Read the November 2 meeting.

D' Good evening, everybody. I had no idea that we were live, but I see the live picture on the screen. So recording in progress right now. Now we're live and ready to go. So welcome everybody. And this is the let me go ahead and call this special closed session meeting of the Santa Ana City Council for November 2nd, 2021 to order. And let me just start with a little bit of housekeeping here. This meeting is taking place with in-person attendance and teleconference via Zoom. the public may access the meeting via the Santa Ana YouTube channel or the city's website and as

usual please understand that the flow of this meeting may be interrupted due to technological challenges and I'll go ahead and turn it over to the clerk to go ahead and call for a roll.

Councilmember Becerra? Councilmember Hernandez? Here. Thank you. Councilmember Lopez? Here. Councilmember Mendoza? Here. Councilmember Fan? Here. Mayor Pro Tempeñaloza? And Mayor Sarmiento?

Here. And I did receive a phone call from Councilmember Becerra. He said he's going to be running a little bit late today. We do have quorum, correct, Madam Clerk?

Yes, we do.

And do we have any members of the public that would wish to speak or any council members that wish to abstain from any of the items on the closed session calendar?

I do not have any members of the public. and I didn't receive any written communication.

Great. Why don't we go ahead and recess into closed session, and we'll be back out for public once we're done. Thanks. Thank you.

Recording in progress.

Mayor, the meeting is being recorded.

Great. Good evening, everybody. Let me go ahead and call this regular session of the City Council meeting to order. We are back from closed session. And let me go ahead and start by opening with some housekeeping. And hopefully everybody, some housekeeping language, hopefully everybody had a safe Halloween. Feliz Dia de los Muertos. Today is the second day of Day of the Dead. And so we're recognizing and remembering people that we lost who were special to many of us. so we send our best wishes to all the families. So this meeting is taking place in person with in-person attendance and teleconference via Zoom.

The public can access the meeting via the Santa Ana YouTube channel or the city's website. And as usual, please bear with us as our technology may interrupt the meeting as we go through this. I'm going to go ahead and turn this over to the clerk so she can call attendance roll call.

Councilmember Becerra?

Here.

Councilmember Hernandez? Here. Councilmember Lopez? Here. Councilmember Mendoza here councilmember fan here mayor Potempeñalosa present and mayor Sarmiento

here and let me go ahead and just remind everybody that tonight we're going to be interrupting the meeting we're actually moving to a redistricting public hearing which is item number 27 and we have to start that at seven o'clock so as we're going through probably public comments and maybe some other parts of the meeting, I'll go ahead and just take a pause and we'll go ahead and accelerate item number 27 so we can have the public hearing on that. And before we begin with the Pledge of Allegiance, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to the clerk to see if she is ready to make her remarks.

Thank you, Mayor. To request to speak on agenda or non-agenda items within the city's jurisdiction, with the exception of public hearing item number 27 regarding redistricting, please dial star 9 from your phone or click the buttons labeled raise hand from Zoom at this time. For public hearing item 27 only, please hold your comments until the mayor opens the public hearing scheduled to be heard at 7 p.m. Please announce your name and ward or neighborhood you reside in within the city of Santa Ana for the record. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. And now we'll go ahead and ask everybody to join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. if you'll all please stand. And that will be followed by the invocation, so if you could please remain standing after the Pledge of Allegiance. If you'll all please repeat after me. Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America

and to the republic for which it stands,

one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, and I'll go ahead and turn it over to Pastor Matt Dohm.

You're with us to go ahead and present the invocation.

My apologies, Mayor. He has not checked in with us.

Let's give him a few minutes and we can go ahead and go on and maybe he makes it to the meeting. Why don't we go ahead and I'll sit down. Go ahead and bring Pastor Dwan up when he arrives.

Great. So let's go ahead and begin with our ceremonial presentations. It appears that we're going to go ahead and continue the first ceremonial presentation to the next meeting, and that was a presentation by Council Member Becerra. So I'll go ahead and start this one off with item number two, which is a recognition by Council Member Hernandez. And so, Council Member, it's all yours.

You are going to be recognizing Dance 413 competition team for recognition of their top placement in the Spotlight 2021 National.

competition team here.

Okay.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Well, thank you all so much for joining us today. I'm honored, I'm humbled, and I'm excited to see the wonderful things that you're all doing in the community. And it looks like we're going to have some assistance here. So thank you so much for standing with us. as we go if you can help assign the certificates to the respective students. So I wanted to celebrate Dance 413 competition team. Owners Lauren and Jessica opened a Dance 413 studio last August at 1517 North Main Street. Their

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main objective is to help dancers develop versatility, confidence, self-esteem, and discipline, all the while making new friendships. Inspired by biblical truth, Dance 413 is based on Philippians 413, which teaches that we can do all things through Christ, who gives us strength. This truth has been key to Lauren and Jessica, helping them overcome obstacles in their professional and personal lives. Dance 413 offers classes for children between the ages of 3 to 18,

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in the genres of ballet, jazz, lyrical, tap, and contemporary dance. Dance 413 has a competition team made up of tweens and teen women. This fledging studio took the team to the Spotlight Nationals in Las Vegas, where they competed against many other well-established studios throughout Southern California and throughout the Southwest U.S. They got five place positions in four different categories. Most notable was their second place for the Future Gems Teen Division small group to the song Sella by Kanye West.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

The young women of this team are all from Santa Ana or the immediate surrounding vicinity and true examples of roses in the concrete. Coming from inner city households and beating the odds by showing the talent that exists in Santa Ana and the talent that we are able to create as a community. their competition coaches and mentors are truly dedicated to seeing their dancers succeed congratulations to all of you make some round of make a round of applause

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would you like to bless us with some words and tell us what your experience was like we would love to hear from you.

Awesome.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Thank you.

Hello. My name is Andrea and I'm one of the members on this team that went to Vegas and it was really fun. It was cool representing this studio that was brand new in Tarana and I grew up here my entire life so that was really fun to do. Yeah, all that hard work paid off and here we are. Hi.

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So in Santa Ana, we celebrate youth in power. We celebrate changing the story through the arts. So I'm gonna call your names, and if you can just please come up and receive your certificate of recognition. Vanessa Gallegos.

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Samara Ocampo.

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Congratulations. Jocelyn Martinez.

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Paulina Segala.

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Sarah Lopez.

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Abigail Valdivia.

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Amanda Campos.

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Andrea Cerda.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Before we go, I just want to say I'm really humbled. that I have an 11 year old daughter and I have the privilege of raising her and it's really empowering to see what you are all doing for these young ladies the future of our city looks like this thank you very much

Congratulations team. Thank you, Councilmember Hernandez. Let me go ahead and turn it over to Councilmember Lopez, who's going to be recognizing the Santa Indiana High School's District Navy Junior Reserves offer Training Corps for their outstanding contributions. And I see School Board Member Dr. Alvarez in the audience. You going to come up and join us? Come on up.

Oh, and our superintendent. I didn't see him either. Welcome. Thank you.

Jessie LopezItem 1

Hi everyone, good evening. So we are here tonight to do a recognition for some of the folks that have outstanding contributions to education and I'd like to start off by recognizing first sergeant Adam Sanderkhock senior naval science instructor master sergeant Louis Guardado a naval science instructor chief Matthew Christensen naval science instructor commander Thomas Ossick senior naval science instructor and senior Chief Harry Oliver who is also a naval science instructor and the Santa Ana Navy Junior Reserve

Jessie LopezItem 1

Officers Training Corps also known as NJROTC was established in November of 1971 and for 22 years straight Santa Ana NJROTC has been a national distinguished unit being the top 10% nationally And so they routinely achieve over 5,000 hours of community and district support yearly. And the NJROTC serves, they actually host several championships and events on campus to include leadership academies, numerous scholarship opportunities, and they help with the enlistment of students that want to be in the military as well.

Jessie LopezItem 1

and cadets embark on one of the most interesting and valuable educational experiences of their high school journeys and the program provides them with tools and skills that they can use to succeed in high school but far more important these tools and skills will help them be useful for the remainder of their lives and the group is run by three retired military veterans, two from the Marines and one from the Navy and this is the only unit in the city of Santa Ana that serves all Santa Ana students not just folks from Santa Ana High School and I'm really proud and

Jessie LopezItem 1

quite surprised that you haven't been recognized in the past and so on behalf of War III families we really want to thank you for all the work that you do and you know it's volunteer work and so I think that's really important to remember and so I'd like to give you both the opportunity to say something on behalf of the

program. Thank you everybody. City Council, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate this. I appreciate Dr. Alvarez taking the time to put us in for this prestigious honor. We do this for the kids. We don't really do these for these recognitions but it is nice and it was I appreciate the clerks also drafting up two extra certificates for two long-standing naval science instructors one of them just retired two years ago and he had the helm for 25 years all right so i'd be remiss if i didn't get his

name out there that's commander thomas osick him and senior chief harry oliver that they retired in 2018. we're not a recruitment pipeline most of my seniors don't even go in the military we are about service character citizenship discipline it's our job to try to arm them with as many tools as they can to be successful and I'd further like to thank my two bosses up here superintendent Arment Harris and dr. Alvarez one of our esteemed board members every year that we go to conferences throughout the country typically these are annual a lot of the

instructors get together and we kind of compare notes on what are some of our challenges some of our successes and without a doubt one of the biggest challenges and hurdles in JRRTCs is the level of support that they give get from the cities and especially the districts the school districts and our school district without a doubt is one of the major reasons we are so successful strong advocates at the school board level always at the superintendent level And we absolutely could not be as successful as we've been without their support. That's not just fluff we're throwing out.

That is absolutely, positively, 100%. We could not do it without them. It is a symbiotic relation. We are here to serve, but we could not do what we do without everybody's here help. And City Council, I'd like to invite you on 10 November, which also happens to be the Marine Corps birthday, next Wednesday. That will be our 50th pass and review. um at the santa ana high school and that'll be at 9 30 a.m on our football field thank you thank you

um i just wanted to take a quick moment to thank council member lopez for recognizing the enjoy our NJROTC program. Two things that we should be proud of. We've been in existence for 50 years. We're among the oldest NJROTC programs in the nation. Number two is that we've earned national distribution recognition for 22 years in a row. 22 years in a row, that means that that puts our NJROTC team program in the top 10 in the nation. And I think that those are two things that we should be really proud of. And I wanted to thank Councilor Lopez.

Thank you. Trustee Alvarez is famous for those selfies by the way so you can't go anywhere without those so thank you everybody for that and thank you councilmember for that recognition let me go ahead and move along to the staff presentations and I'm going to turn it over to assistant city manager Mendoza so he can give us a COVID-19 update. Thank you Mr. Mayor Daniel Soto will be

doing this on behalf of myself.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. Tonight we have a brief presentation on an update on COVID-19 vaccine boosters and a quick update on city employee vaccine survey.

On to vaccine boosters. The COVID-19 vaccine boosters are now available, and the California Department of Public Health recommends that those who are eligible to receive the vaccine booster receive it. And additionally, the booster vaccine is designed to help folks maintain their level of immunity for longer. The vaccine booster is available for those who have received the full series of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, the first and second vaccine, or who have received the one Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Thai Viet Phan

Hey, Daniel. Sorry, Mayor, I just got a text that our live stream is not working. So some folks are, and I just checked the YouTube is not up.

Madam Clerk, you're going to go ahead and check on that. Thank you, Council Member Phan. It's good to know.

As some of our guests are leaving the chamber, maybe it gives us a couple minutes for that to be fixed. And Daniel, if you can maybe give it about 30 seconds and then maybe start up. Thank you.

I can hear something.

Is the YouTube the only way, I mean they can still see it via Zoom or is it just the YouTube channel?

Zoom is also another platform that people can access it through the Zoom channel.

So as we're getting that fixed, maybe folks can meander to that platform and view the meeting through that or turn on channel 3. So go ahead, Nanny.

Thank you for your patience. Who is currently eligible to receive the COVID-19 booster vaccine? All individuals who are 65 years of age and older, people aged 18 years and older with underlying medical conditions, who live in long-term care settings, who work or live in high-risk settings, two months after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, or six months after receiving either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine series.

The COVID-19 booster vaccine is safe and the California Department of Public Health recommends that those who are eligible receive it and either way folks who have received the full vaccine series for Pfizer and Moderna or the one Johnson and Johnson vaccine are still considered fully vaccinated. On to the vaccine survey for city employees. This week our human resources department shared a survey with city employees asking them to self-report their vaccination status and their bargaining group to the city. This survey closes on Friday and we will have

the results at the close of the survey. For more information on COVID-19 and resources, residents can visit our website at santa-ana.org forward slash COVID-19.

Thank you. Great. Thanks for that presentation, Daniel. Any questions or comments for staff on the COVID-19 update? Seeing none, we appreciate that. You'll bring the results back from that survey to us. I know that Council Member Hernandez and I met with the mayor and the mayor pro tem of the city of Downey, and they were sharing with us that they're almost at 80% vaccine rate for their population there, which is really good. I know maybe what you can do is at the next meeting bring our numbers of our residents that are eligible to be vaccinated to see kind of where we fall.

There was a disturbing article that Latinos are still lagging behind on vaccination rates, so to the extent we can do more, we certainly want to do that, And, you know, we don't want to be that outlier that, you know, in the county everybody is getting vaccinated and our folks in the county aren't. I certainly want to thank this council and staff for a resolution that we adopted, I believe, at the last meeting, which was basically condemning a lot of the misinformation and sending the letter to our friends at the County Board of Supervisors

so they can try to discourage the proliferating, any sort of misleading or inaccurate information. So that will go a long way. Thank you for that presentation. Let me go ahead and ask the City Attorney, Madam City Attorney, is there anything to report out of the special and regular closed session?

Sonia R. Carvalho

Thank you, Mayor, members of the Council, members of our public. We did have two closed session item discussions this evening. One was a regular closed session. The other one was a special closed session. With respect to the special closed session, which was a matter of potential or anticipated litigation. The City Council did meet to discuss the county's redistricting procedures and has agreed that all seven council members will sign on to a letter asking the county to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act and this was approved by a 7-0 vote. Mayor, I'd like to also just briefly

Sonia R. Carvalho

say I'd like to confirm that we are back on with our live streaming only because we'll need to be kept informed under our AB 361 because you're noticed under that law the moment that that goes down we can't conduct business you would have the choice tonight not to further that not to make those findings and then you could conduct business but when you decide to use your discretion to meet under that provision then it must be live streamed or you cannot do business here to this

evening got it but I'd like to just confirm if I can interject it is up in

live it was for a few minutes understood so meaning conducting business we can't deliberate can we still take public comments can we do any presentations can we swear in at any of our commissioners so under the law under this new law you

Sonia R. Carvalho

don't have to exercise this you don't have to have virtual meetings but when you agree to make those findings then you are literally considered not to be in session if the if you're not live streaming your meeting so that prohibits you. Now again, you don't have to do that. Our staff is recommending that we continue that. We have some other commissions that are sensitive and need to continue to meet virtually, but that would be the consequences tonight if it goes down again.

Well, let's follow that policy since we've already agreed to resolve for that. So we are up and we're live streaming so we can move forward. Let me go ahead and before we go to public comments, I know that we have, and I'd like to request indulgence from my colleagues on the council to go ahead and take a matter out of order so we don't have anybody waiting too long and after their bedtime any commissioners I think we do have a youth commissioner that is present that we'd like to swear in if that's okay I think we'd have to take an action by the council to go

David Penaloza

ahead and approve that item yes our mayor Samantha all make a motion to move item six from the consent calendar great for approval great there's a motion in a

second for item number six are there any other commissioners besides miss miss Tucker that or is that the only commissioner that is the only commission there great okay so let's go ahead and take that item out of order we have a motion by mayor pro temp and yalosa a second by councilmember Mendoza

if council members can please vote from the voting module

Are you getting all the votes?

Yes, my apologies, Mayor. I was trying to log in. It looks like I got disconnected.

Maybe the old school way of just taking oral voice votes is beating out the new devices here.

My apologies, Mayor. No worries. Motion carries with 7-0 with council members Becerra, Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Fan, Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa, Mayor Sarmiento voting yes.

Great. Thank you. So why don't we invite Ms. Emily Tucker, if she is present so she can be sworn in. It's a big deal.

Welcome.

I, Emily Tucker, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution

of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies

foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States

and the Constitution of the State of California, that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion

that I will

well and faithfully discharge the duties

upon which I'm about to enter. Thank you.

Yay.

So Emily, so a condition of you being a youth commissioner, you have to stay here for the whole meeting. Just kidding. Just kidding. We wouldn't do that to you.

Anyways, thank you and welcome. Thank you for serving Emily's parents. Welcome. Thank you for allowing her to serve our city.

Great, so let me go ahead and move it along to the public comment section. This is a time and place for the meeting of 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 in any discussion at this time. We will hear from members of the public that are physically present in the Council Chamber first and then I'll go ahead and turn the meeting over to the Clerk to see if there's any members of the public that are on the phone that wish to address us. So we'll begin with that.

So, Madam Clerk, I guess we do have a few speakers here in public that would like to address the council. So I'm going to call on you. I'll name a few names so we can get through this quickly. And if those that are expected to speak can please come close to the podium. Let me begin with Sceith Duin, followed by Octavio Cesar Martinez, followed by Madeline Spencer.

And Sceith, so you'll see some lights there, and everybody's given three minutes to speak, so as you see the light.

Okay, like this?

I'll see that, and use that microphone.

All right, I haven't been to a city council meeting, I think, in about eight years. Oh, man. Okay, good evening, guys. my name is Keith DeWine. I am the founder or one of the founders of the Santa Ana Arts Walk. I also established the Santa Ana train station arts district. I hold the longest lease in the Santora building going all the way back to 1994 with one of the oldest art galleries in the space. And one of the issues right now is an RFP came up for South Main Street Arts and Improvement. and i'm one of the participants that made a submission on that one of my concerns is that

i was told that the residents of south maine the south um south maine neighborhood alliance and i believe it's irma draghi and janelle hardy called for that for that district have not been participants in it or have the residents of south main street they're the ones that have to live with the art projects or whatever is going to go in i submitted an outdoor movie theater and it was kind of dismissed very quickly and i don't think people realize that i come from harvard university with a background in urban city planning and development i brought my other roommate that has the same

degree as i did and we spent about two months working on the district one of the things we wanted to do was put a outdoor cinema into the district one is a magnet to attract people from the downtown district to fourth street on art nights so you create a green transportation corridor you create more commerce on main street but more importantly and this is what i'm really excited about i'm a huge advocate both here and statewide for arts and education and technology

and I wanted to create a situation in that district where Santa Ana's youth could participate and interact and do movie making. And I reached out to the Screen Actors Guild, asked if they had people they could assist. I went to the Creative Vision Foundation. The lady that runs it is an ambassador to the United Nations. I have a letter of recommendation from one of the founding members of Santa Ana. She, her name is Cheryl Book Alps, and she's already won several awards. So we have a large mentorship.

This creates a bridge with Santa Ana, utilizing an outdoor cinema with Chapman University, with the junior colleges. The highest paying jobs are going to be in California in the Hollywood movie industry. In addition, by taking this plaza and creating an outdoor cinema, You also create a venue for farmers markets, for food, cooking demonstrations where they can be shown up on a large screen. You create outdoor plays and theaters. And I know that Santa Ana's in a crunch for more venues. There's not enough to go around.

And I heard a couple issues was one, someone would graffiti the screens. And I'll go real quick. And I supplied different details of paint companies that can assist so that you don't have to deal with the graffiti. The second thing is programming, and I don't think we have any shortage of individuals to do port programming. For some event like this.

