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Let me go ahead and call this meeting to order. This is going to be the closed session part of our meeting. And let me just take care of some housekeeping disclosures before we get started. This meeting is taking place with in-person attendance and by teleconference via Zoom. The public may access the meeting via the Santa YouTube channel or the city's website. So once again, please bear with us as technology may interrupt the meeting. And I'm going to go ahead and have the clerk call roll.

Thank you. Councilmember Becerra? Councilmember Hernandez? Here. Councilmember Lopez? Present. Councilmember Mendoza? Councilmember Fan? Here. Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa? Here. Mayor Sarmiento?

SO HERE, THE LIGHTS ARE ON. NOW PEOPLE CAN SEE US. SO THAT'S GOOD. ARE THERE ANY MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL THAT WISH TO ABSTAIN OR MAKE ANY DISCLOSURES BEFORE WE TAKE UP THE SINGLE CLOSED SESSION ITEM? SEEING NONE AND HEARING NONE, MADAM CLERK, DO WE HAVE ANY SPEAKERS THAT WOULD LIKE TO ADDRESS THE COUNCIL?

YES, WE DO, MAYOR.

Zoom ID Mira media arts, Santa Ana if you would please select the microphone icon and proceed with your comment. You have three minutes.

Yes hello, can you hear me this This is Sandra Pocha-Pena Sarmiento. And I'm a resident of Pacific Park Eastside. I'm also the Pacific Park Eastside neighborhood leader. So I'm calling in on the MASA account because I'm traveling, but I am a neighborhood leader. I'm calling about the Cypress Street fire station. We, you know, the South Main leaders, residents and businesses have been contacting the staff for months, trying to, you know, find a way to save this fire station and preserve it for public use. We do not need more residents in one of the densest zip codes

in the entire city, in one of the highest COVID areas in the entire city, in one of the most underserved neighborhoods in the entire city, which is 92710 Pacific Park Eastside. We need a community center. We need community resources. And this building, with its historic legacy, is a perfect place to serve our community. We have turned in many different proposals to you. We've examined the security costs. Staff has been saying that security costs are over 18,000 a month, yet we went in there

and we've seen that even with that cost, you can't keep one homeless guy out because there's no camera system. We have brought up the need for a $1,000 camera system by Ring for 10 cameras at a cost of under $500 a year for all services. And that would eliminate anybody coming on and breaching that property. But city staff refuses to revise any kind of security considerations or to really have any kind of dialogue with us. We also have addressed the parking situation.

There are 12 parking spots at the Dollar Tree directly in front of the fire station, 11 of which can be swapped out for the 11 parking spots the city already owns half a block away along with Northgate. We've addressed the firewall during the tour that that staff wonderfully made available to us. We addressed that the firewall, if it needed to come down, there's an additional property that's available just to the south, just to the north of the fire station. So once again, we are asking for the Cypress fire station to be taken off the table, be taken off the surplus property list.

Staff says they cannot do anything to revise the security costs, to restructure any kind of options for this property without it being off the surplus property. So that's what we're asking. We have a cooperative of nonprofits and community people from all the different surrounding neighborhoods, Wilshire Square, Henninger Park. All of us have been in union wanting this fire station to be restored to community service. So please have a look at the email I've been sending. I've been sending many emails. Ten seconds left. Thank you.

and please get this fire station off the surplus property list please work with us the community we really want this this this property rehabbed and we don't understand why staff is really just being so rigid with not including us or working with us at all so thank you please save the fire

station cypress street saints thank you mayor we know we don't have anyone else virtually joining

us who wants to speak on closed session items great let me go ahead and thank you and let me go ahead and go to the in-person request to speak and let me start with uh celica rias

good evening mayor and members of the council i'm a little bit nervous okay I don't offer and speak in public but as you can hear my name is Celica Diaz. I live in Pacific Park neighborhood since I first came to the States when I was 13 years old. Don't do the math. I'm 27. And I recently participated in the Sarana housing roundtable discussion from which I learned that one of the top priorities for Sarana residents is housing. In regards to the Cypress Street Fire Station, Mayor Sarmiento and other members of the council,

I've been trying to save, preserve, and restore the Cypress Street Fire Station since it became vacant in late 2016. The Mayor knows everywhere he goes I would approach him because he has a home up on 4th Street that's over 100 years old. So when he mentioned at the Comlink neighborhood hero that he was able to save it and preserve it, I approached him. And he can testify and tell you that I've been working hard. Then Chris Miss and Janelle Hardy joined the efforts in 2017. Then others who found out about it just like July have joined the efforts too.

The Cypress Fire Station, in my opinion, if it gets to be sold and gets converted into housing, it would be a win-win situation for the people who live in my community, for my residents. And also, because if you leave it vacant for longer, it's going to continue to be damaged. We know that we have two homeless. One that digs holes on the ground, and we have the one that lives upstairs. And we continually have fires in it. So I'm also here to advocate in case you decide to keep the fire station, save it, preserve it and restore it.

I'm here to advocate for a PAL program or a police station to be in the location or a family justice center. The reason why? Because we know that that's a high density crime area. I would definitely not support a non-profit to come over and take over the building. Why? Why? Because a nonprofit has the building and look at the way it is now. They have neglected it and they let it get destroyed. Also, I am here because I want to ask you to please allocate funding to get our park rangers back. I know it's not part of the closed session

item but I would strongly suggest that you bring our park rangers back and also allocate funding to get personnel to clean up the parks constantly. It is very sad for me to go and before my little boy gets to play on the playground I have to clean up and make sure there are no needles which I have found many. So that's it for tonight and my name is Celica Diaz. I'm a Pacific Park neighborhood leader also. Thank you. Thank you Celica. Taylor Rudd followed by Irma how to get sorry for being late I thought this was a later start my name is Taylor

right I am here regarding the 625 South South Cyprus I simply want you to know that I'm still fully committed to the restoration of the building I'm trusting that the city council will be able to at one point decide to sell the building and that my offer would be considered as acceptable my intent is to restore the building to its historical standard i've talked to the historical society uh talked about everybody i can as far as what

they're expecting and then to repurpose it for housing only and I have no other purpose for it I do have a group of people that are ready and standing by

that's about it I just want you to know I'm still fully committed so thank you

Thank you. Followed by Irma Hauregi. And Irma is our last speaker.

Hello Mayor Sarmiento and Honorable Counsel. My name is Irma Hauregi. I sent you a letter last week. I have two points to make. First of all, we strongly, strongly, strongly are part of the Neighborhood Alliance that represents six neighborhoods which Susanna Sandoval and I are co-founders to keep the property for the taxpayers and the residents. In real estate, you have to think long-term. Permanent benefits for the community. In short-term, yes, there are issues, but in long-term, there's many benefits that can be had. First and foremost, do not sell an asset because once it's sold, even though with the best of intentions,

it's lost forever to the community. Second of all, do a proper assessment of the structural situation, preserve the facade and its historical elements because there's batch of tile and all that. I physically tour the property. Based on that assessment, then you can look at what should be done and what funding is available. Whether it can be rebuilt the back as a community center or a garden for an interim time while more studies and funding is collected. Definitely a substation because that's one of the highest crime areas in the area. I've been in Santana since 1979 in that general area. I'm very knowledgeable about that.

And after that, then do a real assessment and survey of the community and look at what the needs are, and then let's look at our programs. My second point, there are great programs in the city, arts, parks and recs, boys and girls, the Family Justice Center, and PALS. Let's visit them because sometimes when we talk about something, and you haven't seen it, I know two of you have, I strongly encourage you to the Pals because that's the one I visited I'd like to see other programs then we can assess properly what is the best and highest use not a short-term turnaround housing is wonderful yes but this is the

highest density neighborhood if not the top one of the highest and we our infrastructure is weak at best we don't have green space we don't have community centers available it could be multi-purpose seniors in the morning a in the afternoon or something for students. And then something maybe in the evenings like tutoring or whatever. So let's, I strongly, everybody I've talked to is, please let's keep the property and let's be wise and think long term. On a very short note, for those of you who don't know me, I'm Irma Haurugi. Seven of us, and Mayor Sargento knows that, we worked on the Pacific Electric Park.

It took us nine years and $3 million to get that done. And when I drive by, I still tear up. I still get a legacy. I have a legacy. I still, my voice cracks. You have a legacy. When you get off that date, you walk with your hands and knowing that you did the best permanently. Thank you.

Thank you, Edema. And I can attest to that. You and the neighbors did some very hard work, and thanks to all your hard work, we have a beautiful park there. Let me go ahead, and I believe Edema was our last speaker. We're going to be recessing into closed session. I just want to alert everybody to an item, and I'll mention this in open session as well. We have an item on the agenda, item number 25, which is to adopt a resolution for an intent to award the solid waste franchise. So we're not making a selection tonight just for the four vendors and those that may be in attendance to address the council.

You may not want to maybe exert your time today because no decision will be made. We're simply going to be adopting a resolution to set the time when we make the selection for that vendor and that hauler. Just wanted to put that out there for those of you who are in the audience or maybe holding on the line. So with that, we are in recess on closed session item.

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For more information, visit www.fema.org

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For more information, visit www.fema.org

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Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Recording in progress.

Good evening again everybody. Let me go ahead and reconvene the meeting of the City Council for today, an open session. And let me go ahead and just make a few housekeeping remarks. I did this before closed session. I'll do it again for those in open session with us. This meeting is taking place with an in-person attendance by teleconference via Zoom. The public can access the meeting via the San Ana YouTube channel or the City's website. and as usual please bear with us as we may have some technical difficulties let me go ahead and call on the clerk to please call roll of the city council

councilmember Becerra here councilmember Hernandez

councilmember Lopez

councilmember Mendoza councilmember Fan here Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa present Mayor Sarmiento.

I'm here.

The public was able to begin joining the speaker queue at 4.30 p.m. and in accordance with the council procedures, calls will not be accepted after the public session has begun. Speakers who are not in the speaker queue by 6 p.m. will not be permitted to speak. Please hold your comments on public hearing items until the mayor opens the public hearing. to request to speak on agenda or non-agenda items within the city's jurisdiction, dial star now from your phone or click the button labeled Raise Hand from Zoom Now.

You will be asked to announce your name, ward, or neighborhood you reside in within the city of Santa Ana for the record. Thank you.

Great. Thank you for that, Madam Clerk. I hope everybody is well. Welcome to the city council meeting. Thank you for joining us. Before we begin with the Pledge of Allegiance, let me go ahead and just remind everybody on item number 25. I mentioned this before we left and recessed for closed session. We will not be making a decision on a selection for the hauler in the waste contract. We're simply going to be addressing a resolution and considering that to set the time and the place for the selection. So please bear that in mind. Let me go ahead and call on Councilmember Becerra to lease in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Everybody would place their right hand over their heart and begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, Councilman. Let me go ahead and I'm not sure if Pastor Cota is on the line or if he's here. There he is. Come on up, Pastor Cota. Tommy Cota is a friend of not only those of us in the city, but those of us in the community. And he's been gracious enough to lead us in the invocation for tonight. Pastor Cota, thank you for joining us. Yes. Thank you, Mayor and Council Members.

God, we thank you so much for this opportunity to gather together here in this place. And Father, we pray for your wisdom and insight and understanding concerning all the matters that may be discussed here tonight. And Lord, as we think of this great city, the city of Santa Ana, Lord, we pray your protection over her. Lord, we thank you for the unity that has been expressed. And we pray for more of that, Lord. We pray for more unity. We pray for safety amongst our streets. Lord, we pray that not only would the crime drop,

but Lord, we pray that crime would completely stop here in this city. That this city would be a great example to other cities, Lord, of how people can come together. Lord, I'm mindful of what your word tells us, that when the righteous govern, that the people rejoice. And so, Father, we pray that you would give great wisdom to those that are in charge, to those that are in authority. Lord, we know that wisdom from above brings peace and unity. It brings reason. It is open to reason and mercy. And so, Father, we ask above all things, Lord, that you would be glorified.

I pray that there would be unity amongst our city council, Lord, with our police department, Lord, our school district, and everyone else. Lord, you know the needs, and we pray that you would meet all those needs according to your good will and purpose. In the name of Jesus, amen. Thank you.

Thank you, Pastor Cota. Thank you always for joining us and leading us in that. Let me go ahead and move now to the ceremonial presentation section of our meeting. and I'm going to turn it over to Council Member Becerra, who's going to be recognizing Connie Hamilton. Go ahead, Council Member.

Am I first?

Phil BacerraItem 1

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for this opportunity. One of Santa Ana's most active advocates for our local neighborhoods, Connie Hamilton, is relocating to Texas. Connie has a long and impressive record of involvement in neighborhood affairs and has been a president of the South Coast Neighborhood Association for over 15 years. In that role, she's helped coordinate annual meetings for all the neighborhood associations in the South Coast metro area. Following the completion of a Leadership Santa Ana workshop back in 2008, Connie helped organize the community group Connect to Council that many of you know very well.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Connie served as the chairperson of that group for more than 10 years. And during that time, Connect2Council presented informative events within each ward of the city and collaborated with the respective city council members of each of those wards. These events helped to update residents on Santa Ana affairs and answer residents' questions in a very comfortable setting, and it proved to be very successful. Under Connie's leadership, Connected Council also organized and hosted numerous city council candidate forums and community policing forums as well.

Phil BacerraItem 1

And if all of that wasn't enough, Connie also served as a board member of ConLink, which is the communication linkage organization for all the neighborhood associations here in Santa Ana, and she served in that role for several years. Santa Ana is truly a better city for having had her involved with our neighborhoods, And it's a shame she's leaving because for all that she's done and her heart was here in the city and for all that she did, we're really going to miss her. And so I had the opportunity, and this picture that you see on the screen is me visiting Connie probably about two days before she literally packed it up for Texas.

Phil BacerraItem 1

So I had the opportunity to present her a certificate of recognition on behalf of the city of Santa Ana. So I wanted to wish her the best from all of us to her in Texas. Thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Councilmember. Yeah, I remember Connie, I believe, was one of the founders of Connect to Council, and I know that was a forum that, you know, I see Carl, I see Edma, I see others who, you know, worked with her to engage the public and create a space and a forum for candidates and issues. So we certainly are going to miss her. Do we know what part of Texas she moved to?

Phil BacerraItem 1

Waco, I believe.

Waco, Texas. Well, we send her greetings from Santa Ana to Waco. So in any event, thank you for that presentation. Let me go ahead and turn it over to staff to give us the COVID-19 update. Madam City Manager.

I do have a presentation that will be loaded shortly. So tonight what I wanted to talk about during the COVID update is discuss a little bit the new variants that are working their way to the United States. and then as requested take a look at the trends that we're experiencing in Orange County with positive case rates as well as how we're doing on vaccines and then I want to take a minute to talk about mask wearing at the very end of it.

I'll go ahead and start talking as they load the presentation.

So, pardon, Councilman? My mic is on. Can you not hear me very well?

Yeah, if you could maybe get closer.

Okay. Is that a lot better? Yes. Okay. So genetic variants of COVID-19 have been emerging and spreading around the world throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. These variants in the United States are routinely monitored through sequence-based surveillance, laboratory studies, and epidemiology studies. There's a U.S. government group that developed a variant classification scheme that categorizes the variants into three classes. Variants of interest, variants of concern, and variants of high consequence.

To date there are no variants of high consequence that have been identified in the United States. The variants that are appearing in the United States include a number of them. So right now in the United States there's four notable variants. The first one is called the Alpha variant and it was first detected in the United States back in December 2020. It was originally detected in the UK. There's the Beta variant and this was detected in the US by the end of January 2021. It was initially detected in South Africa. And the Gamma variant, it was first detected in the United States in January of 2021 and

and was initially identified from travelers from Brazil. And the Delta variant is the variant that was detected in the United States in March 2021, which was initially identified in India.

So with those variants, you probably have heard on the media, there's a lot more emphasis on the re-evaluating mask guidelines. That's why I wanted to touch upon that tonight. As far as the trends in Orange County, this next slide will show you that in the county, countywide, the test positivity rate has steadily increased since June 15th. So June 15th there was a .6% increase, by July 1st that grew to a .9% increase, and then July 19th a 3.3% increase in the positivity test rate.

In our city, the total confirmed cases to date is over 45,000, and the total lives lost to date are 875.

On the vaccination numbers, we do have a breakdown by the type of vaccination. Of the two-dose vaccine platforms, the number of people that have at least received one dose of that in our county is over 217,000. The number of people fully vaccinated from the two-dose platforms is 1.7 million. Of the one-dose vaccine, that's the Johnson & Johnson, the number fully vaccinated is 120,000. So for Orange County, the total number of people that are vaccinated across all vaccine types is over 1.8 million.

Some more stats on the vaccination. at our city level, you can see by the zip code the number that have been vaccinated in comparison to the total population for those same zip codes with the eligible population vaccinated percentage in the very last column. So in all of these zip codes, we're over halfway there. We still have a long ways to go.

And then on masks, based on CDC and state regarding masks, And I went through it in detail, so I don't want to spend a lot of time on tonight what the guidelines are. But basically, face coverings are not required for fully vaccinated people, except for the following settings. And those exceptions still include public transit, hospitals, long-term care facilities, homeless shelters, correctional facilities, and indoor schools.

so face coverings if you're not yet vaccinated they are required indoor public settings and businesses and that includes retail stores restaurants theaters family entertainment centers meeting and local government offices so here at the city we do have signage and we are stating that if you are not fully vaccinated you need to wear a mask if you are fully vaccinated you do not need to wear a mask. But based on the variance and the trending of the positive test rates, we are changing our stance to strongly encourage everyone, whether they're fully vaccinated or not, to wear a face covering indoors.

The last thing I want to touch on is I had the pleasure last week and Council Member Mendoza joined me. We went to the Advance OC where they rolled out and introduced the launch of the Orange County Equity Map. and it is something that has been developed by professors and contracted for by Advance OC and it's a platform that spotlights social and health disparities in Orange County neighborhoods across multiple dimensions with a specific focus on the impact from COVID. It's an interactive map I encourage all of you to visit you can spend hours looking at it but it goes down to the census track

level in our city and it talks about all the areas in social progress index and how we score as a city this is a just a snapshot of what it looks like and it's readily available on the website what it did line up with is after they studied where there were deficiencies in social progress index and they laid over the top of it where we were hit the hardest by COVID if there's a definite correlation between the two so it's a great tool it certainly will help us as we deploy revived Santa Ana dollars to the hardest hit areas and that concludes the COVID presentation I'd be more than happy to answer any questions thank you

for that presentation madam city manager let me go ahead and bring it back to the City Council if there are any questions or comments by any members of the council seeing none and hearing none this is a great tool by the way the advanced OC you know dashboard the the only you know comment I was going to make is that as we as we see that there's some disturbing trends of you know numbers going up obviously you know LA County's taken a different position than Orange County so far in mandating masks and indoor indoor settings you know I really appreciate the direction of us doing the same I think it's better to be

you know out of an abundance of caution for those who aren't vaccinated to use masks as they go indoors as we are indoors but I know that you know as schools start to reopen as children start going back into in-person curriculum to the extent that we I don't believe we have any testing sites in the city and I know we did prior to the vaccinations are there any testing sites in the city that we can direct our parents children residents to Latino

Health Access is still doing testing in our city just down the street from City Hall.

Great and maybe what we do it is maybe put that on our website because I've gotten calls from some you know principals and other school staff and faculty and they're you know they said that the closest one was in Anaheim and I didn't think that was correct so maybe what we do is we put that site there we can include it as a resources and as an option for parents and faculty and those to be able to go through. And, yeah, these breakthrough cases are also disturbing as well. Those who are vaccinated are still getting it, so it's good to have the testing option available. Anyways, that is it. Thank you for that update.

Let me go ahead and ask the city attorney if there is anything to report out of closed session.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

Mayor and council members and members of the public, we do have reportable action on the real property closed session item that was discussed. By a unanimous 7-0 vote, the City Council decided to reject the offer made to purchase the property at 625 South Cypress and to cease any further negotiations to sell the property because the Council would like to see staff explore using this site for community-oriented programming and has also asked for additional security to ensure the property is preserved during this period of time when they are looking at other options. And that is all the reportable action that I have.

Thank you, Madam City Attorney, and thank you, members of the public who addressed the council before closed session. Let me go ahead and move along to the public comments section of the meeting. And let me explain that this is the time and place for the city council to receive comments from members of the public on agenda and non-agenda items. Pursuant to the Brown Act, the city council may not enter into any discussion at this time. the public comment line is now the call-in line is now closed it's been open since 4 30 so we'll now hear from members of the public that are here in

person and then I'll go ahead and turn it over to the clerk so she can call on those that are waiting online to address the council so let me go ahead and begin with the speakers speaker cards for those who are present here and let me begin with Ronnie Sandoval followed by Peter Katz. Good evening. My name is Ronnie

Sandoval. I'm the CEO for Civic Center Barrio Housing Corporation, the largest provider of affordable housing in the city of Santa Ana. I'm here today to share my comments regarding two issues. The first one, facial recognition technology. It's come to my attention that the City of Santa Ana has contracted with the United Way to disperse emergency rental assistance. The United Way utilizes Checkpoint ID to verify the identity of the landlords. Checkpoint ID is a facial recognition collection company presented as a

biometrics technology company. FRT is a flawed system that is not regulated. There are no guarantees that the company collecting the data will sell the information to larger collection companies. This practice can be a violation of due process, privacy, and civil rights. There are no protections for the people placed in these databases. FRT has caused a wrongful conviction. I I declined to allow my face and my driver's license to be scanned into Checkpoint ID database,

which means Civic Center Barrio Housing as a landlord cannot receive any rental assistance monies on behalf of their families. I directed my concerns to Santa Ana Housing's housing manager. I also contacted one of the managers at United Way. I was told to simply opt out. opting out of the CARES Act means that I am declining receipt of emergency rental assistance payments for my families in need. I'm asking that you dismiss any use of the form of facial recognition technology. The second issue,

Civic Center owns 48 condominiums, Town Square condominiums project. In In 2019, I attended a meeting with various City of Santa Ana officials. In that meeting, I was told that the City and the City Council were both in favor of the sale of this project. I was directed to submit in writing how I would coordinate the sale. I complied and did submit a written proposal to the housing manager. Currently, the nonprofit is paying $25,000 a month in HOA dues and special assessments.

The first units ready for sale have remained vacant since 2019 in an attempt not to displace any families. I would like to meet with the City Manager and the City Attorney to finalize this process that would enable the families waiting to purchase their first home and become permanent resident of the city of Santa Ana. I am formally requesting this meeting be scheduled as soon as

possible. Thank you. Thank you, Ronnie. Peter Katz, followed by Norm Fisher, followed by Jonathan Sanabria.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Council. It's been a long time.

Comlink next Thursday, July 22nd at 630 in the Police Community Center will be hosting an open forum on the waste management contract and I am speaking in favor tonight of holding the public hearing so that all parties to this contract have a fair and open opportunity to present that case to you seven members up here you are the ones that will decide this contract one of the largest contracts that this council will deal with over the next few years and it is one of the largest utility bills facing all the residents

in the city and as residents are struggling out there and trying to pay their bills and as the city is trying to do the same thing we need to have a fair open and honest presentation so that we know that we're getting our money's worth and you guys are going to have to make that decision. We can only give you some ideas and some recommendations what we think but the ultimate decision will come down to you guys and it's something that you have to dig in deeply and look at all the facts and don't be swayed by what has happened in the past what will happen in the future. But this contract

is very important to the city in how we look at the future and how we clean up our environment in the days and weeks and months and years ago thank you mr.

mayor thank you Peter thank you for your comments norm Fisher followed by Jonathan Santa Brea followed by Lisa dermis a

good evening council members my name is norm Fisher I want to take this opportunity to ask you to support the lion Street name change to Elk Lane in front of the Santa Ana Elks Lodge I've been a trustee for eight years and a member of the Santa Ana Elks Lodge for 25 years in that time I have seen our lodge support the Santa Ana community with donations of at least a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year but more than that we have committed time and effort as mentors to veterans groups boy scouts girl scouts women's clubs

women's support groups schools after school programs drug awareness and helping create a sense of community with those we serve this is no ego here with the requested change we want to commemorate those individuals that came before us and those who follow in our footsteps thank you for your

consideration Thank You norm Jonathan followed by Lisa dermisette followed by

Lucia Gonzalez. Hi thanks for having me here and me being here of course as well. I've been a citizen here since like my whole life and you know I grew up in Santa Ana like obviously you know I enjoy living here and stuff but these past few years it's been different because I live right next to the railroad at the Union Pacific and And since like a couple years ago, I would say probably like five, six years by now, there's been like some homeless encampment. And it's been getting a little out of hand because we have like little like toddlers, you know,

my niece and my nephew, they're like this high. And it's kind of sad seeing them like grow up with this like harsh environment when you have like drug addicts, you know, doing heroin, crystal meth, shooting up in front of my house, prostitution in front, gunshots. fireworks, you name it, you know, all sorts of violence and you know it's kind of hard like hearing, it's kind of hard trying to find an answer when you go to like so many different types of people. You know I've contacted like someone through the mayor office, I've

contacted the sergeant from the San Antonio Police Department, nothing. I've contacted someone from the neighborhood watch nothing I've contacted some someone that works in a as an undercover cops nothing and you know I've been looking and begging for answers trying to find a solution what I could do I've called Union Pacific railroads that owned the property and you know they they can't do nothing except kick them out but I'm trying to find a solution here and you know I've

I've been contacting numerous numbers and I'm still not giving up because I'm the only one out of my whole neighborhood throughout the whole residence that's trying to put a stop into this. And I'm tired of this because I have to get up at 2 in the morning to go to work. And it's hard going to sleep because when you live in a rough environment that's noisy all the time, you hear homeless people being really loud. you hear music bumping in the train tracks you know I see I see all of it I see drug deals in front of my house and you know it's it's hard for me to tell

the kids the most because they tell me when is it gonna like stop and you know I can't tell them like oh it's gonna stop today or it's gonna stop next week because it's really it's really hurtful for me to say like there's no answer for me to find now but I'm looking for some and you know you guys are my only hope I've really been through so many different phone calls and I feel like nothing's working I really want to just walk out with like a number to call someone just to have this over with like thank you for your comments

Jonathan why don't you if you can go in the back foyer or lobby area somebody from staff will go ahead and meet with you and talk with you and hopefully offer you some resources and some help so to the extent that you can wait for somebody from staff to meet them out there. Thank you for your comments, Jonathan. Lisa Dermaset, followed by Lucia Gonzalez, followed by Linda Fernandez.

