it you lose everything just remember the fire station um and santa anna no se vende thank you thank you zoom id carla juarez if you

could please select the microphone icon on your device yes hi hi good afternoon good evening my

My name is Carla Juarez. I am a resident of Santa Ana and I am calling in regards to the Revive federal funds, the $142.9 million. I believe that those funds should be going to the most vulnerable. And I mean, I am okay with art and all that, but I think it should definitely go to the most vulnerable population in our inner city, especially those that were affected. and especially the essential workers that had to put their lives on the line and continue to work to maintain us.

That would include our undocumented population. And I echo the need for our transgender ladies that need our help. And also including those that identify themselves as LGBTQ. Also defense fund for the tenants because we know that by the end of June there's going to be a tsunami of evictions that are coming in the population. When you come from privilege and you have to downsize, that's nothing to compare to when you're already at an extreme low income and you have to downsize.

that is different, definitely one step on the street when you have to downstride. So I urge you to please protect our residents and build a Santa Ana for residents that are here, that have been here, that were here before Santa Ana was popping and vibrant in downtown Santa Ana.

For people that have already been here, And I also want to urge you to please provide a fund for cooperatives, which are worker-owned cooperatives, which will build real equity, where the workers are the owners and are residents of Santa Ana. And also for the empty lots, I would like to also advocate for Thrive Santana for a community land trust with community agreements for the benefit of residents. there's a lot of empty lots that have fences on it. And again, I've said it before, that those empty lots are no good to no one right now.

But we have a need, we have many needs of green spaces, of Mercaditos, of affordable housing, but true affordable housing for extremely low income. Like also for our houseless folks. All those lands could go to good use. And especially with these funds, these funds should go for the most vulnerable.

You have 15 seconds left.

And thank you, now for anybody else. Everybody else, we still strive and we hope we can survive. It is our most vulnerable, they're one step away from being homeless, but from being houseless,

it is just a real need. Thank you for my time.

Thank you.

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

Hello, this is Sandra Pochapeña-Saramiento and I'm a Santa Ana native and a neighborhood leader here in Pacific Park Eastside Santa Ana. We're the neighborhood where the fire station is located. And I just wanna say, you know, we've seen over the last decades, you know, me growing up here, just some of our most beautiful, historic and Victorian homes just torn out. And now these corridors just blighted and they're full of crime. You know, we have so many beautiful historic assets and homes that have just been destroyed in this neighborhood. And to have the last publicly held asset, the Cyprus fire station,

just, you know, sold off for not even, you know, for 300,000, not even what is spent a year on its security you know it just and also we as a community uh you know as a neighborhood we're not consulted or involved in any way like like really we should have had a community meeting we should have been able to give input and put some community conditions on the use of that site but we have over 60 pages of correspondence which i've shared with you and you all should have gotten my my packet uh my compilation of previous letters and proposals so i won't rehash all that

info i'll just give you some quick updates and one of them is that tim rash who's a significant historic restoration advocate here in santa anna has started to see the wisdom and not rushing into a sale at this time given the money to be gained is so small in comparison to the value this property could still hold for the city and for our community i have also submitted a proposal for an artist residency by the artist george yeppes he's an internationally recognized artist and he has submitted this residency proposal to the Art Commission. And if someone is there in residency,

then the city doesn't have to spend $17,000 a month on security. So that's a way to transition it into the ultimate use that our residents want. And that's we really need some kind of a technology history community center. COVID really showed just how this very dense zip code, one of the two most densest zip codes in the whole city. So we really don't need more like multi-unit housing. We really don't. We need a center that can provide us, you know, access to the things that we need. And right now that's technology, access to arts, history, and, you know, uplifting programs for our youth and our seniors.

So we have a whole coalition of people that really support this use and this transition into a community center. You have copious lists there. but they're from multiple neighborhoods. Pacific Park, Eastside, Henninger Park, Wilshire Square, Madison Park, French Park, Barrio Logan, Lacey, Casa Bonita,

Thai Viet Phan

Artesia Pilar, Delha.

All right, so all these people, we're all saying the same thing. So please, please, please reconsider the sale. Don't sell our history. We could even have an on-site PALS program. And that's all I have to say. Thank you so much for your consideration.

Thank you.

zoom id girl bear at 1967 if you would please select the microphone icon on your device thank

you can you can you hear me yes we could hear you okay hi yeah um my name is mimi soto and i am with SCIU Local 721, who the Santa Ana chapter is a chapter that we represent. And tonight, I know that you're going to be reviewing your budget. And there are some items that we'd like to bring to your attention, the city council attention, and the attention of the mayor.

In the past couple of weeks, we have been informed that they'll be contracting out some of the parks and recreation departments in the morning time for the morning time ambassadors.

Now, these were created when the park rangers were let go, when you guys were in financial dire straits.

And these are part-timers we're talking about. 60% of your part-timers are residents of Santa Ana. So essentially the council and mayor, if they do pass this, will be putting out 60% of, you know, like I said, 60% of their workers live in Santa Ana. They'll be putting out Santa Ana residents out of the job market.

And I know one thing when we do, we've supported some of you on city council, and I know definitely one of the things we talk about when we interview our prospective council people that we would like to support is how they feel about contracting out. So, you know, due to the contracting out of the parks ambassador programs, they're changing our members' morning schedules and offering them evening schedules.

What they're doing is they are expanding the current contractor they have, which I believe is Allied, and offering them evening shifts. Well, a lot of our morning shift ambassadors already have jobs in the evening. They cobble together this work to try to make a full-time job out of two or three jobs. So essentially, this would be putting them out of work. So what we're asking you to do... We have 15 seconds left.

Okay, so what we're asking you to virtually do is not contract out the work of union workers. I have tried to ask if the council and mayor are behind this. Administration has been very reluctant to let us know. So again, we do not support the contracting out. and we hope that the council that we have supported is with us.

Thank you. Thank you.

Zoom ID, Mariela Alonso. If you would please select the microphone icon on your device.

Hi there, good afternoon. Good afternoon. My name is Mariela Alonso, and I am a resident of Santa Ana all my life. I grew up on 4th and Grand. and I went to SAUSD schools. I am now an employee, a very proud employee of SAUSD. My children are now being raised in Articia Pilar and I have to say that the Santa Ana that I grew up in where I could ride my bike around my block until the lights went on on the street is not the Santa Ana my kids are growing up in

because of the overwhelming amount of junkies and homeless in our neighborhood. And I hope that with the monies that are coming in from the government, you guys can maybe not so much spend it on junkies and homeless that don't want to be homed, but on longtime residents like myself, and maybe putting that money towards bettering our parks and our public pools so that I can have a place to take my kids and feel safe and not worry that my 12-year-old daughter, again,

is going to see a man exposing himself on the street, things that I never grew up witnessing. Looking out our window and we're able to see junkies. you know it's just not the Santa Ana that I want for my children because it's not the Santa Ana that I grew up in so I would like to see more of the monies that we're going to receive in bettering our parks bettering our communities because we're taxpayers and we're proud Santaneros and we want our city to be beautiful and to thrive and more of our resources should be for Santaneros for tax paying, law abiding citizens.

Not people that unfortunately don't want help. And I'm sorry, I know it may sound cruel, but send them back to their cities where the cities are dumping them from. Send them back to Irvine, send them back to Laguna. This is my city, this is my children's city and I want it to thrive and to be beautiful. And another quick thing is parking. Please help us with more parking. I am looking at two empty lots as I speak to you right now. They've been empty for quite a while, and I think those lots could be very well used for parking for the residents that live on Bristol and Civic Center and in the surrounding area.

Parking is such an issue, you know, where we're pinning neighbors against neighbors because residents of, you know, 9th Street and Pacific, they don't appreciate the people that live in the park.

15 seconds left.

Coming to park in their neighborhoods, and I totally get it. But also parking out here is hard. So please help us out with parking and please help us out with the homeless situation to give my kids and the kids of Santa Ana, the kids of S-U-S-D, a better quality of life in our city. We don't wanna move out and we don't wanna be going to Teston or Irvine to their parks because they're nicer. I think Santa Ana is more-

Thank you, your time is up.

Thank you so much. I appreciate your time.

Zoom ID Dorian, if you could please select the microphone icon on your device. Thank you.

Hello. Hi. You may proceed. Hi. I reside in Ward 5 and I think that we all have a lot of work to do. I think the community has already been doing a lot of work for many years and will continue to be doing a lot of work. I think it's important to fund already existing organizations that directly support the community voices and issues that they have been standing up for for years. There may be ideas that the council has in mind, but I think it is good and important to continually check in with the public and the community and see if those ideas that you have in mind,

they ensure what fits best for all of us. So continually to check in with us would be important. I'm sure your ideas are great, but I think always just keep the community in mind. I think it's also important to see what does not already exist and what is lacking in the community. As many people have already mentioned, we need to uplift and promote resources such as housing for low-income families, community centers that focus on youth, elderly and young adults. As a member of the LGBT community, I totally agree with the previous comments on our trans sisters. I agree funds should go towards uplifting

and supporting our trans sisters of color who are amongst the most at risk and vulnerable to violence and abuse. So creating trans homes and clinics to provide resources, safety, and support are very needed. Apoyo a Nostras Hermanas Trans. We also need to uplift our LGBTQ community by creating community centers as well. Other resources our community needs are funding for immigration legal defense fund, legal support for tenants, community centers that focus on the arts, culture, and theater in Spanish, with themes relative to the Latinx population.

And most of all, the funds should go to the community needs and not the police. Defunding the police would make us feel safer. So use the funds for prevention programs led by experts that can train the community as well. So, and that's it. Thank you.

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

Hello, my name is Brianna. I am no longer a Santa Ana resident because I cannot afford it. So I agree that there should be low income housing, especially for trans people, as I am a member of the LGBT community. I support the trans Latinx women. I also wanted to give my thanks to Media Arts Santa Ana for agreeing that we need resources for the arts and thank the art commission for also asking for a humble million dollars out of this big budget. I would like to thank the person who just spoke and agree with them that you can defund the police and take money from there to help the resources to help Santa Ana residents.

I'm here as an artist primarily because I work still in the city as an artist and I'm asking to have arts funded, specifically the investing in the arts grant that was saved last July and there's been no applications for it. It's rumored that majority of the arts budget goes towards Bauer Museums, and most of that should go back to investing in the arts for working artists that are helping the community. Right now, the arts are stuck in a business model, and they are left to the scraps of already hurting businesses. And these grants are already inaccessible to people. They're reimbursement grants.

You have to front the money, which most people can't do, and then you're reimbursed. So those grants are left to gentrifiers and businesses and organizations that are looking to make money through art and use artists and not through community-led organizations that are helping artists and the community. A lot of this money goes straight back to the city in licenses and event permits and other red tape and paperwork that holds back artists and the community from really thriving. So there can be cost cut there if it was a more direct way to support the arts.

overall it should go to the citizens who are most vulnerable and there are ways to integrate these solutions please listen to the listen to the people don't sell the firehouse please support queer people in their housing please support the heart the artist please defund the police

thank you for your time thank you zoom id thrive santa anna if you would please select the microphone icon on your device. Thank you.

Hi everyone. Good evening council members and mayor and staff and everyone listening at home. My name is Luis Sarmiento, not related to the mayor, but a member of our community land trust Thrive Santana, which is a grassroots organization which has been formed by Santana residents and local organizations to fight for equitable and inclusive development, particularly on public land,

but throughout the city in different ways. We know that our economic development in the city has historically excluded a lot of our community members from LGBTQ compañeres to people of color, from African-American to immigrant communities historically. So we are one organization that is working to find solutions to these historical inequities. and we have some suggestions for the use of public funds

in a responsible way that will benefit Santana residents. Instead of continuing to pay for the increased cost of law enforcement and of the many, many public health crises we see today, let us invest in prevention in solutions that are driven by the real experts who are those directly impacted, our community members whose wellbeing is at the center of our future as a city. And this includes investment in youth programs designed by youth and led by youth.

Five million minimum should be invested in to facilitate economic development on public land driven by residents in Santana in collaboration with our community land trust, Thrive Santana, and other community organizations. Housing for low-income families, for extremely and very low income families, the Mercadito, parks and community centers, and a low barrier shelter or shelters for our houseless community. Support fund for small merchants and micro enterprises, including

cooperatives and including support for capacity building for our low-income community to build capacity as entrepreneurs and as business owners. Many of our... 15 seconds left. Oh, okay. Also, we want to support the call from our LGBTQ trans community for inclusion in the distribution of these funds and also community centers for all arts, culture in Spanish and in other languages

including indigenous, Chicana, Latinx, culture, African-American and black culture and history. Thank you, your time is up now. And history and other cultures and communities that have contributed to our history in Santana and to the history of our neighborhoods.

Thank you.

Zoom ID, Allison, if you would please select the microphone icon, thank you.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. My name is Allison. Good evening, Mayor and Santa Ana City Council members. I'm the youth organizing coordinator at Viet Rise calling in to comment on the fiscal year 2021 to 2022 budget. I'm also calling on behalf of Viet Rise, the OC Justice Fund, Arbor Institute for Immigrant and Economic Justice, Immigrant Defenders of Law, the Vera Institute of Justice, and 32 other organizations. We submitted a letter to the council on May 17th, and I'm calling in today to reaffirm our request to this to the council to make the deportation defense fund a permanent program

and allocating funding every year at the level of 300 000 starting in this fiscal year's 2021 to 2022 budget thank you thank you

zoom id manny escamilla if you would please select the microphone icon on your device thank you okay

Thank you for that. So thank you, Mayor and Council. I hope you all received my email to you focusing on opportunities to address the structural deficit that's masked by the Measure X funds due to expire in 20, start expiring in 2028. So I do want to focus in on structural investments that I believe the city can make currently, including that were included in that letter. So I believe that the city should pursue a public banking study and some seed funding with some of this rescue money. I think that a feasibility study to identify ways in which Santa Ana might

be able to benefit from the creation of or joining with a publicly owned municipal bank actually could help out with a lot of the interest and capital needs of the callers that are also on the line and that called in. Number two, some additional investments in communication infrastructure so the city still lacks a dedicated kind of constituent management service or CRM program that's used in the private sector to help centralize communications and to make sure that everyone that wants to be communicated with is communicated with in a language of their preference and in a mode that is best for them.

So I believe that that would be a good long-term investment for the city. And as we're making all of these decisions with the general plan, the city still has lacked, I think, a detailed understanding of how much money different properties bring in. And it's a relatively simple process of collecting the business tax and the sales tax data that's private and I think held by the CDA department and the county assessor's office. So, you know, kind of putting that data together, you can see where the money's coming in and where the money's going out. And I think would be helpful in our land use analysis as we make these big

long-term, you know, kind of changes to what the city's going to look like down the road. And to that end, I don't think that our general plan has really focused anything on the North Main, the Midtown-specific land or potential civic center revitalization efforts. So those are really big chunks of land that can be used in a lot of different ways. And they're still kind of off the table, even with this grand general plan update. Regarding SARTEC, you know, if we're going to make that area kind of cost-effective over the long term, it's probably going to require some kind of long-term land lease.

The city is already in agreement or starting an agreement with the county and the site a little bit north of there. But I believe that's going to be the model to kind of dig out of that million-dollar deficit. So all of this, again, is to get the city a little bit more funding in the long term so that we can actually prioritize all these various needs. And, you know, one of the most hard things to do in the city is to go through your certificate of occupancy process. So for anyone that's familiar with that, it's something that's unique to Santa Ana.

It ends up with higher business startup costs and serious delays in passing inspection. So, you know, one of the things we can do is basically change over to a zoning clearance form, which is what most cities do. And I believe that has majority support from the council. And then on other items, I just want to, you know, kind of point out that the city does pay $1.4 million to the Bowers. And the Bowers currently has the second highest paid executive in the nonprofit sector at $500,000. Oh, thank you. At $500,000. So, you know, even if we just give $300,000 a year over the next four years during the

recovery fund, that's out to a million dollars or so, we can support our arts and culture that way. And if you do get the chance to have Georgia Yepes do a residency in Santa Ana, that's like saying, hey, Emilio Vasquez, come do an international residency. I think it's something we would all support if we just kind of knew how important that artist was. So if Yepes is looking to use the fire station, I support that.

Thank you. Zoom ID Alejandra Capistron.

Zoom ID Janelle Hardy, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device, thank you.

Hello can you hear me? Yes we can hear you. Thank you. Hello Honorable Mayor and Council. I'm going to be reading my comments. My name is Janelle Hardy. I live in Santa Ana and I'm a longtime neighborhood leader in Hedinger Park neighborhood. I'm speaking on closed session item number two potential sale of historic Cypress fire station. My comments are my personal opinions. I'm asking you reverse course and remove the historic Cyprus fire station from the surplus property list and stop the potential sale of the historic Cyprus fire station to a private entity.