Thank you. All right. Those words. Thanks, guys. Appreciate that. Octavio Cesar Martinez, followed by Madeline Spencer, followed by Ryan Smoller.

Well, first of all, thank you for pronouncing my name correctly. It's not often I hear it. My name is Octavio Cesar Martinez and I'm here on behalf of the Reclisadores Unidos. I'm speaking on behalf of the recycling industry, but specifically scrap metal. The recycling industry ensures the reduction of extracting and refining and processing raw metals, malt, and all of this process creates a tremendous amount of air pollution. Recycling scrap metal is important because it reduces the need for these processes. In fact, 70% of metal is recycled scrap metal.

And many folks do not know that recycled scrap metal has an almost infinite life. If you can melt it, you can recycle it, unlike paper and plastic, which usually has a 6 to 5 cycle. There are approximately 2,500 scrap metal recycling facilities in California. Over 1 million end-of-life cars and 3 million end-of-life appliances are recycled at these recyclers every year. Scrap metal recycling provides California with 51,000 jobs and an estimated total of $3.6 billion in wages.

The industry's impact to the state is $11.5 billion. It also generates more than $1.5 billion in tax revenue that goes back into California local governments like this city. Locally, scrap metal recycling centers in Santa Ana see several sales of scrap metal per day. These retail consumers are environmentalists and they play an important role in keeping scrap metal off our streets and out of our landfills. So we need to protect these jobs in the metal recycling industry against proposed regulations by the Department of Toxic Substances Control that will effectively eliminate the scrap metal

recycling industry in California and drive it out of state. So I'm asking you to please join us protecting these green jobs. You can visit our website at RecycladoresUnilos.com for more information. Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you very much for those comments. Madeline Spencer followed by Ryan Smolar followed by Danny Vega.

Good evening council and staff. It's good to see everybody in person. I haven't been here for a really long time and it's just nice to see everybody's face.

I'm here tonight as part of Santa Ana Business Council. I'm a consultant for the downtown and it's our time again that time of the year where we come in to have the levy assess to pass whether the bid is going to stay in the downtown or not. And I just want to do a really fast reflection about like where we've been and where we're going in downtown and I gave all of you something that's been turned into the federal government right now and so as you can see it's for investments for downtown. The Biden administration has a Justice40 initiative where they're giving frontline communities funding.

So I just wanted you to be able to see that because there is a small investment that we're still asking for from the council as well. The first thing is we learned right away at the beginning how important the computer and internet are to businesses. As you all know, digital inclusion is really important in our city. And there is a huge digital divide that we were able to see. And one of the great things is that Mark Morley sent down somebody who began working with us and we created an initiative called Thrive and Go Live. And we were able to prove that with a group of college students, they're able to build computer.

Like a lot of our businesses don't have internet. They don't have any digital presence. And so I'm hoping for the support of this council and staff in the future. if somebody comes through to help small businesses, we already have a program that works and we'd like that program to be helped, to be put forward and funded if that is something that is possible. Another thing that we learned during the pandemic is about the reevaluation and the use of public spaces. We have these parklets, the indoor-outdoor spaces that you guys have seen, which is an amazing thing that happened in our downtown.

We also notice though that people in communities also need the same access to be able in their impacted homes to have that. And one of the things that we have downtown which is amazing is in having mixed use and flex zoning, there's a lot of different multi-uses that can be done with spaces. And we'd like to have it enshrined that there's a right to green spaces, public plazas, parks. and what that means in order to overcome inequities is that people also have to be able to use the bathroom, which is something that we still struggle with in downtown because it's not open all the time for the public.

We also don't have a lot of spaces that are built for children to be able to play in, and so those public restrooms, the amenities being used, and kid-friendly spaces in those plazas as well as ease of access to using those plazas for the public is really important to us. Another thing that we saw is during the fires, floods, and climate change that we really think that it's important that the city integrate into all their policies things like green alleys, etc. And what we're asking is that...

Madeline, if you could wrap up.

Yes, thank you. We can't do this alone in downtown. We're working and we have initiatives and you can see all of those ideas in this document. but we need we need you guys to help us so that we can help you because it all

comes back into the city thank you thank you so I may have misspoke we used to have lights on there did the speakers see when their time is approaching is

there a screen with yes mayor there's the screen the same one that we have here

they have one right okay great all right Ryan so you're gonna be on the spot man

All right. Hi, everyone. Great to see you all. Great looking group. And my name is Ryan Smolar, and I work with Downtown Inc. We're one of the place manager organizations made up of the stakeholders who are requesting the levy for item number 18. We come before you guys every year as part of this process of raising the downtown levy. It's actually an idea that came from Canada, from a small main street up there, where the businesses were looking for a way to collaborate, do marketing, clean and safe services, and compete with the mall as the older downtown infrastructure.

And so since the 80s, the city of Santa Ana has had a levy downtown, and we currently run that levy along with the Santa Ana Business Council. We're really well known for the marketing support we do downtown, the communication stuff, the newsletters, the social media, also bringing people together, stakeholders and convenings for input and feeding information to the city and what people need and also feeding out city programs so that make sure that all the businesses, downtown stakeholders can take advantage of the things that you guys are offering. Of course, this has been an incredibly unprecedented year.

I'm glad Madeline shared those great books, which shows some of the stuff that's been accomplished this last year, but also some of the exciting things that we're looking towards next year. Last year was all about pivoting, pivot, pivot, pivot, but we were all there working. The downtown businesses really invested and kept their doors open as much as possible and the community safe, and it was really a beautiful, I think, moment for downtown. but we're very excited to be coming out of COVID. People are excited to see their downtown filling back up with events, with people, with customers, residents are coming out.

And so it's a whole new emergent era. That being said, there's still a lot of work to do. So passing this levy is something we do this winter, but we also want to be continuing to work with you, as Madeline said, to raise other resources to continue to provide the awesome programming and innovation and a forward-thinking vision for downtown for us all to continue to work on. So thank you very much and we're here to answer any

questions. Great thanks. Ryan thank you for staying under the three-minute limit too. Danny Vega followed by Dale Helwig followed by Carl Benninger followed by

Alberta Christie. It's been two years since I've been here. Good evening Council. My name is Danny Vega, resident of Ward 3. I wanted to come just to kind of echo a suggestion that was brought up in a Conlink meeting by a resident I'll just call, referred to as Jeffrey Kay. He suggested that we should have regular homeless related updates, just like we have COVID updates at every city council meeting. I don't need to tell you, but the homeless crisis is easily the top three, if not the biggest issue that Santa Ana residents would identify in the city. And I've tried to listen to most council meetings,

but based off of the conversation that you guys have here, you would think that this wasn't such a big issue. What are we doing to address the issue? Between the problem getting worse and improving, where is that arrow pointing? What direction is the city heading?

The homeless crisis is a reality that nobody in the 64 neighborhoods that exist in Santa Ana can escape. Whether you're going out for a walk, whether you're going for an errand, whether you're dropping your kids off school, whether you're just driving to work. You see on the sidewalk people are using drugs, they're exposing themselves, they're jumping onto incoming traffic,

They're even assaulting our residents. You guys remember Sanana teacher recently or not too long ago shared a bloody photo of his face after being attacked by a transient while he was out walking. My wife was exiting my neighborhood and a transient started hitting the hood of her car. She was seven months pregnant at the time.

And even I've had transients even in my backyard.

hard. So what are we doing to address this? I don't know what legally you're allowed to share to us, but it would be great if we had, you know, like what's going on in our shelters? Are we filling up beds? Who's filling them? Are they from outside the city? What about homeless related 911 calls? How many are those in the last month? How many of those are violence in nature. So I'm asking you not only as a resident but as a father of three beautiful princesses, as a husband, that you make this a priority. Let's talk about this at every city

Thai Viet Phan

council meeting. That's all I had to say. Thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to, I was at Comlink recently and I specifically did ask the city manager for an update regarding this issue

and so she is aware. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, council member. Dale Helwig followed by Carl Benninger followed by Alberta Christie and then Victor Mendez.

I've got 14 seconds left.

Be quickly. Dale Helwig, Ward 3. I just wanted to say that November 11, 1919 was Armistice Day. And a week from this Thursday it will be Veterans Day. It was changed to honor all veterans that have served in the armed forces. So I hope we close this meeting in honor of the veterans that have served. The other thing is item 21. It's a receipt in file. But I really don't understand what's going on with that.

I do know that I've heard rumblings around our neighborhood that the city and the school district are having discussions about the co-sharing of facilities in insurance and stuff like that. So I'm hoping that you guys can figure out what's going on with that and allow neighborhood associations to use school facilities for conducting their meetings, especially in times like right now where having it at a house is not recommended. You can't get the right spacing for people and everything else. So we normally use the long bowling center. That was vandalized,

and so we had to look for alternate means as well. And I don't think the Advanced Learning Academy was available to us for our meeting. The other item, 25, streamlining city council meetings, all for it. Having meetings go until 4 in the morning is not very nice. I would request, though, that you don't cut short public speaking. It's hard enough to get up and present an issue in three minutes, and if you cut it down to 90 seconds, if there's more than 10 speakers, maybe up the number of speakers for the threshold to get it down to 90 seconds.

But 90 seconds for more than 10 speakers is pretty restrictive, I think. So that's it. Look forward to seeing the redistricting presentation tonight. Thanks.

Thank you. Carl Benninger, followed by Alberta Christie, followed by Victor Mendez.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members. First of all, Mayor, I understand your pain because I just saw the price of tuition at Northeastern. I think the real question our government should ask, why is education so expensive? Because my daughter graduated in 2004, and that amount of time has gone up three times of what we paid for her. So that's what a question needs to be asked. The pain's that obvious, right? Yes, I know your pain. I've got a number of things I'd like to cover tonight. Item 19 is talking about bylaws for the ETEC. I just want to say I am here in support of that,

and we did review those laws in front of the ETEC commission, and everyone voted for it, and so I do want to support that. I also want to announce that Comlink on November 18th, we're going to have our November meeting. We are going to recognize 10 people in the city of Santa Ana as our heroes, neighborhood heroes. usually we do this in June but because of COVID we delayed it till this time it's very appropriate we do it on this evening because Peter Katz who was a great supporter of that program we're be honoring him on that night when recognize celebrate his life as well as salute to the veterans as well as do our

annual Thanksgiving basket give a giveaway so if you're available on November 18th we'd love to see you at the community center in the police Community Center for our common meeting this brings me to item to number 21 right now we're coming out of COVID we're trying to get the neighborhoods going again and unfortunately a lot of our neighborhoods use the schools to meet at and that's being denied to us right now we have neighborhoods that have not been able to meet because they have no place to meet I know the committee joint committee between the schools and and the city has not met I could only thing I

ask is please let's have that meeting let's get this discussion i also can see a little bit of resistance because of what they used to charge us to what we want to pay there's got to be compromising there somewhere and we're hurting ourselves by not having our neighborhood meetings so please please please get together meet together and let's get our neighborhoods going going again as we come out of covet the last item i want to talk as a citizen of santa anna on it

And this is kind of more for Councilman Hernandez. I feel your pain. I really do. I'm really sorry for what happened to your cousin. I realize when you were young, at your age, everything's black and white. It was for me when I was your age also. And with age, I've discovered there's gray areas on it. And so though I'm very supportive of investigation, the reason why it's being done on the state level is because that's by state law that any shootings go immediately to the Attorney General not because our DA is corrupt our DA we are very supportive of Todd Spencer in his department yeah but I think

that's the proper place and so let's see how that comes through before we're there and if it's not well I tell us what this way we'll see the results if I do not agree with it I'll be with you okay this also brings me to a point that I was very upset to find out that Bristol was closed for Boku hours on Saturday. I was able to warn a lot of my fellow modern-day supporters to avoid Bristol as they came to the game at Servite, which is beautiful. The stadium was definitely full.

Carl, if you could start winding up.

Okay. Okay, what I want to say basically on, I lost my train of thought, but now I understand there was unauthorized closure of the street, unauthorized celebration. If anyone should follow the laws of the city, It's definitely the council people. No one else, I know I shouldn't be able to, and neither of any of the council members, allowed to close down a major street for an item like that at that time. I also have a problem not standing with the flag.

Thank you.

Okay?

Thank you. Thank you. Alberta Christie followed by Victor Mendez. And Victor will be our last in-person speaker, and I'll turn it over to the clerk after that so she can have those on the phone.

Hi, good evening Mayor and Council members. I know your pain. I was on the council budget meetings. We had 3 AM budget meetings, so I understand what you're going through. But anyway, I'm here to talk about item 21 with the Santa Ana Unified and the city of Santa Ana with neighborhood meetings. In 1991, myself and all of our residents formed the Valley Adams Neighborhood Association. That was because we had two gang shootings right in front of our homes on Glenwood, right across from Valley.

Gristet, in fact, Gristet Street and Glenwood was a gang house where they stored ammunition and everything else. We came together, I mean we risked our lives, believe me, fighting that game, getting them out of there and securing Valley. We met there because that was the only safe place for our residents to meet during that time because we didn't know who to trust at the same time. Okay, so years we've worked with both Valley

and John Adams helping them. We met with them for meetings and no problem whatsoever. None whatsoever. And now we're coming up that they want us to pay $139 per meeting in order to use Valley. Well, last two months I circumvented that by having the principal of Valley on my guest list as a public speaker and to use her facility, but we're low income. We can't afford that. We're a bedroom community. We have no other place to be

but either at Valley, John Adams, or the other schools. This is a city, and a city is made up of many components. Government, public safety, businesses, school district, community, and the arts. At what point if we don't, if we have one of those elements saying we don't want to work with you, what happens to our city? Our residents are there. We want to be able to improve our quality of life and

And we need your help because of the fact that once again in this date and time we need that community support and we need to meet so we all can work together. Thank you.

Thank you Alberta. Thank you for those comments. Victor you might want to get comfortable because unfortunately we're at 7 o'clock and we have to begin our public hearing on the redistricting matters. Unfortunately we're bound.

Okay. Show me one. WE OWE YOU DINNER.

SO LET ME GO AHEAD AND MOVE ALONG TO THE PUBLIC HEARING.

SO LET ME GO AHEAD AND BRING US TO ITEM NUMBER 27, WHICH IS THE PUBLIC HEARING ON THE, this is the second public hearing regarding the redistricting ward boundaries. Before the public hearing on item number 27, Madam Clerk, please provide instructions to the public who would like to make a comment on this public hearing item only either in person or by phone.

Thank you, Mayor and members of the council. If there is any speaker who would like to provide a comment by way of Zoom or conference call, please dial star 9 from your phone or select raise hand from Zoom now. I do see that we have four different attendees who have their hand raised. I'm not sure if you wanted to speak on this particular item. So when I unmute you, if you would please identify and indicate if whether or not you wanted to speak on public hearing item 27 regarding redistricting. Thank you.

Mayor Redekop, M.D.: Great. So let me go ahead and do we have a presentation by the consultant?

M.D.: Yes, we do, Mayor, and Sophia is connected. And if you want to share your screen, Sophia.

Sophia M.D.: Yes, I can share my screen. I don't have the ability to turn on my camera, but I believe I do. M.D.: That's okay. Okay, that's fine. No problem then.

Are you able to see my screen?

Yes, we are now, thank you.

Okay, perfect.

Oh, can I start? Go ahead. Okay, wonderful. Hi everyone, good evening. Thank you for being here. My name is Sofia Garcia. I'm the GIS and Outreach Director with Redistricting Partners, the consulting firm that is working with the City of Santa Ana. As was stated previously, under the Fair Maps Act, the redistricting material during a council meeting has to be at a time certain on the agenda. So that's why we're starting at 7pm. So let's get started we're going to talk about how we move from out of the kind of like outreach phase that

daisy and staff has been conducting into the process that we're going to do from taking all of that testimony uh to draft maps so that's the basis of tonight's presentation

so we'll start by talking a little bit about the fair maps act so the fair maps act requires that the City of Santa Ana hold at least four hearings under the Fair Maps Act. Again, this bill can be referred to as AB 849. One to two pre-map hearings to collect community of interest testimony. So those are hearings in front of the City Council. And then they must hold two map hearings to discuss proposed maps. And the second hearing can be the final hearing if there have been no changes to

any draft maps. If there are changes to any maps, then they must hold another hearing to be the final hearing to pass the map. They have this in place because the final map must be published seven days prior to any discussion in public forum. So again, if the council decides to make any changes, they must then have another meeting and then have a vote on the map. For the final map there may be some small changes that are applicable but if there's anything that makes a substantial change to the map then again they must postpone and

then have that map be public for seven days. So there is a four hearing minimum but the council can decide to have more than that if they decide to. The City of Santa Ana held six community workshops resulting in community of interest input and map submissions via distrctor.org and they were hybrid meetings where we had some folks in person and also some people who attended online. They'll hold three more public hearings during the draft map process and final adoption. I attended the the hearings this past Friday and

Saturday and Daisy and staff did let the public know that if you're interested and having staff present that outreach hearing then the best thing to do is to talk with Daisy and her and staff would be interested in coming to any additional community workshops to share that presentation so she did state that on saturday's meeting if you missed it the timeline for the process uh today october 5th they adjourned to hold their meeting on the 19th so 19th and this evening this these

are the hearings to gather community input the hearing on the 15th will be a hearing where we we will discuss draft maps. Right now the timeline for draft map adoption is December 6th and then on January 28th, they will read how the first reading of the final map adoption. Again, the under law, the final deadline for the city is in mid April, but this is the timeline that the city council has adopted.

The community meetings that were held, They were held throughout the wards. Wards one through six and at different times. There was always translation available. Again, on Friday and Saturday, we had a lot of Spanish speakers and it was a hybrid meeting where it was accessible to the public. And so Daisy and staff just did a wonderful job of doing the outreach and making those available.

The traditional redistricting criterias are the principles that we will utilize when we at Redistricting Partners draft any map or make amendments to any maps that have been submitted on distrctor with the direction of the council. And then the final map plan will also follow these criteria. These are also criteria that Daisy spoke about in all of the community meetings to let the community know the process that we would be under as we look at any draft maps and as we produce draft maps. So I'll go through them again just as a reminder for the public and for the council.