Good evening, esteemed mayor and city council members. I want to first off thank you for this opportunity to talk to you on behalf of the Santa Ana Elks Lodge here in Santa Ana. I am here with 11 other members who are here to speak to you on behalf of the name change of Lion to South Elk Lane. What I'd like to talk to you about is the charitable aspects of our organization because that's really what affects our community. We have been in this community for 119 years. We have

been serving our community since 1902 and I'm going to share with you a few of the items that we've worked on just this year. We've partnered with the Big Brothers and Big Sister organization and had a picnic for the kids and provided 400 backpacks filled with all the supplies a child would need. We partnered with Orangewood Foundation, provided $2,500 worth of food for their food pantry to give out to homeless children.

We had a dinner for them, provided movies, popcorn machine, played games, decorated the facility with Christmas decorations that were donated by the Santa Ana Elk members and provided them 500 backpacks. We provided Thanksgiving baskets for the Samueli school families and 250 backpacks filled with items. We gave to Santa Ana Unified School District 577 backpacks filled with

everything a child would need. We handmade over 300 comfort teddy bears that we gave to first responders of Santa Ana Police, Fire, and Rescue for them to hand out when a child is involved in a catastrophic situation. We provided 400 backpacks for Miracles for Kids as well as purchased a Dodge van for them so that they could transport children and supplies to people in need. We had a picnic for the police athletic and activity league kids

with games and all the food they could possibly eat. We hold veterans breakfasts as well as provided a washer and dryer and a refrigerator to the Broadway house that houses 14 veterans. We presented two checks for $2,000 each to the Orange County Rescue Mission and gave toys for all their kids at Christmas. Provided 400 backpacks to each of the county and city homeless shelters with personal care items such as socks, COVID items, sweatshirts, hats,

gloves, blankets, and snacks. We are currently working on a plan and securing a grant which will allow us to partner with the City of Santa Ana to build a park in the area. We do many wonderful things. We ask for your consideration to rename South Lyon to Elk Lane this would mean everything to us and we look forward to our continued efforts in Santa Ana thank you thank you Lucia

Gonzales followed by Linda Fernandez followed by Nancy Lewis

Good evening City Council. My name is Lucia Gonzalez and I am a proud resident of Ward 3 and I am in support of amending the city's cannabis public benefit fund to transfer allocated money from enforcement activities to youth services. According to the 2021-22 budget, roughly $7.6 million has been allocated for enforcement activities while less than half a million dollars was allocated for youth services. As of now, it is not clear how the money allocated for enforcement is being used. We need more detailed publicly accessible expenditure reports related to these funds.

Further, what type of message does it send to young santaneros when 15 times more funds are allocated for policing compared to youth services? Not only should you support this ordinance, but you need to ensure that the funds currently allocated for policing are actually redirected to the youth after it is implemented. For those of you who are backed by the police union, voting in favor of this ordinance will be an opportunity for you to show the youth where your priorities lie. Please do not take this decision lightly because we will definitely not. Thank you.

Thank you, Lucia. Linda Fernandez, followed by Nancy Lewis.

Esteem, Mayor, I'm with the Senate also, and Lisa Darcy pretty much said everything. I'm back.

Thank you. You get points for that.

Nancy Lewis.

Good evening, Council Member. Good evening, Mayor. I am Nancy Lewis. I am a resident of Santa Ana, and I'm also a Measure X commissioner representing Ward 4, and I'm a member of the Santa Ana Elks Lodge. I've been a member for five years, and I served the lodge as their Elks National Foundation Chair and Grants Coordinator. So I became an elk to conduct charity work and make a positive impact in my community. I haven't lived in Santa Ana long for about four years, and I wanted to get involved locally. And my role at the lodge allows me to do that.

The Elks National Foundation's mission is to help Elks build stronger communities by investing in communities where Elks live and work. And so obviously I live in Santa Ana, and that's why I'm interested in investing here. As grants coordinator, I secure funding from the Elks National Foundation Community Investments Program program to help youth develop lifelong skills, send students to college, meet the needs of today's veterans, and improve the quality of life in local elk communities such as Santa Ana. And many of the programs highlighted by our result of Lisa Dermase were funded by Elk

National Foundation, if not all of them, including the PARC grant that we're going to pursue that she mentioned. And so I'm honored to serve my community by securing funds for programs that improve the quality of life for Santa Ana residents. And so we really appreciate and we're honored that the name changed from South Lyon Street to Oak Lane. South Oak Lane is being considered for vote this evening, and we would appreciate your support. I thank you for listening to me. Thank you, Nancy. Thank you.

Thank you. Jeff Bromet, followed by Leticia Rodela, followed by Bernie Dennis.

Hi, you guys. I'm Jeff Brummett. I put the Orange County Equality Map here, so it really screwed me up on my notes. I'm a Santa Ana elk. I've been an elk for seven years. I've been a Santa Ana resident most of my life. Being an elk is like such an honor to me and my family and the fellowship itself and we really want to thank you guys for the consideration about Elk Lane. I am actually in charge of the veterans within our community and I just wanted to read you something. This information of course would be a no to you.

But the homelessness among veterans has grown here in Orange County in great numbers. The total number of veterans, probably the city manager knows more than I do, in number over 294. This is from a few years ago, so probably many more. And many of those services come to Santa Ana. They end up here in Santa Ana, those veterans. So as you know, within our community, Heroes Landing, I'm sure some of you have heard of it, it was built a couple years ago. and we were able to and this is a permanent it's a homeless to permanent housing for the veterans which is incredible thinking of a homeless

veteran needing a home and we're able to supply that here in Santa Ana so what we did at the Elks was we got involved with them when they first opened and we were able to when Nancy was talking about ENF Elks National Foundation we got a $10,000 grant. A $10,000 grant which supplied them with their full sets of glassware dishes, eating utensils, pots and pans for every new veteran resident and family. That's a big deal. Like they moved in and they had this supplied for them and this is all through the support of the Elks National Foundation. And

And lastly, as Elks, we are compassionate and vigorous in our efforts to help others. We see a need in our community, and we are steadfast to be there. I'm so proud of my Elks fellows, and it was a wonderful thing knowing how happy the veterans were. So when this name change to Elk Lane, it would mean the most to the Elks for now and for the rest of time, especially within the Santa Ana community. Thank you.

Thank you for those comments. Leticia Rodella followed by Bernie Dennis followed by Tanya Castaneda.

Yes, Leticia Rodella here. I retired after 42 years in the educational field, so I'm extremely interested in the ELCS scholarship committee and what it has to offer. I joined the Elks three years ago and I became the scholarship chair, a position that I hold today. We are honored to have the opportunity for the name change to Elks Lane. This name change may turn the attention of others who want to know who the Elks are and most importantly, what the Elks do to support the Santa Ana community. The scholarship committee is an integral part of how the Elks help the community.

Every August, Elk Scholarship information is sent to every high school in the city of Santa Ana. This includes the public, private, and parochial schools, a total of 16 schools if I counted correctly. This year we awarded a total of $30,850 in scholarships. In the past four years, we have awarded 48 scholarships. To give you an idea of the amazing Santa Ana students who have applied and received the scholarship, I'm going to name four students. Each of these four scholars went on to complete district, state, and national ELKS scholarship recipients, against national ELKS scholarship recipients.

Some have been awarded four-year scholarships from the ELKS National Foundation. Alexis is a graduate of Middle College High School and is in his third year at Harvard working on a business degree. Heidi, a graduate from Saddleback High School, is attending UCI working towards a degree in criminology. Heidi has returned to the lodge and volunteered on several of our scholarship fundraisers. Franklin, a graduate of Middle College High School, is attending Stanford and working toward a chemical engineering degree.

Naomi, one of last year's recipients from Century High School, attending UCA and plans to focus on microbiology and bacteriology. Again, just naming four outstanding students from San Ana schools. Last year, because of COVID, the scholarship committee did not hold an awards night. Instead, a scholarship drive-through was given to the recipients at the lodge. This was well attended by our ELKS fellow members who stood in the front door of the lodge cheering the scholars as they drove by in their cars. These scholars received their certificates and the college going away box was handed to them through the window of their cars.

On August 20, 2020, Julie Liopi, a reporter of The Voice of Orange County, published an excellent article about these graduates. Her article was entitled Orange County College-Bound Seniors Who Inspire. And that title describes our Elks Scholarship recipients. In closing, I believe that this name change may turn the attention of others who want to know who the Elks are and more importantly, what we Elks do to support the Santa Ana community. Thank you.

Thank you for that. Bernie Dennis followed by Tania Castaneda followed by Carl Benninger.

Good evening Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council. My name is Bernie Dennis. I'm chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Sandown Elks Club number 794. About 50 years ago the City Council approved a request to change the name of Bugley Street to Elk Lane. There was a young engineer at the city at that time who was commissioned to do the study for the city. I know that because I was that engineer. Anyway, upon your approval,

you established really, geez, my mind went blank. Sorry about that. You established a tradition and that tradition was that Elk Lane was the home of the Elks. We'd like you tonight to approve our request to change that section of Lyon Street between Ettinger and St. Andrews to Elk Lane so we can go home. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comments. Tania Castaneda, Carl Benninger, and then Courtney Calderon.

Good evening, Honorable Mayor and members of the Council. I'm Tonya Castaneda, Municipal Manager with Republic Services. Thank you for the privilege to be considered as your solid waste and recycling partner. Pertaining to item number 25, and as a follow-up from the June 22nd Solid Waste Study Session, I wanted to clarify a few items for you and for the community. Number 1. RNG. Republic's SoCal fleet runs 100% on RNG today and will be zero carbon by the start of the Senate Agreement in 2022 through our partnership with Clean Energy. In addition, we are currently negotiating with a processor to use the city's food waste

as a renewable energy source to power our vehicles by then. Number two, electric vehicles. While others say it can't be done, we're doing it. And we're doing it in Boise, Idaho, and we're going to bring you one of our prototypes for you and the community to see up close and have all of your questions answered by one of our electric vehicle engineers. Number three, vehicle miles traveled. VMT impacts solid waste collection and on-time service, as well as quality of life issues for Santa Ana residents. Republic will service the city of Santa Ana with the lowest overall vehicle miles traveled,

which helps Santa Ana reduce air pollution, traffic congestion and street degradation. Republic's facilities are less than 8 miles away. Shorter and more efficient routes means Santa Ana customers will have on-time service every day. Other proposers have longer commutes for their facilities, which could negatively impact Santa Ana's air pollution, traffic congestion, loss of productivity and increases safety risks. Longer commutes cause driver fatigue and could add to accident rates.

4. Sustainability. We are the only solid waste company to have our greenhouse gas reduction goals approved by the Science-Based Target Initiative from the World Resources Institute, which means that our goals are aligned with the Paris Climate Accord. Our CEO has also taken a public stance on environmental justice and social justice, which is featured in our 2020 sustainability report. And last, financial stability and low risk. Republic is self-financed and has the financial capital to make the upfront multi-million dollar investment in all new equipment and vehicles.

In addition to our financial strength, Santa Ana has the extra security of our emergency response team with over 1,800 support personnel available to the city. In conclusion, we are excited to be the city's partner for solid waste and to deliver on your climate action plan with clean vehicles, lowest vehicle miles traveled, sustainability leadership and financial strength. Thank you for the great privilege to be considered your partner for this community. We're here tonight to answer any additional questions. Thank you.

Thank you for those comments. Carl Benninger followed by Courtney Calderon and then Isabel Becerra.

but I think on Isabel's card is correct you're just available here for any questions right

thank you there you look very very nice in the tie first time I've seen you in one tie for a while

I haven't worn it for like a year so yeah it feels a little tight well in case you guys forgot me I

brought my Red Wing jersey some things change some things don't the team is still lousy so

I do just want to follow up with Peter said is that our meeting this Thursday will be on on zoom for comlink and it's normally our dark but because the important issue of this waste management we decided to have Novell who's going to be presenting the contract and we invite anyone to come to the community center police community center where questions can be asked and this is a very important contract. I really want to thank you guys for bringing this to fruition. We sat too many years watching this can get kicked down the road. So we're glad to see it finally coming to fruition.

I also want to speak about another thing. I want to first welcome all the new council members. I enjoy your enthusiasm. One of the things that kind of made me jump up at home, my wife heard me jump up, was about a green initiative. I wish we could solve the global warming by initiatives, but we are a small city of Santa Ana. But what can we do? And there's a lot that we can do. One, I don't see solar energy in the city and I would really recommend that. I sat on Measure G oversight committee. Saddleback High School, 95% of their power is generated by the solar panels.

And it doesn't have to look ugly. You go by the school, you don't see a one of them. But 95% of their power is generated. My own house, I generate. I've been five years into with solar next year I reach my break-even point and I'll go 24 years of not having really to pay which I'm making money so I'd like to see more solar programs in the city and we're lacking various areas already have done it I also like to see you're gonna be voting on vehicles tonight and one thing I don't hear is where are the all-electric where are the hybrid vehicles in fact looking at deals we have we we have a few in the city but I

can count on one hand. We should be investing in more of those types of vehicles. And I know Mayor Prof. Tan, you mentioned about Tesla being equipped with police cars. That is true. And in fact, Ford and Chevrolet have just announced programs which are looking at trying to come up all electric police cars. So I'm sure if we contacted them, we may even get to try some of their experimental models. But those are things that we can do to help curb global warming. And I recommend that we do. And I also want to thank the city for, especially the city manager, for all the fine work during the time of this pandemic,

keeping the city going, keeping us informed, and the wonderful programs that came out through the city. I want to thank you.

Thank you, Carl. Carl, I like the jersey, but does that say Northeastern on your shirt?

I like that even more. This is my $100,000 shirt. My daughter got the education, I got the shirt. and I'm sure you're going to have one of these because your son is going there right now.

My shirt is a little bit more expensive with time. Thank you, Carl. Courtney Calderon, followed by Victor Mendez,

followed by Cheyenne Hernandez.

this. Hello.

So I guess I'll start off by saying to revoke corporate charters.

I want people to understand in our community that corporations were intended with the purpose of temporarily combining material resources to invest to serve a particular public good, such as bridges, right? Another thing is internet. Instead of using this very essential social service where there's never gonna be a shortage of clientele and running it kind of like the postal service, right? No, we privatize it. That's how we privatize it. How do we actually do this? We'll check out schools. We start defunding them under like by a lot and we start funding things like the police department

This is how we show the community what we prioritize and where we invest and and so this is why the city budget matters I'd like to take a break now and kind of slow down. I'm getting nervous I hate public speaking, but I rather inform my community of how you all are corrupt and Let them know how you all are selling them out to these corporations because while they may be here speaking on things that are important all I hear is social needs a community lacking lacking services that you as elected officials

should be meeting and you're not so we have to privatize them schools charter schools why do we have to privatize our education there's never going to be a shortage of clientele same thing with um let's see water that's already on the wall street have we started engaging on how water is privatized and how that's going to impact our community no because we're too busy engaging in the conversation of hey guys please stop over funding our police why do they get new cars why do they get redirecting a fund like this but redirecting a funds for rent for our community

takes how long why because of procedural things what has following these procedural things have gotten us nowhere so why are you guys continuing to follow them Jonathan homie show up why is it that you can show up to things that to literally tokenize our community and you don't show up I would also like to say that he's a POS very similar to you but I said I'm sorry homie but the fact that you have a history of abusive behavior. I don't understand why you have a boat. Time, time. Thanks, sir. I don't understand what you're saying to me. That's a lie. Okay. Accountability, sir.

But thank you for distracting me. But again, the same way that you tried to do the same thing to Jessie when she was asking questions, it's nothing more than I can expect from an abusive person. in a position of power like the landlord that mayor you still have not really addressed the people that sullivan are still fighting for rights to literally live in a place that they're paying for show some damn respect for your constituents because here a lot of the people behind me don't actually look like the people that live in santana i'm sorry y'all love y'all but like come on

there's a and I like I said some of y'all some of y'all look guys zoning zoning and coding matter there's a reason why there's parking meters in front of apartment complexes guys thank you

Courtney yeah Victor Mendez followed by Cheyenne Hernandez followed by Delfino Roa

Thank you. Been a while. I've been a little bit under the weather. Point of order, if I may. Number 32, do I address that separately or under comment? It's under the joint session Council on Housing Authority. What's the point on this? Do I address it here or do I have to wait and do that under that? you can address it now go ahead and okay that's fine um anyway uh i love the covet report uh i'm glad the city manager has responded to some of my comments over time putting natural data and percentages of vaccinations i can only state there should be a comparison to the county and the state

in that presentation i think santa ann is looking good it looks like you're outpacing the state and the county in that respect so if it's good news why not present it and i don't think it's bad news either it's been a good effort all around number 10 hallelujah staff has listened over the last year i've been trying to get them to buy local businesses in the auto and they finally did it it means it can be done thank you mr brucera for supporting that just a point on this on the issue of auto sales it goes beyond the sales tax it supports jobs it supports the pot the supply

chain and just so you know the ability of guarantee or any auto dealer to sell more cars is depending on selling cars so when you buy that car that tells chevrolet that they're a worthy dealership that means they can supply them with a lot of good quality automobiles which drive the consumer to those dealerships which create sales tax revenue so please don't look at it as a one-time off transaction there's a lot involved in this and a lot that this contributes to the economy number 12. this is just a general comment just really using an example i think it's a fallacy

need to say this is the lowest, call something, anything, the lowest responsible bidder, and then plug in a contingency. In number 12, for example, you plug in another $62,800 as a contingency. That doesn't mean the person is the lowest responsible bidder. He could very well take that $62,000 all for himself and spend it all, whereas maybe another bidder wouldn't spend any. You just don't know. So I would implore this council in the interest of control, fiduciary responsibility, and just fiscal effect in this to get rid of these contingencies, set a policy where, you know,

if they need to do a change order, they need authority for something, have them come to the council, maybe set an aggregate cap on a contract, but just to feed your control to staff for millions of dollars each year, I'd be honest here, I'm being, I'm being a friend here, you're not doing your job. You have a fiduciary responsibility to oversee that money. Every council, probably every board does it this way. I don't know why the city continues to do it this way i'm only asking to do what's right look out for the taxpayer dollars if staff have all these

controls all these audits they shouldn't mind going blank and bare without any contingency and coming back to you when they need the money and i'm okay with that too

then on number 32 i fully endorse that i've had direct experience with this i think as some of you know i am working with not just a bad actor but somebody in my view is very unethical and And it's high time we put these people out of business. Enough is enough. People cannot avoid the law and then skirt the law by not giving people relocation and turning and then using the courts to their advantage. I like what's being said. I would only say make it the equivalent per unit, not just a one-off, just per unit. If he has a poison pill in there and he's not in compliance with anything, however many units he's renting, $2,500 per unit,

and that's what he gets tagged on per issue of non-compliance. Make it hurt, they'll get the point. And I wouldn't worry about the California Community Apartment Association. If their people are really doing their job, they shouldn't have any issue with this.

Victor, go ahead and if you can wind up your life, Fred.

Yeah, I'll wind up in 10 seconds or 15 seconds, please. Thank you. Lastly, I put out an offer to do some free work to help you with workers' compensation. Be happy to do it if the offer still stands. I think you have some money in there, but if you don't, that's okay. Let's just give it a whirl, find out if there's anything that needs to be evaluated or further considered. But the offer still stands. I'm here to do it for free. Thank you.

Thank you, Victor. Cheyenne Hernandez, followed by Delfino Roa, followed by Rodolfo Oregel.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council.

My name is Cheyenne Hernandez, a waste management driver and a resident of Santa Ana, proudly serving the city of Santa Ana. I immigrated to Santa Ana, California from Tijuana, Mexico at an age of 10 years old looking for a better future. I have attended Franklin Elementary, Lake Thrope Intermediate, graduated from Saddleback High School. Growing up in Santa Ana as a low income family, it brought up many struggles that were not easy at a young age. Even with some hardships in life, I grew up with the goal to achieve. Growing up, I enjoyed Trash Day because I was amazed of the waste management trucks.

I told myself I will be driving one of those one of these days. That is what I'm doing now. For the past years, it's been an honor to serve my city as a driver for waste management. The employees and I are beyond grateful to work with an amazing city in the city of Sanana that we all call home. helping our friends neighbors is what brings us together as a community as an amazing community that's an Anna is becoming the renewal of this contract will mean so much to every single employee currently working at the Sonana yard we will really appreciate you letting us continue our journey in

this amazing city thank you thank you Cheyenne thank you for those comments Delfino Roa followed by Rodolfo Orgel followed by Jose M.

Good evening Mr. Mayor. I'm Delfino Roa. I'm working with Waste Management for 40 years, 30 within Santa Ana and I've been serviced the residents for all this time And the company gave me the opportunity to grow my kids and send them to college. And I still have one to not finish the college. But not only that, I tried to service better to the residents. And I tried to handle the bulletins for the residents.

When I see couch and mattress outside or in the yard, I said, call the company. They come and get it for free. So what I come and tell you that, you know, we like to, you know, to consider your help to continue with us to serve in the city of Santa Ana. Like, we always do the better job for the residents and the customers outside. Thank you, Mr. Maria.

Thank you for those comments. Rodolfo Orgel followed by Jose Mesquah followed by Ron Herrera

good evening mayor council members my name is Rodolfo Orgel I've been a I've been with Ways Management for 28 years and I grew up downtown Santa Ana fifth mentor and really proud. Once a saint, always a saint. Graduated from Santa High School class of 92. Married with three children. My oldest, thanks to Waste Management with the support, she went on to college to Colorado University. She's a professional soccer player in the city of Mexico. In 2004 Waste

management give me the opportunity to win a 2004 Chevy Tahoe for a great customer service that I service a lady on North Hacaranda and Fairhaven 2020 driver of the year 27 years no accidents and really proud thanks to their great safety first environment to carry we we have brief every day and we aim to have no accidents and be safe in the city of Santa Ana last and not least we're not

just trash man we're professional sanitary engineers thank you

Thank you. Jose Mesquah followed by Ron Herrera.

Good evening, mayor, everybody, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Jose Mesquah. I live in the city of Santa Ana. My wife works for Santa Ana School District. My son worked for Santa Ana School District. My son and my daughter went to Santa Ana College. My son transferred to the university. He's almost done. He's going to be done this year. My daughter just transferred to the university. He wants to be a lawyer. And when he finished, he wanted to come back to the city of Santa Ana and service that community. We love our community. We are Santa Ana people. I've been here with Wage Management for 27 years.

Just yesterday, it was 27 years.

Like my friend said, we're not just freshmen. We're part of the community. We have the community. Some people don't even know, but we know a lot of people that need help. And we're not even the company know. We go happy. I know this little kid, he got some disease in his chest. Last two months ago, his father died. Since last two years, Christmas, my family and me, we go and buy toys for him, give it to him. And since birthday, we go buy toys too, give it to him. And we try to help everybody. We're just not just, like I say, trash mans. We're the professional drivers.

Also, we're the biggest company in safety. Safety is our goal. Every single day we got meetings about safety. So like a neighbor, you feel so comfortable when you see a big truck driving around in the city, on the streets, when your little kids playing, and the bicycles in the summer after school. And you be comfortable with the trucks that are there because we know what to do. We also know what to do with an emergency. In case the truck get fired, we know what to do. We need to kind of just open the door and throw the trash at it.

We got a plan every time we talk about it. We take a plan, we follow schedule, and we do the safety things to do. And also, I want to thank you for all those 27 years to work in the city and and West Management, and I hope you give us the opportunity to keep this journey. Thank you.

Thank you. Ron Herrera is our last in-person speaker, and then we'll go ahead and move over and switch to our speakers that are on the line.

Mr. Mayor and City Council, I'm glad to see all of you finally. other than seeing on my computer screen. My comms director's here, and he had a four-page speech for me to present to you, but I'm not doing it. I wrote some things down, because I want to have a conversation with you. As you heard, my name is Ron Herrera. I'm the principal officer of Teamsters Local 396 and the president of the Los Angeles County Federation

of Labor which encompasses 300 affiliates, 800,000 union members. But I'm here to speak on behalf of the gentleman that you just heard from. In the union we call them brothers, but brothers and sisters. And I hear the word community a lot here today. And that's what you have here with the workers of waste management. I visited the yard there in Santa Ana last Friday.

And I spoke with my brother Cheyenne who told me about the letter that he wrote to you about immigrating here at 10 years old from Tijuana. and seeing the trucks on pickup day and wanted to become a waste driver. And now he has fulfilled his dream. I spoke with my brother Delfino who spoke here today. And he showed me pictures of parents and children wearing a waste management hat. And telling me stories about how he takes birthday presents to the kids on his route.

And I talked to Rudy, Brother Rudy, about his daughter who plays professional soccer. But the job that he has had for that many years provided his family with the middle class living. That's why I'm here. And I wanted to share those stories with you.

I think it's important that you understand the workforce that you have here are really residents, really community. They're here because Santa Ana matters to them. I grew up in a similar community down in the South Bay, a smaller city, of course, Wilmington, and I grew up in a community where generationally you had brothers and sisters who went to school with 10 or 20 different families, and that's what you have here. But I'm also here to clarify something.

There are three union companies in this city, Waste Management, Republic Services, and CRNR. No one else has my signature on a collective bargaining agreement, And I want to make that very, very clear to you. In closing, thank you all for providing the workers at Waste Management, because it takes a partnership. It takes a city like you to provide the resource to pay wages and benefits. So I want to personally thank you for that.

And I want to continue to be partners with our incumbent hauler, not disrupt these families, and be partners with the city of Santa Ana. Thank you very much.

Thank you for those comments. Let me go ahead and turn it over to the clerk, because I believe we have some members of the public that are on the line that would like to address the council. And I want to remind everybody that this council still does allow people to call in. And unfortunately, not all our sister cities do that. So it's something that I want to thank our staff. We know technically it's an additional responsibility and a burden, but we think that the public input is that valuable. So with that, let me turn it over to the clerk to go ahead and call on those on the line.

Thank you, Mayor. Speakers on the queue may provide their comments on agenda and non-agenda items within the city's jurisdiction at this time. Please hold your comments on public hearing items until the mayor opens the public hearing. When unmuted, please announce your name, ward, or neighborhood that you reside in within the city of Santa Ana. For the record, you will have three minutes to speak. Before unmuting callers, I'd like to begin by reporting the following summary of emails provided as of today. We received one Santa Ana resident comment on influx of homeless individuals around 1st Street and Lyon Street.

