Read the November 15 meeting.

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special meeting of the Santa City Council to order for November 15, 2021. Let me go ahead and just start by making some opening housekeeping remarks. This meeting, as usual, is taking place with in-person attendance and teleconference via Zoom. The public can access the meeting via the Santa Anna YouTube channel or the city's website, and as usual, please bear with us as our technology may interrupt the meeting, and I believe we may have some speakers that are waiting for us on the phone, So I'll turn it over to the clerk to first call roll and then maybe to get rolling after that

Thank you mayor councilmember Becerra here councilmember Hernandez

here

Councilmember Lopez here councilmember Mendoza here councilmember fan here mayor potent Pena Losa here mayor Sarmiento here

Why don't we go ahead and Let me lead everybody in the Pledge of Allegiance and if you'll all please rise Face the flag and repeat after me.

David Penaloza

Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, in the visible, with liberty and justice for all.

Great. Thanks, everybody. So before the public hearing, I'm going to go ahead and have the clerk read out some instructions of the public for those of us, for those that are on call that would wish to address the council. So, Madam Clerk, I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you, Mayor. Members of the public joining us by way of Zoom or conference call and would like to make a comment for public hearing item one regarding redistricting. Please dial star nine from your phone or select raise hand from Zoom now.

Great. Thank you, Madam Clerk. So, this is a time and place for us to open a public hearing. This is the third public hearing regarding the redistricting award boundaries. And I know we have our consultant who is in person with us and will be making a presentation. And before we have any council member comments, I'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing and have members of the public who wish to address the council. So, Madam Clerk, I'll turn it over to you because I don't see anybody in person unless somebody has handed you a request to speak or address the council card.

Thank you, Mayor. And good evening, Mayor and members of the council. Before handing this off over to Sophia with redistricting partners who will be providing a presentation, I want to make sure that the council and the public understand how tonight is different from the last two public hearings. This time there will be draft maps that will be presented for the very first time to the public and council, and redistricting partners, Sophia, will be going over those details. However, once the presentation is done, we want to make sure that we receive from Council's

input on those draft maps and such things that we're looking for from the Council are any changes to the draft maps presented or if the Council wants a totally new constructed map, if there's a community or neighborhood that needs to be uplifted, or if the Council wants to reduce the deviation or increase the CVAP or anything that should be identified. And so with that, I will go ahead and hand this over to Sophia.

Sophia B.: I think it's on. Are you able to hear me? Do you want me to take my mask off? Is that? Okay.

I can do that.

Huh? Oh, thank you.

I'd rather leave it on. is that's okay yeah yeah just be closer just be closer than i can do that yes okay i will share the screen okay are you able to see the screen yes yes okay great a little different than being behind my desk uh hi everyone welcome good evening oh nope pause i'm sorry one second

Did I share the wrong screen?

No, I think you're sharing the right one.

I did. I could maybe share.

Maybe this one?

Is that one? Okay. Okay, there.

Oh, wonderful. Okay, great.

Perfect. Hi, everyone. Good evening. My name is Sofia Garcia. I'm the GIS and Outreach Director with Redistricting Partners, the firm that is working with the City of Santa Ana City Council. And today, as Daisy stated, will be the presentation of the draft maps. And also was noted is that what we're looking from the council and the public are amendments to the maps. They are draft maps, not the final map plans. And so we will, at the end of the presentation, look to the council for direction instruction amendments to any of the plans any changes you'd like to see or new maps um so we'll get started

okay so we like to just start the base and we know a lot of folks are familiar with these terms but just for anyone who's new we are following the traditional redistricting principles and compliance with the fair maps act when we draft any map plans so following relatively equal size contiguous maintaining communities of interest following census designated places and keeping the districts compact so these are the base for all of our plans and in compliance with state and federal law as we noted we are moving from the draft map phase and how we do that is we look to

community of interest input that we've received throughout the process and so it is an input from community driven process focused on rules and also feedback and so we will go through kind of what we've received so far and we're also waiting to process some more of the community of interest feedback from the placemats from the online surveys and also the maps on distrctor

So for public submissions, we have received 16 public submissions on Districtor, the online mapping software that the city of Santa Ana is using. 13 of those 16 are full citywide plans, and three of those are community of interest submissions. They all are open to the public, So anyone who has access to wifi and the internet are able to view all of these plans. We also had six community workshops, but as Daisy noted in the past meeting,

her and her staff have met and already are meeting with additional community members to receive additional feedback. But there's six of them were the official city council workshops.

From public submissions, we're working on what we call Atlas data packets. We was working on them earlier today, so we will give them to staff later today or early tomorrow for all of those 16 plans that were submitted. They will have a cover page of the plan submitted on districter. There will also be a data table with the total population, the deviation, and also So the ethnic population otherwise referred to in redistricting as the citizen voting age population data or CVAP that will be numbered one through six for all the districts that you see.

So it'll have a cover page, a data table page. And this is important because even though districtor gives you some data, districtor only gives you the district that has the highest deviation. So it doesn't give you the total plan deviation. and when you receive these data packets, you'll be able to see which of the full maps plans that were submitted on district are in compliance. And if the council would like to uplift any of those plans, we can work to modify or adjust any of those community-based plans that are not within that 10% deviation. And so you'll be able to note that with the packet.

And finally, each packet will also have a district by district breakdown where you can see the individual individual district maps, along with street level detail and data tables and charts.

You'll also receive those for the community of interest submitted plans as well. So you'll be able to see those in more detail with the data behind them.

