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Okay, Mayor, we're ready to go whenever you are.

Thank you.

Thai Viet Phan

Recording in progress.

Great. Thank you, Madam Clerk, for letting me know that we are now recording and we're live. And I want to reconvene the regular open meeting of the City Council that took place on June 1st, which was adjourned to today's date and time. and so I'll go ahead and adjourn this regular open meeting once again. Let me just read a quick disclosure so we can get started and let everybody in the public know that the 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 and again please bear with us if

there's any technical difficulties. I'll turn it over to the clerk to call roll but before she does that let me just um remind uh everybody that um we are on public comments were heard on the item that we're going to have before us tonight the public hearing item number 29 so no further comments will be allowed on today's regular adjourned city council meetings and i'll turn it over to the clerk for a roll call thank you mayor councilmember becerra here

Councilmember Hernandez?

Here.

Councilmember Lopez?

Thai Viet Phan

Here.

Councilmember Mendoza? Here. Councilmember Fan? Here. Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa?

Here.

Mayor Sarmiento?

Here. I see on the calendar we have a Pledge of Allegiance, so why don't we go ahead and get started with that before we dive into the continued public hearing. If you'll all please join me by facing the flag, putting your right hand over your heart and repeating after me. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for its patience,

David Penaloza

one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Great. Thank you. And we are on item number 29, which is the public hearing to consider an ordinance to adopt the fiscal year 21-22 city budget. approve revive st. Anna spending priorities approve the reso for changes on the city's basic classification compensation plan budget and adopt the seven-year capital improvement program and i'll go ahead and turn it over to the city manager to continue where we left off and she might give a summary or a recap of where we've been all right thank you mayor mayor members of the council we

will continue with where we left left off and we do have a presentation

So while he's getting that loaded, one of the first things I wanted to do is just recap from the last hearing, since we did get through a lot of the operating departments. So I want to make sure that I have captured the council's wishes in regards to those departments that have already been before you. So the direction that I have noted, you can go ahead to the next slide, Daniel.

There we go.

So for the city manager's office, we will take the equity and inclusion coordinator and shift it over to Revive Santa Ana. We will add a third executive assistant to help support the city council along with access to interns. And then mid-year we will revisit the support being provided. In the city attorney's office, the city attorney is going to evaluate the steps necessary to shift any of the cannabis tax set aside from enforcement into youth programs to the extent that she can.

And for the Community Development Agency, they are to prepare an economic development strategy and determine what are the tax generators and how can we retain and attract more of the businesses that do generate tax. For HR, they are going to provide some more information for a single council member on the wellness incentive and the ride share programs. They are going to continue with the efforts to rehire the laid off part time staff and we have already rehired 44 of those individuals. Many of the other ones contacted have already moved on to other employment, but we will continue to do that.

And then HR will be working with our labor groups to develop an official telecommuting policy. For Parks and Rec, the direction received was to add a 5K run, looking into using Revive Santa Ana funds to do that. And that would be in addition to the movie events that Lisa talked about in the parks that would be across the city in all wards. And with that we'll move right over to the departments and the first department that is up is planning and building and director tie

Thank you City manager rich good afternoon mayor maple 10 and member of the city council I have the distinguished honor of leading the planning and building agency and to present the department's budget for the upcoming year today The planning building agency consists of four different division including building safety code enforcement planning and administrative services. The services that we provide are development service related as well as quality of life and looking at also animal control services as well. The department has 75 full-time employees as

well as 16 part-time employees. We are staffed to the Planning Commission as well as the Historical Resources Commission. As I mentioned our services also include animal control as well as neighborhood improvement program native initiative program and the historical preservation program

our budget is approximately three percent of the citywide budget and 5.4 percent of the general fund it is approximately 21 million dollars and the with the funds we provide as i mentioned development services animal control services code enforcement and building services

the highlight for this year i want to take a moment to acknowledge our staff during this past year with the covet pandemic we were able to continue providing uninterrupted services during the code closures while our staff as well as the services we provide would deem essential we would not deem as first responder we had challenges in getting ppes for our staff and looking at how we can continue to provide services to our community we were able to do that through creative working with our police department working with our

barrister crime finance as well as going out to different vendors to be able to achieve getting the ppes we needed to continue our inspections providing services at the counter i'm proud to say that our staff was here from day one working with various other department and provided uninterrupted services to our community. We also realized that early on that we needed to facilitate our businesses and economy by looking at how we can provide opportunity for our businesses to continue open and operating during the pandemic. We've worked together with CDA and other department

staff and put out a guidance for businesses to continue operating and open operating both outside of their property as well as in the city right away and in our sidewalk and parking lots i think our efforts were successful in allowing businesses to be sustaining and many businesses have actually even survived the challenge of coven and we're proud to say that we'll continue to provide those opportunities for our businesses in the next year under your leadership and providing the approval at the last meeting for those types of activities to continue this past year we

successfully defended the city against four of the orange county cities in arena challenge the four cities challenged arena allocation with skag we were able to under the leadership of our city manager, developed a strategy, evaluated our position, and was able to work with the SCAG from staff, staff from SCAG, and was able to successfully defend the city against those four challenges on arena allocation. That was a significant win for our city as the challenges cited too many different opportunities

in our city but i think we're successful in showing that we comply and we follow the process we facilitated quite a few number of major developments even though we're experiencing covid we issue over 5200 permits with a total valuation of 353 million somewhat consistent with years past so we would say that was a very successful year the department facilitated the entitlement of major projects such as the Amazon last mile facility on Grand one Broadway Plaza I'm so yeah one Broadway Plaza third and Broadway the Northgate market site Central Point the Bowery as well as the Westview

affordable housing project in our effort to continue to move towards a digital environment as well as streamlining our process we our staff acquire a software I call it Evolve. It is a paperless e-plan document review and approval process and what that does is it allows for the submission plans and document online. This significantly reduced the amount of time that someone would need to look at submitting plans. But also you know development plans can get pretty lengthy and large and it's very expensive to produce and by allowing e-submission we significantly reduce the cost for our application

process. We're also working with the team on implementing a GIS-based process that will enable planning, building, engineering, and finance to work on a system to continue allowing and moving towards a digital environment that will provide a better customer experience for our residents and our customer both in person as well as on the web. In terms of our goal for the upcoming years, we will continue to implement a record management system and migrate to a new land management system that will improve and enhance our ability

to provide our service digitally. As I mentioned, we are continuing to work on improving our presence both in person as well as on the web. We will strengthen our code and cannabis staffing resources. Both of these issues came up during the pandemic, both positive as well as areas that we needed to address in terms of code enforcement, and we saw the need for that. So we're working to enhance our staffing to improve and preserve the quality of life that our residents have come to expect. We will also continue to enhance our building staff and resources. We saw in this area that why we were able

to continue our services we were also able to utilize many of technology to be able to work smarter but at the end of the day we we still need to be able to have the staffing so that we can continue to provide the services that our development community our residents have come to expect and and provide in a timely manner we're looking to enhance our economic resiliency as well as seismic safety in the city by completing a seismic survey of structures in the city this

will allow city to develop a seismic retrofitting of structure plan in case of a natural disaster we'll be able to quickly identify which buildings needs to be quickly addressed and be able to respond to it as well as looking at ways of potentially upgrading or retrofitting those building before the natural disaster as a preventive measure. And finally the goal this year for us, it's a big one as well, is to complete the general plan. This document has been going on for a number of years. We are on our way. We

recently completed our environmental justice outreach. With the completion of that we will finalize our information gathering process and move towards finalizing the draft general plan and EIR and is looking to present the document for initial public hearing process this fall for the plan Commission and the City Council to consider we will also be working on the housing element as this is the sixth cycle of the housing element that we were approved this year with an allocation of housing for our city and with those

allocation we will need to complete the housing element at least by october but no later than february of 2022 with the completion of the general plan we will also embarking on the first phase of a comprehensive zoning code update the zoning code update is significantly important as we need to ensure that with the adoption of the general plan we have to have zoning regulations and and standard that will implement the vision of the general plan so they are consistent and is something that we would need in order to implement the vision of the general plan.

So with that, that concludes my presentation of the budget for the planning and building department. I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Great. Thank you, Director Tai. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the council to see if there's any comments or questions.

councilmember Ty and before that madam clerk if you'll just go ahead and let me know if there's anybody with their virtual hand raise that's on the line but let's go ahead and get started with

Thai Viet Phan

them councilmember fan thanks mayor and thank you man for the update I know you'll have a lot of big projects I've been pending for many since the first time I met you I guess one thing I do want to bring up because I do know that there are some staffing changes or requests and I guess I wanted to better understand you know a lot of the comments I got from people trying to get plan checks or get permits it's it's taking eight weeks ten weeks more I think some of it was

Thai Viet Phan

COVID but you know is it is it something that you know for you it's it's a staffing issue is it a able to go through these projects?

It is. We can always use more staff in terms of having in-house ability to do plan check, plan reviews. However, what we have found is that a combination of both in-house staffing and supplementing that with our current process as a hybrid, we also use outside services for expediting. However, the in-house staff, with the in-house staff, we're able to have a little bit more quality control and better react to some of the more timely requests in certain instances. But on the average, I think our goal is always to complete plan checks within a very short time frame.

So the average time for a plan check where we can look at between, you know, 7 to 14 days. So I think you were talking about...

Thai Viet Phan

It might just be permitting in general. you know a lot of comments i get whether it's from another entity like a ce or or gap you know gas or even planners you know people are just trying to get a project through they they say well it's taken a really long time for me to be able to talk to someone or get information and again i know that you're working with a skeleton crew especially during covid but as we're talking about economic development and trying to bring in more businesses i hope that you would be busier than ever and

Thai Viet Phan

I guess my understanding is planning often gets deposits from developers, from folks looking to get permits, and so it almost pays for itself in some ways. And so I was just trying to get a better sense of that's something that you need or you anticipate outside of what you already have on the budget as proposed.

In terms of the staffing changes, we certainly took a look at what our needs are and we'll work with the city manager's office to propose what we feel would be appropriate for this year as we continue to evaluate our services versus what we're looking forward towards for the next upcoming year in terms of work so my my my goal is to continue to work with the city manager to make sure that our growth is sustainable and that our service model is something that we can react to the economy as well as reacting to the development community so being able to have a

hybrid model to have a combination of both in-house staff as well as our supplement of outside consultant services we're able to scale up and scale down in real time so it's a sustainable model considering the economy that we're in we're able to have the ability to provide service but still be fiscally

Thai Viet Phan

responsible okay thank you so much for that

thank you councilmember I think we have councilmember Lopez who wants to ask a

question as well councilmember thank you mayor sir thank you for the presentation director hi one of the questions that I have I guess when I look at the department and division breakdown why is it that animal services is under planning. With the approval of last year's budget. Thank you. Council

member, it used to be included in the police department and with the adoption of the current budget there were services that were found to be located better in other departments so the animal services department was moved to a men's shop and we also relocated the street crossing guard service to the

Public Works Department. Okay thank you. And so I guess why was it moved over from

police to planning? So council member at that time we were asked to look at services that could be provided by other departments rather than the police department and animal services lend itself to that. At many cities you will see it located in various places a lot of it is contracted out Santa Ana does use a hybrid system and we're not 100% contracted out for that so and Min Tai has experience overseeing that operation and some of his former roles that he's

held at municipal governments okay and so thank you for that in terms of the reallocation um i see that there's going to be like a change from code enforcement manager to assistant director and just want to say that congrats um you know for that if i think it's going if it is going to the person that i think it's going to get that promotion so good job um everyone think. Was that a question Councilmember? No no no it was just a

comment. Thank you. Great thank you Councilmember Lopez. Anybody else on the line or here want to ask me go ahead and go to Councilmember. Thank you

Phil Bacerra

Mr. Thank You Mr. Mayor. Director Tai thank you for that presentation and you know, I appreciate your ability and your staff's ability to be nimble during the pandemic. And, you know, I think some of the changes that you implemented were definitely needed pre-pandemic and I think will come in very useful post-pandemic. And I appreciate some of the comments from my colleagues as they were talking about trying to improve the efficiencies. And I think that that's exactly what you accomplished with, you know, going towards a digital platform. So I'm happy to see you continue to push for that.

Phil Bacerra

So the question or concern I brought up at the budget workshop was in regards to certificates of occupancy. So can you help me understand as far as we go forward, is there a way that we can address the issue of trying not to place an undue burden onto a business that's not performing an exhaustive amount of tenant improvements?

Thank you, Council Member. And having that understanding of that question, we immediately started looking at evaluating our process. So we're currently completing a study of the process and the necessary component of those inspections. What we'd like to do is to coordinate with our city manager's office and bring back a future recommendation with the council on how to adjust that fee for the city fee broadcasting process for business licensing purposes.

Phil Bacerra

That's fantastic. I'm very happy to hear that, so thank you for that. A question for you as far as, let's see, so with our, let's see, page 305 we're talking about administrative citations that are projected at $25,000 less even though you're also proposing to add to code enforcement officers. And I know that our code enforcement officers are super busy and I know they're very diligent and they're great at what they do. So help me understand, I'm sure it's probably a budgetary thing, but why are we showing what I would think is such a low amount?

Thank you for noticing that. And the amount that's being shown in the budget is a projected revenue on collection. It doesn't reflect the issuance of citation amount, but it's reflecting what the city is able to collect in the process of collecting from the citation process through a third-party citation company. So there is an amount that is issued and that amount then get pushed to finance department for collection. Anything that we're unable to collect then it goes to a third-party company.

So the amount that you see there is a projection on collection and not necessarily the work that we actually did in terms of issuing citation.

Phil Bacerra

So, yeah, this number does not at all reflect issuance, rather just collections. Correct. Okay. Those are all the questions I have. Thank you, Mr. Tai.

Thank you, Council Member. Any other questions from the Council?

Mayor Pro Tempaniolo said.

David Penaloza

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. Director Mintai, how are you doing? I'm good, thank you. Good, good, good. I wanted to ask a little bit on your I was looking over the just the workforce changes and shame on me for not asking this at the last two meetings but um where do the neighborhood initiative representatives fall under in which category under the planning okay under planning the division the under the

planning division yes it's a functional planning division okay and

David Penaloza

And I'm not, probably not, we're probably too late in the game to even consider this. And I'm not sure if my colleagues would even be interested. But given the fact that our city is 27 square miles and what I believe, you know, close to half a million people, I think that if we're going to be adding any bodies, it should be, you know, we're talking about adding a third executive assistant, adding a Vietnamese community liaison, which I'm fully supportive of. But I think we should look into eventually adding a third body under the neighborhood initiatives.

David Penaloza

I know we currently have two, one that handles the north and the south, maybe because of the size of our city and the effort to try to engage more neighborhoods and activate them. I think I think it'd be best I'm not sure if there's an appetite or there's even a possibility to adding one this year for this budget but as we move forward just some of my thoughts that I was having very happy would seen the the land management software being you know implemented as we move forward to try to cut down on that time of people standing around on the ground floor I I know that was a huge push of mine.

David Penaloza

So yeah, just wanted to make that comment and throw it out there. But thank you. Thank you, Mayor Brotem. That's pretty much it for now.

Thank you. Great. Thank you for those comments, Mayor Brotem, Peñalosa. So I think everybody has had an opportunity to speak, those that wanted to. Just a couple of things. Good work. Thank you for the presentation, Director Tai. I think yours is one of the more challenging departments, I think, because we tend to be to get calls from people as Councilmember Fan said that, you know, something is, you know, needs to be reviewed. And a lot of times we find out that the ball is in the court of the applicant and they have to respond to comments that are made. Nonetheless, I mean, this has peaks and valleys

and, you know, sometimes you get immersed with, you know, applications and you have to review. And I think we've even outsourced a lot of the work, right? So we have some in-house, some staff outside my concern has always been you know in my conversations with the city manager been just customer service delivery you know and a lot of it isn't fiscally you know based it's more the ability to have whether it's somebody over-the-counter or whether it's a planner that's assigned to just walk somebody through and I know that the most difficult thing for us is to say

when somebody has a bad experience because in the industry it tends to you know you know just create bad impressions bad reputations for the city and then others think that we're you know we're very unresponsive or unwelcoming so to the extent that that's something that you've instilled and you continue to instill it isn't on here it doesn't appear you know as a column or anything but those are things I think that are cultural changes in the way you know services are delivered so yours tends to be one that's really engaged with the public and engage with the applicant so you know if you if you can continue to do that

that's something that's really important and you know i think it's it's always based on empirical data right i mean you know the less calls we get i mean that means that you're doing a great job and your staff is doing a great job and i've heard good things and on that if you know i know that there was a report that was issued recently um by the grand jury on the cannabis industry and we We know that that's public and we know that that's there were great findings, by the way, and they were very encouraging on the industry because I know that a lot of people didn't understand what the industry was going to look like back years ago.

Now we see other communities getting on board. But one of the recommendations or a couple of the recommendations I think were fair in addition to all the good comments that were made about what we're doing is maybe having a contact person or having a point person that handles that. I think we may have somebody like that, but to the extent that becomes a fixed role, doesn't mean we have to add somebody, but we could assign somebody who's a planner and familiar with the industry to be able to go ahead and be responsive and maybe marshal staff and responses for that industry as it continues to grow.

And the other one is just auditing, you know, and those are fair. reporting you know how that industry is doing I think you know it certainly exceeded our expectations this past year during the pandemic and really did help us alleviate what we had forecasted to be a much deeper you know debt and our shortfall the industry helped and I think it's fair and so you know as we go back and revisit things I think those two comments are our our fair from that from the grand jury that we can incorporate. So that and finally, just something that we had spoken about previously about our development

industry and how they get saddled with development impact fees as a result of us participating in the transportation corridor agency. So we're, and I was just speaking with Mayor Pro Tem about it because he's our representative to both those agencies, Foothill East and San Joaquin, trying to find out whether there is a benefit for the city to continue. and we know one of the member cities just left, I think it was San Clemente, for different reasons, and we would. But I believe to date, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, about $20 million have been paid by developers in our town

to those agencies over these past years that we've been a member. And so I don't know what benefits the city has received as a result, but I know that those $20 million that the developers have paid that have properties and businesses here could have been used for other community benefits in the city for its residents. So just something, you know, I think it may be on their radar. They may be studying that, but to the extent you can comment on that and work with them on finding out what is the tangible benefit. Does it make sense for us to continue? Maybe you can come back to us and let us know on that.

That certainly would affect, I mean, our budget and the way we do things as well.

Thank you, Mayor. I think your comment, and it's very well noted, I'll continue to work with the City Manager's Office. The city managers have been very supportive of our service improvements proposal in terms of both forming a cannabis group to work closely with the cannabis industry under our code enforcement program to not really to enforce the code, but actually to help process, monitor, and shepherd that process along. And so we'll continue to improve that aspect by enhancing our staff as well.

And then on the service-oriented, we continue to work with our staff to understand that the range of client and expertise that we have at our counter vary from someone that does it every day down to someone who's for the first time stepping into city hall. So they need to be able to recognize that and adjust their style and communication so that it facilitates moving a project forward rather than just giving people information. In terms of the TCA fee, we'll definitely work with our partner in public works as well as city manager's office to evaluate and come back to the council in the future with some recommendation.

I did want to address one other aspect that came up during the discussion on the study session was the question relating to the proposed fee for the renoticing requirements. at the study session there was a question of whether or not that could potentially impact single-family residential development. While we don't think that will impact the single-family application, but to ensure the council that that won't happen, we request that with the adoption of that fee that you also allow the exemption of single-family properties and applications from that fee.

So that's our adjustment to the budget request.

Great. Thank you for those responses. Thank you for your presentation and your hard work, Director Tai. And I believe, seeing no other questions or comments from the Council, let me go ahead and turn it over to Chief Valentin for his presentation.

Okay, Mr. Mayor, City Council, City Manager, and all the residents and folks listening virtually. Thank you for this opportunity to present this year's proposed budget on the police department and to speak on the services that are provided by the police department. It is my continued honor to serve as your chief, and I first want to thank all of the men and women that work day in and day out, 24-7, to serve everyone in our city equally.

I also want to highlight, and I don't think this is done enough, and that is that what you have in this city is a top-tier police department. I think some people know that, and it's always good to remind folks of that, and that's what's in place today. So I'll get into the budget.

the proposed police budget is 143 million with zero additional dollars proposed in our 21-22 budget increase from last year. We had just under $10 million in supplemental budget requests. So these are items and assets that we needed to perform at an optimum level. None of those were approved, so there was zero dollars added there.

We had 10 professional staff positions that were unfunded going into this proposed budget, and again, none of those positions were funded. On the screen, this is the manner in which the police department is broken down. Chief's office oversees the operations day to day. Administration Bureau oversees hiring, training, investigations bureau in charge of all criminal investigations. Field operations is your uniformed personnel in the field and then our jail operations.

Again, $143 million is the general fund. That's 38% of the total general fund, and that makes up 18% of the citywide budget.

Before I get into highlights and the goals for this year, I wanted to share some context in terms of statistics and how we're staffed here at the Santa Ana Police Department. On the sworn side, we have 384 authorized positions, 376 of which are funded, 8 are unfunded and so today's maximum ceiling is 364. The western states average for police ratio of officer to resident is 1.8. Today's numbers with the officers

that we have hired we are at 1.08 so just just a little over half of the western states. Some additional information on comparisons when you look at cost of police services per resident in the city. The city of Long Beach, and this data comes from census and the staffing numbers of each of these cities and police departments. So the city of Long Beach is $477 per resident. The city of Anaheim is $438 per resident. The city of San Bernardino is $408

dollars per resident and Santa Ana is at three hundred and fifty three dollars per resident.

So the highlights of of our accomplishments this past fiscal year is um are framed on the strategic plan. We have a five-year strategic plan that that complements the city's strategic plan and this was put together with input by city council and residents of the city number one was to reduce response times to priority one calls for service so that's your 911 emergency call and so you see a reduction there of 33 percent we increased community engagement programs from 75 to 114

about a 52 percent increase and again this is being done as many directors have mentioned during the pandemic. Other than our fire contract service, the police department was in fact the only police department in the city that stayed on 24-7 for the residents of our city. The police department continued its focus on community engagement. We shifted to CDC compliant micro events. So even though we had to be very careful, like the rest of the globe, we felt it important to continue to engage with our community in a safe manner. And we were able to accomplish that.

We increased proactive policing measures, which led to approximately 71% increase in firearms seized. So I'll pause here and make a note that what you've seen across the nation is actually an increase in violent crime. So conversely here in our city, we also experienced an increase in violent crime. The first quarter of this year, we saw the increase to include four gang-related murders. We put together Operation Community First, which is a comprehensive plan to address the increase in violent crime.

And we haven't seen another gang-related murder in the last 90 days, in the last three months. So that is a success, very comprehensive approach and intent. The seizure of firearms, another note here, that significant increase comes at a time when the overall incidence of use of force is decreasing, has in fact decreased. So officers conducting good proactive police work at a time when the use of force incidence is decreasing. Why is that?

Our focus, as you know, is very much centered on de-escalation and good communication tactics. A lot of what we do can be de-escalated simply by talking to people. We increased the number of officers assigned to the homeless outreach and engagement, the Colt team, from 5 to 10. This will come up again as we look at alternative police response.

So the goals. I think I stressed my staff out with all these goals, but I have faith that we will accomplish these. So first and foremost, I don't want this council or anybody listening to think that we are blind to what occurred throughout 2020 and really certain actions occurred in 2020. but you have to look at our history and then this piece on equity in policing our communities.

And so we're very much, I can tell you that I am personally involved in that dialogue locally, regionally, and across the country. So we want to focus on rethinking police services and response models. How is it that we're delivering police services? We want to focus on continuing to build and sustain community trust. This speaks to the core of our continued ability to serve folks in our city. If they don't trust us, they won't call us, they won't seek the help that they very much need. And that is critically important to us.

We want to explore and implement best practice restorative justice programming. I mean, I have just one example here that I think is very doable in this fiscal year. It's a program out of the Dallas Police Department. It's a first offender program. The program focuses on taking first offenders, nonviolent, and redirecting their disposition if they accomplish certain educational goals that can be provided through police staff, sworn and professional. And this again, nonviolent, maybe a property crime. In Dallas, it focuses on the ages of 10 to 16.

So we would look at possibly a similar model. So a good diversion program. And it also we would make a recommendation to the court that they not be entered with a permanent record into the into their into their criminal history. We have increased funding for police training with focus on de-escalation and effective communications consistent with the 21st century policing framework. We will focus on expanding youth investment and community engagement and explore establishing a second PAL center.

This piece was in fact I think presented previously in other budget presentations. And then we will enhance trauma-informed services through our Family Justice Center and police response training. So whether it's detectives assigned to sex crimes or officers assigned to patrol, we have the ability to reach out to social service partners, have them come in and provide additional training on trauma-informed service delivery platform and really looking at what the victim is experiencing.

We are going to increase prevention and intervention strategies and programming specifically, increase the police explorer program by 10%, enhance and grow our police cadet program and internships before the pandemic. So this would have been two summers ago. I saw an opportunity come through City HR for student interns from Santa Ana Unified School District. A firm believer in mentoring and paying it forward. I seeked out that opportunity. We hosted a number of students. Very successful when I first called. Ironically, I was told we don't do this in the police department. Well, we do now.

And so it was a successful summer for both the students and the police personnel that volunteered, had more volunteers than students. So we want to do that again and expand that program. Again, centered on youth investment. We want to assess and implement alternative traditional police responses to crime and quality of life issues. This piece here is it complements another proposal already discussed and that is to look at nonprofits to come in and assist with some of the calls for service in responding to homeless related quality of life issues.

I have the numbers of how many total calls we received last year and I would say a good two-thirds potentially of those calls could be shifted. And so we still need police officers to respond to those violent incidents and crime violations, but a good portion of those can and I believe should be shifted.

expansion of our youth and community investment programs we we have uh robust programs uh that had to be altered during the pandemic we still facilitated them we had to do some stuff virtually we we had to do very small groups as well as you can imagine we have a parent or academy the padres we have a teen academy we have a community police academy as well a very robust program all of this supports community engagement the behind the line program is an opportunity to bring students out to a scene of a dui enforcement initiative and we walk them through the impacts

the potential impacts of driving under the influence alcohol drugs very successful program once we fully come out of the pandemic we hope to do a lot more of that And again, centered on youth advocacy programs. And we want to support Pathways to Success. Some may say, you know, what is this entire slide saying here? What it's saying is that we recognize the value in investment on the front end. And we are a part of that solution very much.

Continuing with goals, we will complete the calls for service policy analysis, which was initiated last year, we're looking at how we respond to calls for service. And are we sending the appropriate resources, depending on the information that we initially received from our dispatch center. We want to complete and distribute to the community a community satisfaction survey, so we get to hear firsthand how we're doing. We want to continue our focus on the department's dual policing strategy of community oriented

and traditional policing models to respond, mitigate and prevent crime and continue community relations investment. We will explore and expand employee wellness programs and support to include debriefing critical incidents for lessons learned. Anytime there is a critical incident across the nation what we do is it could be as soon as the following morning we go through that incident and draw initial lessons learned and look to see what our policies are in place and to see if we need to make any immediate adjustments

and in any long-term policy adjustments as well employee wellness is critically important the rates of police suicide are through the roof and this is an area of focus that we will continue to have for our employees. We will continue to incorporate the six pillars of 21st century policing, which are trust and legitimacy, policy and oversight, technology and social media, community policing and crime reduction, training and education, and officer wellness and safety into our current practices and further expand de-escalation and effective communication training in addition to mental

health crisis intervention training. Another focus area is to continue implementation of our new sergeant and jail supervisor training programs and continue to seek out leadership for those folks. We can't train enough and we certainly want to provide new supervisors in their role with the adequate support that they need.

I know everyone has several questions and comments, and so I have a ton of data here, and I'm ready when you are.

Boy, you're being pessimistic. I was going to say you're done.

Thank you, sir. Good night.

Just kidding. Thank you for that presentation, Chief. And, you know, again, I think to be fair, there's certainly a lot of very good things that are, I mean, and there shouldn't be any reluctance on your part to deliver what you just told us, which are some very good things on the front end. And I think it's, you know, it is something that the questions, I think, or responses are proportional to the funding that, you know, that certain departments receive. In other words, we have some departments that receive less than a percent of city money, some departments that receive, you know, quite a bit.

So the proportionality of just interest and concern and being prudent, I think, is reflective of the proportionality of funding that goes towards ease, as well as just the social component to this. So let me go ahead and just, but with that preface, let me open it up to the council to see if there's any comments or questions by members of the council.

Council Member Hernandez and Mendoza.

Great, let's start with Council Member Hernandez and then Mendoza.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to start by thanking our police chiefs. I really respect your leadership, Chief Valentin, and I thank you for acknowledging how difficult of the year 2020 was for members of our community. It was a very traumatic and distressing year for a number of reasons. COVID-19, the murder of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Andres Uruguado in L.A., and then the storming of the Capitol. It's just a very difficult year for a lot of people, and it really was a reminder that

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

we have to rethink service, public service. and I'm happy to see that on the presentation that you brought forth, it was not only comprehensive, but to see a police chief bring forth a proposal to rethink police services and responses, it really shows how different of a city Santa Ana truly is and how we are evolving with the times. In light of that, rethinking police service, I think that there's a couple changes chief that will improve response times for poor police issues involving violence, weapons, and any other dangerous conditions.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

I think it would be wise of us to divert those police responses of all 911 calls for homeless, mentally ill, transient related matters to civilian professionals for initial contact slash encounters. So I do think that would be wise. And I think another thing that would increase safety both for residents and for officers would be to discontinue enforcement of stops for minor infractions, including but not limited to broken taillights, tinted windows, expired registration tags.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

those are some of the thoughts that I have. I wanted to ask if that's something that aligns with your opening line here and rethinking police services response.