Also comment about the amount of smoke shops in Ward 3 and 6. A United Artists of Santa Ana provided a comment on bid structure and oversight request. One Santa Ana resident commented and concerned regarding the OC Animal Care stopping their trap, neuter, spay, and return program. For item 24, one Santa Ana resident commented on postponing approval until the city can meet with three school districts to discuss the cost sharing. item 25 one Athens services employee supports Athens services for contract

one Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce support waste management for contract item 26 we received eight Santa Ana resident businesses and support and one residency not disclosed one Santa Ana resident commented to defund the police and increase use services one Santa Ana resident commented to consider what programs will be funded and defunded before making the change. For item 27, Santa Ana resident was in support increasing noticing of city-sponsored development projects and publishing the agenda seven days in advance and notice translations. Item 29, one Santa Ana business

in support of ARPA funding for DT parking structures, downtown parking structures enhancements and increase funding to downtown business improvement district. And item 32, one Santa Ana resident commented a fine will not help impact residents. They need to fix the systematic issue with landlords and investors. And one Santa Ana business in support arts and culture commission funding requested for use of ARPA funding. That was for item 29. And with that, Zoom ID Media Arts Santa Ana,

if you would please select the microphone icon on your device to unmute your call.

Okay, can you hear me?

Yes, you can hear you now, thank you.

Wonderful, thank you. Hello, City Council and Mayor and City Manager. This is Victor Payan. I'm signing in for Media Arts Santa Ana, but I'm actually addressing you today as a member of the Executive Committee of United Artists of Santa Ana. We're an advocacy organization. As you know, we were partners in the development of the Arts Master Plan, Arts Commission, etc. And we do advocacy and also the affordable housing in the city there for artists. So I want to talk about two things. The first is item 26, the ordinance for the cannabis. As some of you may remember at the beginning of the talks about the use of cannabis funds,

The arts were originally listed as one of the purposes that cannabis funds would be used for. We don't know when they were removed, but the ordinance needs to be amended to restore the arts as a recipient of cannabis funds. 100% of the people who buy cannabis and pay the cannabis tax are over 21, and yet they are not served by programs supported by these funds. It can also be argued that a high percentage of cannabis users are supporters and patrons of the arts and artists themselves. individuals. Please rectify this egregious oversight and add the arts as a recipient

of cannabis funds. The cannabis tax generates 10.7 million for the city, so it is not unreasonable to ask for 1 million going to the arts as has been requested by the Arts Commission. This can fund Arts Commission programs, professional development, and the many important needs outlined by the Commission and public during the recent budget discussions. We've heard a lot of talk about support for the arts from the Council, but I have not yet heard anyone on the dais make a motion to allocate real or meaningful funding for the arts from this year's

budget. I'm asking for one of you to be the hero today, to be that hero today. And regarding the transition between youth and adults in arts, when I was in high school, I was editor of the newspaper in high school and the literary magazine, and I got a full scholarship to Stanford. And that was really instrumental. I wouldn't have done it through sports, wouldn't have done it through some of these other avenues, but the arts are very, very critical, but there needs to be programs and funding for adults, young adults, out of school, adult population that are not being

served, but could easily be served by the cannabis tax. So please, as you look at the budget, and as you look at this ordinance, please restore funding for the arts. Thank you. The second thing I want to talk about is ArtWalk. There's a discussion right now about ArtWalk and a subcommittee from the Arts Commission to look at it because a lot of people are really upset at how it's being run by Downtown Inc. And Downtown Inc. recently held a public meeting about the Art Walk and I just wanted to report back. We issued a statement from United Artists of Santa Ana,

but I want to summarize it to you all here, but you all received it so I hope you read it. But we heard complaints from former staff, Art Walk vendors, Art Walk patrons, Art Walk Founders. 15 seconds left. Artists' organization. So what we're asking for is read the statement. We're asking for an investigation audit of the relationship between downtown Incanista and partners and to bring in the head of Civitas, John Lambeth, to give a presentation on the proper functioning and regulation of bids. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

zoom id denise reynoso if you would please select the microphone icon on your device

hello my name is denise reynoso i'm a resident of ward 5 in santa anna and i'm also the leader of the downtown neighborhood association um we just want to bring up the concern of several residents in downtown about the lack of security in the downtown area. All the residents deserve to partake in the events and have the peace of mind that they're safe. There's been an increase in crime with the lack of security. So I just wanted to ask that you support the parking structure enhancements, including adding security and murals as part of the Revive plan. Thank you.

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

Okay. Hello. Can you all hear me?

Yes, we can hear you. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah. So hello, Mayor and Council. Just a couple of quick items tonight. So just wanted to talk, I guess, on item 27 so that I know it's just, I believe, just a receiving file. but kind of reading through it I was hoping that the council might consider adding additional support for transparency regarding legal documents that the city is currently kind of facing so I'm not asking essentially for any you know things related to ongoing cases that are privately held by the city attorney's office but just as a general resident it still is relatively

hard to go into the system at the county and try to kind of dig out files there. And obviously the lawsuits and potential for lawsuits do make up a significant liability risk for the residents. And I was just hoping that there could be a little bit more support for making some of those documents available to the public. Again, just any documents that are already on file publicly down at the courthouse. Definitely, I found that the federal system is a little bit easier to use and friendlier, but our local one, not so much. So just some consideration as you update the Sunshine Ordinance.

I do believe that would be in the spirit of transparency. On item 29, just very supportive of the amount of funding that is being directed to the library. I believe you will get some great kind of outcomes out of that. And hopefully that we kind of serve to benefit and invest in the institutions that make the city, you know, and provide opportunities for residents in the city. Because right now I think we're at about 171 out of 185 systems in the state on per capita funding. So we spend about $13 per person. And I think the average in the state or the median in the state is about 37 per person. So there's still a ways to go there.

But I do believe the revived funding is a step in the right direction. And I guess even though it's a public hearing item, I only have one thing to say that I'm just very supportive of item 30. And I do believe the city needs to be more aggressive in penalizing landlords and property owners that basically just expose our own residents to dangers and don't do anything to improve their properties. I do like the more aggressive stance that the city has taken in recent years. And I think that we should kind of continue that in the future. So with that said, just wish you all the best.

And I guess I never say that it's a part-time resident in Ward 2 and property owner in Ward 6. But yeah, hope to see you all next week for the discussion on the WHO.

Thank you.

Zoom ID Jairo Cortez, if you would please select the microphone icon. on your device to unmute your call.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of the city council. I'm Jairo Cortez. I'm a resident of ward five and the executive director at Chispa. And I'm calling in regard to item 29, the American Rescue Plan is giving Santa Ana the opportunity to do right by working families across the city. At a time when families continue to struggle financially, facing rising costs of everyday expenses driven by production shortages, rising rents, and lingering financial impacts of the COVID pandemic, we are in full support of the inclusion of a stimulus plan to support low-income families in Santa Ana.

As we saw with the multiple rounds of stimulus checks provided by the federal and state governments, this type of financial assistance goes a long way to offer families relief and financial security at a time when they need it most. By adopting a stimulus program of its own, Santa Ana also has an opportunity to provide relief to immigrant families who were excluded from the federal stimulus payments and individuals without ITIN numbers who were excluded by the state stimulus program. We would also like to encourage the city to explore the creation of its own health agency.

The COVID pandemic made evident the cruel reality that unless there is a sweeping change in county leadership, we cannot rely on the county to be a partner in ensuring public health for our city. Thank you.

Thank you. Zoom ID Taylor, if you would please select the microphone icon to unmute your device.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Taylor V. Blanco, and I'm a resident of Ward 6, and I'm here to express my support for item 26. Santa Ana was the first city to make cannabis legal in Orange County, and as a result, the city has profit by millions. Further, the police department is also receiving $152 million. dollars it's the second largest budget in the city it's receiving 18 of the city's budget there's already an outrageous amount of funding going towards policing in the city and it's time that the city begins funding our youth funding must go towards healthy youth development services

programs and resources such as mental health counselors youth re-entry programs expungement clinics teen mom programs and food cards for young people who don't have access to food I'm requesting that you all vote, not just just some of this funding, but all $7 million from enforcement activities into youth services. Thank you.

Thank you. Zoom ID, Apolonio Cortez, if you would please select the microphone icon to unmute your device.

Zoom ID Danny Vega, if you would please select the microphone icon to unmute your device. Thank you.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we could hear you. You may proceed with your comment.

Hello, my name is Danny, resident of Ward 3. I'm calling in support of our San Ana Police Chief, Chief Valentin, who is currently being targeted by Police Union President Jerry Serrano. We live in a time where there is mistrust of the police by people in San Ana. I think everyone will agree that it's imperative that we mend the broken relationship between the residents and the police if we are ever to achieve safer streets for our families. That will only happen if the police department is led by someone like Chief Valentin, someone who has proven to us to have the best intentions for the community,

whether it's been putting an end to a practice of shining bright lights onto residents eyes as they drive around town or being transparent with his police department, Chief Valentin is on our side. What is also imperative is for the police and the public to speak out against tyrants like the union president Jerry Serrano who has constantly put his own agendas above the safety and wishes of Santa Ana residents. to the police listening in the chambers. Please stand up to your union president. We want safe streets, and you want a safe place to work at. Let's work together. But you need to oust your union leader, Jerry Serrano.

I guarantee you that the majority of the public is behind you and the chief. Thank you.

Thank you.

Zoom, I, or caller with the last three numbers, 271, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device or select star six to unmute your call.

Hi, my name is Bulmado Bulmaro, Bulmar Vicente, and I am the policy director for Chief Star, and I'm also a lifelong resident of World War, Santana. I'm here to support item 26, the consideration of the ordinance amending the cannabis public benefit funds. Also the city you know we we have one of the youngest populations here in the country but yet our youth programs and services still remain very under-resourced and underfunded and I believe that we as a city can do more to to invest in the young people here in the city. Santa Ana was the first city Orange County to approve the legal sale of cannabis

and we've been able to raise more than $55 million in the last four years over legalizing cannabis. Law enforcement still continues to eat up a significant portion of this revenue and there still remains concern over the lack of transparency over how this money is used. And this has been reported by the OC grand jury, which recently released a report on Santa Ana's monopoly of cannabis. There's also no meaningful public input or collaboration in determining the objectives and allotment of these significant cannabis revenue. The absence of transparency over the investments of these funds raises concerns for residents

and for young people. This also just further widened the gap of trust between the community and police. We urge you to pass this change in the cannabis and to transfer funds from enforcement activities and to youth services. AND WE WANT TO ASK FOR ONGOING COMMUNITY INPUT IN THIS PROCESS OF CREATING NEW AND EXPANDING EXISTING EFFECTIVE PROGRAMS THAT BEST FIT COMMUNITY PRIORITIES WITH THESE THINGS. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU.

Persona con nombre Apolonio Cortés, por favor active el sonido en el aparato que está usando Zoom.

okay the speaker does not have a microphone on their device so I thought

that was the last caller great thank you madam clerk let me go ahead and bring it back to the council for the consent calendar consideration and I'll ask members of the council if there are any abstentions or any items they'd like to

Phil BacerraItem 1

pull off the consent calendar mr. mayor yes I'd like to go ahead and pull item

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

five thank you any others councilman I have recuse those to announce so it's going to be items on the consent calendar it's 6 10 19 18 and 21 and main place shopping town aalrr and vineyards are written clients that's my employer and out of an abundance of caution Penske motor group LLP is a client but the item is regarding Penske Chevrolet of Cerritos so again out of abundance of caution I'll be recusing myself from that thank you great did the clerk get

that though these are recusal I wanted their recuse those only okay so it was 6, 10, 15, 19, and 21. Is that correct? Did I read that?

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Not 15, 18.

18. Thank you for that.

Great. Okay. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Lopez?

Jessie LopezItem 1

Yeah, I want to pull 14, and I was going to pull 18 as well.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Mr. Mayor, with that, I'd like to move the consent calendar, the rest of it.

Give me one second. Let me just ask Council Member Hernandez. Councilmember Hernandez anything you wish to recuse yourself or pull off the consent calendar?

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

No, Mr. Mayor. The item I was going to pull was just pulled by Councilmember Lopez.

Great. And just for the record, I'll go ahead and I just have a comment on number eight. Once we go ahead and approve, I'm supportive, completely supportive. I just had a couple of comments I wanted to make on that. And I will be recusing myself on item number 10. I received a campaign contribution from one of the vendors and I wanted to disclose that and recuse myself from that item with that I believe there's a motion for the balance from councilmember Becerra is there a second second a second by Mendoza madam clerk if you'll please call roll thank you and

if I can have the council members please provide their vote virtually

Becerra Mendoza. Councilmember Fan. If you would please vote on the device.

Okay.

Thank you for your patience. I was trying to share the screen. With Councilmember Becerra motioning, Councilmember Mendoza seconding, Councilmembers Becerra, Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Fan, Mayor Potempo, and Alonso, and Mayor Sarmiento, all voting yes.

Great. Thank you. That motion carries. And just what I wanted to say, I wanted to thank staff for their hard work on item number eight, and specifically Daisy Perez for all the hard work on her leadership on putting together a grant, which is an incredible grant that is the Health Equity Literacy Grant. We are going to be receiving $4 million along with Latino Health Access, community clinics, and I think that's why Isabel was here earlier, if she's still here in the audience. I want to thank her for her support. The Orange County API as well as UCI.

So this is going to help us address the health equity disparities that exist in the city. It's an incredible grant. It was very, very competitive. I know that many public agencies, as well as the county and others, submitted their grants. We were successful. And that will allow us to bring on a city equity inclusion coordinator that will help us guide how we deliver and consider health care challenges that many of our residents have. So, Madam City Manager, anything you wanted to say on that? I'm sure we're all certainly very proud of our staff.

I'm very proud of Daisy's hard work. It was heavy lifting, and there are a lot of jealous other public agencies, but I think you explained it best. Thank you, Mayor.

Great. Thank you for that. And with that, let me go ahead and move along to the items that were pulled off the consent calendar. The first one was item number five, and I believe that was Council Member Becerra that pulled that item.

Phil BacerraItem 1

council member thank you mr mayor

Phil BacerraItem 1

so so this item is regarding the uh city's speed humps policy and so uh what if uh nabeel salva if

you could come up to the podium council member he does have a short presentation if you would like

Phil BacerraItem 1

to see something in regards to this item um if that my colleagues would like to see it i'd be happy to

What's the pleasure of the council? How short is it, Nabeel? Maybe that'll help us. It's a tricky question, Nabeel.

We could do one page if you like.

That works.

And the public's request for speed humps to slow down traffic throughout the entire year, last year, we felt that we would update the policy, and tonight we're presenting that update to you. So just a background, quick background. We had an existing policy in 1998. We are updating it, making it more efficient. We're going from a 10-step process to about four- or five-step process. We're lowering the standards so it would make it easier to qualify. This is a sample of a speed hump.

This is a sample of a speed bump. Usually, those are used in parking lots. This is the speed cushion that we have piloted in a couple of locations in Santa Ana.

Where speed pumps and speed cushions are installed, they need to be installed on local streets, single lane collector streets, with residential classification, not a primary fire access, and not a transit route. We would like to have the policy to be uniform throughout the entire city. The technical requirement to meet the warrant for a speed pump is the block. The speed needs to be 25 miles per hour or less.

This is the travel daily. I had that here. So number of travel or vehicles per day need to be between 500 and 3,500. We will look for adequate space, block length, and block layout. The measurement of speed needs to be about 9 miles per hour higher than the set speed of 25. So we're looking at 34 miles per hour at the 85th percentile when we do the speed study. Visibility is important and also the final authorization would have to be approved by

by the OC Fire Authority because that affects their response. In a nutshell, that's the new policy, and we would like, if you have any questions.

Excellent, thank you, Director Saba. Councilmember.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Part of my concern in what I've read in the policy, and I appreciate what you're saying, because obviously we wanna make sure that there's a scientific component, right? You guys are doing hard line analysis and data compilation to come up with whether there should be a speed hump, a speed cushion, speed something. Something that's mitigating speeds in these certain corridors where it's allowed. And so, but when I was looking at the report, I see a speed hump interest form. Then after you do some analysis, then we get to a neighborhood advisory poll.

Phil BacerraItem 1

And what I don't understand or what I guess I don't like, frankly, is the fact that we're trying to do engineering through polling. You know, the fact of the matter is, if there's an area that you come to me as a professional, and you identify and you say, you know, the posted speed limit is 35 miles per hour, but through our analysis we've witnessed, you know, 80% of the traffic coming through here at 55 miles per hour, 45 miles per hour, and it's an unsafe area. I don't want to then say, well, let's just see if anybody likes it. I mean, I have to believe hopefully people like safety.

Phil BacerraItem 1

And if there are some people who don't, that's unfortunate. I can't in good conscience sit up here and advocate for policy that doesn't look at science. And the fact is, if you come to me, Nabil, and you say you've analyzed a certain corridor and it warrants that, I think the only thing that holds us back as a city staff and council would be just whether we can afford it. So I appreciate your efforts to streamline the process. Nobody wants to go through 50 steps to get something that they believe is warranted in their community. But I do have a little bit of concern.

Phil BacerraItem 1

I mean, this is very eerily similar to what we're experiencing with these neighborhood parking permits. Because you get certain segments of the city where they're trying to implement a program, and now we're leaving it to polling when maybe the numbers show that it's necessitated, that we need this in a certain area. So I will throw it back to my colleagues, but I think my concern is this idea of polling, of seeing if there's an interest. I think if our professional engineering staff comes to us and says there's a safety concern along the street or a particular stretch of roadway, I would want to see it.

Phil BacerraItem 1

I would like to see the humps or the speed cushions installed. And obviously given what we have to be sensitive to as far as our budget. But I just having these interest forms and advisory polls as part of the process, I think just it's not appropriate for this process.

Great. Thank you for those comments. Let me go ahead and ask if any other members of the council have any comments. And this is just a receive and file, so hopefully this information will help.

We can study that again, and I'll come back to you on any revisions for that. And there had to be a reason. I don't have it right now on why we poll residents. But, you know, we have been receiving bombarded with a lot of requests, as you know, with speed cushions. And we're hoping that we could find funding for those. And so in preparation for the funding, we've updated this policy. But we will visit that request and the fact that we have to poll someone. And we do the polling twice, actually, right now. is in the beginning and when we have funding, we require that 60% or two-thirds of the resident

along that stretch of street to agree to it.

Phil BacerraItem 1

But that's a staff-initiated procedure, correct?

Yeah, that's part of our process.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Okay, and as a council member, I don't like that. I'm one of seven, but I'm just expressing that I don't like that. I don't think that's the appropriate way to figure out where we need to put these humps and speed cushions.

Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Phan?

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Thank you, Councilmember. I knew you were going to pull this item. Nabil, I would get rid of this polling situation because half the time we're fighting about, is it the landlord who's going to be polled, or is it the resident, or is it a tenant? How many of the tenants? And it makes it extremely difficult, obviously, as he mentioned. We saw it with the parking. But with speed homes, if you, let's say the neighborhood has, you know, 20 families and only 10 of them have children well they're the ones who are going to be really paying attention to the speed issue frankly as a you know

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

one of two people living in my house both adults I don't really walk or play outside in the street in that way and so I might not care or notice so I just really don't think we need to have any of this polling if we have one or two people asking we should look into seeing whether it's feasible and again I understand that there is a money component and funding component we can address that as we do with for example our CIP list and make a list of okay well maybe you know Gunther or Santanita there's a lot of cars speeding down Gunther and you can see that's a high pedestrian area that has had many

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

accidents and we can put that high on the list of speed hump CIP if you want to call it that but I would like to get rid of the polling and the first or second round of polling I don't think it's effective I think it just delays the process and it takes more time frankly and putting it on residents to do the legwork when i really don't think it's necessary and with that i would like to see staff look into how to address this policy removing those aspects and then looking at how to maybe even create like i said a list of priority areas for speed humps as they come in or as requests come in we have started

there we have a perfect it's very long last but again the funding is not okay

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

well you know I do find that a lot of young people especially children walk and I hear that there's some ARPA money that potentially may help with youth

services thanks Thank You councilmember mayor pro tem then councilmember Mendoza

David PenalozaItem 1

Thank You mayor Sarmiento and Thank You councilmember Becerra for pulling this item i have to agree with what my colleagues have said i i am not comfortable having a polling method when it comes to speed bumps within our neighborhoods because like we've seen with the neighborhood parking programs it doesn't work we have uh 50 of our community are renting uh whether it's a house or apartment and what we've seen with neighborhood parking permit districts is that half the time they can't locate the, I mean, people are renting, the owner isn't available,

David PenalozaItem 1

no one collects the mail that's addressed to the owner or whatnot, and it's very hard to get to that 75% or two-thirds majority of signatures in support of something. I'm not supportive of the polling. I'm not comfortable with it at all because I just know it doesn't work, and with something like speed bumps. I won't repeat what my colleagues have said, but I mean it's the truth. You have communities where not everybody has kids and might not notice, might not sit outside long enough watching their kids play on their bike or roller skates or whatnot to even notice

David PenalozaItem 1

that there's a speeding issue within streets. One question that I had for you, Director Saba, when it comes to the daily counts that are listed on here, that the technical requirements requirements for consistent for with the region the daily counts of vehicles per day is 500 minimum to 3,500 right that would go through an area yes to even that's your window if it goes

above then the street may not qualify because there's so much traffic through it so it may not

David PenalozaItem 1

become a true residential street okay I and what concerns me with that is that we have a lot of stretches of road in Santa Ana that are very wide and I don't see how there could possibly be 500 vehicles that travel through it a day one instance just a couple weeks ago we were emailing back and forth I met with a lot of residents in the Memorial Park neighborhood they had concerns with the speeding on St. Andrew from Flower and Bristol Street very familiar with the numerous emails that I've communicated with you and that's just one example that stretch of St. Andrew is the width of four lanes of cars.

David PenalozaItem 1

You have two lanes for parking and then one lane in each direction. That's a pretty wide street. Same with Standard Avenue, which I know Public Works has also been working over the last couple of years with that neighborhood to mitigate that speeding issue there. And I don't necessarily think that there even is 500 vehicles that travel through that stretch of maybe Standard, but definitely not St. Andrew because that's very familiar with that neighborhood. I live there, and I don't think that there's 500 vehicles that even travel through there. However, if there's only 100 vehicles that travel per day there,

David PenalozaItem 1

and 50 of those vehicles, half, okay, 20%, 20 of those vehicles travel at 100 miles per hour down that stretch of street because of how wide it is, which I see it daily, that is enough for me to and knowing that there's a park just right next that that that we have children trying to cross the street to get to the park there's no crosswalk there's nothing so you have i mean that is enough for me to say this stretch warrants a speed bump um so i'm not comfortable with the polling and i'm not comfortable with the the requirement of having 500 vehicles

David PenalozaItem 1

travel through a stretch of street to even think about putting because that is a lot of vehicles but even if you have the same vehicle that blows through every single day obviously I would hope that traffic police handles that but you know that there there there's a lot of areas in our city that would definitely I know we got identify funding for all of these are expensive but little by little we should be able to implement and install these speed bumps without having to say well there's only 450 vehicles that went through here and didn't meet that threshold

David PenalozaItem 1

so i'm not comfortable with those two thresholds and i'll end it at that just personally because it's a receiving file i don't know what kind of uh we can we can look at those those numbers in

fact the 500 used to be a thousand and we lowered it just to meet to to allow for more speed bumps to be actually become feasible. We lowered that. It used to be 1,000. So part of the improvement is made it at 500. But for San Andrew, I think that San Andrew specifically, that seat may have more than 500 vehicles a day travel. But again, we'll look at that standard, and we'll get back to you on that.

Okay. Thank you, Director Saba. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for those comments. Council Member Mendoza.

Thank you, Mayor Sarmantel. I agree with my colleagues. The polling is going to be a little lopsided if we continue with it. I have a real-life example of a resident who lives in a narrow street across from a school. They have the issue of, as they're backing out, they have speeding cars, and they're at risk of getting hit, and not to mention the kids crossing the street. So if you would poll just that one street, they would say yes, but if you would poll the street behind it, they don't have that issue.

So they would probably not want that. What I'm thinking is maybe if you could, in addition to, just have some kind of community informative sessions where they don't require any polling, just so that they have a buy-in and where city staff can point out the benefits of the of these humps or or the other speed on deterrence so that they see the the beauty and the protection of their children and and of their

communities. I think when we give somebody the option and the information to be part of it, I think they will be more open to having such speed bumps in their neighborhood.

Thank you, council member. Any other members of the council have any questions or comments?

Hearing none and seeing none, I think you received plenty of helpful comments, so let's move along that is a receive and file item moving along to the other council requested item to be pulled off the consent calendar i believe that was item number 14 by councilmember lopez and this is the uh to amend the agreement with the landscape west management services to increase the annual contract by 250 000 for median landscaping so i'll turn it over to councilman

Jessie LopezItem 1

Thank you. Daisy, can you start my three-minute clock, please? Yes. Thank you. So I'm pulling item 14 because one of the things that is in the stock report is a map, and that map shows us where we have the medians that we are contracting with this company. And, you know, Googling it, and also just thinking about different parts of the city that I drive by, the median on Santa Ana Boulevard and Broadway, you know, it's always looking like a patch of dirt. There's no little, in comparison to what it used to be with the little plants, it doesn't look like that anymore.

Jessie LopezItem 1

And so I'm pulling the item because my concern is that if we're going to keep contracting with this company, how are we making sure that our mediums, there's some sort of system in place that we are either taking pictures of them and taking inventory so that they don't look the way that they look now. And you know I think what we should do is really move away from the little plants that can't survive without us watering them especially now that we're in a drought. We should really be planting trees. I think trees you know provide coverage for a tree city. I think that makes the most sense and I'm probably biased

Jessie LopezItem 1

but I think the medians on 17th street are some of the best looking mediums here in the city with all the trees and I think that that would just work the best for us thank

you great thank you for those comments councilmember any other members of the council have any questions or comments on this item if not I'll entertain a motion to move the item yeah I'll move it great we have a motion by council member Lopez is there a second second second by I believe it was Becerra and And Madam Clerk, if you'll please call roll.

Council members, if you would please cast your vote.

So do I need to revise that and just say, Council members, vote? And we'll do that, and then you can go ahead and recite the results.

Okay, thank you. Thank you. Council member Mendoza, thank you.

Okay, thank you. Councilmembers Becerra, Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Fan, Mayor Potempeñalosa, Mayor Sarmiento, all voted yes.