Built in 1928, the Cyprus fire station is historically significant as the first and oldest fire station in the city. And the mission Spanish colonial revival style of architecture reflects civic architecture that civic architecture trend and government buildings of the time. The Cypress Fire Station has a long time standing on Santa Ana's historic register of buildings. I believe as a city-owned building, the historic Cypress Fire Station has opportunities to benefit the South Main Street communities and in doing so meet strategic plan

and the new general plan's historic element, making the project possibly an excellent candidate for various funding opportunities, including revised Santa Ana funding. A historic rehabilitation of the exterior and an adaptive reuse of the interior to serve the community is a unique situation that the city and neighborhoods may never see again, in my opinion, should be taken into serious consideration. Please vote to reverse course, remove the historic fire station from the surplus property list, and stop the sale of the historic fire station to a private developer entity. Thank you.

Thank you.

Caller with the last three numbers, 919, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device or select star nine to unmute your call.

Caller with the last three numbers, 919 please dial star 9 from your phone or select the microphone icon on your device to unmute your call.

Caller with the last three numbers 919 please dial. hello hi thank you you may proceed with your comment

good evening mayor sarmiento and esteemed council my name is larry gonzalez rivas thank you for opening up this special forum for public comments giving citizens the opportunity to share ideas and input on how these funds must be spent ultimately it's the right thing to do as this is the public's money but it's also a testament to your wisdom and inclusiveness so thank you the best way to spend the money is to spend it on things that will impact all people not just some and if we can't get there then plan b is to spend it on tasks that tackle multiple issues a caller earlier

said kill two birds with one stone and i agree with him maybe we can kill three birds with one stone i'd like to advocate for most of the funds to go towards the expansion of green spaces in the city of sanana especially in the center of sanana the city is suffering from a lack of green space and public open areas that allow the city to a maintain a cleaner and more environmental

posture and speed provides relief and lower temperatures during the hot summers in addition to that the expansion of green space will allow people to take exercise and health initiatives into their own hands by going out to exercise at the park it might also alleviate the problems we're having with parking spaces as a secondary ultimately i think that that's probably one of the best ways to spend the money because there are a lot of vacant lots in the future a lot of these

office spaces are not going to be needed as much a lot of these retail centers you can already tell are at the end of their life cycle some of them have already gone under and nothing but an empty buildings so rather than allow developers to continue building multi-story apartments and condominiums i would advocate for the city to spend much of the funding towards buying these properties and rehabilitating them into a green state um i'd also like to comment on the tax rate i believe that it's excessive i think we're at 9.25 right now the average orange county city is

at 7.75 uh it's a pretty significant um price jump and i think it's anti-business and uh probably does more harm than good for the city long term because a lot of the larger companies that are looking to move into the city i can probably assure you that would be one of the reasons that most people would not want to 15 seconds left to the city of san anna um the last thing i'll comment is not for a defunding of the police but definitely a reduction in funding and absolutely no funding increases because i don't think that's the best way to provide investment into community long term

i do support the arts and i'm against the sale of the fire station thank you thank you

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

Yes, good afternoon. Members of the Council, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Pulido. My name is Ana Letty. We are members of the successful families, strengthening international communities. international somos mujeres que hemos servido por muchos años aunque algunas de nosotras no vivimos en santana sin embargo hemos felizmente servido a esta comunidad y es importante que nos tomen en cuenta ya que hemos trabajado incansablemente para empoderar a la comunidad preparándola a que

sean económicamente independientes proveemos talleres educativos asistencia legal apoyo de salud mental y de inmigración como conversación latina sin fronteras se conectan personas de otros países que han sido deportados para hacer sus preguntas al experto de inmigración y por So we put our orders and are disposed to continue to serve our community. And at the same time, we ask that we help economically to have a space to continue to serve our community. Thank you very much.

We thank you for taking into account this portion of the funds. And that we keep the Spirit of the Holy Spirit. Thank you.

Our interpreter will now translate.

Good evening. Mayor, City Council Mayor Pulido and my name is Analeti and I am here from an organization called Successful Families of International Women and we are women who have served for many years in Santa Ana. Some of us do not live in Santa Ana but we have served Santa Ana for many years. And it's important that you listen to us. We look, we seek to empower women to be successful, to be financially independent. We offer workshops, we offer

mental health services, health services, immigration services, and we have people from other countries that are calling, who have been deported, that are calling to consult our immigration expert. We are serving our community and we would like to see if there's, we can have a space available so we can continue serving the community. So I would like to listen, for you to listen to our please and we could probably have some money from this allotment. So may the Holy Spirit be with you and God bless you.

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

Good evening. My name is Idalia Rios. I'm a resident from Santana. And the first thing I want to say is I feel very hopeful for all the well for the major for all the city officials and I and the staff too because lately they have been working towards the well-being of the community but right now I want to thank you for listening up to our our comments but not just by listening but acting after you get all of our feedback. So the first thing I want to say

is that now that we have the money for the people, let's use it for the well-being of the people, Santana, and the stuff that we need, it's obviously more libraries, more open spaces for our younger kids, for our youth. We need prevention youth programs. We need extremely low income housing, we need housing designed for Santa Ana residents. We wanna remain and thrive. We need housing for our Latinx trans family. We need programs that are designed

for our immigrant community. When you do programs like SAVE, Sometimes it's hard to have access to those programs, because we have challenges like internet, we don't know the language. So just when you are designing these programs, make sure you know the community, the type of residents that we have in our city. I'm again selling the firehouse because we need more open spaces. We need more programs that are really thinking of the future of Santana.

And when we're talking about the future of Santana, that means doing programs for our kids, for our youth. And housing, it's essential for our families. It's not a luxury. It's housing. Everything starts with housing. If we want to worry about their education, if we want to advocate for their health, we need housing. So the only thing I just want to say is that I think you guys are going to make the right decisions. And I'm just happy to know that if you are sitting in that chair, it's because you have been listening to the community.

So just keep listening to us and let's just work together for the well-being and for a better Santana. so thank you very much thank you

zoom id esperanza de rosas if you would please select the microphone icon thank you

hola buenas tardes mi nombre es esperanza corona de rosas quiero hablar de las cooperativas un poco que como dicen las compañeras nosotros somos cooperativa de niños, de cuidado de niños. Queremos que nos sigan apoyando porque hay muchas personas que perdieron el trabajo por la pandemia y muchas personas se enfermaron y se quedaron sin empleo porque no los protegieron los empleados. Entonces, sean selectivos, ya que nuestras cooperativas van a hacer mayor empleo para personas que no tienen un trabajo. Y que también piensen en las personas indigentes. Que hay muchos lotes

vacíos hagan casas tiny houses para que les puedan ayudar y eso es comprensible yo creo que para todos ya que nos afecta a todos en vez de criticarlos podemos ayudar un poco usen el señor para personas que lo necesitan talleres de mentales para los jovencitos que se están jugando las calles hay mucha necesidad y ese dinero se va a utilizar correctamente no en cosas innecesarias es un punto de pensar y otra cosa hay muchas organizaciones que están apoyando en la comunidad a nuestra Thank you very much.

se vieron afectados por la pandemia y que también puedan este apoyar a la comunidad de inmigrante que a pesar de que ellos eran los que estaban trabajando sin ningún derecho a desempleo y sin ningún derecho a recibir ningún tipo de beneficio del gobierno federal de todas maneras ellos necesitan fueron muy afectados por la pandemia y también necesitan ese apoyo económico también muchísimas gracias por pensar en las personas que son de bajos recursos. La mayoría de las personas que viven en Santana son de bajos recursos y más del 50% de la comunidad de Santana es inmigrante. Muchas gracias por pensar

en las personas de bajos recursos y por el low income housing que han proveído para la gente, pero que también todavía necesita mucho más. Necesitamos apoyar a las familias low income con rentas afortunadas para que puedan ellos a prevenir quedar en la calle, porque últimamente hemos visto a muchas familias durmiendo en sus vehículos y que la asistencia de la ciudad no les ha alcanzado a llegar, ya sea porque no saben utilizar la tecnología, porque tienen miedo por su estatus o porque simplemente no han sabido cómo llegar a a a a

a

Okay, our interpreter will now translate.

Good evening. My name is Esperanza Corona de Rosas and I'm here to talk about the cooperatives, the co-ops. We have a child care cooperative and we need the support. We've been supporting people who have lost their jobs due to the pandemic. They have been sick and their employees have not protected them, so they have lost their jobs as well. So cooperatives will employ people who do not have jobs. and thank you for what you've done for the homeless and we need more help for the homeless. There are empty lofts throughout the city where you can put them, you can build tiny houses and housing for them there.

And they've been affected by the pandemic and they need money, they need mental health services and workshops as well. And we need help here for housing, for me for many uh there have been essential workers and i'd like to before my time finishes i'd like to invite my husband to say something my name is sergio corona and thank you for helping these uh essential workers uh throughout this this pandemic they've been affected by the pandemic they have not been helped by their employee employers and they do not have benefits and

and many of them have not been able to access any federal help. And thank you for providing low-income families with housing. Most of Santa Ana residents are low-income. Over 50% of Santa Ana residents are immigrants. And we need low-income housing. You have done that, but we need more. We need much more. There are low-income families that need housing, and many of the people in Santa Ana have not received any of this help. Many do not know how to apply. Many are afraid of applying because of their immigration status and many do not know just how to apply.

So please support them. You may need to help them one-on-one as well.

Thank you. Zoom ID Alejandra Capistran. Please select the microphone icon on your device.

Consulting Orange Country, una compañía cooperativa formada en la ciudad de Santana por personas que han trabajado por varios años en las comunidades más necesitadas y fuimos privilegiadas ya que nuestra capacitación fue a través del taller de rastro de contactos impartido por la Universidad de Arban, California. De ahí nació la idea de crear la cooperativa. Realidad de Consulting de Orange Country. We were women who, despite the adversity of the pandemic, we realized that there was no barriers,

because despite having been passing by a bad moment, different situations, we gave the time to take this training and privilege to finish it. and from there came the idea of making this cooperative. This cooperative offers many opportunities because the different colleagues that we are here in this cooperative are people who have

We have a trajectory in different communities, different...

They have been in different places helping the community with much experience. I feel privileged to be here and I ask you to help us in the economic way to help us to get ahead.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Alejandro Capistran and I am from the community, helping the community and the NAMI organization and I'm also an advocate and I'd like to request help for our co-op, our cooperative. And we have been working for several years in the community and our trajectory, our work has began. We have the privilege of being trained by UCI's contact tracing. We've been helping the community in this, and we've had this opportunity to be trained by them.

We are women who, in spite of being in adverse conditions in the pandemic, we realized that there are no barriers because even though we've had a hard time, We took the time, we valued ourselves, and we took this training, and we took the time to get this training to provide our community. And because of this, we created a co-op who provides opportunities for different types of people to have different cooperatives working together. And the members of our cooperatives have different expertises in helping in different communities.

and they come from different places to help the communities. So we are asking for your help, for your support, because this cooperative can help in our community. Mr. Sarmiento, we trust in you. We trust in all of you. We are here to do a good job and to give 100% and more. So God bless you and thank you for listening.

Thank you. Mayor, that was the last caller. but before we end public comment period, I do want to announce that we did receive written communication on item one, the budget workshop. One from Downtown Inc. President requested to invest American Rescue Plan Act funds into downtown. One Santa Ana resident requested to invest American Rescue Plan Act funds into zoo, arts, master plan, parks, and library. One residency not disclosed requested to invest in arts, and one who works in the city of Santa Ana requested to invest in arts.

And on closed session, item number two, Cypress Fire Station, four Santa Ana residents requested to not sell the property and indicated that it needs to be served to the community.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the city council. And let me begin by thanking all the members of the public that called in and those that came in person, specifically to the council members that opened up the council for members of the public to come in. Thank you all. I think that the suggestion was a very good one to make sure we give an opportunity for those that may not be able to engage with us virtually and may have some challenges with their access to wifi and the internet. So thank you to staff and council members as well for making this special meeting possible.

What our intent was, was to make a discussion of the budget and have this workshop and to discuss maybe in a little bit more detail at a time when people could engage, because we've had discussion on the budget, and it's always been sort of at the tail end of the meeting, and sometimes we're going a little late, like 10 or 11 at night, and it's very difficult for people to engage. So this is one more opportunity to allow people at a reasonable hour to look at what we're going to be considering at the next meeting and at the following meeting. So I appreciate everybody's participation and support

to make sure that this is as transparent and open a process as we can make it. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to the city manager to give us an overview and a presentation with her staff on the proposed workshop on the 2021-2022 budget.

Thank you, honorable mayor, council members, and members of the public. Tonight we have a presentation on both the upcoming fiscal year regular budget and more importantly the additional federal dollars to revive Santa Ana. I'm going to handle a couple of the first slides. Let us get the presentation loaded for you.

I believe we're having some of those technical difficulties. Be patient.

Okay, is that going there?

I'm going to go ahead and continue, but while they determine, I believe the presentation is showing up on, is it showing on Zoom, City Clerk?

One moment. It's on Zoom.

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Is Daniel not able to share screen?

Hi, this is Council Member Lopez. As an FYI, I don't know if folks in the chamber can see it, but we are able to see the first page of the presentation, if that helps.

Mayor, would you like me to just go ahead and start? Well, they've...

Yeah, well, just so everybody knows here in chamber, we have just a static shot of the city manager. So that's okay. But as long as the members of the public can see that, I think we'll get ours adjusted fairly soon. But maybe your initial slides are more context setting, Madam City Manager.

They are. So I will continue and not leave everybody waiting.

David PenalozaItem 1

Just to add to that, it is available via Zoom, as the council member stated, but the YouTube feed is the one that's not, that's displaying the city manager and not the PowerPoint.

Yeah, because it's delayed. The feed is delayed.

So City Clerk, I believe Daniel is sharing the screen. So does he have access to do so? Yes, and he is.

Yeah, we're just having technical difficulties from the video room to display it here in the council chamber. There it is. Yay!

Yeah, there it is. All right, my apologies to everybody. So we'll go ahead and get started. Once again, it is a budget workshop. We're going to present information on the regular budget and then more importantly the federal dollars. So if you advance the slide. The Executive Director of Finance is going to walk you through the budget process, explain to you how we landed at our proposed budget, which will be up for consideration next month. We want to highlight the input and the direction that we have received on funding for our strategic priorities and other City Council priorities, such as rethinking police response, addressing

homelessness and providing additional resources for housing. We'll then shift and talk about the American Rescue Plan guidelines and we'll get into some details on our recommended and proposed spending plan down at the program level for the first tranche of dollars. As always at the end of the presentation we look forward to your direction questions or comments. You can advance.

So just as a reminder, and I know the mayor mentioned it, but tonight's special session was done at the request of city council in order to allow one more additional public discussion on these very important topics. There is no formal actions before the council tonight. It is to receive direction. Formal actions will be before the council on June 1st, where staff will be seeking more than likely a partial appropriation of the ARPA monies as we start to roll those out. And then we will be presenting the complete proposed draft 21-22 citywide budget for its introduction.

Also, as we have done in the past at this first introduction meeting, you will have individual presentations by each of the executive directors over their specific operating department budgets. And then following the June 1st meeting, on June 15th, you'll have before you for consideration the second reading of the budget ordinance. And then more than likely, we will also have additional ARPA appropriations. And then, of course, we begin the new fiscal year on July 1st. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Director Downs.

Thank you. Next slide, please. So good evening, Mayor and Council members. I wanted to start my portion of this presentation with some big picture information about the city's budget. We do have an incremental budget process. This means we start with the prior year budget and incrementally increase it for justified additions. We're slowly moving away from this process to improve accountability. Our baseline budget includes negotiated employee compensation increases,

wage step increases, required pension contributions, and other contractual increases such as fire service and ambulance service. We've made process improvements this year to improve our budget control of funded positions, and we've improved the accuracy of the budget calculation for employee compensation. Moving to the hybrid zero-based approach, we now set all contracts and commodities at zero and departments must justify the entire budget in those categories.

For benefit of the public, most of our focus is on the general fund in budget presentations and staff reports. This is because the other funds come with spending restrictions, so there is less flexibility and therefore less discussion. Many of these restricted funding sources require separate approval from City Council such as the annual CDBG program, proposed projects for the road maintenance and rehab account from gas tax, and project grant applications. We need to make improvements in budgeting for internal

service funds. These funds account for centralized services paid for by service charges to department budgets. The general fund pays for the majority of these overhead charges. Next slide please.