Thank you for the question. Councilman Hernandez. I think there's a whole host of opportunities when we talk about rethinking police services. as I mentioned before, with an alternative police response to homeless, a good portion, not all, but a good portion of those calls could in fact be redirected. What we don't want to see, and I don't believe we want to partner with third party and have them respond to armed incidents or people exhibiting violent behavior.

So we want to certainly rethink the overall response and be smart about how we're going to handle the different types of incidents there on that issue. With regards to shifting away from minor offenses, again, I think there's an opportunity to discuss what that looks like. I have to be frank and honest with you because that's what you hire me to do. And so that minor offense in some instances and in fact has led to a very serious crime, right?

That broken taillight could lead to a homicide suspect and in fact has. I have some data that I can provide on the ratio of officers stopping people and then actually issuing a citation or just providing a warning or just providing an opportunity to educate someone on a different cone pattern, let's say. Right. So there's that opportunity. I think we need to be very, very careful and judicious about any absolutes, particularly when we're talking about officer discretion and all the complexities that go into conducting the good work that is done on a daily basis.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

Thank you, Chief Valentin.

Thank you. Any other questions, Councilmember?

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

At the moment, no. Great. I'll just take a deeper look at everything, and if I have any additional questions, I'll raise my hand.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Council Member. I believe Council Member Mendoza was next.

Yes, thank you, Mayor Sarmiento.

Chief, I'm very glad to see that continuing to build

and sustain community trust is at the top of the list. It's been a very tough year, And I think that we do need to concentrate on that. And I'm glad to see that you are going to be building stronger trust through all the programs that you list, and especially the First Offender program. I'm glad that we are going with best practices for restorative justice. and I think we could capture some of our delinquents very early

and put them on a better path rather than delinquency into a path of learning and being responsible young adults and resourceful city residents. And my question has to do with your police cadets and internships. is that limited to is it high school students or college students and the second question is we used to have a program where the volunteers were retired police officers or trained individuals

who would go out and take care of the non-violent calls such as you mentioned with the homeless. Are you working on that kind of program or is it organizations, nonprofit organizations who are providing that kind of volunteer service already?

Okay. Thank you for the questions, Councilman Mendoza. Let me start with Explorer and Cadets and interns. So the Explorer post is a traditional police Explorer program ages 14 they age out believe it's 18 19 cadets can go up through college and we encourage that the internships like i said two summers ago we did it for the first time and that's focused on students from our local school district many of them were in between their senior year had just graduated and were heading off to college wanted to get some experience something to put on the

resume and so that's the focus area there all of which we hope to expand with regards to volunteer retired police officers as volunteers we may have a issue with regards to their retirement status to come back as volunteers in the same jurisdiction to do that we do have volunteers they are not they are not

retired police officers thank you chief thank you thank you Councilwoman any questions from those here in person councilmember fan thank you chief hi

Thai Viet Phan

this is great to just really get to see a lot of the goals and what you've been doing the departments been doing so a few questions first about the PAL Center so this is something that was new to me I didn't know what it was until we met a couple days ago yes so can you I guess maybe do brief overview of what the PAL Center is and then talk about where the second PAL Center would be

absolutely thank you for that question and I appreciate you spending the time with me a couple days ago to talk about our program so the PAL program is the Santa Ana Police Athletic and Activity League. This is programming that occurs up and down the state across the nation. It's an opportunity to have police personnel. They don't always have to be sworn personnel but people that are part of the police department. We have currently one sworn member and the rest of the staff are professional non-sworn staff. To engage with youth focused on physical activity but also support and mentorship for education. Our PAL program

was developed in 2007. It is at the old library off of West McFadden, McFadden and Sullivan area. It services about 200 families. Many of you have been by there even during the holidays when we provide meals and different programs not just for the students attending but for the families and many of these families are the most impacted in our core of the city if we were to open a second pound I very much would love to see that I think there's a service need in the city we've

looked at a couple of locations on the east side of town that would be a possibility open to all of your input and of course approval. And so it, a pal center services the various neighborhoods that are immediately in the area and then others come because it's a safe place, a safe place to do homework, a safe place to speak to mentors. We have various programs that occur that require travel. And so I can provide you some of those. there's homework assistance, physical fitness, cultural arts. We have a partnership with the Santa Ana Unified School District. I might point out that

during the pandemic, during the height of the pandemic, when our school district as they struggled to provide a remote access, the folks that I have assigned to the PAL, they figured it out. They made it happen. Very proud of them. And then we saw them again during Christmas and they brought it up. They appreciated the support that they received. The summer program is really the the crown jewel of POW. There's 30 kids that are selected from 200 and they compete in various

exercises at different locations. I have pre-COVID the numbers that were serviced and then post COVID.

That essentially is an overview, but it's a really good opportunity. When we're talking about youth investment in some of our most impacted neighborhoods, that's what this represents, which is why it's been so successful for so long.

Thai Viet Phan

Thanks. And this is great. I love to hear about this. I think it's a fantastic program to have. Might I suggest on the east side, I actually just spoke to folks at the Del High Center, and that would be a fantastic location to partner with a local community member, someone who is well-trusted in the Nellahan neighborhood and beyond. And they have plenty of space, classroom space, space to do cartwheels, anything. And I know our officers have a great relationship with the nonprofit there. So I really do recommend we look into that.

Thai Viet Phan

I think it would help Delhi, the neighborhood, as well as the nonprofit and the city of Santa Ana in looking for space. The other question I had was regarding the police explorer program. When we met, you mentioned that the explorer program is not paid. It's an internship and it's experience. I would like for us to look into whether it's with the revived Santa Ana money or our budget, that we look into providing some form of payment for students. I do understand that we like to pay young people in experience, but I always tell folks I never did an internship until law school because I was too poor to work for free.

Thai Viet Phan

I worked pretty much every day since I was 15 and two jobs in undergrad and law school. A lot of our students do work part-time to help out their families, and who better to have participate in a program like the Explore program than those who are helping to support their families. The other thing I would also like to bring up is I know that you're working with SAUSD. I would like to also make sure that we reach out to Gardner Grove Unified District as well as Tussin and Orange. Right? GG. The two of us here, he went to Santiago, I went to Los

Thai Viet Phan

amigos and you know over 8,000 Santa Ana students attend Gardner Grove Unified School District schools and we want to make sure that they're also involved in these wonderful opportunities plus we have a west end substation in Ward 1 in the Gardner Grove Unified School District so that would be an easy way to build relationships on the west side the other question I wanted to ask you was about the Family Justice Center. Will you please provide me some statistics? I know 2020 was obviously a very difficult year with the pandemic, but any information you might have regarding the number of families

Thai Viet Phan

or individuals who were served since it opened?

Absolutely. So we opened the doors to our Santa Ana Family Justice Center, which I have to point out is the only co-located Family Justice Center within a police department, police headquarters in the nation. still today. And it didn't come with some negative feedback from some groups in terms of, you know, it's not going to work. The community will not come to the police station for assistance. And so that that simply is not true. And the numbers bear it out.

We partner with

various nonprofits, sampling are four girls, Casa de la Familia, Community Legal Aid Society, County of Orange Social Services, Crime Survivors, Inc., Eli Home for Abused Children, Get Safe Human Options, the Mexican Consulate, Orange County Department of Child Support Services, Waymakers, Women's Transitional Living Center, and the Youth Shelter.

Last year, again, during the pandemic, we had 100 clients. We received 718 calls and I'm sorry, 612 calls. We provided 718 services, different services. It could be as simple as a referral. It could be sitting down with someone and actually walking them through the temporary restraining order process, which, as you know, is arduous. And if you're not familiar with it, it's intimidating. So we offered those services this year thus far as we continue to open up and come out of the pandemic.

We've had 85 clients, 664 different services provided and 550 calls received. And again, the focus here is very much trauma informed. We have different service providers that sit down with clients and they come to the front of the police station, they're checked in, and then they're brought up to the third floor where the Family Justice Center is.

Thai Viet Phan

Thank you. And this might also be kind of veering into the Revive Santa Ana funds. You know, part of the funds is about addressing COVID, harm resulting in COVID. And as we know, as many of us know, the rates of domestic violence and abuse have gone way, way up during the pandemic. And so I can see a program like the Family Justice Center as we work with Casa de Familia, who received the proclamation for SAM, Sexual Assault Awareness Month and other organizations that I hope we can put some of that money into the Family Justice

Thai Viet Phan

center, even as lawyers, you know, going to court, facing your abuser, and explaining to a judge, someone you don't know, why you need this restraining order to protect yourself and your family is incredibly traumatizing, and I'm really glad that we provide that service. I also would like to see that we work more with other nonprofit legal aid, such as Legal Aid Orange County and Public Law Center to work with the U Visa program, which I do know we do and actually help advertise that service for our residents because a lot of folks who are undocumented don't understand that they might be able to

Thai Viet Phan

apply for citizenship or a visa if they report a crime and with that I wanted to I guess talk about or ask you some questions about traffic stops broken taillights expired tick tags you did mention kind of I guess it's called broken window right theory see a broken window it's probably a dangerous time do you have any statistics on the number of instances in which if you stop somebody for broken taillight expired tags that it resulted in a major crime or arrest or

anything like that not specifically I'd have to do research for taillights and the different vehicle code violations. Let me pull one data point for you here.

Do you have the RIPA information?

So we have a assembly bill that was put into place January of this year that requires us to track all that information. I have it here somewhere. And so I believe off the top of my head, it's about 50% of the time or so where people are stopped and then they're actually issued some type of enforcement action and others are not. And then it's also broken down by ethnicity and sexual orientation as well.

Thai Viet Phan

Okay. Yeah. So I know the DOJ, we do report to them on this matter. I guess my question is really more toward one of my colleagues mentioning, well, we don't want police to enforce expired ticket or tags and things like that. And so I really wanted to get a sense for one, what is the amount of time slash money that we spend in enforcing something like tinted windows, expired tags and, you know, a broken taillight?

Yeah. So, again, we can we can take a data dive on that in terms of a dollar, an estimated dollar amount. because sometimes that citation is not issued. Again, I would, you know, there's a possibility of, you know, we used to have cameras here in the city, red light cameras. There were some issues with the technology there, and we moved on from that. There could be an opportunity where, you know, the focus has been and will continue to be to look at serious crime. Officers may stop someone for something minor, but that leads to something much more significant.

And so it's problematic to say, to issue a kind of a black and white eating to say, you shall not do this. I think it's problematic for the safety concerns that we're dealing with here in our city. It could work in another community. And there's others that are beginning to explore this. So we have to study that and see what are the implications and the impacts. And then we also have to be realistic about what our safety concerns are here in our city, which are very different than, let's say, a community of 30,000 or 40,000 with a much lower crime rate.

So that would be my concern with a blanket perspective on that.

Thai Viet Phan

Thanks. And I know, Councilmember Serra is like, where is this going with the budget? I have a, there is a nexus.

Thai Viet Phan

So, you know, the reason, so when we do stop somebody, let's say I'm driving my Civic and my tags expire because I'm terrible at remembering to re-register. Do you pull someone over purely because of the expired tag?

That could be the probable cause to stop and speak to you, yes.

Thai Viet Phan

Okay, and that makes sense, you know, if you have probable cause. So the reason why I bring that up is, you know, One, we do know that for a police officer, someone in the field, that pulling someone over is one of the most dangerous situations you can be in. In fact, anybody watching the news will see that the vast majority of shootings involve traffic stops, or Terry stops if you want. The reason why I ask is, like you said, we do have an increase in violent crime or serious crime and we don't have personnel for it. You're saying there are still vacancies.

Thai Viet Phan

And so I really want to get us focused with the dollars that we do have on the issues that are most at hand. Violent crime reporting, domestic violence, sexual assaults, and other instances in which it's an imminent threat to life or property.

Thai Viet Phan

I'm not sure if spending 20 minutes writing down a ticket for an expired tag is going to be a threat to life or property. And so for me, I would rather see that officer either patrolling for that violent incident or responding to violent calls. So that's really where I'm talking about the budget, which is, you know, the field team has, I think, $2.6 million allocated for overtime. And that's a lot of money for overtime because an officer is, you know, now working longer hours, more days, getting paid a time and a half

Thai Viet Phan

to do something where, you know, to pull someone over for an expired tag. And so that is where I would like us to see us shift our focus to move away from something like an expired tag and focus on, you know, these other calls that, as you say, are increasing. And that might address some of the overtime concerns.

Thai Viet Phan

So with that, I think those are all the questions I have for now. Thanks, Mayor.

Great. Thank you, Council Member Fan. And I know there's probably some additional questions. I know we have Council Member Lopez in the queue. I just wanted to say, you know, I mean, we totally want to stick to the budget, but policy questions are within the domain of this council. And this is the opportunity to ask policy questions as they impact our fiscal health and our ability to see whether policy changes or policy adjustments can change the budget and can change these numbers.

So I don't want us to get too timid about asking questions having to do with policy because, as we know, there's a nexus to everything. So I just don't want to have a chilling effect on people not being able to ask questions because this is the moment. We're dealing with a, you know, you know, a huge budget and we get to see this once a year. And this is really what is part of this is the most essential role of a council member to have to represent the residents and to be able to ask these questions that they can't ask and that we have to ask on their behalf.

So, you know, with all due respect to everybody who wants to be narrow on our narrowly tailor our questions having to do with, you know, how things are quantified. The policy has to do with it. Or are we beyond the scope of that, Madam City Attorney?

Sonia R. Carvalho

No, this is the one time a year when you get to look at your budget and make your policy decisions and then format your budget to carry out those policy.

So the scope is fairly broad when we're talking about a budget to be able to ask about what the policy practices are of each department and department head.

Sonia R. Carvalho

Yes.

Thank you. Council Member Lopez.

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. Hi, Chief. I hope that you are well. I do have a couple questions for you. Yes, sir. But I wanted to start off by talking, you know, some of our departments are running really tight budgets. and when I look at the expenditure summary, I do see a big jump for your department. The current budget is at $133 million and it is being proposed to increase to $141 million. Can you walk me through that jump?

So again, there is no additional dollars to our general fund. the increase that you see, which is about, I think it makes up about 90% of that increase, are contractual obligations that the city council approved previously. So there's no additional increase. I mentioned that before, and the additional requests that we had in order to operate at an optimum level were also all denied.

Thai Viet Phan

Okay, and my takeaway from that is that services

for Santa Ana residents are not increasing, but the cost is.

Would you agree with that? So I would agree that there are contractual increases from last year's baseline. Yes, I would agree with that. Thank you. Another thing that I wanna talk to you about that Councilmember Phan briefly brought up the overtime um and you know in looking at the data we see that um you know in the past years we've paid you know 7.1 million in 1819 we paid 8.9 million in 1920 um and 5.1 million is being

proposed for the upcoming year and my question to you is how are you going to make sure that what is being proposed doesn't go you know it doesn't have an overflow effect to see you know such to like to the likes of what we've seen in past years thank you for the question and so what we have done over the last two to three years is invest in a robust hiring strategy in mid-17 we

had 67 police officer vacancies. You fast forward today on the books we have I believe it's 12 and that includes the cops positions that were at a cops office the 10 and so however when we hire recruits we have to send them to a six and a half month police academy. We have to put them through an orientation and then they go through a field training program of additional four months. So you're talking it's well over a year plus before these officers are out on the street on their own and we can fully depend on them in our baseline for deployment.

So early on in this strategy and this approach, I knew, we knew, and I shared that it would take a good couple of years to fully materialize the investment, your investment, the city council's investment on hiring and so we should see a continued decrease in overall overtime this next fiscal year and moving forward. Okay, thank you chief. Another thing that I wanted to talk to you about that you kind of talked a little bit about is the category prioritization per calls and one of the things that I noticed in going through the data of the last six months is that

a rape can be classified as a category three which is essentially the same thing that we're categorizing graffiti as and so for me i want you to hear that that's unacceptable um that rape you know sexual crimes need to be a higher priority for our department because there's no comparison to when somebody somebody experiences that um you know i i understand graffiti is an issue but rape and sexual crimes need to be a higher priority for our department? Yes, again, thank you for that very important question.

And so we do have, as you know, and you cited, we have a priority response policy. We have five levels of priority calls. The first one being emergency life death. And then we go down the list to number five. So specifically on the example that you're citing, without having all the information it could be it could be that it's a a what we call cold call with no suspect information the dispatcher that receives the initial information they have guidance on how to classify each call for

service that comes in and of course life and death emergency 911 that's always going to be a priority one you know your parking illegal parking is giving me priority four which is why you see a long delayed response based on availability of folks and the rape that that clearly any any sexual assault any crime against person is a significant incident that affects someone but again not knowing all of the the context and the circumstances as to why for example in this hypothetical that case that incident was classified as a priority three um there there has to be additional information to justify that the other piece

that I might add is that each individual dispatcher is receives ongoing professional training and they have the ability and they are encouraged to make tough calls to either increase priorities of calls or lower them if the information isn't there. So that is an ongoing piece and on one of the slides where I talk about goals, we are finishing a calls for service analysis where we looked at the way we do business, the way that various agencies similar size across the country do business and we are intending to make some adjustments to that moving forward to have in fact a best practice.

Okay. Another thing that I just wanted to put on your radar is, you know, we're having this conversation about remote work and being more efficient. And one of the things that, you know, I think the idea that is floating around out there is for these really, you know, non-emergency calls, can we essentially have, you know, non-saurant officers or people from the desk take like a virtual call that way we're not necessarily dispatching people and you know we can record virtual calls so that people can get assistance in a in a timely manner because that's one of the

biggest complaints or not necessarily complaints but feedback that i receive from my constituents is when i call a cpd they show up two hours later or they never show up and so i think I think moving to remote work is a good opportunity for the department to assess and necessarily you know and see if that can work out as well. And another thing that I wanted to talk about you know Councilmember Pham talked about traffic stops and again you know the data shows us that traffic stops account for almost 45% of patrol activity.

And so I do think that there's a good return for Santa Ana residents. If some of those calls or some of those traffic stops can be stopped so that we can, you know, have more resources that are going to answer priority one calls, as you just said, that is, you know, a high priority for the city. So I just wanted to put that on your radar.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Council Member Lopez. I'll go ahead and see if there's anybody here. Council Member Becerra has his hand.

Phil Bacerra

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First, I want to begin by just saying that, you know, Sam Anna PD has a history of progressive policing, and this goes back well before our current chief. I mean, going back to Chief Davis, I mean, there's always been this sense that RPD has always been just ahead of the curve. We've always been proactive in looking at the best practices, and hearing your presentation tonight, Chief, you're falling right in line with that. So thank you very much for that. I love what I heard about increases to PAL. It's an excellent program, and I've been to the facility, and it's amazing.

Phil Bacerra

The folks that are working there are wonderful. The Explorers are another great program. The Behind the Line program, I'd like to see that continue to grow. And I like what you're talking about in the sense of trying to implement nonprofits coming in and assisting on these emergency calls that ultimately prove to be non-emergency. You know, folks, call 911. We've always been told something's happening. Call 911. And a lot of times, and you probably have the statistics, some of those calls really do not rise to the level of a true emergency and dispatching folks that can de-escalate

Phil Bacerra

a situation that doesn't have to take a shielded officer off the beat is definitely a good approach to investigate. And I also like what you were talking about with dual strategies, this idea that, you know, community-oriented policing with the traditional policing methods. And I would agree that we need to really, as we move past the pandemic, be more proactive with our community and you and your officers know this. Building that trust is so essential. And you know there was a time where in Los Angeles with Chief Gates the accusation was

Phil Bacerra

you know the police are just occupying a neighborhood and they're just driving through it and that's all it is. I know your officers do way more than that and I just want to voice that I'd like to see you continue to do that and see the officers continue to do that. And as far As far as the traditional model, though, I think that policing has evolved over time. Policing will continue to evolve. I think that when we implement our Police Oversight Commission, that will be a chance to even further explore the dialogue of what kind of training our officers should have. I've said this before and I'll say it again.

Phil Bacerra

I want our police to have the best training. Just like a lot of things that our PD does, I want us to be the top of the heap. I want us to be the ones that everybody's looking to use as the good example of what policing has done. And I think we'll do that as we look at training and further incorporating other subject matters that our police officers will be better served and, more importantly, our community will be better served with having. And as far as the dialogue about whether we should enforce minor violations or not, it's fascinating. I had the opportunity to do a ride along with the MET team and literally within 10 minutes

Phil Bacerra

there was a guy with tinted windows, pulled him over and the next hour we were, not we, let's just say the MET team. I know I felt like I was a part of it, right? The MET team had apprehended a gentleman and two others with quite a bit of narcotics on them, weapons, a lot of cash. I mean it was very clear that there were some bad things that were going to happen and that stop prevented something that could have been a lot worse. And I know that our officers are doing that. And so, you know, it's really funny because as a planner we always hear about the broken

Phil Bacerra

windows theory and the idea that you've got to take care of the small stuff so it doesn't grow into the big stuff. And that's exactly what you guys are doing here. This is what happened in New York City when then Chief Bratton implemented that program. And I've seen it implemented throughout cities throughout the United States and it's been successful. I mean, seeing Times Square from what it was in the 70s and 80s to what it's become, it's night and day. And I know that for what you guys are doing, I would say, yes, please, don't stop doing that.

Phil Bacerra

Because I think you guys have, you know, and your stats will show, you have that proven success of stopping what could be larger and more serious and fatal crimes because you are able to come in and prevent it or stop it at the very beginning. So as far as questions, you know, Chief, you mentioned the ratio, and I apologize, I didn't quite catch what you were saying. You were saying that there is an industry standard where the average is 1.8 versus 1.0. Again, I apologize. What did you mean 1.8 to 1.0? You said officers to residents. Were you saying officers to 1,000 residents? Correct.

I can provide a little more context. Sure. So the country is broken into regions in terms of averaging of police officer ratio, and that's one police officer per thousand residents.

Phil Bacerra

Okay.

And so for the western states, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, so all the western states, that averaging is 1.8 per thousand residents. So with including all of our recent hiring over the last two to three years, we currently are at 1.08. So call it not quite 50% but close to it. So that's where we're at.

Phil Bacerra

So using that ratio, using that math, what would we need to authorize for hiring to get us to the point where we're at this acceptable average?

Well, you know, simply from a math standpoint, that increases you to about 600.

Phil Bacerra

Okay, which we're not getting even close to.

We're very lean. We're very efficient at what we do.

Phil Bacerra

Okay. Thank you for that. And another topic that's already been talked about and I just want to chime in on, and that is the overtime. So, and this is more of a question. So in looking at the draft budget, I'm looking at the police field operations over time. So my book, it is page 229. And so in there, fiscal year 1819, it was $750,000. Then in fiscal year 1920, it was $3.8 million. And then in fiscal year 20 to 21, it drops down to $1.3 million.

Phil Bacerra

given everything that happened in 2020, I would have expected that to be flipped around. And so, but just seeing the fluctuation of that overtime, and I heard you earlier, and I completely agree, the more officers we have, overtime should shrink. But can you explain why we have the numbers fluctuating as much as they are?

So, again, it really is tied to the total number of officers that we have and where we have them deployed. So the way that we staff up the police department is patrol operations has to be number one. They are the core of core. And then we build around that based on priorities that I obtain from all of you and residents, city manager and others. And so then I staff up the rest of the police department in that manner. So the unrest that occurred in 2020

the bulk of that the costing was actually May so that would have been the previous year and that was really the bulk of it as we move forward and we from day one made a ton of adjustments we are good stewards in terms of adjusting officers to leverage and have them work on straight time and we do that across the department so the fluctuation has to do with the number of officers as they're coming out of the training program and then where we can place them most efficiently.

Phil Bacerra

Okay. So the idea, hopefully, because as you said, that we have eight unfunded authorized positions. So my hope is that in future fiscal years we will fund these positions because I think ultimately we want to bring down overtime. I mean, that's what I mean. We're having this discussion here about the budget. This would be completely an appropriate action to take. So also, you know, I mentioned our MET team earlier, which by the way, as you mentioned, they do a great job. They've taken so many weapons off the streets. They're a great group. But what I

Phil Bacerra

I wanted to ask you on page 234, it shows here that there's a $420,000 increase for the MET team for IT maintenance and insurance charges that weren't there in the previous fiscal year when MET was there, but those charges weren't there. I don't know if this is you, Chief, or maybe Catherine, who can explain why we have that?

Yeah, let me start that off. I have a sheet here somewhere. So a large part of those costs are the full deployment. And this is the Met division, which is not just the Met team. It also incorporates the gang unit. So it's the entire division. The gang unit is actually larger than the Met team. It's a smaller element. And so those are various costs. Robert, you got that sheet? Give that to me and I can go through it with you.

Okay, so in salaries of that million dollars, it's $288,000. And that may have been the addition of an additional officer to round out that staffing of a sergeant and 10 officers on the MET side. And then we have the gang unit, which, again, is larger because you have detectives that are part of the field unit, and then that also work inside the station developing intelligence to work up cases. 18,000 of that was medical insurance. 70,000 of that is retiree health benefits. Workman's comp insurance. These are costs that were now built in.

Phil Bacerra

Oh, no, Chief. I'm sorry. If you go further down, where I'm focused at is it would be account code 65040 65100 and 65105. Just those down there which

total to 420,000. 65105. Right. So you've got

Phil Bacerra

IT maintenance charge, insurance charges, and benefits overhead. So what I'm asking is, so if I'm looking at the full page, I've got items in FY 2021, and then in FY 21, 22. And going down to those codes I just referenced, those all show big fat goose eggs. But then the next column over, we've got $420,000. So I'm just trying to understand where that sudden increase came from, because while I understand what what you're describing and all the work that the Met team and the Met division has and all the resources they need I'm just curious to

understand where that 420,000 yes popped up so on the IT maintenance you know that has to do with computer assets both at their desk and also in vehicles yes the insurance and benefits overhead I can have one of my colleagues here join me and provide you that. Sure. So each of the accounting units within each department is charged with these overhead charges for the internal services. And when this was a new accounting unit that was set up, the internal service charges for this accounting or for the entire

police department were rebalanced and re-spread over the new larger number of accounting units. And so that's why you see this new charge here. There's corresponding decreases in other accounting units. So overall, if you were to add up all of those fixed overhead charges for those internal services from one year to the next in all the accounting programs, the overall increase for the police department is less than $200,000, which corresponds with the small increases that each department receives. for these centralized internal services.

Phil Bacerra

So, which I appreciate that explanation. So in other words, this isn't just an additional 420 that popped up, this is rather an accounting exercise where 420 is showing up here, but there's a commensurate difference somewhere else in the same budget. So it's not a spike, it's just a re... A rebalancing. There you go, okay. Thank you for that. And my final question on this would be,

Phil Bacerra

So I did a tour over at the city yard, and we were talking about police patrol vehicles and the work that it takes. You know, when you buy a vehicle, the amount of work it takes to outfit the vehicles, and then, of course, maintenance. And we have some of our cruisers that are getting a little up there in age. And so what I wanted to ask was, in looking at the budget, if somebody could educate me as I was looking through the police budget, I didn't see it. Maybe it's there or maybe it's another part of the budget. But I wanted to know, are we proactively upgrading those vehicles?

Phil Bacerra

And I ask that because just from a cost perspective, we can say, oh, well, that's okay. Cops can just drive these vehicles and make it work. But they can't. some of these vehicles literally the computer brain inside the vehicles we are not able to procure the parts and some of the time it takes to keep these vehicles on the streets is not worth it compared to procuring a contemporary newer vehicle so I just hope that we are actually investing in the fleet and if somebody can point out to me how much we're

investing and what we're getting for that so the answer is yes we have received 16 police vehicles that have already arrived to City Yard. And probably what you saw is also the different phasing in the outfitting of vehicles. We use our internal staff to do that. We have three additional vehicles arriving June 15th and an additional 8 to 10 Ford interceptors that are funded through 21-22 fleet supplemental funding. So we're proactively addressing that asset, which is a critical one. Okay. Yeah.

Phil Bacerra

Yeah, and that's what I gleaned from being out there and just seeing from an efficiency standpoint for what they're doing to help your team. How can we make sure that they're not spending as much time on your vehicles, especially because they're managing the entire city fleet and there's a lot of other vehicles that they need to address. So I'm glad to see that we're upgrading that equipment. Those are my questions right now, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Chief.

Great. Thank you for those questions. I think we have a couple of people that want to speak again, but let me go ahead and call on Mayor Pro Tem, then I think it'll be my turn, then we'll go through the second round if we need to.

David Penaloza

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. And I'm happy that Councilmember Becerra asked about those patrol vehicles. I'm actually surprised they last that long, given that they're Ford.