In addition to the kind of those paper packets, all of them will also have a link where you'll be able to zoom in to street level and be able to see them more clearly these data packets are also the ones that you received for the draft map plans and so we're we're giving the same level of detail to all of the publicly submitted maps so you can zoom in and see the street level because we understand with the paper there's only so much that you can do and only so much you can see and so with the online version you can zoom in specifically to street levels and be able to see kind of what those boundaries are and what the differences is.

We're also, we received the placemats and continue to look at those and those are available online on the City of Santa Ana redistricting website. They're linked. I think the last time I checked, there were about 15 publicly submitted placemats. We've also continued to receive emails from members of the public. And so for the next meeting, we will have what we call a community of interest report. So you will have some thumbnails and a summary of all of the map plans and the placemats that have been received. So we are still working on that for you.

So for the draft plans, we have created three consultant drawn based plans based on community of interest testimony and traditional redistricting criteria. These maps are posted on the website prior to the public hearing. The maps are also lettered, not numbered. This is a temporary structure because the council will be the ones who will number the districts at the end of the process. We letter them as to not see that there's any sway from the consultant on how the districts are drawn. If the council would like us to number those, we can do so.

we just ask that you as a council let us know which district should be which number so our default is to letter them but we can number them if asked by council

so draft map a or draft plan a we create our draft plan a as a minimal change plan so we took the existing lines of 2011 and adjusted them for the current 2020 population so you will see very minimal changes and adjustments with this specific plan again you have the cover page the data page and those individual district packets for draft plan a for draft plan b oh this is a typo um so oh my apologies we'll update that when we send it to daisy for the final plan so for draft plan

a it meets all the traditional redistricting criteria and also achieves the following it It has a deviation of 8.5%. So under the 10% total plan deviation that's allowable. It also creates four districts that are 50% plus Latino citizen voting age population with B, D, E and F. It also creates one Asian influence district at 30% plus CVAF, which is district A.

It also uses the existing lines as the base, adjusts for population growth, and follows major streets for draft plan A.

Draft plan B follows traditional redistricting criteria and also achieves the following. It creates, it has a deviation of 8%, so a little lower than draft plan A. It also creates five districts that are 50% Latino CVAP, at B, C, D, E, and F, and also has one Asian influence district at 30% plus CVAP, which is district A.

Draft plan B uses community of interest testimony and publicly submitted maps as its base. It keeps more neighborhoods together. So the neighborhoods of Santa Ana, Windsor Village Hole. It also follows West Edinger Avenue as a major boundary and keeps other neighborhoods such as Villa Vista and mid-city. Draft plan C also follows neighborhoods and is the plan that keeps the most amount of neighborhoods whole. It has a deviation of 7.9, so again, the plan with the lowest

deviation. It also has five districts that are 50% plus Latino CVAP at B, C, D, E, and F, and also has one Asian influence district at 30% plus CVAP, which is district A. And it uses a community of interest plan as its base.

It has the most minimal neighborhood line splits with West Warner Avenue as its border for district B and East First Street is its border for district C and E. Again, you can kind of zoom in with that web link to see the least amount of splits for the specific plan.

So for adjustments to plans, there's a number of ways that we can adjust or the council can instruct us. Again, for any adjustments, those will have to come from council. We can hear public testimony, but any of those directions to the consultant must come from you as a body. So we can look at lowering a deviation, if that is of interest to the council. We can also identify some specific trade-offs. So now that we're looking at full plans, any adjustment to a district will mean that another district will lose deviation, will lose population. So we can look at those trade-offs.

Or if you wanna have multiple amendments to a plan, we can see that all of those districts could change. or again you can ask us to create a completely new plan from scratch

any proposed changes we can look at those individually and come back with any of those adjustments for the next meeting and what's next is to hear from you all the council and the public so any official council drafts will need to be made public in advance of any city-wide public draft hearing all city council maps all council drafts will go to a final plan selection hearing the final plan selection hearing will consider only draft maps that have been made public for seven days so that's under the fair maps act where any uh the specifically the final map

must be made public for seven days so if there are any what we call major adjustments to a plan during a meeting specifically the final meeting then you all would have to hold an additional hearing to vote on that final plan and again numbering of the districts is done at the end of the process so we recommend after a map has been finalized then the council will talk about how they will number that new plan and so as daisy noted at the beginning some instructions that the council can give us is you can instruct us to make amendments to a plan or specific plan

you can instruct us to draft a new plan or to uplift a community submitted plan you can also let us know if there's a plan that you would like us to not consider anymore so if one of the three plans you would like to veto we can not bring that up at the next hearing so that's another kind of adjustment that we can make as well and so that's the the end of our presentation and i will I'll give it back to staff to continue the meeting.

Thank you for that presentation. Before we bring it back to Council, let me go ahead and just have the clerk see if there's any members of the public who are online or on the phone that wish to address us.

Thank you, Mayor. Yes, we do have members of the public who would like to provide a comment virtually. We did not get any speaker cards for in-person.

And we already went over the summary of correspondence provided based on the draft maps. Zoom ID Anna Charco, if you would please select the microphone icon to unmute your call.

Thank you.

You have three minutes. You may proceed with your comment.

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 the communities of interest in Santa Ana. Latina Health Access have been proudly working alongside community residents for over 27 years, providing services that address immediate health needs while providing certain information and facilitating opportunities to increase civic participation and impact policies that would improve those social determinants in the longterm. Therefore, we urge you to consider the communities of interest that include our most vulnerable communities.