The first criteria is to create districts of relatively equal size. And when we're talking about this first criteria, we are utilizing census data, and that is the total population data, which means we're looking at the count of people, not citizens. It also means that when we're talking about census data, the data is synonymous with the geography. So on Districtor and on our internal mapping platform, we utilize census blocks, which is the smallest unit of geography that we received from the Census Bureau to be the building blocks of our districts. It is not in the best practice of redistricting to split

census blocks because if we were to do so, we wouldn't be utilizing true census data and therefore we wouldn't be upholding the number one criteria to create relatively equal wards using that census data. The council also has some room to not necessarily create wards of perfectly equal size. They have a total plan deviation of 10 percent and we'll show you in the existing lines and all draft maps that we talk about will have that total plan deviation so that

the council can be aware of that the deviation for each plan the second criteria is to create districts that are contiguous this means that all districts must be geographically intact and if there any reason where we wouldn't have a contiguous district or ward excuse me i'm going back between ward and district a contiguous ward would be if there were any unincorporated areas in the city that weren't part of the city. Communities of interest is a term and concept that we've gone really in depth with. Daisy and her staff have talked about that and uplifted that during all

the outreach meetings. It's a criteria that puts forth the importance of community input, of hearing neighborhoods, of hearing any additional input from the community. Communities of interest, you don't need any census data to come forward with you just need your story your narrative and what you would like the council to know throughout this process another criteria that the council can look at is to follow census designated places or their government boundaries those are existing government lines that we can get from the city's gis department or the county's jis department

And finally, the last criteria is to keep districts compact. And this can be in two kind of definitions. One is an appearance. So that means it looks like a shape that we're familiar with. or in function could mean that a district may look a little bit different, could be considered as a gerrymander or appear as a gerrymander, but instead may serve to have an odd shape due to the functionality of that ward and how it relates to the other wards. For map creation, there's a number of ways that the city staff has been showing to the public,

and one of those are these what we call placemats at redistricting partners. They're large pieces of paper that show for community of interest placemats just a boundary of the city of Santa Ana that allows for the public to draw any areas of the city and then the community of interest or and then the the ward drawing one that gives you the neighborhood boundaries. We have received a number of placemats and we will have those up available and on the presentation for the

presentation on the 15th they're also available on the city of santa anna website they're all linked there the photocopies have have been taken and staff has uploaded them i believe there's over like 15 placemats that have been submitted to the city council Districtor is the other way that we've been receiving submissions and again community of interest testimony and ward maps and so this is a what's called a district-based map but we know it's a ward-based map that was submitted and on Districtor regardless if someone names their map

or not they get a specific unique id and during this process we'll reference the unique id number so that we stay consistent as we're talking about draft maps that have been submitted we have a commute for the community of interest maps a distrctor does allow for the community to have a space to add any additional text or comments when they are submitting a district-based

or members of the public to give comments. So that's why during a community of interest submission, you may see some texts and on a word based map, you will not see any texts.

Hey, Sophia, let me interrupt you because we may have some questions. So let me just bring it back. I know Mayor Pro Tem has a question and if any other members of the council.

Please, yeah, please interrupt because I can't see you on my screen. So definitely.

David Penaloza

But you can hear us, so don't worry.

I can, yes.

David Penaloza

All right, go ahead, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. And Sophia, this is Mayor Pro Tem Peñalosa. So I just wanted to, not sure if our city staff's responsible for this or someone at redistricting partners, but on that page nine of your slide, the map submission ID 60147, the one you were just showing. That school on Bristol and Edinger is moderate high school and you have it listed or this map has it listed as Glenelg Martin Elementary, which is just north on Edinger.

So-I'm sorry at the bottom the bottom left of the map yeah the bottom left of that map that school

David Penaloza

that's listed uh south of Edinger on Bristol should be modern day high school and not Glennell Martin so I'm just I wanted to let you know so that we're we're being vigilant with the rest of the city and we're not seeing these these uh errors not sure why that would show up there but but that's not the correct school.

Okay, thank you for that. This is using, all of these are from the distrctor tool, but I have noted that in our notes to kind of check that when we create our data packets for city staff. So instead of it's Glen L. Martin Elementary, you said it is modern.

David Penaloza

Yeah, it's modern day high school.

! ! Okay.

David Penaloza

Okay. Any other questions? No, that's it.

I just wanted to make sure that we're not making these mistakes. Any other members of the council have any questions or comments at this point? Go ahead, Sophia.

Continue. Thank you so much. So, for this submission, ID 60147, they wrote that it is mostly Hispanic, Mexican, Spanish-speaking in population for for this area that they drew.

For a map submission the id here is 70404. Some things I'd like to note for the council and the public on districter it does give you the ideal population for each ward and this means that if you were to draw six wards exactly equal population each ward would be 51 898.83 but again the city council has an allowable total plan deviation of 10 percent and also another thing to note district only shows the max population deviation it doesn't show the total

plan deviation so we will get data packets to the city that shows the total plan deviation and more of a breakdown of each of these award-based maps another note again for members of the public if you'd like to specifically give additional comment for your award-based map on district or they call it a district-based map then we invite you to reference your id number of the map that you submitted either during a public hearing or email staff or again to let the council know additional information behind the reasoning of how you drew your maps. It's not necessary but

if you'd like to give extra comment referencing the ID number is helpful in that process.

Another map submissions we had multiple back submissions and again we we'll have even more that's been submitted and we'll show all of those on November 15th. Excuse me. So 70524, 70537. And these are all available to the public. You can use the Santa Ana district or link on the website and you are able to look at them on your own. And again, they because they are it is an online public tool there is no login information so maps are

anonymous unless someone specifically adds their name to the title of the map or when they're submitting community of interest testimony so we may not know the author of the maps unless they come forward and tell us who who they are so we did again receive additional testimony throughout throughout the community of interest workshops and through the community of interest survey. And we will work with the staff to add that information to the presentation on the 15th. So we are aware that we are missing some stuff for this presentation and we'll make sure that we add that for the 15th. For the current districts, we'll do a review

of the current districts and the data. And this is how the packets that you will receive for also district maps. They'll include an overview page of each district. They'll include a page with data tables, which will show a breakdown of the total population, and then also the citizen voting age population data. And then each packet will also have individual district pages with data. In addition to the draft maps and also the public-based submissions,

we will provide a sort of like a Google Maps link where you'll be able to zoom into the map and look at that online. So that's another thing that we will provide and have available for that November 15th meeting. These are the current existing ward boundaries, wards one through six. We have the current census data. So when we are looking at a total plan deviation,

We look at the ward with the highest deviation. So in this instance, it is Ward 3 at 9.6. And then we look at the least populated ward, which in this instance, it is Ward 6 at negative 3.9. And then we add the difference between the two. And that's how we have 13.5. So we will do that again with all of the public submissions and then all of the draft maps will have the district deviation or the ward based deviation and then again the total plan deviation. So again, if folks are confused, I'll just state that again.

So how we get that total plan deviation is we take the ward with the highest population, the highest deviation, and then we add that to the ward with that is least populated. And so currently the current ward lines are not allowable. They are 3.5% over what is allowable for the city council to submit as a draft map or a final map. Excuse me. Another thing of note in the citizen voting age population data, which again we will have it for each draft map that's submitted,

the final map as well is the citizen voting age population breakdown. What we have highlighted are all of the wards that are over 50% plus Latino CVAP. So that is Ward 2, Ward 4, Ward 5, and Ward 6. And so what that means is that when we see data for either the Latino, Asian, or Black CBAP data, we must draw it if it is over 50% plus that citizen voting age population data. And currently using, looking at the current warm

lines, again, two, four, five, and six are above that 50% for the Latino CBAP. So the subsequent slides are slides that show you examples of how we will give council and what will be available for the public, which is the ward by ward based maps. You have an overview of the ward. You have graphs on the 2020 data, the CVAP. And then at the bottom, you have the specific breakdown for that ward.

And then at the bottom right, you can kind of see where in reference is this, these boundaries to the entire city. So we have district one, district two, and again, district three is the ward with the highest deviation at 9.6, ward 4 or 5 and then ward 6 which again is the one with the lowest deviation at negative 3.9 so how we will move from a community of interest testimony to draft maps we'll continue to get

input and what we need as redistricting partners is we need feedback from the council on potential draft map versions so all plans that we submit will follow the required criteria under the voting rights act under compactness contiguity equal population again looking at those traditional redistricting criterias and what we need from the council is feedback on uh and also from the community is feedback on potential versions so if the council would like to uplift a community plan if the council has a specific neighborhoods, they'd like us to keep in mind direction

on kind of how you would like us to move forward when we present the draft maps on the 15th.

For all the draft maps on the 15th that will be presented, they'll be in that similar packet that we just reviewed for the current lines. So they'll have that overview page, the data tables, and the individual districts showing the data for each of the ward lines. We'll also produce a summary document with all of the plans that have been provided thus far. They'll have a thumbnail of the image of the map that was submitted. They'll have some additional description, the date of when it was submitted, and any name,

and the ID number as well. So that will be a multi-page document just consolidating all of of that information that you receive. So it'll be on top of you having available the original maps and surveys and placemats as well. It's just like a summary document.

All maps approved as draft maps will be placed on the redistricting website for public feedback. So those will be available to the public prior to the meeting on the 15th so that you have some time to review them, get ready for your public comment and ask the council, or just give your comments on them to the council. And there will be potential map changes in the district tool as well.

For future hearings, we'll allow for changes to the drafts prior to adoption. So hearing on draft maps and selection on final. So what this means is that if there are any changes that are made to maps for the upper Dan vote for that final map plan, that plan must be made available to the public seven days prior. But again, following the fair map sec, we're also going to make maps that are going to be available to the public, available on the website prior to that meeting. I want to state to members of the public and the council that when we submit draft maps, that's what they are.

They are maps that we would love feedback on to make changes, and they are not the final plan. So we will submit multiple of those to you, and we expect to hear a lot of testimony when we have those maps available to you.

again for members of the public if you'd like to continue to submit any maps or give testimony then distrctor is is the link the online mapping tool that the city is utilizing it's still up and available for you to use and then the placemats are also available for you to use on in the website and then also in person so those are the two two of the ways but not the only ways that you can submit your map testimony. We also will accept and take any maps that are created in another mapping software. So if there is a community group or member of the public who would

like to submit a map using Esri technology or Map22 technology, we can definitely take that and work with you to make sure that we get that specific shapefile. And if there are any members of the public who are want to submit a map on a piece of paper or a napkin absolutely we will take those as well and as a reminder for the verbal or written testimony we won't be mapping those but we are listening and we'll summarize those and take those into consideration also when we are drafting maps so that is the end of the presentation and i will give it back to staff for any questions or comments.

I did want to indicate that there was a correction on the date on slide number four,

where it indicated January 28th would be the first reading of the final map adoption. It's actually January 18th. And that may have been me, because I know that I updated the timeline for you. And so I apologize if I did that. And I also wanted to inform the council that I have been actually requested to continue to attend other meetings and I am continuing to do that. And that is good news because the public is wanting to provide their maps to me. And I am going to go into their association meetings or neighborhood meetings.

I'm actually going to one tomorrow at Discovery Cube and then I'm participating with Public Works on that one. So, I just wanted to inform the council that I am getting a lot of feedback from the public.

Good to know. Thank you for that presentation. Let me go ahead and before I call on members of the public to address us on this item and members of the council to comment, let me go ahead and officially open the public hearing on the redistricting ward boundaries matter that we are taking under consideration. So let me go ahead and call on the members of the public that are in person and then I'll ask the city clerk if there is anybody on the phone that wishes to address us. So let me start with Elizabeth Martinez, followed by Karen Alvarado and finally Dale Helwig.

with you who is where my community is in the area of Santa Ana, where I live, is Latin. So, I would like to say that we have many needs, such as economic justice, education, immigration, rights of workers, access to the medical care, public health, public transport, social justice.

The map that the Council approve of the different communities of interest, the most possible district that follow the federal law of the right to vote, the plan for the city of Santa Ana is in the fulfillment of the federal law of the right to vote and the community of interest, that reflect the needs of the residents most affected by the city. La comunidad latina Santa Ana es el hogar de la comunidad latina más grande y establecida en el condado de Orange. La comunidad inmigrante y bajos ingresos. La ciudad incluye varias comunidades de interés, incluyendo a inmigrantes, comunidad de bajos ingresos y familias de estatus mixtos.

La comunidad vietnamita, la comunidad del oeste de Santa Ana, trae riqueza en diversidad, cultura y merece mantenerse unida. La comunidad que sufre de injusticia en la vivienda, de comunidad concentrada en apartamentos y hogares móviles. Estas comunidades son muy diferentes a las del norte de la ciudad y el área del sur, que la data del censo muestra diferencia en ingresos menores concentrados de comunidades de color. Muchas gracias. Que tengan buena noche.

Gracias.

Good evening, Mayor, members of the City Council. My name is Elizabeth Martinez. I'm a resident of Santa Ana. I'm a community leader with several organizations, and I'm here to ask you to look at this redistricting process. I'd like to share about my communities of interest. We are Latinos. We have lots of needs. We need social justice. We need immigration services. We need to look at workers' rights. We do not have access to medical services, transportation, community justice, etc.

The maps, you need to look at the different communities of interest and follow the mapping laws. We have lots of needs. Santa Ana is the largest Latino population in Orange County. We have low-income people. We are mixed status. households, we have housing needs, we have Vietnamese populations west of Santa Ana. We have a lot of rich cultural diversity. We need, we have injustices in

housing including mobile home residents and we are very different than the residents of North Santa Ana and south of the city. We are a community of color. Thank you for listening.

Thank you. Karen Alvarado followed by Dale Helwig.

Hello. Good evening, City Council and Mayor Serviento. My name is Karen Alvarado. I am an organizer with Orange County Congregation Community Organization. And OCO works to develop grassroots leaders to bring systemic change and results in creating communities where everybody can live with dignity and thrive. We are a member of the People's Redistricting Alliance, which is a coalition of 16 community-based organizations established to promote greater community voice and statewide and local redistricting processes here in Orange County.

We are leading the effort here in Santa Ana, and as folks have mentioned in the presentation, I do want to give a good shout out to the consulting team and the city staff team for really trying to engage the community. But as we know, it's really difficult, right, as we're still working through a pandemic to really bring more community input and voices. So I appreciate really the openness to have additional community meetings to get further input and really guidance into how these communities of interest should be considered in a map redistribution. So I really want to appreciate and highlight that.

However, I would want to stand here before you to ask to consider an extension of the timeline. I know that the deadline is not until April 17th to adopt the final map. So in really helping and working together, it would be helpful to have enough time and meet with everybody as much as possible to be able to gather the input necessary that will really do the honest justice to gather all of the communities of interest. So for that, I do want to make sure that we've already been working in months in advance and we'll be coming up with a community map submission as well for you all to consider,

hopefully in the next couple of weeks, and that it's going to be a product of months of community engagement and including districts that are obviously really balanced and equal size, continuous and compact. So I really, you know, again, want to just ask for your consideration for the extension of the timeline to provide additional community feedback and invoice. But as my colleague mentioned earlier, Santa Ana really does have a rich community and that is focused in low-income immigrants and mixed status families that need to be at the front and center of this process. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Dale Helwig.

Mayor Paterson, do we have any members of the public on the line that wish to address this on the site?

I have four that have their hands virtually raised and I will unmute each one at a time to ask them because I don't know if they're raising their hand for this site or some other one.

Go ahead, Dale. Dale Helwig, Ward 3. I think I can keep this under 30 seconds. The map is incorrect. it doesn't show the annexed area that we added to the city off of north of 17th and east of Tustin. So I'm hoping that redistricting partners can correct that and show the full city. Thanks.

Thank you for that.

I'll go ahead and turn it over to you now, Madam Clerk, to go ahead and call on those members of the public on the phone.

Thank you. And before I do that, I do want to make sure that the council is aware that any written communication we received on redistricting is available at santa-ana.org forward slash redistricting. And all the maps submitted as well. And it will be stored there for 10 years. And with that, the Zoom ID Media Arts Santa Ana, did you want to provide a comment on redistricting?

yes and there's still an opportunity to provide a comment on general comments right absolutely okay perfect yeah um well first of all i want to begin by thanking um the council for taking a stand on issues that help santa anna residents in this time of pandemic crisis there's a lot of important issues that affect our future and our children and um you know our economy um and quality of life so in terms of redistricting i know you're you uh enlisting looking at the comments you guys are aware of this but to guard against gerrymandering um i know that we generally see um

you know wards and districts that are kind of very funkily shaped and to create boundaries that create communities the more central the definitions are the more people that live near each other can actually form communities and relationships with their council members make sure each ward has an equitable distribution of parks community centers businesses etc so as not to create amenity deficient wards and those are just some ideas and again I think that taking as much time as it as you need to get community input from all parts of the city is is definitely a good thing so if that

means extending the deadline as well but again just to create boundaries that create communities

thank you thank you zoom id Anna Charco if you would please select the microphone icon to unmute at your call.

Hi, good evening, Mr. Mayor and City Council members. My name is Ana Charco and I am here on behalf of Latina Health Access to speak on item 27. Latina Health Access has been probably working alongside community residents for over 27 years, providing services that address immediate health needs while providing information and facilitating opportunities to increase civic participation and impact policies that will improve those social determinants in the longterm. It is therefore that I ask of you today to take into consideration communities of interest that include our most vulnerable communities,

such as low income communities, the Asian community, specifically the Vietnamese community and the tenant community. Mostly specifically the tenants leaving in apartments and mobile homes during the redistricting process. These communities should be respected in the redistricting process as these communities are very different from those in the north and south part of the city. Additionally, we are a tenant city and most of our tenants are low income. The census data shows a difference in income and concentrations of community colors within the north and the south part of the city. We would like for the redistricting process

to also be more friendly and for it to be promoted beyond social media platforms and online website as we have seen not a lot of our community residents are involved in this process. Therefore, we would also like to request if we could extend the timeline to gather community input and put forums together where we are able to gather both our base and community input. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Zoom ID, AraceliLopez714gmail.com. If you would please select the Zoom icon on your device and announce if you would like to provide a comment. Can you reduce your volume on the other device, please?

I live in the neighborhood of Isai, here on the street Pine. I want to ask you to please consider this, to involve more than the community. I was listening to the presentation and I was telling the consultor that they had done a very good job. Lamentablement, I've never been told of those forums. Many of my community don't know of those forums. I would like to say, when they say they're doing a good job, what is the amount of community that they get to those forums and what is the number of people who are taking their opinion to make this distribution of districts.

My community is a very variable community where we live many young people, we are immigrants. Most of the people rent and we are living with a high cost of our rent. But sometimes I worry that the city continues using the same methods to reach the community.

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que los mapas que van a llevar estas a estas organizaciones que están trabajando como coalición los tomen en consideración porque eso es lo que vivimos nosotros día a día y espero que nos hemos escuchado gracias y que tengan buenas noches y espero que también la manera de cómo hacer alcance en la comunidad de santana siento que ya es tiempo de que se modifiquen en la manera de trabajar de ustedes gracias

Good evening, Mayor, members of the City Council. My name is Salaselio Robles. I live on the east side on Pine Street. And I'm talking here about the redistricting process. You need to involve the community more. I was listening to the presentation and the consultant said that you did a good, they did a good job in outreach. And I don't think that that's the case because I never knew about these forums. the community did not know about these forums. So when you say you did a good job, how many people were at the forums? How many people got to give their input on the forums? Our city is

varied. We have lots of young people. We have immigrants. We have renters. And we have people who pay a lot of money for rent. The city needs to improve the methods on how they reach out to the community. This is an important issue that's going to affect our life, the lives of our children and our grandchildren and we we need to do more forums and I'm thankful you want to do more forums to reach out to the community. This decision is an important important because it involves the city and this is about our life so when you

consider maps you need to consider us because this is about how we are living so thank you and have a good evening and I hope that you change your outreach how the city does outreach in the city and it's time for you to change how you do

your work thank you zoom ID CEA if you would please select the microphone icon thank you did you want to provide your comment on item 27 regarding redistricting.

Today I want to comment on the process of redistribution of districts. I would like to share my community of interest. Tomate that in a community of interest, we are a person geographically defined where we share interests in common. And as the definition is very broad and gives discretion to determine the topics of work, as a promoter and organizer, I have been involved more formally in the last seven years with the justice of the living.

Thank you.

a community of interest, that should be under a same district and stay together together to work towards a better collective and start a way of making a more equidad. I also ask that when this is published, we have to be able to work together in those following days. Today, we must be able to be together together. I also want to add that in many different ways, we have asked that when we publish Thank you.