Your May 18th draft budget document included a full reconciliation of the growth in general fund revenue and expenditures. This is a summary to help the public understand why the city's budget grows each year. We estimate revenue growth of 19.3 million or 6%. We expect sales tax to increase a total of 8 million or 7% with 3.6 million coming from Measure X and 4.4 million from the original 1% Bradley Burns allocation. We expect some of our revenues will partially

recover from the impacts of the pandemic such as business tax and hotel visitors tax. And our cannabis tax revenue is expected to increase by 1.6 million or 8%. For expenditures, we start with the prior year budget and remove one-time items to arrive at a recurring baseline budget. Then we add contractual increases. We're proposing a reduction of the hiring freeze which brings back funding for 15 full-time employees distributed across most departments. We're proposing to make the train station subsidy a

recurring item. When cannabis tax increases then our two-thirds set aside also increases along with the spending for youth programs and enforcement. We We had a few workforce reallocations and additions charged to the general fund, which are listed here. City Council and the public will find direct benefit from the permit technician and street light maintenance worker, along with part-time interns to help support City Council and the Parks Ambassador Program. We also proposed to add the cost of a Charter Amendments ballot measure,

increased city council allocations for meetings with constituents, and the cost of mandated redistricting. Next slide, please.

This is a list of items we have not yet added to the city's budget, but we expect to propose them in the future. This would be the pension debt refinancing savings, potential employee negotiations, revenue for the final jail module, increased overhead charges to stabilize internal service funds, a zoning code update, and deferred maintenance for facilities. Next slide, please. This is a summary of our efforts to rethink police response.

We are looking to divert homeless-related 911 calls to a contracted nonprofit for rapid response. There were no additions to the general fund police department budget for fiscal year 21-22. The only increases are for previously negotiated employee compensation increases and a couple of overhead charges for those internal service funds I spoke of earlier. You may remember last year the City reassigned Animal Services and Crossing Guards to other departments, freeing up the PD for core policing duties. Next slide please.

We'll get to the City Council's strategic plan priorities in a moment, but this is a summary of funding for other City Council priorities. As mentioned previously, staff added the cost of a charter amendments ballot measure to the proposed budget, along with part-time interns, expanded city council allocations, and staffing for the parks ambassador program. The fiscal year 2021 general fund budget, that's the current year budget, includes $1 million of one-time funding for sidewalks.

We remove all one-time items to arrive at a recurring baseline budget for the next year's budget, so there is no general fund allocation for the upcoming year. However, we do have some gas tax fund balance available as a one-time funding source for sidewalk improvements should the City Council direct us to add it to the budget. In addition, we have two projects funded with restricted money that include sidewalk improvements, totally nearly $1 million.

Finally, staffing was added to the Public Works Department to improve service delivery. We plan to use restricted money to bring back funding for 15 full-time positions with a total estimated cost of $1.5 million. Next slide, please.

Last year the City Council adopted a strategic plan and this year provided the City Manager with updated direction for priorities. We have identified $196.2 million in the budget that supports the City Council's strategic priorities. We have allocations totally more than $72 million for community safety priorities. There is another $6.5 million allocation for modernization and $8 million for efficient services. And finally, we have identified nearly $110 million to support economic priorities.

I have more details for proposed spending to address homelessness and housing in the following slides. Next slide, please.

This slide includes our total proposed cost of $38.4 million to reduce homelessness and to respond to it. There are assistance programs for those experiencing homelessness, as well as city response to the impacts of homelessness.

Next slide, please.

We propose total spending of $75.4 million for housing assistance. Some of that will come from the federal stimulus money, and some will come from our other restricted funding sources. We have $31.9 million for rental assistance, and $43.5 million for other forms of housing assistance.

Next slide, please. At this point in the presentation, I would like to turn your attention to the American Rescue Plan Act and the Revive Santa Ana Spending Plan. Next slide, please. This is a summary of the federal spending guidelines. All of our spending must support one of these categories. Prevent or respond to COVID-19 or the negative economic impacts of COVID-19. child mental health, academic and social development, substance abuse, and child care, improved public health, premium pay for essential workers,

water, sewer, or broadband infrastructure. There are expanded spending opportunities for qualified census tracts, which include health, housing, violence intervention, lead paint remediation, and early learning. Any other governmental services must come from the revenue loss allocation. Any infrastructure spending other than water, sewer, and broadband must come from the revenue loss allocation. Future infrastructure dedicated federal funding is expected. Measure X became effective April 1st, 2019.

so we only collected three months of the new revenue source in fiscal year 1819. All periods following fiscal year 1819 include 12 months of Measure X revenue. Fiscal year 1819 is the base year for purposes of calculating a revenue loss. Therefore, the federal guidelines may not allow us to calculate a revenue loss. There are 51 other California cities and counties in this same situation. I have reached out to the U.S. Department of Treasury as well as our advocacy resources.

Considering this unforeseen complication, I will ask the federal government to allow us to modify our calculation of revenue loss.

Finally, if the city transfers any of the federal stimulus to a non-profit organization, they must follow these same spending guidelines.

Federal guidelines allow for broader spending to benefit qualified census tracts. Here is a map of the city's qualified census tracts. This information can be accessed on the HUD website. Next slide, please.

We'll get into the details in just a moment, but here is a summary of our proposed Revived Santa Ana Spending Plan. The funding sources include the ARPA allocation plus other federal allocations specific to housing. We based the proposed spending plan on the first 50% tranche, which we actually received last week. On May 18th, I reported a $75 million spending plan for the first allocation. Since May 18th, I've learned the Community Development Agency expects to spend more than 50% of their housing allocations.

So, the proposed spending plan has increased to $79.5 million. We expect to bring you a budget appropriation for consideration during June so we can hit the ground running. We're just not quite sure which meeting yet. It might be split over two meetings. Next slide, please. The first priority listed in the Revive Santa Ana Plan is recovery from the pandemic. With total first tranche spending of $6 million for local vaccinations and education collaboration, public health equity, expansion of critical city communications methods,

sanitization and prevention, and COVID emergency response. Proposed second tranche spending includes the same categories, but will likely evolve based on demand and changing circumstances. Next slide, please. The next priority category is direct assistance programs, with total first tranche spending of $20.6 million for emergency rental assistance program, emergency housing vouchers, food distribution, reopening assistance to businesses, early childhood support and Head Start for those ages 0 to 5 years,

after school programs, youth violence and sexual assault intervention, and digital literacy education. Residents are receiving stimulus checks directly from the federal government this year, so we expect to include resident stimulus in the second tranche of spending. Next slide, please.

The public health and safety priority category includes total spending of $14 million for the addition of green space at Santa Anita, healthy food access, trash abatement and supplemental code enforcement, support services for COVID response, rapid response homeless services, upgraded park restrooms, enhanced security for usability of parks and community centers. We are seeking clarification from the US Department of Treasury for some of our proposed spending. This is another potential way that our spending plan may evolve as some of these projects may not end up

fitting the guidelines and of course we'll need to propose substitutions at that point. Next slide please.

The critical infrastructure priority category includes total spending of 24 million dollars for affordable broadband access, community center renovations, updating the central library to support early childhood learning, a new library branch and expansion of library accessibility, pedestrian and mobility improvements, information technology and process upgrades, and neighborhood safety streetlights.

Next slide, please.

The city fiscal health priority category includes a proposed allocation of $14.9 million. If the US Treasury agrees that we have a revenue loss, then we can use this money for other government services and we can return with a more detailed spending plan for this allocation. Next slide, please.

So that concludes my prepared presentation, and we welcome your questions and direction.

Thank you, Director Downs. We appreciate that. I think it puts it in perspective when you see both the budget information and the ARPA plan together. So let me go ahead and bring it back to the City Council to see if there's any questions or comments. And Madam Clerk, you'll help me with those that aren't here, because it's easy for me to see who here at the dais wants to speak. So let me know if there's anybody whose hand is raised.

Council members, any questions or comments for the city manager or director Downs?

I do not see any on virtually raising their hands.

Let me call on Mayor Pro Tem. He'll go ahead and get us started.

David PenalozaItem 1

Thank you for that, Mayor Sarmiento. I just wanted one of the questions that popped up to my head when I first saw the presentation. and Director Downs, thank you so much for the presentation. I know staff has been working double duty the last couple of weeks to get this information to us with ARPA and the entire budget. So thank you for your hard work. One question that I had that stood out to me was you did mention that we are expecting sales tax to grow, the Bradley Burns portion, which it was just my curiosity. Why are we expecting that?

David PenalozaItem 1

is that something that was that we're just seeing already um happen or or is there a reason why we're expecting more people to purchase goods is this a stimulus effect it's a combination of

things a partly reopening partly stimulus effect and partly just based on what we have been seeing so the city does retain the services of a sales tax consultant who helps us with this They do a very, very in-depth analysis. They walk through business by business. Sometimes they're picking up the phone and calling businesses and talking to them. Other times they're looking at data that's available from the state. So with their in-depth analysis, they are able to give us some estimates for the future. They're usually pretty accurate.

it. Maybe a little bit on the conservative side, but they've done a pretty good job so far.

David PenalozaItem 1

Thank you for that. You mentioned reopening, and I guess I was confusing the two. I don't know why my mind was thinking cell stacks revenue pre-pandemic. So for some reason, I thought we were expecting to grow past pre-pandemic levels, but you're obviously referring to the loss in revenue that we saw in sales tax over the last year, which makes complete sense. And that's the only question I have for right now. I am happy to see that, and I know a couple of us on here, and Councilmember Becerra has talked about this before with the sidewalk improvement program.

David PenalozaItem 1

I was happy to see that that was something that was discussed. I am supportive personally of seeing our sidewalks throughout our city upgraded. They're 70 plus years old in many areas of our city. And, you know, we've seen how detrimental that can be to the public out there that's just simply trying to go for a walk. So happy to see that. And I saw the possibility of funds to more library, expanding our library system, definitely much needed in our city as well.

David PenalozaItem 1

I know that over the last year or two, I've advocated to increase our library capacity, our library footprint in our city, by bringing back our library bookmobiles, which I'm very excited to see come towards the end of the year. as staff has told me. I know they're being constructed as we speak. So that's gonna be a huge improvement to our library program. Supportive of seeing an actual library be brought back, a third one, somewhere in the city. I know that with these funds,

David PenalozaItem 1

that is going to improve the access to, I mean, knowledge to our community and that is just the overall improvement in health and helping our community grow and thrive, especially our younger kids, to have access to those libraries and programming. So I'm happy to see that that is something that's being included in these conversations as we move forward with this budget. That's something that we definitely want to see. Green space, I mean, I definitely want to see, I represent a big part of central Santa Ana, a very park-poor area in our city,

David PenalozaItem 1

along with crumbling sidewalks and lack of libraries. It's lack of green space. And I drive by and see a lot of vacant lots that are city-owned throughout the city. You know, there is opportunity there where we could be creative and invest in making these lands available for the public use. Green space, I know a lot of the lots are in areas that are probably not suited for to you know to have kids playing and running around talking about bristol street because of the heavy traffic that goes by at high rates of speed but definitely definitely um towards the inner part of the city i know that there's there's opportunity

David PenalozaItem 1

there so i'm i'm liking what i'm seeing i'm still trying to get myself situated with the the guidelines that federal guidelines I'm going through that guideline book like we all should be you know a couple hundred pages and and it's a lot to digest but I'm happy to see what's been talked about so far I'm excited to hear a little bit more of what my colleagues have to say there's a lot of work that we can do and I'm just thank you for the presentation that's it for now mayor i'm sure i'll have some more comments uh towards the end thank you mayor pro tem

madam clerk anybody on the phone or you guys can just go ahead and speak up if you guys are on the phone and you want to say something i'll just go ahead and call it no council member currently is raising their hand virtually let me let me go ahead and call on council member fan thank you

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Hi, Director. Thank you so much for the presentation. And apologies to the Mayor and Madam City Clerk, it's going to be more than three minutes.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

So I'm going to try to cover budget-related questions first, and then get to the ARPA funding questions. So the first thing is in the budget presentation, I'm just going to address that one before I go into the packet, which is this additional allocation of $35,000, a city council allocation for meetings with constituents. What is that?

So currently the city council has allocations of $10,000 each. Now these are traditionally for contributions to nonprofit organizations in the city, but these allocations can also be used for meetings with constituents. And you know, like group meetings, group setting meetings. and the idea was there seems to be more of a demand for that and so the idea was to expand those allocations from $10,000 to $15,000 to allow for a little bit more robust discourse with the

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community. Maybe because I'm new I still don't understand why what that would be for because the understanding is that we have a policy in which as a charter city you know we get $10,000 in allocation that we may contribute to nonprofits or schools. For example, a school might have a scholarship fund and they might ask for a donation of $1,000. So that's my understanding. I don't really understand the meeting with the public part. Let me answer that, Council Member Fan.

So you are absolutely correct. And I know when you started, you got a prorated amount of the $10,000 and it is for donations to those qualified nonprofits that each of you select. What we have been experiencing over the past several months is that the demands placed on you to meet with your constituents and your scheduling of meeting has increased than ever before that we've seen. And one of the things that we've been impacted with is the additional expenses of those constituents meetings that each of you are having. So instead of trying to have a scramble to find

the dollars to fund those, we increased $5,000 per each council member and the mayor, which makes this $35,000. So you'll have $10,000 still for your nonprofits, but we're putting in additional $5,000 so that if you want to have donuts and coffee to meet with your constituents in the park, I have a source of revenue to cover that expense. Got it. Okay, so that's helpful. Maybe

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I just was naive and didn't know how to spend that money. But I do want to ask, maybe this is for the council, but currently we just follow a policy guideline and then we can just pick whatever nonprofit and whatnot. I would like to see something in which we do share that information with each other and with the public. So for example, the Heritage Museum is holding an event. They asked for a $2,000 donation, like Dinosaurs in the Park. And I, you know, they filled up the form and I provided them with the contribution. But I would like us to know what my colleagues

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are doing and what organizations they're supporting in addition to our current policy.

We can certainly accommodate that. It's public information, so maybe we can host a spot on our webpage and post the contributions made to nonprofits.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Sure, that would be great. The other question I had was regarding increases to police. So during your presentation, you mentioned that the only increase in the budget is specific to prior contractual agreements. Is that correct? The $14 million? So there's no additional kind of cars, services, or anything like that. It's really stuff that prior council has approved and that we are contractually bound to pay for.

This is for the general fund. There was some requests approved for replacement of vehicles coming from other funds. But for the general fund, the only increase to their budget was based on the contractual items.

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Right. That was from the MOU from two years ago? 2019. Okay. Great. Thank you. I think the last one is answered. Okay, so now to the actual budget itself. In your staff report from the last meeting, there was a mention of the jail. Now, I understand, I spoke to Chief Valentin, and he did mention that there's going to be this last module that would be filled up, not an expansion, but a utilization of existing space. However, despite that, and despite paying

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off the jail by 2024, it will still be a cost, a negative cost to the city, right? $2.5 million? Yeah, that's what I reported last time. Got it. And then the alternative to the jail is this booking facility that is estimated to cost $8.8 million. Do you have a breakdown as to why that's the case? I just don't understand because it seems like a lot more money when we're not going to be

holding anybody and I think I did provide let's see I have my last staff report here I think we did provide some information about what's in that 8.8 million yes okay it wasn't in the staff report it may have been part of my oral comments or something, but I know it was for a number of staff members because the booking facility, just like the jail, would operate on a 24-7 basis.

So you basically have to cover four shifts of people. And I believe that the four shifts of people came out to something like maybe four or five people per shift to operate this booking facility. so it was mostly the cost of people but also the cost of the services like the background checking and and all of that and some uh equipment and so it was an attempt and and of course the chief can certainly provide more detailed information to any council member that requests it or at the

next meeting on june 1st but there is a very detailed calculation of what comprises this 8.8

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million? That would be really helpful. I know that a lot of constituents have had concerns about the operating cost of the jail, and I understand that for a very long time, I don't know who it was, there were many people who tried to sell the jail as a revenue generating facility. I don't believe that something like a jail or booking facility should ever be touted as a revenue generation scheme. It's a cost of service related to public safety, but I'd like to see those numbers because at this time, it seems like the U.S. Marshall with their 12.x million dollars is

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subsidizing our ability to book individuals at the Santa Ana jail, which is not a bad thing. If someone else is willing to pay for our services, I'm not mad about it, but I would like to see those numbers broken down.