Those communities of interest are monolingual communities, the low income communities, the Asian community, specifically the Vietnamese community, the apartment tenants community and the mobile home residents community during the redistricting process. On the west side of the Santa Ana River Red, the communities of interest are the Asian community, the mobile home resident communities, the seniors living on fixed income communities. In addition, we believe that Central City and Mid-City Santa Ana share common communities of interest,

as there are several communities of interest, including monolinguals who share Spanish as their primary language, which apartment renters, mixed status immigration family, meaning that there are families that compromise that is composed of family members who are undocumented, documented and low income families. Lastly, we would like to request that we could extend the timeline to gather community input. I know in the previous meeting, that was something we did discuss and it was discussed by the city council members. And I was just wondering if there has been any update on that as the information is not shown on the website.

But if so, please let us know and see if we could, or if you could possibly extend the timeline for the registering process. Thank you for your time and have a great night.

Thank you.

Zoom ID, Tim Johnson, if you would please select the microphone icon. Thank you. You may proceed with your comment.

Hi, good evening, Mayor and Council. My name's Tim Johnson, resident of Ward 3 in West Floral Park.

I appreciated the opportunity to be able to hear the presentation prior to making comments. Unlike what Sophia indicated though, plans B and C do not keep neighborhoods whole. The micro communities of West Floral Park, Jack Fisher Park, and Morrison Park are all part of one larger community neighborhood. but unfortunately two of these draft map plans separate those communities. I would ask that you consider them to be one larger community despite the micro community neighborhood association designations. Flower Street is a small residential street as it goes through our neighborhoods,

despite how fast folks may drive through our neighborhood and how it's larger in other parts of the city. So big picture is that I believe that draft maps B and C missed the mark by separating our park area neighborhoods, West Floral Park, Jack Fisher Park, Floral Park, and Morrison Park neighborhoods, as well as our larger communities of interest in Park Santiago, as well as Riverview. We share many common attributes in terms of city parks, in terms of neighborhood association events, such as garden tours, home tours. In fact, there was one this last weekend on Saturday as well as schools,

which provide common community participation. I ask that you would consider to make tweaks to draft a plan A. If anything changes from A, you may want to consider reducing the deviation at the very south end of town by reallocating back the little square that was moved from one district to another down the very south end of town and that will actually reduce the deviation. The big picture would support and make tweaks to map A and keep our communities of interest together north of 17th street. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Zoom ID, Jesus Santana, if you would please select the microphone icon. Thank you. You may proceed with your comment.

Hello council members and mayor. My name is Jesus Santana. I support the Suleban and Action team in the Suleban community. And I think I just wanted to share that for the Suleban community, it's really important for it to be represented by one word. Currently it's separated by two. I think again, you know, y'all have heard me in the past, but just to remind you all, it's a community composed of four mobile home parks. two apartment complexes and also condominium. And I think for the residents right now, more than anything, it's what's needed is for them to come together. Unfortunately, there's no neighborhood association

that represents this community. So I think for us as, you know, people who want to encourage and support more resident participation, we really need to make an effort to also extend the amount of time that people can give their input, just because I think, you know, with our support, with community organizations and partners. We will do our best to support you all in getting more voices and more input from residents that really are affected by these redistricting or the turnout of how the districts look like. So I implore you to please listen to the community and give us more time to submit these forms.

But more than anything, just think about the Solomon community because right now there's a big need to support them because overall today I heard some unfortunate news in regards to some mobile home residents receiving additional concerns, but I think just to cut it short, I really want to be able to just support the community, give input and provide their insight. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Zoom ID Araceli Robles, if you would please select the microphone icon.

members of the council. My name is Araceli Robles. I live in the district 6th. I am here. I am a little worried because the presentation is in English and we are taking decisions that will affect our communities of interest, like the people who are immigrants, monolingues, and the Vietnamese community. So I invite you to reconsider when you are making these decisions in the map. Remember that we are families who are in those communities and that we really need to be represented

and receive the resources that we need. Actualmente, with all this COVID-19, life will not be the same as we had before. So we have to take into consideration because the importance of being able to leave these communities because we need to receive more resources. Something that I always liked from 20 years ago that I live in this city is that the community community really are free for the community. That our children have mentors for that they can get to the university, they can get to have a better quality of life. and also invite us to really help the programs to buy houses

to be more generous with the immigrant community and we can be owners of our own homes. That allows us to stay and prosper here in the city of Santana. My community is multicultural, we are very committed to the community to be part of the solution. We are not only part of the solution to make changes, comunitarios y yo les pido que tomen en consideración porque ahorita se está tratando un tema muy muy importante y solamente fue en inglés yo no sé si para la comunidad tiendamita hubo traducción

espero que sí porque necesitamos que todos estemos invitados en la mesa cuando se están llevando a cabo estas reuniones tan tan importantes que depende mucho la vida de nuestras comunidades los próximos años este les pido que tomen en consideración esta preocupación que yo siento y realmente le doy las gracias por tomarse el tiempo and para excel escuchado en la comunidad y espero que puedan pasar un report en español sobre todos estos procesos muchísimas gracias y que tenga muy

buenas noches and a feeling and antes de con más que quería que sepa que si ahorita estamos en YouTube si quiere decir en el internet Santa hyphen Anna

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Oh, forgive me, I'm sorry, one second, please, our translator is going to translate in English.