Great, so the motion carries. Yeah, just for the public's information, so we used to have voice votes, and now we have an electronic device where we can vote electronically, and so, yeah, old habits die hard. In any event, I think the last item that was pulled off the consent calendar was item number 18 by Councilmember Lopez. That's to approve the agreement with Lieber, Cassidy, and Whitmore, and approve an amended agreement with Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Rua, and Romo.

Jessie LopezItem 1

Yeah, so I know Councilmember Fan also pulled this item.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

I am recused from it, but because it's on consent, I can just sit here.

Jessie LopezItem 1

Thank you. So I just wanted to, I had a couple of questions. I want to know exactly why we're upping up the dollar amount by $50,000 towards, I think it's the city attorney's office. And it's general fund money, correct?

That is correct. It's funded through the Human Resources Department. So there's two items before you. There's one to execute an agreement for $100,000 and there's one to increase an agreement for $50,000. And it's for needed services, but I certainly will have the Executive Director of Human Resources come up and he can provide a little more information on the necessity to have these services available to us.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

And, Councillor, I would like to just clarify that it's not an increase to the city attorney's contract and authority it's a need of the hr department for additional legal services so it's a request coming from the human resources department thank you for that clarification

good evening honorable mayor and city council um could you repeat the question one more time i guess why why is this happening extending the contract from 50 000 to 100 000 what's the need about they're currently providing um legal service and on ongoing personnel investigations that were a lot related to EEOC and DFEH matters. And those investigations are gonna exceed the original $50,000 and that's the request for expanding it so that we can conclude those investigations.

Jessie LopezItem 1

Okay, is there, and I know it's an investigation, but is there anything else that we can, the public can know at this point in time about it?

Right now, they're just, they're personnel confidential investigations.

Jessie LopezItem 1

Okay. And so if these investigations were happening, we wouldn't be seeing this item now say that again if these investigations weren't happening we wouldn't be seeing this item in front of us correct okay um you know i just i just want to make a final comment um i think fifty thousand dollars would get the saddleback view neighborhood maybe three lighting posts maybe the fisher park neighborhood that stoplight that they want that with flashing lights um it could probably help with the speed bump issue that we have in our different neighborhoods and so you know I think that it's money that unfortunately

Jessie LopezItem 1

we're using and investigations and I really hope that we don't have this

issue moving forward thank you thank you councilmember any other members of the

council have any question councilmember Mendoza is this a one-time request and is it for one year two years three years this increase the increase for Anderson Atkinson's one time I just feel that it's it's quite a bit considering that we already expend quite a bit for legal services and I

And I will clarify that there's multiple investigations.

Is there any other way that these investigations could be done in-house without having to do the increase?

So I'm currently in the process of recruiting for an EEO ADA administrator. But we also make a determination when allegations come in. We make a determination on the sensitivity of the allegation and who's involved. And also current workload of staffing. So unfortunately, with the involved complainants and then also a lack of in-house staff, we went outside for conducting investigations.

Is this similar to having external investigations rather than have in-house due to the confidentiality of the items, the investigations?

Can you repeat or clarify that question?

Well, there are some agencies who do not investigate their own, but rather go to external affairs for a neutral third party to do the investigation. Is that what you're doing?

Independent neutral investigator, yes.

Well, this time I will reluctantly support it because, as I mentioned, we already pay a lot of legal fees and this is money, as my colleague Lopez mentioned, that could be going directly to our community for public safety or any other services that our community needs. But today I will support it.

And I will concur with the council that we would obviously, as staff, not have allegation investigations, but we can't prevent that. And under the law, we have an affirmative duty to investigate.

Understandable. Thank you.

Great. Thank you for that. That sounded like a motion. Was that a reluctant motion, Council Member Mendoza?

I make a motion to approve the item.

And I'll second with comment. And so I just want, you know, the public and my colleagues to know that this is triggered by sort of conditions outside our control. And we don't have the staffing levels in order to address the volume of investigations and inquiries and responses, legal responses, and the responsibilities that we have to thoroughly investigate everything. So to the extent that, yeah, this is a moment when we do need that additional staffing, legal staffing for this, I think that's what warrants the item before us. So we have a motion and a second. Colleagues, please vote.

Councilmember Mendoza and Phan, if you would please cast your vote.

and councilmember Fian

I'm recused from the item oh thank you my apologies

councilmember Mendoza if you would voice your vote and I can go ahead and

mark it in there for you thank you well she's a maker of the motion so hopefully She's using yes.

Can't assume anything anymore. That's right.

Okay. Motion carries 6-1 with Becerra Hernandez, Lopez Mendoza, Mayor Pro Tem, and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes, and Councilmember Fan abstention.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. So that brings us to the end of the consent calendar and the first item on the business calendar. that's to consider and approve an agreement with all city management services for a school crossing guard program for either a two-year term not to exceed 2.5, roughly 2.6 million, or a five-year term not to exceed 6.8 million. So I'll go ahead and turn it over to the city manager if there's any background or any presentation.

Certainly. Thank you, Mayor. So this item was before you, and there was a lot of discussion regarding the price of the item and whether it could be a shorter term. So our Executive Director of Public Works did go back to the vendor who is willing to honor the same prices and do a shorter term. So what's before you is an option, as the mayor just stated, to go for a shorter term or back to the staff's original five-year term recommendation. The staff's available to answer any more questions on this item if you would like.

Great. Thank you for that, Madam City Manager. And if the Council will remember, this is an item that was continued until the presentation was done, and this is the second time we've had to consider this. So I'll bring it back to the Council for any questions or comments. Mayor Pro Tem.

David PenalozaItem 1

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I guess this question would be for City Manager Ridge. The one question that I had was, did any conversations happen with the superintendent of the Santa Ana Unified School District regarding Grove Unified School District? Were just conversations at all about the potential of sharing these costs with them?

Certainly there were a couple different conversations that took place. One is the school ad hoc committee talked about the item. And then I did have an informal conversation with the superintendent of Santa Ana Unified School District. certainly was informal there were not any board members or decision makers involved in it the the conversation basically ended in there isn't an interest at the superintendent level but as I mentioned before it wasn't taken to the board in regards to that school district adding any funding to the cost

David PenalozaItem 1

of the crossing guards repeat that last part please at the superintendent level

there was not an interest in providing any funding for the crossing guards okay so that's i mean

David PenalozaItem 1

that's it that's where that ends or is there how do we continue that have that dialogue so the what

was requested and why it was continued was to see if we could go into a shorter term agreement so that was done by the public works director and that's what's brought before you one thing to be really important is the crossing guard needs to be in place and able to start services on August 16th. Okay. Okay, that's it for me, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for those

comments. Council Member Becerra. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So why would these crossing

Phil BacerraItem 1

guards? I mean, I appreciate that we continued the item because what we were doing was to see what, you know, Madam City Manager and staff could do as far any dialogue with our friends over at the various school districts that serve our students here in Santa Ana. But why aren't these crossing guards part-time employees? I mean, I think this would be a wonderful opportunity, and especially given some of the restrictions that we have, the limitations. You know, it has to be so many year agreements, so much of this, so much of that. I feel like we probably would have a little more flexibility if we controlled our own destiny,

Phil BacerraItem 1

and that might also help us probably better negotiate or try to come to some sort of agreement with the school districts that serve our city. So if you could explain why we're not bringing back our part-time employees to serve in these roles.

I don't have an answer to that question. I don't know if that question's ever been posed. Traditionally, the cities that do fund crossing guards do so through contracts because it's seasonal, it's varying hours. I will say that we did look into, and there is not a state requirement for a city or a school district to actually fund crossing guards. It's a mixed bag out there across the state. Some school districts do fund. Some cities do fund. Sometimes there is a cooperation between the city and the school district. There certainly is a lot more vehicles for a school district to fund crossing guards.

They have the ability to tap into PTAs and use parent volunteers. years, and they also have an exception carve out in the state code that allows them to bring back retired teachers without any impact to their retirement. But it's a mixed bag across. I am not aware, not to say that there isn't one out there, of a city that uses actual part-time employees to provide this type of service.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Okay, thank you for that. I think right now at this point, given the timing, I don't know that we're really in a good position to not move forward with this item. at least I would say from my own personal preference, the first option, which would enter us into a one-year agreement with an option for one additional year. But I would, if we were going to go down that path, I would want staff to commit to working with our partners over at the various school districts, Sanana, Garden Grove, Orange, Tustin, wherever it makes the most sense.

Phil BacerraItem 1

And I want to thank Council Member Phan for bringing this concern up because I think it's something that we need to be more cautious of. You know, we talk about fiscal responsibility and we want to make sure that we stretch our dollar as far as we can. And knowing that there are other cities and other districts that are doing it in a way where it's a little more economically feasible for the cities, I think it's important for us to explore that option. But I understand where we are today. And the last thing I want to see is our kids crossing the street without a crossing guard.

Phil BacerraItem 1

So I to use a phrase from one of my colleagues earlier I reluctantly support this item And with that mr. Mayor, I will go ahead and jump on it and say that I'll move the item with the option one

So there's a motion for option one. Let me I believe there's some other comments from the council Let me go ahead and call on councilmember Pham

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Thank you mayor and thank you to my colleagues for making these comments Staff, as you know, I pulled this item quite, I guess, taken aback by the dollar amount of almost $7 million to fund crossing guards. And while I do understand that it is important for our students here in the city to walk safely to and from school, that's why we have the Safe Streets program. But I want to, I guess, share a little bit to the public who might not know that, you know, the city has been funding these crossing guards because that's just what they've done or we've done time in memoriam. And that's what some other cities do.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

As a new council member, I think that that's a terrible reason to continue doing something just because it's been done that way before. And so I looked through the 50 locations in which we have crossing guards. all 50 of them and map them.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Most of these locations have streetlights. Most of these locations have streetlights. Only 20 locations are crosswalk only without streetlights. First, I think that we need to go to the school districts, all four of them, and demand that they partner with us to fund this program. Garden Grove Unified School District partners with the city of Garden Grove to fund crossing guards. There is no reason why these school districts are not partnering with us. In fact, the existence of the school is causing the traffic. So this is a relationship that we need to have.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

I am tired of one school district demanding that we pay for these services and refusing to partner with us. I did not attend Santa Ana Unified School District. Two of my other colleagues did not attend Santa Ana Unified School District. Yet, only six of these locations are, I believe, in an area outside of Santa Ana Unified School District. They should be a partner. So does Garden Grove, Orange, and Tustin.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Secondly, before we even look at the contract, I think we need to pull out all the locations that already have improvements such as streetlights. Because if a child is old enough to use a streetlight, then they can use a streetlight. If they are not, they should be accompanied by a parent or an older sibling. And if you did that, the list of 50 locations would go down to 20. So instead of $1.2 million a year or so, the cost should go way down. So I think that's really important to look at.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Additionally, I really hope that our school district partners and that city staff go back to them. ask that they support this because what I'm seeing is that a school district that is getting more money than the city of Santa Ana in ARPA funding in fact they're getting a hundred and thirty five million dollars in ARPA funding a school district that refused to open its campuses all last year to allow students to use its parks is now demanding again that the city provide a service for them so I think that it's only fair that we ask that we partner

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

together just as we have providing crosswalks, providing streetlights, and making it safer for students to go to school. So with that, despite the timeline, I don't think approving a one-year contract is going to get them to the table. They're going to look at us and laugh it off like, I guess, maybe that informal conversation and say, well, they have an agreement. Why change it? Why change it? And I would ask these school districts to say, hey, PTA, step up. parents step up teachers who are already out there helping the kids line up to leave school step up and then we can talk because otherwise we're always

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

going to be playing on an uneven playing field when negotiating with them so with that I would not support a motion to approve this contract either option one

or option two thank you thank you councilmember I believe councilmember

Jessie LopezItem 1

Lopez and then Hernandez yeah you know I do agree with councilmember fan I think a year from now we're probably going to be back here but I do want to see maybe a pilot with volunteers retired teachers you know retired folks in the community that have the time to volunteer for something like this would be great you know I also think that

Jessie LopezItem 1

you know one of the things I've been publicly and privately asking for is like a standing ad hoc between the council members and the school board folks and I think that maybe this is something we don't know now because it hasn't happened but I think that this is something maybe that if folks were at the table this could have been resolved and so moving forward I do hope to see that happen i hope that there's some willingness um from sa usd school board members to you know me with the council and um i know now that that's something that i have to bring forth

Jessie LopezItem 1

as an agenda item and that's what i'll do but i do i am going to support this item um i don't want to see you know anyone get hurt and then be the finger we pointed at us for saying you didn't provide enough support for the kids to cross so thank you thank you council member i

I believe Council Member Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Lots of great dialogue being had at the council today. I'm supportive of this item. I'd rather see this service exist in our community than for it to not exist. And I do concur with Council Member Becerra. I think it would be worth us looking at if this was something that we were able to have part-timers work, I think that would be a great solution. as somebody that grew up right beside a school, Fremont Elementary, we consistently had a cross guard. We had the same cross guard for probably upwards of about 15 years. And it added a lot of value to this community.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Students, families, parents knew the cross guard. We regularly saw this individual on a daily basis and it just made us feel like a community. We are a very diverse and a young council, but from my knowledge there's there's only two people here that are parents to kids that are under the age of 18 myself and mayor Sarmiento as a parent I I would be absolutely upset to see the city not go this route of having the service I I concur with my colleagues I feel the school district should definitely be at the table I think it is something that they should

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

take on but part of why I ran for office is because if someone's not willing to do their job then that's why we're here. So with that being said, I'm supportive of this item.

Thank you, Council Member, for those comments. I know Mayor Pro Tem has another comment he wanted to make. Let me just mention something really quick. And, you know, I know there, and please start the time on me as well, Madam Clerk. I know that this has always been a sensitive conversation because it is a large commitment that we make but we have to understand that

children and you know parents that are using crosswalks getting their children to and from school you know these aren't school board constituents these aren't City Council constituents these are residents and these are neighbors and these are responsibilities that we have to share mutually so to the extent that you know once they're on our streets I always feel compelled that we have to provide a service and create a safe environment and a safe route to and from school. And I know, you know, unfortunately, during my tenure, we've seen and I've seen too many, you know, pedestrians get struck and young children get struck.

And so to the extent that it is a difficult, you know, large expense, it is something that is certainly worth making sure that, you know, we address that danger. because unfortunately we have a lot of vehicles in our community. We have way, way too many pedestrian accidents, and we have a lot of people that walk and a lot of people that bike ride in our community. So there is exposure. I do appreciate Councilmember Pham's concern. That's one of the reasons why I convened an ad hoc to address joint relationships between the City Council and the School Board.

And I know it's beyond the scope of what we're talking about, but Madam City Manager, maybe we can consider making that a standing committee just because I think that it's outgrown its ad hoc status. And I think there has to be, and I know there was, there used to be a standing joint school board and city council committee that had members of both boards. And they could talk about issues like this and others. And I think it might be that moment where we can have some worthwhile conversations as we go down this path.

So that's all I had to say is that, you know, unfortunately I've seen too many accidents where, you know, we're looking at one another and saying, you know, whose responsibility is this? And I'd rather not have that question posed to us and have parents come before us and say, you know, why didn't you do this when you had the opportunity? So that, but I am sort of intrigued by the comment about the part-time staff. So if staff can maybe do a little bit of research on that, it certainly is an intriguing idea.

And I know we've been looking for places where we can have our part-timers fit, and this might be one of them if we talk to our representatives of the service employees. So I've heard support for this item, and I've obviously heard opposition from this item. I know that there's a motion for option number one, so maybe if council members can explain it. I'm happy to second. Okay, second. And just really quickly, Director Saba, if you could just answer a question for me really fast on option number two versus option number one, because I know option number two is a five-year option. Option number one is the two-year option.

That's correct. Correct. Is there a benefit to having an extended, you know, contract?

It's just the fact that we have to go back out to do the RFP process with a two-year option. Once the first year is over, then we'll have to go back and do the RFP process again to retain a vendor to do that for us. So it's going to happen really quick, and we usually do three plus two and so forth.

Got it. Got it. Thank you for that. Sure. I believe Mayor Pro Tem had one more comment to me.

David PenalozaItem 1

Thank you, Mayor Samedo. I was going to mention the Joint Use Committee, but so you you took it from me but all good very supportive of that but while we were discussing and having additional conversations I you know thinking out loud here I started thinking about the part-time potential for our part-time any some part-time employees or even I know there's a lot of people out there that want to volunteer speaking at the senior center just a couple days ago a of the very able seniors were asking me how can I volunteer I want to be more

David PenalozaItem 1

involved I want to so there's also maybe it's a it's a mixed use of all three maybe some part-time workers some contract workers and some volunteers that could dedicate time to to doing this and I know that this is this is a might sound crazy but even just thinking of you know the fact that we're investing you know it's a lot of money over six million dollars into potentially into a crossing guards you know there's no reason why we can't use them if they're able to and I don't know how close the contract

David PenalozaItem 1

is, but I mean, you know, for something like Halloween, for example. Halloween is one time a year.

David PenalozaItem 1

Maybe having that option, would they be willing to work in high traffic neighborhoods to help? Because we've seen a lot of the, I think it was a couple years ago, we had that terrible accident where a couple kids were killed crossing the street on Halloween. So just creative ways that we could maybe see if we can get more options for them to since we're paying a lot of money for them but that's it mayor something thank you thank you so

we have a motion in a second any seeing no further discussion oh

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

councilmember just a quick comment if we didn't have these crossing guards there'd be plenty of funding for permanent speed humps which would actually support all people walking down the street but with that I will let you

start with the vote thank you councilmember so colleagues please vote on your devices

Motion carries 6-1 with Council Members Becerra, Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Mayor Pro Tem and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes and Council Member Fan dissenting.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Moving along to item number 25, which is to consider the resolution of intent to award a solid waste franchise and I'll turn it over to the staff.

Thank you, Mayor, for this item. We do have a brief presentation to just explain what exactly the resolution is and why it is needed before you take the next step on August 16th. So I will turn it over to Executive Director Nabil Saba.

Thank you.

waste franchise section 1303 of the city municipal code requires that before granting a franchise the City Council shall pass a resolution declaring the intention to grant the same stating the name of the proposed grantee the character of the franchise and the terms and conditions upon which it is proposed to be granted. Through the city's solid waste service request for proposal process, the city intend to award solid waste franchise on August 17, 2021 to one of four

proposers, Athens Services, CR&R, Environmental Services, Republic Services, or Waste Management. That concludes my presentation.

Thank you, Director Sava. I'll go ahead and bring it back to the council if there's any questions or comments on the side.

Mayor Pro Tem.

David PenalozaItem 1

Oh, no questions. I just was going to motion to approve.

Phil BacerraItem 1

And I'll second.

Great. We have a motion and a second. Any other questions or comments from the council?

Yes, Council Member Pham.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

I guess I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask it, but I did know relating to the waste hauling, so I wanted to ask staff or maybe Madam City Attorney. I do know that there was a request for council members to go to Comlink. I know we're doing a presentation, Director Saba, but obviously we can't all be there. So maybe, Director, if you can coordinate with certain council members or just staff to make sure we don't end up with a Brown Act violation.

We can do that, Council Member.

Thank you, Council Member Phan. Mayor Pro Tem.

David PenalozaItem 1

I have a question in regards to that.

David PenalozaItem 1

With the Brown Act, we could be there, essentially. We just can't communicate and discuss, right? But if we all happen to be there, or four of us?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

Technically speaking, a quorum of the council can attend a community meeting, so long as you do not participate, but I do warn you, and it's the reason I strongly recommend people not go. There is an AG, Attorney General's opinion, from a few years ago where a fifth council member in a seven-member body was making facial expressions, and the Attorney General concluded that that was participation, and so they were deemed to have a Brown Act violation. So rather than be accused of doing things like that, I think it's best that you avoid appearing at these places as a court.

David PenalozaItem 1

Thank you for that, Sonia.

Thank you. Yeah, so no winking, no thumbs up, no thumbs down, no grinning, no frowning.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

So maybe I want to, because I do understand Com League was looking for participation with the counselor answering questions, so maybe I would open up to the trash ad hoc because we're the ones who've been working on the item. But I just wanted to put it out there. Thanks.

Great point. And I just want to remind the public that we did have a study session exclusively on this item. So we had, I think it was a three, four hour meeting where we vetted the four vendors pretty in depth. So I certainly appreciate them lending their time. So, you know, and there's been an ad hoc that's been delegated with that responsibility to do a deep dive on this. So I think this hasn't been for lack of effort. And as somebody said before, and I think it was, you know, Carl, we've never been this close to approving this contract

or considering approval of this contract because we've tried in the past, and I think it's been about three or four years that we've tried and haven't been able to get this close. So we are very, very close, and I appreciate staff and my colleagues and the vendors and members of the public. So we have a motion and a second.

So colleagues, please vote on your device.

Councilmember Hernandez?

Thank you.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Just resubmitted.

Thank you.

Motion carries. 7-0 with Councilmembers Becerra Hernandez, Lopez Mendoza-Fan, Mayor Pro Tem, Beñalosa, and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes.

Great. Thank you. Moving along to item number 26, which is a consideration of amending the ordinance on the Cannabis Public Benefit Fund, restricting the uses for additional use services. That really cleared the room. Nobody wanted to hear this item.

let's wait

staff has a presentation on this and we don't have a presentation but i can do a brief summary of this great so at the time that you adopted the citywide budget you had three follow-up items that you had requested from staff this was one of those follow-up items and it came from the majority requesting the ability to potentially move money around between the two-thirds set aside, between youth services and enforcement services. So your city attorney and the finance department worked at drafting an ordinance that would allow you to do just that. It doesn't change the two-thirds set aside, but it would give you the flexibility

to move between enforcement and youth services. So the finance director, the city attorney, and myself are here to answer any questions that you may have about it. this would be the introduction of the ordinance and then it would return for a second reading

great thank you for that summary and that that report let me go ahead and bring it back to the councils to see if there's any questions or comments hearing none seeing that i think mayor

David PenalozaItem 1

pro tem thank you thank you mayor sarmiento um and and i just need a little bit of clarity madam city manager and and uh director of finance whoever could or city attorney i mean you guys could decide who wants to answer but um in regards to to so tonight we're not making any changes to the allocation of funds or how much money gets separated into what the amounts still stay one-third one-third one-third to youth enforcement and right

you're absolutely correct mayor pro tem so this is the introduction of an ordinance that would enable you to do those changes in the future at a future

David PenalozaItem 1

And in the future, when we do eventually decide to transfer funds over from, whether it's enforcement to youth or youth to enforcement or vice versa, whatever that will be, it would require five votes of the members of the council, correct?

I'm going to defer to the city attorney because if you stay within the two-thirds, there's a way to do it. If you actually go outside the two-thirds, I believe you default to the old ordinance. So I will let the city attorney answer that question.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

Yeah, I think it will depend on exactly what you plan to do with that money. So, for example, if you make changes within this fund and you simply are moving money the way this ordinance allows for, you would not need five votes. If you are going to take away money that was already allocated or budgeted and have to then make up for that change, you may need five votes. So I'm going to need to know exactly what you mean by that.

David PenalozaItem 1

So, for example, six months from now, we decide that we want to remove $3 million from enforcement into youth services. Does that require four votes or five?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

Okay, and so I may need a little assistance on the technical side of this.

So I can answer that question. So, Mayor Pro Tem, you can approve a year's budget on a simple majority, but mid-year to do an appropriation adjustment. So if what you're doing entails an appropriation adjustment, so let's say you're moving some money from the enforcement side to youth, and it's being taken from one department to another department, that would be an appropriation, which does mid-year require a supermajority.

David PenalozaItem 1

Okay. So, okay. I just wanted clarity because I definitely do not want to remove the entirety of the amount allocated to enforcement because although that enforcement demand has seen a reduction, I know that there's still a need and there still will be a need as we move forward. I mean, I know that it's not the amount that we initially needed, you know, four years ago when we had 200 plus illegal dispensaries. But I know that some, if not very little, will still exist and we still will have that need.

David PenalozaItem 1

So I just wanted to make sure that we will still have the opportunity to decide that we want to have some enforcement and not completely remove it all. And it would require a majority. I feel it would just be more transparent and efficient that way as we move forward and clear. But thank you for that clarification.

Thank you for that. Council Member Becerra, then Fan.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I have a couple, well, first kind of clarification in regards to the current ordinance. And this is 13-202 that says enforcement services, because we're talking about enforcement versus youth services. The language says that they are any and all services provided by city staff for the prevention, detection, investigation, and violations of the city's codes and ordinances intended to prevent public nuisances or activities that are detrimental to the health, safety, and welfare of the community. So just for clarity, I want to make sure that when we're talking about the funding for enforcement,

Phil BacerraItem 1

Number one, it's not going exclusively to the police department.

Correct, Council Member. There's three departments that primarily have the enforcement responsibilities.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Okay, and those are what? Police, code enforcement, and city attorney. So I could go among any of those three. And so we hear, and sometimes I've heard this in different times, so I'm not trying to say it was one person at one time, but sometimes we hear that this funding for enforcement is only related to illegal cannabis shops, right? So what I want to get clarification on, though, is from what I just read in Section 13202, it sounds like these funds go beyond enforcement from a cannabis perspective. In other words, is it fair to say that this goes towards nuisance abatement,

Phil BacerraItem 1

any other, again, non-PD but enforcement activities that do not include cannabis?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

Yes, and I mean, just from my perspective, so you understand from the city attorney's office, for example, we funded an attorney position with this money, and that attorney, as some of you know, handles all types of nuisances. Some of our troubled hotels and motels, he's been successful in that. He handles nuisances involving single-family homes, and he also uses his time to, he serves as the prosecutor for the hundreds of citations that are issued each month. So he has, that's where the funding goes. And so that's quality of life improvements.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Thank you for that clarification, Madam City Attorney. So just to be clear then, this is funding that does come from the Cannabis Fund, but it is not exclusively used for enforcement related to cannabis activities. Is that correct?

Correct, sir.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Okay. You know, I know that this item is not about direct appropriation tonight, and I think questions that were already asked as far as vote thresholds satisfy my curiosity, but I just wanted to point that out, that as we're talking about moving money around, I think there's some very worthwhile youth services that are not currently funded right now that I would love to see funded. But I also want to point out that in case there's any sort of misconceptions about this funding, that it really goes above and beyond cannabis. We're just like the youth services.