Councilmember, if I can make one clarification on the additions that are included in the police department's general fund budget. When she stated contractual obligations, it does go beyond just labor agreements as well. So the police department does have contractual in place that are multi-year that could have inflationaries into them. That would be included in the increase as

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well. Got it, but thank you for that clarification. So at the end of the day, it's prior contractual agreements that the council is bound to. Staff is not suggesting an increase in the general fund spending, and this current council is not looking at other increases. Thank you. Okay, I'm going to switch over to ARPA now. So some of the questions regarding your presentations, do you have any idea regarding when modifications to the guidelines or additional, you know, information would be

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provided or are we just trying to read tea leaves at this point? I think that there will be some

additional information provided soon. Like today they just posted additional information on the website but it's nothing that helps us it has to do with the smaller cities the guidelines for them because they have a different a different method of allocation but we do expect some some amount of additional guidance we have some attorneys that are reading the language on our behalf and I've delved into it over and over and over again and we're constantly getting clarification from, for instance, from the National League of Cities, the League of California Cities,

the Government Finance Officers Association. So everybody is trying to push as much information out there as possible. This is very soon after the initial interim final rule was published on May 10th, I believe. So we expect that this will continue to evolve over the next weeks, but I don't expect that this is going to take many months or years. I think it will take weeks and maybe a couple months.

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That would be my expectation. Thanks. Well, I ask because I do see, obviously, improvements in Santa Anita going up on the west side, and it's in Ward 1. I know that residents have for years asked for improvements there. So I really hope that those clarifications can support open space and parks for our city. Now, related to that, we've heard a ton of comments about the Cypress Fire Station.

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Sticking to the ARPA funding, have you, the staff, spoken to anybody and maybe gotten an idea about how that might affect something like a historical resource or whether that's even feasible?

Well, considering that the ARPA money has to be spent on those different categories that I had listed back in towards the beginning, the ARPA guidance. Let's see here which slide number, because you do have these in front of you, so you might refer back to them.

It was slide number 13. For the spending, you have to have a nexus with one of those items on there. So for example, we might be able to create that nexus between upgrading public restrooms to make them safer for people to use that supports improving public health. We might be able to make a nexus on green space for improving public health because obviously that gets more people out using even the passive recreation areas in the city and just

generally contributes to an overall healthier population. So it's just a matter of the strengths of those nexus, if you will, and the U.S. Treasury's interpretation of it because they are the federal department that is in charge of making these determinations.

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Right. Thank you. And I wanted to ask in general with the nexus argument, because when I was reading the guidelines, 151 pages of it, a big portion was what would happen to us if we misspent the dollars and that the federal government can sue us and that we would be liable to repay it. That's correct. Okay. And that's one thing, you know, I want us all to be conscious about that because I don't want the federal government to come down with the hammer and, you know, cost us a lot of attorney's fees.

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The next thing is, oh, what is public health equity? I think that was like a line in there. I don't fully understand. I can take that one.

Thank you. Give you a break, Executive Director. So for public health equity, we had discussed early on a couple of items that would fall under there. One of them was doing a feasibility study to open up and have our own public health department. So we learned through the pandemic that there was a disparate impact to our community. Could we have fared better if we had our own public health department? That's the question that was posed to staff.

So that funding would bring in a consultant to do a study on what would it entail to have your own public health department, what would it look like, what revenues would come with it, what expenses are we obligated to do. In fact, we've already issued an RFP on that. Didn't cost anything to issue the RFP, so we haven't assumed your approval of anything. The other area that we wanted to do is we knew that through the COVID that the different areas of our city were impacted vastly different. So I wanted to bring in an equity and inclusion coordinator.

And that's to ensure that we are equitably doing our services across the entire city. So that would be someone you can fund payroll from the funding, the ARPA money. It would be a limited term assignment, unless in the future you did want to make it a permanent position beyond the funding of ARPA. But it would be someone that's ensuring that we're equally distributing all the services that government provides. We are allowing access for individuals through all of the different communities within our city. So that would be a position. More than likely, it would be one that would be in the city manager's office. Thank you.

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My other question, and this is because you have really good bullet points, but I just wanted to expand on them. We talk about digital literacy education in the presentation. Will you expand a little bit more on that?

Certainly. So one of the things that we also learned during COVID, in addition to the lack of quality internet access some individuals have and the lack of speed, We did learn that there's large parts of our community that could benefit from having more education in the use of different technologies. So it's something that we would hope to do through our library. And it would be educational programming to just increase digital literacy, but then also an opportunity to promote all of the available tools that we already have in place.

We have over 300 hotspots available at our library right now that individuals can check out and they would have access to an internet service provider to utilize. We're pushing very heavily, promoting our My Santa Ana app. You know, that also goes to digital literacy. So that's the gamut that we were thinking of that it might help. The need, I think, came from the online schools when the schools shut down.

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Thank you. I know my mom could use some of that. she thinks everything on YouTube is true. My final question for ARPA right now is the bullet point on affordable broadband access. I know ARPA funding specifically discusses access to the internet and supporting residents on that. What is staff's, I guess, thoughts on that?

So that one, if you, I'm not sure if you threw all 151 pages of it, but it is geared more towards specific areas of the city. So Executive Director Downs can probably confirm, but for the broadband area, it is looking at targeted areas and not necessarily a citywide solution. But the one area that we're finding in need, we do know that anywhere in the city, everybody can have access to internet service provider. It's the cost and it's the quality that's the issue. And specific to the ARPA guidelines, they do define what quality service is, and it has to do with the

upload and the download speeds. So most of the low cost plans, your upload and download speeds are so small that you have a household, and if you have two people working on a computer and sharing the service and the Wi-Fi, you can't do a whole lot of it. So it would be a focus per the ARPA guidelines on the cost and the quality in the areas that would be allowed. Off the top of my head, we probably need to have a consultant do a study of it, but we have some fiber optics within the city, and it would be maybe doing those last mile connections to those areas so that we

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could increase the speed for them. Thank you. My aunt uses the low income version of internet, and I think it's like three megabits download. I think it's only for email, really. So I wanted to ask that about broadband access because I am concerned with merely subsidizing internet, I guess, bills because ISPs, you know, they can increase at any time and eventually the funds will run out. And that doesn't help residents long-term if we don't have good infrastructure to address the lack of broadband access throughout the city. So those are my questions for now. Thank you so much. And if I think of anything else, I'll wait to land.

Thank you, Council Member, but I will not call on you if you refer to it as ARPA money. We've got to refer to it as Revive Santa Ana Plan. So come on, it took us a long time to label it that. So just kidding. Council Member Mendoza, I believe, has her hand raised virtually. Council Member Mendoza?

okay there you are there i am i apologize i i'm using two devices because of

technical difficulties council member if you can speak up just a little bit more because

you're coming in a little low right there you go testing testing is that better much better All right. I would like to see and ensure that we include some of these items in our budget. And I'm not sure where they were listed. And I may have just not overlooked or not heard them when Director Downs was going through the presentation. but I would definitely want to see an increase in the funds for the arts and the culture.

We need to bring the Art Walk program back. And so I wanna ensure that we allocate enough funding for that. That is a social activity that is very beneficial to our citizens and the cities around our own city. We attracted many, many participants from Orange County, and that was making some revenue for our businesses downtown.

So now that the restaurants are reopening, I think we should seriously look at expanding on the funds for the Art Walk and get that program going. And also I would like to ensure that we take care of those people who are most vulnerable and that is increasing the funds for the immigration legal defense fund another 100k and perhaps make it a longer term rather than just the yearly item either five-year contract or even a permanent because immigration is an issue

that we need to address. And being that majority of the citizens here who are the ones who are most needy are the ones who can benefit. And to help us create a legal pathway to their citizenship, I think we should seriously consider increasing that fund. In addition, the city of Santa Ana was once a very active, actively involved and connected

with its citizen through more activities, more city-sponsored events, such as a city fair, concerts in the park, parades, and we need to do some kind of, have some budget item specifically allocated to have these kinds of things so that we could give our residents something to entertain and to help them cope with the stresses of everyday life and particularly this last year with the COVID,

all the anxiety of COVID, I would really like to see during summer months at least a monthly or even every other week a concert in the park and bring some live bands. It won't be very expensive. We have Centennial Park and this could be another way for the city to connect with its citizens. We could have the different departments out there providing information, the police department, and creating more community involvement.

And also on my radar is I didn't see anything mentioned for senior citizens. And we need to reopen our community, our senior citizen centers and start advocating for our citizens. So we need to bring them back and provide transportation for them, get them meals on wheels in these centers so we could begin rehabilitating this program that has gone by the wayside.

and perhaps bring in an outside service where outings could be arranged from the community centers to take the senior citizens out to their doctor's appointments or out to the park for a few hours. Something that is going to benefit our senior citizens. we cannot forget our most prized citizens of Santa Ana. The other is the youth services.

I know we can use the cannabis monies for this, but I think we need to really focus on reopening our recreation centers. And I know that we're already recruiting for recreational leaders. But we need to ensure that there's recreation centers throughout the city where the youth come after school for homework assistance. and for what you mentioned, what Tai Pham mentioned about providing the digital and technical resources

for the community who are not able to obtain that quality internet at their homes, they could come to the recreation centers to use computers or use their own computers and use our internet there. And also we should look at reopening the swimming pools because that's another area of great interest to our communities. I learned to swim in Santa Anita Park. And if it weren't for that center being open throughout the summer, it would have been very, very difficult

for my mother to entertain seven kids throughout the summer. So we spent most of our summers there at Santanita Park. And it was just memories that are precious. And like I said, it was the place where I learned to swim. And it's a life-saving talent that we should be ensuring that our children acquire at an early age. I'm just surprised that many adults still are not able, do not know how to swim.

And also I think I want to advocate for having a public health facility that is dedicated strictly to Santa Ana residents, because I think it would save, it would have saved us money and in the future it could continue to to save money for us in somewhere or another and it'll be much more convenient for our residents to be able to

to take the bus or even walk to one of the nearest facilities in in the area and that concludes my my comments

Thank you, Council Member. Let me go ahead and go to Council Member Becerra and then Hernandez.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I also want to thank our Madam City Manager and Director Downs for the presentation and all the work you guys have done on the budget thus far. So every time we talk about the budget at length, I begin my comments by reiterating what our city's mission is, just because I want us to remember why we're here, what we're supposed to be doing. And that mission says to deliver efficient public services in partnership with our community, which ensures public safety, a prosperous economic environment, opportunities for our youth, and a high quality of life for our residents. So I want to begin more with comments

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and then I'll go into questions. So, you know, with the structural deficit that we have, I'd like to suggest that we look at going out for an economic development plan, because honestly, what's our roadmap to fixing this? I mean, insanity is doing the same thing over and over. We're seeing this structural deficit, not a one-time hit to the economy, but a structural deficit. And I think we need to put a little more time into figuring out how we remedy that. And I think that such a plan would probably recommend that we invest in the arts, which some of the folks I called in this evening mentioned, and I would absolutely support that.

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And another aspect of economic development is making it easier for some of our small businesses to thrive. And so I appreciate when I heard one of the callers echo something that I've been saying long before I was a council member, and that is to look at eliminating the certificate of occupancy, especially for the businesses that are not especially, for the businesses that are not performing 10 improvements because that a certificate of occupancy is to confirm that 10 improvements have been completed successfully to our code and to then take somebody who is literally leasing a space, not punching any holes in the wall,

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not rewiring anything in the space and to require them to pay what I think now is close to $400 for a certificate of occupancy is absolutely anti-small business. So I would like to see us look at that, especially for if not this year's budget, next fiscal year's budget. Bridging the digital divide I think is important through access to high-speed broadband infrastructure. I think making sure that all of our residents have that access, especially what we saw during COVID and how many folks were impacted because, you know,

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it's funny we talk about the high-speed broadband and the definition of it. It really is inadequate And I hope that, you know, if we're gonna think big as a city, let's think about high-speed broadband in a way that I think most people think of high-speed broadband, not this very minimal standard that I think most people, if they saw that, they would say, that's not high speed. So I hope that we put something out there and we set the goal higher than what these minimal standards are.

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And also I heard about heard folks talking about digital literacy education because you know what's the point of being online if you don't know what you're doing online. So I think it's helpful that we do that and I like the idea of us educating folks through our libraries. I think that's the perfect venue for that. I'm definitely supportive of exploring the feasibility of hiring a city health officer and possibly a health department. That's another aspect of city service, or I'll just say services to the community that we saw woefully inadequate from our, I'm gonna use this term loosely, partners at the county.

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And so I think that this is one of those items where we need to look at, well, if we can't see the service provided adequately or exceptionally from the folks over at the county, then I think we need to really look at what that feasibility is. And of course, making sure that we're not paying duplicative fees, making sure that if we do decide to go down the path of having a city health officer that we bring those fees in house, not pay the county and also pay for our own. We've got to catch up on maintenance. That's been deferred way too long.

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And as far as green space, I mean, we are so park poor, but what I think we need to really look at, and this will be something we looked at through the parks master plan, but to look at acquiring additional neighborhood scale green space. You know, we've got parks as large as Centennial and we've got parks as small as French Park. But, you know, I think we need to look at places where we could be creative. You know, I think we've, you know, staff has been really exceptional in identifying opportunities. But I think, you know, when I was on the planning commission, there was a map that was shown to us

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that was where we have open space deficiencies. And I hope that we really look at that map as where we start to really dive into where we can acquire that neighborhood scale public space. And like a broken record, I'm always going to say this. We need to prioritize our basic public infrastructure, whether it's our sidewalks, streetlights, the traffic calming that we've been doing. And we've been doing a great job of that. Maintaining and enhancing our urban forest. I mean, we just celebrated Arbor Day and we talked about how wonderful the urban forest

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here is here in Santa Ana and, you know, just drive down any of the streets with the beautiful tree canopies. Let's make sure we not only maintain that, but in other parts of our city where it's very inadequate and let's enhance that. And then our landscape medians, we did a great investment in them. You know, we went through the drought. we saw them just decimated to dirt, and now we're seeing really, really forward thinking enhancements with the drought tolerant plantings that have been planted in those medians. So to maintain that. So with that, I'll dive into my question. So in the staff report,

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one of the expenditures that's highlighted is new part-time parks and rec facility attendance at a cost of 0.3 million. So what I want to understand is, are these the morning shift park ambassadors that one of the callers brought up this evening that are being contracted out?

So I think I can answer that question for you, Council Member. There are a number of recreation facility attendants. We're not contracting out anyone. What Lisa is doing is she's just doing some reorganizing. And we have an agreement with Allied Security that we entered into some time ago. she's just adjusting the duty so that Allied is going to be doing the early morning opening but there still is other tasks that the individuals perform that they they're not nobody is being laid off they're just taking the early morning opening and having Allied security do it and then transferring the individuals to

do some of the other tasks because there's more tasks obviously the main three tasks that these individuals do is the gate parks opening but there's also the sports field monitoring and the um on during the weekdays and sports field monitoring during

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the weekends as well. Okay um thank you for that explanation but with any of these contracts you know they don't take on additional tasks for free so are we looking to increase their contract by asking them to do this additional morning task? No it's she's just shifting around the resources

there's not an additional expense to the contract.

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Okay, thank you for that. And I would like to know, I don't believe you guys know this tonight. If you do, my hat's off to you. But where does our cities propose 38.4 million in spending on homeless-related issues rank in comparison with other OC cities? I want to know that because, I mean, that's a huge item.

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$38 million that the city of Santa Ana out of 33 other cities, excuse me, is spending on homeless related issues. And that's a huge, huge ticket item. So I'd like to know where our neighbors in the county are when it comes to that spending. Another is the train station. We have such a wonderful opportunity there. And since I've joined the council, every time I see the budget, there's always that big red hole right there. And I get it, you know, you have a combination of COVID impacting transit ridership out of that station streetcar construction but I just want to make sure that everybody knows like

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do we have plans to to take that you know reoccurring subsidy and turn it into a revenue source?

The short answer is yes sir we do they've been derailed a number of times and most recently with COVID and then it's become quite a nice spot to do vaccinations at but there there's some incredible space over there that would be great for some economic development activity and i think with the reopening we certainly can refocus on trying to bring some some life into the train station it is gorgeous even the the top room i think would be a great event space so i look

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forward to working on that and that might be something we address in an economic development plan and i appreciate madam city manager throwing in there that she doesn't want to see it derailed I like that. That was good. See, I'm paying attention. The other is, so in regards to our police patrol vehicles, it's my understanding that we have a lot of vehicles that are over 10 years old, and because of the shape that they're in, the inability to procure some of the parts for these vehicles, it makes sense to purchase vehicles that are a little more recent. So,

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And I don't say that just simply because let's put money into our police, but really just in the sense that the time spent by our motor pool staff, a tour I did recently of the city yard, it's just exponential towards police vehicles. And not because of anything that police are doing with these vehicles, but just simply we've allowed them to get to such an age. And so what I wanted to ask so that our motor pool staff can work on the public works vehicles that are there that are providing the essential infrastructure and services for our residents.

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Are there plans in the budget to do anything in regards to updating patrol vehicles? Not all the other vehicles, not anything heavier duty, but just simply patrol officers that interact with our residents and businesses. What are we doing to make sure that they have vehicles to get out there?