Hi, my name is Araceli Robles and I just wanted to let you know that I'm part of the community and first of all, I've been listening to all this presentation and it was presented only in English and I wanted to know if translation was available because I wanted to be part of everything and I felt kind of left out. I want to be part of the community and I want you to keep in mind when you are drawing the maps to keep all the people in the maps, not all people that only speak one

language only people that they're Vietnamese all the people we want to be part of the community we want to be represented after COVID we needed resources we want we also need the community centers when our children we need they need mentors we need to be part of the community We also need help to buy houses. We need to have more programs because we want to be part of the community. We want to be in Santa Ana. We want to be part of the

solution. We don't want to be just we don't want to be asking for things. We want to be part of the community. We want to stay here and also again we I was wondering if the presentation will be interpreted or translated in Spanish so thank you so much for everything and thank you for your help

zoom ID Manny Escamilla if you would please select the microphone icon thank

you you may proceed with your comment okay hello just making sure you can all hear me yes we could hear you thank you oh well yeah definitely I think you Mayor and Council for doing this and having so much outreach on it. I definitely would like to see a little bit more of the community maps highlighted to get to see what the various ideas are out there, if that's within your purview. But I would actually point out to some of what folks have been calling in about, about wanting to participate in, you know, even just the language barrier right now. But you also might take this time to consider making a drastic, I would say,

dramatic, but also quite, I would say, correct move in considering having local, you'd say, non-U.S. citizen elections. So the city of San Francisco does allow for individuals that are not U.S. citizens to vote in local elections. There are, I believe, 11 municipalities in the city of, or sorry, in the state of Maryland that also allow for that. So while you're looking at these maps, you might even be open to the idea of considering how we might be able to implement something like that. Because even if we're kind of keeping these neighborhoods together,

we are in fact ignoring the whole section of our community, which is a relatively large section of our community that doesn't get to vote in our local elections. And I believe it is in keeping with our democratic principles to allow them to vote in whatever ways are legally possible. So again, the city of San Francisco does allow for that in limited circumstances. We might be able to do some research there. So I just wanted to give you that thought for consideration as you look at these maps to make sure that maybe under that or under those scenarios, they might also be balanced out as well.

But yeah, so definitely a lot of good comments from other residents about keeping communities together because that's good stuff. And I hope you all have fun with these lines.

Thank you. Mayor, that was the last comment.

Great. Thank you for that. Let me go ahead and close the public hearing. That was my question for the city attorney that was here. Are we closing these public hearings or are we adjourning them to the next? These are all individual public hearings that we're holding for these redistricting matters. It's not one long public hearing that we have. Correct? Great. I'll go ahead and close it now and bring it back to the council and see if there's any questions or comments from any members of the council or if there's staff that would like to add anything to what we just heard and have our consultant ready to answer any questions.

And we have Council Member Hernandez on the line as well, correct?

Yes, we do. Mr. Mayor, I have my hand raised if I would.

Go ahead, let's start with you.

Yes, thank you, sir. I just want to start by thanking the presenters for a very thorough presentation. I think you've done a fantastic job along with Daisy in holding multiple town halls for residents to give their input. So I have a question, and I guess I'll use subject A for this matter. I'll go ahead and ask in regards to subject A. Okay, so I see that we had in the presentation, existing, the existing map. And that's the map that we currently have adopted

through the city of Santa Ana, correct?

Are they available to answer? Yes, those are the, when we say current lines or existing lines, those are the lines that were adopted in 2011. Okay, so the map that you-Not 2021, your last cycle. Yes. Okay, so the map that I'm looking at in your presentation that says existing wards is the map we have today. Draft plan A is a map that you drew up. It looks identical to the existing map. Correct, yes. The draft plan A is a plan that makes minimal changes to your current lines to adjust to the 2020 population.

So that's something that we do. Redistricting Partners, it's a practice to give the option of having a minimal change to the existing lines. But again, this is a space where you as council can have us amend stuff, or you can let us know that you don't want to consider a map, but that is an map pay is an option for you at the moment. Okay. So with map a, can you tell me what some of the changes are? I looked at the map, you know, front and back and I'm just, I don't know if there's anything that has changed here. So I was hoping you can tell me what the difference

in draft day is and our current map that we have today.

Yes. So we have a slide that kind of shows you the draft plan A and then the next slide has an overlay of the existing lines with plan A. So there are minimal changes to the Northeast for our district A and then minimal change and the South, the Southeast of C. So those are the only districts. Oh, and then also B as well at the south, the southernmost part of district B. So those are the three changes that were made

to the existing lines to create the minimal change plan A. Okay, thank you, Sophia. So I want to provide some commentary to you. I am opposed to plan C. I know that there is the Santa Anita neighborhood, which is part of it is cut out. The Sullivan neighborhood is cut out as well. So it's cut in half. I know that there is parts of Floral Park as well. Like one of the residents mentioned that is divided here.

So I don't think draft plan C does a good job of having equal representation, especially for communities of interest. I think a suggestion I would like to make is, I think plan A obviously based off of what we have today, you know, I do think it's a fair draft. I would like to see more drafts made. I think that these three are not going to suffice because I do think if there was a recommendation I could make, for instance, with draft A,

I'm looking at the letter E, and I think if there was a way for us to incorporate all of Sullivan upwards to Main Street, I think that does take into account those communities of interest. So I know that that's been echoed and attended. One of the redistricting meetings at El Salvador Park, residents of Sullivan were there and did ask to be integrated, and I don't see that reflected on any of these maps. So I would like to see if we can integrate Suliban as one in one of these maps, I think that's going to be ideal.

Especially this community of interest has been pretty vocal in their representation. So to clarify my comments, I'm opposed to draft plan C. I don't think that's a good map. I'd like to see more maps presented to us. And number three is I would like to see Sullivan included as a whole, ideally with letter E. And that concludes my comments at this moment.

Thank you, Council Member. You know, before I go to Mayor Pro Tem, I just was going to mention to Sylvia, I see that on, you know, I almost missed the overlay that you have with Plan A over the current map. Is there a way to maybe put dotted lines around the existing map so we can see a little clearer because the colors are pretty pastel and it's hard to just see where those changes are. So maybe that will help us kind of visualize what the existing map lines are and the different iterations. And as we go forward, we can see where the deviations are, what's being changed. That might be helpful just for a visual.