Phil BacerraItem 1

We're blessed that this money is coming in and that we're able to use it for the activities that we do. That's all I have. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. Council Member Fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Thank you, Mayor. I think Council Member Becerra stole my thunder a little bit because I was exactly going to ask about code enforcement specifically. Alvaro is in the room and he's you know code enforcement works so hard and they're very much understaffed and underfunded and a lot of folks don't know but code enforcement ensures that our residents are safe you know a lot of our red tagging and a lot of our businesses who don't comply with laws that keep residents and customers safe are dealt with via code enforcement and so I'm really excited that while we are creating a fund to allow shifting

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

between youth and enforcement services, I would like in the future to look at expanding code enforcement because it's not just about cannabis. It's about unsafe fire situations. It's about overcrowded slumlords. It's about businesses that are not complying with the law. So I think that would be really great. The other thing is, as some of one of the callers in public comments did mention, and and maybe this was not the original intent of the ordinance, but with Planet 13 being the largest dispensary in California opening here in Santa Ana and other funds coming in,

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

I do think one, we need to address the taxing issue, but two, also finding ways to assist local artists and those who are not just youth because there are also a lot of needs for young adults who are not under 18, you know people who are in the early stages of adulthood that could also really benefit from a lot of these programs. Great thank you for those

comments. I just had a couple of comments and one of them's a question and a couple of comments so this is more for the city attorney so I'm kind of confused I guess if we're being asked to vote on an amendment to this ordinance so we can later vote to appropriate money that's going to request a two third majority why wouldn't we just do a two-thirds majority vote to appropriate money now without an without an appropriation so I guess to me you're we're being asked to vote twice as a two-thirds majority for an appropriation first to amend this ordinance second to appropriate money

later that just doesn't make sense to me but you know I know we differ on the interpretation of how this of how this is being done because the way I see it This is just giving the council the flexibility to move this single fund and appropriate three different needs, right? One to the general fund, one for enforcement, and one for youth services. So to the extent you're asking the council to vote twice on a supermajority threshold to be able to allocate these monies. So that I don't understand and that I don't agree with. That's just my legal interpretation of the municipal code section on this.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

Yeah, so I wanted to maybe clarify. It's not my understanding that you would need a supermajority vote to do this tonight.

So you want a simple majority tonight for the flexibility for later. So again, why wouldn't we just go straight to the appropriation tonight and say, you know, we want to be able to go ahead and move some of that. Do we need that tonight? Do we need that additional step of having the flexibility on the ordinance?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

Yeah, so it wasn't in the agenda, but I think that the goal was that the way the ordinance was previously drafted, it not only would have required a two-thirds vote to amend, and you wouldn't have been able to have the flexibility that you were seeking so that in the future you could move the money from, you know, when you adopt your original budget in the future, you are no longer going to have to do one-third, one-third, one-third. So that's what this ordinance is doing, so that when you have your original budget discussion, you will now have flexibility. And we gave you that flexibility without having to do the two-thirds vote.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

And the ordinance had also required that you declare a fiscal emergency. So we didn't have a fiscal emergency. So even if I had brought this to you as a two-third and done an amendment, I don't believe you could have made the findings for the fiscal emergency. So what this ordinance does is it gives the council greater flexibility now to allocate during the original budget decisions.

All right. Well, look, it just sounds a little goofy to me, but in any event, I understand what we're trying to do. And I guess just to give a little context is that you're right. This enforcement isn't exclusively, you know, police, you know, dollars. It's for city attorney staffing. It's for code enforcement staffing. And I think even a little for city manager staffing.

And I forgot business license.

And business license. So there's many things. And I remember when we first did this, because I think I was the only one on the council that was here when we did this, the one-third, one-third, one-third was kind of arbitrary to begin with, right? We had about 120 unpermitted illegal operators, and we thought, let's make sure that the revenues go to reducing that number. And I think now, you know, I could be corrected if I'm wrong, Alvaro, we're down to less than 20. big number big change right so you know staff has been extremely effective at addressing that somehow all these other you know enforcement efforts were

blended into that enforcement which is fine but I guess the what we're losing sight of is what was forecasted for this fund was miniscule compared to what we have now so not only have we you know addressed the need for the enforcement effort, but we've gone way beyond what we forecasted. So that's why I just see the proportionality difference between what we're funding for youth services and what we're funding for enforcement is just, you know, they're polar extremes. So that's not what the original intent, the legislative history of this one-third, one-third, one-third, you know, separation was.

It was to equally fund these efforts. And now, you know, we have the youngest, one of the youngest cities in the country and we are funding to a much smaller degree than what I think we should because the council took a risk when they decided to regulate cannabis but one of those I think policy discussions were if we're going to introduce this new industry into the city we're going to make sure that the youth gets served by it whether it's through education whether it's through programs whether it's through capital improvements but all these efforts whether it's through

libraries, all these other different things. And I just don't see that being realized to the degree it should. So that's my thought. That's the whole purpose of this. And if it gets us further down to that path, then, you know, I'm completely supportive. But I just think, you know, it kind of makes me think we're just going through a lot of different steps when we should be cutting to the chase and helping our kids. But that being said, I think we have another comment from let me get back to you councilmember because I think councilmember Lopez Hernandez okay Lopez Hernandez

Jessie LopezItem 1

ambassador yeah you know when this comes back to us what I want to see in the staff report is a chart breakdown of how much goes to CMO how much goes to PD how much goes to to the attorney's office and how much goes to the business license because as a councilmember I didn't even know that some of these department for benefiting from this money and i don't think sanayana residents know that and they deserve to know that i mean i think that they want to know that and so please make sure that that information is available to everyone great thank you council member hernandez

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

yes thank you mr mayor um i concur with a lot of your comments um i just want to go back to to 1998 November, California voters passed Proposition 10, the Children and Families Act of 1998. And this act levied taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products to provide funding for early childhood development programs. Because of this tax, it's the reason why we have programs like Head Start. It's why we have a lot of parenting programs in California. Revenues generated from this tobacco tax enhanced the early growth experiences of children. as the first city to legalize cannabis in Orange County.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

I think that we have the opportunity and the responsibility to show other cities how these tax monies can create change structurally in Orange County, particularly in Santa Ana, the youngest city in Orange County. I don't feel that these dollars are reflective of the good that we can do. there's a strong need for youth services that we're not meeting. The cannabis fund, I think, allows us to do that. I'm supportive of us having those funds reallocated to youth services. I'm supportive of us seeing us incorporate the arts into it.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

There's an intervention and prevention model that we can strengthen through the arts. And I think that this is a really big opportunity for us to transform our city as a whole with these dollars. So I'm supportive of redirecting.

Great. Thank you for those comments. Councilmember Becerra.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I'm going to bug the city attorney on this one more time. So just so I understand, and I appreciate Mayor Sarmanto asking these questions, but I want to make sure I understand. So just the vote tonight on the item before us that we're discussing right now, do we need five or four votes of this council to approve it?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

Simple majority vote tonight. Simple majority.

Phil BacerraItem 1

everything else down the road if it's outside of the initial adoption of a budget it's an appropriation that's five votes five affirmative votes okay and again it's not to it's not a matter of a discrepancy or anything I just want to make sure I understood that I agree with councilmember Lopez in the fact that yes we should be showing the breakdown of where these enforcement funds are going the fact that if people don't know that these funds are going beyond PD that they're going to abate nuisances that are literally right next door to people's homes,

Phil BacerraItem 1

I think they absolutely should know that because I think it's important to understand. Because while we're saying that with the original intent of these funding percentages and that we've seen code enforcement do an exceptional job in taking out or getting rid of most of these illegal cannabis shops, When you look at what's in the code today, it doesn't talk about just eradicating illegal cannabis shops. It talks about enforcement on a whole global scale. And so I think that many of our residents appreciate that because, I mean, just today, I can tell you right now,

Phil BacerraItem 1

I got probably about eight emails alone today, and it was about different properties. And Alvaro knows because I forwarded most of them to him. So he knows there are definitely a lot of properties that need these resources. So to Councilmember Lopez's comments, yeah, I would like as an informational item and just to showcase what our staff is doing. Because whether it's attorneys in Madam City Attorney's Office, Alvaro and his team, and whomever else is receiving the benefit of these funds, I think it's something we should be highlighting. And I think it's important for everybody to understand truly where this money is going.

Phil BacerraItem 1

I do agree with my colleagues that, yes, we do need to fund our youth programs even more. But I would be interested to see where those funds specifically would go before we start wading into actual appropriations. I don't think we should kind of throw out ideas generically tonight. I think hopefully we'll direct staff to come back to us with items that we can start to dive in on. but I just I really appreciate the comments about enforcement and where that money is truly going and what it's been accomplishing. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember. And we certainly will in the should you approve the introduction and the second reading, we will add that information to the staff report. But more immediate, I'll send you an email where you can find the information in the budget document that's online and available right now.

Phil BacerraItem 1

I'm sorry, real quick, Madam, Madam, City Manager. So in the budget document, will it actually show us the specific enforcement activities that are tied to the Cannabis Benefit Fund?

It will show you the allocation by the departments.

Phil BacerraItem 1

By the departments. Because I don't want to put words in Council Member Lopez's mouth, but my understanding is we want to really drill down specifically on where these Cannabis Benefit Funds that are supposed to be going to enforcement, where they're actually going to. It's kind of similar to what you hear when people say, well, we've got the general fund, but they want to understand that portion of the general fund that's Measure X. because Measure X had a commitment to certain priorities where that funding is going. I think that's what we'd like to see a little more specific breakdown.

We certainly can include more detailed information. Thank you.

Great. Thank you for that. And I think everybody's had an opportunity to speak. I'll go ahead and entertain a motion to adopt the staff's recommended item. Mayor Pro Tem.

David PenalozaItem 1

Yeah, I just wanted to say that I would like to see that informational report as well that Council Member Lopez mentioned, because even in the mostly favorable grand jury report, that was unclear of where exactly that breakdown in enforcement was. So that would be very important for all of us to see. And I do agree with a lot of what Mayor Sarmiento said. The cannabis fund towards youth, definitely, it is warranted to be a lot more than it is now. because like he mentioned in the beginning it was very little amount of what we're dealing with now so very supportive of those efforts but I was

David PenalozaItem 1

gonna ask my colleagues and and mayor Sarmiento I I'm still very unclear at how this whole breakdown is so would I would I know you were about to entertain emotion I would I don't know if it would my colleagues would even indulge the idea but I would make a motion to continue this item for two weeks just because I honestly am frankly not a hundred percent clear on just the the what the the changes that are happening and they're probably not much and mayor Samantha maybe or somebody staff could could uh indulge me a little bit on but

David PenalozaItem 1

I'd like to continue that and for two weeks if my colleagues would be open to

Mayor Pro Tem, if you'd like, I can try to make a short summary. I don't know if you want me to do that right now or certainly if you want to entertain a continuance. I think in essence, under the current ordinance, you don't have the ability to move the money around without going through multiple steps, including a supermajority and declaring a fiscal emergency and listing findings for declaring that fiscal emergency. So this ordinance is a means to amend the current code to allow you the flexibility without having to do a fiscal emergency to allocate between youth and enforcement.

It gets a little bit confusing because an ordinance can be approved on a simple majority, but when it comes to actually changing money around, if it's part of your citywide budget, it's a simple majority. but if it's mid-year and you're changing from one department to a next that triggers the super majority so I don't know if that helped yeah that made it very clear madam city manager thank you

David PenalozaItem 1

for that so I will back that motion thank you thank you for that is there a motion I'll move

okay well you know what I'll move I'll move the item and and mayor pro tem will second if that's

Jessie LopezItem 1

right that works okay I do I do have a question mayor please for the city attorney Sonia if hypothetically you know there was something when it comes back to us like language wise that I wanted to add or edit could I do that at

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

that point in time well your charter allows you to make minor amendments to the ordinance so long as the intent of the ordinance is not changed under government code you wouldn't be able to make any changes but your charter allows you a little tiny bit of flexibility so yes if you have questions after if you decide to introduce the ordinance tonight we can talk about if you guys want to make minor edits to it okay thank you great thank you for that

seeing no other comments hearing no other comments I'll go ahead and ask colleagues to please vote

councilmember Hernandez if you would please cast your vote

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Can I get some clarification on the motion, please?

You want to take a stab at this, Madam City Attorney? Do you want me to go ahead and recite?

Council Member Hernandez just wants clarification on the motion. Sorry, it's just an introduction and a first reading of the ordinance.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

What that does is it introduces the ordinance, and we have to come back per the charter and state law so that you can have a second reading.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

You are not adopting the ordinance tonight, you are introducing it. At the next meeting you will actually adopt the ordinance and it will go into effect 30 days later.

Thank you.

Great. So we're voting on the motion before us.

thank you council members becerra hernandez lopez mendoza fan mayor potent penalosa mayor sarmiento voting yes great motion carries thank you for that

let's move along to item number 27 which is the informational report on amendments proposed amendments to the sunshine ordinance and thank you mayor

As Daniel sets up, he does have a presentation on this item. I will just go ahead and introduce it. So this is an informational report about proposed amendments to the Sunshine Ordinance. This came from a council discussion on if there were any opportunities to increase the transparency and accountability of the existing Sunshine Ordinance. As you know, the Sunshine Ordinance was adopted in October 2012. And so the staff report walks you through what some of the requirements are of that Sunshine Ordinance.

and it also talks about some of the ideas that were discussed at the council level regarding improvements to that Sunshine Ordinance. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Daniel Soto from the City Manager's Office.

And while he's setting up, I want to see, why do we get a live visual on us, but we get photo stills on the City Manager and City Attorney? Because those are such good photographs, I think that's why they just...

They're all by request, Mayor.

A brief introduction to the Sunshine Ordinance. In 2012, the City Council approved the Sunshine Ordinance with a series of provisions relating to transparency to expand transparency for the City of Santa Ana. The ordinance was amended in June 2013, and I'll go over the six provisions of the Sunshine Ordinance, which includes those amendments from 2013. The first of which relates to meetings and agenda postings for the City Council. State law requires that at a minimum for regular City Council meetings that agendas be posted 72 hours in advance.

Our Sunshine Ordinance requires that our City Council meeting agendas for regular meetings be published at least 96 hours or four days prior to the start of the City Council meeting. Our Sunshine Ordinance also requires that the agenda be accessible in languages other than English, including in Spanish, and that the City Council meeting agendas list future agenda items for major projects. The second item requires noticing and community meetings for certain development projects. And I'll go over those requirements.

So for certain development projects, a development project applicant is required to hold one community meeting no later than 20 days after the submittal of an application for the administrative site plan review. For noticing, the applicant is required to mail noticing about that community meeting to all homeowners that reside within 500 feet of the subject property. The notice must include the time, date, and place of the community meeting, a map depicting the location of the subject property, a brief description of the project, and contact information for the applicant.

The notice must be in English and Spanish and include instructions for how to request language interpretation, and that language interpretation must be provided by the applicant. As far as the community meeting, it must take place either on a weeknight during the week or during the early evening hours or on a Saturday. and the meeting must take place in a facility that is accessible to the public and is located within one mile of the subject site.

Additionally, the applicant at the community meeting must provide a presentation that includes the following. The components of the proposed development project and a description of any impacts or benefits to the community. contact information so that members of the public can contact the applicant for further information and the applicant must provide sufficient time for questions and input and prepare meeting minutes for that meeting. Not less than four days following the community meeting, the developer is required to submit an affidavit that the required community meeting was held in appliance with the Sunshine

ordinance and finally notice of planning commission public hearings must also follow similar noticing requirements the third provision of the sunshine ordinance is related to requests for proposals or RFPs in summary the city is required to post all RFPs on our city website and when the city awards a contract to a contractor the city is required to share that information on the City website as well as share the second and third ranked companies for that competitive RFP. The next item is regarding calendars of certain city

officials, specifically calendars for the mayor and members of the City Council, our City Manager, and members of our Executive Management Team which includes our department heads for our various City departments are required to maintain and share a monthly calendar that includes all scheduled city-related appointments and meetings and shall be posted on our city website and be made available at the Clerk of the Council Office for public inspection.

The next item is related to access to lobbyist information. Our Sunshine Ordinance requires that certain officials or individuals and entities disclose certain campaign finance disclosure forms and that those forms be available on the city website.

Finally, the sixth provision of the Sunshine Ordinance requires a series of public meetings related to our annual city budget. It also requires that the city manager prepare a five-year strategic plan and host a series of meetings for those five-year strategic plans.

Like the city manager mentioned back in May, members of the city council discussed making some amendments to our Sunshine Ordinance, and I'll go over each of those tonight. The first was to add one additional community meeting for certain development projects, which would require a total of two community meetings. The cost for these meetings vary and are typically borne by the applicant. As such, there would be no fiscal impact to the city.

The next item is regarding increasing the noticing requirements for those community meetings for the certain development projects and expanding the mail notification for addresses within a 500-foot radius to a 2,000-foot radius. If the city were to make that change, our staff estimates that the number of mail notices would increase up to tenfold and again this cost is also borne by the applicant and there's no fiscal impact for the city. The next item is requiring Nixle notifications when fulfilling noticing requirements for city sponsored

development projects. Currently there is no cost associated with using Nixle. I mentioned that Nixle is a specific digital tool that we use for communications. We may not always have the Nixle tool but we'll certainly have other digital communication tools to share information with the public.

The next item is to require lobbyists to register with the clerk of the council. Currently, the city uses a company called Netfile for all of our campaign finance and related disclosure forms that are filed with the clerk of the council. Netfile offers a tool that is subscription base costs about $10,000 a year to implement to assist the city with collecting lobbyist registration forms. If the city were to proceed with a provision regarding lobbyist registration, the city council can amend the Sunshine Ordinance to define lobbyist disclosure

requirements or can consider adopting a separate ordinance to define what those requirements and specifics would be. The Clerk of the Council would administer those provisions.

The next proposal is to continue to host hybrid or virtual and in-person City Council meetings. The information gathered from staff identifies an annual cost to purchase a Zoom license which allows us to hold the meeting in the format that we're in now, which costs about $360. The remainder of the costs are associated with staff time which is built into our existing department budgets. Finally the last proposal was regarding publishing our City Council meeting agendas seven days in advance as opposed to our current 96 hours in advance. If the City Council were to amend our Sunshine

Ordinance to require that our regular City Council meeting agendas be published seven days in advance there would be no direct costs associated with doing that. Our staff would, however, have to revise our workflows to accommodate the seven-day lead time for our City Council meeting agendas. And I also point out that if we were to make any changes to our City Council meeting agendas after they're published, it may be important to keep in mind that we want to, or that the revisions or addendas to our City Council meeting agendas may create some confusion for the user when looking at our city council meeting agendas online.

Tonight, staff asked the city council for direction to proceed.

Thank you. Great. Thanks, Daniel, for that presentation. Let me go ahead and bring it back to staff. And just for clarity, there's no recommended item. We're just providing direction to staff. Is that correct? Correct, sir. Great. So let's go ahead and provide some direction.

Jessie LopezItem 1

Yeah.

Council Member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 1

I did have a question first, Sonia. um there was a suggestion that was made there was a suggestion that was made publicly tonight about possibly adding something to the sunshine in regards to um support for legal documentations online and adding you know adding anything that's already publicly on file adding that to our city website just so that it's easier on the residents to be able to access those type of documents. And so that's my question. Are we able to do that?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

I can supply those items from our office if we could work with IT and they just let us put those into a file folder. And if there was a way to upload them, that can be done very easily.

Jessie LopezItem 1

Wonderful. Thank you. Also, reading that there is no fiscal impact to the city, that's probably my favorite line to read ever. I think it's great. You know, it means that we are able to like move ahead with these amendments and I hope that the council does support them. And so my direction, you know, for staff is going to be to essentially come back with an amended ordinance and, you know, introduce the lobbyist language. If I could work with the city attorney, I'm more than happy to do that to make those definitions and that's all that I

have at the moment thank you thanks Johnson member fan and then the Sarah

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

this is great and I just want to thank councilmember Lopez for having brought this up as a council agenda item so a couple I guess comments regarding the staff recommendations instead of the one week I would like to see it be two weeks I know everyone's gonna hate me but a huge issue is that you know even if we get it Thursday night you know I'm up into one two in the morning kind of reviewing all that I can go over the agenda with you know the city manager on Friday often when City Hall is closed so thank you to the city manager and assistant city manager for accommodating that but that doesn't give a lot of time

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

for residents who want to review often you know this this agenda was almost 900 pages we're often at 1,400 pages of information for people to kind of go through and I would like to give residents an opportunity to either meet with us or meet with staff if they have questions and I think that would just help with transparency in the city and have greater dialogue again I don't think that's going to be a huge issue we just have to adjust our workflow in the future. The one thing I do want to also mention though is that you know we make

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

room to allow for supplemental agenda but yeah city managers like we have to but I would like as a part of the ordinance amendment to say that the supplemental agenda be published the 96 hours before and we would only have one supplemental agenda only if an item is brought up in the two weeks before a meeting. That way, you know, it ensures that staff or city council, if we have a presentation, a requested item, or something like that, we do it with the initial two weeks. And if there is an urgent item or there's something that really just had to be brought up, we still have, you know,

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

the supplemental agenda at the 96-hour mark. And that prevents us from having six supplemental agenda that no one can really figure out, but also, you know, gives us the flexibility and encourages more time and transparency. The one thing I am also concerned about is the 2,000 foot radius. I definitely understand where that concern is coming from. However, I did a little map around my area and it's quite a long way, 2,000 feet, and that would encompass a lot of folks and especially as we have you know because it's not just

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

council items right it's it's also planning commission and all these other organizations and commissions that might have a notice so you might end up having too many notices that people might start to ignore that's just something that I'm personally like if I keep getting a bunch of communication I might just not pay attention to it especially if it's I think almost a mile away or a couple miles away or almost a third of a mile away from my house.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

With that, oh the other thing I do want to mention is that I'm going to say it again but it's very disappointing that our notices only come out in English and Spanish. As a Vietnamese American Council member, the fact that my mom constantly gets notices for developments in English or Spanish and she doesn't speak either language, she speaks Vietnamese. So I know one of our residents did send in some communication, I believe it was Dale Helwig, who mentioned that depending on the neighborhood, we should look to providing other languages.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

And I do know that sometimes our notices are in English, but then we say if you want Vietnamese or Spanish, call this number. Nobody's going to do that unless they think that somebody's coming after their housing or some other benefit or they freak out. So I think that we should do a better job like if this is something near Morning Sunwood, you know There are a lot of Vietnamese residents there if it's you know first and hazard It depends on the neighborhood, right? I think we can do a better job of accommodating all three languages

With that that's all I have for now. Thank you. Thank you councilmember councilmember Becerra then mayor pro tem

Phil BacerraItem 1

Thank you mayor Samantha. Um, I I too want to thank councilmember Lopez for bringing up these items I I think Sunshine is so important. I mean, if there's any hesitation to believe that this council's trying to act in good faith, the best way to make sure we are and make sure that staff is doing the same is Sunshine. So I think, what's the old adage? Sunshine's the best disinfectant. So I'm glad that we are looking at expanding the role of this ordinance. In regards to the six points that were discussed back when we had this item at the beginning of May 2021,

Phil BacerraItem 1

On page three of the staff report, it talks about increasing the noticing requirement for development projects from 500 feet to 200 feet. But then where I'm a little confused is that on one page it talks about city-sponsored projects, and then on another it says certain development projects. I'm assuming that maybe that was – well, let me take it back. I hope that when the ordinance comes back, it takes what the Sunshine Ordinance currently has. So I know it's Section 2-153.A where it lists the four items that trigger some of the requirements for the Sunshine Ordinance.

Phil BacerraItem 1

And so my hope would be that whether it's the noticing or some of these other items, that we would circle back to this section because we've already established that these are the ones that meet that threshold. So that's my thought there. The additional Sunshine Community Meeting, I think the more that the community is involved and they get together and they hear the proponent of the project and staff, or I'm sorry, and proponent, yeah, proponent of the project and staff. You know, it's funny, so while the mayor likes to flaunt that he's been here longer and he gets to tell us that, you know, he's experienced all these things,

Phil BacerraItem 1

one thing I do remember watching the mayor as a council member while I was in the audience a while back was when this ordinance came forward, I remember the community, I'm sorry, the Planning and Building Agency director at the time, this is way, way back, there was the, I would say, the desire to have multiple community meetings. And I think staff was wrestling with it because of the fact that as you're going through the process, when would be the right time to hold this meeting? And to his credit at the time, he had inserted the Sunshine Meeting right at that beginning phrase.

Phil BacerraItem 1

And now I'm going to get a little in the weeds, but after a person submits the application, they have 30 days before the staff deems it complete and proceeds from there. And it's within that timeframe, it kind of allows the proponent of the project to actually take the community input. And if they need to modify it a little before it's a formal submittal, they have that option. The second meeting, I think at that point, you know, I'm not sure where as far as from the planning entitlement process where you could insert this because you do have state mandated periods of reviewing the project and certain thresholds.

Phil BacerraItem 1

threshold. So I'm open to the idea, but I just remember that conversation back then, and so I know that really it was a very wonderful suggestion by the director at that time. So I would be curious to see if there's any way to work with it today, but I don't know that there is. For the Nixle notifications, I wanted to ask a technical question. Are we able to focus on particular neighborhoods? So, for instance, if we have a project that's going to impact Thornton Park, Morning Sunwood, Metro Classic, are we able to target just those neighborhoods and not just do a city-wide blast?

Councilmember Bacera, my understanding is that with the Nixle platform, we're able to target notifications by zip code to focus on a specific area.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Okay, so it's zip code. So as far as when we're talking about radiuses, we really can't get it down to that level. It's really just going to kind of overlap beyond the, you know, whether it's 500 feet or 200 feet radius notification, correct?

I'd have to double check with the platform to see what those specifics are, and then I can certainly share that with the city councils.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Okay, perfect. Thank you. I really love having the lobbyists file their economic interest statements with the city. I want to thank planning staff and our clerk for including the names of lobbyists for development projects that currently appear on our planning commission and city council agendas. So it's one way to kind of show you who's working on projects. But I think the financial interest is very important. And I know that when Mayor Pro Tem and I sat on the ad hoc last year to look at potential charter amendments, this was something we were starting to go into.

Phil BacerraItem 1

So I absolutely love the fact that this is something that we're still talking about, but that we're actually going to take action on. So I think this is wonderful. And with that, I'm looking forward to seeing these amendments come back. The more sunshine on our government, the better. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, and then Council Member Hernandez.

David PenalozaItem 1

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento, and thank you, staff, for bringing this forward.