That was what I spoke about earlier, that there is some restricted funding or other funding that has been allocated in the 21-22 budget for replacement vehicles off the top of my head i do not have the specific number of vehicles but i can certainly report back to the council later on that and exactly what kind if we're talking patrol cars and how many yeah and i'm focused on patrol

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cars i don't want to see us looking at anything heavy duty i'm just looking at basics to get our officers out there for calls for service that our residents are asking for and our businesses. Another question is would the cost for the charter amendments that we've been kind of kicking around to potentially kind of coincide with the upcoming gubernatorial recall election, would the cost for those charter amendments be the same if we instead of doing them during the gubernatorial recall election did them during the November 2020, 2022 election?

I think they would likely be very similar, just a difference in timing.

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Okay. And you know, myself and Mayor Pro Tem, we sat on an ad hoc to look at charter amendments and I'm very excited the opportunity with this council to put forth some of those measures because I think they were good governance, they were there to enhance transparency. So I think that, you know, I'm excited at the opportunity, whether it's 2021 or 2022. So I appreciate that that's been a part of the discussion.

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So another question is, there's a proposal, if I understood it correctly, to charge for any requests to mail out parcels and letters related to mailing out notices for public hearings. Is Is that what that's for? Is that, are we trying to push the cost of notices onto applicants versus the city taking on the postage?

I actually don't know the answer to that one. So I'm going to write that one down.

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Okay. Well, and thank you. Because my concern is, you know, I get it if it's a large scale development and it's just another line item for a developer to take on that cost. And I appreciate that. What my concern is, is for a single family homeowner who, you know, by virtue of doing home improvements, wants to do something that triggers a variance. And then all of a sudden you've got noticing requirements and that guy's project just got, you know, ballooned out of existence. So I would appreciate that if we are looking to shift that cost, that it's done with a

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little more discretion, not just blatantly across the board. Got it. So that's one. A question that I'd like to have answered prior to June 1st would be in regards to certificate of occupancies. How much revenue do we receive from CFOs for businesses that are not actually doing TEND improvements versus those that are just getting hit with the CFO you know for just occupying the space and not doing anything that requires the pulling of a building permit. So I know it's kind of getting in the weeds but I really think it's important for us to break that down because I

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think that's something that again is you know may seem small but you know these costs add up and here we are talking about helping folks recover from COVID and the pandemic these are the types of things that add up and this is partially a comment but a question that doesn't need to be answered right this moment but I guess what I don't understand and looking at the presentation tonight is sidewalks are not being funded as an ongoing funding or a funding line item and we have We have general fund revenues of 340 million and we can't find one million dollars for sidewalks.

Phil BacerraItem 1

We can't find one 340th or 0.2% of our revenues to dedicate to making sure that our residents, our frontline workers walking to the bus or children walking to and from school can have safe sidewalks. It's just it's such a basic purpose of what we do as a city and I just I'm gonna tell you, it's a very, very big frustration of mine because for all the things that we have in the budget that you guys are proposing, which you've done an amazing job, I think this is just one huge glaring issue that we can't provide at least a million dollars for sidewalk improvements to our city.

Yeah, right now our revenue versus expenditures or our resources versus expenditures because we're planning on using the available general fund balance in excess of the reserve policy. So if you look at those resources compared with the proposed spending for next fiscal year, we're within roughly $100,000, you know. And so, you know, I certainly appreciate where you're coming from, and it would certainly help us meet our OCTA MOE requirement as well. But, you know, it's a matter of what do we, you know, what do we bump out to fit that in?

And so that's really what we're looking at because it is kind of a zero sum game. So I certainly appreciate the comment and we will continue to look for solutions for that. But in the interim, if the council chooses, they can direct us to use some, another one-time resource, which is our gas tax fund balance.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Well, no, but that's, see, that's exactly what I want to get away from. Exactly. Utilizing one-time funds. I mean, you know, this right here says funding for other city council priorities. It's not a council priority. It's a resident priority. It's a business priority. This isn't something that we said, gosh, you know, I was on a trip in another city, and this is a very unique idea. Why don't we bring it to Santa Ana? Sidewalks are basic infrastructure 101. So when we keep saying one-time funds, that's not what it should be. It should be something that is, like, when you guys are building that budget from the ground up,

Phil BacerraItem 1

that should be one of the basic items that you guys are considering. So that's my comments for now, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Hernandez?

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I had some questions related to the presentation.

Council Member, if you can maybe get a little closer to your microphone or your phone, we can barely make you out here. Yeah, can you hear me now? Maybe a little higher if you can. I'm not sure if the audio is low on your end.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Are you able to hear me okay now?

We might have some technical difficulties on this end where you're kind of not coming in too clear.

Okay, my apologies.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Much better. We can hear you now. Okay, wonderful. I just wanted to start by saying thank you to the staff that put the presentation together. It is greatly appreciated and thank you Daniel Soto for sending it to me via email immediately after as well. I'm happy to see us have such a comprehensive plan. I want to see us focus a little bit more on the prevention side because our community is very different. When we look at crime and the statistics that we have here of crime, a lot of it comes from the fact that we as a city

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

have yet to have a focus and a commitment to breaking cycles of poverty and cycles of trauma and cycles of inequity. And it continues to be an issue with us moving forward because we are able to stop crime as it's happening, but in perpetuity, we've not brought forth a solution. So I want to see us focus more on that area. I was hoping that I can get some clarification on what exactly those prevention dollars are going to be aimed to do.

Council Member Hernandez, are you speaking of the ARPA money that's for youth violence and sexual assault intervention programs?

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

No, Madam City Manager. It is in the funding for City Council strategic priorities of $196.2 million. under community safety, we have crime prevention, 0.7 million. And then we have emergency police response, which is 56.7, and community policing at 0.8 million. So I just felt like there was a bit of a misbalance. We obviously want to have very strong emergency police responses, but what good is our emergency responses when we're not spending enough of our infrastructure and time preventing crime?

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

because i know that this city if we don't get in front of preventing crime our crime statistics are only going to grow in age we're going to see those crime statistics reflect a much younger demographic because our kids don't have an abundance of programs or access to affordable housing and all of those unaddressed needs turn into a turmoil that i've seen all too familiar growing up in articia pilad i've seen a lot of friends that i cared about go the wrong route and and i just want to see us have more of an emphasis on preventing crime because i think

that's key thank you council member for the question we do have those details for you it's approximately 545 000 for the pal program and then another 150 000 for fjc and i apologize I do not know what FJC is. It's a family justice center. Thank you.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Yeah, that is not going, those two programs are great programs, but that's not enough to prevent crime here. There's not enough intersectionalities in, for instance, the PAL program. It's a great program, but I would want to analyze how effective this program has been. I would want to see, you know, how much of that 500,000 that we're paying is going to services and what the attendance rate is. Because I know there's nonprofits here that are operating on very minimal budgets that are serving, you know, 40 to 60 kids on a daily basis.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

I know, for instance, I met with one organization, Neutral Ground, and they shared with me that they have a program on Tuesdays and Thursdays for kids. they don't have a budget and they're serving 40 to 60 kids on a Tuesday. So I want to make sure that we're using these dollars effectively because when we look at $500,000, we can fund a lot of programs that will meet a lot of different needs for kids. So that is an area of concern for me. I would be interested in learning more about that PAL program. Do you think that's something that we can do?

Certainly, sir. what we can do on june 1st when the operating departments are doing their presentation we can have all of the the stats for that and as always we're looking for your direction so if you want to reduce money and take money from elsewhere that's why we're having these these dialogues

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

yeah i think it would be wise for us to to take a look at the data that we have in our city As a council member, we're able to see our significant events report, and some of them are very traumatizing to read. And it would only make sense that we increase the Family Justice Center's budget because there's such a strong need for it. The fact that it hasn't even broken the $200,000 threshold in this budget concerns me, so I would like to advocate to see them get more money. And I would like to advocate to see us take a look at how effective the PAL program has been.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

I personally know a couple of young people that have benefited greatly from it. But I do think we need to diversify the programs that we are funding when it comes to crime prevention. Because when we look at crime prevention, there's not a whole lot of responses that we have on the ground to working in neighborhoods where we're hearing about shootings or drug addiction at a young age. So I want to see us have responses there. And I think that if we had these crime prevention monies go toward organizations that focus on reentry, case management, trauma-informed

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

practices, mental health components, you know, reentry housing, I think that our city is going to be in a much better position to be able to respond to the need to have stronger crime prevention. So I would advocate to my colleagues if we can increase that crime prevention budget

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

significantly, at least going past that 1.5 million threshold because it's needed. We can't just wait for crime to happen to stop it. We have to get in front of it. We have to We have to make sure that we are reaching children as young as we can, and that starts with investing in their lives early. And that brings me to my next point, Madam City Manager.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Another component of prevention that is all too unfamiliar when it comes to these conversations publicly about preventing crime is increasing the arts budget. having a dedicated budget that is going to reflect that we are indeed investing in arts, that we are indeed investing in creating programs, because there are a number of art programs that allow children to have an outlet that is safe and productive. And for a lot of kids, that can become a skill that changes their life, where they frame their whole educational experience around that passion.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

My daughter being an artist and a pianist, it's done wonders for her. Art changed my life. So I would want to see us have more funds go to supporting arts in our community. Arts brings us together. I have this mural behind me today in light of George Floyd's memorial, which is coming up on the 26th. So art brings a lot of people together. And I think it would be wise for us to invest more money there because it does effectively help us reduce crime by giving kids a safe outlet to express themselves.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

And lastly, Madam City Manager, I would also want to echo having more inclusivity when it comes to our programs and diversifying them too, having more LGBTQ trans services because in hearing all of the phone calls today, they're absolutely right. there is an absolute need for us to support our residents. And they've helped us identify a lot of areas where we are lacking that intersectionality. And I wanna advocate and support the good work

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

that the Alianza Trans Latinx organization is doing. They're not supported by our city financially, but I would want to see us support more programs like that. And if we can have a larger focus on the art to address the public health crisis that we've seen all throughout this pandemic, by investing more dollars in prevention, I think that it's going to bring us more solutions. By having a solution to a lot of the issues that residents are facing, I think it's going to put our city in a much better position with these dollars. So if we can invest more money

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

in infrastructure by utilizing the open spaces that we have currently. We have a lot of parcels in Ward 5 that are for sale. We should get innovative with these parcels. We should utilize them to provide programming, to alleviate some of the parking issues, to support some of the businesses that are having very little parking. So I want to see us support small businesses. I want to see us get innovative with the housing crisis. We could take a look at creating some infrastructure, utilizing some of these parcels of land that we have. And then lastly, I think it would be wise for us,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

there is a need for us to support having a stronger immigrant legal defense fund. I do think that that is something that we should incorporate into our budget. I would support increasing it to that $300,000 amount because just recently I received an email from a resident. And thank you to Daniel Soto for assisting me. But residents that are undocumented, that are navigating court cases, a lot of them don't, it's their first experience dealing with the legal system. And it's a scary and challenging thing to navigate for folks that are non-English speakers. And I've had to deal with a number of instances

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

related to immigration defense. So I would want to support that as well.

Thank you, Council Member. Let me go ahead and, you know, let's do a round robin. I think everybody's had a chance to speak at least once. Yeah, so I was gonna call on Council Member Lopez and then probably bring it back to me just for a few comments and then I'll bring it back to others who may wanna add or make some additional comments. Council Member Lopez.

Thank you, Mayor Carmiento. I'm gonna lower my hand now. So I just want to thank, you know, start off by thanking staff for making this meeting happen. I know it's really a short notice, and so I appreciate the effort that has been made to get us all together. I also just want to start off by saying that I support some of the points that Councilmember Mendoza and Councilmember Hernandez have brought up, like the Legal Defense Fund, and furthering, you know, and really cementing our support for the arts here in Santana. and making sure that we're supporting Santana-based artists and other institutions and organizations and coalitions

that don't necessarily have access to grants because of the criteria that is set in place. I also agree, Manny Escamilla is a caller that called in and talking about removing that certificate of occupancy for our small businesses. So I'm happy to hear that their support from other council members as well for that. And so I guess I just wanna go into the budget. And so one of the things that was talked about earlier today was the jail. And I have a couple of questions. I wanted to know, one of them being was

if we were able to use the county jail as a booking facility.

So that was one of them. And then the other one was,

I think I read, if I'm not mistaken, in the budget worksheet that was given to us, that the operating costs would stay the same. But if the jail is, you know, filled up with staff, wouldn't the operating costs go up?

The budget includes funding right now for the correctional officers and so if we're able to hire those correctional officers then we would be able to open that final module and start earning revenue for it.

Okay, thank you, Director. And so another thing that I wanna discuss is going through the high overview of the budget. If I could, if somebody could talk to me about, and this is, I'm pulling up page 41. It's under the human resources department and one of the line items, one of the activities is called POA Retire Reach Health Insurance. Can someone please explain to me what that is and how that works?

Yeah, it's something that's a part of the POA's MOU with the city. The city makes a contribution. I believe that it is normally 2% of their base wages each year to a retirement health savings account, a retirement health program that is actually managed by the POA. So per the MOU, the city just simply makes a contribution to the POA, and then the POA takes it from there.

For the upcoming fiscal year, there is a one-time increase of an additional 2% that they negotiated in exchange for delaying some of their wage increases because of the pandemic and the city's budget situation. So for this upcoming year, that contribution will go to 4%.

Oh, of their base wages. Sorry. Okay. So am I understanding correctly that it'll go from 2% to 4%? Just for this coming year, that was what was negotiated. But normally it is a 2% contribution. Okay. And is that, so every year, you know, there's discretion to have that become more, right, for further funding? only if it's negotiated between the city and the police officers association okay

so this is you know in count what I understanding is that this is the proposed increase

so I guess what I want to know is do we have access or

because where is this money coming from?

I'm sorry, what was the question? So I want to know where the increase is coming from. So it's general fund money. Yeah, and it's a contractual obligation because the MOU was already negotiated and approved by the city council. By the previous city council? That's correct. Okay.

Okay, thank you for that clarification, Director.

So, I really wanna thank all of the staff. I know this is a really big report that they provided us and I really do value all of the work. And so, I like going through these and seeing what's available to us. And so because this increase is coming from the general fund, are we allowed to request or receive reports to see the actual breakdown of the 2%? We could certainly provide you an overall calculation,

but if you mean breakdown by employee, because it's based on 2% of each employee's base wage, I think we could probably provide something to a degree for that breakdown because the employee wages, they are public information. So we could give you that calculation of what 2% of that is. Yeah, I think, you know, for me it's important to review it and, you know, it's coming essentially from the general fund, which is public money. So I'd like to see that. All right. Thank you.

And by the way, we usually do that calculation in, I think, September of each year and make that payment in October. So it's based on who's on the books at that time. So like if I made the calculation right now, we can budget for it. And the budget is just an estimate. But if I were to make the actual calculation right now, it wouldn't be what we end up paying because that's based on a calculation that's performed in September, I believe. Okay. And then, is it normal or is it standard for employees to manage their own health funds?

Hello, Council Member. It's Christine. For the larger unions, that is a role that they have taken on, your International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, it's not uncommon. So for your current POA, in addition to managing the retiree medical trust, they also procure the active employees medical insurance as well.

Okay. Okay, okay. And so, you know, do we have any, I guess, any oversight on what that money is being spent on?

We don't currently have audit rights of that information. We know the obligations, so the underlying support that we certainly can provide you would be the calculations and then the provision that exists within the MOU.

Okay, perfect. Thank you.

Let's see. So I guess my final question on this point is if Cat can, I don't know if Cat or City Manager want to address this, but did the city save any money? did we save anything at all um by essentially you know deferring um the poa six months raise and agreeing to do a two percent increase in contributions to to the health fund we did reap

savings when we needed them through the concession that was negotiated with the poa and we can certainly get you the details of that as well. Okay thank you. Those are going to be all of

my questions on that so I'm looking forward to receiving the report. Also wanted to just highlight that I wanted to reiterate that homelessness is the number one issue for Sanano residents and so I think you know moving forward having us think differently about what that looks like in terms of how we deal with it is really important and I do I am supportive of you know restricting responsibilities and making sure that we hire trained professionals with an academic background and what I think is much needed in terms of critical race theory,

social work, psychology and most importantly that people have that lived experiences so that they are able to relate to these struggles and that they're available, you know, Monday through Sunday. And so one of the things that the city of Santa Ana used to have was one person who was designated to deal with the crisis at hand. And so I think it's probably a good idea for the for that conversation to be revisited, just because I think that a lot of information can get lost in translation. And it's also for me, the way that I think about it, it's a good idea to have one

proper point of contact that is giving all of the resources that they need to thrive in their job setting so that there is at least like one liaison that is dealing with this issue here in the city. And so one of the things that I've seen on the presentation is that we're going to move over to, working with nonprofits to really divert those calls. And so I'm supportive of that. And I wanna make sure that we're looking to the community-based public safety system that other states like Oregon have really pioneered to provide mental health first response

to cause of mental illness, homelessness, and addiction. I do think that for me, it's really important for us to tackle the root causes of the issues that we're living through instead of just continuing to do what we've been doing in the past. Another comment is that I recently read that the city of LA recently allocated $14 million to a newly formed community land trust. And so I'd like to see the city, you know, take the same steps to support Santana residents and really give them the opportunity to remain, thrive and to help kick off their small businesses. I think that CLTs are really

beneficial to our local economy and to residents in general. I've talked about the jail and another thing that I want to talk about is public works. You know, public works is something that is dependent on like on a daily basis, the service or our residents depend on it on an everyday basis. And so one of the things that I would like to see moving forward is as opposed to having our public works department depend on grants, you know, to clean up sidewalks, to invest in the sidewalk safety is really to have some sort of allocation go to public work.