David Penaloza

Remember, in five years, you're going to have to move away from gasoline, so we'll have another conversation then. But anyways, Chief, thank you for all the work you've been doing. I know it's been a crazy busy year and I'm very thankful for your leadership and the way you've been handling the department. I want to say that I'm supportive of the things that you mentioned. I'm supportive of an additional PAL Center. I've seen the work that Officer Holcomb has been doing at the PAL Center over on McFadden. It's a fantastic spot space for our kids and the way that we interact with them has been phenomenal even during the pandemic.

David Penaloza

So my hat's off to you and the PAL program. I am supportive of Councilmember Fan's idea of having paid internships because one thing that I noticed and I was told is that as kids age out of the PAL program, 18, 19 and going to college, they do come back and volunteer to tutor the younger kids that have been in the program and teach classes. And it'd be a great opportunity if we had those same Santa Ana kids that come back and volunteer their hours, you know, offer them some form of payment because they are going to school, they are our youth that went through this program.

David Penaloza

And if there's an opportunity there to offer that, I think that'd be fantastic because, you know we should be trying to provide for our residents and our youth as much as we can

David Penaloza

the i i so i have one thing that you mentioned with the explorer program i know you mentioned that the minimum age is 14 years old is that correct i believe it's 14 it's usually end of middle school and high school is the primary focus okay that i think that's also worth visiting to see if it's if there's a way where we could even have like a like a way to lower the age requirement to probably not the same tasks that you do with the current Explorer program but ways where we could start bringing in younger kids 12 13 years old into exposing them to that to the Explorer program because

David Penaloza

I've seen the work that they also do and it's also fantastic very happy with that as well. I just want to also, you know, state for the record that with the things we've heard about pulling over people for minor infractions, I am 100% not supportive of that. I think we should continue to have our traffic officers enforce the laws. I know that back in February, Valentine's Day actually of 2010 I was driving home on the flower Street 2010

David Penaloza

yeah I was about 19 18 no 20 years old not that young and I was driving home and a truck a white truck blew past me without its lights on and I was like oh you know that guy doesn't have his lights on so I went home the next morning I woke up to find out that a girl I went to school with, Cara Lee, was t-boned at the intersection of Sakioka and Flower. It was a drunk driver who t-boned her and killed

David Penaloza

her. She was decapitated by his vehicle. So I think of incidents like that. And I'm thinking, if I would, if a police officer would have seen that truck driving with its lights off and pulled them over, that young woman would still be alive. And you think of incidents like that that happen all the time. Just two weeks ago, I had family visiting from Mexico, and we took them to Vegas. And my mom's Honda Pilot, you know, I'm driving it, and I went to go get pizza for my little cousins, and I got pulled over in Vegas.

David Penaloza

And I'm like, oh, okay, so I get pulled over, The officer was nice and he's like, hey, I pulled you over because your taillights are completely off. I almost rear-ended you. I'm like, really? I had no idea. So, of course, the next day we drive home. It's an eight-hour drive. And I was terrified the entire drive because I was like, someone's going to rear-end me. If that officer hadn't pulled me over and told me that my taillights were out, I would have probably not realized it. my mom would be driving around town and she probably would have got, you know, God forbid,

David Penaloza

something happened to her. It gets rear-ended or whatnot. So I definitely think that we should continue to enforce all our laws, even the minor traffic ones. It definitely keeps our community safe. You know, just hearing the idea of not pulling somebody over for a broken toellight is ridiculous, just personally. Just, I mean, it's like, you know, we need to address her traffic laws that's the least we could do especially when the residents of Santa Ana had this idea that our officers don't do anything half the time you know we should you know continue to enforce her laws

David Penaloza

that's just um you know one one of the many uh uh things that i've heard that are you know It just sounds silly. You know, it's the basic responsibilities of a police department, especially our traffic division. And for someone to suggest that that's a huge policy change. That shouldn't be trying to get covered up in this large budget item. Well, we currently have zero people watching on Zoom. We have about 40 on YouTube. You know, it should be agendized as a council discussion item.

David Penaloza

That's a huge policy change. So if there's changes like that, definitely think that they should be agendized for a larger discussion and really be transparent about it. With that said, one of the things that I noticed in your budget, Chief, was that your vice line item, I know that two years ago when I first came on the city council it was 500 bucks was the original amount which you know I also found a little laughable so I know that it's still a huge concern in the city as well and I and I want to

David Penaloza

know why it's only you know or what exactly does a four hundred and forty

$4,000 that are in there. What exactly does that cover? So that is and it's a matter of how it's presented in the budget. You're correct. I remember that conversation two years ago. Let me just reassure you that we have a full-time detective sergeant and I believe it's four or five detectives assigned full time to vice narcotics and marijuana enforcement of illegal shops to pop up on occasion. So it's a

full element. Clearly that does not account for 448,000. This 448,000 is the equivalent of one detective and a portion of some overtime. So there are other there are other officers working in the vice unit? Is there a vice unit? There absolutely is. Full-time detective sergeant and either four or five detectives is the total number. So it's a full element. They respond to all vice-related crimes. They address prostitution crimes, all of the illegal gambling facilities.

They are the frontline element that does all the undercover work, intelligence workup, and then go out and serve search warrants. It's a vice-related crime. It's a core function of what they do, and it's a full-time asset that's dedicated to that effort.

David Penaloza

Okay. So those officers can also be found in the field operations line item, or is it just...

So where exactly... Okay, so they're under the Medical Marijuana Dispensary Task Force item.

David Penaloza

Okay.

David Penaloza

So, which is good because I know that that's one of the main concerns that I've heard from residents as well is just vice in general. I know that on the west end of town for the early on in the city manager's tenure, we were actively, you know, having dozens of meetings in that side of town to address the, not just the prostitution concern, but the crime that came with it, the drugs, the violence, the gun the the the shootings uh this this was uh solicitation on people's driveways correct uh i mean it wasn't just solely prostitution it was a number of things that came with it um

David Penaloza

do do we know how that problem on that side of town has changed since in the last two years i mean do you have just off the top of your head great question i meet with my senior staff and

operations command on a weekly basis and we have very minimal to no complaints regarding prostitution and prostitution related crime out on the west end we're talking really about the harbor corridor right from 17th all the way to first street and even further south currently again that's that's the reason we we have a balanced approach to everything that we do in community policing efforts and traditional policing efforts. Because if we let one go over the other, that can be significant and problematic for our city.

David Penaloza

Okay. And I know that because of the pandemic and the tourism industry that exists just north of Harbor, I know that that feeds a lot into the vice and prostitution issues we've been having in the city for decades. I know that over the last year, we saw that decrease naturally because of the lack of tourism and events at the convention center, which I assume will start picking up again. I mean, I just, just thinking, and I know that, that one of the, the measures that was a huge help to the police department and the vice unit was adding the,

David Penaloza

the no left turn into that neighborhood after I think it was nine or 10 PM on, on a certain days. and that helped a lot, correct?

That helped significantly. It helped those residents. They appreciated it deeply, your support and public works and making that happen. That's an example of someone who may be engaging in what may be a minor traffic violation against that left turn going into a neighborhood. If they're from the neighborhood, they'll know how to get in and out safely. So could they possibly be engaged in some type of criminal activity? Possibly.

David Penaloza

And that was, I mean, you're right. It's a perfect example of a minor traffic violation where we should pull somebody over that's breaking the law. We were able to remove a lot of Johns, not just Johns, but a lot of pimps that were, I mean, I went on a couple ride-alongs where, you know, every time we would pull somebody over, I know I made the city manager go out there at 1 a.m. on her like second day of work and we were both kind of wide-eyed open of how you know just pulling somebody over for you know for making a left turn when they weren't supposed to or having their headlights off you know they're driving

David Penaloza

through this neighborhood at 1 in the morning their lights are off because they don't want to be seen because they're soliciting prostitution so thankful for that thankful that we were able to install those those traffic signs to continue doing that and addressing the problem that neighborhood this is a neighborhood that doesn't have much and and and just has that's one of their largest concerns where they can't even walk out in the middle of you know in the morning to go to work or school without having to see the remnants of the problems that existed there on their doorstep so thankful for that chief is

David Penaloza

With the PAL program, is there a, what I see here, the line item I see here is just for the one center we currently have operating today? Correct. And is there anything in this budget that would allow us to expand that programming, or is that just a conversation for the future? So not in this budget.

I would work with the city manager and her office. One, I believe, a nice fit is Revive. funding for this purpose if it qualifies certainly could be applied to staff up and

David Penaloza

establish a second pal okay that that is the the comments i have for right now i just um again i'm very supportive of that pal program uh expansion uh if my colleagues haven't seen the one we already have I highly encourage to take a tour of it it's a very well-rounded program and I'm excited to see it grow thank you chief thank you great thanks for those

comments so I think everybody's had a chance to speak at least once we'll come back and if somebody wants to have a follow-up I guess it's my turn now so don't feel bad chief get comfortable relax just wait till what we do to director Saba okay so I'm waiting for him I'll be watching just kidding well listen let me begin by saying I really do appreciate the presentation I think it gives us a good you know summary of where we've been where you see the department going and let me just start with a couple of things that I really want to compliment you on so the community first effort you know getting

weapons off the street we saw that that was you know necessary that bore really good results you know in addition to also the compliments that the department has received for hiring bilingual officers that's a huge huge benefit for us to have officers that are able to speak and you know different languages to our community members directly that is something huge and the reduction and use of force, civil rights claims, excessive force, abuse of authority actions against us. We're trending in the right direction. I know there for a while they were spiking, and what that does for us is it puts us in a bad place,

not only for perception.

There's risk liability. There's monies that are expended, but more importantly, there's lives that are lost, and that's something that we don't want to see. So those are all really good things, and I know that you've done a really, you made a strong effort to do training and de-escalation. And I know we just had an officer involved shooting just a couple of days ago, and it wasn't a fatal shot. I don't know if it was, you know, intended not to be fatal because I believe it was, you know, the perpetrator or the alleged perpetrator was struck below the waist and the legs, I think.

I don't know if that's the case, but look, that person is alive. They'll be standing before a court and facing, you know, facing the criminal justice system. But what that does is at least it shows that you're not, you know, the first response isn't to be to have that fatal shot. We know how difficult that is, but I want to attribute that to the de-escalation training. So all those things, I think, are really good. And, you know, the PAL program is a great program. My son volunteered there, so I'm very familiar with that. And I forget who it was that was the director over there. I'm not sure if he's still there. Tom Serafin.

No, before him. Kenny Aguilar. Kenny. Officer Kenny. So a great, great guy. So I'm very supportive. But I think what I want to do is, you know, just talk at a high level about some things I think that are important that you reflect on here in the goals, which is 21st century policing. Right. And what we you know, what I mean by 21st century policing is, you know, there's obviously a trust issue in the community and in the public with respect to law enforcement here in the city. There's there was an inflection point last year with all the different incidents happening, not only nationwide, but locally.

There were a lot of people, a lot of our residents that sent us to make sure we address and we adapt. Because law enforcement isn't static, would you agree? Law enforcement evolves in how we address law enforcement changes with time, with leadership, and I think with better practices as we go through. It's like any other profession. It improves. So I'm really encouraged to see that you're flexible on that.

But, you know, I do think that we have a one of the youngest cities in the country. Our median age is right around 27, 28 years old. So when I look at investment in crime prevention, 0.7 million, and I see that, you know, the most effective way, and this is a layperson's perspective, the most effective way to deal with a crime is to prevent it from happening in the first place, right? So there is front-end efforts that we can make to prevent that. So, you know, the things that we've spoken about, you know, expanding the PAL program,

doing more community-oriented policing, that develops trust with residents. You know, doing things like public engagement, like town halls, that will have you and officers and the council go before the public and field questions and listen to residents and say, This is what we believe you're doing well, and these are things that you're not addressing. I think it's important, and I don't know when the last town hall that was had. I think we may have some neighborhood presence at some of the neighborhood association meetings, but I know it's thinner than I'd like it to be. I'd like us to be more present, more visible, more responsive.

You know, this is the service. This is their service, right? This is the public service, and we all, you know, you know include ourselves as public servants so we have to be responsive to them I think you know when you were talking about reentry I want to go back to that and and and I like this idea I'm not really familiar with what you mentioned as you know a reentry example the first offender program but it's sort of a diversion program right so it makes a lot of sense I like it but there are also some efforts that have been made in other cities our size which are called expungement

clinics, right? We have people who have a criminal record for cannabis possession, which is no longer even illegal here in the state of California and in many states in the country. Isn't that a way to also have somebody clean their record of something that no longer is a crime and to the extent that, you know, that can't be, that can't create an enhancement for somebody who is later arrested for something. They have one less crime on their record. Is that something that, you know, you're familiar with? Have you, have you known of any other departments

that have been involved in expungement clinics and helping, you know, those that have been, you know have those on their records have those removed I'm not too familiar

with those I'm aware of them they usually come from the direction of elected officials through their working with their DA making those requests and so that's that's what I'm aware of on on those so if I could just briefly comment I know you have additional comments. Restorative justice, I think there's absolute value there. I lean back on my experience at the school district, serving there as the chief for almost five years, and really my work there, bringing it forward. There's an absolute need and opportunity, but I think we also need to reflect and be centered on,

you know, restorative justice doesn't equal no justice, right? There has to be some learning point, some give back, by the individual offender. And this is more, you know, specific to programs and that.

Right. Absolutely. It's a reentry, restorative justice where you, where people who have already served, you know, their offense or their, you know, sentence for an offense is reentering our community, right? And to the extent that there is an ability to go ahead and make that person have that reentry be as smooth as possible. I think that the department has a role, can be whether it's instructive or assist in directing folks to some sort of expungement clinic is something for us to consider.

So if you can, that would be great to research and to look at.

You know, again, I've talked about the, you know, the, you know, the gains that you've made, the efforts that you've made with de-escalation training. But I see that you have here that there is wellness program support and debriefing after critical incidents. So one of the things that I've seen other departments do is that they do front-end training on psychological fitness, right? Just checking in with officers to see they may not be part of a, you know, directly involved in a critical traumatic incident, but they're affected nonetheless and their judgment could be compromised.

I'd rather rather than being reactive and debriefing, wouldn't it be better to be proactive and make sure that that officer that we have that's going to be expected to make a critical decision, split second decision is whole, healthy, well supported and trained?

Absolutely. And it's very much part of what we already do. We certainly can look to expand that service platform in our force options simulator. Part of that debriefing that officers go through and briefing before they handle a situation is part of that support, part of that education. We do have other elements in the police department that on a voluntary basis are very strongly encouraged to actually sit down with a police psychologist and just check in. Our detectives at work, sex crimes, child homicide cases, those are some of the most complex and impactful cases that any police officer is going to experience in their career.

And so on a regular basis, they have the opportunity to check in with a police psychologist. And then it's an open platform for them as well, confidentially, that exists. So we can certainly, I'm a big supporter of employee wellness, and we should. And I will assure you that we will continue to expand that.

Great. Thank you. And, you know, I think in the city manager's presentation when she talked about rethinking police response, I think, you know, we've had a lot of conversations that date back to last year's cycle in the budget when we were talking about diverting 911 calls from the department to either a civilianized nonprofit or some sort of professional staff that has experience in dealing with those either, you know, folks who are maybe ill, maybe mentally ill, have some cognitive or psychological problems, or others.

I think what my premise was for that change was that a lot of what we don't know what to do with, we always put on the department, right? Because people logically say there's an issue, let's just have the police handle it. And I think that's not fair, number one, because you all already have other critical issues that you need to respond to. And I think, as you said, the first goal in the strategic plan was to make sure we address our response times and make sure. And although we've made a 33 percent improvement, look, in those critical calls, those 911 calls that are dangerous,

where there's life and valuable property involved, we want to be able to get there as soon as we can. And I think if your officers are handling a call for a houseless person or doing a welfare check, that's not the best use of your time because you have to, you know, let's say they're taken to a hospital or taken someplace else. Your officer has to remain there, and they can't be relieved until, you know, that processing is completed. So I'm really heartened to see that we're moving away from that. I'd like us to talk about how we can have the you know the funds that were used towards that

be used towards this service delivery right because I think right now what's happening is we're going to be using revive money for that but I don't see the nexus on COVID related issues to providing better response to that to those that are mentally cognitively ill transient. So I want us to see what we can do to adjust.

Yes, thank you for that. And it is part of an ongoing dialogue. And I think finally, I think this this fiscal year we're going to address it. And part of, you know, you mentioned that .7 is dedicated to youth intervention in the police budget. Part of this alternative police response, you know, I have currently a sergeant of police and 10 police officers assigned to homelessness response citywide. It's about $2 million of cost, just on staff cost.

If there's other needs, equipment, overtime, et cetera, that's on top of that. So as part of this alternative response, I would propose that in order to open up a PAL, an additional PAL, in order to facilitate a lot of this leveraged engagement and programming centered on youth, that those staff hours be used for that. Again, policy decision for you and the rest of the council at the direction of the city manager.

Well, that's kind of what I'm looking for, Chief, is that, and I really appreciated you beginning with the premise of saying there are no additional dollars being directed towards the department, with the exception of those previously negotiated contract obligations that were done in the past that I think were deferred as a result of the pandemic last year, and now we have to honor those. those are obligations that the city has but aside from those you are not proposing nor is this council proposing any additional funds in fact I think what you just said really captures what I've been trying to say is now how do we

with what we have how do we adjust some of those some of those funds in order to address I think what for me is really important which is the prevention right and and the investment on the front end and I know that's really difficult to to do because we have so many immediate needs. But yet, to the extent that we invest now, look, a cycle later, it really does bear fruit. And sometimes we don't see it for a generation. Sometimes we don't see it for years. But if we don't invest now, we'll never get there. And we're just all we're doing is we're being reactive. And your successor's job, whenever that is,

is going to be that much more difficult for the failure to act now. So, you know, I would just, you know, I appreciate what you're saying. I really think that we can make some, you know, adjustments. Talk to me a little bit about, well, before I go there, let me just comment because I have a note here on the Family Justice Center. So I think that it is a good effort. I think we can make it more effective, more efficient, more of a resource. maybe I'm one of those voices that thought that having it located in the department is maybe not the best place and let me just and just hear me out on this and you know I could be wrong but we

have a lot of people in our community that are immigrants and undocumented and they still don't have that trust with police for them to be able to go into the department and say you know I need help and so I just don't know and maybe what we could do is we could just look at that and see you know how many people are we serving that are undocumented that you know that are Spanish speakers that feel comfortable going in I know that you know we've got some work to do with the trust and I think once we get there then it'll be great to house it there but I just want to make sure that it's not

something that chills people from coming in or prevents people from coming in because we know the need is so high for a resource like that so that was just something I wanted to mention as an aside but you know if you can maybe talk to me about the Met division because I know we've had some discussion on that and what I saw on the I think on one of the exhibits and I think was page 22 or something where in the 1819 fiscal budget there's a zero 1920 there's a zero

2021, there's a $5.6 million expenditure. And then in 2021-22, the proposed 21-22 is 6.7. So we have

two years prior to 2021, where there is no expenditure, we have an introduction of that expenditure in 2021, and then it jumps by a million point one to this proposed cycle. And I think you explained about it being not just the MET team, but also the gang prevention unit. So it basically covers both, right?

Absolutely. And I appreciate the question because it's come up before. And so allow me to provide the context. The Metropolitan Division was established in unison with the three elements, the existing gang unit, the new major enforcement team met, and then as an ancillary function, the SWAT team. So these are very high-functioning elements, necessary elements that address the most violent of violent criminal acts. So from a budget standpoint, what you saw was from one year to the next,

that line item that included this additional staff that was not there before. And so, in fact, I was asked the question maybe a couple cycles ago, where are you getting the money to do this? I had no additional monies. Again, staffing up the police department, first and foremost, will always be patrol operations, emergency response. And then I allocate resources based on priorities. This priority to establish a violent crime suppression unit now met.

was identified in the strategic plan with input from various members of council, city manager, and community members. We engaged facilitating with the Orange County Human Relations Commission at a couple of listening sessions. And so those were priorities that were established. They're delineated in the five-year strategic plan as a priority goal. And so that element went live of January of 2020. Prior to that, that team, which expanded the Metropolitan Division, did not exist. Those resources were elsewhere. And so I had to look at the entire police department

and, again, based on priorities, emergency response, vice-related crimes, violent crime, response, mitigation, and prevention of violent crime, make those tough decisions to make those assignments you know directly from from from various council members I also heard that they wanted to see part they wanted to see this element come back if you'll recall some 10-15 years ago we had a similar element called the strike force and that strike force was very successful very effective but one of the lessons learned that I that I took from that experience they were in

place for I think nearly 10 years was that it was it was in fact expensive because of the additional training required it was a full-time SWAT element and so that required one of their days to be fully dedicated to training every single week and they were they were very focused and refined on the types of crime that they would respond to so fast forward I hear loudly the need to address this crime issue, I established the MET team as a flexible hybrid. It is not a full-time SWAT team and so they don't have that additional training requirement. They train very well,

but they don't have that additional, you don't take them out of the field for 25 percent of their deployment. In addition to that, because they're a hybrid flexible asset, I can deploy them based on their focus across the city to address really any crime issue and in fact have. When we had to put our arms around and lean in on the issue of the increased spike in prostitution and all of its related facets of crime the met team was redeployed to address that most recently to augment the staff that we have to do things safely and keep you know officers alive and

people safe that were that were contacting they were very much involved in the service of all the search warrants in all of the illegal gambling facilities and slap houses throughout the city. So again, going back to the budget question, which is the core here, that team did not exist until January of 2020. So we clearly from a budget standpoint, we want to be transparent and show

all the assets that are there. Does that? It does. Okay. So again, and I do, I mean, it was time it was it was a period of time before I came on the council that there was the strike force and so the reason why I asked that is that again I see the increase the 1.1 million from last year to this proposed you know 20 21 22 you know I'm not a huge fan of militarizing our department I believe that it really

does erode the trust, right, in my opinion, right, and I think, you know, what I know I was advised by many of the residents, you know, they're just worried about some of the things that they hear in other jurisdictions like LA County where you have a group called the Banditos, right, and they're an elite unit, and they, you know, unfortunately have been found to, you know, abuse their authority, definitely not saying anything about ours, but it is a slippery slope right so I guess are these 10 officers are they segregated from the rest of the department you know how I guess I don't

know how they commingle or mingle with with the rest of their peers right because I think what happened in LA County was that and and you know I need to speak to you and be frank with you my former well my brother-in-law who passed away was a deputy LA County Sheriff you know he would tell me about some of these gentlemen and and it was a real real unfortunate incident he passed away my brother-in-law passed away but before he did he was familiar with the way there was you know these units these elite units that really did veer off and do things that were not core police functions and and that's my

fear about any strike force or any elite unit that they will be treated differently that they will be you know, given broader scope. So, you know, I just don't like the sort of, you know, different classifications, but to the extent that they're blended in, I don't know, maybe you can speak to that.

Yes, and thank you for the question and the context and framing it. So, like you, let me first comment, like you and all of you, I do not support the militarization of a civilian police force. If people want to very much be centered on military service and we appreciate the service, then they need to do that in our military department of defense. We are a civilian police service department is what we are. And so having said that, it's important that we facilitate police services safely.

The MET team, which is a sergeant and 10 officers, they are co-located with the gang unit in the general investigations floor. It's an open workspace concept. Nobody is in a private office. So there's a lot of engagement, a lot of intelligence sharing, information sharing, and gang planning, and also briefing prior to different operations that they're going to engage in, and the debriefing as well, post. So this isn't an element that's off some more, you know, off-site remote, separate from themselves.

And they certainly, like any other element and or police officer, held to the same standard of behavior and accountability as anyone in the police department.

Great. Thank you. And so back to the budget and how this affects that is, or my comments affect that is, you know, that increase, if you could see in our effort to try to invest a little bit more in a more balanced way on crime prevention, see what it would look like to keep the funding static for that line item on the Met. that difference of 1.1, if that from 2021 to 2122 proposed, there's a delta of 1.1 million. If that were kept static, those funds could be used to, you know, what could they be used for, right?

Maybe thinking about some of the things that we mentioned about, you know, the additional training, about expanding youth programs, about community-oriented policing, establishing trust with residents, having town halls. And something that I think was mentioned previously by Council Member Hernandez, which is similar to what we have in the GRIP, GRIP program, there's another model out there called the Gang Prevention Youth Development Program. And that is another similar model to GRIP. but it's kind of a blend where it's gang prevention and youth development.

Something like that, I think, has borne good results in other communities, very similar to ours. It's hard to compare us with other Orange County cities because the other 33 cities don't have the challenges that we do as an urban community and as a very densely populated community. So that was one.

And then also looking at, you know, again, removing the, as we already spoke about, removing the, you know, or diverting the 911 calls that relate to, you know, those parts of our population that are houseless, are mentally ill and may have cognitive problems. That's one. The other one is what I think was mentioned by some others and I Completely respect your response on having a bright line rule and saying we're not going to enforce one or the you know minor infractions, but I do see that there were approximately

85,000 calls for service that were placed in the last six months and again, I think Close and I think in this was councilmember Lopez said, you know about 45 percent of those were for traffic related stops right and that makes sense I mean you're patrolling and you stop people but I don't think anybody is saying don't enforce it don't enforce a tinted window that's maybe two grades too dark but there are different ways that you can enforce it there are ways that you can enforce it by taking a dashboard photograph of that license

plate sending them a ticket or a citation or an infraction to to cure that problem and that could be for you know registration that's expired other things and I think you know when when we say you know an idea is silly or ridiculous it's because we can't explain it we're just using adjectives and that's not a good way to make policy I think what we're looking at is a way to do improve

response times. I think if somebody is pulling somebody over and citing, you know, someone for a expired registration tag, are we doing it because the tag is expired or are we doing it because we want to find something on that person? So it kind of sounds like we're almost doing this under the guise of pulling them over for an infraction, but we're really seeing if there's, you know, weapons or contraband or something in that vehicle so it almost sounds like it could be profiling it could be you know stopping somebody for that and again this is just you know playing this out

so you know are we really stopping them for that expired registration or that broken tail light are we stopping them because we want a reason to sort of investigate what's on their person or in the vehicle if I may let me reassure

that we do not profile. When I've been asked this question throughout my career, what police officers do is they consider and a segment of that can be profiling behaviors or variables associated or related to crime. Example, robbery occurs at a location the suspect is described as a male white with the beard. You probably should not be approaching someone who's a male black clean shaded, right? So we're responding to variables and behaviors which may, you know,

incorporate profiling those behaviors. So we do not do that. With regards to the issue of the example of you know the expired registration tag so what you see is sometimes there's the car stop and then there's simply the warning that occurs by the way your license or your brake lights are out you could get rear-ended and killed so to to respectfully in terms of you know, profiling or pretext. That's that's not what our officers do. If they do, if they

are accused of that, I can reassure you that we would investigate that and determine what occurred, you know, and why, you know, various members of the council have been on right alongs. One of you, not Councilman Becerra mentioned he'd been out with the med team. Someone else I was out with our officers. In fact, it was the med team. And a traffic violation occurred in front of them. And they quite didn't understand, you know, the initial purpose for the approach, gun in the car. And so, you know, we're going from, and it was a, I think it was a non-moving violation at that.

So, you know, something that is a fix-a-ticket, if you will, leading to an armed subject. So I hear you loud and clear in terms of looking, exploring different opportunities where it may be feasible to, you know, take a photograph and send someone a notice in a parking violation situation or what have you. We will take a look at that. And I appreciate your support also, Mayor, that it should not be a blanket approach and an edict to stop this.

Right. And this is important because I think obviously we're struggling with making sure that we're able to enforce certain laws. But I guess for me, it's always been quality over quantity. Correct. So to the extent that we're citing a bunch of people for, you know, broken taillights and maybe not having, you know, anything, whether it's a permit, whether it's a push cart vendor that doesn't have their permit, you know, updated. Those things we can fill stats with, you know, hey, we did thousands of citations this month.

to the extent that you're really removing bad actors off the street, that's really, to me, the benchmark of successful law enforcement, right? Not, you know, citing, you know, people who are not, you know, committing serious crimes. And I think where we are rethinking, like diverting the 911 calls, also has to do with just reducing the encounters with certain populations, right? So let's just say you pull somebody over and the person is a monolingual Cambodian speaker,

can't really exchange information easily or whatever language, right? There's some language barrier between the officer and the person that's being pulled over. or maybe that person has an autistic passenger and the autistic passenger reacts violently to somebody in uniform, or that person is mentally ill, right? You can have just as many dangerous encounters when that happens, and it's by no fault of the officer. It's just the conditions.

So that's, I think, what has me struggling is to make sure that those encounters keep you safe, keep the driver, passenger, you know, and people safe, and also allowing you more access and more opportunity and more time to address, you know, people who are calling you for a violent, imminent, you know, core police call that, you know, where danger is involved. So, you know, I think that that's where we are kind of struggling. So if you can give us some direction on what you think would be maybe not a bright line rule,

but maybe an enhanced practice, something that will allow your officers not to be dealing with sort of, you know, the quantity, just, you know, giving infractions on things that are considered minor and looking at how we can still enforce and enforce in an effective way, right? And like I said, to me, the quality is more important than the quantity. So that is something that, you know, I'm hoping you can have as a takeaway on this. But I do want, you know, the investment that is going to be made in prevention and for youth to be done through the department because if we do it through revive

monies then it goes away in a year or it goes away in a couple years that is a very temporary fix to a long problem and a static problem so i've already spoken enough so i'm going to go ahead and pass it

before you move on mr mayor if i go back to the uh met piece yes specifically the 1.1 uh and again I'll hear from the remainder of the council and if it if in fact that is a core staffing

funding piece then you know we could be talking about having to do away with that element right

do away with the entire the met team no no no there's a delta between what was expended in 21 and what is proposed for 21-22. And I think that dealt as 1.1.