Now or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or

with Latino health access. I'm here to talk about item number 27. And the organization, I belong to an organization that is a committee for the redistricting of Santa Ana. We are diverse and inclusive group. And in this redistricting process, I'd like to talk about the community, our community of interest. We have, as it's defined, a community of interest is people who are well-defined, who have common interests. We are here to promote the organization. We have issues of housing justice, immigration. It's important for our community. We need to have quality education.

We need to have medical insurance, justice access, linguistic access, public transportation, and many other issues. And when you make this decision, when you decide on the districts, We need to work collectively so we can have better equity. When you consider the redistricting in the next few days, we need to work together to improve the system. And we ask you that when you send these invitations to workshops and meetings and community events, that you think outside your little box. Because not all of Santa Ana is in social media and has email.

So this is, this may be just political games and things that you're doing, but this is an issue that affects all of Santa Ana and we'd like to have a transparency in this process. We'd like to know who has been submitting the maps because we need to work together to build a strong community.

Thank you. And with that, that was the last comment that is, that raised their hand on Zoom. I did want to also announce to the members of the public who are listening that there's other meetings that are being requested and I'm happy to attend. So tomorrow I will be at Discovery Cube at 6 p.m. Wednesday, November 3rd. We'll also be on Wednesday, November 10th, and that was an invitation with OCCO at St. Joseph's Catholic Church at 6 p.m. Again, that's on Wednesday, November 10th. And then also on December 2nd at 7 p.m. at the Pentecostal Church of God.

And that's, again, at 7 p.m. Thursday, December 2nd, Pentecostal Church of God for the Morrison Park Neighborhood Association. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Thank you for that. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the Council to see if there's any questions or comments on the presentation or on the public hearing matter tonight.

Councilmember Fan.

Thai Viet Phan

Thank you, Mayor. I attended one of the hearings or presentations, and that was really helpful. So a couple things. First, if you have never used Districter, it's super fun. It's like coloring but creating your own maps. So I definitely recommend you just trying it out, whether it's for your community of interest or creating your own maps or just to see how crazy you can get. I definitely recommend it. The one thing I do want to ask, Daisy, is I do know you updated the link, but on the landing page for the City Council redistricting process, I would love to see a big button for redistrictor.

Thai Viet Phan

So that way you don't have to go through a couple links to get there. The other one I wanted to ask, and I don't know if it's for our consultant or Madam City Attorney, and I think it was a question I had already asked at the forum, which is, you know, So I was elected because of a settlement for our California Voting Rights Act lawsuit alleging that the city of Santa Ana, based on overpopulation, was diluting the Asian-American vote. And so for anyone who's interested in submitting these maps, how does that affect what we're doing now with the 2020

Thai Viet Phan

census, and how do we comply with the settlement And you know, in light of the population changes.

Sonia R. Carvalho

I mean, my answer to that would be obviously we have to remain consistent and be able to comply with the law. I think in terms of specifics, that's probably a question best asked the consultant in terms of how they're drawing those lines. They have the information as to population and how numbers may have changed since the last time we did that. But I would just definitely say we've got to be consistent and we've got to be in compliance with the law.

Thai Viet Phan

Madam consultant, do you have any thing to add to that?

Yes, we will be looking at the data and keeping in mind what, how the lines were drawn in 2018. And again, if we see any of those groups for the Asian, Latino or black population, we, it isn't again, the best practice is to draw districts that are focused on those.

For other districts that don't have that population threshold, we would rely on community of interest testimony or the remainder of the traditional redistricting criterias.

And we can note that too when we show the draft maps. And again, if they follow those criteria, because for the ones that weren't listed is we do follow the Federal Boating Rights Act. So that is a really high criteria. And then we'll look at when it's the criteria that we look at when we're looking at the equal population. And so that drawing, Boating Rights Act districts does come as the number one criteria above the other traditional principles. I don't know if I stated during the presentation, but those are ranked criteria.

So again, it starts with the Voting Rights Act, then we look along with the equal population, and then the other criteria is follow.

Thai Viet Phan

Thank you. And I guess the last question I had was, you know, we had a few callers saying they didn't get notice. And I know in a city of over 300,000 people, we're not always going to be able to catch everybody. But are we able to, whether it's, I don't know, mailing folks or something like that, is that cost prohibitive because i know in our city at least with you know covet and whatnot the door-to-door the the hard mailers kind of got more attention compared to you know social media and the like

well i can connect with staff who has done that in the past and see what that would take i could definitely look into that more absolutely thank you thank you for that

Councilmember Lopez. Thank you Mayor Salienta. Daisy, I think I heard you say

Jessie Lopez

you're gonna be in War III two more times. Can you please send those dates to me via email so that I have them on my calendar? And because we're gonna continue obviously to do more outreach and speak with the community and I know the last time we were in War III there was probably five people there and so I do agree with the cause that we need more community input so I don't have an issue with extending the timeline I think it's probably really appropriate at this point since we're going to continue to ask for feedback from Sanana residents

thank you thank you councilmember any other questions or council member

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

Hernandez yeah I just wanted to share I recently attended a redistricting event on October 29th and I wanted to applaud Daisy Gomez for the event. It was well organized, it was very welcoming, there was social distancing, there was beverages and snacks and residents were very well informed. There was translation in Spanish and in Vietnamese and there was a respectable turnout so so please continue to do your due diligence it is well noted and appreciated. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember. Mayor Pretend.

David Penaloza

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. Thank you, Madam City Clerk, for the work you've been doing with this. One thing that I would like to suggest, and maybe as a, you know, that you could try moving forward, is I know that we have on the schedule a lot of community events that should draw large people, large amounts of people. And, you know, like we had the 5K this past weekend or two weeks ago, and it would have been nice to have maybe an informative booth just strictly related to redistricting and the city's process. I know we have the ice rink coming and the fiestas navideñas and the tree lighting ceremony.

David Penaloza

Those are our events where, you know, we could use because of the amount of people they draw to set up a booth and just have kind of informative information, informative information, if that even makes sense. You know what I mean. to really get the community involved and put on notice that these meetings are coming. And yeah, that's all I can say.

David Penaloza

And I still haven't seen any, and I know they are effective. It's sponsored social media content targeting specific neighborhoods and areas in the city. Vietnamese in the West End and Spanish in the Central City. I know that the times that we have done sponsored social media content through the city manager's office It's been effective in getting that information out there. So Doing that as well would be very beneficial to this process. Thank you

Thank you for that any other questions or comments

Yeah, I would just Say thank you for the for the presentation. Thank you for members of the public for their comments and for my colleagues' comments as well. So, you know, something that worked really well when we were trying to reach out during testing and during, you know, vaccination clinics that we were supporting was just texting, right? I mean, you know, because it's a very inexpensive way to reach some households that aren't connected still to the internet, and the school district does it really well for, you know, information that they're sending to parents. I mean, I know I get text messages all the time.

And so I think that might be a way that if you're going to be in a ward or you're going to be in a neighborhood, maybe you could really focus in on sending a text message to that area. Maybe the consultant can probably lead you in the right direction. And then the other one was maybe putting something in the water bill that has the remaining dates that we have. We may be brushing up against that a little bit. Maybe that timeline's kind of winding up. But to the extent text messages are a really cost effective way, because almost everybody has a phone and a device that they'll be receiving information.

And all they really need is the date and the location, and that's it. Finally, I would just say for our presentations, because I'm not sure if we're going to be having any additional public hearings or anything else, But on your timeline, what might be a good idea is to put the deadline of when the final date is for submission. I believe the statutory date is sometime in April that Sophia mentioned, our consultant. So long as that's there and everybody understands, as we mentioned this, there is flexibility in time. We're giving ourselves a lot of additional time in the event that we need to gather more information.

We certainly don't want to make any decisions based upon a nominal amount of maps and background that we receive. So, that's all I have. And seeing no other questions or comments from the Council, I will now go ahead and close the public hearing and go back to our final in-person public speaker. And I know he wanted to learn all about redistricting, so that's why he waited. Mr. Victor Mendez, come on up.

And then we have some speakers on the phone, right, Madam Clerk?

Yes, we only have one.

It was informative.

Vince, you don't owe me dinner, but you owe me coffee, and I'll be in touch.

Thank you. Number 13, I've spoken before about the use of contingencies in your public works contracts. And I just want to make a point here because I know Council Member Penaloza was speaking to the kind of the slowness of some of our public works projects. I can tell you one thing up front. If you load a contract up with your full amount, with your contingency, the contractor is of course going to be incentivized to take his time because he wants that money. I'll be happy to reach out to you and explain it some further, but the way you're contracting is definitely a factor in the slowness in the delivery of your projects.

Not only does it cost you probably more money, but it's taking more time and causing you some of those political headaches. So I will talk to you further and hope you'll take the invitation. On item 23, your extension of your city attorney contract, you know, I think any city council has the prerogative to choose whatever city attorney they want to contract with. Maybe the public feels differently, but at the end of the day, that's the city council's prerogative. Of course, provided the city attorney isn't elected. The report itself is very puzzling to me. It read like a staff evaluation report.

It's like they talk about a negotiated salary and benchmarking the increases that the POA got versus what the city attorney has had in the past. Again, I would not necessarily go forward on that report. You may want to go forward nonetheless, but based on that information, that's not something I would necessarily vote to extend a contract to. It's just not reading properly, and it seems it's not the proper context or approach when you're talking about a negotiated fee for service. Again, this is your call. I'm just pointing out kind of the discrepancies I'm seeing.

The benchmarking information was also really out of line. You have $695,000 in contractual expenses, not just $325,000 for the city attorney. That's what's in your budget. City of Anaheim has 33 full-time equivalents at city attorney overseas, including prosecutorial functions. That's not really a good benchmark. Huntington Beach is an elected official. Again, that whole laundry list of cities and what they cost doesn't really mean anything. people may be doing different things and having different functions and the cities just don't seem consistent with Santa Ana. Again, I'll just leave it to you.

And then in terms of performance, I mean, I can only state what I've read. There's been allegations of leaked information. You know, just most recently there was some controversy over the Brown Act. And probably, and it's been about two months since we've heard about trying to move forward on Council Member Bracera's proposal. I see I only have about two seconds. to streamline this, yes, to your streamlined proposal. I think it's a good idea. I'd suggest having staff try to maybe minimize their presentation to five minutes since I have to do mine in three. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you very much for those comments. Let me go ahead and bring us to the consent calendar section of the meeting.

Mayor, I do have one more.

Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. You do have somebody. Thank you.

Zoom ID Media Arts Santa Ana, if you would please provide your public comment.

Yes, hi, this is Victor with the director of Media Arts Santa Ana, resident of East Side, now called Pacific Park neighborhood. A couple of things. I wanted to let you all know that we had a successful 12th OC film fiesta just concluded this past Sunday. Virtual, we had another great cinematic celebration of our nation's diversity and multicultural heritage. We had OC and Santa Ana filmmakers, including Farron Kidd, Chicanos Unidos, Tyler Stallings, Mosue Oropesa, who's in Arizona now, work at a film school, Paul James Houghton, Dylan Chant from Chapman, and some high school students as well.

We had audiences and filmmakers from around the country, more than 45 films representing the Latin A, Asian American, African American, Middle Eastern, LGBTQ students, veterans, Middle Eastern, and that the festival, because it was national, has served as a cultural ambassador to Orange County and Santa Ana for the rest of the country. And we did have attendees from all over the country. I wanna thank you for the city and the support of this festival, which you helped found 12 years ago. We are really expanding, very excited, and we're going to be doing more programming coming in early in the new year, year-round programming.

So we're very excited. We're also in the middle of a series of our Millennial Producers Academy, Milpa, a free class which provides media arts, professional development, creativity, and technology training for youth and young adults. So we're very excited about that. So that's the media arts Santa Ana Maza update. I wanna change hats now to a United Artists of Santa Ana to say that we had sent a couple of letters to the city and haven't heard response. So I wanted to, we sent them to e-comment on October 19th one, and then the previous one was on July 20th. The first one that I wanted to address today

deals with the South Main Art Public Arts Initiative. There was an issue with the scoring, with some conflict of interest issues that we made the city aware of and we haven't heard back. The problem with conflict of interest regarding two of the arts commissioners, we should have recused themselves from judging applications from their friends. There's a perceived conflict of interest, and this is serious. The California Arts Council takes it so seriously that unlike one-year limits on actual conflict of interest, the state does not have a statute of limitations on perceived conflicts of interest.

It also violates the city's code of ethics and conduct. This also in terms of public input, the South Maine Public Arts Initiative RFP states, it's a South Maine Public Arts Initiative review and approval process. It's designed to provide substantial input and participation by representatives from Public Works Agency, Arts and Culture Office, Senate and the City Council and other stakeholder groups in order to ensure that each accommodates, that the project accommodates the requirements to the public in place in which it is cited. As of now, this requirement of substantial input and participation by stakeholders-

15 seconds left.

Not suggested and we had suggested the South Main Neighborhood Alliance do this. And also in our second letter, we asked for an audit of Downtown Inc. There have been many complaints

regarding, ought to be examined regarding Downtown Inc and East End Partners relationship, leadership-

Thank you, your time is up.

And use of public funds, thank you.

Thank you.

And that is all, Mayor. And before you proceed, I did want to announce that we did also receive written communication on agenda item. One Santa Ana resident commented on unpermitted event on October 23rd at Santa Ana Boulevard in Bristol. One residency not disclosed commented against rent stabilization ordinance. One Tenants United, Santa Ana commented in response to the rent stabilization ordinance REFERENDUM. ITEM 18, ONE SANTA ANA ORGANIZATION IN SUPPORT. ONE SANTA ANA ORGANIZATION COMMENTED ON THE WAY THAT THE MONEY IS BEING DISTRIBUTED AND USED. ITEM 21, TWO SANTA ANA RESIDENTS

COMMENTED TO WORK WITH SCHOOL DISTRICT TO KEEP ACCESS AT A MINIMAL COST. AND THAT'S

ALL WE HAVE. GREAT. THANK YOU. LET ME GO AHEAD AND NOW ASK ANY MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL IF THEY WISH TO PULL ANY ITEMS OFF THE CONSENT CALENDAR

Thai Viet PhanItem 18

or abstain and recuse themselves from any items. Councilmember Phan? I need to recuse myself from item 11 and 15 as Orange County United Way and the City of Westminster are clients of my employer, my law firm Rattan and Tucker, and so I will recuse myself from those. And I'd like to pull item number 17 regarding the down payment program. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Anybody else

wish to pull any items or abstain from any items on the consent calendar?

Phil BacerraItem 11

Mayor?

Yes.

Phil BacerraItem 19

I'll go ahead and pull items 19 and 21.

Great. Thank you for that. So is there a motion to move the balance of the consent calendar? I'll motion. All right. So I think it was a motion by Council Member Hernandez and a second by Becerra. Madam Clerk, if you'll please call roll on that.

Mayor and Council Members, if I could ask you to please use the voting module.

Motion carries 7-0 with Council Member Becerra, Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Fan, Mayor Proter Peñalosa and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes.

Thank you. Going to Item Number 17, Polled by Council Member Fan. Go ahead Council Member.

Thai Viet PhanItem 19

Thank you. So first, I would like to say that I'm really excited for this program. The city of Santa Ana has a down payment assistance program, and I'm glad that we are kind of revamping it and investing additional funds into this program and also making it easier for Santa Ana residents or workers to apply and receive additional funding. The one thing I do want to, I guess, discuss with my colleagues up here is that currently under this new program the recipient the borrower could borrow

Thai Viet PhanItem 19

up to $120,000 for a down payment for a house here in the city. However one of the issues that we may come across is let's say 20 or 30 years down the line and they're looking to retire. Many of these residents may choose to sell that home and they would pay back the funds to the city at no interest but they would have gained a lot of equity I think anybody here who maybe bought a house here in Santa Ana 20 years ago or in the 90s you probably saw your house and value you know really shoot up in value and so for me I would like to see

Thai Viet PhanItem 19

us kind of carve out or create a caveat to that that if you receive down payment assistance from the city of Santa Ana and you sell your home for profit, which I assume you would, that if you do not reinvest that money by buying a house in the city of Santa Ana within a year, that you pay the city five or ten percent of those profits. Because what I'm worried about is if Santa Ana is investing 1.2 million dollars into this down payment assistance fund, You know, we get the money back, but 30 years from now, $1.2 million would have lost value, right?

Thai Viet PhanItem 19

And what people are doing then is they're taking all of that profit and moving to Riverside or moving to Palm Desert or Florida, I don't know, wherever people want to retire. And so we're losing that investment. So what I'm asking my colleagues to do, and I've spoken to one of our city attorneys as well as Judson Brown on this, is that we can just create a condition that says if you sell your home for a profit and you don't buy a new home in the city of Santa within a year that you pay the city five or ten percent of those profits I don't think that's a lot to ask I can say that when

Thai Viet PhanItem 19

I bought my townhouse in 2019 it's basically increased in value by $80,000 two years later so I can only imagine in 20 or 30 years what the increase would be and i really think that that's a great way for any resident to kind of give back to the city once they've ready you know receive the benefit of the down payment assistance great thank you for that

comment excellent comment um councilmember becerra thank you mr mayor um i want to thank staff for

Phil BacerraItem 19

listening to the multiple council members that have brought up uh you know the the down payment assistance program and trying to you know increase the amount of resources that we have going towards creating these opportunities for home ownership the staff report stated very well home ownership leads to asset building and the accumulation of wealth instead of solely relying on the city's financing of affordable rental housing so the first i'm sorry the my first home program is going to increase those home ownership opportunities for what the staff report says at

Phil BacerraItem 19

least 10 lower income families right here in Santa Ana. I wanted to ask staff, so in looking at it, it says the increased amount will be $80,000. Is that going to be enough for down payment here in Santa Ana? Because just today I looked at Zillow, not to say that's the absolute concrete source, but having said that, right now we're looking at something in the ballpark of $700,000. So if you do the math um you're looking at a down payment at least if you're going at 20 percent you know well over a hundred thousand probably closer to 130 000. so um that's a quite a difference from

Phil BacerraItem 19

the 80 000. so is there a basis for why we're only capping it in that ballpark thank you council

member judson could you come forward um our housing manager justin justin brown will explain to you the reasoning for the two caps and the income levels. Yeah. Thank you very much, Council Member Becerra. We didn't come up and use a specific calculation when we came up with the 80,000 and the 120,000. We were intentional in what we were trying to do, which was double the amount of assistance available for moderate income families and then add an additional $40,000 available for low income families. low-income families could qualify for up to $120,000 in down payment assistance.

But we didn't run the calculations on the median home price or anything like that to come up with these values. Okay.

Phil BacerraItem 19

Thank you. I appreciate any increase in this program. Like I said, I think it's valuable to have more home ownership opportunities here in Santa Ana. Excuse me. One thing also that I wanted to call out, and the fact is that in the quarterly report for housing division projects for the period from July to September of 2021, only two of the 16 applications for down payment assistance were returned, which means that there's only 12% that have been returned. So with this program, obviously more money being available will hopefully entice folks to participate. But what I want to understand as we're rolling this program out,

Phil BacerraItem 7

what's going to change? And Sandy is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result what are we going to see different here from the execution that will result in a better

percentage of applications returned and approved well yeah thank you councilmember i think uh the basis of this is more assistance is available per household so uh families struggle to qualify for home for down payment assistance for various reasons, right, various reasons per household. But in the end of it, the theory of change here is that it comes down to their financial ability to purchase a home. So what we're assuming is going to happen with this investment is that we're going to

be able to double or hopefully triple that number. We want to get more families into home. We want to see this investment be successful so that next year ideally we can return and

Phil BacerraItem 7

recommend the same thing. So just so I understand are you saying that by providing more funding you expect to see more applications returned and most likely or hopefully approved? Yes yes that's correct. Okay I hope so too. I hope so too and I just want to say for the record thank you Justin you know I don't know what it is where some of my colleagues are very opposed to folks profiting from their investments. And especially with down payment assistance, I see it not just enabling folks in our community to have the opportunity to sink roots into our community,

Phil BacerraItem 7

but they're also, we're preventing displacement. We're helping to keep folks here in town. They're not, we don't see so much of a transiency. And I think that that investment in itself, to say that, well, they're just gonna wait a couple years and leave and go out to Riverside, I don't know that that's fair or accurate because I think that for folks that are leaving, I mean, it's a choice, but I think the folks that are coming into this type of program, they're seeking to be here in Santa Ana. I mean, if it's about economics, you know, currently it's a lot easier to move out to the Inland Empire.