Great. Definitely. Yes, we can take those changes and amend them for you.

Excellent. Thanks. Mayor Pro Tem, go ahead.

David Penaloza

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. And thank you, Sofia, for the presentation, for the work that you've done. I must say that I am a little disappointed in the fact that we're only seeing three proposed drafts. I know it's too early on, but from the very beginning that we started this process a couple of months ago, myself as well as some of my colleagues really stressed that importance of seeing multiple variations of maps and right now we're all we're seeing is is three which is you know not not great and we're off to a bad start because it's pretty limited on what we're seeing so that's my first comment my second

David Penaloza

comment is I want to say that I agree with councilmember Hernandez and the fact that I I'm not too supportive of map draft B or C because of the fact that you know in 2018 we were sued against the California Voting Rights Act because of disenfranchised community the Asian community was disenfranchised here in the city among representation here on this council and both B and C from what I'm looking at that West End Ward which I think is listed as

David Penaloza

district A on the on both maps B and A the Latino voting population increases and you see the Asian voting percentage decrease which I think just brings us back to pre 2018 of why we got sued in the first place so I definitely want us not supportive of B or C because of that because the whole idea was to have an equal opportunity for an Asian representative to be elected to the City Council and also going along the lines of B and C I don't like that community

David Penaloza

of interests is of interests specifically on the north end we're split down the middle I think it is in the city's best interest to keep that a whole district and if I had if this was if it was just up to these three I'd definitely be supportive of further looking at District Map A, or Draft A, and seeing how we can maybe continue working with that one and molding it in something that could be equitable across the entire city. Those are my comments, Mayor Sarmiento, but definitely not supportive of B or C as they are. Thank you.

Thank you for those comments. Any other members of the Council wish to ask any questions of the consultant or make any Any remarks for the record? Councilmember Becerra.

Phil Bacerra

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This is for Daisy. Daisy, you and I spoke about this this morning or earlier today. So when I go on to the city website to look up these maps, our consultant just mentioned that we have 16 plans submitted. And so I go on to your page, I go on to the redistricting page, and I scroll down towards submit your community of interest map and then I see something that says maps received. And I literally clicked on it about a couple minutes ago and I've got an error message. So that frustrates me because if I'm getting that message,

Phil Bacerra

I'm here in a city building on the Wi-Fi, on the network, and I'm not able to get through. I can't imagine how many other folks aren't getting through. So I'm not seeing these maps. I can't imagine how many other folks are trying to look up these maps and not seeing them. I did stumble upon them though after I went into the Districter software website and I see in the gallery there they are. And my understanding is the consultant is going to go ahead and take those maps and then further break down the data for us. Okay.

On the link, there's kind of two sets of maps. So there's the placemat, and so that would be the link where you're getting that error message. So those are those paper-based maps. So those are linked there. And the district or maps right now, they are only on that district or site, and we're gonna send those data packets to staff to add to those. So the district or maps are currently not on your website, but those placemats, those ones that were scanned and receive during those community meetings are the ones linked to that.

Phil Bacerra

Okay, so at some point, God willing, it'll be beyond these three drafts before us, because while I appreciate your work on this, I don't support any of the three, and I'll go into that in a second for why. But as far as to see the other maps that members of our community have submitted and to see your analysis, what I would like to see is somewhere just simple, stupid, easy, where someone can click and they pop up and they have the same level of data like what we have attached to our agenda for tonight. It's just, it's not right, it's not fair to hide them or I shouldn't say hide them but just they're cluttered.

Phil Bacerra

It's a confusing way to get to those maps. So I would really appreciate if we can make it much more easier for folks to access those maps because I think it would help us up here. it would I think produce a more robust discussion about what we have because so far you're not hearing too much support for the draft maps that were attached here. But in going into that, I've always thought that the 2020 map was not a good map. It satisfied one potential issue, or not potential, one issue, period. and it, I think, caused a lot more confusion and really was not a good map as far as keeping communities of interest together.

Phil Bacerra

It was not, it's a very awkward map. But to the point that Mayor Pro Tem made as far as maps B and C to further dilute the Asian population award, I won't support that at all. And one thing that we've been hearing from various folks in the community communities talking about keeping certain neighborhoods together. We've heard from the north folks that the parks, Park Santiago, Floral Park, West Floral Park, B and C split them up. And then you've got one map that actually puts the southern neighborhoods together, but then the other maps don't do that.

Phil Bacerra

And I think that one thing that really highlights the interest in in the Southern communities and neighborhoods was during the pandemic, the folks that were meeting, they weren't meeting in their individual neighborhood associations, they were meeting through the South Coast Alliance of Neighborhoods. And I see that connection on the South end, very similar to what we see on the North end with the parks, with the folks north of 17th. So I think that we need to see a map that respects that and puts those communities together. Where that ultimately lies,

Phil Bacerra

Obviously, that'll depend on statistically how we satisfy the standards that we have to satisfy. But I think to not have those together, I mean, you're splitting communities. I think you have some that split along flower. You have some, I just, I don't think that's a good idea. But one thing that I will say, and I want to thank staff for this, is that because we started when we did, we've given ourselves enough runway so so that we can adjust and we can get more input from the community and hopefully by making these other maps available and as we hopefully will receive more maps,

Phil Bacerra

we'll be able to have more for this council to think about and discuss. But what I'd like to ask is, so when I'm looking at the schedule on the site, so we've got the draft map adoption public hearing tonight. That's what we're holding right now. And then we have it where December 6th would be the pre-final map public hearing and then January 18th final map. I know we adopted a resolution laying out the schedule and I don't want to change these dates per se as far as holding hearings, but is there anything that prevents us from adding an additional hearing or two so that we can gather more input?