Okay. We'll take a look at it.

Take a look at that.

Yes, we'll do it.

All right. I think we have council member Hernandez and then council member Fan.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

Thank you, police chief Valentine for all the information and for your responses. I want to go essentially line by line on items of interest for me that I want to address. In rethinking police services and responses, as we were talking about the traffic stops, and I want to listen to both sides. And my colleagues brought up some very interesting points that we need to enforce these traffic stops. I also want to acknowledge the privileges that we have as elected officials.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

We can drive all throughout this community and more often than not. We know this community like the back of our hands already. But many of us aren't working at 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock at night and driving home. And that's when a lot of these interactions happen, when we have these traffic stops. And I also want to remind my colleagues in the council that there was a young man that lost his life last year. Dante Wright in Minneapolis, Minnesota, lost his life because of a routine traffic stop.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

He had an air freshener hanging from his mirror and was shot and killed by a police officer who mistakenly thought she took out her taser. So I also want to remind my colleagues of that reality.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

as we take a look at reframing and rethinking public safety the first and most common interaction between community and law enforcement is a traffic stop and I don't I don't think that should be I think that we have to we should have more community oriented policing and we should have more positive relationships where that should be your first interaction. So I think the best approach is, as we talk about such a complex issue, is we know that for decades officers and law enforcement

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

agencies have used traffic stops as a tool to deter, you know, drunk driving, negligent driving, but they've also used it as a tool of criminal investigations. And I say this as somebody who grew up right by El Salvador Park. I saw it happen quite frequently driving home with my grandparents. My grandfather was a laborer for 43 years. He was a working class gentleman. And the optimal solution to make traffic stops about the traffic violation should be the goal. If we are going to have a professional actually address traffic violations, that

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

That should be the focus, not about utilizing traffic stops to find reasonable suspicion for a more grave crime. I don't want us to turn traffic stops into a tool for criminal enforcement. And for historical context, Supreme Court decisions like Wren versus United States in 1996, it put the rubber stamp on pretextual traffic stops. And in this particular case, the Supreme Court held if officers see a traffic violation that they pull the car over for that motivation.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

They found that the cases in which they were actually stopping somebody because of that traffic violation were very minimal. It was because of profiling. It was because of suspicion that this person could be a criminal. And I don't think that's fair for residents. I want to see crime come to a halt. Absolutely. But it shouldn't be at the expense of that being your first interaction with a police officer. There has to be a better way. So that's my response there. number two we have to continue to build and sustain that community trust and I'm happy

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

that's at the top of the list and and one of the most important components of building trust and sustaining trust is consistency and and having a good across the board model of of of accountability. Now I have a question for you Chief Valentin. Yes sir. How have we handled complaints or requests from community members and what does that process look

like? So we take every complaint that we receive in. We certainly do not dissuade anybody from filing a complaint. As you know on our website we have the complaint procedure form posted it's in English and Spanish and if it's not in Vietnamese I apologize it will be in other languages necessary and so every supervisor is trained to accept complaints and

provide anyone that requests it to file a complaint a formal complaint form that is brought into the police station and either at the bureau level wherever the person is working or in internal affairs they review it and then assign it accordingly I have statistics for you have data on community complaints on internal complaints a whole host of other areas all this information is also posted on our website in terms of the raw number of the data the frequency of complaints I'd like to point out

that we as a police department at almost a ratio of two to one based on evidence hold our own folks accountable almost to a one a two to one ratio

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

thank you and um so so we have a two to one ratio that that's what you're sharing right now yes thank you and in addition to that we talked about um overtime and we want to make sure that if if anybody is working more than they're supposed to that they're fairly compensated that is without debate. But this particular field is a field where fatigue can make the difference between life or death for an officer and for a community member. There's a lot of grave effects that come

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

with not being 100% when you're working in service of others. Now, in talking about the need of addressing mental health. These are human beings at the end of the day. Our officers are people that and they deal with very stressful working conditions. They are responsive to you know a multitude of things that would traumatize your average person in our community. Now in addressing that fatigue that can come with having to work those long hours, fatigue's effects are more prominent in routine situations that otherwise aren't stressful for police.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

According to Lois James of Washington State University, who studies sleep deprivation and policing, he shared that from an officer safety perspective, there are serious consequences of fatigue when working overtime. One such result might be impaired performance while driving late at night. But researchers at Washington State also found that working inadequate hours heightened preexisting implicit bias. They monitored the sleep of 80 police officers and presented them with a series of tests, and officers who slept less were significantly more likely to associate African Americans

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

and people of color with weapons. And a study of the Phoenix Police Department published in the Police Quarterly compared compared officers working 10 hour shifts with those who worked more than 13 hours, hence overtime. Longer shifts didn't result in fewer arrests. However, field interrogations, nor did they hinder pass rates on shooting tests. But the number of complaints made against those in 13 hour groups were significantly higher, nearly double than those working 10 hour shifts. So I'm concerned about our officers having to work such strenuous amounts of hours.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

And I'm concerned about community safety if our officers are not 100 percent, because at the end of the day, there's a lot of fatigue that comes with being in public service. And these officers deserve to be at their best. Our residents deserve to have our public safety officers be 100 percent. So I want us to be attentive to that. Chief, do we have any mental health check-ins for officers that are working long hours before they do hit the field to see if there's too much fatigue or maybe if they're not feeling 100%?

I appreciate the comment, the reference to data and research that's out there, Councilman Hernandez. And I wholeheartedly agree that we need to keep an eye on our workforce. And so every shift that officers work, they attend a roll call briefing, whether it's a specialized unit or regular patrol. And part of that is their supervisors, a watch commander, their supervisors are strongly encouraged to make that assessment. And if they see that someone is extremely tired or there's something going on, they're gonna pull that officer aside

and check in with them and see see what's going on. We encourage officers to get the rest that they need to come in you know fully rested and as you mentioned they're they're right out of their police car from the first call the first interaction may be a life and death situation and so we want to see that officers get the rest that they need and if need be we have EAP that we can refer to We have police psychologists on contract that we can refer to 24-7 essentially to provide that support.

We also have a very robust peer support counseling team that is available 24-7. These are members of the organization, both sworn and professional staff, that can provide support at a moment's notice. one of the projects that they were involved in was highlighted at the recent award ceremony in a education prevention and resource referral on police suicide this is a epidemic that's impacting our workforce has been increasing over the last 10 years and so we take this very serious

we focus a lot of time and effort here and again staffing up a good police department that has the adequate resources enables and supports officers increasingly to just have to work their assigned shifts and not additional overtime shifts to your point thank you thank you i would support maybe

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

looking at integrating more mental health support in in your in your department i think that that would be important for us to to have more mental health support and services for our officers i I think that that would change the climate and the culture of policing. If we just regular, if we just destigmatize mental health and we have voluntary check-ins happen, you know, on a regular basis, I think that that can change how we police our community. Because at the end of the day, we need to be 100%. And if we're not feeling our best, we know that hurt people hurt people.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

So I would happily support seeing you guys have additional mental health services and in in in light of what I'm mentioning here you have a priority of having a focus on de-escalation and effective communications I think mental health goes hand in hand with that strategy would would you agree yes sir Okay. I support having additional training on de-escalation, effective communications. I think it would be wise for us to include in that line item having trauma-informed services.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

I think that that is imperative to this department. And also maybe taking a look at being aligned with the CAT team, working very, very closely with them. As I'm taking a look at the following bulletin, I see the expansion of youth investment and community engagement with the PAL Center. So can you tell me a little bit about what the expansion of the PAL Center would look like? What type of programs would you look to offer?

Yes, so once we decide on a facility, we need a building, an asset in order to facilitate these services. We would look to, and it also depends on the size of facility that we acquire and decide on, we would look to duplicate many of the services that are already offered successfully at the West Powell Center. So homework assistants, they also have a teen check-in. The teenagers that attend POW have their own space because, let's face it, they don't want to interact with the 8- and 10-year-old.

So physical fitness is a large part of that. And then cultural arts, they have 60 minutes of art instruction provided by POW staff daily. 90 minutes of music instruction provided by PAL staff on a weekly basis. They have live student performances that are provided by the School of the Arts conservatories. And then the lunchtime fitness program partnership with Santa Unified. And then there's a variety of different athletic teams.

So we have to be strategic in terms of the location that we select. So we have the resources and the imprint both in the building and outside the building to facilitate these programs. And then any other, you know, mentoring and education support programs that we can put in place would certainly be a focus.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

Thank you, Chief. Now, I'm fully aware of trauma-informed services. Myself as a service provider, outside of my counsel role, I utilize a lot of trauma-informed approaches to working with you. Could you help inform the public as to what that actually translates to? What would that look like from a police department perspective, trauma-informed services?

So really focused on our crimes against persons special crimes division, which is child abuse, molest. those types of cases, the service provided to the victims, their families, anyone impacted, are centered on the approach of understanding and being empathetic to the trauma that they have experienced. And to ensure that we, as law enforcement providers, that we don't add to that trauma.

For example, when we are going to do a forensic interview of a potential victim of a, let's say, child molestation case, we want to ensure that we have all the professionals at one place at one time so that we're not re-interviewing the victim or the witness in a very traumatic incident. So trauma-informed, focused, and the approach is victim and witness and person-impacted centered. If that makes sense, if that fits, that's the way that we incorporate it.

And then our patrol officers, we have roll call training that's provided from time to time on this topic as well. The experts in our department would focus right now. currently we can certainly look to expand this is in our sex crimes child abuse molest detail

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

thank you i think it would be and thank you for for giving that breakdown because it's important a lot of community members oftentimes we overlook how important it is to have a trauma-informed approach um now i i think this is great and i commend you um but i think it's worth us looking into maybe moving from a trauma-informed services approach to a TIC approach or trauma-informed care approach. Number one, I want to give you my affirmations, Chief, for acknowledging that there's trauma there.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

Because for the longest time, our cities pretended like it's normal to be poor, like it's normal to live beside parks where children get shot, and like it's normal to live in communities where we close down libraries. All of which we should not have to debate is toxic to the brain and the body's development. So I want to thank you for acknowledging that because a lot of young people in our community are traumatized and in going from a trauma-informed services approach to a trauma-informed care approach chief it's going to allow us as a department to understand

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

and consider the pervasive nature of trauma and it promotes an environment of healing and recovery rather than practices and services that may inadvertently re-traumatize community members because I'm taking into account this is the police department and there may be some discomfort I can assure you there will be discomfort in certain communities communities like Townsend communities like Artisa Pilar, where hypercriminalization has been prominent here for as long as people lived here. I think it's important to have a trauma-informed care approach to how we provide these services,

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

because some of these communities are more delicate than others. For instance, gang culture in a community that isn't densely populated is different than a community that is densely populated. Because for one community, you'll have multi-generational, you know, gang culture that affects children as they're born. And then you have other communities where it's very different. Everybody has a different story and a different background. And having a trauma-informed care approach helps us tackle those delicate issues more carefully where we can get to the root causes of changing people's lives.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

Is that something that we can take a look at? Is having whatever youth services we have be trauma-informed care trained?

Absolutely.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

Absolutely. I'm sorry.

Thank you.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

Thank you. And in addition to that, we talked to, I think Mayor Sarmiento brought up the GRIP program and I'm glad he did because I wanted to talk a little bit about that. The GRIP is the Gang Reduction Intervention Program. And can you tell me a little bit about the GRIP program? I'm more than certain some of my colleagues maybe aren't as familiar with it and community members. So can you tell me a little bit about what the GRIP program does?

So the GRIP program is a partnership with various law enforcement agencies, city police departments, county probation, the district attorney's office, and partnering with the school district of their respective jurisdiction and various nonprofits to provide skills, training. and really you start with a pledge and the pledge simply is that you know I as a young as a young person you know in the sixth grade let's say which is a very impactful time junior high I commit that

I will not get involved in games so this is a prevention model it's not an intervention some aspects are intervention but it's primarily a prevention based model and so officers engage on a scheduled basis with students that are involved in GRIP and how they how they get involved is either they volunteer to join the program or they're referred by their teachers at school and so I'm very familiar with the program it it also provides for an opportunity

to have positive interactions with officers that sometimes, as you mentioned, some of these kids come from very impacted areas of our communities, and their interaction with the police is oftentimes negative. It's one of their family members being arrested. It's an incident that they see unfold on the street involving an officer doing their job, etc. So this is a great opportunity to mirror officers and youth, and we also have an opportunity to meet and engage their families as well.

So it's a program that is successful. It is labor-intensive, but like anything, investing on the front end pays dividends certainly in the future. And as the mayor said, we may not see it materialize for another generation. and that's okay. We have involvement the last time that I looked at the program here in Santa Ana, I think at about six schools throughout the city. We also work with our partners at Santa Ana Unified, the district and the school police department in facilitating co-facilitating the GRIP program here in our city.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

Thank you, Chief. And can you tell me, are there any penalties to this program if a child is not successful in the GRIT program?

So part of the program that I would say is a smaller percentage of it is it starts from the platform of accountability, holding students accountable to staying focused in school, making good choices, staying away from gangs and not ever even, you know, beginning that life in a gang culture. Part of the factor that we work with, with our school partners and the DA's office, is student attendance at school.

So we have had cases that through GRIP we can have an environment where we're calling in parents or whomever is the guardian, and there can be some sanctions through the school district because kids have to be in school until they're 18. That's the law. And so there is that opportunity within the GRIP program. I would, based on my own personal hands-on experience with the program over the years, I would say that that's a very small percentage of what actually occurs in the program. So the vast majority are dedicated and they're successful through the program.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

So in simple terms, Chief, if somebody is not successful in this program, a child or potentially a parent, if the child does not go to school, can be in prison. Correct?

So based on my experience, that would be an absolute extreme. and I'm not personally aware of any case involving a Santa Ana GRIP student slash family where that is the case.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

I'm aware of it. I actually had the pleasure of meeting with GRIP in 2015 and attending one of their events at the department in 2015 as well. And that was one of the things I learned is that if I am given nine months in the GRIT program and I am not successful, a child or parent could look at potentially being incarcerated if their child is not successful in the GRIT program. So I wanted to share this because that's what we need to move more away from.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

The fact that we have a department and a chief that has done such a great job in yourself, because we have not had institutions like police departments ever acknowledge that trauma existed in these communities in the first place. And we have somebody in yourself who I think is very much future-proofing our city. I think it's important for us to look at and acknowledge that we have kids that live in households where you can't escape gang culture. And we have a program that could potentially

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

cause more harm and more trauma to young people. And I just think there's better ways for us to use our tax dollars here. Do we have a success rate or some data that you can share with me as to how successful this program has been for us and how many kids graduate from this program a year

i will absolutely provide you and the remainder of the council um our santa ana data with regards to grip i will i work closely with the assistant district attorney tracy miller who is the um really she brought uh and implemented the program years ago you may have met her as well and i certainly could get that data and provide it to the entire council.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

I share this, Chief, and it's important. I think I have to look back on my experiences as a kid, and it's not common for elected officials to share what I'm going to share, but I'm not your common elected official. I'm a community member first and foremost, but I grew up right beside El Salvador Park, and my father was a gang member, and my grandfather was a gang member, and I'm not a gang member. But it took a lot of work and it took and it wasn't because of my family that I was able to do the things that I did.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

It was because I had music and the arts and I had sports and I had so many different mentors that were able to nurture and and see the value in me. And they never they never let me lose my light. And that's how I changed my life. And it's why I committed myself to helping this very community in Ward 5 is because I know there's kids and there's young adults that think that they can't get outside of that concrete. And it's difficult because it feels everlasting, like it's never going to get better.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

And I want to advocate for us to transition away from having a punitive approach to working with communities that are traumatized. Because we have an opportunity to disrupt hopelessness. I want to share with you, Chief, there's a program in L.A. I recently met with them. It's the Gang Reduction Youth Development Department.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

And I think it would be wise for us to utilize the funds that we have in GRIP to start a program like that, where we can actually have community intervention workers on the ground working in those more at-risk communities, where the very people working in those communities are the people that lived there, that grew up there, that maybe fell through the cracks and made it out. So I just wanted to put that out there, Chief. I think there's better ways for us to use that money. I believe it's $500,000, correct?

Yeah, and that really is an allocation for the time of the personnel involved. I don't have any full-time resources assigned to GRIP. And so we will I will certainly take a look at that and I will also provide the data that you're requesting. I do agree with you that if we're talking about an intervention and a skill building program, it needs to be centered on a positive platform.

I agree with that.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

Thank you, Chief. And then in closing, the last thing I wanted to touch on is the continue to incorporate the six pillars of 21st century policing, trust and legitimacy, policy and oversight, technology, social media and community policing and crime reduction, training and education, officer wellness safety into current policing practices. So I think something that is going to be aligned with what you mentioned here in this bullet point, I think it's great that we have this focus, but I think that we can advance that focus.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

If we bring in community nonprofits, which you mentioned in the beginning of your presentation, if we bring in some community nonprofits like Mutual Ground, reentry organizations that do work here locally, and we work with our department in conjunction, where we have a database where when we have a first offender, those community organizations get notice of that, almost like a referral. and then they do a checkup or a follow-up, similar to having a wraparound program where we have a family coordinator, where we have a therapist,

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

where we have a social worker, where we have a youth partner that focuses on working specifically with the child in the house. I think that would be wise of us to do that if we want to reimagine transforming this community and having it actually be safe we have to have some sort of redirection because we can stop crime we can suppress it absolutely but you still have a household where that person regardless of if they made a good decision or bad decision that's some you're someone someone's everything and that might be someone's dad

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

whether that person was good or bad you have a child in a fatherless household um one out of 10 males is living in a fatherless household. So it affects generations of young people. Do we have a follow-up when there's a shooting and there's a victim? Do we have a follow-up when

there's a perpetrator? What does that look like after the arrest? So in certain circumstances, murder incidents, shooting incidents. We do work with victim advocates that work very closely with the families impacted. And then also support when there's courtroom testimony that's required. I will tell you that the example of a crime victim, a young child, my

detectives themselves do some of this. They you know follow up and check up they're not you know they're not licensed clinicians when it comes to counseling right but what they have is they have passion and they care about the people that they're servicing so like what I've seen is they'll track their victims as they're working through the system and then say Christmas comes around and we're you know collecting goods they remember those significant cases and then draw back on them and I've seen it I've seen it firsthand the interaction that occurs so can we do more of

it can we do explore different you know additional options that you're citing absolutely I think

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

that's something that we should emphasize I think it's something we should prioritize chief because because our relationship with the community can't end at being a victim or being a perpetrator. We as a department need to unconditionally care about these residents, right or wrong, or right in between, it doesn't matter. I want to see us actually care for these residents. So I think it would be wise if we want to continue to build and sustain community trust, to have some sort of a follow-up, whether it be in partnering with a nonprofit or a reentry organization, there should be a follow up.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

There should be a wraparound which could conclude and really change the trajectory of trauma in a community. So I think it would be wise to do that. Optimally, we wouldn't wait for people to be arrested to interact with them. We should get that started immediately, you know, being on the ground and helping folks and being more innovative rather than just doing, you know, coffee with a cop. We can do diaper giveaways. We can do, you know, skateboard giveaways. You can do boxing glove giveaways. There's just a lot of ways to build those relationships. I'm happy to lend an ear and give you some ideas.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

But I think that it's important for us to think beyond just arresting somebody. there needs to be a wraparound. So is that something we can take a look at implementing into our strategy moving forward?

We can certainly explore that. Of course, we'd have to look at the funding and costs behind that, right? Again, some of which we already do, but anything additional, we would have to look at that. But definitely worth exploring. Yes, sir.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

Thank you, Chief, for your responsiveness. Again, thank you for your time. and that concludes my comments mr. mayor thank you thank you councilmember

David Penaloza

Hernandez and and thank you chief Valentin I think in the future it's important that you also highlight the numerous community events that your officers just do out of the kindness of their own hearts whether the back-to-school backpack drive or the Christmas toy drives that you guys do and always gather thousands of of toys and backpacks for for our kids and I've seen it you know it's definitely heartwarming to see when you just stop kids on the street to hand them a toy and a backpack so always appreciative of that uh councilmember fan i believe was next

David Penaloza

and after her we have councilmember lopez uh for speaking so councilmember fan close yours

Thai Viet Phan

thank you mayor pro tem and thank you chief for being up here um i wish we can get you a chair oh you do have a chair okay and some water um so just actually to follow up on the community relations aspect that Councilmember Hernandez was asking. I wanted to go back to one of your slides.

Thai Viet Phan

So it's stated that there is community relations investment. Can you talk a little bit more about what exactly that means and what you know falls under that aspect so to me in addition to all the

formal programs that we have and i cite just a sampling that are focused on youth and family here in this brief slide to to me my direction and my expectation for the police department is is that every interaction be an investment in community and genuine community engagement and community trust building. Every opportunity that we have to do that is important. So much so that when I first took over the police department as chief,

part of the redirection that occurred was encouraging officers and any personnel that we have to actually get out of their police car and make contact with whoever is in the neighborhood. And this is separate and aside from responding to a call for service, right? Calling for that, you know, people call us, they don't generally call us to just ask us, how you doing? They call us because they're desperate for help. And so the encouragement, and it's a consistent piece and expectation, is that you look for opportunities to engage. You know, when you're responding to, if you happen to be responding to a call

and you you are aware that you know the person lost in a theft all of their uh you know equipment that they that they cut lawns with what do you do with that right council member mentioned all these acts of kindness that is is birth not only from a from an expectation that is shared from the top down but it comes from community building and community investment great thank you

Thai Viet Phan

I wanted to go also back to in your slide you had mentioned that you increased the number of officers assigned to homeless outreach and engagement from five to ten right so that a hundred percent increase also some information from director Downs for a 1920 I didn't get the 21 22 cost but But it was $10.3 million in police response. So 17 of police field ops and dispatch was related to homelessness. Does that sound about right?

Yes, I believe that's the cost, is it citywide cost? And so there's a breakdown of that.

Thai Viet Phan

For community, for response to homelessness in general?

Correct, overall.

Thai Viet Phan

Well, I received $10.3 million police response, $7.7 million fire response, $1.4 million cleanup and code enforcement, $0.7 million park safety, $4 million homeless services, such as supporting Mercy House and CityNet, and $1.2 million for management and legal. And this was in 2019-2020.

Okay. We'll track down Catherine Downs and she can answer that specifically. Okay.

Thai Viet Phan

Well, I guess my question is, you know, we're up here talking about how do we address the costs and how do we divert calls for support related to homelessness. So in this 21-22 budget, are we still keeping, you know, 10 officers responding to homeless outreach?

Chief, I'm going to take myself. So, council members, so right now, as the chief indicated, he has a number that are still dedicated to homeless response. But through the Revive Santa Ana plan, we had wanted to try, and we talked about it before, we want to add, we want to supplement the CityNet services, we want to add mental health services, and we also want to add additional medical services for the homeless. The CityNet contract that we're trying to work on with them right now includes their own dispatch center.

So it hasn't been implemented, but once it is implemented and 911 calls can be diverted to that, what I hope to see is that it would free up the 10 officers that they've dedicated to the Colt team, which would allow them to do other activities, if that makes sense.

Thai Viet Phan

And maybe that might include if, say, a person who is houseless has a weapon, a gun, then maybe they would respond?

Oh, absolutely. We can't take away if anybody's in danger or there's a criminal element of it.

Thai Viet Phan

But diverting calls in which someone is, say, asleep on the sidewalk. Exactly. Thank you. And then if those diverted calls from, say, someone sleeping on the sidewalk, that officer would be freed up to respond to a violent crime somewhere else. Is that what our goal is? Exactly. Thank you. I just wanted to hear a verbal confirmation for those on the call.

Thai Viet Phan

Okay, great. And so that actually gets me to our 2021 Excel sheet for our calls of service. It's on the city website. So first, thank you so much for providing so much data to our community on the website. As the mayor mentioned, there were about 86,000 calls from December 2020 to April 2021.

Thai Viet Phan

So I'm just going to name off some numbers or ask them questions about what these types of calls are. So if you can help clarify for me. So we had 4,000, about 4,500 calls for quote suspicious activity. What would fall under suspicious activity?

A whole host, an array of activity. and it could be someone that the neighbor does not recognize as being part of that neighborhood. That could be deemed suspicious to the calling party. It could be someone who is maybe more overtly involved in suspicious activity and criminal activity conducting narcotic sales from a car, for example. It could be a person who's walking up and down a street looking into cars, and that's not normal behavior.

So it runs the gamut in terms of trying to cover any and everything that could be suspicious. And what is suspicious to one person is not suspicious to someone else.

Thai Viet Phan

Understood. Thank you. And what about the 1,500 calls for, quote, abandoned vehicles?

Yes. So those are going to be calls related to the vehicle that may appear to be abandoned to the person who's calling in. Now, there are more obvious signs of abandonment. A vehicle on blocks with no wheels. Clearly, someone's not involved in driving that vehicle at the moment. But it could be a vehicle with a couple of flat tires. It could be a vehicle that is extremely dirty and clearly has not been moved. So abandoned vehicle, again, could encompass a whole host of things.

Thai Viet Phan

Okay. What about the 642 calls for vehicle ops? It's cited as vehicle OBS under patrol activity.

So those are entered as a result of an officer observing some type of activity. that they're going to stop a vehicle, speak to someone associated to a vehicle. Those are the basis of those calls.

Thai Viet Phan

Thank you. And the 1,400 calls regarding welfare checks, what falls under a welfare check?

That could be someone heard screaming from a house that leads to domestic violence and, you know, something worse. it could be you know a young person who's driving a vehicle that is so young looking that probably shouldn't be driving a car to mom or dad's car again it it runs the gamut of the type of specific calls and and if I preface in all of these subcategories that you're you know asking me about in terms of you know extrapolating well all of these calls could have been diverted elsewhere The issue there is, of course, we don't know what that unknown call is. We simply don't know.

One of our recent double murders, a murder-suicide, was an unknown trouble call initially, which then leads to hours and days of investigations and a whole host of police resources.

Thai Viet Phan

Thank you. That's very helpful. And what falls under the 4,400 calls for, quote, parking problem?

So that's a car that's double parked. That's a car that's blocking a hydrant. That's a car that's blocking someone's driveway access. Double parked cars parked in the, I mean, again, just vehicles that aren't parked appropriately on the side, you know.

Thai Viet Phan

Thank you. No, that's, you know, just wanted to make sure there's no legend to explain each of these categories in the Excel sheet. So I just wanted to make sure I fully understand what they are and then we have about 8300 calls regarding traffic stops and that that would like you said run everything from speeding to expired tags to tinted

windows. I actually think DUI might be or maybe not under a different call but

Thai Viet Phan

okay so so that's very helpful I mean we have thousands of calls all of these things and as you were you know mentioning some of them can lead to like that case in which you said there is a murder homicide right you know one of my colleagues had mentioned well we should enforce all our laws and sure we should if we had all the resources in the world in an ideal world nobody would break the law but I you know we live in the reality of a restrained budget and so you he had an example of say a person driving without their lights on right would you consider that a

Thai Viet Phan

dangerous situation with their lights lights off without without their lights on yeah yes that could

be very dangerous could lead to an injury could lead to a death etc okay and let's say um one of

Thai Viet Phan

their tail lights is out that could also lead to you know maybe they can't see the turn it's signal

and it's dangerous for the other drivers right has in fact led to collisions because you're not

Thai Viet Phan

signaling what your intention is as a driver yes right thank you so in those cases it's possible that people may be in imminent danger because of these vehicle problems possibly okay now can you please explain to me what imminent danger there is for an expired tag imminent danger related to a

expired tag. Solely based on that preface, I don't know that there is. I don't know that you could establish that. Solely based on that singular perspective and view. Vehicle, expired tags, and everything else quote unquote looks normal. I don't know that you could extrapolate eminent

Thai Viet Phan

danger. Right. And so I guess my point in saying that is, you know, we talk about traffic stops for something like an expired tag or a broken tail light or not having your front lights on or tinted windows and saying, well, that might lead to a more dangerous situation or a warranted arrest or a drug bust, for example. However, again, we're talking about a specific type of stop, and you don't know if someone with an expired tag who's not putting anyone else in actual danger has any of these other issues involved you'd have to as an officer right stop this person ask them all these questions take time away

Thai Viet Phan

from say other cases that are currently violent in order to address this traffic

stop right that would require an officer to investigate further right so I guess

Thai Viet Phan

My point is our field operations is working on $2.6 million of overtime. Every department has different types of overtime involved. If my field officers are spending 1,500 calls for abandoned vehicles, 600 calls for vehicle observation, 1,400 calls for welfare checks, and 4,500 calls for parking problems, I think a lot of that maybe it's for our dispatch that should clarify that hey we can send somebody else other than uniformed police officer who could be spending time on you know whether it's a homicide

or an attack or a violent crime and if i may and in fact we do do that we have parking control officers civilian staff both in service to the police department and contract services wherever possible, we're going to dispatch the lowest possible level, right? And so we, if I may, we operate from a responsive platform to our community. And so, you know, that vehicle blocking my ability to get in and out of my parking space is very, very important to that individual, right? And so if we have a parking control person available or someone else,

we're going to dispatch them as opposed to an officer take the officer's time but when that resource isn't available and it's not available 24 7 sworn officers are we're going to dispatch

Thai Viet Phan

and i guess then maybe my comment to you or city manager is that if parking control is truly that important to our residents and i understand it is because you might need to go to work and you know parking control is significantly more affordable than a uniformed police officer trained to handle a dangerous situation who should be spending their time dealing with dangerous situations, then I would like to see us move some of that overtime that's being spent on parking control to a contracted position or some other code enforcement position that would free up some time for officers or not require them to be working overtime.

