Read the December 7 meeting.

Mayor Poisson, Mayor Poisson, Vincianosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanosanos

for the record and let me go ahead and just make some opening remarks. I hope all of you are well. We had a meeting yesterday so I want to wish everybody, hopefully everybody had a good Thanksgiving break and for those of you who are wearing masks, thank you for that. We know that it's still dangerous out there. We can't mandate anybody to wear those inside but to the extent that everybody is trying to keep safe, we certainly appreciate you doing that. Let me go ahead and just say this meeting is taking place with in-person attendance and by teleconference

via Zoom. The public can access the meeting via the Santa Ana YouTube channel or the city's website. And as we just noted, please bear with us as the technology may interrupt the flow of the meeting. And I'm going to turn it over to the clerk so she can call roll.

Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Becerra?

Here.

Councilmember Hernandez? Here. Councilmember Lopez? Present. Councilmember Mendoza? Here.

Councilmember Fan? Here. Mayor Puebla-Penpeñalosa? Here. And Mayor Sarmiento? Here. And before we proceed with the Pledge of Allegiance, let me go ahead and turn it back over to the clerk so she can make some remarks as far as recording and being able to connect with the meeting today.

Thank you, Mayor. To request to speak on any agenda or non-agenda items within the city's jurisdiction with the exception of public hearing item 35, 36, and 37, please dial star nine from your phone or click on the button labeled raise hand from Zoom at this time. For public hearing items 35, 36, and 37 only, please hold your comments until the mayor opens the public hearing. 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. I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Mayor Pro Temp so he can lead us in the pledge. And if you'll all please remain standing after that for the invocation by Pastor Guillermo Gonzalez.

David Penaloza

Thank you, Mayor. If you could all join me and rise and face our flag. And place your right hand over your heart and follow along with me, please. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Good evening. My name is Guillermo Gonzalez, and I'm the lead pastor of Mariners Church in Santa Ana. Mariners Church is grateful for a city like Santa Ana because we both want to see the city not just exist, but also thrive. And I want to thank our mayor, this assembled council, and everyone joining us today. It is an honor for me to be here today. At this moment, I would like to pray for this meeting, our leaders, and this beautiful city. Let's pray together. Dear, wise, and loving God, I first want to say thank you on behalf of all who are gathered here today. Thank you for your many and abundant blessings.

Thank you for life itself, for the measure of health we need to fulfill our callings, for sustenance and for friendship. Thank you for the ability and the privilege of being involved in useful work and for the honor of bearing appropriate responsibilities. Thanks as well for the freedom to embrace you or the freedom to reject you. Thank you for loving us even so from your boundless and gracious nature. Lord, you have taught us that as citizens we ought to obey the governing authorities since you established those very authorities to promote peace and order and justice.

Therefore, I pray for our mayor and for the various levels of city officials and in particular for this assembled council. I am asking that you would graciously grant them wisdom to govern amid the conflicting interests and issues of our times. That you will grant them a sense of welfare and true needs for our people. That you will grant them a keen thirst for justice and rightness, confidence in what is good and fitting. that you will grant them the ability to work together in harmony, even when there is honest disagreement, and also that you will grant them personal peace in their lives and joy in their task.

And I pray for the agenda today set before them. Please give an assurance of what would please you and what would benefit those who live and work in and around our beloved city of Santa Ana. It is in your most blessed name that I pray. Amen.

Thank you, Pastor. If I could have Alondra Diaz come up and join me here in front. Yeah, let's give her a big round of applause as she's walking up.

So, you know, I haven't done a ceremonial presentation in a while, so I'm glad that I'm kicking it off with you. Alondra and I haven't had the pleasure of meeting each other, but her story was shared with me, and I just said, you know, we've got to share it with the rest of the city and everybody here, because it's a really compelling story, and it's a special story, and it's a Santa Ana story. So Alondra is one of the teacher of the year for the state of California. So that is a big deal and she is from Santana, she is a product of the San Ana School District and a product of the city. So let's give her a big round of applause.