Phil BacerraItem 7

But I think for folks that are applying for this type of assistance to be here in Santa Ana, they're doing us a favor by committing to our city, by committing to our community, and seeking roots here in town. So I don't know that we need to split hairs and start seeing where we can gouge them for what little profit they're making. And I say little because in the sense that they are putting a lot into a down payment. I mean, they're committed to that. For folks that are not getting down payment assistance, there's other programs that are even more taxing.

Phil BacerraItem 7

But again, I just don't think that we should be nickel and diming folks who are making a commitment to be here and going through this program because they need to and they want to be in this community. Thank you.

Great, thanks. Council Member, or sorry, Mayor Pro Tem.

David PenalozaItem 7

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I just wanted to also thank staff for bringing this item forward. Very happy to see our collaborative effort in the city to really help our Santa Ana families get away from renting and getting away from relying on affordable housing and helping them, you know, purchase their own home build generational wealth over time. I know that I personally know dozens if not hundreds of people in the city that were paying rent at an apartment or renting a house and were fortunate enough to move into home ownership in

David PenalozaItem 7

the city and they pay less in their mortgage than they do renting an apartment or a home. So very excited to see programs like this. I wish it was more dollars allocated towards this but I know that with time we'll hopefully be able to put more money towards this. I want us to be careful in suggesting that we restrict a homeowner 20-30 years from now from you know taking a cut of whatever profit they may have when they sell their home 20-30 years

David PenalozaItem 7

from now. If somebody wants to, in my opinion, sell their home 20 years from now at a profit, okay pay the city back, the down payment assistance. If they want to move to Texas, to Florida, to Mexico, to Riverside and buy three homes with that profit, more power to them. I mean that's the whole point is to help these families build generational wealth over time so that they could have something to pass on to their families and their kids. And I just, I just, I'm not comfortable putting a condition on something like this because it's infringing on people's

David PenalozaItem 7

private lives to move freely and do whatever they want.

David PenalozaItem 7

I don't think it's going to take away from the city because they'll sell the home and moved to a different place but guess what a family's another family's gonna buy that home and reinvest in our city and it's not gonna sit there vacant forever and ever people someone's gonna buy it and someone's gonna shop in the city and someone's gonna pay the property taxes so I don't think the city loses anything by having that family move to a different state so I'd be supportive of the item as is and I'll make a motion to approve it and that's Thank you for those comments.

I'll second it with a question.

Go ahead. Go ahead, Council Member.

Is this program in addition to what we already have? I had heard that the home buying assistance program that I had was about $50,000 and it was forgiven if the person lived in the home a certain amount of years. And then if they lived in it for 10 years, that all was forgiven. Did we do away with that or is this in here as well?

No, thank you. Thank you, Council Member Mendoza. This program is an enhancement upon our existing program. So we already invest in down payment assistance. We have offered $40,000 for modern income families and $80,000 for low income families. This injection of funds with approval by City Council will add $1.2 million dollars and increase those amounts to 80,000 and 120,000 respectively. But it is building upon our existing program.

Okay, very good. And my second question is, if the resident sells the home here in Santa Ana and does not invest in another home within two years, they end up paying quite a bit on the capital gains. It's my understanding. So they may even lose out on any of that profit. Is that correct in my understanding?

Councilmember, I don't think we would like to give taxation advice to anyone based on their familiar situation. We wouldn't know. But yes, capital gains exist. But we don't know if each family would be subject to it.

Fair enough. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you both.

Jessie LopezItem 7

Thank you. Sorry Judson. I do have a question for you. Go ahead, Councilmember Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 7

Well, first and foremost, thank you for this. I think that this is a really important program, and I like that we're continuing to evolve. Do you know if any other city has something like what Councilmember Phanis are posing? Anything of the like? Thank you, Councilmember Lopez.

Because not that we know of, no.

Jessie LopezItem 7

Okay.

Jessie LopezItem 7

Um, question.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 7

Good job, Jitson. That's my comment.

Is that yours? Okay. Any other questions or comments? So, um, so I know we have a motion and a second. I do have just a couple of comments on this.

So I think, you know, everybody wants our residents to evolve, those especially that are tenants and renters to evolve into becoming homeowners. But I think we've had this program around in some version for years, right? I mean, this isn't a new program. This isn't something that's novel. And we've had, unfortunately, not much success. and I don't think it's because our program is deficient or it's somehow not trying to meet its goal or operating well. I think the other side of this equation is sometimes folks just don't qualify for the other part of the financing. So that is a big piece of this. So we're dealing

with lenders now that are extremely demanding and, you know, to finance a purchase of a home that, you know, look, I was just looking at some of the, I wasn't looking at Zillow, but I was looking at some of the new homes that were on, that are being developed by 4th and the railroad tracks by KB. They're now at $700,000, $800,000, and these are townhomes that are very modest in size. So for somebody to qualify for financing for something like that is extremely challenging.

And so we'd love, I think it's great and aspirational to try to make homeowners out of folks here in town. But unfortunately, that means a lot of, to encumber properties, to get a first, to get a loan, you have to provide a lot of information that sometimes isn't available more than anything. A steady income and people coming off of COVID right now don't have steady incomes, and some of them are really sort of off balance. But I guess to me, the other piece of the puzzle is from us providing some sort of matching deposit.

There has to be some ability from the borrower or from the resident to have their own internal savings. So I think the reason why I think this is coupled well with the inclusionary housing fund is that now you're helping people have affordable rents so they're able to start saving money. So they're able to start cobbling together that money so they can couple with these matching funds that the city will provide. So our funds alone won't get somebody into a home. there is a whole litany of things that are required. So I think that if we can work with lenders,

and maybe that's the relationship that we can start having is with lenders that are reasonable and working with our residents and seeing what we can do to assist. And sometimes it's just simply walking somebody through the application process. And I know I've worked for lenders for years and represented them. It is just a very, very daunting task, even for somebody that is familiar with debt financing, but for somebody who is a low-income, you know, first-time homebuyer, it is an overwhelming process to go through that. And so I think what we're going to start seeing, hopefully, in the city with the creation of affordable units,

with the creation of stabilization in our, you know, in our communities, is that people are going to start saving. People are going to have more disposable income. And that's the hope is that coupled with this I think maybe the program will be successful. It's going to take some time because as we've seen you know renters and people that reside in our community 70% of their salaries are going towards rent. So how do you expect to save anything to be able to you know put together a fund to be able to you know present a deposit and present it to a lender and say can you underwrite a loan for me for half a million dollars.

That is a very difficult thing to do. and to ask our residents. That's just not realistic. And yeah, we'd love to create generational wealth, but it is a whole, you know, burden that I think we're, you know, expecting people to overcome easily. And that's just being simplistic about it. And so we can't be that simplistic in our thinking. On the other hand, I mean, I think it's fair to have a program like this for those that are in a moderate income level that can maybe be able to do this, but is a very limited population that we're talking about. So I think we have to be proportionate in how we

expend these inclusionary funds. I think this is fine. This can go ahead and maybe help 10 families, and I appreciate Judson and the community development team for creating this amount of money and this increase. I think it's well thought out. We're increasing the amount that we first started with. $40,000 was at that time very strong and we thought was helpful. Now it's considered modest given what deposits are expecting. We see properties in the city that are on the market that are being outbid. There's multiple bidders bringing the asking price up by 20%, 30%.

And that's just the reality of the market that we're in, unfortunately. So those are all my comments. And I think we have a motion in a second.

Thai Viet PhanItem 7

Mayor?

Yes.

Thai Viet PhanItem 7

I would like to make a sub-motion to approve the program as is, but also add in the condition that if the borrower chooses to sell their home and not purchase a property within the city of Santa Ana within a year of the sale then they would pay back the city five percent of the profits. I think that it is what we want to do because it ensures that this program is sustainable into the future and that we continue to invest in Santa Ana

Thai Viet PhanItem 7

residents and not, you know, incentivize others to profit from the loans that they get and then to

move out of the city. Thank you. Great. I'll go ahead and second that and I forgot to mention, you know, the whole discussion point on that. I think, you know, we don't want, you know, our capital to flee as well. We don't want it to be spent and expended and used in other communities. These are precious dollars so I'll go ahead and second with that

Thai Viet PhanItem 7

amendment. And just for clarification, paying back that 5% would not apply if they repurchase a house or purchase a different house or downsize in the city of Santa Ana. The point is if they stay here in the city they get all the benefits of a resident but if they choose to leave then 5% is not a huge

price to pay. Thank you. Great. Thank you for that. Madam Clerk, why don't we go ahead and take up the substitute motion first. If that doesn't go, if that doesn't pass, we'll go ahead and go to the

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 7

original motion. Thank you. I have a question. Yes, go ahead, Council Member. So with, with the sub motion, what is the length of time that we're placing on, on, let's say a prospective sale? Like, let's say I qualify for this program, purchase a home today, and 15 years from today, I decide to sell. So I guess what's the threshold for that time frame?

Thai Viet PhanItem 7

You can sell your house whenever, and at that time of sale, you would have to pay back the city, the down payment assistance, right? That's part of the program, no interest. But let's say I went from a three-bedroom townhome to a four-bedroom single family. I take that profit and I buy the single family in the city of Santa Ana, you don't got to pay back the 5% if you buy within a year. But if you take that profit and go to Riverside and buy a mansion, I do believe, in my opinion, that paying back the city 5% allows us to replenish the fund. So it would be the one-year trigger.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 7

Okay.

Thai Viet PhanItem 7

Yeah.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 7

I guess my thought process on this was I'd support the sub motion with the condition that if you choose to sell your house before the 12 year mark and the reason why I choose 12 years is that's the amount of years children spend in public education and oftentimes when families move between different households it affects children adversely. so that's how I'm looking at it I guess I would be concerned if somebody purchased a house and sold within five years I would absolutely be concerned about you know them capitalizing on a program like this when there's people who truly need it so is there any condition that you that you see along

Thai Viet PhanItem 7

those lines I guess I don't understand because right now the program only requires the borrower to pay back the down payment assistance that they received. Whether they sell their house one year from now or 10 years from now or 30 years from now. My concern was just whatever profit that the borrower gains, they're taking that profit and now using it and investing it in a different community. So the one-year trigger is just to say whenever you sell your house, if you buy another house within Santa Ana in a year,

Thai Viet PhanItem 7

then you're free and clear just pay back the down payment but if you buy a house somewhere else within that year then you pay five percent on top of the down payment I'm not sure what the five-year

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 7

limit is okay so I guess my question was more specific to um would there be a point at which we would look at this and we say okay you know if you sell your house within you know 20 years of purchase, you know, does this amount change from 5% to, for example, let's say 7% or are we just capping it at keeping it at 5 is my question.

Thai Viet PhanItem 7

Oh, I offered 5 just because I think within that amount of time that's not a reasonable, that's a pretty reasonable return on investment. You know, for the city it's not, you know, 10% might be a bit aggressive and so that's only reason why I said because a typical you know life of the loan is 30 years so they might have already paid it off and then decide to sell and make a profit off that. I have a comment. Thank you.

Go ahead council member. Home buying and applying for a loan is complex enough and it seems like the issue is getting a little more complex and more difficult and and there's more restrictions added to it. So it seems like if we add this on, it may discourage the resident from applying at all. And so then we don't end up helping. For that reason, I will not support this motion.

Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Becerra.

Phil BacerraItem 7

Since this is another motion or a sub-motion I'd like to comment, and that is like many of the housing policies that we keep seeing coming across the dais, I feel like this is just another motivator to go to another city and invest. And yes, folks that need down payment assistance need assistance. But if they know that applying for it in Santa Ana, when they commit to paying back what they are given, and then on top of that are taxed even more, we complain about predatory loan programs and all these other things where we keep adding burdens onto folks here in Santa Ana. And now we're trying to do it from the dais.

Phil BacerraItem 7

And you can argue whether 5% or 10%, what's too much or too little. But at the end of the day, it seems like a pretty simple deal in the sense that we are giving assistance and they're paying it back. And to add all these things, I agree with Council Member Mendoza. There's no reason to make this more complicated than what it needs to be. We're assisting folks to invest in the community and sink roots here and try to prevent displacement. All this other stuff is just helping convince folks to go to another city. And I will not be supporting the substitute motion.

Great. Thank you. Any additional comments? Mayor Pro Tem.

David PenalozaItem 7

Thank you, Mayor. I guess I just have questions on the, trying to see if I understand what the sub motion is.

David PenalozaItem 7

So are we saying, Council Member Fann, and please correct me, that by allowing somebody to buy a house or a property in a different city besides Santa Ana, that the city of Santa Ana is going to lose out on that? Because somebody, what I'm thinking is somebody will buy that home. And they will pay those property taxes of whatever that home value is at the time. and they will shop at their local grocery store and they will spend their money here. So I don't see where the city of Santa Ana loses out if we just ask residents to pay back the down payment assistance and that's it.

David PenalozaItem 7

Council Member Becerra does have a point where it's a little predatory on residents. We're now going into that territory of not only infringing on people's private lives and their right to move wherever they want, but now at the same time we're essentially becoming loan sharks by doing this, adding an extra 5% tax or whatever it is on the profit. So I'm not sure why or how this would work.

David PenalozaItem 7

If you could please elaborate.

Thai Viet PhanItem 7

Yeah, so for example, the reason why I mentioned that if they buy, they decide to downsize or upsize within the city after they sell their original home, they're free and clear. They don't have to pay back that 5%. They would just pay back the down payment assistance that they originally got and just continue to invest in the city. I, you know, first I don't think it's a loan shark situation because one that's not it's not usury. Usury under state law is a very specific definition but secondly what we're looking at is sure they pay back a

Thai Viet PhanItem 7

$120,000 30 years from now, but if the city had actually invested the $130,000 within 30 years, it would probably double in value. So we are getting diminishing returns in 30 years if someone only pays back $120,000 that they originally borrowed. So what that means is in 30 years if we get that $120,000 back and we want to help another Santa Ana family buy a home in the city it's not going to be enough. The down payment now is going to end up being $240,000. And the point of this program or this caveat is to ensure that we continue to be able to

Thai Viet PhanItem 7

replenish the fund so we can continue to have these affordable funding for down payment assistance, but also incentivize folks to continue to invest in Santa Ana. Because I think what you end up having is, I'm not telling people they can't leave, You know with affordable housing, you know when we say you're in a covenant protected affordable housing unit And you want to sell then you might have to resell back to Habitat for Humanity That is part of the agreement or you have to sell to another moderate or low-income family that is typical We are not preventing people from doing anything that they want to do

Thai Viet PhanItem 7

We're just saying if you continue to buy a new home in Santa Ana awesome, you know, you're you're doing what I think is what would be great for our community. But if you decide to go somewhere else, that's great too. Good luck. But we want you to pay back just a little bit of the profit that you're going to make so that other Santa Ana families can have the opportunity that you had. On top of that, when we're talking about, well, is this complicated or not, the difficulty into getting into home ownership, and I know this because the only reason why I was able to afford my townhouse is because my husband's a veteran.

Thai Viet PhanItem 7

We got zero down on our townhouse. Otherwise, between student loans and our rent payments, we would never have been able to save up the $120,000 or whatever it is. And we never would have qualified for this program to buy a home. And so that's really where the, I think, the barrier to home ownership is. it's not in the future when you make 300 or 400 or 600 thousand dollar and profit from selling the home and paying a little bit back that that is the reason why I'm looking for this particular provision and you know when you're

Thai Viet PhanItem 7

talking about a new resident moving in well I get that I think that's great but it's not clear that the new resident would be a different Santa Ana resident It might be someone else from elsewhere. And that's great, but it kind of makes no, it comes out even in the wash, because whether they move to a new house or to a place in Florida, that original house is going to get sold to somebody anyway. So I guess in either way, the point is to make sure the city replenishes these funds and that we continue to invest in the city and not elsewhere.

David PenalozaItem 7

Thank you for that. But I just think it would be the same because we're essentially now going to say we're going to tax you to leave is what we're doing. And at the same time, we can't guarantee that it's going to be already here Santa Ana resident just like we can't guarantee that all the affordable housing we want to build is going to be for Santa Ana residents. By law, we can't restrict affordable housing to just Santa Ana residents. So all of them are, it just, I don't know. I think, I guess that was the whole point to this program is to help people buy their properties and, you know, again, build generational wealth.

David PenalozaItem 7

I don't like that we make comments up here that say, you know, everyone that's in affordable housing doesn't have a good credit score and can't apply for a loan and the lender won't approve them. I know tons of people that, you know, are in affordable housing, and they have great credit scores and great paying jobs, maybe not great paying jobs, but because of how expensive the market is here, they can't afford to put a down payment on a home. And their mortgage will probably be less than the rent. That's the reality that we're seeing. So I know there are people out there in affordable housing that do have great credit score

David PenalozaItem 7

that would be approved for loans. So we shouldn't make just broad statements like that, that lenders want to prove anyone in an affordable home. And I just don't like the idea of taxing a resident to move out of the city. That just doesn't make sense to me. But that's it, Mr. Mayor. Thank you.

Any other comments on the substitute motion?

Phil BacerraItem 7

One simple quick statement. Paying back the loan is replenishing the fund. Pure and simple. That's it.

Great. So just to speak on the substitute motion. So it's funny how people don't like terms, but they'll use legal terms as if they were accurate, right? So taxes is very different than what I think is being asked for in this provision. A tax is an assessment. If you look at this, this is a very different provision that the council member is offering as a substitute motion on monies that are appreciated, right? And so I see this as a way of keeping this program for those that believe in it and I do and not and

When we speak about saying, you know many people don't that's why it's qualified It's not a blanket statement saying that nobody qualifies But you know if we want to be hyperbolic we can certainly say that and say yeah You know there's three people out of a thousand that will qualify. Yeah, I guess you're right, but you know we are making opinion. We are making comment. I think based upon our experience and based upon the data and the information that we have before us. And again, I don't think these are collection efforts where anybody's kneecaps are going to be broken if they don't pay this back.