Thai Viet Phan

That would be my general comment regarding something where it's not a dangerous situation,

but we can still be responsive and if i may so again going back to the preface that we truly don't know what is going to be a dangerous situation so at the pleasure of the council at the direction of the city manager if the direction is to not you know be responsive to these types of calls for service then you know we need to take a broader look at this and a broader perspective on what are we not going to do and be very transparent and open with our public what are we not going to do if we're not going to fund and again i started my presentation with zero dollars

added zero dollars added and a very very robust look at looked at what can we do different you have my commitment there and i just would would be concerned would be very concerned uh if we move away from our focus on this dual approach of traditional based policing and community engagement community based policing

I wasn't sure if you had it oh it counts I was just gonna say we certainly can explore that one of the the challenges that we do have is your only 24-hour operations that's fully staffed is your police department so it's similar what the mayor's comment was a lot of stuff happens and default it lands up into the police department. So to have the code enforcement on a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week schedule and the resources and the vehicles, it would take a substantial exploration of it and costing of it for you. But we can certainly explore that.

Thai Viet Phan

Thanks. Yeah, I mean, because a parking problem shouldn't require an armed peace officer who's trained to do other things. and so I would like to see something like that and I do appreciate that there is no increase in the budget however part of the conversation as we say expanding the Family Justice Center expanding PAL although I think that's already in the budget or potentially doing more work in the community itself that's where I guess I would like to see you shifting the focus right because again we have a lot of overtime in a number of areas. I'm focusing on field operations because that's

Thai Viet Phan

the highest amount overall. And when I'm looking at some of these issues where we're doing traffic stops for something that is not inherently dangerous, but quote, might lead to something more dangerous. To me, you know, we are committing officers to doing overtime for something that might or might not be fruitful. Now, I would love to see you follow up with statistics and data in our city regarding the number of traffic stops for, you know, whether it's broken taillight, not lights, you know, tags that actually lead to broader enforcement. That would be really

Thai Viet Phan

helpful for me. So I would like to follow up on that. Now, question about communications for the shifting to the jail I guess no one's really asked about that yet so shifting to the jail I think in the budget it had mentioned that there is 216,000 sorry no it's under communications just for a police department two hundred and sixteen thousand dollars in salary overtime for communications can you help me understand what that is or what what that's for I don't know where you

Thai Viet Phan

referred to is that under dispatch apologies it just says police department communications

Thai Viet Phan

it's item 61040

so that's um overtime for our dispatch services okay so okay so they fall under communications yeah the jail doesn't have dispatchers right right sorry i thought it was together but it's

Thai Viet Phan

not separate so now I'll get to the jail thank you now the jail overtime is stated for I think five hundred and seventy eight thousand dollars what is that so that is essentially to provide

safe staffing levels for our operations in the jail we do not we have a number of vacancies and so we need to augment the staffing with overtime once we hire all those positions it's similar to the patrol overtime. Once we hire all those positions, then you will see the decrease

Thai Viet Phan

in overtime expenditure there. Okay. And so are those vacancies, part of those funded vacancies

that just need to be filled? Yes. Those are going to be filled. Correct. Great. And now just for

Thai Viet Phan

additional clarification, because again, I think I've asked some questions about the jail just with you, but I don't understand, you know, part of the staff report, it might've been from May 24th, that stated, you know, the jail is a cost. Whoever tried to sell the, you know, say the jail was a revenue generating activity was lying. I think that, you know, a jail is a service that the city provides in dealing with police activity or public safety activity. But it does state that even with the expansion of the last module or the use of the last module, let me clarify, we would still be

Thai Viet Phan

$2.5 million in the hole after we even pay off the jail right so best estimate it's $2.5 million in the red okay and then there's a estimate for a booking facility that would cost us eight million dollars can you just help walk me through step by step what the costs are and why it would be eight million

dollars? So it has to do with the type of custodial facility that we have, a type 2 facility. If one of our officers has to book a prisoner, they can come and do it at our city jail. Generally, they can be in and out in 20 minutes unless there's some extenuating circumstance, require a medical clearance, etc. You're also incorporating costs of having our officers go back to a model that was in place over 25 years ago and that's going to our local county jail in addition to the cost

and the cost back when the jail was implemented was i provided this to a couple of council members it was nearly 200 i want to say 175 185 dollars those were dollars 20 years ago so i don't know what the current cost would be but it's significant in addition to that the the staff hours required for our personnel to sit at the county jail are significant that 20 minutes turns into several multiple hours per booking per arrest so that's the that's the difference if we went to a type 1

facility our cost would actually go up to that level so this you know what previous administrations provided in terms of you know the jail service and what it is um i can't speak to that but it's it's a it's a service that requires funding and what i can tell you is that our santa ana jail operates efficiently and it has a very very strong platform in recuperating costs so you'll see that the revenue I believe it's in the area of about 16 million dollars so you don't see that in in

in other city jail operations we do a good job there we have good relationships with the different institutions that we work with and the jail staff work very closely to ensure that we are charging and recouping those revenues wherever possible.

Thai Viet Phan

Thank you. And just some clarification, because, you know, out in the universe, people might or might not get accurate data. So, you know, some folks are saying, well, in Santa Ana, we might arrest somebody, but they're actually held at the Orange County Jail, not at the Santa

Ana Jail. So it depends on the type of booking or if there is a specific security threat. in fact the reverse could be true. We could get a call from the local sheriff or another agency to actually house one of their inmates but generally speaking they're going to start here and unless there's we provide extensive medical services but we don't provide the full spectrum that the county jail has in place. We're very close but we don't have the entire platform so in those circumstances We certainly want to provide the medical care required for anyone arrested or detained, and we want to transfer.

Thai Viet Phan

Thanks. But you did mention that we do provide a number of services for those who are at the jail. Can you just run through those quickly?

Absolutely. So there's some threads and some of the other comments from counsel tonight and other conversations that I've had with you all. We operate a custodial facility with purpose. Clearly, folks are there because they have violated the law and they're remanded to custody. But while they're there, what are they doing? We want to be a contributor to positive interaction and skill building. There's opportunities for folks to acquire their GED. We have, and this was altered somewhat during the pandemic, of course, but at the height of Ockham, we're transitioning back, as the rest of the world is.

faith baits services we have group dialogues that occur our jail is different than a traditional custodial environment and that is a it's a direct supervision model it's built on trust and the notion that you will behave yourself and so that's very different than a very very traditional discipline top-down custody facility. Our payout on liability exposure incidents that have occurred is well under a half million dollars in the 25 years that the jail has been

in existence. And it's because of this philosophy and I will tell you that even I in the younger part of my career I couldn't quite put my mind around this. What do you mean you have inmates just walking around with a couple of staff members it's built on trust built on good behavior and we don't have people sitting idle thank you that's

Thai Viet Phan

very helpful and also the liability information is very helpful just because you know we've been seeing all sorts of stuff coming out with the Orange County jail and I'm glad to hear we're not in the same position I do also I guess I would also like to see some information regarding folks who have you know what kind of activity they've gotten or done how many of them have gone a GAD you know you're talking about all these programs but I'd like to see kind of the effects of that on those who are housed in our jail at the next meeting or a

follow-up jail commander and assistant jail commander are listening in the cloud

Thai Viet Phan

oh great and so my other question is when we're you know we're talking about this booking facility and housing folks either in well not housing but holding folks OC County or or in the Santa Ana jail what is the comparison with our jail and other jails in the county or in the Southern California region regarding

costs and efficiencies ah that's that that's a good question I don't know that we're one of the largest city jails in operation and so a lot of the city jails in Orange County specifically they just don't compare in size and so I don't know what their operating costs are a lot of them exist from a pay to pay to stay you're convicted of a crime and you're gonna pay a fee to stay there at their facility we have that element here as well but a lot of those smaller jails that's that's really their focus and then holding people for very short periods of time as well. We can certainly

kind of look at a comparative with other like-sized facilities.

Thai Viet Phan

Great, thank you. I had another question and it totally left my mind, so if I do remember, I'll ask about it. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Council Member. I believe Council Member Lopez is next.

Thai Viet Phan

Thank you, Mayor General. Chief, I'll keep my comments super brief.

I know it's late, but I do just want to express that I 100% agree with being proactive and seeing how money can be shifted to invest in crime prevention. So, you know, I do want to see the Met be at 5.5 as opposed to what we're seeing now. And, you know, continuing that topic of like diversion, I think that it will have a positive impact on Santa Ana PD and our community as a whole, because more than 7,000 calls were placed in the last six months for dealing with unhealth folks.

And so when we are able to free up our officers from this work, I do think that the tide will shift. And, you know, again, I don't think that police officers signed up for that work. And I am thankful that they do it, that they've helped with the crisis that we are facing. But I do want to relieve them of that unfair responsibility um and so you know from the data that i was looking at um i read that approximately 31 000 calls had been placed um in the last like six months

um that could be responded in an alternative manner and so you know these include categories that read as transient activity, traffic stops, road hazards, and lower priority calls. And so I do think it needs to be a serious consideration. And those are going to be my final comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Lopez. Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa.

David Penaloza

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. And thank you, Chief Valentin, for still standing. I wanted to reiterate some of what my colleagues said in regards to always making an effort to divert cause from homeless-related cause. I know that it's a serious problem that we've had, and it's a majority of our officers' time is taken up with that.

David Penaloza

I know that just, I mean, over the last couple of years, we've been working hard on doing just that, you know, whether it was contracting out with CityNet to try to move away from having an armed police officer respond to these calls. I know it started with putting together the coal team that encompasses various departments and then now contracting out with nonprofits like CityNet. And I just wanted to announce that as part member of the ad hoc committee to address homelessness, next week we're going to be touring Be Well OC, which is another way where we could have private-public partnerships.

David Penaloza

I know the city of Garden Grove, Huntington Beach have moved in that direction to not just for the unhoused members of our community, but, you know, members of all incomes across the city that are suffering from mental health and drug-related issues where we won't have police officers responding to these calls, but somebody from, hopefully, from these different partnerships that we're trying to put together. So there's a lot of work still left to do. I definitely agree with my colleagues when it comes to that. It's something that we most definitely should address. And I know we have been.

David Penaloza

But like I said, always room for improvement. And I had another thought that just, like Council Member Fant slipped my mind. So Mayor Sarmiento, I will end it there. But if you come back to me, I'll let you know. Great. Council Member Becerra.

Phil Bacerra

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I too appreciate what I'm hearing from my colleagues because what I'm hearing isn't what we were hearing a year ago, which was defund PD, dismantle PD. Well, we're talking about keeping the budget very similar to what it was last year after we got very surgical in trying to reconfigure police's operations, budget, etc. But a lot of the things that my colleagues are talking about, number one, fatigue from overtime. I mean, I don't want an officer responding to a call that's been on the beat for, you know, over eight hours, let alone 10 or 12.

Phil Bacerra

And the only way we're going to drive down overtime is to fill these positions that are authorized but not funded. And that would actually mean, you know, the horror, let me say it out loud, actually increasing funding towards our police. And that's something that we need to be honest with ourselves about. We want to make sure that our police are trained. We want to make sure that they have resources. One of my colleagues said more mental health resources, more trauma care resources. Couldn't agree more.

Phil Bacerra

Anything to improve the well-being of our police officers so that they are able to serve the community in an adequate, exceptional way. Yeah, I would like to see us do that for them. But I think we have to be really honest with ourselves and say, look, we know that we aren't here trying to dismantle the police. We're here to try to make them better and to serve our community better. But the only way we're going to do that is to be honest that defunding, taking away the funding is not going to be the answer. The reality is going to be we're going to have to look at how do we reduce overtime?

Phil Bacerra

Well, it's going to have to be hiring more officers. You know, we're going to have to put resources towards PD, not think of creative ways to appease certain squeaky wheels that want to just dismantle it. So honestly, I'm very optimistic of the conversation that I'm hearing from my colleagues because ultimately it sounds like what we're trying to do here is make our police department better. And as I said at the beginning of my comments, we've always been one of the more progressive police departments in the nation. And I would like to see us continue in that same vein. So, again, I'm really optimistic from what I'm hearing tonight.

Phil Bacerra

I'm looking forward to our deliberation later. So, thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. I think, Mayor Pro Tem, you remembered your question.

David Penaloza

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. I regained that thought I had, which was 100% related to my initial thought. But I think there's also, you know, I'm hearing a lot of my colleagues echo the same thing, and I agree. it's you know trying to direct policy to divert our an armed officer responding to these calls and you know we're if I a lot of times we think of when you when somebody calls 9-1-1 you know we expect an officer to respond at least that's what our community thinks residents of the city of Santa Ana they call 9-1-1

David Penaloza

for whatever issue they're having, they expect an armed officer to arrive most of the time. So I think one way where we could work on this, Chief, is as you look at ways of how to address this, along with the city management and across our city departments,

David Penaloza

is educating the public as well. Because the public is still going to call 911 and demand that an officer shows up to whatever the call may be. And one way that we definitely need to work on together, Madam City Manager, Police Chief Valentin, CDA Director Mendoza, is coming up with some kind of campaign where we simply do that, is educate the public on the other resources available out there, who they could call if there's an individual on their front lawn yelling at all hours of the night

David Penaloza

or having an episode related to drugs. I mean, there are resources out there that we're already slowly but surely working with that could respond to this. But the public doesn't know that. The public, again, is just going to call 911 and demand the police officer. So we have to find ways maybe at your community events, at your, and I'm hoping we have more of those as COVID restrictions lift, at your coffee with the cop, at your Friday night lights, or lights on with the cop, I forget what it's called, but at all these other events, and parks and rec events, we should have informational booths available

David Penaloza

to the public. This is what, you know, educating them on, this is what we, you know, when and not you should call the police. I mean, a lot of times our community doesn't know better. They'll call 911 and they'll flood our dispatchers with calls and and that's also a huge component that we should talk about and address is educating our our residents on you know what we we offer what what you know residents don't know that we contract with CityNet and you know they're there and I know that our dispatchers oftentimes have to make that call that decision do I send out an officer do I

David Penaloza

forward it you know if it's two three in the morning you know on a saturday night we're not sure so i'm hoping that from this conversation we we come up with a you know legit plan where we could have that citywide educational effort on how you know or on what the the services are available so that the public just doesn't you know con i-1-1 for for things that maybe we don't need an

officer at so that's that's it mayor great comment thank you i think that goes along with your community engagement so and also i agree with councilmember becerra i don't think you know i don't think anybody believes that and and you know while you're going to catch your second wind we're going to go ahead and you know go go to the next um department head but thank you first of all for fielding some very difficult questions, Chief. I think they were fair, all of them. I think they were all fair and reasonable. And literally, these are things that I think many members

of the public would like to ask, and they can't. But by way of listening, I guess through us, which we are, you know, their representatives, I think it's important that you gave some very salient responses. And I don't think anybody is saying, let's dismantle the department or the you know let's take resources away I think if anything you know I go back to the presentation that the city manager presented to us and you know it was labeled rethinking you know police response and I think that's really where everybody needs to be where you know we are looking at ways to improve not to

abandon right and to the extent that there is a very good opportunity right now and I think you heard some very good suggestions of ways that things don't have to be increased things just have to be adjusted I hope that you took them in good faith because I believe everybody everybody's and everybody had good intentions as they were making these comments to you and I know you being from this community I mean you are somebody who you know was raised here lives here and you know is is integral integrally connected to this community understands that it's a complex city you know and you know we we can't do

policing the way we did you know even 10 years ago which seems like a long time ago because the community evolves and practices evolve and that's why I think we have so much hope in you because you seem to have that ability to transition a department that may be you know may have some practices that could be improved you know and others that could be you know adopted so we certainly have that good faith in you and hopefully you took all these comments in good faith which is what I believe all of us met so city manager I think you heard yes

we've taken notes and I definitely will be following up with the chief and chief you can sit down now all right thank you give that man some oxygen so you have Three to go, sir. The next one is OCFA.

Great.

Stop that.

No, you can have a trophy, sir. Three hours or 40 minutes. Go ahead.

Chief Henry, we were just warming up with Chief Valentine. That's what I've got, sir.

well good evening and thank you for having me to the to the mayor to the city council and the city staff I appreciate the opportunity to share a little bit about the fire authority I've been in the fire service since 84 and I got to tell you I think last year probably was probably one of the most challenging years that we saw as far as emergency events and and continues to be so for all the reasons that that everybody's well aware of with that being said the people of your fire department rose to the occasion and

they're still doing so every day and I couldn't be more prouder and unlike other emergencies that we have dealt with the pandemic I think challenged us in ways in complexity as well as duration and it continues to do so so our flowchart especially for some of our new council right we have our division chief that's my position I've got administrative captain and I've got an administrative assistant I have operations you know we serve 10 fire stations we have three

battalion chiefs on duty of 48 members on a day 12 different companies basically serving the of the city and last year we had 34,000 calls for assistance our community risk reduction which is our fire prevention group as an assistant fire marshal for inspectors and an office specialist and then our community education is one person and then our administrative piece that I talked about

and we roughly make up about six percent of the city's budget I think it's important that under the fire department budget piece we account for about four and a half five percent the rest goes to the ambulance contract of about five million as well as our our budgeting for the billing piece And here's a perfect example of that breakdown. This year we are going to see a cost increase of about 4.5%. Majority of that, 47% of that, is due to personnel costs for MOU contractual agreements,

as well as overtime and workers' comp, as well as health insurance. When we talk about the overtime piece, one of the things that I'm sure you'll be asking me more questions and related to that is why our costs went up this year.

We had a tremendous amount of people that were off. Out of 1,300 members, we had about 300 of our members that were affected directly by COVID.

And I'm lucky to say that nobody was seriously injured. we did have some people that were hospitalized but because of that that increased our overtime costs as well as our workers comp cost last year we had a number of big incidents and the covid uh because we're self-insured right our workers comp costs went up and as you can see that accounts for about 27 percent of that increase and then obviously our service and supplies guys. So what did we do last year? I think the first thing that comes to mind, right,

was the COVID pandemic response. I think we talked about that a little bit. I never thought that we would be dealing with it to the capacity that we did. And one of the first things that we were challenged with, right, was understanding that and how do we keep our people safe. And And we struggled like everyone else with trying to get the PPE, understanding how we were going to identify calls, and at that point make some changes to keep our personnel as safe as possible and continue to serve the community. At one point during the height of that, about 50% of the calls that we were responding to were COVID-related

or had the potential to be COVID-related.

and on top of that in December of this last year we were asked by the Orange County Health Care Agency to assist with providing some oversight leadership and guidance and putting together the teams as they wanted to build out these super pods one of the things that's I think is important right is the super pod that was here put in Santa Ana has basically vaccinated over a hundred thousand people since its operation and it would have been a huge part of that. Our teams of people that provided that leadership and oversight right was basically taking a very different diverse group of people, healthcare

workers, volunteers, city county employees and basically blending them to provide the service that we needed to do to help people get vaccinated. When we look at the calls of service that the city of Santa Ana basically provides we had about thirty four thousand calls of service now the fire authority serves 23 cities and the unincorporated and last year we generated a hundred and twenty two thousand calls for service so when you think that Santa Ana is accounting for about twenty five percent of that it's quite a busy place as you guys are well aware something I'm very proud of even though we had to do

socially distancing and stuff is we had 70 community outreach events a lot of that was virtual right a lot of it was in person including providing a cert classes socially distance wearing masks and all of that and we were able to try to continue to provide education outreach and experiences for our people the best that we could. And I never got so familiar with Zoom until this last year like everyone else. But it was a great experience for all of us. On top of all of that, when you add all of that, right,

we also partnered with our law enforcement members to assist and provide services during some of the events that happened last year. And then, of course, we still had fires. and last year we had three large wildfires that impacted the county the Silverado the Blue Ridge and the bonfires I'm sad to say that during the Silverado fire we had two of our wildland firefighters that were critically injured and spent numerous months in the hospital I doubt that they will ever return to work just due to the significance of their injuries I'm happy to say that both of them are out of the hospital after having over 20 surgeries

and basically are in recovery, and we're continuing to work through that.

So looking at those 34,000 calls for service, here's a quick snapshot, right? Obviously, the majority of that is EMS. The 2% is fire, and then the other 21% accounts for all other types of service, and that could be simply as a smell of gas in a structure, traffic accidents, somebody threatening to jump off of a building, automatic alarms, hazardous materials calls, downed power lines because a tree's fallen over a wind or

anything else that might be related to that. So our goals, even though we are transitioning out of the super pod we are still going to be involved in to some degree with some of the mobile pods we'll continue to respond for people that are having COVID related symptoms and issues and so I believe COVID is going to be become part of our new norm just in a different capacity one of the things that we are doing in this division is we are expanding our Explorer Splash

cadet program. As you know, we have a cadet program here in the city at our station 75, which is down there off of First and Main, and it's one of the largest posts. One of the things that we are piloting is, given our youth an opportunity to have other experiences, we know that some of them won't go on to become firefighters. So one of the things that we're doing now is we're going to allow them to have experiences where they actually learn from either become, You know, do a sit-along in our dispatch center, work side-by-side with our community educator, learn what it takes to become a fire prevention person,

or go on to job shadow our mechanics and our support services so that allows them to have some opportunities for this. This year, we have hired a diversity, equity, inclusion coordinator. And the thought to do this, it will serve the entire department, but started about three or four years ago when we were looking to increase awareness and understanding, right, and be more reflective. And we started with simple things like our girls' empowerment camp that allowed people to come in and have experiences. And with our diversity, equity, inclusion coordinator, it's two-pronged. One is to bring awareness and understanding internally.

The other thing is to look for creative ways to do outreach, right, to hire more diverse members in our society. We will continue to partner with our law enforcement partners here in the city as well as in the county. One of the things that we saw during last year was we saw an increase of fires related to people that were homeless. And we're continuing to work in targeting those areas in ways that we can do that. Lastly, our biggest goal, right, will be continuing to do community outreach.

We're excited about getting back to some semblance of normal, being involved in the schools, and reducing impacts of fire drowning and other public issues. And then just this week we had a meeting with Santa Ana Unified and we're working with them on a grant program to provide opportunities for our youth in middle school as well as high school to learn about a pathway in public service and also related to ethnic studies. So that's a big piece to that. So that'll be interesting and a new piece for that.

and we'll be moving forward.

With that, I will take any questions, anything that I can help you with.

Thank you, Chief Henry. Thank you for that presentation. Let me go ahead and call on Mayor Procent Danielosa.

David Penaloza

Thank you, Mayor Salmiento. Division Chief Henry, I just wanted to thank you for, and apologize really for the reason why you're up here. If you recall, at the last budget, we kind of just glossed over the fire department and it was like this is it next page and it's like wait a minute so happy you're here it's important we show our community you know where their dollars are being spent yes sir I know it's it has been an extremely busy year for all of you I just wanted to kind of show my support for your you know thinking of OCFA you know I would think we need a diversity equity and inclusion coordinator yes because of I know that

David Penaloza

personally when I've had the fire department respond to my to my house only once in the last five years thankfully thank God sir it's not you know a service you want to call to your house because it's usually someone ill there I had to translate for my mom and and the fire department because of I believe what it was like four of them or five but none of them from what I remember spoke Spanish so it it's it always be nice to move in that direction make sure that as we're hiring at OCFA and firefighters that that provide service to a community like Santa Ana we you know keep in mind that it is a

David Penaloza

largely Spanish-speaking community and we should always strive to have bilingual firefighters on deck I know they're out there good friends of mine are members of OCFA previously Santa Ana Fire Department then transferred over and the cadet program too and they're both bilingual so I know they're there but as we're working towards that always important but thank you thank you for the work and yeah that's it Mr. Mayor

Thank you for those comments I believe Councilmember Lopez Yes thank you Mayor Hi Chief Henry I do want to take this opportunity to thank you for all the work that you and the rest of the firefighters do. For those listening that don't know, I do sit on the OCFA board and we are the board is also having budget discussions and they are ongoing. So if there are any major changes, I will make sure to report back to Santa Ana residents. But thank you also for sending me the list of community events going through it. it made me really excited that even during a pandemic,

we'll see if they really showed up for the community and got creative. And so I'm looking forward to continuing to support our community events. So thank you so much.

Thank you, ma'am. Thank you, council member. Council member Becerra.

Phil Bacerra

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Chief, thank you for all that you do and all that your firefighters do for our city. It's our honor, sir. Unfortunately, it was not shocking to hear that your folks were very impacted by COVID. You guys are legitimately, when we talk about frontline responders, that's exactly what you guys are doing. And so, again, I'm appreciative. I know my constituents appreciate everything that you and your team does. To jump back into budget, on page 300, we talk about the fire facilities fund.

Phil Bacerra

And, you know, when I had my ride along with you last year, you showed me some of the great attributes of our facilities, but you also showed me that we need to improve some of our facilities. And I have to tell you, I didn't like seeing that there was a proposed decrease of about $236,000 for the fire facilities fund. I don't know if you or maybe Catherine or someone could explain why there would be a decrease to something that's such a core service. and obviously you guys need the facilities.

Thank you for the question. The fire facilities fund draws on basically developer revenues which come in erratically. There's no constant source of revenue like, say, a tax. And so the budget is based on availability and upon the top priorities for the fire stations. And our municipal code limits what we can spend that money on. So it really has to be something that supports firefighting, like maybe a roll-up door on a fire station. It would not support, say, like bathrooms for staff.

And so because of the restrictions on the money, the highest priorities of projects involved and the availability of funds because they don't come in the same every year. That's why you'll see the budget fluctuate. And so maybe it happened to go down this year, but maybe next year you might see an increase.

Phil Bacerra

So help me understand then. So OCFA provides our services, but the city of Santa Ana continues to own the stations. That's correct. So like any asset that we have, what's our revenue source for improving our assets?

What is the revenue source?

Phil Bacerra

Yeah, what funds are we using to improve our fire facilities?

Yeah, for the fire facilities, it's only that fund that collects those developer fees, if you will. There is no other dedicated source of funding, so if we wanted to do things like, say, improve employee restrooms at the fire station, we would probably need to pull from the general fund.

Phil Bacerra

Okay. And you know, this is kind of unfortunately a theme that we have here where some of these basic core services we overlook. We just assume they're magically funded. They've all been taken care of. And I would encourage all my colleagues to go along with Chief Henry and take a look at our facilities because, again, we have some outstanding facilities, but we also have some that are in dire need of repair. And it's just frustrating that we don't have dedicated revenue streams for some of our core basic functions. and fire we're all sitting up here showering praise on the chief and his troops and i will

Phil Bacerra

continue to do that but i also will continue to advocate so that they have the resources so that they can continue to service our community so um thank you kat i just one question one more question for the chief and that is um you you talked about your calls for service and i was curious of those calls because you had other and then emt and so what i'm curious about is what's a percentage of those calls, both categories, that are homeless related? So, for instance, you mentioned homeless fires, like fires that are started. We've seen them out there on the Union Pacific right-of-way.

Phil Bacerra

We've also seen, at least down on the south end of town, where you'll have a homeless person who's unresponsive at a bus stop and your folks get called in. So, just out of curiosity, what percentage are related to the homeless?

the rough numbers that we have right now about four to six percent okay four to six four to six percent are related to the homeless homeless okay based on the last calendar year to this year and i wish i could give you a more definitive number um if we respond to like when we're responding to the courtyard, right, we can query that and we have a direct address. Otherwise, it's subjective, right? The individual making the report may reflect that, you know, yes, they appear to be houseless or, you know, they may or may not know that.

But it's about 4% to 6% is what we're seeing on an average.

Phil Bacerra

I would ask, going into this next year, if you could try to keep an accurate tally, because I think that's something that's very important. I know myself, I know Mayor Pro Tems brought this up, where we as a city spend such an outrageous amount dealing with the homeless. And I know your firefighters are out there, whether it's reviving them or having to deal with fires. I just want to make sure that we understand the true costs that Santa Ana and our taxpayers are enduring. So if you wouldn't mind doing that as we go forward. Those are my questions right now. Thank you, Chief Henry.

Thank you for those. Anybody else have any questions? Madam Clerk, is there anybody in the queue or anybody on the phone?

Council Member Mendoza. Go ahead, Council Member Mendoza.