I don't know how many teachers there are in the state but there's probably thousands and hundreds of thousands. 300,000. All right I'm glad you have your stats ready. There's a reason why she was a teacher of the year for the for the state. So it is probably an extremely competitive process I would imagine but to be recognized and to be honored with that is no small is no small feat. So you know especially because she is from our city we wanted to make sure that we honored her accomplishment but there's more to come. So let me tell you a little

bit more about Alondra as she's up here. As I said, she's a Santa Ana native born and raised in Santa Ana and attended Santa Ana Unified School District Schools. So despite facing childhood trauma inflicted by poverty and violence, Alondra became the first in her family to attend college. She graduated from Santa Ana College and Chapman University with a BA in Peace Studies and a Master's in Education. She's been serving as a bilingual educator for 15 years and taught in Santa Ana and Orange County Elementary Orange County Elementary of the Arts for 10 of those years

she is currently a third grade general education teacher and dual immersion teacher at Ralph A Gates Elementary in Saddleback Valley Unified School District she was recently one of five that was named 2022 California Teacher of the Year these educators are ambassadors for the profession and serve as representatives of the state for the calendar year. There's more to come. In addition, Alondra was nominated as California's representative for the National Teacher of the Year competition.

Thank you.

So we're going to make you blush, right? Because you're already starting. So we're getting there. There's more. She will compete against other state nominees, and one will be announced at the 2022 will be announced as the 2022 National Teacher of the Year in the spring. Congratulations, Alondra. You're an example to so many and despite the you know the background and the struggles that all of us you know who are from Santa Ana and and raised in Santa Ana understand we know you've overcome so much and you've accomplished so much.

You've made the community of Santa Ana proud, but I think on behalf of all the kids that you've taught and your neighbors here in Santa Ana, we're so proud to know that one of us is excelling and going far and representing us and showing what our community has to offer. because sometimes, you know, being from Santa Ana, people always say, you know, hey, you know, this stigma or that criticism or something. You know, it's great to have somebody who is going to be representing us with integrity, with excellence, and knowing that she has a community behind her that loves her and supports her

and is going to be rooting for you in the spring. And I think, you know, I think she's going to be National Teacher of the Year.

So I'm predicting it here, all right?

You heard it here.

So before I give you this recognition, extend it to you, I want to give a shout out to one of our employees who's a good friend of Alondra's and a good friend of ours. Many of you in the downtown know her. Julie Castro Cárdenas, who works so closely with us, you know, shared Alondra's story with me and just said, you know, look, share it with everybody else. Because sometimes we don't. This is a problem with us in Santa Ana. we don't tell our stories well right there's so many good things happening and sometimes we just don't share them and this is one that we have to share

because there's so many more so hopefully there's more to come I don't let me go ahead and you know give you this well I guess you already have it so here let me go ahead and hand it to you again but listen I'd like you to go ahead and share a few words with us let us know how you feel let us know a little bit about your story and tell us how you're gonna become national teacher

of the year next year the floor is yours thank you so much I am incredibly honored to receive this on behalf of the many teachers who are dedicated to provide equitable education for all students for all students all means all students and I just want to thank the many teachers who believed in me even when I didn't, and that I can now join the teachers who believe in students every single day. And what I want to do is I want to invite teachers to continue to do hard work in the classroom

to provide equity for all students. And for that, we need to retain and recruit teachers of color. We need to continue to do that so that students can see themselves in the classroom. And I want to make sure that I am a good role model not only as a product of Santa Ana Unified School District here but also one who overcomes barriers who is resilient who honors their family and the values and I want to make sure that I do that in the classroom and I invite all teachers to honor the families of these students who come with so much with so many strengths and who every

every child has everything everything to be amazing and to be successful and to thrive we just need to be there and tap into that potential and it starts with getting to know their names and their stories and then inviting them into the classroom so I want to thank everybody who has supported me along the way and my family my mom who worked two jobs who was a single parent of four who never showed up to a classroom at none of the conferences yet she cared yet she

wanted me to thrive we need to change the narrative of these families because every parent wants their child to thrive and so I want to remind everyone in these positions as educators and anybody in education that you hold such an important role you can and you will make a difference no matter how challenging days are for us and education we are making a difference and so I thank you and on behalf of all the teachers and also I represent students who are often

marginalized. In honor of them I will continue to pursue equitable and equitable education and equal opportunities for students. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

She's got my vote, so I think she's going to make it. Thank you for that, Alondra. And thank you to Team Diaz. Look, she's got a rooting section with her. So let me go ahead and call up Council Member Hernandez who's going to be making a recognition, a proclamation actually presented to Joe Andrade, dedicating Josephine Chepa Andrade.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

All right. We have an amazing proclamation that we're making today. and a very large family of 35. So if we can just get a couple of the immediate family up here, I think that would be helpful. And then at the end of this, if the family's okay with it, do you mind if we meet outside for a picture? Awesome. I don't know. There's a large amount of Chepa family here, so we'll meet outside for a picture. Sound good? All right.