So talking about that as well is very, again, exaggerated. And it's unfortunate that those are arguments. I think this is a rational debate. We can agree to disagree on this policy. I think the idea is is that the substitute motion is more intended to see how we can continue to use these funds as they're being recycled back into the program. Again, I guarantee you in 10, 20 years, this deposit amount of 120,000 is going to seem like nothing. It's going to seem like the 40,000 that we started with years ago. So I think this is a way to use some of that equity that, you know,

Would not have been garnered by that resident or by that borrower had it not been for these funds That are that belong to the city. So I think you know, I think it is a fair proposal I think it's something novel. I hadn't seen it You know, I hadn't thought about it, but I certainly think I can support it So in any event those are my last comments and I'll go ahead and call for the question and madam clerk if you'll to please call take roll on the on the substitute motion if I can ask

everyone to go ahead and mark your vote. Cast your vote please. So point of clarification,

David PenalozaItem 7

are we keeping it at five? Is that the, is it five? Because I know five was just thrown out as a,

Thai Viet PhanItem 7

as a. Yeah, five was my motion because the number is pretty conservative for the amount of interest and return on investment that you would have if you were investing in an index fund over a period of time. So that, that's why I threw out five for that return. And I do want to say that if we could limit all affordable housing in the city to Santa Ana residents we would have done it.

Great should we vote? Yes please I think it's just Mayor Pro Tem.

Okay motion passes 5-2 with Council Member Becerra and Mendoza voting no, Council Member Hernandez, Lopez, Van, Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes. Great thanks everybody.

So I think the next item was item number 19. That was pulled by Council Member Becerra.

Phil BacerraItem 7

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Nabil, if you could come up. I had a couple questions for you on this one. So this is the item to adopt a resolution approving the revised Environmental and Transportation Advisory Commission bylaws, or ETAC. Nabil, thank you for coming up. So help me understand, I'm not familiar with why this is presented the way it is. So Article 6 of the bylaws before us have ETAC, quote, acting in an advisory capacity to the City Council instead of the Executive Director of Public Works, which is yourself.

Phil BacerraItem 7

Is there a reason why we're having it advise the Council versus Public Works?

Correct. when ETAC was established, it was an advisory to the council, to you guys, not to the executive director of public works. Somewhere two years ago, the bylaws were revised to advise not only the council, but also to the executive director of public works. Now, the charter and also the ORDINANCE WERE REVISED RECENTLY TO LIMIT IT TO ADVISEMENT TO THE CITY COUNCIL, WHICH IS YOU, AND WE ARE REVISING THE BYLAWS TO REFLECT THAT.

Phil BacerraItem 7

THIS IS MORE OF A CONSISTENCY EXERCISE, A CLEANUP?

YES. YES, IT IS.

Phil BacerraItem 7

OKAY. WHICH I APPRECIATE. THANK YOU. IT'S IMPORTANT THAT WE HAVE CONSISTENCY ACROSS OUR COMMISSIONS. IN FACT, I KNOW THAT WAS ONE OF THE CHANGES IS TO MAKE SURE THAT THE E-TAC IS THE COMMISSION, NOT THE COMMITTEE. THAT'S CORRECT. The other question I have was just simply, in what ways do you see or envision ETAC advising the city council? And I ask that only because in my time on the council, I don't remember, I don't recall any time where I've seen ETAC come to the council to advise us on something. I know last meeting we had an issue with the urban forest, right? Right up their alley when we talked street trees.

Phil BacerraItem 7

But I don't remember seeing something that said, we, ETAC, have voted to advise the council to plant more jacaranda trees or don't plant any jacaranda trees. I don't remember seeing that, and that seems like a wonderful opportunity for ETAC to advise the council. So can you give me an idea of when and how the ETAC does advise the council? MR.

Sure. Commissioners can come to you individually and advise of what ETAC is about to undertake. So they could be one-on-one, and they can actually come here and do the advisement to the entire council, or they can, you know, do it in an email or so communication-wise. That's how the advisement we see happening to you, to the council. We do presentations to ETAC on many items, not only environmental but water and transportation. We're doing one for the bus shelter coming up soon and many other trees.

So your example for the trees one, we did have a presentation and we had a dialogue with ETAC members on the urban forest. AND SO AGAIN IT IS UP TO THE INDIVIDUAL COMMISSIONER TO COME TO YOU FOR ADVISEMENT.

Phil BacerraItem 7

WELL I'LL GO AHEAD AND MOVE THE ITEM BUT WHAT I BEFORE I RELINQUISH I WANT TO ADD THAT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE GOING FORWARD MORE FORMAL RECOMMENDATIONS FROM E-TAC TO THE COUNCIL AND YES I HAVE GREAT DIALOGUE WITH MY OWN E-TAC COMMISSIONER BUT I THINK IT WOULD JUST BE MORE PRODUCTIVE FOR THEM. I mean, for them to sit there and receive presentations and then that's it. It's kind of a waste of time for both staff and the commissioners. But I think to present to them, garner some sort of support or input from them to then include in your presentation to the council.

Phil BacerraItem 7

I look at it the same way as when something of a land use nature comes to the city council, we see that the planning commission has made a certain recommendation, whether they support it or oppose it. it's a part of planning and building staff report to the council. So going forward, I'd like to see more of that. I mean, I'm absolutely going to continue to have dialogue with my ETAC commissioner, but I would like to see staff do more to incorporate formal recommendations from ETAC. So with that, I'll go ahead and move the motion.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 7

I'll second.

Thank you for that. Any other additional questions or comments on that item? If not, Madam Clerk, if you'll please set our devices up so we can vote.

Yes, if members of the council can please cast your vote.

Okay, motion carries 7-0 with council members Becerra, Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Fan, Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa, and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes.

Great, thank you for that. Moving along to item number 21, I believe that was also yours, council member Becerra.

Phil BacerraItem 7

It was. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. It's a shame that we had two folks from the school district here earlier this evening. They grabbed the recognition and ran. I really appreciate, though, that the superintendent and board member Alvarez were here. I just wish they were still here. you know for me I feel like especially as we come out of the pandemic it is so important that we enable our neighborhood associations to start to reconvene I know that in my neck of the woods down on the south side of town there are a lot of the neighborhood associations that simply stopped

Phil BacerraItem 7

meeting you know they did not embrace zoom and that's fine there's nothing wrong with that but here we are at this point where you know I just went to the Thornton Park Neighborhood Association meeting last week and we were over at McFadden Junior Higher. Now at MIT, which I love saying that, I live near MIT. And the fact is, is that we were able to use the facility. It worked out well. The principal for the school gave a great presentation to the community and it was wonderful. We got to learn about what was happening over at McFadden Intermediate. And then at the same time,

Phil BacerraItem 7

we also had representatives from Public Works, from our PD, and it was just what you would imagine. It was a great neighborhood association meeting. And now to think that, especially for myself and my wife, who when we pay our property taxes, we see on there bonds for school district facilities. Now in no way, shape, or form do I want to intrude upon our facilities when classes are in session, but I don't think it's a hard, terrible ask to continue the partnership that the city and the school district have been a part of for decades,

Phil BacerraItem 7

and to have that collaboration, which benefits both entities, because a strong community benefits the schools and vice versa. So it really is frustrating, because I've been hearing, as the staff report that was submitted to us indicated, At one point, we hear that they're charging, or at least they're saying they're charging, then they reverse the charges, and then the charges are different. And it's just a ridiculous situation. And I really do wish our SAUSD superintendent and board members were here to explain what's going on.

Phil BacerraItem 7

And I know that the staff report had asked for our committee, our school district committee, to engage with them. but I just want to voice for the record that it's really unfortunate that we're even having to discuss this in open session. I know that our city manager and the SAUSC superintendent have a great working relationship, and so for us to be at this point where we're having to talk about this in a public session, and I've been fielding many calls and emails expressing concern about that. In fact, we had folks this evening also voice their concerns about what's been going on.

Phil BacerraItem 7

So my hope is that this gets resolved more sooner than later. I hope that our committee is able to work with SAUSD to resolve this, but I think this is just an unfortunate situation given how many years we've been able to collaborate, and now for this to be in front of us is, again, frankly, very disappointing.

Thank you for those comments. Council Member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 7

Thank you, Mayor Sarmento. I think it's very normal for people to get a recognition and leave. I mean, look, there's probably, what, five people here in the chamber. But I do want to say that we have our upcoming school collaboration meeting next week on the 9th. And so I think it would have been nice for us to have discussed this with the trustees then. But it is a receiving file for us. And ultimately, this is not the council's decision. It is going to be the school board's decision. And so I guess I would encourage people that came here and expressed a concern

Jessie LopezItem 7

to also go to the school board and let them know your opinion and your thought on this so that they can hear directly from you and I'll make sure that this is something that we're able to discuss next week with the trustees thank you

thank you for those comments mayor pro temp and Yonasa thank you mayor

David PenalozaItem 7

Samantha and I just had a couple questions for staff so it might be I'm I'm guessing Min or Steven, if you want. With the item, I know that in 2019, my first year as a council member, we had multiple meetings that I recall over on the west end because of the prostitution problem that they were having on Harbor. And we had it at places like Hazra Elementary, which is in Garden Grove Unified. So when we have neighborhood association meetings at Garden Grove Unified School Districts, or Garden Grove Unified Schools,

David PenalozaItem 7

do they bill us? Do they do it at, who could answer that for me?

I don't know specifically in that instant what happened, but I can tell you that generally we do work with the school district, and to have a public meeting and using the facilities generally complimentary, because it is from neighborhoods associations in the past the Santa Anna School District their facility we have been able to use as part of servicing the community it's just been recently that this this change that will occur and it doesn't occur consistently we get different messages from from different folks that we talked to the school district uses a booking software

and that software is the one that some people are requiring our staff to go through and that creates the charges for the facility.

David PenalozaItem 7

Okay. So I guess my – go ahead, Stephen.

Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem, Daisy is recalling that Garden Grove Unified did not charge us for that event.

David PenalozaItem 7

Well, it was multiple meetings. It wasn't just one. So they didn't build us to use their facilities. Correct. Okay. And see, I would find it would be rather helpful for staff reports and receiving files that are related to this, not just have Santa Ana Unified in the title, but all the different entities that we use and have used in the past to hold neighborhood association meetings, whether it's Garden Grove Unified or Santa Ana Unified, Orange Unified, or wherever. Wherever I mean it's you know definitely Something that we could

David PenalozaItem 7

Do better at as a whole is just really including all of the key players not just one entity that encompasses only about 70% of the city so with that said I you know it's It's time to get creative because I know that this is a battle that that the city manager and the school district has had for about a year and a half with just you know charges are you know wiped out then they come back on with late fees and and whatnot I've heard all kinds of different scenarios but you know we we

David PenalozaItem 7

are serving the same people and they should be able to access these facilities because they also pay into the funds I know I've seen you know I'm the last one of my mom's kids that went through Santa Unified and that was 2006 and for 14 years I mean she's been paying those property taxes and they keep going up and up every year to Santa Unified school district and it just keeps on adding and adding so you know the the you know whoever's listening out there I hope that they take that into consideration and yes this is the school board's decision ultimately and the school board's direction to see how

David PenalozaItem 7

they want to you know work with the city to to have these facilities available for them but you know it's also a good conversation to keep in mind as policymakers here at the city council because of the joint use different joint use agreements that we have with the school district whether it's greenville elementary and grissett park whether it's goldina's high school and centennial park I mean there are a lot of joint use facilities that for the most part of the day and and weekend are off limits to our city residents because of this joint use agreement and they're being used solely by the school district so you

David PenalozaItem 7

know if the school district wants to get into a position where they're nickel and diamond in our residents in our neighborhood associations and we got to get creative staff and also look for alternatives I mean let's not just rely on whichever school district, Santa Ana or Garden Grove. I mean, there are numerous churches, neighborhood churches, there are charter schools, there are private schools within the city that I'm sure would be more than happy to accommodate our neighborhood association meetings in the city. I don't want us to just solely rely on one group just moving forward. And let's make sure to just include everybody,

David PenalozaItem 7

not just one entity in the future when it comes to reports like this. Thank you. And I'm supportive of any creative effort that we could come up with, the school ad hoc or committee. Support of that as well, but just making sure that we keep the interest of all our residents in mind. Thank you.

Great. Thank you for those comments. Councilmember Van.

Thai Viet PhanItem 7

Just really quickly, you know, I didn't go to the Santa Ana Unified School District Schools. I went to Garden Grove Unified and so bringing in these different school districts has been something I've Kind of banged the drum on for a while. I just wanted to reiterate to our residents Please talk to the school district You have just as much right to be there and to demand these services As you have the right to be here and so just for the record their next regular Board meeting is November 9th next Tuesday. Thank you

Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Mendoza.

Yes. I also do not agree with assessing any fees for our neighborhood associations to hold their community meetings. It's a public facilities, and thus, as my colleague, Alpeña Loza, mentioned, we all pay our taxes. So the neighborhood should be allowed to continue to use the facilities. and it's probably an issue that we can can brainstorm further brainstorm on the ad hoc collaboration meeting between the district and the city because I think

it's just plain discrimination what are they going to do on are they going to forbid their PTA associations from meeting or are they going to charge their PTA Association minutes? How about the student council meetings? You know, it's a fee that is, and it's not a fair source because these associations have a benefit to our society, and we cannot be putting this kind of burden on our residents.

So I will see about attending, and I encourage all the public to go to the school district meeting November 9th and voice your opinion. Perhaps if we get enough people out there, there will be pressure to think about this a little further and do away with the issue in its entirety. Thank you.

Great. Thank you for those comments. Thank you. This is a receive and file from what I understand, so I think you've received a lot of direction. I think all the comments were relevant and fair. The only thing I would say is, you know, I haven't been around long enough to remember some of the deals that were made like 20 years ago when the school district went through a really, you know, explosion of students and their population was so you know so overwhelmed the system that the city had to you know give land and actually we didn't have to give land but we exercised our ability to go ahead and grant land to the school

district back then I don't think anybody you know realized that we were gonna expand that much and now we're contracting I think you know the the district's student population has you know come down by about maybe five to 10,000 students. But as you know, there is land now available that the school district has, you know, I wish we would have been more forward thinking back then to see how some of that could have reverted back to us. And, you know, I am a big fan of joint use agreements because, you know, they do seem to work. And I know that now the committee, the standing committee that is going

to be meeting with the school district members and the trustees there is going to have a a full agenda because there are a lot of things that I think will be discussed. I think the good news about everything is that we have, I think, hopefully a strong enough relationship with everybody there that we can talk reasonably. It's funny, when we're talking about fees that others are exercising or maybe are imposing, I get the same comments about fees that we're increasing throughout the city. So I just want us to look inward as we're increasing that.

I would actually suggest to staff if maybe they could bring back a discussion, like a study session item on fees that we've increased. Because I know somebody was telling me that it is a parent group that provides services for parents of autistic children. And they would rent that space behind the zoo on an annual basis. and they were renting it for like $300, which was a modest amount, it skyrocketed to somewhere in the neighborhood of three or four times that amount. And I've also seen that happen with some of our reservations of different city facilities.

So I'd like to see what we're doing with respect to fees and making them accessible because those are also things that parents and students and residents have a right to know if these increases and what the delta is, where we were, and where we are now, and why. But I think it's a good thing for us to look at others, but also to look inward at what we're imposing and what we're doing with our own fee structure. So I think that's all good, because what it does is that it makes us kind of assess and see if there have been any increases. If there

haven't been, that's great. Maybe there's a way we can reduce fees. But the idea is to practice what we preach. Let's make sure that we don't have others impose things on residents, but let's not do the same and impose these same assessments on residents or fee increases on residents when we shouldn't. But I'm just basically requesting that it comes back to us at some point as a fee analysis on our end, if that makes sense. Yes, sir. Thank you very much. So that ends our consent calendar items. I think the next item that we have before us is our first business calendar item,

which is item number 24. And I'll go ahead and turn it over to staff.

I'll make a motion to approve. Great. Is there a second? Second. Great. We have a motion to second. Any other questions or comments? Seeing none, colleagues, please vote.

Our device froze. Our device is.

Voice vote?

We'll do that. Mayor Patan motioned and I'm sorry, who seconded? Thank you. Council Member Becerra?

Phil BacerraItem 24

Yes.

Council Member Hernandez? Council Member Lopez? Yes. Council Member Mendoza? Yes. Council Member Fan? Yes. Mayor Potempo-Nalosa? Yes. And Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes. Motion carries unanimously. Moving along to Item Number 25, Options to Streamline City Council Meetings. Is there any presentation, I think, you know, any information that folks need to discuss? Any questions Council Members have?

We do have a presentation if the council so chooses. It is a little lengthy, but the information is also essentially what's on the staff report.

Does anybody need a presentation? I think we've been through this a little bit, but I'll go ahead and defer if there's interest in having a full-blown presentation. I don't see any nodding heads, and I'm not nodding mine. I've gone through the report as well. Do you want to summarize if there's anything that you want to mention, Madam Clerk?

I think the gist of it is just the research that between the city manager staff and the clerk of the council staff that we did in collaboration to find out what other cities are doing because many other jurisdictions are dealing with the same lengthy meetings. And so I did do some research and found that it's really those, the sensitive items that bring out the public where we get 12 hour long meetings and for like example the budget back in May we had three meetings and one was 12 hours and the others were eight hours

long and it was essentially public comment. So you know I think it's probably a lot of it is just how can we streamline. We do have some parameters already listed in our resolution However, we don't enforce it all the time. Like for example, council member comments will post up the timing, but that doesn't really do justice to sometimes when you really do have to dive into a conversation or a discussion on particular items. Some are more sensitive than others or contentious. So there's just a lot of different things that we found that other jurisdictions are doing.

City of Long Beach, I think, was one of the main ones we used because they recently adopted something and they actually started way in advance in 2018 or I think it was 2018 or 2017 that they had implemented like having a council meeting end by 11 p.m. and they found that that really wasn't helpful because the full council wasn't getting enough of of a discussion to make decisions on items. So, and then other meetings where they extended it or they added another meeting, that wasn't successful because it was just as long. So I really think that maybe being more strategic

about having those contentious items on a separate meeting day, like, you know, hopefully the redistricting item that we're going to have in two special meetings, the Monday before the Tuesday council meetings, maybe could be a success if we're having any contentious item on the Tuesday meeting. So, you know, there's a give and take, and there's different things that we can try before we come back to Council with the resolution. Council would like to provide some recommendations to staff. If there's additional research, maybe jurisdictions that you know of that you would like us to look into, happy to do that.

Great. Thank you for those comments. Those are helpful. I have some comments, but I wanted to see if any other members of the Council had some. Council Member Hernandez and then Becerra.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 25

Yeah, thank you for your comments, Madam City Clerk. I do think that that's a good idea. If we do have more contentious items to keep them isolated and focused, I do like the idea as well of special meetings. So I just wanted to echo that that's something that I think would be helpful. I also don't think it's a good idea to limit the dialogue that we're having as policymakers. It's important that we're able to be able to respectfully disagree or agree amongst each other. But nonetheless, I do like the idea of a special meeting and isolating those items to their own respective agendas.

Great. Thank you for that. Council Member Becerra.

Phil BacerraItem 25

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I like the idea of holding the special meetings for some of these items that are of quite a bit of interest for folks. I like what I saw in the staff report in regards to what Long Beach does by reducing comments for items if we are going to hold those items during a regular meeting and and I and I say that very hesitantly because I don't like the idea of limiting public comment but being in this capacity we also have to balance the ability to get business done and I don't think that this council has in any way shape or form been stifling when it comes to enabling comment in

Phil BacerraItem 25

In fact, I'm very proud of this council. Throughout the pandemic, we probably were one of the most transparent councils in the entire county, if not Southern California. I'd be so bold to say that because I think we were offering various ways to communicate to the council. Some of our neighboring cities wouldn't even let you call in anything over Zoom. They weren't. I mean, it was just a complete opposite from what we offered. So I think that just for the sake of the ability to conduct business, I think that might be something that we consider as a recommended policy.