Yes, I just want to commend the chief and the participation of the fire department in the vaccination efforts. I'm sure you have saved a lot of lives in that manner. And I'm glad that you're expanding the cadet program because I'm all about providing internships for our youth and also that you maintain focus on educating our youth in safety issues such as

drowning. So I'm very glad that we have these items as a priority. So thank you for all the good work and accolades to you and your department thank you that was it thank you ma'am thank you

Thai Viet Phan

council member any other council member fan hi thank you chief just for my edification so in the division six it does you know mention the three large wildfires in orange county So Silverado, Blue Ridge, and Bonfires, and I think we all know wildfires is a part of daily, you know, annual life here in California. So does this mean that OCFA Division 6, as paid for by the city of Santa Ana, is responding, right, to these? Okay. So were any of these fires in the city of Santa Ana?

No.

Thai Viet Phan

Okay. And so is that just a part of the pooling that OCFA does, that we're paying also to provide services to other cities?

Yes. If I understand the question, did any of the firefighters from Santa Ana respond to those fires? Is that the first question, ma'am?

Thai Viet Phan

Yeah, I guess I'm just trying to understand. Obviously, you know, this is a pretty large $51 million cost for the city, and I fully understand we have a ton of calls. But I guess I just wanted clarification that some of our police officers, as paid for by Santa Ana tax dollars, is being used to respond to wildfires in other cities.

Council Member, if I may answer that question. So in public safety, there's what's called mutual aid, where agencies will send individuals in outside of their jurisdiction to assist with emergencies. for OCFA they do a true up every year and they actually will look at what our contract price is and they will look at what services were actually provided to our city. So there is a reconciliation and a process. So it's not like if there was a terrible fire and all of our resources were sent out, they would first never send all of our resources out, but that we would completely be eating those costs.

So hopefully that helps answer the question.

Thai Viet Phan

That does. The true up makes a lot of sense because I think we all know none of those, like as you mentioned, we're in the city of Santa Ana. And so if we're spending hundreds of thousands or potentially even millions of dollars for our firefighters to work there, I'd like to see kind of that accounting. But that's really helpful that there's a true up. So regarding the overtime, and I apologize if I did miss this, can you help explain to me, was the overtime in relation to the fire response or was it really in relation to the COVID response?

Both.

Thai Viet Phan

Okay.

Both.

Thai Viet Phan

All right. And then I guess I also wanted to better understand the 2020 fire call statistics. It says 70% is EMS, other, and then fire. That sounds really backwards to me, but if you can help enlighten me as to why 77% of the calls are EMS, or is it just someone had a heart attack and fire is responding?

So all of our paramedics, okay, are assigned to fire engines.

So if I'm understanding the question, the types of calls, right, are a lot of them are health-related, and it could be simple slip and fall. It could be somebody not breathing. It could be a car accident, you know, whatever the case may be.

Thai Viet Phan

Okay. And for these medical related services, say a slip and fall or someone had a heart attack, who's the person who's actually providing the medical attention? Is it the firefighter or an EMT?

So if I can explain.

Thai Viet Phan

Yeah, that would be helpful. Thank you.

Absolutely. So all of the units, the 12 units that you have in the city of Santa Ana, right, that the OCFA provides, all of them have two paramedics on it and also have two EMTs on it. Okay. And so they'll respond as a unit and assess the patient and then treat accordingly. and then carry ambulance will respond and you know transport the patient to a hospital or if they don't need to be transported might be just an education like you know like sometimes people may call us because you know they go hey I feel like I'm sick I want to go to the hospital okay we come out there and we

say you can go to the hospital by an ambulance or you can go by yourself in a car you know all of those kind of things so sometimes that's the case as well so But if the question is who treats them, it's the paramedics and then the EMTs that are there to assist. And I hope that that answers it for you.

Thai Viet Phan

Yeah, so I guess I understand EMTs do have medical training, but less medical training than a paramedic.

Yes.

Thai Viet Phan

And so when you say a unit has two EMTs and two paramedics, who else is part of this unit that responds?

Are there other firefighters? Yeah, so they're all firefighters.

Thai Viet Phan

Okay.

Okay. On the unit, there's a supervisor. That's the captain. Then there's the driver, okay, who's the, we call them the engineer or the operator. And then you have two firefighters. They could be firefighter EMTs or they could be a combination of a firefighter paramedic. So they're dual role.

Thai Viet Phan

Got it. But how many people is in one unit who would respond to a call? Okay, a total of four?

Yes.

Thai Viet Phan

Okay, great. I just wanted to understand that because if somebody has a slip and fall, I just wanted to make sure we didn't send eight people out who are ready to go to answer to a fire when it's a slip and fall.

Right.

Thai Viet Phan

Because, again, like we were questioning with the officers, the peace officers, there are some calls that warrant additional attention and others that warrant potentially less attention and I am NOT part of OCFA board I know Councilmember Lopez is but when we do have these calls where someone is saying I slipped and I fell I I guess would ask that in dealing with the cost or personnel cost that maybe we just send the two EMTs or one EMT and one paramedic. Just to look at that, because we don't, I think, need two paramedics and two EMTs to go in a

Thai Viet Phan

fire engine to respond to someone who slipped and fell at a target. And that is a significant cost, especially if we're getting 35,000 calls, 77% of which are EMT and not fire. And so with that, that concludes my comments and questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember. Great comments. So not seeing or hearing any other questions or comments from the Council. So Chief, you know, I think I'm the only one who remembers the transition from our own fire department to OCFA. CFA and you know it was it was painful because we lost a department that preceded even the founding of our city but it was less painful because we know it was a transition where a lot of the staff was absorbed we got to keep our stations you know the equipment and I know it's been as seamless as we could I think as you know all of us could imagine because it could have been a lot

bumpier but I think you know for the most part it's been you know an effective transition it was important I mean we were looking at a recession at the time and we were it was just a very painful time in the city's history so you know I know that you know the question was asked on response time so you know we appreciate that continuing to be a priority and you know and you know I agree with some of the comments made about us maintaining those assets that we have which are our fire stations I mean they're the cities maybe one day we have our own department back and you know to the extent that that may happen you know

who knows you know how far down in the future i don't ever want to give up on that you know on that opportunity or on that hope but you know we want to maintain these facilities and you know that just to make sure that you know we have our firefighters you know living and being in a in a safe environment that's always important so and finally just thank you for um all of what you did during the build-out of the, I wouldn't say it was a super pod, but it was a medium pod over at Santa Ana College. But the way you all went about doing it very quickly, very efficiently and effectively,

and I know you did it throughout the county, but the one that was here was extremely special and important, you know, when we went out and toured because we really had to plead and beg for that one to be brought here in Santa Ana. And I know you all heard us and you built it out that much quicker. So thank you for everything. Thank you for the presentation. Appreciate it.

Okay. The next one is Public Works Agency. So, Director Nabil Saba.

Director Saba is coming to the hot seat.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of the council.

As you know, the Public Works Agency has many duties and functions within the city. we maintain the water, sewer, street maintenance, including street sweeping, graffiti, trees, maintenance of the medians. We also overlook engineering, traffic, capital improvement, development, and building fleet maintenance is also one of our functions. We also manage trash collections, storm water systems, and bus shelters.

To get it started, the Public Works Agency is divided into five main divisions, administrative services, engineering services, fleet, facilities and stores, water resources, and maintenance services. we have a total of about 234 employees in the agency. Public Works Agency budget is about 30% of the citywide budget. However, we're less than 5% of the

general fund, as you can see. We do depend on enterprise funds coming in from water, sewer and refuse. In addition, we also have some restricted other sources of funds, internal service funds, and capital funds that supports our operation. In terms of capital improvement, we have a plan for next year that consists of about $57.4 million capital improvement plan which includes municipal facilities, public utilities drainage and improvements,

street improvements, and traffic and safety improvements. I'd just like to highlight the municipal facilities part of the CIP. We do have a dock park in the plans, splash pads that are in the plans, about $5 million dollars that will be installing splash pads for our parks department sports lightning and facilities we also have plans to install synthetic turf fields and some improvement on stadium synthetic turf and improvement on the

bus shop there's about a million dollar worth of improvements on our bus shelters in the same time the utilities is receiving quite a bit of improvement the sewer we have about four million dollars worth of improvements coming in and in the water infrastructure we're set to spend about 15 million dollars of improvement for next year in addition to about half a million dollars for the mpds program street improvements about 16 million dollars traffic safety improvements about eight million dollars and i have some specifics if you're interested in these projects. I have a list of them that are included in the CIP plan.

So I'd like to highlight some of our accomplishment by division in the Public Works Agency. Administrative Services did absorb a project billing and quarterly reporting function for the capital improvement programs that improve our billing and recovery of cost from regional and state agencies. In the engineering services, we reorganized the division to improve the effectiveness and the efficiencies and responsiveness of the delivery of our CIP projects.

In the fleet facilities and stores, we completed a major facility and remodel repairs and replacement of facilities throughout the city. In the Water Resources Division, we initiated the Advanced Metering Infrastructure, Smart Meters Program, and in Maintenance Services, we expedited the replacement of sidewalk, about $1.4 million worth of work on sidewalk, which had about 1,006 locations in 12 neighborhoods throughout these six council worlds.

Some of the goals that we have for next year is to implement a comprehensive street design program which considers other infrastructure's needs, such as water, sewer, street lights, signs, sidewalk, during the project design phases. We're also looking at acquiring all infrastructure CIP projects to include safety features such as fencing, more durable traffic safety controls, bike lanes, anti-graffiti coating on street signs, and to enhance the hardscape in lieu of just using asphalt surfaces.

We were also planning to begin the assessment and the consolidation of what we have, completed infrastructure plans. We have master plans right now for water, sewer, storm drain, streets, trees, and traffic signals. We're hoping that we would include all these plans on one comprehensive plan for public works. We are also working on standardization for conducting facility assessment of all city facilities and develop a 10-year facility CIP plan. This is in line with what Chief Henry was talking about.

Some of the facilities that we do capital improvement programs for is the fire stations, and we're hoping that we would do this assessment and have a feel of what the cost would be to invest in these structures we're also looking at improving the pothole repair service to 48-hour response time by utilizing and marketing the mysanana app and we are planning to implement and improve technology to improve the water distribution system and to enhance customer

service I know that members of the council really interested in our initiatives and our work on trying to keep the city clean I just want to talk to you a little bit about the current effort that we have in the Public Works Agency to maintain the cleanness of the city we have a homeless service cleanup coordination we also have illegal dumping removal service from the streets and the sidewalks we also have of course a graffiti removal service with 100%

color matching we also have an abatement weed abatement service on streets and sidewalk street sweeping which includes residential and arterial service arterial services and also a bus shelter cleaning service as you all know we are in a process of a request for a proposal for a solid waste contract and thank you for your direction mayor and the council we have asked to enhance the service of the trash collection program or

in the RFP and we added these services and I'd like to report to you that all of the potential haulers have agreed to provide these services and some of the services the services we asked for is a site-specific litter cleaning and bulky item removal a proactive program and on-call program where we're not going to wait for the haulers, we're not going to wait for someone to call. It's proactive where they will be surveying the city on a daily basis to look for abandoned items for pickup. So that's an improvement there.

We also asked for a right-of-way trash container service and cleaning about 250 extra trash containers that would be spread throughout the entire city, 250 for it to be maintained on a daily basis, 250 of those. And those are separate from the bus shelter trash containers. We are also requiring the waste hauler to use the MySanana app to report and respond to requests. We also asked for sidewalk litter and debris cleaning service.

That's a daily service that the provider will do to clean our sidewalks six days a week to cruise. In addition to that, we have also asked for a sidewalk power washing service. Same thing. I believe it will be six days a week, too. So there will be pressure washing our sidewalks. We also asked for a porter service. We also requested that they clean the bins once a year upon request. We also asked for a clean business initiative.

The clean business initiative is basically a program where they will be required to reach out to our businesses and help them clean their sites, their plazas. There is some investment there. and it's an outreach program that the hauler would be implementing to reach out to the businesses to clear their areas. We also have a weekly alley cleaning in addition to an increased multifamily bulky item pickup. So all these enhancements are included in the new agreement with a solid waste hauler,

and we're hoping that some of them will be implemented almost immediately. Some will be staggered over a two-year implementation period. So with that, I am available to answer any questions.

Thank you, Director Saba. Sure. And I'll go ahead and bring it back to the council. But before that, so that last slide is really impressive.

Thank you.

So that really changes, I think, the scope of services for any waste hauler that I've seen. Normally they're very standard and, you know, once a week, twice a week. And so we certainly did depart from that. And it's amazing that all four have agreed. So far. They have no choice.

Way to put the screws on. So I'll go ahead and bring it back to the council to see if there's any questions.

Director, or director, Councilmember Becerra.

Phil Bacerra

I don't know if that was a promotion or not. I'm not sure. Well, thank you for that. Thank you, Director Saba, for that presentation.

Phil Bacerra

What you and your team does is really, when we talk about core services, We talk about public safety, but we talk about quality of life. What makes us not a third-world country? Because we have running water. We have sewer services, storm drains. I mean, your team does it all. But, you know, one of the things that you haven't been given the resources for in the past, and I've been very frustrated about that for the last year and a half that I've been here, and that is what is a very core function in a city that is as walkable as ours, and that is sidewalks.

Phil Bacerra

And so it still pains me that in our general fund, we have a big fat goose egg for sidewalks. But if you wouldn't mind elaborating, so thankfully for this year, we have, I believe it's $2 million. Where will that money come from for sidewalks?

We believe that there is some money in the, what we call, let me get you an acronym exactly. It's the, some of the SB1 money, which is called the Highway User Tax Account. the gas tax that fund comes to us from the sp1 and we believe that there is about a million dollar that we can uh not earmarked money that is we have to liquidate meaning we have to close some projects to bring that money forward and use it for sidewalks so there is a potential that we will have that done and and implement and use that money for the sidewalk this time around

Phil Bacerra

Okay, so we're thankfully going to have an infusion of 2 million. Last year we had about a million coming to the sidewalks.

We had an million, and actually we did a 1.4 million. Nice, nice.

Phil Bacerra

Okay, and so you provided the council with an updated report back in April.

Yes.

Phil Bacerra

And in there you discussed that for, I guess, kind of a total amount that you would need to bring sidewalks up to a certain level to where they could be maintained on a more reasonable level. We're looking at $7 million, you know, a million over each year for seven years. But what would the amount be if we, let's just say you had the $7 million, you brought the sidewalks up to a reasonable level of service. What would you need on an ongoing basis annually

to maintain the sidewalks? My estimate is about half a million dollars a year, just to keep up with the three uplift and you know deterioration normal deterioration of sidewalks so about half a million dollar a year after we catch up with our backlog of fixing everything that we have right now yeah and it's funny in

Phil Bacerra

the budget our draft budget we are allocating eight hundred and twenty thousand dollars for crossing guards yes which I find ironic because people are crossing streets but they are walking on sidewalks it's kind of like giving a captain a ship but then there's no ship to give to the captain so it's kind of ironic but um i actually and stay put uh madam city attorney i have a question for you in regards to uh trip and fall cases folks that are walking our sidewalks and slip or trip how much are we paying out annually for these types of cases

Sonia R. Carvalho

So I think I had more recently been asked that question, so I was able to pull some data for fiscal year 2019 and 2020, including all of the lawsuits and claims through the Risk Management Department. That year there was an expenditure of $463,750. For this current fiscal year, 20 and 2021, the payments to date are $131,850, but we currently have about 10 cases that are pending and two new claims that have come in.

Sonia R. Carvalho

We experience about one to two trip and fall claims filed each month, and the total expenditure for the two fiscal years right now stands at $595,600.

Phil Bacerra

Wow. So when you put that into context, if we had better sidewalks, we'd probably have a lot less for paying out for folks injuring themselves. And we would have adequate, if not exceptional sidewalks, which, again, a very basic core function or deliverable that our city government should be providing. so I just that that's amazing and director salva you're saying that for half a million a year we would have maintained sidewalks we should be able to okay no thank you for that um also you know another core function at least I know I get a lot of calls from constituents about this are

Phil Bacerra

resurfacing streets and potholes and so I wanted to understand because as I'm looking through the budget where is that line item for just road maintenance so basic average resurfacing and potholes because I was looking through it and I saw a couple of items that look suspiciously like it might be it but I wasn't a hundred percent sure so I just want to get confirmation it'll take me a while to

get to that item but I want to bring your attention to the CIP where we do have a program funds to do street surface rehab. Okay. And we have some money that is included in there for next year. Let me.

And if I can add, just most recently at the council meeting they approved a contract, a large contract for a not-to-exceed amount to do that type of work, the slurry seals, to keep the streets up to a certain quality so that they don't deteriorate to the point where you have to do a complete replacement.

Okay. And so that's in the CIP? Yes. Portion, yeah, the maintenance part of, you know, potholes is different than the CIP. So the pothole is taken from the maintenance, and that is contracted service that if a pothole is, you know, needs to be fixed, then we call our contractor to fix it.

Phil Bacerra

So that's a line item in maintenance then?

Under the maintenance, yes.

Phil Bacerra

While you're looking that up, another question I had, going back to sidewalks for a brief second. You mentioned in your presentation the comprehensive infrastructure master plan, which I absolutely love that you're doing that. I know that Parks is doing the Parks master plan, which seems like a no-brainer. You should have that. But thankfully, we've got good directors, good staff that are bringing these things forward. And so I'm excited to see that we're looking at the city through a forward-looking lens. We're trying to make sure that we have adequate or exceptional services going forward.

Phil Bacerra

But in that plan, I did not see sidewalks listed, but I just want to confirm, would that be something that your team would assess as part of the overall comprehensive infrastructure?

Yes, it is part of the infrastructure. and the plan not only have what we call the pavement condition index that is really mapped for the entire city and the condition in the streets, but also includes sidewalks. And those are included in the master plan. Okay. Okay.

Phil Bacerra

Well, Director Saba, I appreciate your presentation. I appreciate the information you provided us. like I said you you are providing one of those core basic services that we should all be enthusiastic about because that's what we're here to do we're not in Congress we're not in Sacramento we are here to provide these services that our residents can see every day and whether it's tree trimming streetlights I appreciate what you're doing actually I do have one last question just came to my mind in the budget we have an allocation for a street light maintenance worker and that's only one though right we have an existing person right

now that operates what we call a cherry picker right he's a one person so we needed to really have another person with him for safety and redundancy so we did ask for that position and thankfully we we got it through the general fund this time fantastic i i just yeah i wanted to

Phil Bacerra

make sure that I appreciate that so it's no that's great again thank you very

much director thank you one last thing if you don't mind there is about three million dollars in local street preventive maintenance in the budget item number six in the CIP so there is about three million dollars this time around for a preventive maintenance and those includes street resurfacing and

Phil Bacerra

you said that's in the CIP that's in the CIP okay okay perfect thank you for that

director sabla sure great thank you for those comments i believe we have uh councilmember lopez

yeah thank you mayor hi director saba um just wanted to you know start by thanking you and the department i do agree that public works is a core function of the city and um the majority of my work is dealing with public work so i just wanted to thank all of you for the work that you're doing um and i did have a question um I know that very little funding from the general fund goes towards public work. But one of the things that I saw that just kind of like sparked my curiosity was that from the general fund expenditure summary, I saw that for the 20-21 year,

there was 500,000 allocated, but for the proposed upcoming fiscal year, there's nothing allocated for sidewalk. So I just was curious like how that decision gets made and why were we able to allocate for this year but not for the upcoming year?

Yes, thank you council member for the question. As you can see, this is an item where the general fund has given us last year half a million dollar and that fund was brought to zero which means we didn't have that 500,000 from the general fund for sidewalk this time around. Okay. Thank you for that clarification.

I guess just as a follow-up, it could come from a restricted fund. Do I understand that correctly? Not sure about the question. Like, if we wanted to fund sidewalks from the general fund, could we move money from a restricted fund to help do that? You know, the restricted fund really is earmarked money for projects, and we can't move that money around and use it for sidewalks.

Like I mentioned earlier, there is a potential source of funds, this time around, from a carry forward, what we call a carry forward account from the Utah money, or the highway user tax account. that we're trying to close some projects and by closing some of the projects the money may become available to us what's left in these projects for sidewalk replacement okay thank you for that clarification

thank you council member i believe uh council member mendoza

is up yes thank you Thank you, Director Saba. I was wondering if the funds for the parks and recreation area, if the lighting includes the McChandler Tennis Center?

No, it doesn't. Not this time around. We do not have any funding for that project.

is is there any other funds that would within your department that could be allocated for that

or is it something that maybe i need to check with city manager a director she's referring to the water project that you're doing that's going to do those improvements to the yes it doesn't

include lights for the tennis courts. But it does include the reconfiguration of the tennis court for pickleball courts. But it doesn't include lights.

Because of the issue with Prop 218 and the use of water funds to do improvements, this particular site is and where tennis court is and we are going to be reconfiguring the tennis court therefore we're making some improvement to the tennis court but we can't add lights by using

different kind of funds okay um madam city manager i'm wondering if we could uh use some of the cannabis funds then because it's a it's a youth related activity and since some of that cannabis is to be used for or services for the youth we certainly

could look into alternative funding sources for the light I think the good news is that through the water agency and Nabil's efforts will be able to at least do the configurations for the pickleball courts yes yes that is good news and possibly it is property that it's under the responsibility of the Santa Ana Unified School District to actually maintain so maybe there's an opportunity to partner with them we could certainly talk about it at honor in our

ad hoc meeting as well all right all right thank you appreciate it that was um the only question i had thank you thank you council member

mayor pro tempana rosa thank you mayor sarmiento good evening

David Penaloza

director saba thank you for for joining us thank you um i i definitely had similar concerns to what my colleague councilman becerra said in regards to just always keeping in mind the core functions of the city We seem to lose for decades now, not just recently, always lost track of what exactly a local municipality is supposed to do, what kind of service we're supposed to provide to residents, especially in one with the highest tax rate in the county. I mean, it's not only the highest tax city, but one of the highest tax states. So it's very expensive to live here.

David Penaloza

and we as a tax paying resident they expect you know basic core functions to be there and fixed I don't know how many times I'm walking through my neighborhood jogging walking jacks and who's very happy about the dog park and I'm happy to see that in the capital improvements program and the things I I hear from residents it's you know that know me it's like fix our damn streets finish Bristol fix the damn potholes look at this sidewalk in front of my house and and yeah it's it's you know the tree fell on my car today this morning running I

David Penaloza

mean I've been jogging and I get a phone call from a resident tree just fell on like my car or hey my mom fell yesterday on a sidewalk you know what what she's hurt what do I do and it's it's constant it's these are the main concerns that our residents have and and every year I see less and less going there because you know we start getting into all these other issues that that you know our federal issues legislative are not essentially core

David Penaloza

functions of a city government I would like to see personally a solidified line item addressing our sidewalks because of, like the city attorney stated, of how costly it is to the city every single year. I don't know how many settlements I've approved or had to sit through because of these trip and fall cases because of these sidewalks. And I mentioned it last year and I'll say it again. My aunt, around Memorial Park, which the sidewalks got replaced thanks to our efforts at the last budget cycle, tripped and fell and knocked out her front teeth.

David Penaloza

I mean, this was a two-inch separation from the sidewalks. And, you know, we were able to be creative and find, you know, half a million dollars to address the sidewalks. But it shouldn't be one-time funds. These should be ongoing annual allocation because this city is 27 square miles and it's 150 years old. It shows its age just driving down any street. And so definitely want to keep that in mind always.

David Penaloza

It's just what are the core functions is filling up these potholes and, you know, and just the work that's done. I also want to make sure that we're communicating and coordinating with other departments. I know that recently I've emailed you and reached out over a project that never seems to end. It's, you know, they'll dig up, fix it, leave it pristine, and then two weeks later, they're out there and they just ripped up the entire sidewalk that was just laid out. And I'm like, what is going on?

David Penaloza

And I've seen this a couple of times throughout the city where it's just the same spot, just digging and digging and digging. and then they fix it and then they a month later there and so you've clarified that it was you know at first time it was one issue then the second time it was another issue but we should be able to communicate throughout you know if we're gonna dig up a stretch of sidewalk or street let's reach out to uh anybody who who is well this one happened to be the same department oh the same

department okay so it was the water department it was a lot of department it was it was a there was a service line versus a fire line. So it's two different lines.

David Penaloza

So when we do things like that, do we have inspectors out there that are kind of verifying, you know, okay, we dug up, let's look at, do we check every line or do we just address the one?

It's difficult. You know, the disturbance of the soil next to an existing line may cause the line to fail a week, a month after, if you touch it or you do some work next to it. You wouldn't see it immediately when you're doing the work, but it can come after you've done with the work, like what happened in this situation. Put the concrete and you're done. You walk away. In a month, another leak comes up, and that's what just happened.

David Penaloza

And so these things happen. So it's that one, and then I'm sure you'll remember, read away, same thing. when I was I was calling saying hey they're ripping up the street they just laid out last month and I'm like what so just to keep in mind is making sure that we're cross-checking across sure if it's just the water department or even if it's the private departments like the gas company or or I mean it's still we're still paying for it as residents you know that service so if one's gonna dig up we should all talk to each other a little more but with that said back to the comment

David Penaloza

I mentioned on Tuesday night is that we all sit up here and ask, ask, ask, and we know how to spend money, but that has to come from somewhere. When something is asked for, it has to be taken away from somewhere else, or it has to come from a revenue stream. And in public works, I know that our cell phone antennas generate revenue that are at our parks, correct? that goes to parks yes okay and our bus shelters do we currently how many bus

shelters approximately do we have in the city we have about 600 bus stops bus stops not all bus stops have shelters and not all bus stops have a bench and a

David Penaloza

trash can okay and the ones that do have shelters about 200 with shelters and we own all of those or are they okay and we own the furniture which is the bench the trash and the shelter it's okay cuz cuz I know that an easy way to generate revenue is is advertisement I know years ago we did have bus shelters with advertising on them we we still have that but not as many as we had before a lot of them over the last five ten years have been replaced with these hideous

David Penaloza

And I mentioned this last year as well, aluminum, weird looking, it looks just like a pile of sheet metal that just somebody dumped on the side of the road. They're ugly and they're an eyesore and they make the entire neighborhood around them look ugly.

Galvanized, yeah, that's right.

David Penaloza

You know which ones I'm talking about, correct? And so those, I know there aren't any way to advertise on them and try to generate revenue to fix our sidewalks and have that steady stream of money coming in. That's an easy way. I know that there's plans to replace some of those, right?

Yes. We are replacing the ones that are going along South Main, the galvanized ones, with a new design that has an advertising panel on them. So we're replacing those on the South Main. So we will be able to generate a little bit more money on the advertisement there. But we do have a vendor called Clear Channel that manages the advertisement on the bus shelters as we speak. And there is some fund that comes in to us for the maintenance, that pays for the maintenance of the bus shelters.

However, the maintenance of the bus shelters, as you know, previously was twice a week, maybe three times a week. That's not enough in Santa Ana. we need to maintain our bus stops almost on a daily basis. And that, what we had just done recently, we had a contract drawn out with a vendor named SureTech. And now I have that SureTech that maintains the bus shelters starting Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.

day in addition to what clear channel does or did in the past the other two days or two three days that so I have two contracts for the maintenance of the bus shelters now okay

David Penaloza

and which is great because that's again another big concern and and and constant I would call pinging of me from residences is these trash cans that are overfilled dumped over and just the the uncleanliness of these bus shelters but these are simple areas where we could uh put some more effort in it because it is 50 of our residents don't have own a vehicle and it is a uh they walk they walk to from their home to the bus shelter uh unfortunately they they run that risk of falling

David Penaloza

on these sidewalks um and now they have to to deal with the bus shelter that isn't you know clean And so I know that Councilmember Phan and Mendoza and I have been on that ad hoc, and that's something that we've been advocating for is just the upkeep of these facilities, which is great, and I'm happy to see that. That's a whole trash contract issue that we'll have to decide eventually. But just, you know, I know you're running a heavy department and very excited about the work you guys are doing.

David Penaloza

One question that I had is, I noticed that in your workforce changes, and I'm trying to locate myself here in my manual. There is a reduction of a project's manager from four to the proposed three for 21-22. Can you explain to me and just kind of walk me through what...

We're actually reclassifying that position. one of the four project managers will become an enterprise manager. So instead of having three projects manager, we'll have, I mean four, we'll have three project managers, and we are reclassifying that position to be a different name, actually. There's no funding changes. It will become an enterprise manager.

David Penaloza

Enterprise program manager.

Program manager, right.

David Penaloza

So can you just walk me through that difference of what would they?

You know, what has happened is because of the trash contract that we are negotiating right now, there will be quite a bit of additional responsibilities of the current project manager to manage the trash contract. So we believe that the scope of work is going to change. and in preparation for that we wanted to distinguish between a project manager to an enterprise manager so we're taking that position and kind of giving it a different title because it's exactly what this person would be doing

David Penaloza

is managing the enterprise not just projects so so that would be just you know to prepare for whoever is selected of the it's a current position that that person would oversee and maintain, make sure that everything that is asked of in this contract is carried out?

Right. And it becomes, you know, the solid waste is basically an enterprise in its own. Right. So we wanted that person to manage that enterprise.

David Penaloza

Okay. So currently that person is dedicated to trash contract and negotiations?

And the bus shelter and there's another program that is managed by that, which is the Banner program.