David PenalozaItem 1

I've sat up here two years now and everybody knows that I harp on the fact that we need to be transparent with what we do. And like Council Member Becerra said, the more sunshine, the better. One of the first projects that came before me as a sitting council member in January of 2019 was a Legacy Square project in the Lacey neighborhood. And there was an uproar in French Park because they did not know about this. and they are a stone's throw away from the project. And only a certain number of residents within French Park receive notifications of this. And one of the things that I brought up at the time

David PenalozaItem 1

was saying that if there is an encroachment in this 500-foot radius of a certain neighborhood, we should make sure that the leadership in that neighborhood is aware. We should make sure that the neighborhood associations of that neighborhood is aware, Not just the residences that this 500-foot radius encompasses, but beyond that, definitely not 2,000 feet. I agree with Council Member Fan. I think 2,000 feet is a little excessive. I would like to see that personally just reduced to 1,000 would be a more appropriate way to go.

David PenalozaItem 1

And in that same sense, if that thousand foot radius encroaches into an inch of the Delhi neighborhood or the Thorne Park neighborhood or the Memorial Park neighborhood, the Memorial Park neighborhood leadership association, if they have one, should be made aware of so that they could trickle that information down to the rest of the residences. one easy way that we could also look at this versus just snail mill and I know that I've worked with Daisy Perez in the city manager's office on this numerous times over the last year whether it was census or or covet information was the

David PenalozaItem 1

Facebook targeting advertisements social media and text messaging is a huge huge way that we could get information out there that is a lot more cost effective than snail mail and and using the US Postal Service which I let my mail accumulate for about five months before I even look at them to shred them that's just me personally because everything's digital so I know that I don't want this to be wasteful either one thing that that one way that we could work and is

David PenalozaItem 1

if we look at the cost of of just a targeted Facebook ad of those two weeks leading up to that first sunshine ordinance meeting or planning commission meeting or city council meeting we could reach out to the applicant and say hey the city of Santa Ana will sponsor the as part of the the reaching out of of notices you know we're gonna it's gonna cost you 200 bucks and we're going to use that to target that specific neighborhood within a thousand feet of that project for you know two weeks that that will go you'll have people see it hundreds of times

David PenalozaItem 1

over the course of two weeks so that's an effective way of getting information out versus just using a mail and I'm happy that councilmember but Sarah brought up that potential charter change that we were pushing forward with last year and unfortunately for those who remember we weren't we I know mayor Sarmiento was supportive but it wasn't there and that was one of the things we wanted lobbyists and developers to register with the city clerk who they they donated funds to for campaign donations and whatnot and register a lot so that is something that is fantastic I'm very

David PenalozaItem 1

proud that we have this ordinance no one I know there's always improvement but no one does it as good as Santa Ana the fact that we still have a hybrid virtual meaning mayor Sarmiento mentioned that earlier and that's something that I'm very proud of that we still give residents the opportunity to comment virtually and yeah the more we could we could add on this the better again just even with our the it's not a change it's already present but even with the city officials in our calendars you know I'm proud I don't want to throw my colleagues

David PenalozaItem 1

under the bus but i'm proud that i'm the only one that has every calendar from day one every month posted right underneath my council page on the city's website because that is what we need to do is be more transparent with the public so happy with these changes maybe reducing the 2000 to 1000 would be my only ask and that is it mr mayor thank you thank you for those comments now we all have

tired treads on our back but that's all right just kidding um council member hernandez i believe it's

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

you're up. Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Lots of great comments. I concur. I just wanted to support Councilmember Phan's suggestion. I do think that we should also include Vietnamese as a language, an additional language. We have a large community here and and they should certainly have a seat at the table. And that concludes my comments.

Great. Thank you. I think everybody's had an opportunity to speak that wanted to comment. I think a lot was captured so hopefully there's a lot of feedback for staff to incorporate just a couple of things on my end and so so you know there was once a time there wasn't a sunshine ordinance at all and people weren't talking about transparency people weren't talking about open government so I'll date myself again and I don't know if I flaunt but I kind of you know I I speak from history Maybe it's that old age. Maybe it's that. I'm just kidding. But but I'll bring some names up that were, you know, that were present at the time.

And that was Council Member Tina Heddle, Council Member Benavidez and Council Member Martinez. And the Madam City Attorney will remember those names because at that time, this was a very bold concept. The whole idea of sharing your calendar was a foreign idea. It wasn't something that was, you know, expected. Other communities weren't doing it. You know, the fact that we had disclosures, that we had to talk about who we met with and, you know, and have things like noticing done properly. Before, you know, I literally attended, like, a meeting for a development on July 3rd before a long weekend.

And that was just, that's when I realized this was very, very, you know, counterproductive to noticing and providing information to our community. So, you know, I want to thank those council members back then who joined, who I joined with, and a woman named Anna Ursua. Anna was with Building Healthy Communities, and they had received a grant to do work in the city and empower these efforts, these local efforts. efforts, and I just think we're much better. We can always continue to improve this effort, but we didn't have that at one time. And I think this is, and I know Carl and those in

the community really supported this effort because none of this was open, and it was a very closed way of doing business, and I think we're getting much better at this. The only things that I'd like to maybe share are that I like the idea of texting. I'm always a big fan of that because I think you can really drill deep down and be specific about who you want to notice. And I think a lot of people don't have access to the Internet yet. We're working on that on the next item or on the next, yeah, the next item. So in the meantime, and as an adjunct, everybody has a cell phone, right?

And they get notices and we can provide some really specific parameters and radiuses for or radii, I guess, for those. The only other thing is on the agenda being provided two weeks in advance, that seems a little tough for me. And I like to have time to review it, but I just think a lot can happen between the time that we receive an agenda and then the time we actually come and deliberate on that. So to the extent that there are supplementals, I've seen that done. but maybe what staff can do is maybe canvas other cities not smaller cities

but cities our size right and what they do because I know special districts like the water district we try to provide as much time as we can for our agendas because they were really long but you know nonetheless I think that they were reasonable so we want we don't want to be onerous or oppressive on staff because we want well thought out staff reports not something that's just handed to us that may, you know, they're just trying to make, you know, the deadline and, you know, something could be too skeletal, not much detail, and the thoroughness is really important. So let's strike a balance on that.

You know, I think 96 hours is an improvement from what it was before. I think before it was 72, and, you know, some places go as low as 48 or something. But, you know, we, I think, are improving on that. Maybe we can find a nice balance between what staff is able to do, what the expectation of the council and the public is as well. So those are my only comments. And, you know, finally on the lobbyist, you know, one thing I'd like to get some clarity on is, you know, former council members being lobbyists. How does that, you know, let's define that a little bit more because I know that, you know, that's an open question.

I mean, depending on, you know, case law and depending on, you know, AG opinions, it's really, really vague. So I just want to make sure that we are able to define it a little bit better because I get confused when I get some notices from others. And I know as we all step off the council, we want to be able to abide by clear rules.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

So I think you're referring to the revolving door. But I did want to just point out one thing real quick so that the council understands. As you make efforts to become more transparent, for example, by communicating with the public via text, There will be times under other laws where we still will have to communicate in the old-fashioned way. For example, in CEQA, we have to document that people have received a notice, for example. So until our state legislators kind of connect up and kind of get with the program, with the text messages, and change the law,

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

you may be seeing duplicates, and that's just what we're going to have to do to comply.

Mental note to the legislative ad hoc. There you go. To get busy. All right. Mr. Mayor? Yes, Councilman.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Just two quick points. Councilmember Pham mentioned Dale Helvig's correspondence with us, and he provides some good comments. One thing I wanted to ask staff for clarification, when we send out notices, do we only send it out to property owners, or do we send it out to property owners and occupants?

I'm going to see if there is a planning department personnel here. Both.

Phil BacerraItem 1

We do.

We have information.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Okay.

Same thing with neighborhood leaders. We have information to recognize.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Okay, perfect. Because, yeah, I think in this city to make sure that folks who are renting also have a chance to speak up about their thoughts on a project. And then just to echo the idea from Mayor Pro Tem, I think while Nixle is a good program, I think with social media, if we can do a better targeting when it comes to noticing, I think that's an excellent idea. And I would actually love to know what other cities actually utilize.

So, Councilmember, we do have an answer to the question as to how narrow can you go with Nixle's, and you can go down to a quarter mile.

Phil BacerraItem 1

You can't go down to a quarter mile. Okay, perfect. But, yeah, I still agree that the social media aspect could be something that we'd want to explore and, you know, see what other cities are doing in regards to it. See, as Madam City Attorney mentioned, if there's any sort of hiccups from any sort of state law that would prevent us. But for the most part, I'm glad that that was brought up. Thank you.

I think it's Council Member Lopez, then Council Member Phan.

Jessie LopezItem 1

Yeah. Quick question for staff. So the only thing that I hear that we're not totally in agreement on is like the radius, which the staff recommendation is 2,000 feet, which I support. I don't think that you're ever going to get a Sanana resident that tells you if there's a project going on 1,000 feet from my home, I don't want to know about it. I don't want to be informed. I don't think that's ever going to be the case, at least not in my ward. I don't know about all of the different wards. But I think that 2525 was a great example of that. You had people from Ward 2, Ward 4, Ward 6, the entire city come out and speak.

Jessie LopezItem 1

And so I hope to see that hopefully. So I guess that's my question. What is that going to look like when it comes back?

So first to clarify, the staff report, the items that are for us to research and to amend, they're not staff recommended. Those were all council driven. So you don't have any staff recommendations in this. So what I'm hearing tonight is that's one issue, as you pointed out, and then it does appear that the other issue is on how long before we publish the agenda. So those two. So we certainly could go back and look at how other cities do it and come back with a recommendation. It might come back at 1,000 foot or 1,500 feet, and it might come back at 10 days instead of 14 days.

We'd want to thoroughly research that before we return to you. Okay.

Great. Thank you for that. Councilmember Phan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Thank you. I just had a, I do want to say a quarter of miles, about 1,300 feet. So that would fit into about a thousand feet radius. But I did want to mention or ask a follow-up regarding the lobbyist because, you know, so for the Sunshine Ordinance, are we able to, I guess, put the definition of a council member revolving door in focus? You know, I know that was something we requested kind of in the charter amendments, but if we can do it in this ordinance, I'd like to do that and get that done today and not wait for a ballot measure two years from now. Is that possible?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

Yeah, we did work on some language when we worked on the charter. I'm looking at Daniel because he put a lot of hours into that. I remember. We worked closely together. So yeah, the only difference is that in the charter it would require a voter approval and in an ordinance it just requires drafting first reading and second reading. Okay, so that I would request

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

as I think all of us have mentioned up here that that language of what is the revolving door, what is a former council member able to do, who is a lobbyist, be added into the Sunshine Ordinance so that everybody is clear as to what that may be. And I also want to make it clear to folks watching that a lobbyist is defined by being paid to talk to your council member and legislature. So just because you're working for a nonprofit doesn't mean that you might not be a lobbyist also. So just be aware that if you are getting paid $2,000 a month, do it. So just be aware that that's the case. And you know, that might require

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

a little bit of a change for all of us. But I think it's always going to be better to know who's advocating with whom. Thanks.

Great. Thank you, everybody, for all those comments. I think everybody had a chance to give some really good feedback. Hopefully staff incorporated all those into the minutes, and Daniel was taking notes feverishly. So thank you. Moving along to the next item, that's item number 28, which is an informational report on the rainbow crosswalks in downtown.

Okay, so Daniel's going to stay put. This is his item as well, and this is a result of a constituent request to the mayor who said, I don't know, let's see what my colleagues have to think about it so Daniel's done a lot of research on ways that we can honor this community with rainbow crosswalk so I will turn it over to him

good evening mayor and City Council tonight we have another presentation for you regarding a request to install rainbow crosswalks in downtown Santa Anna. Just a brief introduction about Pride Month. LGBT Pride Month is celebrated in June to recognize the impact that the LGBT community has had on history with a focus on the hardships that the LGBT community has endured throughout our nation's history. The rainbow flag was created in 1978 and rose to prominence as a symbol of the LGBT community and the rainbow colors reflect the diversity of that community and the spectrum of human sexuality and

gender. While the flag has undergone different designs, the most common variant consists of six colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet.

And members from the LGBT community as well as allies, other entities, use the rainbow flag and the rainbow colors as an outward symbol of their identity of the LGBT community or support for the LGBT community. Local governments also use those colors to show support or commemoration for the LGBT community. The City of Santa Ana displays the LGBT Pride flag in front of City Hall every year from May 22nd in commemoration of Harvey Milk Day through the month of June for Pride Month and this year the city lit up our water tower rainbow

colors to commemorate the LGBT community also. Like the city manager mentioned a constituent did reach out to the city regarding a request to install rainbow crosswalks as a permanent fixture to commemorate the LGBT community in Santa Ana. So staff looked at a handful of different cities regarding how they've deployed permanent rainbow crosswalks in their cities. What you see on your screen is the intersection of 10th Street and Piedmont Avenue in Atlanta. This crosswalk was installed in 2015 as a temporary fixture and was made permanent

in 2017 at a cost of $196,000. That cost included permits, road closures, staff time and some utility work. For that cost, the life expectancy for those crosswalks is 10 years and used a thermoplastic tile method of installing the rainbow colors. This installation was paid for by city funds and by and supplemented by private donations. The next city is Long Beach, California which installed rainbow crosswalks in four intersections along Broadway. The installation was done in 2015 at a cost of $31,000,

and the city paid for that with gas tax funds. Next city is San Francisco, California. The city and county of San Francisco installed rainbow crosswalks in two blocks along the Castro District. The crosswalks were painted in 2014 at a cost of $37,500, and the installation was privately funded. The City and County of San Francisco's Transportation Agency did update their crossing guidelines to include a decorative crosswalk painting section to guide the city and county on how to install decorated crosswalks in their community.

And finally, staff took a look at West Hollywood. You see two painted crosswalks at the intersection of San Vicente and Santa Monica Boulevard. The cost for this installation was $70,000, and the city used gas tax funds to install the crosswalks that you see here. So staff did some initial digging to find out how much it would cost to install Rainbow crosswalks here in Santa Ana. Our public works team identified an initial cost estimate of $8,000 to install one crosswalk and recommends that if we were to install rainbow crosswalks at an intersection that we install them at all

four crosswalks for a total cost of $32,000. Staff also mentioned that the annual cost to maintain those crosswalks would be approximately $1,500 a year and that the installation would be good for five years. At this time, staff requests direction from the City Council to proceed.

Great. Thank you for that presentation, Daniel. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the Council. Before I call on them, I want to thank staff and specifically Daniel and our Public Works Director for getting us some of these data points and some costing out of what it would take and also the examples of what other cities have done so I think the city received well staff received some communications from some advocates obviously wanting to make sure that the diversity of our community is recognized not just once a year but really you know we have we have such a richness here and

such a long tradition of being not just supporters not just you know those that you know kind of do things every once in a while we've done things here in Santa Anna that we're very that we should be very very proud of going back to being the first community in the county to recognize Harvey Milk Day being the the home of the pride parade and obviously you know lighting the tower that was the first time that that was done this year and that was a really beautiful symbol and you know we shouldn't we shouldn't confuse this was saying hey this is going to solve problems because this really is a symbolic effort or

gesture it doesn't solve the hardships that the LGBTQ plus community has to endure but what it does especially for you know young people in our community at least they know that we embrace you know who we are we embrace the diversity we embrace the fact that you know we have young people growing up in very hostile environments but at least they know that their city cares for them and loves them and this is one way that can be done all year long and not just up once a month so to the extent that you know staff took it upon itself to do

that extra step of lighting that tower because we light it for other important moments this is another way to extend that all year long and you know and I just want to thank my colleagues for you know considering this being supportive of it and realizing that our community is very diverse and our community needs to understand that we stand with them in you know difficult moments not just when it's convenient or when it's you know a month that we're uh you know celebrating something it is a year long so uh just with that background i'll go ahead and bring it back to council um i believe it's mayor pro

David PenalozaItem 1

him than councilmember fan thank you mayor sabiento for that um and i think some what my one of my questions was answered was i was just trying to get an understanding on the process here because so this was brought forward to us by a constituent request a constituent request and the mayor's direction oh okay all right that's that's fine because I for a second I was like why are we up you know so but that's good very supportive of this however I noticed that in the staff report the staff identified the cross

David PenalozaItem 1

walks on Broadway and 2nd Street as a possible location to install rainbow crosswalks to me that that intersection seemed kind of random I think this is something important that we could be proud of and show more prominently on a more prominent and visible intersection maybe along Main and 4th or 4th and Broadway or 4th and Spurgeon or any of the intersections on 4th Street or or Main Street and and 4th just because I'm right now I know there's a lot of construction in downtown and all these crosswalks are torn up and I would hate to see us paint a crosswalk right now when the crosswalks look like that

David PenalozaItem 1

because I just wouldn't want to see that so second and Broadway seems kind of random and and I know we have the second Street promenade there and the art walk happens but if we're gonna do this I think there are more visible and better sidewalk crosswalks to do it at just my personal opinion and I want us to be as inclusive as possible with this and I noticed that the the example shown and that's just an example of how quickly things and times change the colors left

David PenalozaItem 1

out are the transgender flag which is I believe brown and and and I don't even want to try to identify the other colors because I'm gonna mess them up pink I think and and and it would be good to include those colors as part of the the color scheme to be inclusive of everybody that encompasses the LGBTQ community but yeah those are my only comments adding those extra colors I'm sure staff Daniel you you got it right and maybe looking at other crosswalks once the streetcar construction is completed, that we have a nice area where we could do this,

David PenalozaItem 1

instead of just rushing it in a random part of downtown that I don't think is as visible as the others. But that's it, Mr. Mayor.

Great comments. And, yeah, maybe, I don't know if we can incorporate the Arts and Culture Commission, maybe to give us some guidance on, you know, placement, you know, and maybe some other direction on that. But, anyways, Council Member Phan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Thank you. And I think, Mayor Protem, you might be referring to the Progress Pride flag that was updated in 2018. I believe the artist is Daniel Quasar. Yes, thank you. So it includes, yes, the trans flag, the Progress trans flag, as well as the black and brown stripes, in my opinion, which would better represent our community, which is a community of color. So you can do the Chevron, and then, you know, it's all four areas and be progressive there.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

The other area I would like to mention, so I had also looked at second, that little promenade area, and I do see why staff chose it because of the fountain and there's some activity in there, but I think kind of during the day it's a little quiet. I think a better location might be at 4th and Spurgeon, which we do have the LGBTQ Center not too far away. You do have the plaza there where there's a lot of activity that goes on, a lot of families, and so I think that might be a really good spot. Plus, on the aerial map there's already a big crosswalk.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

So apparently if you add white stripes to it, we can use some transportation funding for it. But with that, I am very supportive of the item. I really appreciate bringing this forward. And I do echo the mayor that, you know, I think all of us here know this is just one way to show our solidarity with the community. But it's not the only way we know that we're going to, you know, I guess, add other funds and provide other services that we know are needed to. Thanks.

Thank you, Councilmember Fan. Councilmember Mendoza and then Hernandez.

Yes, I do like the idea to show support for our community and to be inclusive of everyone, regardless of culture, race, or sexual orientation, et cetera. I'm thinking since it needs to be in a place where it's a little more prominent, our Main Street. Main Street and 4th is one area and we have four crosswalks there. And the other suggestion that I have is along the lines of Mayor Sarmiento is to include the Arts and Cultural Commission,

but not just for advice and recommendations, but actually ask them to do the work. It might be less expensive. They're the artists. They have professionalism and we would just need to provide the materials and perhaps have them charge them and with the responsibility of maintaining it and that way it keeps the cost down. And the The question that I have is the staff report indicates that this would last one to five years,

whereas the other cities, their artwork would last about ten years. So is it because of the material you're thinking of using, or are you thinking that maybe after five years we would go back to regular crosswalks?

which company, one of the things that has regular crosswalks for life expectancy. 10 years. That jurisdiction used some form of plastic tiles, which have a longer lifespan. What our public works offered was thermoplasting, which has a shorter lifespan, but also a lower initial cost. And I believe our public works staff may have more information that we can share with the city council regarding how exactly those applications work.

Thank you.

Great question. Council Member Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Yes, I just wanted to say I'm very supportive of this item. I'm excited that it's coming to downtown. I concur with Council Member Fan. I think a great location would be right near the LGBT center and another great location could potentially be third and Broadway. That's a very busy intersection. And I know that that would be a location where it would be very visible to residents on the ground and people that are driving in downtown.

Thank you for those comments, everybody. Council Member Becerra.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I want to echo what my colleagues are saying. I think this is a nice idea. Obviously, it does not solve everything, but I think this is just a nice gesture on the council's part. With that being said, it's funny, most of my colleagues asked the same question I had. I had one question which was, how do we get to 2nd and Broadway as the place? But I think there were some great suggestions tonight. I think near the LGBTQ plus center would be a great place to have this crosswalk. So I'm open to other locations, but I think that yeah, that was really primarily the one question I had was how do we get to 2nd

Phil BacerraItem 1

Broadway but again thank you Mayor Sarmenta for bringing this forward and

I'm happily to support it. Great thank you for that I think everybody had an opportunity to give direction to staff I think staff has a good grasp of where to go on this so we'll go ahead and leave it there. Go ahead Mayor Patel. Just I want

David PenalozaItem 1

to implore after the streetcar construction is complete because I could see us painting these crosswalks next week and then they get ripped up six

months. Duly noted Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you. Got it. Good suggestion. Okay moving along to item number 29 which is consideration of the revived San Ano spending plan and appropriation of the ARPA funding so I'll turn it

over to staff for presentation. Okay thank you Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem and Council members. This is a big item. I'm very excited to present it to you. First, I want to thank each of you for the hours that you've spent. I had the opportunity, along with additional staff, to meet individually with every single one of you, and you helped refine the programs. We did make some minor adjustments. So what I'd like to do is just walk through a presentation that will highlight the changes that we have made to it and talk about the great programs.

I think the mayor aptly said at one point that any one of these items would be a celebratory single staff report. And what you have before you tonight is list and list of those types of items. So it is very exciting. Just as a reminder, what's before you is to approve the overall spending plan. And then certainly staff will start the legwork, which will entail more than likely RFPs and bringing back contracts for your approval. And then it is to do an appropriation adjustment for the $64 million, which is the ARPA dollars. You have already appropriated some of the rental assistance that's included in the amounts.

So with that, I'd like to walk you through it. The five categories remain the same that have been presented to you before. And I'm going to walk you through each one, starting with the pandemic recovery. So on this one there are six different programs and we will highlight the ones that changed. You have mental health recovery as requested by the council. This item did increase by an additional $250,000 to bring it up to a million for the first tranche. And this is the area where we hope to bring a service provider for mental health as well as a potential mental health hotline for our residents at no cost.

The other item in this bucket that changed is the memorial to Lives Lost. The lead agency instead of the city manager's office had been changed to Community Development, and that is due to the involvement of the Arts Commission on this item. The other four remain basically the same, and that is doing a study to determine if the city could take on the responsibility of their own public health department, expansion of our communication methods and sanitization and prevention and then the COVID emergency response related to the OCFA response times responses that were required as a result of COVID.

In the next area, which is the direct assistance program, this is the largest area, this is 26, almost 27 million dollars. The items that we did change in this area, as requested, the amount of allocation for early childhood support increased by an additional half million to bring it to one million. The youth programs increased 200,000 to bring it to half a million dollars. And then on the violence intervention, this is for sexual assault, re-entry, and youth intervention. This one, the lead agencies, it's now included to have parks and the police department added to it.

The next category area of public health and safety, which is a little over $16 million, and has a number of programs in it. There were not significant changes in this area, but a lot more discussion as to the individual programs that would be supplied with each one. For the additional park and open space allocation of the first tranche of 7.8, discussion was included that captured ideas of how else can we gain more access to healthy activities. and two of your colleagues came up with a fabulous idea about a seasonal ice skating rink or potentially a roller skating rink

and staff has already done some initial exploration of that and I believe we can achieve that seasonal ice rink for this holiday season. Under the healthy food access, as you may recall, that was to try to bring a central healthy food market to the core of the city and in addition to help provide some resources for community gardens. So that has been, the description has been expanded on that one. And that was the only changes to that bucket. And then critical infrastructure, this is the bucket that's $21.2 million. And we did have a request to change, and it's to the parking structures.

So initially the allocation was half a million dollars, and we've increased it by $500,000. and that's to help address, you've heard about it from some of your speakers today, the security issues with the parking structures as well as the improvements, the aesthetic improvements that are needed. We also had a great conversation on this item about engaging artists and having murals along the sides of the parking structure, so that will also be included in the programs addressing that. And the final, the remaining bucket is the city's fiscal health,

which just had the four buckets. None of those have changed. It's really increasing the city attorney's office, reimbursing some of our funds that were depleted as a result of COVID, adding some resources for the accounting and compliance work, and then our placeholder really for the revenue loss. That is where we took the money to do all the other increases to the programs and services. So you will see that this amount is down to $8.98 million, which was about a $1.5 million dollar reduction so we still have a reserve left over for this and if we get clarification from the US Treasury and we are able to use that

calculation then those dollars would be available for you to program as well and you wouldn't even need to comply with the ARPA guidelines it would be treated as general fund dollars so I know I went through that very quickly but I'm certainly happy to answer any questions any of you have great thank you for that

presentation and I know that we've had this presentation in detail already so I want to thank the staff and my colleagues for spending time because I know everybody I think met with you and your staff madam city manager and I think the adjustments were made and what's great is that the adjustments don't seem to have been so drastic where we see you know huge changes I think the only Delta I think in the reserve amount is about 1.45 million so given an 80 million dollar revive plan that's you know that's good work on your part that's great work on on the part of the City Council so thank you all for being

measured and for being really specific on some of those changes so let me go ahead and bring it back but I think again we can be abbreviated in our comments because I think we've said a lot earlier in our previous meeting so let me go ahead and see if there's any supplemental discussion councilmember Thank you, Mayor Becerra. Mayor Pro Tem.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Mayor Pro Temer. Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. Yes, I'll keep it brief. I just want to thank staff for meeting with each and every one of us to go over this. I mean, it's a lot of money to appropriate, but it's clear from what's in front of us this evening that you listen to us, and as the Mayor mentioned, there wasn't much shifting, I think, as we finally drilled down. I just want to make a comment on something that the City Manager brought up, and that is the ice rink that we're looking to hopefully see in our Civic Center. What a great way to take back a space that hasn't been welcomed, hasn't been really accessible,

Phil BacerraItem 1

and to bring families and community in, even on a seasonal basis. And I wanted to thank my colleague, Councilmember Hernandez, for supporting this item as well. I think this is something that, you know, the Civic Center is in Ward 5, but the Civic Center, as you know, our city's history is a very important space. I mean, it's the reason why we are the county seat. We are the capital of Orange County. And I think that this is a great way to really activate that space. So that's all I wanted to say, but thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Great. Thank you for those comments. Mayor Pro Tem.