We can definitely add more meetings. It doesn't have to be a public hearing. we can add additional meetings to what's already scheduled.

Phil Bacerra

Well, I'd like to have something or some things, like some meetings where people can come to us and provide more input. Because I know that I think there are more folks that are interested. And I received input today personally, people not liking any of the draft maps. So I suspect after seeing these draft maps, there will be more submittals when it comes to ideas for these maps. But I want to be able to have this council take in that input as part of our deliberation. So whether it's a hearing, whether it's just an agendized item specifically to this, I'll leave that up to you and your expertise.

Phil Bacerra

But I would recommend that we have some before the full council, that we can take in that input from the community.

Phil Bacerra

That's all I have right now. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Great. Thank you for those comments. Let me go ahead and go to anybody else on the Council that has any comments or questions. Councilmember Mendoza.

Thank you. I, too, am not quite convinced on the three maps. So I'd like to get more community input. And it's a bit confusing because we do want to keep the communities of interest together,

Preferably, like, we want to keep New Horizons, Bella Vista, Central City, Pico Lowell. I mean, these are neighborhood associations that have been working well together for many, many years. We don't want to break them up. And I don't agree with splitting Flower Street down the middle. It'll be just chaos. I think we need some clean street lines that are a little more inequity and that where we can represent our constituents in a more equitable manner.

So I recommend we just continue to look at more maps and give it as long as we need to in order to get some maps that are going to work for our communities. And as far as the numbering system, I do have a question regarding that. I mean, how will that work? We have the odd numbered wards that are not up for election. So, I mean, how will that work in essence in renumbering?

Right. So, we call that sequencing. And that's, again, during the, after the adoption of a final plan. While we're drafting the maps, we don't know where the incumbents or council members live. That's not one of the criteria that we're utilizing under the Fair Maps Act. And so again, that's why we are using the lettering system because we may have completely new maps at the end of this phase than the current lines. And so that will be a discussion that you as a board will have on what new districts or new wards will have which numbers. And so that will be a discussion you all have on who will be up for election.

When that happens, no one will be, their term will not be cut short. You all had, when we moved to those new plans, no one's term will be cut short, but you will have to kind of have that discussion if we end up having two council members or multiple in an award moving forward. So again, that's why we advise that we do the lettering system, not the numbering system because we as the consultants don't want to impose any numbers or the sequencing moving forward. I don't know if your attorney wants to talk more on that but again that discussion will happen when the final plan is passed.

Thank you council member. Great questions. Let me go to council member Fan.

Thai Viet Phan

Thanks mayor and thank you to my colleagues who addressed the main issue I was going to bring up which is the agency VAP. First of all I guess you mentioned vetoing. I would veto maps B and C. The first thing that I'm going to look at so I was the council member elected in the ward that was created as part of the California Voting Rights Act lawsuit and the fact that we're you know 30% I think you called it community of influence or I'm really not sure maybe that's a term of art I've never heard before but it to me you know the point is it's possible to

Thai Viet Phan

make a plurality award that meets the criteria of the Fair Maps Act and it should be there because if we don't have it you know the mayor Patel was exactly right we would just go back to the type of discrimination that the API community faced here in the city whether you know purposefully or not so that's THE FIRST ISSUE. THE SECOND ISSUE I WAS REALLY CONCERNED ABOUT IS DEFINITELY THE WEST FULL PARK, FLORAL PARK, PARK SONTIAGO. I DON'T LIVE UP THERE, BUT HAVING VISITED AND BEEN UP THERE, THAT IS A VERY STRONG COMMUNITY OF INTEREST. IN FACT, I BELIEVE ALSO WASHINGTON SQUARE HAS

Thai Viet Phan

SENT COMMENTS ASKING TO BE, YOU KNOW, PUT INTO THE SAME COMMUNITY OF interest as those because they do have a lot of similarities. The other thing that I am personally also concerned about is making sure how Delhi stays together as much as possible. That is a historically kind of underrepresented and low-income working-class area in the city on the east side that I do believe You know should be kept together

Thai Viet Phan

Otherwise I would I really do look forward to the analysis for the maps on distrctor I looked at them. They're really fun. So I definitely recommend I look forward to that for Madam City Clerk, I do request that Because the maps and the analysis will be provide from district or will be provided on December 6 or for the December 6th

special meeting, correct? We can provide that sooner. We're working on that. We could provide that as early as this week for the maps that have been received so far. That would be great to

Thai Viet Phan

provide that information and whatever the analysis is necessary before December 6th. But even then, I would like to see an item on our regular council agenda relating to this only because I know we get a lot of attention during our regular meetings and folks who might be interested in other items will then also see unfortunately redistricting only happens you know whenever there's a lawsuit or once every ten years and a lot of our residents are not as plugged in into how important this process is and so I think it would really be helpful to do that especially after we get you know

Thai Viet Phan

these draft maps and redistrictor maps I think there's more for people to look at and comment on and that's all I have for now thank you great thank you for those

comments and one more time the count of the public gets a chance to see this is when city moves from an at-large system to a district system so that's when you get a chance to look at these again but I think everybody's spoken with the exception of councilmember Lopez hi Sophia so thank you for the math

Jessie Lopez

presented I do I do agree that I would love to see different ones and more at a time and also keeping in mind the Cambodian population on the east side of town I don't I'm not going to be supporting a map that splits them up and I guess I have a clarifying question for our clerk regarding the timeline so So December 6th is, sorry, I was just looking at that. So from here till December 6th, we have about two weeks and a major holiday in between that. And so the expectation is that this council's gonna have

Jessie Lopez

till then to decide on a finalized map?