Phil BacerraItem 25

When I brought this item before the council, when I suggested it, I was looking at the curfew because while Madam State Clerk, you may have seen it in one or two jurisdictions where it didn't work, There are a lot of other jurisdictions where it does and I think all of us on this dais are committed to Staying till 430 in the morning if need be to get something done, but I don't think that's fair to our residents I don't think that's fair to folks that are interested that you know Have to get up in the morning whether it's to get the kids to school or to get to work and then you know

Phil BacerraItem 25

What off of a couple of hours sleep because you're very interested to see how? The deliberations on this dies conclude. So I still would like to see us at least consider a curfew and it's not a hard curfew that I would like to see because what I've seen in practice in other cities is that you put the limit at either 11 or midnight and then from there a super majority of the council can easily vote to say no we're going to dig our heels in and get through this item tonight or in that case late the next morning but I think it's just something that kind of reminds us of the fact that we do

Phil BacerraItem 25

have folks that you know are committed to what we do and they want to stick around and they want to watch it all the way through to the end but at the same time we also need to respect the fact that they need to you know get to bed at some point so those are my comments at this point thank you

Mr. Mayor. Great. Thank you, Council Member Lopez, and then Mayor Proton, and then Mendoza.

Jessie LopezItem 25

Mayor Salmiento. So some of the options that I did see listed on here, I'm a fan of, like, making sure that the council is doing their due diligence prior to coming to meetings and maybe not pulling so many items, which makes the meetings go longer. Also, I'm not a fan of decreasing the public comment time I think three minutes is hard enough for people to come up here and really share all the things that they want to share with us and so I'm not a fan of that I also do my best you know to keep my public comments through three minutes I don't think I have to go around and

Jessie LopezItem 25

round in circles we really need to learn how to get to the point that we're trying to make quickly to be respectful of everybody's time I'm a fan of the special meetings especially for the big budget items and like police oversight things that we know are gonna draw out a crowd I'm not a fan of the curfew per se and I'm not a fan of starting the council meetings earlier you know I don't come from generational wealth and so I am working class and most jobs are nine to five and most people that live in the city have a nine to five job and And so I think starting the meetings earlier would make that harder for people to participate.

Jessie LopezItem 25

And so I'm not a fan of that. I'm a fan of the Robert Rules training. And I'm also a fan, as I've said many times, of making sure that our agendas don't have 40 items on them because I think that also can lead to a lengthy council session. And so I think today's agenda was a nice amount of agenda items that didn't necessarily feel like it was overwhelming. Those are my comments. Thank you.

I think that comment about self-policing our time was directed at me, right?

Mayor Pro Tempeñanosa and then Mendoza.

David PenalozaItem 25

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. though. I definitely, right off the bat, agree with Councilmember Lopez. I don't think we should be decreasing anyone's public comment. I mean, three minutes is, might seem like a lot, but it really is not. And that is like the one little thing that our residents get to presently voice their concerns on any subject. So I don't agree with that. I like the idea of a special meeting but what concerns me about that is that now we'll have residents that are used to having meetings on Tuesdays first and third

David PenalozaItem 25

Tuesday of every month now there there's gonna be a random special meeting somewhere in the in that time frame I mean it just I feel like it would throw residents off maybe because of how large of a city we are residents are use like clockwork of when our meetings are it might cause a little confusion I like the idea but I just want to be cautious of how you know that that would be with our you know how effective that would be with our residents and the in regards to

David PenalozaItem 25

public comments now currently we have on average of anywhere from 10 to 70 any public speakers during public comment. But, and I know Mayor Sarmiento was still here and maybe Council Member Becerra, but the reason why we're taking just public comments all up at the front was I believe due to, and again, if I'm wrong, please tell me, was due to COVID because from when I first started, I remember we would take comments on business items and any item on the agenda, it would, you know,

David PenalozaItem 25

I know at the time it was the business items were 55A and 55B, and they would say, you know, this 55A, if there are any members of the public want to comment, and we'd have the cards. so it would break up the public speakers on each item throughout the agenda versus having a five, six hour block of public speakers on the entire agenda. That there's a lot of people that are watching or maybe in the audience that don't really want to care about one or two or three items. I mean, they only want that one item, but they still have to wait for all these public speakers to speak so we can start conducting business.

David PenalozaItem 25

And, you know, I recall that the public comments when they were done, they used to be at the end of the meeting, which was also problematic because we were ending at 10, 11 p.m. and you'd have two or three speakers left. But the speakers left were just on general items, not on the agenda. And now public comment is just on everything on the agenda. So I don't know, I think there's ways there where we could break up those comments into the respective item and category that could help reduce the time. Right now, I'm listening to myself and I'm talking around in circles, so my apologies, Council Member Lopez.

David PenalozaItem 25

And that was it. I do like to survey our constituents to see what they think because at the end of the day, we are here for them. So you know getting their input on because they don't want to sit here for 10 hours either. I mean I Poor mr. Helvick over there was was asleep that last meeting and it was like 3 in the morning And I was like the Campbell you're still here, but he was here, you know more power to him But I mean I don't think they want to it's a I'm sure they want to get out of here as as you know faster than we do So those are just my thoughts

David PenalozaItem 25

The others I agree with, number one, and Robert Rules of Orders is always helpful.

And that's it, Mayor. Thank you for those comments. Council Member Mendoza?

Yes, I agree with my colleagues, and we definitely need to be considerate of the time that the public spends here. And we're not effective at 2 or 3 in the morning, so a hard stop at 11 would be much appreciated and that way we can let everyone rest, especially your staff, not to mention the overtime that we're paying for the police officers who are here and all the other expenses of going into 10 and 12 hour meetings. One suggestion that hasn't been mentioned, which I encourage my colleagues to use, is

once you've reviewed your agenda and you have questions on a certain item, talk to staff or when you have the agenda review, have your answers, your questions ready and answered. And if there's still a lot of similar questions from the rest of us, maybe we need to look into that item a little bit more. So when it comes, we could postpone it, put it on a different agenda so that we can get the answers. And so if you alert staff to the issues that you may have and they can get that for you, THEN WE WON'T HAVE THAT NEED TO PULL THE ITEM AND WE WON'T NEED TO HAVE ALL THOSE COMMENTS HERE FROM

FROM UP IN THE DIOSISES AND THAT WAS THE MY COMMENTS. THANK YOU COUNCIL MEMBER FAN AND THEN

Thai Viet PhanItem 25

HERNANDEZ. THANK YOU. SO A LOT OF THE COMMENTS WERE ALREADY MADE. THE ONE THING I HAVE ACTUALLY AFTER THE BUDGET MEETINGS WAS I CAME TO CHRISTINA AND SAYS WE'RE NEVER PUTTING ANOTHER BUDGET ITEM at the same time as all these other agenda items again. We're going to have individual budget meetings because they are very long and they are filled with policy and all these other issues. So I would like to see that for these particular items that are of interest to the community. A couple comments. First, I think the comments for non-agenda items can go at the end of the meeting because it's not agendized

Thai Viet PhanItem 25

and if it's really important, they can email or they will wait until the end.

Thai Viet PhanItem 25

The other is for the public comments, I was one of those people who would wait six hours to make a comment. Actually, about our motto, I think I waited like six or seven hours. I actually like having all the public comments at the beginning only because there are a lot of our residents who want to make the comment and then go home and watch the meeting at home with their families. and so they don't have to wait until 9 or 10 p.m. in order to make those comments. So the other is regarding the special meetings. I agree with you with saying, okay, now we're going to have a special meeting

Thai Viet PhanItem 25

and residents didn't know about it if they didn't watch it, is maybe we can designate a day of the month or the week that says, okay, if we're going to have a special meeting after that regular meeting, it's always going to be on a Thursday, for example. So like if today we want to hold a special meeting, we'll do it on Thursday. And if it's consistent, you know, that might make it easier for everybody. We can calendar, we can expect it, et cetera.

Thai Viet PhanItem 25

Oh, and the final thing is when we have, when we decide to, when we have these long meetings with lots of public comments, maybe it's six hours, I don't like to see items kind of get that I guess push to the next meeting, because I know we have a lot of items, right? But I think what we have to do is just adjourn the meeting and have a special meeting, because otherwise you just kind of continue to accumulate items. Finally, I think that we should do the business calendar, public hearings, and then consent calendar at the end,

Thai Viet PhanItem 25

because often consent calendar isn't always the most kind of theatrical of the items or items that get the most public comment and so maybe putting those more detailed items at the beginning would kind of help us dispense with that business. What was the order? Business calendar then public hearings then consent calendar or any you know public hearings might go before business calendar whatever but typically I find that our business calendar items is where we have the more robust discussions. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 25

Hernandez. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I agree with a lot of what Councilmember Fan mentioned. I think it would be helpful for us to make sure that we designate a specific day for special meetings. I think if that day is Thursday, I think that that should be uniform when it does pertain to special meetings. I think that would help us, you know, across the board, you know, have transparency for residents. In addition to that, I think if we, I think it's important that we keep public comments in the beginning. Council Member Fan is right. There's a lot of folks that

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 25

do just want to publicly comment, go home and watch the meeting with their family. So I think that's helpful. And lastly, I do think it would be nice to have a cap on meetings. Let's say if it's 11 p.m. and a majority votes that they'd like to continue the meeting, then I think that's fair because I am a parent. I do have a daughter and I'd like to also be home with her as much as anyone else here. So I do think it's beneficial for staff to get that rest and to not be overworked. And in conclusion, if we do have items that don't get addressed in a meeting, I think it would be

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 25

beneficial rather than having them go on to another agenda having a special meeting great

thank you i think everybody's had an opportunity to comment and excellent comments by everybody i think they're all um they're all relevant and one thing is make sure you keep the timer on all of us i think even if we go beyond it it's still a reminder that you know it's ticking and you know we try to we're getting better right i mean so that disparity between the the three minute limit Because I always thought if we're imposing that three minute limit on the residents it should be self-imposed on us Sometimes we just simply can't but you know we should try to do it

One of the things I wanted to mention is that you know there is already a resolution You know on the books for this so this you know we've tried to tackle this problem before it's not anything new many council Many councils and other deliberative bodies struggle with this work. This is kind of a double-edged sword There are some communities that have zero participation from their residents and that really is sad. So we're blessed and cursed in a way because we have so much public engagement that we are trying to manage it. So I think what I've

heard from all of us that we can condense here is that we want to continue that. That's something that we should encourage and something that we do want. I know that as chair of the meeting, I have certain discretionary authority to go ahead and move things around, and I haven't done that because I've wanted to be respectful of the council's will, and especially because we have such a relatively new council. But I think now you guys are all pretty seasoned, and we're going to start accelerating things a little bit more and going a little faster. And during my agenda review with the city manager, I'll see what we can do to isolate

some of those sensitive items. And what I would suggest is I know the Planning Commission meets on a Monday in between the council meetings What we should do is I think somebody said Tuesdays are kind of programmed in people's minds Hey Tuesday is a council meeting So maybe we use that Tuesday in between our first and third Tuesday that we meet to set up our council meetings And that way we don't interrupt the Planning Commission's meetings I like the You can't do Tuesdays?

Thai Viet PhanItem 25

I literally cannot do Tuesdays I recommend it Thursdays because that is the day that I am always free

Thai Viet PhanItem 25

Okay. As you know, I am a city attorney myself and I have work at that time because I don't work normal hours. Thanks.

You do. And that's something for us to, if it's not that, then, you know, maybe we find some day of the week that becomes, you know, because I think having two meetings during one week is a little heavy. But if we can, maybe put it on to the next meeting. So maybe it's the Thursday in between the Tuesday meetings, maybe something like that. I do like the idea of maybe putting the business calendar items ahead of the consent calendar items because I see that when we pull a consent calendar item, we could just get jammed up. And that's what happens sometimes. And then we just, you know, we're in paralysis for a little while,

and then we don't get to the business calendar items until later and when it's really late. I'm not crazy about a curfew, but I do want to see how we can try some of these other methods out where we can hopefully get ourselves out of here by midnight. I mean, you know, nobody wants to go into the next day. So to the extent that we can sort of, you know, be on the honor system ourselves, that would be something that would be really important to do. And, you know, I think on the public comments, I like the idea of having public comments at the front. They used to be in the back, you know, at the back end of the meeting,

and to have comments by the public who we are serving at the back end is not a good idea. I think, you know, if there are maybe non-agenda items that people want to comment on, maybe that's fair. And I do think, though, that the chair needs to reserve the discretion to be able to limit the time when we have, you know, over 100 speakers because what we have to think about is we have speakers that are speaking to us in Spanish. So those three minutes are six minutes. And so if you extrapolate that, nobody wants to discourage it, But I think there are ways that when we have that many speakers and it's not often

I mean, you know, we're let's not exaggerate that we're here till 430 in the morning every meeting I mean that was a very that's the first time I've ever experienced that But we're usually out of here between 11 and 12, which is reasonable given what other councils do So let's try to exercise some of those things Let's see how those work and then we can come back and revisit what we need to do and you know modify our existing resolution But I think all good suggestions from the council and so with that let's go ahead and move along to the next item which is item number 26 and

Thai Viet PhanItem 26

yeah do we need any any discussion on that it's gonna move to a second so

there's a motion in a second see no other comments or questions all these

please vote so sorry for some reason it's not allowing us to register your to to allow you to cast your votes. Council Member Becerra? Yes. Council Member Hernandez? Yes. Council Member Lopez? Yes. Council Member Mendoza? Yes. Council Member Fan? Yes. Mayor Prozant-Vanielosa? Yes. And Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes. Great, thank you. That brings us to the council requested items and we'll start because I believe we took care of item number 27, the public hearing on redistricting. We'll go to item number 28, which is Council Member Becerra's item. So go ahead, Council Member.

Phil BacerraItem 28

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This item is meant to address two things. One, climate change and also helping our residents. Assembly Bill 2766 was adopted back in 1990 and it was meant to provide a revenue stream for programs to reduce air pollution coming from motor vehicles. The revenue that comes from AB 2766 goes to the South Coast Air Quality District, and then it's distributed to the cities and counties within the South Coast Air Basin, which we are located.

Phil BacerraItem 28

One type of expenditure, though, that is an eligible use of those AB 2766 funds is subsidizing transit use. And in speaking with city staff, as of June 30th of 2021, the city had accumulated a balance of those AB 2766 funds of $1.7 million. Now, some of those funds have been appropriated for this current fiscal year of 21-22. But what I would like to have staff review of those AB 2766 funds of the ones that have

Phil BacerraItem 28

not been spent to implement a program similar to what we see in the city of Riverside in their Go Transit program, and that would be to provide a discount of up to 30% on regular monthly bus passes for all Santa Ana residents in order to offer an incentive to use public transportation. You know, while Santa Ana does have the highest amount of transit use in Orange County, which we should be very happy about, unfortunately that's maybe 10 percent on a good day or a good year, and it's obviously dropped during the pandemic. So, you know, not everybody

Phil BacerraItem 28

uses transit as a necessity. Some use it as a choice, and I think that anything we can do to further that, it would be very important. For quite some time, I'm not proposing this just to say, hey, I hope somebody else does it. I myself, by choice, use transit. And I wish I could continue to use transit more often. Unfortunately, my job does not allow me to. Now, when I do have work that takes me up to LA, or if I, someday when we get back to meeting in person for SCAG, you'll find me on the train and I'll be you know taking buses in and around LA

Phil BacerraItem 28

to get to where I need to get to. So as we're trying to revive our city this would be a great way to help those here in Santa Ana who are struggling to pay for transportation and encourage more people whether you know especially those that do have the choice whether or not they take transit you know to take immediate action here to address climate change by reducing the burning of fossil fuels. That happens when you see more and more cars on the road and more driving taking place. And that also reduces atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, which is a major cause for climate change.

Phil BacerraItem 28

So I think that this proposal is something that takes action. This is not to talk about what we could do. Here's an item that I hope my colleagues will indulge me on, because I think this is something that addresses some of the things that we've all talked about, which is addressing climate change but is real assistance in real time to help folks with transportation that

benefits the entire city thank you great thank you for that any other questions comments

Thai Viet PhanItem 28

councilmember fan thank you thank you mayor mayor and also councilmember serra for bringing this item i'm definitely supportive of it i was a huge transit user when i was going to law school i I would take the train pretty much every day to class, take the train to downtown for work, and the school, USC, they subsidized my pass. So I definitely think it's something we can do, and I am definitely excited that it addresses, you know, the pollution in our city, even if by a little bit. So with that, I hope we bring back that program if necessary. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Mayor Pro Tem.

David PenalozaItem 28

Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to voice my support for the item. And thank you, Council Member Becerra, for bringing this forward.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 28

Thank you. I also just wanted to say I think that this is an item that I'm happy to support as well.

Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 28

I'm also happy to support this. I do have a couple questions for staff. And I know sometimes this is in the area to go back and forth with you all. But I did want to pose these and hopefully get a response via email. And just wanted to know why we've had the accumulation of 1.7 million with the AQMD dollars. What have we been using it for in the past? And what it funds through the city? What programs are using it through the city? And also I wanted to know if we could use AB 277 money for,

Jessie LopezItem 28

if any Santa Ana resident was interested in switching out one of their gas stow tops to electric or having maybe possibly like an electric vehicle incentive, if those monies could be used for that as well. Thank you.

Great. Thank you for those comments. Any other comments?

I wanted to say I support that item as well because this is one way to reduce the carbon footprint and to benefit our city and definitely going to maybe improve the much more use from the public to use public transportation and we can get them some of these incentives mentioned by Councilmember

Becerra. So I am in support. Great. Thank you for that. So go ahead and staff, I think you heard a consensus of the council to bring it back but here's here's a a little bit of a problem with that is i'm not even sure if we can use these monies for that i know in my conversation and as the council's representative to the octa you know i think council member maybe just simply call one of us when it involves you know whether it's you know the sand district sanitation issues or the water district i think when it involves anything having to do i think we could get a lot

done that way but you know again his staff was researching some of this because I forwarded along they were a little surprised and they're not sure if that could be used if these funds could be used for that normally these funds are used for bus stops bicycle routes scooter rentals car sharing services EV charging stations so there are a number of things that you can use it with in addition to this I think that you know looking at how I guess the incentive would be or the motivation is to get people out of their cars to use public transportation,

which isn't a bad goal. And I think at OCTA, if you know, there's already free passes for college students, which is a great thing. We know that, you know, they use them robustly. That's a permanent program. And you know that we started a program in September that have, there's free passes for bus use extended to anybody 18 and under in the city. So we have had, you know, really good success with that, and I know that's been, that's a program that's going to sunset in February. So hopefully to the extent that we have a lot of use here in St. Ann, and I think we have been using,

our students have been using that, it looks like that program may be extended in perpetuity. So those are things I think that we want to do. But, you know, let's figure out whether this is something that we can do. If we can, then that's something that we certainly want staff to go ahead and bring back to us and see if we do a reso work with OCTA on that, but find out whether something pans out on that. So I certainly appreciate that. Mr. Mayor, I just want to clarify your questioning

Phil BacerraItem 28

whether this is an allowable use, and I would ask staff to just look at the city of Riverside. They actively have the program now, so that would probably be a good metric for you to look at. THEY'VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR A WHILE, SO I THINK IT HAS PASSED THE SMELL TEST FOR BEING USED.

WELL, YOU KNOW, LIKE I SAID, THE CEO OF OCTA SAID HE'S NOT REALLY CERTAIN WHETHER HE CAN, BUT THIS WILL BE HELPFUL FOR HIM TO GET DIRECTION AND HAVE HIS STAFF RESEARCHING. GREAT. SO MOVING ALONG TO THE NEXT ITEM, THAT IS COUNCILMEMBER MENDOZA'S ITEM.