David PenalozaItem 1

Thank you, Mayor Submit. I just wanted to thank my colleagues, Councilmember Becerra and Hernandez, for that ice rink idea. I think it's brilliant, and it's definitely something that could do exactly that, welcome our residents into the Civic Center. One thing that I am going to just throw out there, and Parks and Rec Director, please don't come after me, is maybe getting a second Christmas tree in that area.

David PenalozaItem 1

You think of an ice rink, you think of holidays, you think of, I know we get the Christmas tree in the downtown Santa Ana and Plaza Calle Cuatro, but it would be great to have a second one in that area right next to the ice rink. great photo ops great just to bring joy to the community and with that said mayor salminto that's it thank you staff and i will happily make a motion to approve this item great thank you for

that motion and thank you for the comments any other comments from the council i know council

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

member hernandez has a comment council member i seconded yes i i am fully supportive of of how hard we all worked to make sure that this was something that was inclusive and met the needs of everybody in our community to the youth that showed up and and asked for roller skating we heard your demands and that was the that was the goal we wanted to make sure that there was a destination for kids to be able to engage in in roller skating and that's what we would have during the summer and fall and the winter we turned it into an ice rink and I concur with

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Mayor Pro Tem I would love to see us utilize this space have some Christmas music during the holidays and have a Christmas tree and I can assure you I will be doing a toy giveaway down there during the holidays thank you councilman and I I will second great so we have a motion and a

second the only thing I would just end is by saying thank you to everybody you know 128 million dollars doesn't just drop in our lap so there was a lot of hard work a lot of advocacy that was done and somebody said it well earlier we're approving a budget you know larger than some cities general fund budget and you know I think it was seal beach that we picked on last time so you know but In any event, you know, I mean, I just did some rough math. What we're spending for youth is $10.3 million. What we're spending on our houseless population is $7.8 million.

What we're spending on parks and libraries, $17.5 million. Rental assistance, $14 million just in this bundle. And, you know, business and nonprofit help to them, another $8.5 million. $3.5 for broadband. you know arts are incorporated in this any one of these things on a standalone item we'd be like you know you know just praising the source where we got the funding from I just hope this doesn't get lost because as much money as this is these line items are so embedded with hard work and delivery of such positive

services I mean just redirecting diverting calls from you know the 9-1-1 calls from PD to a civilian team that's going to address welfare checks, our mentally ill population and our house's population. I mean, just incredible stuff. I just wish we had time to go into detail on each and every one of these, but I know we all did those in private, but to the extent the public is going to be able to understand and see this in the next year, look, I'm beside myself and that usually doesn't happen because I'm a pretty composed guy.

But this is something that really makes me feel like all of us are very blessed that we can do this. Other communities don't have the ability to do this, and we're delivering it to those families that need it the most. So I just want to thank everybody who did hard work up here. Thank our advocates who helped us get this money and all the staff and public who came and did this. Let's not forget that the public guided this process. We went, and I remember seeing all of us at community meetings and neighborhood meetings listening. And let's remember, there are some agencies that receive more money than us

and didn't ask for a single public comment on how they spent the money. So thank you, staff, for doing this. Thank you, colleagues, for being patient and asking the public to tell you what's important. So in any event, I know we have a motion in a second, and I think we, Council Member Pham, go ahead.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Just really quickly, you know, when I saw this number, it was just like $80 million. That's so much. And I still kind of reel over how much money that is because I've obviously never seen that much money in my lifetime. But I do want to, I guess, let the public know that, you know, staff is going to continue to come back to us with individual contracts, individual items to approve and the public will still have opportunities to put give input give comments and help make recommendations to us as items move forward so this is not kind of the end of the road and it's not going to be

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

spent in the dark we will continue to do that I think one thing I would ask is maybe as we spend the revived dollars we kind of keep a list of how it's being spent and folks can kind of keep track of that I think that'd be really great to see you know this contract to LGBTQ youth mental health this contract to senior services and I think that would be a really great report at the end of it all to see that you know we did good things with this money and one final comment it's a holiday tree not a Christmas tree thank you great thank you

for those comments everybody this is a an important symbolic vote so you know it shows our the the help we're giving to our community because remember these are equity these are dollars based in equity and getting help to those that were hardest hit during COVID so let's let's let's make this vote and and think about the seriousness of everything

Thank you. the most important vote of the night no it got captured councilmember Bacero Hernandez Lopez Mendoza fan mayor potent Pinalosa mayor sarmiento voting

yes great thank you congratulations everybody congratulations to the public good things are coming that ends our business portion of the calendar let me go ahead and bring it to the public hearing section and let me go ahead and make a quick announcement before I turn it over to the clerk so she can make an announcement as well. So before hearing the public hearing on item number 30, Madam Clerk, please provide some instructions on the public and how they can comment to the City Council. Thank you, Mayor.

Members of the public who are joining us by way of Zoom or conference call and would like to make a comment for only public hearing item 30, please dial star 9 from your phone or select raised hand from Zoom now and we did not receive any written communication or in-person speaker cards.

Thank you for that. So this is a time and place for the public hearing on a resolution affirming the fiscal year 2020-2021 Dangerous and Abandoned Buildings Program Report and authorizing the Transmittal of Uncollected Dangerous and Abandoned Building charge in the amount of

$59,313 to the Office of the Auditor-Controller.

City Manager, is there a presentation?

Yes, Mayor, we have a presentation from our Code Enforcement Manager on the item, so I will ask Alvaro to come up.

Thank you.

Mayor, City Council, City Managers. I talk fast anyway so I'll be quick just by nature just so you know you get points for that too so if you want me to pause you better tell me quick all right again this is the addition abandoned buildings program we copy up a collect cause presentation we're asking the city council to affirm a resolution affirming the fiscal cut year 2020 2021 addition abandoned in this program authorized the transmitter of uncollected dangerous and abandoned building charges to the office of the auditor controller county of orange

program background properties in buildings are abandoned extremely substandard otherwise no longer maintain become a court violation right part of the discussion we have before part of the attractive nuisance concerns on security vacant lots structures illegal dumping absentee landlords trashing encampments trashing debris overwork visitation and of course public nuisance violations associated with illegal gaming and cannabis. Much of enforcement and we deals with this type of public nuisance involves partnership with the Santa Police Department and the City Attorney's Office. Some of the

addresses that you have on the list we had a part of a search warrant with the Santa Police Department or required inspection warrants and abatement costs through the City Attorney's Office. The enforcement aspect varies from residential properties dealing with hoarding and property maintenance violations in single-family residential properties and they also range to commercial properties like cannabis and illegal gaming violations by court enforcement authority under the Santa municipal code and the health and safety code allows for abatement actions and provides community with an only inclusive

approach to a structure and deferment property maintenance abatement on private properties the property owners are offered a further due process to obey the conditions depending on the severity of the casualty conditions the property are giving a provided with prescribed compliance period sometimes depending on the issues 24 hours or immediate compliance sometimes an extended period up to 30 days it varies against on the conditions if the properties do not update the conditions after the required timeframe based on the municipal code the city can take the only abatement action through its

contractors. The abatement process allows the city to recover costs by charging the property owner for the collection, including staff time of all incurred costs. Each year, the city finds it necessary to seek legal recourse to recover uncollected abatement costs. The most effective method of collecting is to submit the abatement charges to the Office of the Comptroller Auditor as a lien on the property tax rules. Uncollected abatement charges must be submitted to the Orange County Auditurator Controller. This fiscal year 2021 athletic amendment cost for work performed on eight parcels

total $59,000 plus. In the presentation it's not as clear but you have it in your part of your resolution and the exhibit some of those properties. Any

questions. Thank you for that, Alvada. Let me go ahead and formally open the public hearing and ask the clerk if there are any members of the public that wish to address us either here in

person or on the line. Correct, Mayor. There is no one who has raised their hand virtually who

would like to provide a comment. Great, thanks. I'll bring it back to the council to see if there's any questions or comments on this public hearing councilmember fan and then

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

councilmember Becerra hey there thanks for the presentation I really appreciate it so just can you help walk me a little bit through the process just kind of briefly of how we engage with these property owners in you know assessing their trying to get trying to collect money from them so after the initial

inspection we obviously issue a notices of standard or notice an order in an In addition to that, based on the abatement action that we took, whether it be just staff time or we have to contract with a board of company, we prepare the invoice forwarded to the finance department and it gets mailed to the property owner. They get afforded at least three other opportunities where the finance department continues to invoice them. right again the idea is to notify them make sure that they are aware of the cost in addition to making them aware of the substandard conditions is also

making them aware about the public misabayment that the city needs to recover some of their costs prior to having a hearing such as this we also mail out another notification as part of the public hearing and even after tonight if we receive the authority we check one more time before we actually put into the rules with the county so we check at least four to five times minimum before we actually put it on text rules so when you say we contact

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

them is it only through mailing to that address yes okay do they're in our record okay do we ever have a code enforcement officer or someone from the city like a city representative come to the location to notify them it depends

yes so all inspects are physical inspections to the extent we can notify the property 100 times verbally is better so if the question is do we try to contact via communication because in addition to recovering the cost they still have these two they still need to update and and bring the property up to substandard so this is just one component the actual abatement cost they still need to come into the plan and build environment and get permits come into compliance so any way we can communicate we'll do that okay and so in some of these cases is it you

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

know we're going out there we're still checking the property and that we're telling them hey you have this outstanding balance of $10,000 you need to pay it or this can happen so that but that's what we're communicating to them yes okay and they're just not paying it yes great and you know I'm looking at this list and three of the seven items are they look like residential homeowners and four of these items are Vietnamese residents or property owners. Are these all conducted in English? Do we have a translator or are they English competent?

Both. Some of them are English related and then we try to get also people to speak to them. We have a building inspector that speaks Vietnamese. So when we can try to communicate, we try to do that. Some of the ones you see were mostly associated with some of the illegal gaming enforcement. So they were not as receptive, let's put it that way, being responsive to our request. So in addition to recovering abatement actions, we should find those, for lack of a better word, to motivate. The idea is for them to come into compliance. We don't want to incur the cost.

We try not to hire a city contractor, though we have them on staff, because we have to advance the money. We have to. So when we come to the city council, sometimes we have done this, I think this year, we had asked for more additional payment costs because it was taking too long to collect the money.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

So I'm definitely supportive of, you know, getting this money back and getting our assessment back via the property tax. I just kind of wanted to understand that, you know, we're doing as much as we possibly can to engage with them and get them to pay the city. But some homeowners are resistant or some property owners are resistant. So thank you for that. With that, I am supportive of the project.

Thank you, Councilmember Fang, Councilmember Becerra, and then Councilmember Mendoza and Lopez.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Well, I'm absolutely happy to authorize the county auditor to go after and recover these funds for the city, especially for all the work that you and the contractors are doing to deal with these nuisance properties. But in the staff report, it does state that, quote, this year the outstanding charge for work performed on eight individual addresses is $59,313. So my question is, you know, does that mean we're abating more properties and these are just the eight that we haven't recovered our costs on? Yes. Is that what it is?

Phil BacerraItem 1

So in other words, can you give me a number as far as where we've had to enact some sort of abatement action, right? Whether it's, you know, boarding up, security, whatever that is, whatever that action is, do you have a rough estimate as to how many properties we've had to do that with?

Probably in the last, let's say it's in January. Okay. We've done quite a bit, maybe up to 20 properties. right okay so if we get as part of the uh the councilman family was indicating we're able to get communication and we bring people into the city and establish a payment plan for example then we that will not be part of this list these are the ones that we were not able to get any type of communication or response right right and one of them to be quite honest they did call because when they got the notification of this last hearing that that the 59 000 was for them i said no no no

you only owe 5900 if you come next week and pay us we won't add you to the to the county rolls right so again that and to the extent that we provided the same information the same name indicates that we have the correct right notification contact information just this case they just responded but 59 000 no no no you only owe 5900 but it is what it is well i i want

Phil BacerraItem 1

to thank you for your guys' work to get it down to where we're really only having to address eight addresses. On the other side, when you said round 20 this year that you're going after with abatement action, I mean obviously I know you—

No, I'm saying the last six months, we've done it quite a bit. We have some underpending items that we'll probably follow up in addition. So we have a specific fixed year where we try to get the properties that are not paying right to the extent like I said there's maybe some outstanding debts but they come in already made a payment plans with the Finance Department and then they're doing by installments that's okay St. Gertrude is a perfect example right perfect they came in it was a quite a bit of amount maybe fifty four thousand dollars something like that but we showed them we talked to them they

were this the property was actually a set of three payment actions or police

Phil BacerraItem 1

enforcement actions okay in this case that's the case well i just because what i want to see you and your team do is there are a lot of properties out there there's one on the west side and council member fans district where literally it caught on fire because you had homeless squatters in there yes and it has damaged the buildings the neighbors next door and that's it's not fair it's not right uh to have because it's not a nuisance it's not just oh the grass is two inches over what we'd like it to be. This is literally life safety danger. The fact that you've got folks trespassing into a property and they've set it on

Phil BacerraItem 1

fire once before and God knows they may most likely do it again. So my hope is that as we encounter those properties that we incur, well not we incur, we have the property owner incur the costs of on-site security. I think that it's important. We saw what happened. We don't do that with a century-old church that's burned to the ground, and that's because we didn't have it secured, and frankly, I'm just going to say we've allowed property owners in this town to kind of skate by on some of this stuff, and I would hope that, you know, you've been given the tools, and I would just ask you to use them. You know, I know

Phil BacerraItem 1

$59,000 is a great amount because that means you guys have been collecting those dollars, but at the same time when you come and say that in six months you've done 20 properties I hope you guys will increase that because I guarantee you talk as you know you're out there in the community you talk to one person they can probably give you 20 properties to look at in their sleep so I just I hope that as we go forward I would never want to see another instance like that church burning down and it really pains me to hear that neighbors residents are living next to a property that is I mean, we're going beyond nuisance at this point.

Phil BacerraItem 1

I mean, it's a danger. So I just would implore you to utilize your abatement tools that you can. So with that, I'm going to be happy to support the side.

So just to clarify, Councilmember, we are being quite assertive, right, because they are abatement properties and because when we take an abatement action, we have to ensure that we do follow due process, right? Once we, as a government, initiate a border, for example, and we take possession of a property, we have to be very careful. But message delivered and cleared, and we definitely want to support that. Thank you.

Thank you for those comments. Council Member Mendoza, followed by Lopez.

Yes. I'm wondering if turning over the uncollected, what's it called?

Abatement costs.

Yes, to the auditor controller for that agency to collect on our behalf, do they charge a percentage that they keep and then turn over the rest to us, or do they keep it all?

I'm not sure I can check into it, but I don't believe so. I think the state code allows us to collect for recovery.

And they don't charge us to collect?

Other than us providing the typical service government to government, I don't think so, no. But I can verify.

Okay, thank you. And my second question is on the abandoned properties, if they're not bank-owned, does the city assume ownership and then we sell and put those proceeds towards the expense that it costs?

No. So private property is private property, right? whether bank owner or private property owner. For us to take possession, for example, of a vacant property, we have to initiate an example of receivership action. We take property rights from the actual owner of record, so we have to go seek an inspection or make an inspection perhaps, go before the judge and ask and say that the property owner, this 1234X property, is no longer willing to maintain the property, therefore we ask them to appoint a receiver, for example, to take possession.

Or we can take an abatement action, which takes a little bit longer if we were to ask for a demolition of a vacant structure. And again, very litigious, very legal, due process for us to ensure that we don't assume any liability when we expose the city.

And lastly, I just want to thank you and your department because I had that personal experience with the property that's shown here. and you see the before and after pictures and it was a matter of three weeks because of the danger that you mentioned about other properties catching on fire if this one caught on fire. So good job on this property.

Thank you, Council Member.

Thank you.

Great, thank you for those comments, Council Member. Council Member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 1

Thank you, Mayor Samantha. Can you put that picture?

Which one?

Where am I? Okay.

Did I take it out?

I'll put a picture on the share screen.

Which one?

Jessie LopezItem 1

The main picture you had, the example.

Laurel?

Jessie LopezItem 1

Yeah.

Yes, I memorized them now.

Jessie LopezItem 1

Yeah, so not that one, this one, the side by side.

Jessie LopezItem 1

Yeah, so that is in Floral Park.

Yes.

Jessie LopezItem 1

That was one of the first things I worked on.

Yes.

Jessie LopezItem 1

I got elected. But I just want to say that I am very supportive of this. I'm never gonna feel bad about you know using all of the tools especially with the out-of-towners the property owners that live in Palo Alto and these really wealthy areas and they let their properties here in the city look awful and so I know in my ward particularly in Ward 3 we've had a lot of we've had one too many abandoned buildings go up in flames and so yeah I'm just not gonna have any tolerance for it and one of the things that I want to ask from staff and I hope that

Jessie LopezItem 1

staff follows up with me I want an inspection of all of the War III abandoned properties and so looking forward to working with you and your team to help address those issues.

So this is one of our priorities vacant properties and vacant lots but as an example yes this one took a long time but even when we started the enforcement component right with COVID. We had to go to the judge more than once, right? Because again, we're literally taking an action against a private property owner that everybody might see the big ugliness or the substandard conditions of the hoarding component, but you'd be surprised that person actually had an attorney, right? And they were able to say, wait a minute here, give us some time. This is a mental issue and for us we have to keep going back and forth so when people say

it took a long time or make it a priority here is it just one this one took quite a bit of staff time put a bit of mouth and and the irony is when we keep issuing citations the property would pay he was okay appealing that paying the cost that's not they're not on our list right and so that just gets you that type of feeling of what the property owners and their mentality and yes some mental assistance and help but from us from court enforcement we have to be very careful when we take this approach so that we don't expose the city for any unnecessary liability or letitious action when they challenge us we want to

make sure that we win they were right on point every time

Thank You councilmember mayor pro tem

David PenalozaItem 1

Thank You mayor Sarmiento just wanted to say that I'm also very supportive of this. Alvaro, you know that I've been working also very closely with you over the last couple of years to address these abatement issues and abandoned properties that Lord knows we have

David PenalozaItem 1

many, many of them that need to, we unfortunately need to get heavy-handed and seek legal options. So supportive of the item, happy it's here. I mean, not happy it's here because it's, you know, we need to go to this step. But you know what I mean. I'll make a motion to approve if it's.

Great. Let me go ahead and close the public hearing and then I'll go ahead.

David PenalozaItem 1

That's right.

So let me, seeing no other comments from the public and members of the council, I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and entertain a motion and a second. And I believe we have a motion by Mayor Pro Tem. Second. second second by Becerra and as we expected the technical difficulties have surfaced so we're going to be requesting a voice vote from the clerk

thank you councilmember Becerra yes councilmember Hernandez yes council member Lopez yes councilmember Mendoza yes councilmember fan yes mayor

pretend being a Lossa yes yes sir yes thanks everybody let's go ahead and recess the city council meeting to a joint session of the city council and housing authority

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

and our first items mayor may i may i ask for a moment i just if i can um please what i would strongly recommend that you do is take item 32 first and the reason is you would have multiple recesses and openings this item number 31 is also on the housing authority agenda so i think just to keep things cleaner you might want to move to item number 32 and then i'll help guide you from

Good suggestion. We'll come back to the joint session. Let's go ahead and stay with the City Council. So we're back from recess. That was a very quick recess. Back to a council requested item, item number 32, to discuss and consider directing the city manager to draft an ordinance that would impose a fine equivalent to the median rent of a two-bedroom apartment in Santa Ana

on property owners who rent unpermitted residential units and unpermitted spaces for residential purposes. fine would be payable in the city to be distributed to the persons who occupied the unpermitted units or spaces. And I believe this is an item brought to us by Councilmember Becerra.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So it wasn't that long ago that we had a situation where we had a landlord renting spaces here in downtown that it wasn't purely just unpermitted. It was absolutely life-threatening. It was dangerous. This is not a dramatic statement. This is as factual as you can get and there's actually a person here tonight in the audience that can attest to that. Thankfully the city red-tagged the property. In other words, they deemed the property officially unsafe to inhabit. The landlord responded by offering residents a couple hundred bucks just to

Phil BacerraItem 1

leave, just to go away. And what kind of consequences did the landlord face? Well yes, his property is red tacked. But this landlord put people's lives in danger. And, you know, people sometimes get frustrated with building permits and city permits, and we can go on and on about certain frustrations in that whole process. But the intention of that process is to keep people safe. It's to make sure that certain standards are followed so that people are not put in dangerous situations. So it's frustrating that, I mean, we see this throughout the city.

Phil BacerraItem 1

I mean, it's not just this one property, but we see it throughout the city where people, neighbors, you know, residents throughout are just put in these dire situations. And yes, throughout not just Santa Ana, throughout Southern California, we do have a housing crisis, but we are not seeing, we're seeing these landlords take advantage of people and it's It's disgusting. It's criminal. And so while we try to figure out what we can do to address it, what I wanted to put forward to my colleagues was this idea that

Phil BacerraItem 1

if it's an unpermitted space, that we don't do just a simple $100 fine, $150 fine in a couple more weeks. In the meantime, you've got people whose lives literally are on the line. And so what I'd like to see us do is, if it's legally permissible, which I believe it is at this point in talking to our city attorney previously, is make it so that we have an ordinance on the books that if you are a property owner and you are renting out, whether it's a unit or space that's unpermitted, that you'd be subject to a fine.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Now, I suggested the equivalent to the median two-bedroom apartment here in Santa Ana, and I am by no means married to that. I mean, frankly, to be honest with you, I'd like to gouge these criminal landlords for everything we can. I mean, I don't mind. The sky's the limit for what we can charge these people because they're putting people's lives in danger. So I am not married to this amount. This is hopefully a jumping-off point, And I'm more than happy to hear my colleagues talk about how, you know, where they feel comfortable with, first of all, pursuing an ordinance like this and the level of fines.

Phil BacerraItem 1

The other caveat that I threw in here was that because these landlords are taking advantage of folks that need housing, you've got folks, whether it's market rate, affordable, whatever it is, you go up to a landlord, you're hoping that they're being honest with you and that they're offering you a permitted space that you can legally rent. And so a lot of these landlords, I mean, we saw this through the pandemic. I received so many messages from folks that landlords are trying to get around some of the protections that this council was putting forward to protect folks during the pandemic.

Phil BacerraItem 1

And there are landlords trying to get around those rules back then. So what I'm also proposing though is, while whatever that fee, that fine that we charge the property owners, I would like to make sure that that money is put into a fund for the city and that those folks that are impacted are able to receive these funds. And obviously I think because the city would be processing it, there would be of course an administrative cost on top of that. But again, I'm not going to lose any sleep seeing a property owner who puts people's lives in danger have to pay this fine.

Phil BacerraItem 1

So that's what I propose for my colleagues, and I hope that I can count on your support because I don't believe there's anybody on this council that would condone what these property owners are doing to many of our residents. Thank you.

Thank you for that. I'll go ahead and bring it back to the council if there's any comments or questions.

Council Member Fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Thanks. and you know we had briefly discussed this before I was on the agenda and I am very supportive of this I think that renters you know 60% of our residents are renters and I was a renter until 2019 so I do know that there's a lot of misinformation out there a lot of landlords who take advantage of renters who don't speak English who are immigrants who don't know the law and And so I really love the idea of a fine that the city can take and really distribute it to the renters,

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rather than forcing renters who often don't have the money for an attorney to go to court and demand recompense. That's unfortunately what the process is today. The city can red tag. The city can say you have to close up shop or not allow any more rental units, but the landlord is required to help with moving expenses. However, it's up to the renter to go to court or get legal assistance in order to obtain those services. So I think this is a great way for the city to step up and help renters in the city. I would like to kind of expand this a little bit, and it might not be this exact idea,

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but hopefully one day an idea of a rental registry would ensure that all properties in the city that are legal and safe and available are public. And so nobody has to be confused about the status of the property that they're renting or the room or the space. And with that, I would definitely be supportive of an item that does impose this fine. I do believe that there was some comment, I think from Mr. Mendez, that the fine not be restricted to maybe just one room or one unit, but potentially to an individual renter or every individual lease because as you

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

saw you might have a five-bedroom house with five different leases and those are that in my opinion that's five different violations with you know five different families or individuals who are being harmed and they should all receive this money so that's that's what I'd like staff to bring back thank you thank you

any other comments from the council

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councilmember Lopez yeah I think this is what people call housing in the shadows and I just personally am NOT going to be supporting anything that kicks people out of their home I think that if we are truly going to be about protecting renters there are so many other things that we can do and have in our books and I guess that's just going to be you know for the renters to see in the future when those things possibly come up to this council but I think that this is going to displace people of color it's going to hurt immigrants it's going to hurt first generation folks that you know are housing themselves

Jessie LopezItem 1

by any means necessary and this doesn't mean that I support you know the bad actors the bad landlords that we have in the city that have been here for a really long time that the city hasn't known about and so I just really want to make sure that for me you know ultimately it's just an immoral action

and I can't support this thank you great thank you councilmember mayor pro tem

David PenalozaItem 1

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I, as well, I got to agree with Councilmember Lopez. I cannot support this item tonight just because I'm not, you know, when you look at the entirety of it, I do understand the need to heavily go after these corporate slumlords and absentee landlords like the one we had on Fourth Street with that illegal building that was being used for dangerous conditions, really, for people to live in.

David PenalozaItem 1

But there's also, I know, dozens, hundreds even, of individuals in the city of Santa Ana that are homeowners and unfortunately do rent their garage to somebody or their shed. I hate to know that that is the way people live, but, you know, it's definitely not supporting those living conditions and trying to support that. But at the same time, nobody rents their garage or their shed or their kitchen floor, which I've heard and seen instances of in this city on social media out of just fun.

David PenalozaItem 1

It's necessity on both ends. It's necessity to have somebody, a place to sleep in and necessity for people struggling to pay their mortgage to rent out the garage, the shed, the kitchen floor. I mean, it's not ideal. it's not but Councilmember Lopez is right this will lead to displacing hundreds of people in our community yes there would be a fine but you also think of those individuals that are renting out these spaces again out of necessity that could not possibly afford a fine like like the one suggested so I can't

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support this now until I really get a grasp of just what's going on and that That's it, Mr. Mayor. Thank you.