No, on the schedule, it's actually January 18th is the scheduled date, which could also, you know, Council could also decide to add if you come to the final, the January 18th meeting and find that you want to add another date and not have it on that day, council can choose to do that. And then we could also add the second meeting in December, the regular item before the final map adoption. So council can actually request to have more meetings. Thanks. Okay, thanks.

Jessie Lopez

I guess I'm fine with that. I just don't wanna cram a meeting between now and two weeks or a month when you have two major holidays. I do think that feels like we're rushing through the process, which is why during the last public hearing, I did say we should extend the timeline. It's what we're hearing and this council obviously is not in agreement with the maps and we don't know if we will be with the next set of maps. And also the last thing that I do wanna bring up is, you know, when we're talking about equity and fighting for all the communities of interest, one of the things that we've seen here in the past

Jessie Lopez

is that not all of the communities have been kept together and the Zulivan community is one of them. And so I do wish to see them be kept together. I think it is time that we equitably fight for all of the neighborhoods in the city so that's gonna be my feedback thank

you thank you councilmember and so I think everybody's had an opportunity to make some comments and remarks and I agree with almost everything that was said and you know I do want to thank Sophia and her team and the clerk because look it's a lot to do in a short period of time but I think you know what we've heard from members of the public what you're hearing from the Council is that this is a start you know we're gonna go further I believe and you know the more input and the more outreach we make to the community hopefully we get different iterations either of hopefully not map B and C

because for the reason stated I think those have some flaws that I recall you know what prompted us in 2018 to to you know make sure we create an AAPI district and go from at-large elections to district elections as well. So I just think we don't want to be so lofty in our expectations that this is going to be it and we're done. I think it's going to take a while to do this, so I'm glad that our statutory deadline is until April of 2022, so we have some time and some flexibility. Hopefully it won't take that long, but we certainly want to have some room to study what the population shifts

And, you know, it's funny, I was going back to my constitutional law days when Councilmember Fan was talking about the type of treatment that different communities of interest and influence receive. So, you know, I know that there is a potential, you know, many bodies are going through this exercise right now, and there's federal Voting Rights Act violations, which California is very similar to, but communities have a different treatment, right? So you have heightened scrutiny on some communities and you have mid-level and then you have lower tier scrutiny. So I think that's where maybe that term of art does come in.

But we certainly want to make sure that as we just left that settlement that we made in 2018, we don't automatically violate it in the next cycle. So we want to make sure we're aware of that. But some of the things I wanted to mention to you is that we're dealing with your existing map is a 2018 map right the one that was was created then But that one was based upon the changes that happened in 2010 right the census data that was provided then So, you know, it's almost seeing the evolution of what's what's shifted from 2018 to 2020

which probably hasn't been much, even though we know that from 2010 to 2020, we lost close to 20,000 residents. So I don't know if it's as much of shift, you know, maybe not shifts, but maybe loss of residents from certain areas of the city. So, you know, that sort of historical background will help a little bit to see, you know, where, you know, where has the city changed? Because I think that helps us in devising, you know, new lines going, you know, going back. and you know where where are those neighborhoods that are you know maybe again becoming less populated maybe people in one neighborhood moving to

another and I think you know it's funny and mayor pro tem was reminding me of historic lines going back even decades before right going back to you know 2000 and you know what those shifts look like and some of our single-family residences haven't shifted all that much populations have historically remained the same. It's really the central where you've had a lot of tenant and renter population. So I wanted to see how granular, I guess, you could get with the information to show us, are these districts, what's a percentage of them single family versus renters? Maybe if there's a

way to include information of income levels, because I think all those things really matter when we're drawing lines as we talk about just communities that have similar experiences and similar needs. So to the extent that we have that information included, and I think all of us know where certain landmarks are throughout the city, but I think to me what's helpful is to know where the parks are because I'd hate to have one district that has the benefit or the luxury of having multiple parks when other districts may not have any, right?

Or some, and I remember this, I represented the old Ward 1, which is I think Ward 6 now, that doesn't have a council representative, that is mostly industrial. So those types of things I think help us make decisions in saying, do we keep these certain areas together? Are there multiple schools that are concentrated in one district versus others? you know community centers different things that are resources and amenities that I think will help us you know make sure that all districts I think are all wards you know are able to have some of those amenities and some of those

benefits and it those tend to be things that draw communities together so that might help and for lack of a better term those landmarks are important as we make our our decision-making and so you know I just think you know

Councilmember Mendoza asked my question on cycles because I know when we went from at-large to district We knew there was going to be sort of a lag period where we were going to have a ward that wasn't Representative and I don't think we have somebody in Ward 6 I believe right now But the sequencing to your point is maybe helpful to let us know What choices will have then right? I think after this cycle we should have a representative in every and every ward in the city but yeah whether you know which ones are going to be up which ones aren't I think will be helpful but last request is we know that we as an as a city we have

other lines that are drawn on top of us in other words we have federal congressional lines that are being redrawn right now we have state legislative lines that are being drawn both Assembly and Senate and obviously see the county. So to the extent that we know where their lines and what the treatment is that they have, that they're having Santa Ana experience, maybe that's helpful as well. I mean, not so much for our purposes, but just to see the treatment that we're receiving. And I'm not sure if that's within the scope of your work, but if we can have you at least look at that. I know their statutory