And it doesn't have to be necessary. I know, you know, federal money, revive money is going to be used for that. But I think when we're talking about the budget, I would like to see some sort of line item for public work so that they have something to address the everyday need that we are seeing in the city. I know for District 3, some of the neighborhoods don't have accessible sidewalks, ADA-compliant sidewalks. And so I want to see that be something that is independent not on only grants.

And those are going to be my comments for now. Thank you.

thank you council member and yeah what you know this is we'll maybe do another round just because i think people um our council members still have some additional maybe add-ons or questions and maybe um director downs can go ahead and you know respond to some of those and maybe add some information so i guess it's my turn to to finish up the first round and um boy this is a fascinating discussion. It really is just to hear, you know, a different perspective on how we should address, you know, core municipal functions and how we should allocate these resources and funds.

It's not only an interesting time because we're having an injection of funds from the federal government. There's also surplus funds at the state level that I know, you know, Sacramento is looking to allocate. Unfortunately, they're not going to be direct allocations to cities like we had hoped, but they're going to be through the agencies. But we will compete well for those monies, both for the unsheltered and the affordable housing dollars also. I just want us to keep in mind that we know that there are other sources of monies that are coming in and are going to be maybe sort of overlapping with some of these monies.

I know that there's discussion about the infrastructure bill, how we will compete with those. So that's what makes things really difficult to make decisions on because as we say, let's devote certain part, you know, certain elements of the Revive Santa Ana Plan to infrastructure while we may be getting an augment of infrastructure money from another source. You know, and we're talking about, you know, cleaning up the city and, you know, it certainly needs it. And I think that, you know, after a year of it being dormant and us being inside, it would be great to give the city a facelift, which I'm very excited about.

But we should also remember, we're going through a very significant contract change with our waste hauler. And the discussions that we're having with those bidders on that is really interesting because we're talking about not just your traditional or conventional picking up of your trash bins once a week, we're talking about completely changing the way a waste hauler addresses its contract with a city government. And we're talking about picking up big bins and we're talking about cleaning up alleyways, bus stops, things that we hadn't even imagined because this contract hasn't been revisited in so long.

So I think there is a really exciting moment where all these stars may align. But let me just begin by, you know, I'm not gonna go into detail on some of the things that I feel strongly about. I'm just going to say ditto on some of these things.

The arts as an economic development driver, ditto to what was said. To me, the Deportation Defense Fund is a critical service now that we provide for our residents. So ditto on that to increasing the amount to $300,000. And I know that there was a question that was asked, I believe, by Council Member Fan, and I think it was an intuitive one, about interns that we are going to be looking at bringing on board. And I think that for those of us on the council, and I feel for those that are still very new to the council that don't know what it's like to have a staff person dedicated. And I don't either.

I know that we had tried to do that in the past. And if you look at a study and an analysis of most cities our size, they're either full paid positions for council members or they're staffed. And so we are one of the only cities that don't have that. I certainly am not, I don't think any of us are in this for the paycheck, but I think all of us hold down full-time jobs and some of us have families. And to the extent that we could at least get support with staffing, I really appreciate that being made part of that. I'm going to echo something that I've heard Councilmember Fan say.

We need to have a diversity of those staffers that are going to be helping us being multilingual. and we do a great job in Spanish, but we're lacking in Vietnamese. And so to the extent we can make sure that as we recruit for those positions, we have somebody who's culturally competent, bilingually competent, that is really important to have a policy analyst that can come and help us with some of the issues that we're dealing with. So on discussions with respect to housing and services with unique communities that we have, We did an incredible affordable housing development in the past, and I think it's called Vista something.

I forget the name because it's been so long. But it was an affordable housing development that we did with the disability community. So, you know, it had larger doors to accommodate, you know, those folks who are developmentally disabled. I think we could do the same when we look at other affordable developments with communities like the, you know, Transgender community and other communities that we know haven't had their needs addressed. So to the extent we see Developers in the affordable housing space come to us We should certainly make sure that we try to set the bar a little higher and maybe

You know collaborate with those communities that we know whose needs aren't met. They are residents of our city. They have unique needs, and they certainly should be worthy of our attention. So let me just also just ditto on the youth element to this. It has so many layers, and to say, hey, we're for youth programming is a really watered-down way of saying, you know, there's a lot of money that went unspent last year because we just didn't open things up.

So I'm really looking for a robust effort in this. I was very happy to see some internships that were made available for the summer, some summer work opportunities. You know, I'd like to see more because, you know, I just think they're so valuable to introduce youth to, you know, opportunities that they may not even know exist. That's how I was introduced into sort of this public policy realm. I did a summer youth program here in the Public Works Department years ago when I was in junior high. So it is extremely valuable.

The other thing I really want to touch on is I want to thank you all for our first bullet point on slide number seven, which talks about rethinking police response. So I think, you know, when we talk about, you know, having maybe a professional civilian, either nonprofit or agency or somebody we work with that can deliver those services on either welfare checks, mental health issues, the homeless or the houseless and the unsheltered.

we don't realize that, you know, we burdened the police department with this function that really wasn't something inherent to their responsibility. They're not in this, you know, delivering of services to those who have cognitive impairments, those who have challenges with, you know, not being able to afford a home. But yet we've burdened them with that. And I think it's had consequences because if you look at the response times that many of our residents complain about, has to do a lot with, you know, hey, if we had those officers working on responding to core police needs,

which involve violence, which involve weapons, which involve, you know, dangerous conditions, we could certainly address those in a much quicker time. And our response times would, you know, will be reduced as a result of this. I really do believe that. I think if we can track it, we'll see some good results. An additional thing is maybe just, I think what this does is it reduces the contacts between our police and these incidents that we could get ourselves into trouble with, right? You know, we see that the less contact we have, you know, with law enforcement and vulnerable communities and communities that may not respond well,

You know, there's a reason why there are professional people who are out there who know how to deal with, you know, somebody who has a psychological or a cognitive impairment. There's a reason why, you know, these folks go to, you know, get trained in that space. So I'm really grateful that that's going to happen. I think it's going to produce remarkable results. We see other cities that, you know, have removed their police department from doing all sorts of things. I think it was the city of Torrance. they no longer have their police officers stopping people for, you know, a broken tail light.

When you can simply snap a shot of their license plate, send them a citation through the mail, end of story, as opposed to exposing our officers to pulling somebody over, you know, and something happening, the exchange going, you know, badly and things go sideways. And, you know, then we're looking at a bad situation for both the individual and our officer. So, you know, those things, you know, I think tinted windows or whatever the case is, you can now just simply just, you know, snap a picture of that license plate and you can get the citation in. But they've stopped doing all those minor stops altogether.

And many cities have done that just to reduce those contacts. And I think what it does, it preserves, you know, it keeps our officers safer while at the same time keeping the public safer. So that's something that we may want to think about. that doesn't have much to do with the budget, has a lot to do with the practice and what I think we need to consider.

On staffing, so I don't want to go into too much detail, but I'm not a real big fan of outsourcing work. I'd rather us work with some of the part-timers that we let go. I think they were in the neighborhood of about 150 to 175. To the extent that they don't want to come back because they found another opportunity or maybe this isn't the right moment in their life. We know a lot of, unfortunately, a lot of women are not coming back into the workforce, which makes me concerned. But to the extent that we, and I don't know if we can do this, if we can have a policy

that before we contract out, we make sure that we go through our list, internal list of part-timers that used to work with us and invite them back to make sure that either they want to take the position or be retrained so they can be skilled in that position. Because we're not talking about, you know, as part-timers, a lot of training needs to go into detail on that. So I just want to make sure that you know my position on that. I am not a real big fan of contracting out, especially since we let people go who not only have been with the city for many years but are residents of the city.

So and finally I think on the comment that was made by Councilmember Hernandez I just want to say I appreciate what he said. I think that this is you know this struck me when I first saw it. .7 million for crime prevention and everything else is just you know much larger numbers. I think when we see you know we can fall into the trap of saying let's just keep doing what we've always done and let's just you know let's just continue operating you know as usual it's it's easy we just plug them into programs that are already there but we keep doing the same thing and we're expecting a different result

and that's something that I think we really want to you know sort of depart from because it hasn't it hasn't helped and I think you know there are many new faces and eyes on this council that are seeing this at first glance and they're looking at it with a different lens and I really really welcome that because that's what we needed because we were seeing it with the same lens and doing the same thing and we're just changing numbers and plugging in and you know doing the same programs that give us the same results and they're not working so I

think that the residents and the voters you know sent us a message that they want us to rethink things and they want us to reconsider or consider new options. So that's the budget. I hope that that gives you some direction of where I am on things. On the Revive Santa Ana plan, not the ARPA plan. But let me just begin by asking just a couple of questions.

Are we going in tandem with the budget or can we stagger maybe some of the decision making on how we allocate these funds?

We were planning on having it staggered so that you can do the regular budget and then you know for future years and keeping the ARPA money as an adjustment to the budget and not knowing for sure the timing of the programs. I mean, we might want an ARPA appropriation before the end of this fiscal year, which would be an adjustment to your current fiscal year budget. And then in the future year, we would, as we rolled out the programs, do it in that manner. We can do it however you like, but that was the approach we were planning on taking.

You mean revive Santa Ana money?

Revive Santa Ana.

I thought that's what you said. So, you know, I really think that that's a good way to go.

On slide 14, thank you for including that in the presentation, Director Downs. I think what it does is it brings us back to looking at what was the legislative intent of these federal monies that became Revive Santa Ana monies. It was through an equity lens. It was intentionally described and detailed that this was to help those neighborhoods, census tracts, areas, families, people who were hurt. Not all of us were hurt the same way. We can't do that. So if we say, hey, let's do this infrastructure plan and do that infrastructure plan,

that really doesn't meet the objective and the goal of what these monies were intended to do. These monies were intended to cure issues that people had, and we know that there were disparate consequences. Some families were devastated. Some people lost family members, and they were fatally lost. And so we can't just say, hey, let's do things that covers all of us, because I can tell you I'm blessed. my family was not affected. I was able to work virtually for my house. I was able to do things that other families didn't have the luxury of doing, and I want to make sure that those families

who didn't have that same luxury or benefit that I did, that they get help. And so I want to make sure that we look at those things as we spend this, and that's what the federal government's guidelines, when I spoke to the Department of Treasury, told me loud and clear, this isn't a spending plan for you guys just to do what you've been doing. this is to help those families in your community. That's been totally devastated for you guys to help them now. So I thank you, City Manager, for including the public health equity element. I know it's sort of broad, but what it does is I think it talks about something

that we had talked about before, and I think Council Member Becerra said it well. I think I would just lend my support to what he said about looking at how the county handled this pandemic as the public health agency who's vested with this right or this responsibility. If you look at an LA Times article that just came out on May 22nd, it's called Expired PPE, Staff Shortages, English-Only Outreach, Orange County's Troubled COVID Response. And it details what all the things that went wrong and all the things that went wrong to our residents. So if this doesn't beg the question for us

to address an express element of the federal monies, I don't know what does. So I certainly do look forward to that feasibility study or for us to get there, but I think we want to look at things that could go further in us creating our own municipal healthcare department because look at Long Beach, look at Pasadena, those communities fared extremely well during this pandemic and there's a reason why they had their own departments, their own healthcare departments.

So great work on the ERAP, on the Emergency Rental Assistance Program. I just want to make sure that, you know, that continues to stay robust. We know that we haven't even begun to see the fallout of what's going to happen once restrictions start lifting and moratoriums start going away. The food distribution for those that are still going to be in need of food, thank you for including that line item for that. We know that we have partners like Power of One, like United Across Borders that have been doing this without any sort of help.

We certainly want to have them continue helping our communities because we still see long lines and I don't think that goes away. On the reopening assistance to businesses, the only thing I would add there is make sure we look at the micro businesses. Make sure you look at the push cart vendors, the produce truck vendors, the lunch truck vendors, their businesses as well. They have business licenses. They do business in the city. They are sometimes overlooked because they, you know, they're not your standard brick and mortar businesses. And I think, you know, they are now become, they now have become, you know, vested parts

and, you know, an industry in our city. So let me see. On the footnote on slide number 17 with respect to resident stimulus, I mean, I know that that completely fits under the guidelines of what has been allowed and in fact encouraged by these federal stimulus monies. The only thing I know that I know when I was thinking about it, the federal stimulus I thought could come sort of in the second tranche when we had first heard that the second tranche was going to come six months after the first bundle of monies. But now I know the second bundle is going to come a year after.

So, you know, I think, you know, I don't know if folks are going to be able to hold out a year. So can we just rethink what that would look like if we do it in the first tranche, but towards the end of the first tranche, if that makes sense. You know, maybe in the fall or end of the year.

And, you know, completely supportive of what everybody said on the broadband, obviously that's an express element of the federal guidelines for these monies. The thing on libraries, I think they also, you know, they don't have an asterisk because if you look at a lot of what is on slide 19 there's a lot of ask I don't know what the plural of asterisk is asterisks but in any event I know that there are a lot of them that we're still not clear on so I completely get that but I think on libraries there's some pretty clear in dish of what we can use to say that those are

covered I know that the school district is receiving a lot of federal monies as And I know what they're considering doing is opening up their local campus libraries. And a couple of their school board members called me up and said, how can we work together to maybe create their existing campus libraries into local neighborhood libraries? That may be part of a joint program that we might look at as opposed to creating new libraries. I know what we did in the past, we had joint use agreements, not only for field space, but also for libraries in the past that we would keep open

until about 8 o'clock so kids could stay at their campus. People in the neighborhood can go use those libraries as a place to study, work, and sort of a communal space, community space. So those are all the comments I have for now. I know that was a mouthful. I apologize to the interpreter. but I'll bring it back for the second round of comments from the council. So who would like to begin?

Mayor Pro Tem, please.

David PenalozaItem 1

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. It's definitely great to listen to your colleagues because, you know, I know that a lot of us up here have a lot in common, and I just wanted to double down on a lot of the things that my colleagues have said and Mayor Sarmiento as well, especially in regards to the parks and rec department and just remembering the fact that we did lay off over 170 part-time employees in the parks and rec department so any chance that we have to bring those employees back I know we have begun to bring some back but there's still a lot that we haven't

David PenalozaItem 1

so as we move in that direction we want to make sure that we reach out to those employees first that were previously employed by the city in the Parks and Rec Department and stay away from contracting out to other companies to do the work that our employees have been doing.

David PenalozaItem 1

One thing that I noticed in looking at all the community surveys and even the city council priority survey. The homeless situation in our city is one of the top priorities that we need to address. I noticed that in the presentation, you know, its cost of addressing homelessness is going up to $38.4 million. I believe last fiscal year we were at around $25 million. So that's a huge substantial jump to that amount.

David PenalozaItem 1

And I noticed that on one of the slides we did state, and rightfully so, that we are trying to move away, or the goal is to move away from having police respond to all homeless-related 911 calls, to contracted nonprofit organizations for rapid, for appropriate rapid response, which is fantastic. We should move in that direction. But in the breakdown of the cost of addressing homelessness,

David PenalozaItem 1

we have the police department responding to the expected fiscal year 21-22, 104,000 staff hours, which I did the math and I hope I'm right because math's not my strong suit but that's 4,333 days worth of response staff hours under the police department is is that I mean that just doesn't I know it's a huge problem in our city but that does not seem accurate that seems I mean very

David PenalozaItem 1

very high, and I just wanted to ask for clarification on how those breakdown hours are expected at the next fiscal year, at the same time we have a goal to move away from using the police department to respond to homeless-related 911 calls.