Yes, I would like to see about getting a neutral experts in the area of perhaps urban planning to give some information to the public as sort of as an FYI. I know that the issue has already passed it, so it doesn't have to do it at all, anything to do with voting. It's more to inform the public of the benefits, disadvantages, and unintended consequences of the rent control issue.

And so I'd like to just bring this item for everyone to gain the knowledge from neutral experts in the area, somebody who's unbiased, and just so that we can have that information and hopefully avoid some of those unintended consequences in the future.

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

All right, seeing none, let me go ahead and recess the City Council meeting and convene the Housing Authority meeting. So let me go ahead and call the Housing Authority meeting to order and ask the Clerk to conduct roll call.

Authority Member Becerra?

Here.

Authority Member Hernandez?

Here.

Authority Member Lopez? Here. Authority Member Mendoza? Here. Authority Member Fan? Here.

Vice Chair Peñalosa? Here. And Chair Sarmiento? Here. Great. Madam Clerk, do we have any members of the public wishing to address us?

No, we do not, and we did not receive any written communication. Great. So I'll entertain a motion for the consent calendar.

Motion to approve. I'll second. Great. We have a motion and a second. Colleagues, please vote.

It looks like our devices are working. I think your devices are working now, yes.

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

Excellent. Thank you. Moving along to item number three and I believe Council Member Fan you'd like to go ahead and state your conflict.

Thai Viet PhanItem 28

Yes, I have to recuse myself from this item because it's again Orange County United Way And they're a longtime client of my employer Rattan and Tucker And so with that because this is not a consent calendar item I will walk off the dais and someone wave me back. Thank you. We may be done before you leave it leave the dais

I'll go ahead and entertain a motion on item number three motions to approve I'll second. Great. We have a motion by Mayor Pro Tem, a second by Council Member Lopez.

Members, please cast your vote.

It passed with six voting yes and one abstention. Council, I'm sorry, Authority Member Becerra Hernandez, Lopez Mendoza, Vice Chair Peñalosa, and Chair Sarmiento-Volinas.

Excellent. Motion carries. Thank you. I'll go ahead and adjourn the Housing Authority meeting and reconvene the City Council meeting and bring it back for the closing comments from the Assistant City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor and members of the Council. We have a few public meetings to talk about. Earlier we spoke of some of the redistricting meetings. There are two upcoming ones. One is Wednesday, November 3rd at 6 p.m. at the Discovery Cube, located at 2500 North Main. And there will also be one on November 10th at 6 p.m. at St. Joseph's Catholic Church at 727 North Minter. For more information, you're welcome to call the City Clerk's Office at 714-647-6520. There will also be some protected bike lane community meetings.

San Andes residents are invited to an in-person meeting on November 8, 2021 at 5.30 at the Southwest Senior Center located at 2201 West McFadden. And that's the newly remodeled Southwest Senior Center.

The McFadden Bikeway and then the Spanish and Vietnamese translation will be available at both of those events. So for more information on that project call 714-647-5613. And then we're going to be doing another community meeting for the Standard and McFadden Community Park. To learn more or provide feedback for that, there'll be a meeting on Wednesday, November 10th at 5.30pm at the Roosevelt Walker Community Center located at 816 East Chestnut. And finally Veterans Day is among us. City Hall will be closed on Thursday, November 11th in observation of Veterans Day.

There'll be no street sweeping that day. However, there will be trash pickup as usual. And again, public safety and police operations are always in effect 24-7.

Great. Thank you for those comments. Let me bring it back to the council for their final comments, starting with Council Member Becerra.

Phil BacerraItem 28

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. So this Saturday, November 6th at 10 a.m., I'll be hosting office hours over at Thornton Park. I'll bring some coffee, you bring some questions. It'll be a fun time. Two high schools here in Santa Ana qualified for CIF playoffs in football. That is Sagerstrom High School and Santa Ana High School. Both teams are going to be hosting or playing host this Friday. And then the following Friday, we'll have Modern Day, which is number one in the nation from right here in Santa Ana. They'll be playing their first round game next Friday.

Phil BacerraItem 28

So I want to wish all three of those schools the best of luck in their first round games. Next Thursday on November 11th is Veterans Day. And I'm wearing a poppy tonight in honor of our veterans who all served in the United States Armed Forces. Back in 1921, the poppy was adopted by the American Legion Auxiliary as a symbol of remembrance for war veterans. And at the time, it was for those that served in World War I with the hope that that was going to be, as we all know, the war to end all wars. Unfortunately, that is not the case. And nonetheless, I still continue to proudly wear this poppy

Phil BacerraItem 28

in remembrance of those who fought to protect the liberties that we are blessed to have here in this country today. And as it was mentioned earlier this evening by Dale Helvick, I would ask my colleagues that we adjourn our meeting in honour of our nation's veterans as we won't be meeting prior to Veterans Day. Thank you very much.

Great. Thank you for those comments. Council Member Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 28

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm in agreement with you, Council Member Becerra. I think it's important that we adjourn in honour of Veterans Day. I'm going to go ahead and read Orange County Sanitation District. There's some talking points I wanted to share with our community members. Orange County SAN annual report is based off of transparency, resiliency, and reliability. Every fiscal year, OC SAN produces an annual report capturing the agency's accomplishments, statistics, and financial data for the previous fiscal year.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 28

The comprehensive report provides a snapshot into the work of OC SAN and how we serve the community, elected officials, businesses, and various stakeholders. The report is developed entirely in-house. To view the annual report, please visit OCSAN.com. OCSAN also created a year-end video summarizing the year. To view and share, I will go ahead and post it on my social media page at Hernandez for Santa Ana. And OCSAN, to save $22 million, OCSAN's Board of Directors recently approved staff to move forward with refinancing of $100 million of existing debt to obtain a lower rate.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 28

It is anticipated that this strategy will save OCSAN $22 million over the term of the issuance, which is 12 years total. These savings will be used to reduce the overall cost of debt program and will not be used to create any new programs. Moving forward, I wanted to touch on a subject that has been the center of controversy. And that was that my cousin was murdered by Anaheim PD.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 28

What the public often doesn't understand is that when tragedies like this happen, there is no support group, there is no safe place to go so that you can get the help needed. So I want to show you an inside look at what families go through when they lose their loved ones to police violence and how it incites racism, bigotry, and hate amongst white supremacists. I won't say this resident's name because I hope that he finds compassion in his heart to grow and change his evil ways.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 28

The email reads, Lopez. as the subject line. Dude, stop trying to glorify your cousin's criminal activity. He was a criminal from the get-go. Armed robbery, driving a stolen car, not following orders locked in the car for three effing hours. Really? Maybe you should have helped him. Your cousin deserved what he got. Should he have followed orders, Anaheim PD saved the taxpayers some money. High five to Anaheim PD and SAPD. Don't hate them for doing their job. He should have followed orders and he'd be alive today.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 28

One less mofo to worry about in the street. Stop playing the victim. You being an MMA fighter should know better. I guess your gang prevention did not work on him. Ha ha ha ha ha. He looks like a really good role model for today's youth. and he sends a picture of my deceased cousin to my council email. This is an Anglo-American man. I have received an abundance of hate mail, which I have forwarded to my colleagues on this council. I have been followed by police officers and recently, on Monday, Anaheim PD's chopper was flying over my house at 2 a.m.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 28

When police kill us, it incites the hate and racism amongst our communities. It's no secret why Orange County is having a nearly 30% increase in hate crimes after seeing what happened to George Floyd and after seeing how certain communities reacted to the prosecution of Derek Chauvin. If you are an officer and you feel uncomfortable with my demands for justice, then I ask you to look inward.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 28

Now, people are outraged that I'm challenging government and I'm demanding justice that is not blind, that does not recognize political boundaries, but justice that is fair across the board.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 28

and they're outraged that I'm using my position of power and placing that power in the hands of people because had I not been in a position of power people like Brandon Lopez people like our residents this was a constituent of mine at the end of the day would not have a voice why are you not outraged that police killed a man. And those officers are human beings too. They had to lie their head on a pillow. It wasn't one officer that fired a shot and killed a man. It was several officers that fired shots and killed a man. And

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 28

they didn't just, they weren't just shots that went to his body. This was an execution, a firing squad. So let's talk about what's happening in this country.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 28

Currently, we in the United States, police have killed 885 people in 2021.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 28

Now from 2013 to 2020, 98.3% of law enforcement have not been charged with a crime.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 28

It's clear what's happening and it's clear that government is changing. People like myself are not in positions of power to uphold white supremacy, but we are going to challenge it. And if you are intimidated to see an unapologetic brown man in myself that is bringing diversity to the table in Santa Ana, a rainbow coalition, if you care about people in this city, I love and I care about you. And even if you don't care about people that look like me, I still love and I care about you. So the reason why I'm not pledging for this flag is because this flag is protecting murderous police officers.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 28

This flag needs to do better for veterans. There's no reason why one of the largest demographics of people in this country that are struggling with houseless, being houseless, are our veterans. People that devoted their life to making this country better. So I am going to always be willing to challenge this flag and remind it that it stands on the foundations and the shoulders of people that have sacrificed their lives to make this country better. In the 1960s, there was the first black officer that was hired to work in St. Anna, Harlan Lambert. during his time here, eventually it led him to retire

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 28

and he became an author and he wrote a book called Badge of Color detailing the racism he experienced within SAPD. My voice and my fight for justice isn't just for people that are community members. It's also for police officers because I can assure you the officers that watched Derek Chauvin kill somebody wished that they had the protections to be able to stop him. So my fight for justice isn't anti-anything. It's because I believe in community. It's because I believe in the good law enforcement officers like Police Chief David Valentin, who came from our community and is fighting to make this department better.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 28

But we can't do this alone. So I will, on my worst of days, remind this country that it has to be better. And in closing, I want to thank the veterans that sacrificed their lives, that sacrificed being with their family so that I can have the privilege and the liberties to make sure people have a voice. And in closing, I want to wish every veteran that fought for this country peace, dignity, and love, and thank you for your service.

Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Lopez?

Jessie LopezItem 28

Thank you, Mayor Samantha. Well, in observance of Veterans Day, I'm more than happy to adjourn the meeting on behalf of veterans, especially our family members who served and are still active with the military. And I thank you all for your service to our country. I will be with the Cambodian family this Thursday at 4 p.m. Council Member Phan and I have been invited to be on a panel discussing youth issues, and particularly substance issues here in the city of Santa Ana so if you have time if you're free I welcome you to come and be part of the conversation I

Jessie LopezItem 28

will be with West Floral Park on 11 14 and so I hope to see you there and as I said earlier we will have our school standing meeting next week on the 9th at 12 p.m. and those are public meetings you can view them via YouTube and you can also call in and we'll have translation services available for the public as well and I know Councilmember Pham addressed your comment earlier Danny thank you for being here and staying this late and so yes we come to member Pham put in a request and so did I to have you know homelessness reports and updates and so

Jessie LopezItem 28

you will see that at the next council meeting so thank you for again coming

and letting us know. Have a good night, everyone. Thank you, Councilmember Lopez. Councilmember

Mendoza. Yes, I too would also like to close our meeting in honor of our brave men and women who are veterans. The military men and women who serve and protect the U.S. come from all walks of life. They are parents, children, grandparents, friends, neighbors, co-workers and they are an important part of our communities. Veterans Day originated as Armistice Day on November 11th 1919, the first anniversary of the

end of World War I. Congress passed a resolution in 1926 for an annual observance and November 11th became a national holiday in 1938. Unlike Memorial Day, Veterans Day pays tribute to all American veterans, living or dead. But it especially gives thanks to living veterans who serve their country honorably during war or peace time.

And we give honor today in closing our meeting to those veterans who ultimately paid the price of risking their life for us to be able to be here. and in a country that allows us the freedom of speech and to honor our flag because it's a representation of that blood that was left out there in the battlefields. So in conclusion I would like to especially thank our Santa Ana

PD, our firefighters who have veterans because they continue to serve us and they continue to risk their lives for us. But specifically I would like to honor four veterans who were very dear to me and who have lost their life in the past year. And they were instrumental in bringing this flag, bringing honor to our flag. And that is the reason that we stand here as council members, as representatives of our communities. We stand for that honor for those people who died for us, for our veterans.

Sergeant Antonio Mendez, U.S. Army. He delivered many people from the Nazis. He was there. He saw.

Mustang Navy officer, Edward Romero. U.S. Army Sergeant Salvador Lujan, a Delhi person. He was born in the Delhi area. He lived in Santa Ana all his life, and he died here in Santa Ana. U.S. Army Rafael Colleen, Vietnam War veteran, fought many, many months without any breaks, and so that is why we honor our flag, because we honour these veterans. Our meeting here tonight is adjourned in memory of those men and women

who risked their lives, who gave their lives, and who continue to give their lives for our freedom.

Thank you. For those comments, Council Member Fan?

Thai Viet PhanItem 28

Thank you, Mayor. First, I would also like to recognise Council Member Mendoza for being a veteran herself. My comments are going to be focused on veteran families. As some of you may know, my husband is a veteran. There are a total of four veterans in my family, two of whom are combat vets. The first four years of our marriage, we were long distance because he was serving this country. And I know firsthand from myself, my cousin, you know, families, wives, parents, who know what it's like to also make the sacrifice so that their spouse, their

Thai Viet PhanItem 28

children, their partners and friends can serve this country. I've also seen the toll, the physical, mental, and emotional toll it takes on veterans themselves as well as their families and friends during this service, so I want to recognize that. And finally I want to specifically recognize those veterans who are LGBTQ, particularly those who were dishonorably discharged under Don't Ask, Don't Tell and are finally having the opportunity to change their discharge status. I want to recognize those

Thai Viet PhanItem 28

veterans who are undocumented, many of whom never got the chance to obtain their citizenship, many of whom after serving this country were deported. Those are the veterans that I think about. And of course, our veterans who are unhoused, who many of whom did not get services when they came back from Vietnam or experienced mental health issues. So for me tonight, Veterans Day is really about recognizing those veterans who have sacrificed those families and particularly those who are still not getting the help that they need. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Mayor Pro Tem.

David PenalozaItem 28

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I just wanted to make a couple of announcements that tomorrow, Wednesday, November 3rd, Wilshire Square Neighborhood Association is having their Neighborhood Association monthly general meeting. So I encourage all Wilshire Square residents to attend. Last time I was at one there was about a dozen residents so you know it's always nice to see residents turn out but the more the merrier and on Wednesday November 17th Heminger Park will also have their general monthly neighborhood association meeting at 6 30 p.m. and for more information on

David PenalozaItem 28

that you could visit Santa Anna hyphen Santa hyphen Anna org and click on the neighborhood initiatives button that's directly on the on the main page and just another quick announcement to everyone listening don't forget that this Sunday November 7th is a daylight saving times ends so we got a fallback an hour and we all get an extra hour of sleep which is gonna be exciting but you know sunset at 5 p.m. which is the downside of that but I just don't

David PenalozaItem 28

forget this Sunday you know we get to change our clocks back an hour and yeah that's pretty much it was fell in love with everyone's altars for Dia de los Muertos. I was tagged on many yesterday and today and they're all beautiful. I loved seeing them all and we remember our loved ones and our ancestors for what they gave to us. So thank you to everyone

and good night. Thank you for that. So I think everybody went a little long on their final comments because Danny, this is not late, man. So when Council Member Lopez says you hung in there and you stayed late, late as midnight, 4.30 in the morning. So we feel like we're just getting started here. That's why I think everybody has a lot to say. But look, I just want to begin by saying, I think on the issue of homelessness and people experiencing homelessness, that is a topic that's dominating, look, every discussion that we all have. And I know with some of the big city mayors that I'm meeting with,

that is at the top of everybody's mind. So more resources are going to come. I think what we have to do and we have to figure out is how we use those resources intelligently because I think it's not the volume or the money that we can throw at the problem. It's how we can do it effectively and in a way that's going to be compassionate, but again, produce some results for everybody. I want to thank all veterans and those families that have lost family members who are veterans. I want to especially thank them, but I want us to remember that the very reason why veterans, I think, cared so deeply about their country was so

we have the freedoms that we can exercise. And I think those go to the comments, I think, that Council Member Hernandez said. Some things are, you know, yeah, we all are accustomed, you know, as we've been since we were children, to salute the flag. But that doesn't mean that we all have to. That doesn't mean that veterans didn't fight for those independent rights to be able to say, look, I have an issue with this. I'm going to, I don't feel comfortable. And so I think veterans, when they sacrifice their lives and the families that had veterans in their lives, they sacrifice because they wanted us to have those independent freedoms

that we all may not, we may support many of those, we may not support all of those, but that's the country we live in, that we all can exercise those freedoms. And that's not the way it is in every other country. So, you know, we should respect that. We should respect everybody's right to exercise their will and their independence and autonomy any way they see fit. And that's what I believe veterans having some in my family that have fought and have come home and some that have fought and haven't come home. So, on another topic, you know, State Attorney General Bonta was here in Santa Ana last week and I want to

I thank everybody who attended. I know Councilmember Hernandez, I believe, attended. And we had members of all our diverse communities. We had our Jewish community represented, our Latino community represented, our API community, our Muslim, Native American. It was an incredible grouping of people having some very, very difficult discussions in front of the district attorney, in front of the sheriff, in front of our police chief, and in front of the state attorney general, who is our top law enforcement officer, asking and sharing some very difficult things and very raw,

honest comments. So I want to thank everybody who came. And it all had to do with hate crime that unfortunately is really at a crisis level, not just here in Orange County, but throughout the state. And it's unfortunate because we've seen it, you know, just mushroom. And we've seen, you know, here in Orange County in Santa Ana, a lot of it directed to the API community. And so I think, to me, it just was a really important moment that we had the Attorney General speaking to us and giving us an opportunity to share our lived experiences here in Santa Ana. And he made it

a point to come out here specifically to meet with us. So that was very helpful. So thank you to everybody who participated in that. The last thing I wanted to say was, I know that there, you know, we adopted obviously the, you know, the rent stabilization ordinance and the just cause eviction ordinance at the last meeting. There are efforts to gather signatures in a referendum process. I wanted to thank the clerk and her staff because I know that they're going to be dedicating some information just to explain to the public what is a referendum versus

an initiative. Those are things that I think we need to inform ourselves about. That should be available because what happens is people I think can be easily misled into signing something that doesn't, that isn't clear and isn't represented well. And again, I think a referendum and initiative, those are legal ways that you can either repeal or revise an existing piece of legislation so long as somebody is well informed when they're signing it and so long as that information is accurate. So I will be asking the city attorney to be looking at this as remedial measures if signatures have been gathered and they haven't been

gathered legally, right? If there's been misleading information, misrepresentations made, and I know that there are already videos, there are already photographs, there's, you know, audio tapes. It is kind of an odd thing. And look, I respect everybody's right to be able to gather signatures so long as they're gathered legally, right? And so that's something that I think is really important. I also really appreciate, you know, Amanda, clerk, that you are putting a template form letter available in the event somebody signs something and And they realize, look, I didn't sign what I thought I was signing.

And so there is a legal way to go ahead and, you know, be able to rescind or retract that signature. But those are important things. I think so long as everybody is playing by, you know, the rules, I think that's the important thing. And information and education is what will solve any dilemma. So with that, we are adjourned until November 16, 2021. Everybody have a great night. Thank you.

We have a special meeting Monday, November 15th for redistricting.

Thank you.

Thank you.