deadlines to come up with final maps are much sooner than ours. I think the county's is in early December and I think you know for the congressional districts I think it's sometime in mid or late December but they probably have to decide there sooner because those are primary elections so they have to have their maps done much sooner than ours so just a few things that hopefully will help and to the to the point that was made about the non voters in the city does is that reflected in the matrix that you you all show or is it just voters that we're talking that we're looking at as far as the data the heart you know the

percentages here okay I'll respond to that and then I spoke with Daisy at the beginning of the meeting and her staff has also been taking diligent notes I'd like for us to kind of before we you adjourn we read back all of your comments and feedback so that we collect it so that we can make all those amendments to the drafts. But on kind of your some of your comments on the non voters, the census data is a total count of people. So it's not looking at citizenship is looking at people. So we do have everyone who filled out the census on April 1 of 2020. That's

citizen voting age population data set is also everyone who's over the age of 18. So in no instance during this, will we look at any voter data, our voter registration data it's solely based on the decennial census file. On your comment of looking at the congressional lines and assembly lines, that is something that we can add as a layer to look at once they do finalize their lines, as you noted, they will have their lines finalized next month or in early January. So I was thinking we could work with your GIS department to kind of overlay all of those data layers. We're not a tech firm, we do the data.

So if we could work with your GIS staff, I know there were a number of other data layers mentioned. So if we could work with them to receive that. I also wanted to know and kind of check to make sure that we're using the correct neighborhood file. I heard mentioned a lot in public comment and by the council that we're splitting neighborhoods. So I think if we could maybe sit with Daisy to overlay that to ensure that we are kind of using that same file. because I think we are using a micro neighborhood file on that. So I have a list, and I know Daisy does too, so I don't know if it would be appropriate to kind of read what I've heard

to ensure I've captured everything or if Daisy would like to do that. But that's just something I want to ensure we do before.

I think a lot of what we said is kind of duplicative, right? I mean, we all just want to make sure that we try to keep certain, and it's maybe not neighborhood associations, but neighborhoods and those areas in the city that have similar needs,

like in the north end and central. So those are things I think that, it's not necessarily a neighborhood association. It could be just neighborhoods that have similar interests and similar needs. But yeah, I think we do have over 50, I'm not sure, active neighborhood associations, but that might be helpful for you.

And I can provide you those layers. Okay, wonderful. Definitely with our GIS team. Yeah.

David Penaloza

Go ahead, Mayor Pro Temp. Thank you. Really quick, Sophia, I just wanted to reiterate what I had said earlier. I know as you're going through this process, you're not looking at registered voters in each of these wards, but brings me back to that ward, what we're district A in these map drafts. The reason it's there today is because there was a California Voting Rights Act lawsuit. And it's going to be important to look at voter registration in that district.

David Penaloza

And I don't want to speak too much on it because I'm sure Councilmember Fan could say it more eloquently than I can at his reward. but the whole point was to have the largest concentration of Asian voters in that area to have an Asian representative or to have a higher likely chance of electing an Asian representative. So I don't want you guys to go through this process just strictly looking at population because as we've seen right now with these draft maps, the Asian percentage of registered voters did decrease and you had an increase in Latino registered voters,

David Penaloza

which would defeat the purpose of what happened in 2018. So I want to make sure that you guys take that seriously because that is something that we need to protect as we go through this process. Thank you. Yes, thank you.

Council Member Fan.

Thai Viet Phan

I figured I might just clarify that because I think we don't have registered voter by race, race but we have CVAP which is the closest citizen of voting age. So I guess my the clarification then is citizen of voting age population doesn't actually mean citizen it just means a person 18 or older. So it's just that. Correct, correct.

So we would if we were drawing a 50% plus district the CVAP would be the data we would utilize. So one of the, in the drafts that I'm hearing, vetoing BNC. So we'll have a kind of what we call a stone or a theme. We'll be looking to create the, at least one 50% plus agency VAP and any new drafts moving forward. I will work with Daisy and staff to review the neighborhood file. And I wanna work with her too, cause there's a lot of neighborhoods you all noted and I'm not as familiar with them. So we heard the park neighborhood to the north and to the south as well.

And then also I think some deliverables will work on getting those district or data packets to you before the 6th. So we try to update those as quick as we can. So I think on the day of the 6th, I think we'll work with Daisy too, if there will be a cutoff of maybe December 3rd or before. so you may not get all of the district or maps that are submitted on that day, because it does take a little bit of time. We will work on getting you something called a community of interest report, where we'll do themes of all the district or maps that have been submitted, and then also incorporating the themes

from the verbal comments and the placemats. So that'll be more of a summary document for you all to look at. So I think that'll be really helpful in this discussion as well. And then what was the other one? And then we'll again work with your GIS team to see if we can get those additional layers of income, a single family home, schools and other amenities and parks. And again, I think for the visual aspect, working with your GIS team might be the best route because we kind of what we've presented is the way that we'll present all of our maps and the place map, but we do understand that.

I think your GIS staff and team may be able to have or create something where it's a little bit more user-friendly. So I think those are kind of the touchstones that we'll work with your team on.

Thai Viet Phan

Thank you. I also do want to clarify, though, and being realistic up here, I don't think, unless you're going to have the weirdest-looking salamander-dragon, you know, old-school gerrymandering map, you're not going to get a 50-plus-1 Asian voting age population map. but part of the settlement was that it be a plurality of the voting age population. So I just again don't want any weird-looking gerrymandered

Thank you. Thank you. Exactly. So I think Seeing and hearing no other comments. I think that I think we already closed the public hearing is that correct? So we'll go ahead and I guess adjourn this meeting and we will be We will be having a meeting tomorrow, a regular meeting starting at 5 p.m. with closed session. So with that, we are adjourned.

Thank you.