Thank you for those comments, Mayor Pro Tem. Any other comments or direction for staff?

A comment?

Council Member Mendoza?

I think this ordinance would be a step in the right direction in protecting our tenants. So this time I will be supporting it. and we've got to do something about those living conditions, and perhaps this may discourage the homeowners from renting these spaces that are not adequate for people to live in or people who maybe there's a way that these people, instead of renting out,

could be informed and provided with information about housing assistance and other resources that they could give to someone who's coming to rent the garage. Because I've had that in my own home, people knocking on my door asking if they could rent my garage. And so I give them information about where they could go for assistance. because I tell them a garage is not someplace where you should be living.

And it might be a beginning in getting to the goal that we're trying to achieve here, and that is to discourage landlords from being slumlords

and to encourage those people who need assistance to find the proper assistance to live in a place of dignity where they can have their families in adequate spacing rather than one family in one room. My comment.

Great. Thank you for those comments, Council Member. Sorry, I think everybody had a chance to comment. Council Member Hernandez, is that you?

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

apologies mr mr mr mayor yes i did go ahead virtually um yes i want to thank councilmember becerra for for being proactive and getting this conversation started is it's a much needed conversation i'm just concerned is this i don't think is the the best approach for it um i concur with mayor pro tem and councilmember lopez i think what the result of this will be is unfortunately it will displace a large amount of residents. And as somebody who became a parent at the age of 17, I had to go through those instances where I rented, not the best locations, but it helped me get on my feet.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

And I'm sharing this experience because there are residents that are going through that right now. And if we are gonna be committed to protecting renters, then why don't we just go ahead and look at passing rent control? that that i think would be the best and most effective way to protect renters um that's just my thoughts as of immediate and um with all due respect i'm not going to be supporting this item

great thank you for those comments i think everybody's had a chance to speak except me um so i think everything's clear is pretty clear to staff almost but let me let me just thank um you know council member becerra for bringing this i think i think it's certainly well intended because I know that there are you know instances like in Mr. Mendez's case where you have property owners that you know abuse their rights and and unfortunately victimize you know those tenants who are in despair and need a place to live and and prey on those people you know unfortunately I think

mayor pro tem said it well I think you know there are unintended consequences to some of these efforts and I think in our zeal to maybe distinguish between those homeowners that are sometimes friends or relatives or family members who are extending a place to stay and trying to have you know those people collaborate and and help with rent we may go after them versus those that are really abusing the process and abusing the system but I do think that there are some things on the books city madam city attorney correct that we can do to those that you know maybe are bad actors and I think there's probably things on the

books you know Alvaro that you know maybe what we can do is try to help create a better environment in a healthier less dangerous environment for some I know that you're working on 80 use for a lot of these you know a lot of these residences that may have you know capacity issues but I think you know there are things there without having some of what I think mayor pro tem described are you know consequences that we know could happen you know if if we went down this path so maybe what what in time could be brought to us is some things that we can distinguish and maybe we start with those commercial you know

landlords that are doing this on a larger scale but again I think there's an issue here we just want to be a little bit more scalpel like than using a blunt instrument and you know what happens when we do that is those homeowners that really you know are trying to find a way to make things work could get hit over the heaven heading and could be punitive on them but I mean I certainly appreciate the the discussion because it is one that's real and I appreciate everybody's comments on that so this is where yes go ahead just

Phil BacerraItem 1

since I brought the item forward I just want to clarify so the idea of charging this fine is not to displace folks. This is to make sure that in the case of the gentleman here in the audience tonight, Vic, you know, getting a couple hundred bucks and being shown the door, that's displacement. That's being thrown out essentially because a couple hundred bucks, you ain't going to get a couple rooms at a motel, let alone an apartment. So the idea is to charge enough so that folks that are not able to stay in these places, I mean,

Phil BacerraItem 1

They shouldn't be there in the first place because it's a dangerous place and the property owner should have never rented it to them. But the idea is to make sure that whatever fines we collect, and again, I'm not married to this whole idea of a two-bedroom unit as the amount. I'm more than happy to charge more. If we can collect enough so that the folks that are impacted have enough money to land somewhere, I am absolutely for that. So I just want to be clear that I have no intention whatsoever to displace folks. This is about punishing property owners who take advantage of folks by renting out these unpermitted units.

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And as far as the applicability, if you're talking about a family who's renting out to a cousin or a brother or sister, that's not what this is about. In fact, I would say that our laws would say that if you're renting out to family, that's between you and your family members. It's when you start doing as Councilmember Mendoza said someone's coming to your door that is not related That is saying I would like to rent out your garage Which Alvaro I think could attest our code says what that a garage must be available for automobiles to be in whether you like that or not That's what the code says today

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So I just want to be clear that the intention of this was not to displace and that I'd be happy to even as mayor said if you want to kind of localize it just to start and have the conversation go toward these commercial property owners, I'd be happy because in the case of Vic, this is not a guy renting out a tool shed or his garage. This is putting a gentleman in a space that the way it was laid out, had there been a fire in the central corridor, he would have never got out alive. And so at the very least, I would implore my colleagues to think about the potential

Phil BacerraItem 1

death of this gentleman standing here at the podium and wonder, do you want to take a slow and easy approach or do you want to look out for the lives the safety of our residents at the very least in the commercial um units so quickly quickly yeah yes sir uh i think mr

becerra's right on track i hear about these homes that's a bit another issue why don't we just focus on the commercial i think everyone can agree to better regulation over our commercial properties owned by the CVHS of the world etc. Limited to that I think that's good progress. I like the idea of the fines. I'm a brown person by the way I am a person of color I have been displaced and I'm old so please respect that thank you. But anyway I think starting with the commercial and yeah I may not be here I also caught an infection at the end of June

that could have actually been fatal by living in that place. So yes I'm here today because i was able to come and recover but that place is not very healthy thank you thank you victor and

just because we all you know i understand but i want to clear i want to clear my name was brought up so sorry you just happened to be in the honor mayor pro tem he wanted to thank you mayor sabmiento

David PenalozaItem 1

and and i don't i i i know that councilman boss harrow's intent is not to displace anybody i could attest to that i but it's it's those unintended consequences i i think of of you know take everyone back to 1975 when my parents immigrated here to this country from from Mexico they they there was this house and it's the the his son still lives there it's on Cypress Street by Chavez High School I don't think Chavez High School was there at the time but it's there on Cypress Street it was this house where everyone who immigrated here would that was a place to go that's

David PenalozaItem 1

where they would arrive and that's where he would give them shelter my parents lived in his garage with for about two years then they had my brother as a baby and they live there it wasn't so they had heard of this man's house that he would offer his place he would charge them rent but they lived in this garage and that was you know how they eventually were able to get on their feet and and and move into their own house there's still a need and that man wasn't doing it just because he is he had a luxury he also had a need there was also

David PenalozaItem 1

a need on from him you know I could collect a couple extra hundred dollars and rent out the garage I am fully supportive of going after those commercial corporate property owners that own buildings worth millions of dollars and and are allowing this to go on like in mr. Mendez's case so I guess my question here would be is how do you and just one more little side story my my own mom in the house that I live in today when my father passed away in 1991 she rented out the garage to I think it was a couple and it wasn't because she wanted strangers in her house it was because there was a necessity we could

David PenalozaItem 1

have lost our home if it wasn't for that so it wasn't you know I could I think of people like like my mom at the time if the city of Santa Ana would have barged in and said you know what we know you're renting out your garage we're gonna find you my mom wouldn't have been able to pay that fine but we would have been so it would have displaced the people in the garage they would have been because i don't know how my mom would have pulled whatever the rent was at the time out of her pocket to to pay that so there there are these unintended consequences that i fear with moving in this direction but i am supportive i don't want

David PenalozaItem 1

to squash the conversation entirely i'm personally supportive of going that after those big commercial

David PenalozaItem 1

I know there will be funds for those tenants and actual real funds that could allow them to move into a proper place. But I just it's it's a conversation worth having. I don't want to shut it down completely, but definitely supportive of going after those big commercial corporate owners. That's it, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you for those comments. Councilmember Fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to say for the record, one of the first comments I've ever made at a public council meeting is that my first home in Santa Ana was sleeping in a garage. I clearly remember that because we were new immigrants to this country and that was the only place my parents can afford for us to stay. So I know what that is like. But I think we can also, you know, this is just a requested item and there's a lot of undefined terms and I think we can really narrow it to fit some of the concerns that we have here. So for example, instead of just saying property owners, we can say, you know,

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

property owners who don't live in that unit, because then that would take away, you know, prevent folks like your mom who are just trying to make the mortgage because her, you know, her spouse passed away, or they're, you know, just lost a job and they're living there too. So clearly, if you are living in that home and trying to rent out rooms, you are not trying to create a situation in which you're taking advantage of people, you're just trying to make ends meet. Another one is that instead of just saying right now maybe unpermitted residential units

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

or unpermitted spaces, maybe we can say red tagged or locations that people are not paying for abatement. Because that is exactly the situation we're trying to solve. We're trying to solve a situation in which the landlord must help these tenants move because the location is so dangerous that people can die. These tenants are being displaced because the landlord is creating a dangerous situation for them. They have to leave anyway. But the problem is the legal system is inequitable. It is preventing these tenants from recuperating the money that they deserve.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

The city is trying to stand up and say, we are going to create another avenue for you. We are going to create an easier way so you don't have to find a pro bono attorney, so you don't have to hire legal counsel, and we will collect the money for you and give this money directly to you. And the third thing is, yes, of course we can look to maybe starting with commercial owners or owners who don't live in that home because if they don't live in that home, they're a commercial landlord. They are renting for the purpose of making money. So I think all of these items can really, at least for me, put into this type of ordinance

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

because, one, it will address the concern, many of the concerns I think Councilmember Becerra had, which is protecting the tenants who are being removed already as a result of a dangerous condition. And it would ensure that they are getting paid as well as protect, I think, some of these homeowners trying to make ends meet, folks living in garages. There's a difference between sleeping in a garage and sleeping in a place that's going to give you cancer or a place that's literally going to be another fire hazard waiting to happen.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

And I think that staff is smart enough, our city attorneys smart enough to craft an ordinance that can fit all of those pieces together. And hopefully give folks like Mr. Mendez another avenue to get those dollars. Because right now the only way to do it is hope and pray that the landlord is willing to pay you what the state requires them to. Thanks.

Thank you. I think we have one more comment from Council Member Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. what if we take a look at focusing on buildings that have been red-tagged? As I look at the situation that occurred in downtown Santa Ana, it was a very unique situation where a building that was designed for commercial use was renting out essentially offices as apartments. And it was extremely hazardous, I mean, dangerous situation to live in. Eventually that building was red-tagged. um i think if if we are going to have an ordinance like this i think we should have a focus on landlords like the landlord that owned that owned that building um i don't feel that the money that

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

was paid out to residents that lived there was a sufficient amount of money um maybe we should focus on on that type of uh an ordinance something that focuses on you know buildings that have been

red-tacked great thank you everybody for those comments i hope um some of that trickled down to staff to kind of understand there's obviously a disparity in opinions and there's a difference in views and what I don't think anybody disputes that you know you know bad actors shouldn't be shouldn't be held responsible but I think sometimes in the law and you know fact patterns lead to bad law right I think for policy I think we want to be clear on what that is I think that this is you know well intended I think it may need some work maybe you know staff can work

with you know the councilman and you know see if maybe this can be brought back as another council that item with a little bit more detail because I'm still fuzzy I just would hate to support something that does come back and you know not make sense but look I think the discussion again as was said is worth having it just needs a little bit more fleshing out but hopefully you received a lot of good good comments from everybody yes mayor I believe the

direction is to return with something similar that incorporates your your comments it probably won't be a draft of an ordinance it would probably be another informational and that would allow time to for the staff to research the existing codes we have the existing enforcement tools we add to layer it over to what you're intending to do so I believe I'm clear on the direction

excellent thank you madam city manager so that ends our our agenda items form the city calendars or excuse me city council I'll go ahead and recess from the city council and convene a joint session of the city council and housing authority so madam clerk I'm gonna bounce around a little bit here because I see that yeah and what she could also be housing authority on its own as a standalone special session that we're gonna have as well so on the first item of the joint session of the council and housing authority is item number 31 to appropriate some monies 1.3 million and 488,000 in administrative funds to

administer 89 new emergency housing vouchers which is a good thing so does staff have a presentation on this we don't have a presentation sir but we

have staff available to answer any questions excellent so I'll go ahead and

bring it back to the council if there's any comments, questions, or a motion.

Yes, sir. I'll motion.

Great. We have a motion by Council Member Hernandez. Is there a second? I can second. Second by Lopez. And I believe there's, our items are still, are they working

now, Madam Clerk? Yes. So you're, you should all be able to cast your vote now. All right. Let's try these devices.

Council members please vote.

Council member, thank you.

Thank you. Motion passes with Council member Becerra, Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, fan mayor put in penia Losa and Sarmiento voting yes great thank you so

is there another item on the joint session calendar or was that it you can

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

disregard that you can now disregard item number three because you've just

taken action on it good so that can be that can be yes not considered all right so let me go ahead then recess the joint session of the council and housing authority and convene the special housing authority meeting and let me go ahead and call the special housing authority meeting to order and I'll ask the clerk to please call roll

thank you mayor

authority member Becerra here authority member Hernandez here authority member Lopez present authority member Mendoza authority member fan here vice-chair Pena Lossa yes I mean

president cheers Sarmiento here thank you madam clerk do we have any speakers on this special

housing authority agenda if any member of the public would like to provide a comment on the special housing authority item please select the raise hand feature on zoom or star nine

Mayor, we do not have anyone wanting to speak on the Special Housing Authority.

Great. I'll go ahead and entertain a motion from any authority member on the consent calendar.

Motion to approve, Mayor Sardamante. Second. A motion and a second. Council members, please vote on your devices.

So, Madam Clerk, I'm...

Can you please cast your vote again?

Thank you. Motion passes 7-0 with authority members Becerra, Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Fan, Vice Chair, Pinalosa, and Chair Sarmiento voting yes.

Great. Thank you. So motion carries unanimously. I'm going to now adjourn the special housing authority meeting. Staff, those were all the items, right?

That's correct.

Great. I'll reconvene the city council meeting and I'll come back to comments, starting with the city manager's comments.

Thank you, Mayor. Just a few announcements. First, I want to do a shout out to our water resource division. They won a sustainable infrastructure award. It's the Smart Cities North American Sustainable Infrastructure Award and it's for the Advanced Water Metering Infrastructure Project. So we believe we will receive that award I think in October at the Smart Cities Conference in Maryland. So congratulations to the Water Resource Division. And then just to remind everybody that the Public Works Department is hosting a Zoom virtual workshop and that's for all city businesses that are interested in participating in

getting contracts with the city and that's happening this Thursday at 5 o'clock and then just one more announcement and that is our Santa Ana active streets is doing their summer series bike rides called Sassy Thursdays and there is one scheduled for this Thursday at the bicycle tree it's a family friendly event and everybody rides together so that's all sir thank you madam city

manager let me bring it back to the council for their closing comments

Phil BacerraItem 1

Councilmember Becerra. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just wanted to announce that my next monthly community office hours will be held on Saturday, August 7th at 10 a.m. over at the George Upton Barrier Free Park, which is on the north side of Thornton Park. So I look forward to seeing everybody at that. At the May 18th City Council meeting, I had introduced an item, a council member requested item regarding staff looking into reviewing the Muni code and providing recommendations for the implementation of neighborhood-wide parking districts and I just

Phil BacerraItem 1

wanted to ask real quickly from the city manager if there's a update on that I do believe that

public works department is working on that it's taking them a little bit longer than anticipated and what we could do because of the the time period that it is taking we can return with just an update for you at the next agenda if you would like that that'd be perfect thank you and you

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you already mentioned the workshop for vendors doing business with the city i would encourage everybody to do that it was great to see on the agenda tonight a couple of local vendors get some contracts from us and with that i hope everybody has a good night and stay safe thank you thank

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you council member council member hernandez thank you mr mayor i just want to take this opportunity to thank the residents that took time out of their day to get involved in their community, the residents that sent emails, that reached out to meet with me. Feel free to continue to do that. I am a council member that takes pride in being accessible to his constituents on a daily basis, and I am here to serve you. I'm happy to see that we had the ARPA presentation today as a council member representing Ward 5. I championed early childhood education, mental health resources and re-entry and broadband.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

And I'm happy to see that there's monies to help create programs and infrastructure in our city. In addition to that, I just wanted to touch on the subject. I wish I could be in the council chambers with my colleagues here, but to remind the resident that has brought on two separate occasions, me not being president in the council chambers, I can assure you on a daily basis, I am fighting for the residents of Ward 5. I'm fighting for the people of Santa Ana. Just because I'm here joining you via Zoom does not mean that I am not fighting for my community.

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The same way that we have Zoom be accessible to our residents, I have to remind the residents at the end of the day, we are electeds, but we are also people. I'm a single father, and I do the best that I can to provide for my family while also being efficient in my role as a council member. And I just want to remind folks that we here at the City Council care deeply about our residents and wanted to remind people that single fathers do exist as well. We're out here. I'm raising my daughter, and I'm proud of it. And with that being said, continue to be excellent, my residents, Ward 5,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

and look forward to seeing you guys at the next council meet. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Jessie Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 1

Thank you. Regarding AB 1234, disclosure, I will be attending the League of California Cities Conference in Sacramento in September, and so the city has gone forward and paid for my flight in my hotel room. And also just want to remind word through residents that the Fisher Park Neighborhood Association is having a meeting July 21st. Saddleback View is having a meeting I believe Wednesday tomorrow. We're also having movies in the park at Edna Park

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on July the 28th. We're going to be back in Portola Park July 30th and Jack Fisher Park is also having family fair on July 31st. So I hope to see a lot of the War III residents that I haven't met yet. I'm excited to start meeting you all and start having conversations. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Nellie D' Mendoza. Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I would like to thank

brothers and sisters of the ELKS club coming and learning about all the different Community Services. I am an ELKS member and I didn't even know the extent of their donations and scholarships and backpacks and the purple pig collection.

So I would like to thank them and let them know that definitely we could probably collaborate in the future with the city of Santa Ana to build that park that they are suggesting. I continue to encourage those residents 12 years and above to get their vaccine. It is extremely important that we recognize that we're not out of danger, and the vaccine would certainly help and protect you even more. And we have many vaccine clinics here in Santa Ana.

And also, I would like to maybe get an update of where our COVID-19 memorial plaque or bronze statue or something, where will it be placed in memory of those 875 Santa Ana residents who've passed away from COVID-19? And perhaps maybe we could look at the Plaza of the Flags or one of our other plazas to put such a very important memorial up.

I don't need to remind you that we are in a drought and you can do your part by two simple actions. And that is to ensure that your watering is done either very early in the morning or early evening so the water absorption is much more efficient and the sun doesn't evaporate it during these hot, very hot days.

In the future, if we do start a joint committee with the Santa Ana Unified School District to collaborate on issues of mutual interest, I would like to ask that I be appointed to that. Being a teacher, I have a relationship with the district, and I would very much like to be on that and take your suggestions and collaborate, or maybe all of us can be on that same joint committee so that we can begin that relationship of collaboration

between us, the city of Santa Ana, and the Santa Ana Unified School District.

My office hours continue to be on the Thursdays of each month. Zoom, hopefully as soon as we can arrange it, I will have my office hours in person. But for now, they're from 6 to 7 on Zoom. and you can obtain the link through our city website or even connect to

Council, I believe. On this program that's coming up with the Orange County equity map, this is a very exciting and beneficial program that is going to be beneficial to Santa Ana because for one thing is we have a large segment of the Latino and Vietnamese population who are underrepresented in the in the health

arena so the County of Orange has received millions to work on this in in bringing health care to our residents. And I'd like to ask my colleagues for support and for us to collaborate with the County of Orange in this issue so that we can bring services and share the expenses with the County of Orange. And they have much, much more money than we do for such services. So it'll be good for our residents.

And the last thing is I would like to, oh, wait a minute. I did mention the second item that you could do to help with a water shortage. And many restaurants are already doing it when you solicit businesses around town or wherever it is that you go, but preferably here in Santa Ana. I believe many restaurants are not serving water as a general rule, but only when you ask for it. So if you're not going to drink the water, don't ask for it.

And lastly, I would like to close the meeting today in honor of two very special people. One is a very dear friend and father figure, Salvador Lujan, Sergeant in the U.S. Army, a Korean War veteran. and he passed away at the tender age of 90. And he is a longtime resident, born in the El High area, and currently living in, well, was living in my, off a third and rate, so always has been a resident of Santa Ana.

and I would like also to get an update on the special commemorative significant or how we're doing on honoring our veterans our Santa Ana veterans what is the plan what is the timeline what is it that we're going to do banners in the city, a statue or something along those lines. And also, I'd like to ask for

this meeting to be closed in honor of Miguel Pulido Sr. who passed away last week. And as many of you know, he is our former mayor's father and so he was a very kind and funny and talented person I've met him on several city sponsored events and he was quite quite an aficionado with the guitar and a little bit of singing here and there so he's going to be missed and and yes that

those are my comments thank you thank you councilmember and yeah on

And Miguel Pulido Sr., so we reached out to the former mayor, and he wanted us to formally adjourn in his father's memory at the following council meeting, I believe, so it'll coincide with the services. But I certainly appreciate the thoughts, and I know we kind of adjourned in the last meeting in his memory as well, so he's certainly being remembered. Thank you for those comments, Councilmember Fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Thank you, Mayor. I'll be brief. So I just wanted to give a few updates to residents. please enjoy the free movies in the park I was just on Friday at Campesino Park and it was super fun we had Moana playing the Santa Anita neighborhood Association was raffling off bikes there's free popcorn families were out families were taking back our parks so please attend the next one is tomorrow night Rosita Park and Abominable will be playing there was also a food truck they can buy food from but a lot of folks brought in pizza brought in picnic baskets so please take advantage of the weather the second thing I do want to

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

make an announcement about is Advance OC is doing a back-to-school fest in Santa Anna there are going to be two locations this Saturday July 24th between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. there's the first location of the Salvation Army at 1710 West Edinger and the second location is st. Peter Lutheran Church at 1510 North Parton if you register early you can come at 10 a.m. for medical screenings free medical screenings for you your kids the kids 5 to 18 the first 500 can get backpacks and school supplies so this is a big community event put by a lot of organizations and I'm just appreciative that it's available

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specifically to Santa Ana residents and with that I hope everybody have a wonderful long break because our next one's in on a second meeting in August

oh wait we have a special meeting oh man you just blew our blew that fun that we had for a moment there thank you councilmember fan uh mayor pro tempana i was gonna say i think that's my fault

David PenalozaItem 1

with the special meeting so apologies for that was my suggestion um but um i just wanted to thank parks and rec staff right now and highlight them because they've been doing an amazing job going up and you know up and over and beyond the last couple of weeks with the with the movies in the park and the senior center and grand openings which was awesome to see happy to see that and and thank you Councilmember Mendoza for bringing up Mr. Lujan,

David PenalozaItem 1

Councilmember Mendoza actually was the one that told me last week that he had passed away which very sad to hear I was able to meet him for the first time back in March at the at Valley High School he was getting his second vaccine shot and I was out there helping out and getting a relative of mine vaccinated and he was there and he pulled me aside as soon as he realized who I was and was just so full of life and energy and and and telling me that that I needed to help him with his church that was now doing outdoor service that was in front of his house.

David PenalozaItem 1

And he said, I remember he jokingly said, he was like, yeah, I have hearing aids on and I ripped them out because the church service is so loud and I could still hear it. He's like, so maybe I don't need them. But he needed, he was asking for help. And I remember calling him multiple times throughout April and and not answering and real until Councilman Mendoza told me that he passed away in April so that was a shock to me and and kind of made sense of why he wasn't answering anymore so sad to see him a veteran to see him

David PenalozaItem 1

pass so yeah and one thing that that uh that I also want to add to Councilman Mendoza's when I was a child about 11 years old watching Reading Rainbow I remember they they a way to save water conserve water was to put a bottled water in the tank of your toilet and until this day that that in my mom's house that bottled water that I put in both her toilets are still in there and it saves over a liter of water every time you flush because this bottled water is

David PenalozaItem 1

taking up that space so if you just stick a bottle of water inside of the tank of the water tank it's a fabulous and easy way to conserve water every flush with that said july 31st saturday 10 a.m i'll be at memorial park with my dog jacks hanging out i'm bringing coffee and some pan dulce for community office hours i'll be there for a couple hours so whoever wants to come out and and hang out with me and Jack's, pet him, and talk to me about anything, no agenda, just a chance to hang out with the community and talk. So with that said, Mayor Sarmiento, that's it.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, for those comments. And another good way to save water and conserve water, shorter showers. So, right? Just kidding. Take showers, everybody. so yeah what everybody said you know thank you staff for a lot of these events that are going on all over the city that you know it's hard to keep up with with Saturday night or is it Friday night lights or Saturday night lights summer night lights summer night lights movies in the park senior centers reopening you know libraries all these different things that it's hard to keep up with you

know the schedule and calendaring all these things those are really amazing problems to have that you know there's so much going on that you can't go to every one so thank you thank you to to my colleagues to staff tonight we were part of a historic night adopting you know the revive Santa Ana monies I think that it'll go down in history as a moment that we're gonna be able to do a lot of healing and a lot of help that we're gonna be providing and one of the things that was said to us that we won't have to address and I wanted to give you a preview because I invited the Orange County Transportation Authority OCTA to

come present to us because people are talking about all the detours and construction and everything going on one of the things that members of the public talked to us about especially the youth was free public transportation and they said you know we need to get around and you know can you help us and they wanted us to help while the transportation Authority just adopted free cards free bus passes for anybody 18 and under and so that is going to provide free transportation starting in the month of September going through the end of February I think it's February 22nd but they'll come to present to us this is

just a preview but it's a really important step to sort of integrate that demographic into public transportation and give people a way to get through not just Santa Ana but the entire county so kudos to them we did a lot of advocacy myself and a couple of other directors and we're real proud of that and proud of all the youth that stepped up and started that idea and put it in our heads so with that let me go ahead and remind everybody that we have a special City Council meeting on Monday July 26th at 5 p.m. it's a work-study session on the housing opportunity ordinance and the next regularly scheduled council meeting

will be on Tuesday, August 17th. And with that, we are adjourned. Thank you.