David Penaloza

Okay. And thank you for that clarification, Director Saba. I just, I think of projects that are going on in our city, citywide, and I want to make sure that we, that, I just wanted to make sure that it doesn't, this change isn't reducing the amount of, or I guess, or increasing a timeline for projects that we have throughout the city.

David Penaloza

I talked with City Manager Ridge about this all the time and how I work in the private sector and and and it's all about efficiency and quickly getting things done and I know government's slow by design because we're dealing with a lot of money that's not ours and it's the public's and we should be transparent and have everything out in the open so it is a slower process but I want to make sure that that just a project decreasing a project manager isn't going to have an effect on any projects that we have or isn't it will not okay because I mean you've heard me ask this before about the status on Bristol Street I

David Penaloza

know that has to do with funding for the most part but just things like that that from the public's perception and the public point of view it I mean they don't there's it's so hard to to try to relay that information or why certain things aren't getting completed as quickly as as we can I know a resident recently asked me about the the parks on Sander and McFadden and Ray and Myrtle I think it is projects that we got funded for and I believe we we appropriated dollars last year at the last budget cycle but they still haven't we haven't seen any any movement or it's been over you know and I know the

David Penaloza

pandemic of course slowed things down but do we have um like kind of just for that for that part yeah of why the construction hasn't begun it's been going on i believe it's still in design

but let me see.

I don't see it here, but I know it is under design. I will follow up on that for you.

It's under design right now. It's being designed as we speak. You know, that park has a unique feature where we actually received funding for a stormwater capture system. So below that park itself, we will have some type of a reservoir to capture a stormwater runoff and allow that water to percolate into the groundwater basin. So we got grant for that. Oh, that's actually... So that's being designed as we speak.

David Penaloza

Yeah, that's fantastic to know. I didn't know that and happy to hear that, which opens up another issue of why, you know, the importance of having infrastructure investment to do things like that. Because as we've all driven in Santa Ana, not only do we have to deal with the potholes,

David Penaloza

don't get me started on the OCTA contractor building the streetcar because that whole thing is a mess. And, you know, reason why we need inspectors to verify and check this work. But, I mean, all it takes is rainfall for 5, 10 minutes, and our streets are flooded. I mean, it shows the need for this, you know, things like that.

David Penaloza

Stormwater collection and just replacing our sewers and making sure that our streets are constantly being invested in. And that's basically it. I mean, I just want to make sure I reiterated what Councilman Becerra said in regards to the sidewalks. I mean, and it's not just about sidewalks. Sidewalks, we use that because it's just a basic, you know, simple feature of a city, of a city where 50% of our residents don't own a car. And the city with the most bus stops throughout Orange County when it comes to OCTA,

David Penaloza

So you think there's a lot of people walking. We should give them some damn good sidewalks to walk on and some clean bus shelters to sit in. I mean, it's basic. It's simple. So whatever we can do to find dollars to gear towards that direction and generate revenue as little as it might be with those bus shelter advertising opportunities. Opportunities, not opportunity. There we go again with the opportunities. But I'd, you know, again, just reiterate that and make sure that that's always in the back of your mind. And as we move forward in future years, we implement that wholeheartedly.

David Penaloza

But thank you, Director Saba. And that's it for now, Mr. Mayor. Great. Thank you.

Council Member Fan.

Thai Viet Phan

Thank you, Mayor. Hi, Nabil.

Hello.

Thai Viet Phan

First, thank you so much for the presentation. Yours was the only one that was very colorful and very helpful. I think residents in Santa Anita are very excited to have the synthetic turf and shade at the park. I know that's something that they've been asking for for a long time. So for me, again, I do support the sidewalks and all of that. I really think that is important.

Thai Viet Phan

So my question regarding, you know, Councilman Bracera brought up the street lightning, maintenance, and employees. So currently we have one person. and we add another individual for safety reasons, what happens when someone is out sick?

We do, for streetlights, we actually have a contractor that also supplement what we do right now. So the bigger projects, if someone hits a streetlight, and that happens all the time, by the way, those kind of activities are done by the contractor. What our streetlight maintenance person does, they look at, they drive it at night and to see if there is any lights that are out, and they respond to those and do the fixing, and some maintenance, some rewiring, but that's what we do. If someone is out right now, nothing gets done, or the portion of that task is delegated to the contractor to do.

So now we need someone to really back this person up and drive in pairs, and that's what we do for safety reasons.

Thai Viet Phan

so great uh well it's great to hear that you know we are adding another position my other question is i just blanked on it um let me get back to that because i cannot remember thank you no problem thank you any other requests to speak oh go ahead councilmember i remember um so this is actually regarding a lot of the bike lanes that we've been putting in, and it's very exciting. So we obviously have the Athens street sweeping contract. Are they also sweeping our bike lanes?

Thai Viet Phan

Because there's a concrete barrier, and then the inside part.

The bike lanes are being done by the landscape contractor. So they do it by hand right now. They blow it and pick up the trash, and that's how it's done right now it's not done by the street sweeper because it's a six foot lane where the sweeper doesn't fit but now it's done it's done manually okay um

Thai Viet Phan

i guess it's i don't know how efficient manually is especially since we're adding so many more bike lanes and that's a positive thing in our city so whether it's a you know car or i don't know what other ways other cities are using to clean up these buildings?

We're looking at options to see if there's the sweepers that are six foot wide, so we can do that. And we will have a conversation with Athens, who is the landscape sweeping contractor right now to see if they can provide that service.

Thai Viet Phan

Okay, great, because it would be very dangerous if you were on a bike and suddenly there's debris, right? in a 60 there's nowhere to go because there's concrete on both sides so my next question is when we're doing all this landscaping and some of the center medians i've seen over the last year just really bloom because we we updated those are we using you know native plants drought tolerant

plants you know how do we decide what to use there we are using drought tolerant plants and And the medians were designed by a professional landscaper. And we have used low water needs plants right now. And we're trying to keep them. The challenge, and I know that the condition of the first street medians was at issue one time. And the challenge there is we have pedestrians that cross and use the median as a way to between the two streets or so, two directions. So doing that kills the plants.

And we've had some theft of the plants, actually, just as were being planted. So it is a challenge. We're trying to catch up with it and plant those plants that we lost.

Thai Viet Phan

Thank you. and I didn't know there were median plant thefts, so that's good to know. I guess I would also recommend looking into maybe not so much just native plants, but just hard, I guess I wouldn't call it hardscapes, but if you look at very hot places like Vegas or, you know, you go out to Arizona, they do have really interesting median art and structures that are exciting and interesting but might not require all this watering and is very helpful when it's dealing with a drought that we're facing.

Thai Viet Phan

And potentially be less likely to be stolen if they're in concrete. So that's all my questions right now. Thank you so much, Mayor.

Great. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Becerra.

Phil Bacerra

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just real super quick. I forgot to mention this earlier. Earlier in the CIP on page 13 of it, you described the Fairview Bridge Project.

Yes.

Phil Bacerra

And in there, you described the bike lane as a Class 2 versus a Class 1. I just wanted to point that out and hopefully when we get to the point in the evening where we approve everything that that would be a condition to change that to Class 1 because I know that when that project came before us with the MND, I had made that very clear that we wanted to see a class one bike lane along that stretch there my engineers are looking into

it and it is a hundred foot wide bridge and i we we are working on it we'll see if we can provide the protected bike lane but that's what we'll come back to you along with the renderings i know you're interested in looking at how it look from the outside and the inside so we're going to bring that back to you to make a decision what rendering you like or what design well the aesthetics i hope

Phil Bacerra

that you're involving the community it's not i mean of course the council that's what we're doing okay perfect so all right that that was my comments thank you great thank you for that and

i don't see anybody else uh uh director saba so thank you for the presentation i just simply wanted to tell you um i'm very supportive of the additional uh streetlight maintenance worker as well. Thank you. You know, and I think as we talk about core municipal functions, that's a very fluid, it's a very fluid term. You know, we're not just responsible for sidewalks and roads. And I mean, we're responsible for, you know, the quality of life of so many people, the safety of so many people. So we deliver many services. And I always think we can walk and chew gum.

We can do a lot of different things, you know, effectively and collaboratively together. But one of the things I know you're going to be looking at and working very closely with the staff during Revive is broadband. So maybe that is something that wasn't considered a core municipal function, but it will be. I just think that the future is now a lot less hardscape and basic things like that, basic deliveries of service. but it's going to be, you know, sort of that ability for our residents to be able to connect to the Internet. And so that's going to be a huge part of, you know, your effort, your team's effort.

So please be on the lookout for that. And, you know, with that, I think, you know, we're certainly grateful for all the effort that you all make to connect with the community. You've had a lot of community engagement in your town halls, and that's something that's very well received. So thank you for that presentation. I think we're down to our last one.

You have made it to the last department presentation.

And I hear it's a one-pager or a half-pager.

We can make it a one-pager if you would like that. So I think our finance director is pretty tired these days. But finance director, Catherine Downs.

Thank you. You're in the home stretch. Yay.

Okay.

Okay. Well, thank you for your thoughtful attention that you've given to each department throughout this public hearing. We do appreciate the feedback that you've given us. I am going to quickly run through my personal finance department so that you can get an idea of what we do there. We have 64 full-time employees and 21 part-time employees in finance. We provide internal services to other departments as well as service to the public on the first floor of City Hall. Our services of course include accounting, centralized purchasing

for the entire city, payroll, treasury services including water billings, collecting locally levied taxes, cashiering, and investing the city's idle cash. And finally, central services includes reprographics and mail service. The management and support section includes the budget office and we provide staff support for the Measure X Citizens Oversight Committee. I would definitely like to thank our budget office staff, including budget manager Waldo Barella for the many hours that went into the documents before you during each of these budget meetings.

Our staff strives to make improvements every year to gather, analyze, summarize, and present an enormous amount of data.

With that, funding for the finance department activity accounts for 1% of the citywide budget or 11.6 million this is primarily in the general fund this last year we were able to support the City Council's strategic priorities by organizing and facilitating compliance spending and reporting for the federal cares act allocation developing a plan and assembling a team via competitive process to refinance the city's pension debt and save money continual improvements to our internal budget process including moving away from

incremental budgeting and we continued progress to implement the new water billing software and eliminate the salary matrix and we implemented new open book software to make financial records easily accessible on the city's website our goals for this upcoming year is to now organize and facilitate compliance spending and reporting for the federal ARPA allocation. Last year it was CARES, this year it's ARPA. We have so many wonderful acronyms. And then to complete that pension debt refinancing, of course subject to the city council approval,

and supporting cross-departmental efforts to balance the budget. We'd also like to work on proposing a November 2022 ballot measure to improve equitability for the business tax calculation. And we want to look at continual process improvement, including multiple system upgrades. So with that, I'd like to give you the opportunity to ask any questions specific to the finance department before I move on to back to the overall budget. Great. Thank you for that,

Director Downs. Let me go ahead and bring it back if there's any questions specific to your

presentation seeing no takers I don't see anybody on the screen either so why don't you go ahead and can you just roll right into the options you got it so we

have a proposed budget ordinance before you this evening based on your said the input we received from City Council on at the May 24th budget workshop we have two options to amend the proposed ordinance if directed by City Council tonight. First I'd like to point out that the proposed general fund budget is balanced. Available resources include expected revenue and the general fund balance that's available for spending. The proposed spending of $353.8 million

would leave 159,000 of available resources in the general fund. Of course this does not include the 58.2 million in reserve pursuant to the City Council's 18% reserve policy. So option A before you tonight and certainly we can take any direction from the City Council but option A would postpone a Charter amendments ballot measure to November 2022. It would increase the legal defense fund by a hundred thousand for a total of three hundred thousand. It would provide a hundred thousand of sponsorships

for local arts and cultural events as well as a part-time Vietnamese community liaison. So if city council were to choose option A then the city would spend less of the available general fund balance for spending and there would be 559,000 of available resources remaining. Option B is nearly identical to option A except for one item. The Vietnamese community liaison would become a full-time position as opposed to a part-time position and if the City Council chooses option B there would be

469,000 of available resources remaining. So that concludes our prepared presentation, as long as it was, and we're available to answer any additional questions and take direction from the City Council.

If I may just make one final modification that came up at the last meeting. It was the addition of a third executive assistant, so that would also need to be incorporated in the option

pricing out it would be roughly 80,000 great Wow so all those comments that we made were condensed into this matrix here just kidding I know I know it's I know it's very high level but but that that was that was great thank you for the short presentation let me go ahead and bring it back to the council mayor

David Penaloza

pro tem Thank You mayor Sarmiento and thank you direct endowments for the presentation very informative as always with that said I thank you for laying out the options that we have here I know that the the charter amendments was something that that I passionately worked with that worked on last year and did not happen but I have no issue moving it to the general 22 election, given that that would save us a significant amount of money.

David Penaloza

And if we condense it with that election, which that just personally with my colleagues know that that is fine by me.

David Penaloza

I'm just trying to understand the way the options are laid out. Why are the increase to the Legal Defense Fund and local arts and culture and community liaison Vietnamese. Why are they in parentheses? Is it because, and the others aren't?

Because they're spending. So yeah, it's, it's, um, if you, uh, money that's saved is a positive number, which would be delaying the charter amendments ballot measure and money that is spent is a negative number.

David Penaloza

So the estimated resources, less proposed spending, that's okay. I was just trying to understand how it was laid out here. I know that in the other line items, that's when it's in parentheses, that's negative usually, but okay. So same idea. Very good. Good. In your, are these funds, are they one-time increase right now from the general fund?

Which items are you looking at?

David Penaloza

The legal defense fund, the arts and culture events, or the Vietnamese community liaison.

I do not see those as one-time items. I see those as recurring items.

David Penaloza

So those are slated for reoccurring items to appear for the next however number of years?

That is my understanding. Is that correct?

I take a little bit of a different interpretation. Some are and some are not. So you have in the past temporarily increased legal defense fund, but then it's reverted back to the lower balance. So I don't see the local arts and culture event or the legal defense fund because you budget a year at a time. So you may want a different amount in a future year. Obviously, any personnel, unless you make some changes, that would be an ongoing cost that you would see come back in the future budget years.

David Penaloza

Okay. And with this, we would also add the executive assistant, third executive assistant at about $80,000 a year, you said?

The assistant city manager thinks I have the wrong amount there.

I think we need to include a benefit amount for it.

David Penaloza

Okay, I was going to say it, so it seems a little low for that. And which, I mean, again, I stay on the same tune that I would rather we use those funds for an executive assistant, or an executive assistant to put into an ongoing sidewalk program or whatnot, where we could something that provides a service to a resident versus a service to the City Council with that said I want to come back to the first very first page of this presentation director downs where you have the pie graphs

David Penaloza

laid out which I'm sure you worked on there's trying to find myself here again

David Penaloza

so with the estimated 21 22 general fund revenue we have 340.9 million and on the following page we have the proposed 21-22 general fund expenditure at 353.8 million that is correct so that is about a roughly a 13 million dollar difference and that we're spending about 13 million dollars more than the revenue that's coming in that is correct so how um given that

David Penaloza

the ARPA dollars are one-time monies the measure X is is slated to go away in the next not tomorrow but in the next couple of years how do we how how do we address that right now I mean how are we is this or is this a balanced budget the the

recurring portion of the budget is not balanced because the recurring revenue is less than recurring expenditures but there are some good reasons for that that are temporary in nature one uh you know having to do with the pandemic and some of our loss of revenues we do expect some of those to bounce back during the next year or two in addition to that we are working on the pension refinancing which should help to close some of that recurring gap in

future years so there's there's multiple things that we can be doing one of the when we have this available general fund balance for spending above your reserve policy level it gives us time to make course corrections so that we can bring the recurring portion of the budget back into balance.

David Penaloza

Okay. So we're hoping that as we move forward that that $13 million gap will close with the reasons that we stated.

As we saw in our 10-year outlook, we think that we're probably going to continue to have a small deficit roughly about 2% deficit of recurring items over the next couple of fiscal years and then with that with the payoff of some debt we might find ourselves back into a more balanced situation and that doesn't even include the potential pension refinancing savings that we have okay thank you for

David Penaloza

that. Thank you for clarifying that. I just, you know, it's hard to want to add, you know, numerous positions to the, as ongoing expenses currently when we are, you know, looking at $13 million more in expenditures than the revenue coming in. So right now, where are we getting that 13 million dollars from it's a one-time resource which is your

available general fund balance in excess of your reserve policy threshold level which is what that fund is meant for well the reserve is meant for emergencies or you know extraordinary circumstances economic downturn etc etc we're not even proposing to tap into that that's going to be that that that is held at the 18 percent of general fund revenue this is the amount above and beyond that that is available for spending which is 13 million which is that amount that we on

David Penaloza

top of the the reserve we decided to put aside and save okay which is good I mean that's you know what we want I know been hearing from other cities nearby that are in a lot worse shape. We're not in the best shape, but I know that, you know, it could be worse. And I'm thankful that it's not. And there's a lot of things. But I, given the fact that this is like that, you know, it's hard to add these ongoing expenses without knowing exactly what that uncertainty is going or what that amount is if it's

David Penaloza

going to close entirely over the next couple of months or not so the time those those are the comments I have if I had to pick any one of those extra bodies again it'd be the Vietnamese community liaison because that is something that is is has been needed needed for a long long time in our city and I thank Councilmember Fan for her leadership on that.

David Penaloza

But at the time, that's the only one I could personally support as an added body. The third executive assistant, I currently don't see the need, and because of that $13 million difference, and I just, you know, we should, because it's a service being provided to us, and we're also providing a service to the residents and a connection to us, but it just doesn't make sense at the moment to me. But that's it for now. Mr. Mayor?

Great. Thank you for those comments. I don't see anybody on the line with their hand raised. Anybody?

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

Mr. Mayor, I have my hand raised.

Oh, sorry about that. Go ahead, Councilmember Hernandez. Mr. Mayor Pro Tems computer's not working. Just kidding.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

No worries, thank you. Well, thank you for the informative presentation and really happy to see the options that you presented. I know that there's some challenges that we're facing

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

and maybe that's something that we'll have to address at a later time, these solutions to how we can offset the imbalance that we're having but I do think the Vietnamese community liaison is something that that we should prioritize we should have a full-time Vietnamese community liaison one thing that we can strengthen in this city is cultural competency so I think that really helps us set the bar as a city that is inclusive in addition to that I I think that arts and culture events is extremely important because it's a big part of intervention and prevention and

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

another priority that I do want to champion is the legal defense fund I'm happy to see that it's there I would like to see that the community liaison and the immigration legal defense fund that these items are items that are permanent could you confirm with me if this is something that will be recurring I'm not sure if you already answered that question

Yes, Council Member, we answered that. So of the additional ones, and I do have the amount for the Executive Assistant, it's $108,000. The personnel additions would be reoccurring unless we were to take some action in the future. But for the other ones, we do budget on a year-to-year basis. So those would not necessarily be a guaranteed reoccurring

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

about okay um i do think that that's another um priority that that we should that we should um that we should not fold when it comes to having fully staffed executive assistants i i know that for some of my colleagues when they came into office that we had four now we have two i can only imagine how much more difficult it is to sustain that especially given that we have a very proactive council um i'd argue more proactive than the uh than our predecessors so um i know it's probably presenting some challenges how difficult would it be for us madam city manager to find the

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

funding um for us to to have that 108 000 well you in the options that are before you right now the

the bottom line on both of them is a reduced use of fund balance which means in either scenario you would tap into that, which would just be increasing the amount that we were proposing for you to basically use in the first place. So you could get that out of, if you look on option A, can you put option A or option B back up? So when you take the amount that is already programmed in the budget for charter amendments as an expense and you add that back in you have that 660 000 that you you're basically using to do these other

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

expenditures does that make sense council member yes it does thank you for the clarification i support that i think that this is a good investment for us and for the city

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

that concludes my cotton my comments madam city manager thank you thank you council member

Hernandez I think we have Councilmember Fan and then Lopez thank you mayor and

Thai Viet Phan

Kat thank you so much for your presentation I know it's a lot of work and we've all had a lot of questions over the last few months so just to get to options a and B first of course I think everybody knows I'm very supportive of a full-time Vietnamese community liaison and part of it is isn't it isn't about just Ward 1 it's really about a community that has just been neglected for decades the fact that we started Little Saigon here in

Thai Viet Phan

Santa Ana and now people forget that we're a part of Little Saigon is I think a travesty and so this Vietnamese community liaison is not only going to do translation which we're lacking not because of maliciousness but just because we lack that infrastructure and someone to push for it to happen but also to do community outreach i'm really excited to look forward to somebody who's able to go out into the community and talk to residents talk to church leaders and temple leaders and non-profits and really get folks to engage.

Thai Viet Phan

I also believe that the Vietnamese Community Liaison is going to be helpful in our economic development toolbox. As we look to find ways to bring revenue into the city, we need to engage our entrepreneurs in the Little Saigon community, in the Vietnamese community, who are looking to build businesses, to open businesses, and to hire folks, but they're not getting that engagement here in the city of Santa Ana. We really need to take advantage of that and to do that having someone who's dedicated to working with the community is crucial. And on top of that I really want to thank my

Thai Viet Phan

colleagues Mayor Potem, Mayor Councilmember Becerra, and my other colleagues Councilmember Hernandez for supporting this Vietnamese community liaison because one of my biggest fears after we settled this California Voting Rights Act lawsuit, after we went to district voting, and after a hard-won campaign in which they used slurs against me, called me a communist, and said we might have too many Asians on this dais that if I'm not here, or another Asian-American council member's not here,

Thai Viet Phan

or if we don't have another Vietnamese American council member, other than Councilman Brissetta, of course, that the community would go back to being ignored, that the community would go back to lacking services, that the community would go back to losing access to resources, and a full-time position that is in our budget, someone who is dedicated to doing this work every day is going to ensure that no matter how the politics in the city goes, no matter where the political winds go, that we're still going to have that community outreach and engagement. So, you know, I am very supportive of this.

Thai Viet Phan

And I also do want to remind my colleagues that the $150,000 is an estimate, correct? So after we allocate this $150,000, our wonderful HR director would go out, working with all of you, talking to other cities, maybe the city of Garden Grove, who has a position, like a community liaison, and develop a, I guess, a title and classification. Yes, thank you, Madam City Manager. And then it would come back to us and we would vote on this classification. So it could be less than $150,000.

Absolutely.

Thai Viet Phan

Great. So I just wanted to remind everyone that it's an estimate and that we will have multiple steps before we move forward with that. I also want to, you know, I guess I want to acknowledge that there are concerns about what is considered a core municipal service. First, I'd like to say I'm very grateful that we're a charter city and that gives us more leeway to do a lot of work. Something like sponsoring local arts and culture events, I think Santa Ana, we all know, is known for arts and culture.

Thai Viet Phan

It is not just a community driver, it's not just about arts and culture, but it's also an economic development tool. We have jobs that are related to arts and culture. It draws in tourists. It draws in visitors. It brings people into our downtown to go see our arts and culture and spend in our city. So I think an investment of $100,000 is going to be something that continues to drive economic development in the city, similar to the Vietnamese community liaison. And finally, well, a couple more things. I also want to just support Mayor Pro Tem's, I guess, agreement,

Thai Viet Phan

because I know he and Councilman Bissetta worked very hard on the charter ad hoc last year. I actually sent in some comments about it, too, and very supportive of pushing it to 2022, when it will be, I think, $370,000 was the estimate we got.

I think the clerk has an updated estimate that she could provide you with.

It'll just take me a moment to look that up, but I have that.

Thai Viet Phan

It's okay, but it's less than $660,000. So, you know, I'm very supportive of that. And finally, you know, speaking about core municipal services, I am very supportive of increasing the legal defense fund by $100,000 and keeping that as a part of the budget and making sure the legal Defense Fund is a line item in our budget. I understand that as some of my colleagues say, well, a core municipal service is just sidewalks or public safety. But I think a core municipal service is ensuring that our residents feel safe, that our residents feel included, and our residents

Thai Viet Phan

feel that they're a part of this community. And when we talk about 40% or more of our residents being foreign-born, and that we are a proud sanctuary city in a proud sanctuary state, looking at what the federal government is doing in demonizing immigrants and separating families and tearing children from their parents at the border. I think it's incumbent on all of us to stand up and say we are not going to wait for an ineffectual Congress to do something about immigration before we stand up for our residents and our community. So as someone who has provided

Thai Viet Phan

provided pro bono legal services to an asylum seeker, a mother who experienced sexual assault, whose children experienced sexual assault and fleeing violence from her home country to come to America with a chance at a potential better life and to know exactly what it feels like for her husband to call saying, I don't know where she is because she was picked up from ICE and working with Orange County Justice Fund and attorneys at the Public Law Center over the weekend and talking to community members and teachers of the children to try

Thai Viet Phan

to get her out on bail, that is a horrifying scenario that our residents face every day. And any small amount that we can do to ensure that our residents feel an ounce of safety or even has legal representation, I think is not just a core municipal service, but I think it's a moral value that we have to uphold. So I am very supportive of this issue. I really appreciate all of your hard work in laying this out for us, and I really believe that many of these will help ensure that we build economic development and develop a more inclusive city.

Thai Viet Phan

So thank you so much for your presentation.

And I did want to just add that it was $360,000, yes.

Great. Thank you for those comments, Councilmember Fan.

David Penaloza

Mayor Sarmiento, just to, if I may, just really quick, to indulge me with those charter amendments, Madam City Clerk, because I don't want us to stray from it. That was, if I recall, it was if we, because at the time there were 22 proposed changes, and that cost was if we did each one individually as a ballot question, correct? It wasn't, because I know that you said that if we could reduce the question, like the charter amendments to two or three questions, it wouldn't be that costly. I just want, I was trying to remember.

Yeah, and that's a great question. Thank you, Mayor Pro Temp. so with one ballot measure it's 360 000. so each additional question would be an additional approximately 92 000 dollars okay each question thank you you're welcome great

it's a valuable question each one each one um i think it's council member lopez and then becerra

yes thank you mayor sarmiento and um director downs thank you so much for the presentation i value all of the work that your staff has done i i can't even imagine um but you know i do want to share a couple of comments um the first one being that i'm i'm really happy to see the legal defense funds uh be increased by a hundred thousand dollars and i do think that it needs to be a line item in our budget i'm not worried about um the year-to-year basis of it because as a council we have the decision um we have the power to change that if we need to and so i would like

to see it be included as a line item in the budget um another thing that i wanted to talk about is um thank you for adding that third the third staff secretary for the city manager's office i think it's going to be um i know it's very much needed um and so thank you for adding that another thing that i want to support is uh the community um the vietnamese full-time liaison um i think that if we're concerned about funds we need to prioritize um the vietnamese full-time liaison opposed to like the equity coordinator if that is the issue um and like council member fan said once one of

things that happens with HR is you have to create this position as we've heard it'll come back to us um you know and from my experience in HR you know you don't hire someone right away unless you already know someone um and so I think you know the 150 is as they stated um an estimate and so I don't think we're going to use the entire 150. um so you know those are all the comments

that I have for now. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilmember Becerra. Thank you,

Phil Bacerra

Mr. Mayor. Every time we talk about the budget or we get to this point, I go back to reading the city's mission statement. 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 residents. So far tonight, my colleagues have all talked about what are core services. And I think at one point, one of my colleagues made mention of, you know, we can walk and chew gum. I think what's important to understand when we're talking about municipal operations

Phil Bacerra

and what services we're providing, an analogy that I would use would be, you know, don't redecorate your kitchen if you've got a big hole in your roof, right? I mean, you kind of have to look at the priorities. It's not that you don't want to have a nice kitchen. but you kind of don't want to be rained on when you're in your new kitchen. So to me, when I look at what are these core services, we need to look at what a city's role and responsibility is. You know, the feds are not going to pave our streets. The state is not going to do our sidewalks. That's what our role is. And I think that for us, as we're looking at a budget,

Phil Bacerra

the way I look at it and the way I've talked to Catherine and Christine about this, we need to look at it as once we have the very very basics in place then we can look at these other services that we all want to provide it's not that we don't want to but you know i think sometimes people forget that we don't have a money tree you know at city hall we're not just oozing with money i mean we have the highest sales tax in all of orange county and it's going to expire at some point. And so today we talk about a structural deficit of almost 13 million.

Phil Bacerra

And by the way, I want to thank our city manager and our finance director for presenting a balanced budget. But as the discussion with Mayor Pro Tem was ensuing, that's exactly the issue. We have a balanced budget today because we are taking money that is not a recurring revenue. I keep talking about growing revenue because at some point we all want the city to be resilient. But it's not going to be when we just keep spending without paying any attention to the balance sheet we keep doing that well this is important well this is important I won't disagree with my colleagues about some of the things that

Phil Bacerra

they claim are important I won't but can we afford all of these things and that's what we need to really be much more scrutinizing about and look at and I think that you know I'll tell you this going into next year I don't want to see a budget that has a structural deficit. I don't. I don't want to see it. I know that we can dip into our funds to a certain point, but we need to at some point exert discipline from this dais. We were elected to do that. The mayor said earlier, one of the most essential tasks of this council is a budget. And if we don't take that seriously, we're busy off in the clouds about all these

Phil Bacerra

fluffy things that we'd like to provide everybody because someone asked for it, we need to be We need to be judicious. We need to be responsible and really look at what we can provide. I want us to think big. I want us to be transformative. But again, I don't want to ignore the big gapping hole in our budget. So we need to look at that as we go forward. So like I said, next year I don't want to see us use duct tape and paper clips to try to come together and say, Ta-da! We've got a balanced budget. I don't want to see that. With that being said, I do support the Vietnamese community liaison, but I support it in a part-time capacity.