All right. I'll defer to the finance director for the math calculation, but that's typically based on the previous experience, but you're right. If we reduce the calls that police are handling and shift to a nonprofit, those man hours are going to be deployed for, I think as the mayor mentioned, you know, the higher priority calls with a faster response time. Yeah. And as far as the, um, the

estimate of the 104,000 staff hours, they actually keep very detailed records on that. So they have, you know, the, the numbers that they were giving me were very, the police department was giving me were very, very precise numbers from records that they're keeping. So it's not just somebody taking a wild guess, if you will.

David PenalozaItem 1

Okay. Because, I mean, that's 4,333 days worth of responding to homeless-related calls. It seems excessive, or not just on the ground response team. I know there's internal staff work that goes on, but it seems excessive to me. But if that's information that was verified through and through, it is a lot. And I was just questioning that figure.

David PenalozaItem 1

I also wanna ask for just clarity on moving away

David PenalozaItem 1

from using law enforcement to respond to all homeless related calls. I know that just this past weekend, we had an incident in our downtown that a Santa Ana teacher was attacked and bloodied. And, you know, to me, I would want a police officer to respond to that. We're obviously being mindful of what, when, and where there's going to be a police officer present, correct?

Absolutely. Absolutely, so if there's a crime in progress or a crime committed, that would still retain under the police department. But if it's a call because there's a homeless man on the street or there's a homeless encampment in a certain area, those are the ones that are best handled by the nonprofits.

David PenalozaItem 1

Okay, because I know that incidents that I've heard from, most of the incidents that I've heard of from our residents are usually individuals that are living on our streets, doing drugs, breaking into cars, breaking into homes, assaulting people. And there's going to be, I know, instances where, I mean, that's when I don't see our residents calling just to say, hey, there's a, and they probably do, because I know they do, but there's individuals sleeping

David PenalozaItem 1

at the park. I would definitely not recommend sending a law enforcement officer to that incident, but we got to remember that a lot of the times where residents do call, they do say, you know, it's a homeless person doing something. And so I just need clarity on what that means, but we do need to move away from using those resources to address the problem because the I just I was just looking at the staff report or the presentation it's not consistent with

David PenalozaItem 1

you know we're expecting to spend 104,000 hours of police staff time but we're also moving away so it just there's two conflicting statements in this presentation so we've got to make sure that At the next meeting, at the June 1st meeting, we get clarity on what exactly is going to happen. And if we look, we move into the next year and there is, let's say we reduce those hours, those staff hours, by half. Because we've contracted out with nonprofits and other services that we should be doing. Are we going to see a savings there? And is that money going to remain in the police department?

David PenalozaItem 1

are we going to say, hey, there was a surplus this year because we reduced the staff hours in the police department by 50%, so there's $5 million extra lying around that we could appropriate somewhere else. So I think that's just where my mind's going at, is if that is the direction that we move, and I hope we do, that we look at, we keep track of that very closely, because that seems a little high.

David PenalozaItem 1

One thing that I do want to also double down on is the technology aspect of using Revive Santa Ana dollars. Mayor Sarmiento, there you go. I didn't say ARPA.

David PenalozaItem 1

I know we say affordable broadband access, which is great, but are we only keeping the, is $5 million the only thing that we're using, the only amount that we're using for broadband, I guess, infrastructure improvements?

The $5 million would go towards actual service delivery facility, if you will, whether that be wire or wireless. And then the guidelines, the federal guidelines, you know, say that you're certainly encouraged to include an affordable component to whatever project or program that you develop and use these dollars for.

So it's kind of a two-part answer. It's both the facility, the infrastructure, if you will, and the affordable portion of whatever project or program. And obviously these projects, they're conceptualized, but they're not fully vetted yet, and that's going to take some time as well. As far as is the $5 million it, there is some additional money that we have planned. and theoretically for the second tranche of money for that same bucket.

David PenalozaItem 1

Okay, thank you for that, Director Downs. And the reason I'm asking that is because I'm trying to also understand the fact that we do have private service providers that provide internet within our city, whether it's Verizon or AT&T or Spectrum. I know that there's a couple others. and I personally at my home, I've gotten so frustrated with the speed of the internet available in my area. I've called AT&T and I've said, please, I'll pay what service do you have to offer? Give me the best thing you have in the market. And it's like, well, it's your area. We

David PenalozaItem 1

don't have that infrastructure to provide that high level of service. And the internet at my house is the worst i've ever experienced and it's expensive uh where i work in another area of the city same thing we we contracted this i.t company to come in and sold us the the and to quote him the lamborghini of of servers and wi-fi power points or point whatever they're called um and that this was going to be the fastest internet that we could experience. And it's terrible.

David PenalozaItem 1

It's not, and we've, companies have said, hey, you got the best that's on the market in regards to equipment. It's just the service available in this part of town. So I'm just, like, we're receiving federal dollars that part of this is for our infrastructure and broadband service, which is great. It's definitely needed in our city. But do we know if these private companies are receiving any federal dollars from the feds as well to say, hey, Verizon, you service this low-income community.

David PenalozaItem 1

Here is $50 million for you as an incentive or as a grant for you to improve your infrastructure. I'm just trying to understand, because I know it's not going to cost us $5 million to improve the infrastructure in our city. I mean, that's going to maybe do a neighborhood or a couple street blocks because of how expensive this work is. Do we have information on that?

I don't personally know that any of these federal stimulus dollars were allocated to private companies. Do you?

So kind of a two-part question. On the first part regarding the amount of funding, so it's really clear in the guidelines that it's not broadband for your entire city. It's broadband to the areas that were impacted the most. So it wouldn't be something that would be a citywide program. In regards to the programs, all of the providers are already required to offer a reduced rate to certain qualifying households. So they do that. And then at a couple meetings ago during my city manager comments, they had just rolled out another federal program plan for people to get access as well.

So I don't know if it's being subsidized and what their exact arrangement is with the federal government. But there are mandates placed on Internet service providers for affordable options. But it doesn't address the concern that you raised. It's the speed and the quality.

David PenalozaItem 1

Okay. So that clears up a lot of the questions I had. So these funds that are being made available and which we desperately need is to just provide the access to the infrastructure that's already in existence, not to enhance the service that we already receive?

It could be to lay new infrastructure.

David PenalozaItem 1

Okay.

Which would enhance the service.

David PenalozaItem 1

Okay. And which would be fiber optic?

Fiber optic, Wi-Fi, satellite. There's a lot of options out there.

David PenalozaItem 1

I just would hate to say we're providing this low-cost internet, but, I mean, good luck downloading or watching a YouTube video because it's going to take you, you know. I've seen it, and it's frustrating. And I know that just last year we learned how hard it can be for somebody to not have a stable internet connection at home or at work. i don't know how many times during a city council meeting mayor sarmiento would just tell me hey you're frozen you know and i'm like i'm paying for the best internet i can find how am i frozen

David PenalozaItem 1

and um so that's i definitely want to see enhancements there uh one thing that i did see and i'm kind of going to be jumping around so uh part of me director downs is in the Back to the cost of addressing homelessness, I forgot to mention that we do have, under Parks and Recreation, cleanup and repairs at $365,000. Is this the entire amount of money out of the general fund budget or all of the monies combined that we're using to clean and repair?

It's actually $865,000, so $500,000 is a public works contract for cleanup services in the public right of way. And then $365,000 is for parks and recreation at parks, clean up and repairs. So that's the difference there. And combined it's $865,000 and they both are general fund money.

David PenalozaItem 1

So those are funds that are just, that's the entirety of it, right? That we use for cleanup and repairs in these facilities?

As far as I know.

David PenalozaItem 1

Because I don't, I understand why it would be placed on their cost of addressing homelessness, but I've seen a lot of our residents using our facilities and they litter, they, you know, wear and tear, just natural wear and tear on our parks facilities. I don't want us to just be limited to $865,000 in a city that's 27 square miles for cleanup and repairs. I mean, I drive every street in our city, and it feels like every inch could use a good scrubbing, could use trash picked up off the medians. I don't know why on First Street, the medians.

David PenalozaItem 1

We did a beautiful landscaping on First Street, but now there's just trash and cups and tin cans throughout the median. And I know it's also, I don't want to just also be out there cleaning up the city, just cleaning up after people. But if there's opportunity there and room, opportunity, not opportunity, that's good, opportunity, right?

David PenalozaItem 1

to have a as part of this have a a get or like a clean campaign like you know or uh it would help with with public health overall if we have a campaign out there of how to be healthy how to be clean how to not you know not litter i i uh somebody mentioned being in other cities or councilman becerra mentioned being in another city and seeing nice sidewalks it's like i i've been to Mexico City multiple times, and it is pristine how clean that the city is. I mean, and the fact that I come home, and it's everything's so filthy, but why, you know, is the question,

David PenalozaItem 1

is we do, and I see people litter all the time, and it's, I think it's just so we could find monies in there to educate the public in just having a campaign to be, you know, it would help with our own health, with our own just, if a kid wants to go and run in our park, you know, they're not stepping on litter, which I see frequently, which is a great opportunity that we could have if we brought forward a campaign that just covered overall health and cleanliness in our city. And one final thing, and there's so much that I want to address, but I have a meeting with you, Director Downs, tomorrow,

David PenalozaItem 1

So I'm gonna plan on asking a lot more questions, but if I know we briefly discuss digital kiosks and messaging throughout the city that could help promote this information out there, whether it's COVID related or just city, valuable city information, where to get vaccinated, maybe a message that says, you know, pick up your trash, don't litter, or offer just different, you know, messages and city information. Are we moving forward with that? Madam City Manager, Director Downs, I know that under, I believe I saw critical infrastructure.

David PenalozaItem 1

No, I'm sorry. It was.

It's actually under recovery from the pandemic, which is slide number 16. There's expansion of critical communications methods. And so that would include these digital kiosks as well as other platforms as other platforms as well okay and and um thank you for that and

David PenalozaItem 1

madam city manager i know that i've sent you some some different companies out there that provide these these informational kiosks and and for the public listening it's kiosks that we usually see at an airport or or um inside like a like a mall that kind of like a directory that would be really cool to have in our city if we had that along our bus stops in our downtown at parks at community centers where the public could access information you know 24 7 even be a hot spot for people to use that is is uh great and and i hope that we move forward in that direction to having those those

David PenalozaItem 1

state-of-the-art kiosk throughout the city that'd be very helpful and before i forget i want to also express my support for looking at a, just a feasibility study of what having our own public health department would look like because the mayor's right. You know, with the city our size, again, 27 square miles, close to half a million people, we need to address that. We saw the equities that we had in dealing with our partners across the street. And it's, and

David PenalozaItem 1

And we need to have our own ways of addressing these things and looking at that, of what that would look like and how we could better provide those services when these health situations happen. Again, hopefully we don't have another pandemic, but there are not just a pandemic, but there are just overall health things that we need to address in our city that could be helpful with having our own public health department. And so seeing that before us to see what that looks like is a good benefit to see. I'll stop on that for now. Like I said, we have a couple more meetings and I'm sure I'll have something else. So thank you for that.

David PenalozaItem 1

Mayor Sapiento?

Yes, thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. So I have a list of the council members. I think this is the correct order. Hopefully everybody's good with it. So Council Member Mendoza, Hernandez, Fan, and then Becerra. Council Member Mendoza?

Yes, thank you. I do want to say that I'm glad to see that the Ambassador Program is going to be reinstated. It's very useful for our residents and it'll help us to bring back some of those employees who were laid off from the parks and rec. and I advocate that we should not be contracting out such services. And I would like to see a youth and government program allocated in our fund, in our budget somehow,

to allocate, I don't know, maybe 25,000, 30,000 to have the youth come and see what it's like to be mayor for a day or city council for a day and to have an ongoing program where we can have monthly workshops to create create and to groom future leaders who are Santa Ana residents. And there is a program already in

existence called exactly just that. It's called Youth and Government. And they are providing providing very good services to the youth of our communities. Mayor Samiento and I were invited to be part of that, the summit that was held on this Saturday. So if we could allocate some money to that program, I think it would be great to continue to provide youth services.

and this is a form of crime prevention because if we can catch our youth at an early age and get them interested in the right side of the law and being leaders, I think there would be less criminal activity, less delinquents, less gangs, and we would have a much better community with something like this in place. So let's see if we can allocate that or use some of the money from the cannabis fund. And I have a question about the trolley. When is the completion date?

And once completed, will the city of Santa Ana gain some revenue that we could include in our budget in the near future?

Excellent question, council member. So initially the OC streetcar was scheduled to be summer of 2022, but now they are saying, you know, it could be later in that calendar year. In regards to revenue, certainly to the extent that there is mass transit and it's very convenient, we are looking forward to an increase in our revenue just from increased foot traffic along with hopefully shopping and dining in Santa Ana.

Fantastic. Okay, those were all my comments. Thank you.

David PenalozaItem 1

Thank you, Council Member Mendoza. Council Member Hernandez, the floor is yours.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Thank you, Mayor Fotem. I'm really happy to see us have such really good dialogue around this budget. It's really exciting to be able to hear all the good things that we're working on collectively. So to start on the general fund budget, I just wanted to echo with Mayor Pro Tem and Mayor Sarmiento that I do not support contracting out our workers. I want to see us, you know, offer those jobs back. It would make the most sense for us to do that. A lot of these people live in our community. They've devoted, you know, decades of their life working for the city. And if we can bring them back, everybody wins.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

So just wanted to put that out there. On the topic of crime prevention, there are a couple areas that I wanted to bring forth, Madam City Manager, that we should take a look into,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

including when we're addressing crime prevention, these are the areas that we should place a focus on. We have two programs in crime prevention that you mentioned, the Santa Pal program and the Family Justice Center. Although those two organizations, I want to commend them for the good work that they do. I know that that is not enough support for us to effectively prevent crime, especially in the city as large as we are, as densely populated as we are. We have over 20 active gangs in this community. And I know it's not typical of policymakers to understand gang culture,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

but I grew up in a neighborhood where that's all we saw. And I know that with the little budget that was presented now, we're going to continue to have these issues. So I want us to revamp that crime prevention budget and increase it significantly. And I want us to include intervention, effective intervention organizations. I want us to include juvenile re-entry because what is the value of public safety if it only protects and values people that don't make mistakes. There are going to be young people that fall through the cracks. Our job as the city is to pick them right back up and help them get on the right path.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Number three is prevention, effective prevention organizations. Number four, I would want to propose that we add some sort of a fall Friday night lights type of a program to our prevention efforts. I think that would be great. There's a lot of opportunity for us to support young people and families during the fall. And I currently see that we don't have a whole lot of calendared events for families. I think it'd be great for us to bring a fall Friday Night Lights type of a program. Next is having a more permanent and supportive Summer Night Lights program

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

that runs all throughout summer where we diversify these types of Summer Night Light programs from intervention programs to boxing programs to baseball to poetry to danza, music, piano, play, culinary. Maybe we do some sort of internship where we work with kids and they help us at City Hall, but we certainly need to diversify our summer night light programs. And then following that, I wanted to make note that we need to have trauma-informed services if we're going to be effective in crime prevention.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

We need to have a trauma-informed lens to approaching adversities that people experience in this city. I also wanna remind everybody, these conversations, they're not as simple as we think they are. Preventing crime is something that is immensely complex. We live in a community where we are one of the most densely populated cities in this country. On a monthly basis, residents are privy. They witness people in our community pass away, whether it be because of a fatal accident, whether it be because of a shooting or an overdose.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

But there's trauma that comes with knowing that in the very city that you live and grow up in, you walk past an area that reminds you of a young person that got shot and killed. We have young children getting killed in parks. We have young children getting shot and overdosing outside of closed down libraries. That's all wrong. We need to have a trauma-informed approach to working with our young people and our residents. And we also need to have a strong mental health component to that. There's a lot of lack of acknowledgement when it comes to experiencing trauma in this community.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

There shouldn't be a debate that living in poverty and seeing your fellow neighbors struggle on a daily basis is toxic to the brain and the body's development. Having seen these things that I saw living in this community, I had to overcome a lot to become an elected. And the point of self-actualization for students is even harder. And lastly, we can't talk about crime prevention without mentioning harm reduction.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

If we're going to talk about addressing and being effective in preventing crime, we also need to have a compassionate lens in working with our community members and not demonizing them if they make unfavorable decisions with their life. We have to be able to meet them exactly where they're at. And harm reduction is an approach that is not only effectively safe and has the data to back it, but it's the dignified and humane thing to do in working with residents. Following that, I have the citywide fiber optic, the infrastructure to address the digital divide.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Having the best quality of Internet service is a challenge a lot of us face in the city. But what is the value of having the best quality service of Internet and infrastructure when residents can't afford it? So I do want us to have this focus be on addressing that digital divide, but also utilizing the dollars that we're receiving through the Revive Santa Ana to actually create infrastructure to make the best quality Internet access available to residents at little to nothing. When we do that, we remove barriers to these residents in their everyday life,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

and we make their lives that much easier to thrive. And that's not much to ask for, so I would like to see us do that. And then lastly, addressing homelessness on the general fund budget, we need to include harm reduction. You can't talk about addressing homelessness and pretend like addiction is not a factor. It is absolutely a factor. And we need to have a dignified approach to addressing homelessness. Harm reduction is how we do that. And then in addition to that, we need to have reentry components when we are addressing homelessness.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Because a large part of why people do become homeless is because of interactions with police. Not being able to get back on your feet after one year in prison or jail, you know, even up to six months, can devastate a family. So we need to have more reentry components. Otherwise, we're going to continue to have the same issues and not being truly effective in addressing the housing crisis. Next, I wanted to touch on Revive Santa Ana. I'm going to echo what Mayor Potem said. It's a good opportunity for us to look at direct assistance programs.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

I'm happy and I'm extremely excited that we have early childhood support and Head Start. I think that there's a great opportunity for us in the city of Santa Ana to use some of this open space where families spend large amounts of time waiting for public transportation. Maybe it's on their walk to the train station. Maybe it's on their walk to the grocery store. But there is a lot of opportunity for us to look into a framework of early childhood learning and early childhood education, which is called the Playful Learning Landscapes. It was done in Philadelphia. We have great people here in Santa Ana.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

We have a professor at UCI, Dr. Andres Bustamante, that is an expert in this field. And essentially what this is, is it's an opportunity for us as a city to utilize our public space and our open space to encourage more early childhood education and learning by integrating education and learning and playful landscapes in our open spaces. So I would wanna urge that. And afterschool programs, I'm happy that we have that as part of our direct assistance program. But I want to see us be more intentional about effective programs. And effective programs aren't,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

we shouldn't only focus on the programs that are serving the kids that are doing the stellar and they're the model students. We need programs that are addressing kids that feel like the classroom isn't for them, the kids that sit at the back of the classroom that are maybe more quiet, those kids need programs to engage them as well. There's effective programs that have done great work like TKO Boxing Club. I know that organization would benefit from having more money because they've been able to produce world champions like Ronnie Rios, up-and-coming contenders like Alexis Rocha.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

I want to see us support those types of great programs. And maybe we diversify it and add mixed martial arts or wrestling clubs and just bring back more recreational sports programs. There's a lot of benefits there. And in addition to that, we have Youth in Government, which is a fantastic program. I echo what my colleague, Councilmember Mendoza, stated. I, too, visited those youth. before I was elected, I've been volunteering with them every single year at their youth leadership summits since 2015. And I've seen the benefit firsthand. And it's truly inspiring to see kids be engaged

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

in government at such a young age. That program has a very good model. I'd be happy to see us support programs like that. And next is I want to touch on public health and safety. One item of interest, Madam City Manager, is healthy food access. I think it's important that we acknowledge the need for us to be a healthier city, but I also don't want to romanticize that this is something we need to be much more intentional about when it comes to creating healthy food access. It's not just doing food giveaways, but it's actually creating infrastructure

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

for us to have citywide agriculture. We have a lot of open space. There's organizations that have cooperatives. They have community gardens. I'd love to see us utilize some of our spaces here. I know in Board 5, maybe we can take a look at using some of the parking lot rooftops to do some of that and get innovative with how we utilize public space. And lastly, critical infrastructure. I want to thank the city for updating the central library to support early childhood learning and education. Thank you.

David PenalozaItem 1

Thank you, Council Member Hernandez. Great comments. Next on the list of speakers that had their hand up was Council Member Fan. The floor is yours.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. So my first go around, I ask a lot of questions and this time I'll make a bunch of comments. And well, first I'd like to thank all of my colleagues for making fantastic comments and bringing up really great ideas. the first thing I would ask for in this budget, and I've mentioned it multiple times at other meetings, and thank you Mayor Sarmiento for mentioning, which is we need a Vietnamese community liaison. I am sitting on this dais today because Santa Ana settled a California

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Voting Rights Act lawsuit for depressing the Asian American vote in this city for decades. We have over 25,000 Vietnamese Americans, 12% of our city is Asian American, and we have more Vietnamese Americans than the city of Fountain Valley. Yet we do not have a good relationship with the Vietnamese American business community, the Vietnamese American religious community, the Vietnamese American news community, and Vietnamese American residents. It is imperative as we talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and how to revive Santa

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Anna with these funds that we ensure we work with and engage residents that have been overlooked for decades in the city. You know, the Latino community 30 years ago didn't have representatives on this stage. We didn't have staff that were reflective of that community and we fought very hard to make sure that we addressed those concerns and I was elected today, this year, to do just that. So I asked that staff look at our budget and see how we can allocate funds to an individual who is responsive specifically to the Vietnamese American community. Garden Grove has someone like

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

that, you can look at that city and see how that would work out. And I understand that the city manager's office has, you know, tried to address some of these concerns by hiring interns. They're graduate level interns. They're still students. I think that's a fantastic opportunity for them. And I think that staff has done a really great job doing as much as possible to address the language barriers in our city, but for a lot of Vietnamese language translations, we're still relying on Google Translate. We're still relying on me, a part-time council member, to translate social media posts, if any, and

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

for presentations, and to do the outreach to the community. I know that's my job, but we also need that to be a priority for staff, given that we were sued on this very issue. I think that, you know, again, our CMO has done a really good job doing the best that we can, but today I received, you know, an email from one of our interns asking me, who are the Vietnamese American news organizations in Santa Ana in the county? Because Googling is really hard to figure out because a lot of it is Vietnamese. We don't have somebody who's connected

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

to this community and we need to find somebody who is. And I think that that's a challenge that we can overcome and that we can allocate because not only will that ensure that our residents get access to services that we're providing, whether it's rental assistance, early childhood education, expanded services, but that also brings in economic development to our city. Santa Ana was the first place Vietnamese refugees settled, but we lost that entrepreneurial spirit to Westminster Garden Grove Fountain Valley. We can recoup that. We can bring that back. And we can make sure that Santa Ana is a part

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

of the thriving Little Saigon community that we are and reap those benefits. So I really hope that staff looks into that and do the best that we can to make sure we have that. Again, that's what I was elected for and that is what I will continue to fight for. My second, I wanted to support the Universal Defense Fund. I've supported it since I was a resident. In fact, as an attorney, I have provided legal services, pro bono legal services to an asylum seeker. So I know firsthand the hoops that someone who is undocumented has to jump through to find asylum and to stay here with their family.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

I would like to see that as a part of the budget. I think that as a sanctuary city and as a city that looks to say, you are welcome here, we should have that service.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

I would, however, like to see that that fund works with the Asian American community. Since its inception, it has never, as far as I'm aware, provided services to a Vietnamese American resident or an Asian American resident. That's a problem and we need to make sure that we work with those organizations to provide the services.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

The third issue that I'm very supportive of is in the Revive Santa Ana funds. We allocate $2 million for health food and I agree with several of my council colleagues in discussing co-ops and community gardens and community land trusts. I know, in fact, Thrive Santa Ana is looking to open a community garden or something similar today or co-op. This is a great opportunity not only to create more green spaces for our residents, something like, you know, small neighborhood parks like we had with Mariposa Park that recently opened. That's a small neighborhood park.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

But by creating a community garden, we're providing fresh produce to our residents. We're providing education, and we're bringing kids and families outdoors. So I think, you know, there's really not any loss there. It's all pros the way I see it. So I would like to see that we allocate funding and focus in that space. I also support the investment in arts from the Vrive Santa Ana Funds. It's, you know, when I think about Santa Ana, I think about the incredible thriving art culture here. It's just so incredible. There isn't anything else like it in the entirety of Orange County.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

I would like to see that we engage more Asian American, specifically Vietnamese American artists in the community. And with that, I also do agree that investing in the arts brings funds to our city. It brings revenue. And that it will pay for itself. I think that it's what draws folks into the city of Santa Ana, especially something like an art walk. And that makes sure that we are able to have people, you know, go to our restaurants. I always explore a new restaurant every time I go to art walk. So that's, you know, I would really like to see that we do that.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

I think that this council is pretty unanimous in saying that we want to bring back our former part-timers and not to contract out. I don't think I'm misstating that. I do also agree with our mayor that we should look into something like a right of first refusal if the staffer is, you know, doesn't have a bad history or something like that. I think it's really important that when we cut personnel because of a recession or a pandemic, that when we have the opportunity, we give them that job back as best as we can and we invest in retraining them where we can.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

So I think that you know all of these asks are really about where do we see these types of funding go and how do we make it equitable for our residents. Again, I think that you've seen everything that we've asked for. I really hope that staff focus very heavily on the Vietnamese community liaison and that staff comes back with a cost breakdown of what that will look like in the budget. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Fan. Council Member Becerra.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just want to express my appreciation for the diverse interests of my colleagues and all the different opinions that we have that are coming together. It's just, you know, as we're looking at the budget, we're looking at it through all seven lenses. And I think that it's wonderful to see the compassion for all these different aspects of our community that, you know, when put together, makes our city really shine. So I really want to express my gratitude to my colleagues for what they've advocated for thus far. Just a couple of follow-up

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items from my last round of comments and that is in regards to revive money and supporting outdoor dining throughout the city. I mean you know one of the things that have come out of this pandemic that I think we all appreciate was really the outdoor dining and having it so readily available but But what I'd like to see is that not only that we continue it, but we also enhance it, in some cases make it permanent and make it safe. Because there are obviously some places where I think we're going to need to enhance the infrastructure around it so that it really is truly an enjoyable experience.

Phil BacerraItem 1

And in regards to Art Walk, kind of like other aspects of funding for downtown Santa Ana, I think that we definitely should help them, you know, recoup their costs as far as revenues lost during the pandemic. In regards to Art Walk, though, I think it's very important that Art Walk continue to have that freedom of artistic expression. And, you know, the success that they've enjoyed so far has come from their independence of the city when it comes to how they're managed and how they function.

Phil BacerraItem 1

So I hope that we will support them financially, and I hope we will not get in their way when it comes to their ability to continue to do what they do. So I wanted to put that out there. And for Council Member Phan's advocacy of the Vietnamese translation and, I would say, community relations, I think the way she outlined it was very important because what it says is that we're showing that as we try in good faith to include as many of our residents as we can, we are falling short in certain arenas. And the Vietnamese population in Santa Ana, I believe, is significant enough to warrant such an allocation.

Phil BacerraItem 1

So I would put my support behind that. And, you know, my colleagues have talked about police and how they interact with our homeless folks here in Santa Ana. I think, you know, there's a lot of discussion about the police not being able to handle the homeless or the police shouldn't be able to handle the homeless. And maybe we should have other personnel. One thing, and this is just I want to respond to these comments, but not necessarily as something to include in the budget. And that is, you know, myself and some of my colleagues last year put forth the proposal of a police commission.

Phil BacerraItem 1

And I think that once that police commission is formed, we need to talk about the training for our police. You know, we, you know, as an MOU that was adopted prior to my arrival on the council, we are paying our police a pretty significant salary and benefits. that should be a requirement of those police officers to also have significant training. And it's really unfortunate just to think that we're gonna hire police officers that are on par with the rest of Orange County. Our police officers handle so much more than officers in any other city, but they also need to be equipped and trained.

Phil BacerraItem 1

And I think that is a discussion, a much longer discussion. And I think that would probably involve our future police commission. In regards to homeless expenses, one thing I would like to see us push and thank you Mayor Sarmanto for including me on the ad hoc for legislative affairs. I think what we really need to look at is the fact that 25% of the homeless population of the United States is in California and a significant amount of those in Orange County are here in Santa Ana and we could say it's not fair, but the reality is what we need to do is figure out how to address the

Phil BacerraItem 1

situation. And I think that simply trying to look at, you know, this piecemeal of local solutions, it's just, it's like a Hunger Games. It really, it's just, it's twisted. And I think we need to look to our state and federal partners. You know, every day we read about the state budget surplus and all this money, they just don't know what to do with it. I've got a couple of ideas, and I think our residents would probably agree. Help those with substance abuse and mental health issues. Help them and don't just do it in a way that you know in Santa Ana we do it one way but then maybe

Phil BacerraItem 1

in another city in Orange County we do it slightly different and then maybe LA does it differently. No I think we need to really push our state and federal partners to step up and look at something that's more inclusive and more thorough. And as all my colleagues so far have expressed, I think it's very important that for those of our city employees that were impacted by COVID as far as layoffs, I think what we obviously should be doing is taking those that obviously already know their jobs here at the city and look to rehire them. If they've already

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moved on you know I wish them luck and then we can go from there but I think it's important that we look as much as we can at those that have been here and really try to see where they can fit in. I definitely don't want to see us outsource some of these services especially when it comes to you know interacting directly with our community our parks you know I mean the great thing once you as we get further through this pandemic and beyond, is that we're gonna finally be able to reactivate our parks again, offer programs that will benefit our children and the entire community. And so I would like to see that done.

Phil BacerraItem 1

You know, I've always prefer local hire, but at the very least, let's take the folks that have had that experience working for our great city and let's rehire them. Those are my comments for now. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Councilman. So it looks like we've gone around twice. I'm going to go ahead and just yield my time. I think I said enough during the first round. And in the interest of time, I know we have a closed session where we have two items that we need to address there. So let me just go back once, and council members, to the extent that we can keep it limited, I think you all had great comments. I think we had an opportunity to supplement maybe some things that we said. and emphasize some others, but I heard a lot of very common themes in all of our comments.

So seeing none here, at least at the dais, that any additional comments, anything on your end, Madam Clerk, from those not here?

I do not see any other council members raising their hands for a job.

All right, so we have one last comment from Mayor Pro Tem.

David PenalozaItem 1

Thank you, Mayor Salmiento. I'll make it really quick. I just, and it almost slipped my mind with one thing that I'd like to see and see if there's room for it with these ARPA funds is the opportunity, I think I coined it, I like it, is to, I know we've talked about a memorial or memorializing the residents that we've lost to COVID-19 over the last year. And I know that in the last couple of months, couple months ago we lit the water tower in honor of of of people we've lost in our community

David PenalozaItem 1

but the city of temecula last week i believe did a memorial around one of their lakes and they planted white flags around the lake and on each flag they had the name of every uh temecula resident that has passed away due to covid along with the date and their birthday and i think it's still up there today. I don't know how the city got the information of individual residents that have passed away, but I think it would be nice to look at ways if there's some funding in there available to do something similar. Maybe not the same thing, but just doing something that

David PenalozaItem 1

we could recognize our families that have been impacted by this. And I just wanted to also voice my support for council member fans looking at the feasibility of having a Vietnamese liaison in our city because it is you know close to 30,000 residents in our city that are of that speak Vietnamese and we do struggle with having you know translations and services available. I always question why we have a fiestas patrias parade and during TET during we should have you know parades and events in our community as well but we don't have that connection with the

David PenalozaItem 1

vietnamese business community the vietnamese news media and we should we should be you know offering those the same uh connection to the culture of our residents over on the west end of the city just wanted to show my support and that is it thank you mayor great great

comments thank you i think we have one last comment from council member lopez

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. I didn't quite get the opportunity to do my second round, but I'll keep this short. Oh, I'm sorry. I overlooked it. No, no, it's not your fault at all. So I just wanted to say that I wanted to vocalize my disapproval of contracting out our staff. I think that we need to build up our staff and morale and our capacity and services. I mean, what we can offer to our residents. And to Mayor Pro Temp's point about, you know a memorial this is something that i brought up staff a couple weeks ago and one of the suggestions that i made to them was that we should do a memorial because it's important that

we you know recognize the lives that were lost that could have that could have been prevented but one of the suggestions is you know making a submission form so that people can participate And so I hope that sometime soon I get to hear an update on that or if that's something that the city is going to do or not.

But yeah, thank you, everyone.

Great. Thank you, Council Member Lopez. I apologize for overlooking you. I think everybody else had an opportunity to go a couple times at least. And so in the interest of time, I think we'll go ahead and wind things up. Madam City Manager, I'm almost frightened to say, did you catch everything? Or do you need any additional clarity on anything that was said?

Thank you, Mayor. We had several people taking notes, and we always go back and listen as well. So I appreciate all of your feedback and direction. And we're going to try to move really quickly so that June 1 we can present what your requests are. And then you'll be able to make some final directions. and hopefully adopt a budget.

Great. Thank you for that. And thank you, Director Downs, for being so receptive to the questions and comments. So that being said, we're going to go ahead and recess because we do have two items on the closed session agenda. And we will come back and adjourn after that if there's anything to report out. We are recessed.

Recording stopped.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

Madam City Clerk, do I log into the closed session now?

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Recording in progress.

Great we are back from closed session and out of recess. There is nothing to report out and I will now adjourn this special meeting. The next regularly scheduled meeting is on Tuesday, June 1, 2021. Thank you.

Recording stopped.

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