Phil Bacerra

What I'd like to see is for us to hire the person and let's see how it works. Let's see if there are enough tasks. I believe there will be, but I want to approach this with caution. I've supported it as a council member Phan stated earlier. I've been very vocal of making sure that we have translation services for Vietnamese, making sure that we have better and effective communication to our Vietnamese residents. But in this particular position, and again, I think it's going to be successful. I really do. But I do want to see us, you know, let's not cannonball into the pool.

Phil Bacerra

Let's take our time and let's go through it very cautiously. So I do support that. And at this point right now, I think really it really boils down to as we go forward wanting to be a resilient city, a truly resilient city, we need to be mindful of making sure because our residents don't get to spend into the red at the levels that we're doing. we're not setting a good example. We need to live within our means. I think right now is a very interesting time. We're coming out of a pandemic. We've got this infusion of money coming from the feds and that's wonderful. And I think I want to credit staff for all the work that you're doing

Phil Bacerra

to give us the guide the guidelines and the guidance really to to get to a point where we can really do some wonderful things for our residents and our businesses. But I would just say right now as far as what's before us I would be more supportive of what was it option a at this point in time so that's my comments thank you great

thank you for those comments is there anybody else on the line I think everybody spoke did Mendoza speak already councilmember Mendoza you know mayor

sarmento go ahead i have a question um do we know how much was allocated to the arts and culture last year

council member we did use some cares dollars to go to that but in the arts and culture budget that exists in community development there was not a separate allotment

Okay, thank you.

Great. Thank you. Good question. You know, maybe what we do is because this is so important, this is the end of the whole budget discussion. We go person by person. I think the only other person on the line who hasn't spoken. Councilmember Mendoza, do you want to go ahead and chime in?

No, I don't have any questions. They've been answered as we go along. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. And I think before we go, if we have to do an extra round, but I think we've all kind of spoken almost ad nauseum about everything. So I'll go ahead and just take a crack at this.

It's funny. I remember when we did have four executive assistants, a government affairs staff person, and, you know, an assistant city manager. And this was all when I came on the council in 2007. Then the recession hit, and the entire organization just contracted, right? And while we were going through that recession, the population continued to increase, needs continued to increase. So, you know, I remember a pre-recession staff level in the city, and we really, really did ask a lot of people to do a lot more with a lot less.

And so, you know, I see this right now as a moment where any council has to reflect the values of its residents. And I think for, again, I think Council Member Phan said it well, I think the whole definition of being, you know, municipal government that delivers services, we could just do potholes and sidewalks and tell everybody that's it. That's all we do. That is our basic function and maybe provide police and a jail and, you know, everybody else just, you know, forget about your needs and your wants and your quality of life. You know, that's all we're going to do.

I think, you know, anything evolves, and the way we deliver services evolves as well. So I think looking at these two options, you know, in my mind, it's funny. I would think I was having a conversation with, you know, with the city manager about what's forecast in the next few years. And I think if you look at most of the economic indicators, there is this pent-up demand for people who are going to be investing and looking at investing in the city. I see the arts and culture as an economic development opportunity. I see that as an investment in the city.

I see that as something that's going to draw people to us that is very unique to the county that many other cities don't have. You know, I see that we have a need in having so many people that are here that are undocumented that spend money in our cities, that are our neighbors, that have kids in schools with our kids.

And, you know, it's funny because when we talk about broken, you know, pavement, potholes, sidewalks, what does it mean when a person or a family member or a neighbor is displaced and leaves their community and you, you know, you displace and you disrupt a neighborhood and a community? What's the cost? Because there is a cost to that. When a family leaves, when a family is separated, when a family lives with uncertainty, there is a cost. And I think it could be quantified. So all these things have impacts. It's not just simply wanting to be benevolent or wanting to be compassionate.

There are economic consequences to disrupting a neighborhood and disrupting a community. And I think what we've tried to do here is understand that there is, you know, something that is tangible when you lose these things. I think there's a tangible gain by having somebody who's culturally competent, like delivering services like a, you know, a Vietnamese community liaison. I think we've all spoken about it. You know, we finally have somebody who reflects part of what our population in Santa Ana is. And that's a really good thing.

but it won't matter to have somebody who's reflective of the community without having the support to wrap it with. And, you know, I think that's what Council Member Fann and I think many others have talked about. So, you know, I just see this as a moment where we're receiving close to $130 million in federal stimulus. The forecasting, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, Director Downs, but I think what we had estimated the budget shortfall was going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 19 million, if I'm not mistaken. And then we saw, you know, the cannabis, you know, infusion sales, you know, weren't as bad as we expected.

So we were forecasting a much more dismal moment here.

Absolutely.

And so it's not that, you know, things are completely balanced or we had a surplus coming out, but the whole is smaller than what we expected. So I think given all those things and given that we have been asking our staff to do a lot with very little, you know, and we're looking at growing, we're looking at having this injection of support and the forecast looking very positive. And, you know, look, I do a little bit of, you know, research on the economy. I received my degree in economics from Berkeley.

And I think what it tells me is that if you look at the parallels of what we're coming out of compared to what people were coming out of in the first pandemic in, you know, in the early 1900s, there's a pattern there. There's a really clear pattern of what's going to happen, what spending patterns are going to look like, what living patterns are going to look like. So if we see that, there will be growth, and there will be robust growth. So I'm pretty confident that that's going to happen. I do want to find a way that we can have the Legal Defense Fund, a couple of things,

remove that separation of DACA because I think it already envelops DACA recipients. And I know there was some question about whether or not they had a separate funding source, but maybe what we do is we just envelop anybody who's eligible for the deportation defense fund.

We can easily combine that, and it doesn't require any additional dollars because you have it programmed.

That'd be great. And the other thing is maybe make it a recurring line item, just because I do see that the adjustment in amounts can be made, but to the extent that it comes back to us. So I do want to join my other colleagues to say that it does remain as its own line item like we have others that just come back to us and we adjust in time at the moment. So I do want to say on the charter amendments, you know, I did hope, and I think I'm the one who brought it up to the clerk,

that we were looking at doing charter amendments this year so it could coincide with the special recall election for the governor. But we don't even know when that election is going to be, and we have to work backwards, 88 days, and then we have to prepare for it. So I do think it's probably not going to happen. It'll be difficult. The timing is going to be tough. And especially with your estimate of what it costs per charter question, that is going to be a very, very expensive decision to make. So I think the additional time will allow us to narrow down what the charter revisions that we want to introduce on the ballot.

So I am also supportive of option B. I do think that the 150 is a little padded. I think we might be able to come back with a lower number. and, you know, given the context of where we're in, you know, I'm supportive of option B as well. But I know we have some additional questions. I'll go ahead and see if there's anybody else who wants to speak. I know Mayor Pro Tem has some additional comments and if anybody else wants to comment as well.

David Penaloza

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento.

David Penaloza

I just had some, I guess, clerical questions mostly on just logistics for the added positions. and it's probably a conversation for another time or how it will come back to us but with the third executive assistant that would obviously be under the city manager's office and city manager's budget I'm with the Vietnamese community liaison what department would that go into have we decided that's an

excellent question with some of the roles it actually but probably be coordinating closely with multiple departments so for economic development efforts they would be partnering with the community development department where economic development resides for building a neighborhood association that is part of the neighborhood services which is within the planning department and then certainly any of the the key outreach and forming relationships with the vietnamese media and everything that would be within the city

David Penaloza

manager's office that is that is great to hear um i i do want to make sure that that when that time comes we do I guess provide criteria direction of what we would like to see with the Vietnamese community liaison and I'm sure my colleague Councilmember Phan is is light years ahead of me on in that but I want to make sure that it's we're not doing the hiring it's it's it's city manager correct correct okay

David Penaloza

Okay, great. And in regards to the Legal Defense Fund, I want to make sure that I, you know, it's not about, you know, I'm not sitting up here to say we're only here to provide sidewalks, parks, and police, and that's it, nothing else. No, it's what can we provide these things, but at the expense of what? You know, when we look at a budget that's where we're taking $13 million from our reserves and where we don't have a line item for sidewalks, something as basic,

David Penaloza

and we say sidewalks because there's a million other things that are basic that we don't have line items for. It's like, should we be increasing these amounts? I know that two years ago I worked very hard and lobbied some of our older colleagues and I'm sure Councilmember Sarmiento remembers in increasing that amount from 100,000 to 200,000 and if we I'm sure the mayor remembers one of our colleagues hid in the restroom you know for that discussion because she did not she was hiding and I'm pretty sure we could all take a wild guess of who that

David Penaloza

was no longer here but you know that that happened i i it's something that's very important and we do have a community that is very much in need of of that service and i'm happy that we've been leaders in the community and thanks to community efforts that have that have advocated for that we we are we are there my question um and i'm not sure who would answer this madam city manager or city attorney is with the Leo Defense Fund I know that we currently provide that that paint that $200,000 to one group right I believe you're correct but

we did we did a competitive process because you had requested that when we increased the amount and so they were selected and I believe we did only go with one entity for that which are which ones okay

David Penaloza

Daisy will have the answer for you okay and while she comes up I I just I know that earlier in the year we we agreed to a two-year agreement correct yes mayor

pro-tem we have a two-year agreement with the immigrant defenders Law Center

David Penaloza

which started in March or February April April of this year so just last month or two months ago yes so that would be a two-year agreement to expire in 2023

David Penaloza

yeah yes April of 2023 can we all add two to one one plus two is three so you know my concern is is you know we're we're adding a lot of things during a pandemic when we had a lot of revenue shortfalls uh which you know is troubling it's like we should try to and the fact that we just has had a two-year agreement we went into a two-year agreement with immigrant defenders what was it what was the law center law center so is this the same law center that will be

receiving this additional 100 grand the way there exists a agreement currently stands it's for that fixed amount so you would have to amend their agreement if you wanted to add it to this provider or we could do an RFP if you wanted to add

David Penaloza

an additional provider okay because I I know that with with a lot of these these organizations and I want to make sure that we're not just you know blindly shelling out an additional hundred thousand dollars I want to make sure that it's Santa and a residents and I know I asked this question last year when when I when we not I when we raised the the amount from 100 to 200,000 is how many Santa and a residents in that service which I believe was 40 do you

remember they don't remember the number but we can get you a report so that you can see the increase in services from 100,000 to 200,000 and what that gets to you and then you can decide at that point if you think that's valuable to add an amount to that vendor or if you want to outsource it to someone else

David Penaloza

okay because I know that we we can't be possibly be the only city that this organization services I'm sure they service cities across the country so I just want to make sure that the taxpayer the Santa Ana taxpayer dollars are staying with Santa Ana residents that need it because I know there's there's a ton of work here that needs to be done and I know there's a ton of residents that could use the service and I'm happy we're providing it to them I'm just concerned here with the with the process of doing it now when we just signed a two-year agreement just last month and you know a month into the agreement

David Penaloza

we're gonna you know move into giving another hundred thousand dollars from reserves not just you know money that we have so if you could provide information to that to me certainly councilmember and you know when the dollars are

budgeted we would look to see who has the capacity to take on that additional amount and provide services specifically to benefit Santa Ana residents so this particular organization might have capacity to do it and we have a history working with them or we might have to go out to an RFP and bring in a another

David Penaloza

type of legal service okay because we're also are we auditing the these or these

organizations that receive these funds they do provide reports and we've brought them to you before that tells the like the numbers that they've assisted and they'll share some of the stories and certainly they don't want to you know out anybody that's not interested in having that their information shared but we certainly get information on the numbers of family served. The one thing to remember is it's lengthy services. So to work through one of these issues, the immigrants, a law defender center is working with an individual and it can take months and years to achieve.

David Penaloza

Right, yeah, years. I mean, I have family members that have gone through the legal process. I know my mom's brother right now is like on year eight after she submitted for him and it's a long process and like I said I know there's a need. I just don't want to see, I know a lot of these organizations you know they have, they do, they're not, they don't have robots doing this work for them. I know that the not only is there a legal service being provided to our residents but there's also a lot of support staff that more than likely you know work at these

David Penaloza

at these centers and organizations i just would hate to see you know three months from now see some executive director i don't know how again i don't know how this particular organization works get some a raise or a fat raise and see these extra hundred thousand dollars go to to staff in raises versus actual legal hours being put into to help the senate and residents because that's you know, I don't, we should be auditing, we should be, I know that the report was provided

David Penaloza

early last year, but if we could move into having that done maybe annually by this organization, I know that with CDBG dollars, I mean, the nonprofits go through a lot of work to get that money. I mean, and we know where it's getting spent and what's happening, and they got to do it every time they come asking for funds because it's not going to end here you know to this year it's a hundred thousand dollars next year it's going to be another hundred thousand dollars and the following year it's going to be another hundred k and it's just going to keep happening

David Penaloza

which is fine but my question to my colleagues is where do you get the money from let's find it that's okay let's do it but identify the funds where do we pull them from what do we do we just forget about sidewalks entirely and I keep saying sidewalks it's not just about the sidewalks or do we take it from tree trimming or do we reduce the pool hours back in Memorial Park to only the summer months and not the full year so these are the questions that linger is where do we pull the money from do we could take it from any department but it has to come from somewhere not our

David Penaloza

reserves so whenever we can get that full report Madam City Manager from this particular organization. I'd be very happy to see. I think it's important. And that's

it. Great. Thank you for those comments. Anybody else on the? Yes, Mr. Mayor. Go ahead,

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

Council Member. I just had a very brief comment. I just wanted to propose a solution. I know it's not the time right now. But I think we should look at expanding cannabis that would bring in a lot of revenue and it would help us fund a lot of good work in this community so i think that's something that we should look into i think it's gonna it's gonna help us a lot

thank you for that comment um councilmember becerra thank you mr mayor um you know i think

Phil Bacerra

mayor pro tem hit the nail on the head you know it's not trying to pick what we do and then leave a bunch of things off the chart here. It's what can we afford to do? What is it that we can afford to do? And in my capacity, I get plenty of calls asking about sidewalks, hence my passion for it. Street repair, trees, lighting. I mean, they sound boring and basic, but to the people that call me, that take time out of their day to engage their council member to ask for these services, obviously it's important to them. And it just, I don't think we need to start saying, well, we can't do certain things. I think we can be very nimble,

Phil Bacerra

but what we just all have to collectively do is look at the balance sheet. Let's just make sure we live within our means. Let's not go on a crazy drunken spending spree and forget the fact that we do have to find, as Mayor Pro Temp said, we have to find the funding for these items so to as much as I'm enjoying the debate and discussion I'm going to take a big crack at trying to craft motion to move us along here so I am going to make a motion that we approve the introduction and first reading of the ordinance to adopt the budget for fiscal year 2122 council

member before you before you do that let me go ahead and close the public hearing because it's been open this entire time for public comment and for council member comment and for staff presentation so let me go ahead and close the public hearing we'll bring it back to the council for any motions or

Phil Bacerra

any amendments there too all right I'll jump back in there so I'll make a motion to approve the intro and first reading of the ordinance to adopt the budget for for fiscal year 21-22 with option B as the ordinance and with the third executive assistant. Approve the revived Santa Ana spending priorities. Adopt a resolution to effect the certain changes to the city's basic classification and compensation plans such as addition of new classification titles. And adopt the seven-year CIP for FY21-22 through 27-28 with the edit on page 13 regarding the

Phil Bacerra

Fairview Bridge to edit it from a class two to a class one bike lane. That's my motion.

I will second. Madam City Manager.

Clarification on the final part of your motion. So the bike lane can only be that if it's actually possible to do and the engineers are still looking at it.

Phil Bacerra

No, because we approved the MND with the condition that it be a class one bike lane and nobody said anything then and I'm not relenting. so make it happen engineers are good they can make it happen that's my motion okay well if it

physically can't happen I guess you'll come back and let us know they should because the name of D would have to be amended so just to go ahead and so we have a motion by Councilmember Becerra second by mayor Pro Tem just so I'm clear it's staff recommendation recommending option B with the addition of the third executive?

Phil Bacerra

Third executive assistant. Correct.

Okay. And with the comment about the bike lane. Correct. On the bridge. All right. We have a motion and a second. Are there any other questions or comments?

Hearing none, seeing none. Madam Clerk.

Council Member Becerra.

Yes.

Council Member Hernandez.

No.

Council Member Lopez. No. Council member Mendoza.

Council member Mendoza, you're muted.

Sorry. Sorry about that. Yeah, my concern was that we keep the three executive of management assistant and and let's see what was the other one uh

and and i'm pretty sure i heard the city manager indicate that that is going to happen yeah council

member mendoza i think the motion is to include a third executive assistant in addition to a full time Vietnamese community liaison okay that's a yes then councilmember fan so

Thai Viet Phan

apologies I just want to make sure that we're all on the same page there's a lot of conversation so with option B councilmember Sarah it is the increasing the legal defense fund by a hundred thousand dollars and making it a part of the budget, a line item, sponsoring arts and culture event with another $100,000, as well as the community liaison at $150,000 and the third executive assistant at the estimated $108,000. Is that correct? That's what option B says. All right, cool. So I am definitely supportive of that. Thank you. Mayor Patan Peñalosa? Yes.

And Mayor Sarmiento.

Yes, and just a quick question for the city attorney. Did this vote need a supermajority or was it a simple?

Sonia R. Carvalho

The actual adoption of the budget only requires a simple majority vote.

Okay, and last question.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

My apologies, Mr. Mayor. I did not know that this was option B. I had option A on my screen. That's what was showing. So my apologies. I'm a yes on this item.

great thank you councilmember councilmember Lopez are you good yeah I

just want to make a clarification that I'm supportive of councilmember

Becerra's motion okay thank you I think everybody was confused by your motion councilmember because it kind of went contrary to some of your comments that you were making so it caught everybody a little off guard so I hope you

Sonia R. Carvalho

understand I had it so I hope you understand that you kind of backtracked

Phil Bacerra

little bit so that's what threw everybody off so but to be clear i supported the the position i was just looking at it from a cautious approach i hear my colleagues and i went with it thank you

you just wanted to scold us first so i get it thank you madam city attorney so just a quick question for you now that we've adopted on second reading what are can you just go through what a material change that wouldn't be allowed on second reading what adjustments would be allowed between

Sonia R. Carvalho

first and second reading? So the section in your charter talks about significant changes and I think you would look at that in terms of the percentage that you might change. You know you have a you if you had a hundred thousand dollar change you'd look at that as a very small percentage. If you were going to come forward at second reading and say change 50% of a particular department's budget that would be considered significant. I think the types of changes that we've seen in the past are insignificant and they have not required a new first reading of the ordinance. And Mayor just to be clear I

want to make sure I captured everyone's vote correctly. Councilmember Hernandez and Lopez you both voted yes correct? That's correct. Thank you. Thank you. So

David Penaloza

it's motion carries. Mr. Mayor I was going to suggest that we do that roll call again.

You want to do a re- let's do a recount just to be clear for the record.

Okay. So I have a motion by Councilmember Becerra and seconded by Mayor Potem Peñalosa for option B and to also include the third executive assistant position.

Right, with the comments that were made about making the line items and the edits to the bridge, the bike lane, class one, and making the Immigrant Defense Fund permanent. And I think that was it.

Phil Bacerra

I don't think we can make anything permanent. Budgets are year by year. So this is just an item.

We could keep it as a recurring line item. And that we can do.

Council Member Becerra?

Yes.

Council Member Hernandez?

Yes.

Council Member Lopez?

Yes.

Council Member Mendoza? Yes.

Councilmember Fan. Yes. Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa. Yes. And Mayor Sarmiento. Yes. Motion carries 7-0. I feel there should be some confetti or something. So good. Motion carries. We're done with that. And I believe item number 30, which was Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa. Even he wants to put it over, right?

David PenalozaItem 30

You know what, because we just talked about the item, I don't want to have to bring this up again since we do have over a year to have these charter amendments on our potential ballot. but basically I don't even remember the text of the of the of the council item is basically mayor Sarmiento is to discuss and consider directing the city manager to direct staff to form a city charter review committee to bring forward amendments that can potentially be placed on the ballot for voter adoption at

David PenalozaItem 30

the general election in 2022. Just a little background info to my colleagues. We had this charter review committee over a year ago and spent about four months going over the different, the charter, the entire city charter of what changes we could potentially bring forward. There wasn't support or an appetite to have these ballot questions on the general election 2020, which is fine but now I'm bringing it up back again to see if there is an appetite to form a committee to revisit the proposed amendments and look at the charter and come up with new ones if if you're interested I don't need to be in

David PenalozaItem 30

the committee I did it I read through the entire thing I came up with those changes Daniel Soto has a great presentation that he could show you guys I'd like to give my my new colleagues a chance to take a crack at it and see what they come up with and and go from there and this is basically just to start that conversation because one of the excuses that was used for not supporting charter amendments last year was that there wasn't enough time to consider or look at these on the City Council but we had about eight months

David PenalozaItem 30

but that wasn't enough time. So again, it was just a way to get out of it, but this now gives us, you know, 16 months to potentially change these. So, Mayor, that is it. Not sure if we need to address the city manager, if my colleagues have any comments, but that was basically it.

Great. Thank you. Any comments on this item from the council?

Go ahead, Councilman.

Phil BacerraItem 30

Just to say I support Mayor Pro Tem's idea, and I served with him on the ad hoc to draft the proposed charter amendments last time, and unfortunately we did not garner the support of our colleagues at that time, but I feel confident this council would support many of what we were trying to accomplish back then, and I think it's a great idea to have some of the newer members of the council take a crack at it and go through it. So thank you for bringing this forward, Mayor Pro Tem.

Great. Any other comments? Councilmember Phan?

Thai Viet PhanItem 30

I'm still trying to, I think, collect myself. I'm so happy I can cry. I just want to thank my colleagues for supporting the Vietnamese community liaison. It means so much to me and all the people who have called and asked and the folks who just wanted services. So I just want to say thank you. We're getting to the charter issue. As a resident, I called in and put in comments. our charter is archaic we need to update it and bring it up to the 21st century and so i would be happy to serve on the ad hoc for that thank you great thank you for those comments councilmember

fan anybody else madam clerk go ahead councilmember lopez yeah i'm also supportive of um creating the ad hoc so just wanted to support it great thank you councilmember Lopez

seeing no other comments or hearing no other comments the only thing I am not sure would this go to the city manager would this go to you madam clerk well

it was a coordinated effort between all right that all three of us exactly so

it's the three of you yes all right sounds good I think you have clear direction so let me go ahead and move along to item number 31 which is to discuss and consider directing the city manager to direct preparation of a resolution condemning anti-semitic violence and this is a item brought to

us by councilmember Lopez yes good morning everyone I bring this forth because there's been an uptick and anti-semitic attacks and you know a troubling rise and islamophobia violence as well and so i i stand against anyone who promotes violence and hatred and um i do want to thank mr katz a war through resident for engaging with me and working with me on this and so i asked my colleagues um today to uh support this request that essentially war through residents have brought force thank you thank you council member

any other members of the council wishing to comment?

Councilmember Fan?

Thai Viet PhanItem 31

First, thank you so much to Councilmember Lopez for bringing this forward. As an Asian American woman, I have personally experienced and those in my life have experienced the uptick in anti-Asian hate. And so I can relate to what the Jewish community is going through today with the rise in anti-Semitic violence. No matter how you feel about international issues or political issues, it is never okay to spread hate and spread violence. So I am supportive of this, and I would like to see a resolution condemning anti-Semitic violence. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Fan. Anybody on the line wish to comment?

Go ahead, Councilmember Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 31

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to thank my colleague Jesse Lopez for bringing this forward. I concur with Council Member Fan and I'm happy to support this resolution.

Thank you for that. Anybody else?

I support the resolution as well.

Thank you, Council Member Mendoza, as do I. So I think we've got clear direction. Thank you, Council Member Lopez, for bringing this to us. And please thank Mr. Katz as well.

David PenalozaItem 31

Go ahead, Mayor Cotel. Just wanted to say for the record that I am also supportive of this resolution. Thank you, Councilmember Lopez.

Phil BacerraItem 31

And I'll just chime in and say aye as well.

Very good. Let's make it unanimous. All right. Thank you, everybody. Let's go ahead and recess this city council meeting and convene the housing authority meeting.

So I'm going to go ahead and call the housing authority meeting to order, and I'll ask the clerk to please call roll. Authority Member Becerra? Here. Authority Member Hernandez? Here. Authority Member Lopez? Present. Authority Member Mendoza? Here. Authority Member Fan? Here. Vice Chair Peñalosa? Present. Chair Sarmiento? Here. Madam Clerk, do we have any speakers on any of these housing authority items?

We do not, and we also did not receive any written communication.

Great. I'll go ahead and entertain a motion for the items on the consent calendar.

I'll go ahead and motion.

Great. We have a motion by Council Member Hernandez, a second by Mendoza. Man of Clerk?

Authority Member Becerra? Yes. Authority Member Hernandez?

Yes.

Authority Member Lopez? Yes. Authority Member Mendoza? Yes. Authority Member Fan. Yes. Vice Chair Peñalosa.

Yes.

And Chair Sarmiento.

Yes. Thank you, everybody. I'm going to adjourn the Housing Authority meeting and reconvene the City Council meeting and ask for any closing comments from the City Manager. I think it's just good morning.

No comment, sir.

Great. Thank you. I'll bring it back to the Council. Council Member Becerra.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm going to try to make this brief. I'd like to ask my colleagues if they would support adjourning, I was going to say tonight's meeting, but now this morning's meeting, in memory of Ralph Allen, who's a noted architect here in town. We've seen his work everywhere, whether it's Century High School, Fremont Elementary, the OC Public Law Library here in the Civic Center. His style was concrete, but with very curvy waves, very unique. In fact, he actually has a book published called Concrete Spirit, which I actually own, and it's sold worldwide.

Phil BacerraItem 1

And I actually got to know Ralph when I was a busboy at Pop's Cafe, and he'd come in every morning, you know, toasting coffee, sit at a very particular table, and just one of the nicest guys, and you wouldn't know how accomplished he was just by how personable and genuine he was. So I just wanted to say that I know that he'll be truly missed and I hope that we can adjourn in his honor or his memory.

Great. Thank you for that. Yeah, I knew Ralph as well. He was a great guy. That's it's very sad to see him leave us. Thank you for for mentioning that. Councilmember Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to share with our constituents and our residents that that there's a lot of really good things happening here in our community. and we have our ability to have access to the vaccine. So if you go to any of your local doctors or any of our local clinics, you are able to get that vaccine. At some locations, you don't even need an appointment to do that. So please get vaccinated. Vaccines are now open to younger children as well. It's important that we stay safe, we stay healthy and we protect one another. Thank you.

Thank you for that, Councilmember Hernandez. Councilmember Lopez?

Yes, I just want to say happy Pride Senate. Pride festivities are some of my all-time favorites, and I do believe that every person deserves joy and peace and to be able to live proudly and securely. So happy Pride. Enjoy yourselves and have fun doing it. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Lopez. Councilmember Mendoza?

Yes, I would also like to add that Ralph Allen was a Kiwanis member and he was very instrumental and generous in providing scholarships for our local high school students. And I am in favor of closing this meeting in his memory. He was such a great resource to our city. And also congratulations to all the graduates of our community college and our local high schools.

And wish all of you a successful path in your universities. And come back to the city of Santa Ana once you've received your degrees. And give back to your community. and do well. And I echo Council Member Hernandez in encouraging everyone to get vaccinated. That is the only way we're going to eradicate this virus. And it's going to keep not just you safe, but your families and our entire communities. And lastly,

to be conscientious of your water use. We have a pending drought coming, and so let's start early and start conserving our water. Thank you, everyone, and have a great weekend.

Thank you, Councilmember Mendoza. Councilmember Fan?

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Thank you. First of all, happy pride to everybody that, you know, love is love, and in 2008, for many of us we couldn't envision a day like this would happen and that people who love each other could be together and so I'm very excited to celebrate that Santa Ana has a long history of celebrating that I'd also like to highlight June 12th is Loving Day and for those of you who do not know Loving Day celebrates the United States Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia in which the United States Supreme Court held that interracial couples may marry

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

legally. For many of us here, we take for granted that 50 years ago it was illegal for someone to marry out of their race. And so with that, I want to just help everybody recognize the importance of that and again, celebrate love. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 1

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. Happy Pride to the City of Santa Ana. Very excited to have our water tower lit up in rainbow colors. Thank you, Public Works for that. And our flag, the pride flag flying proudly outside. I also want to congratulate all the graduating classes of 2021 in the city, everywhere from Santa Ana Unified to Garden Grove Unified to Orange Unified, Tustin Unified, our private schools, our charter schools, all the students that that have graduated from this are graduating this year congratulations and a special congratulations

David PenalozaItem 1

to my niece loremi from graduating from eighth grade promoting from eighth grade from mendes fundamental and going on to high school so uh congratulations to all of you good luck great

thank you for that i'm just simply going to say we are adjourned next regular meeting is on june 15th 2021 good morning everybody