All right. Hi.

All right.

Good, good. Okay.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

All right. Well, thank you, everybody, for being here with us today. Today, December 7th, we are making a historic proclamation in the city of Santa Ana. today we are declaring December 16th Josephine Chepa Andrade Day.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

Now Josephine Chepa Andrade was born on December 16th 1926 and resided on Logan Street until she passed away on April 17 2006. Chepa's family moved to the Logan neighborhood before she was born in 1918. At the young age of eight, Chepa began to contribute to her community by going door to door, collecting money to help a neighborhood family. Chepa married a neighborhood boy named Joe Andrade, you're a junior of him, whose family also resided on Logan Street since 1916. Together they raised six children and taught them to

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

be proud of their family and to value community engagement. Chepa became a community activist and was known for gathering signatures for petitions and persuading and encouraging neighbors to attend council meetings to advocate for improvements in their neighborhood. Something that I'm proud to have learned from you guys as the Logan leaders is is the term Los Pelioneros. All right the fighters and that was something that that was of a title of remembrance to Chepa. Chepa received countless recognitions and awards for her community involvement, including the Poverty Fighter Hero Award and the Joan of Arc Award.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

On August 26, 2006, the Logan Neighborhood Association discussed the renaming of Logan's Park to Chepa's Park and submitted a formal request on March 17, 2007 to the Parks and Recreation Community Services Agency. On May 14, 2007, the Planning Commission unanimously approved the renaming of Logan's Park to Chepa Park and recommended a plaque be installed to reflect Chepa's accomplishments. Today we the mayor and Council of the City of Santa Ana do hereby recognize December 16th as Josephine Chepa Andrade Day and call upon public officials, educators,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

businesses, communities, volunteers and all the people of Santa Ana to honor the Lake Chepa for dedicating all her talent all her resources and all her energy to the beloved city of Santa Ana. It is an honor to present Joe Andrade and his family with this proclamation. We'd like to thank them for being here today as we celebrate their beloved matriarch Josephine Chepa Andrade. Chepa was and always will be an inspiration to her family to her community and her legacy will live on forever in Santa Ana. Thank you.

my name is Sam Romero it's not Andrade what happened and many many many years ago there was a move by the that time the city council they had bought three lots okay those three last nobody ever worried about it until they found out that Civic Center Drive was gonna go through the neighborhood and split it in half okay my mother gave me a call I was living in southwest San Adam by the way I was adopted by the family okay before I continue so I went down to my mom go see Chepa she knows

everything so I go to Chepa now Chepa was a person that was a go-to anybody in neighborhood needed anything that go to Chepa. Everybody knew her. She lived in Logan, we lived on Lincoln Street. So anyway, I found out that Chepa had worked with a man by the name of Bob Johnson that passed away about eight, nine months ago, that helped her how to fight City Hall, and she won. Now what do we do with those three lots that was in Logan? Chepa took it upon herself to start raking and cleaning that empty lots those three lots of course the city had no choice then to create a park

and it was though it was called logan park okay but as a as a neighborhood continued to fight for survival since many many years ago i think in 1923 according to la times and 1923 they zoned the logan m2 which was kind of like a death warrant to the neighborhood okay so chepa and there was another guy by the name of Mike Andrade, which was no relationship, and Helen Moraga for a little while, and myself, started making a move to change the zone,

to residential, to save what we could. And her job of getting all those people into this chambers was great. We were being coached by Jesuit priests, Catholic priests were brought down to show us how to fight for ourselves, which we did. We learned a lot, we went through, we saved what we could of Logan. When I was a boy, my dad by the way came into Logan 1912. And when I was a kid, the neighborhood consisted about roughly, I would say 95% residential. The freeway took some houses.

Santa Ana later took Santa Boulevard, took some more houses. Right now we've got about 67% of what we originally had. We were successful in changing the zone. A lot of it you have to give credit to Chepa because she was able to bring the people into this place. At one time there was tactics used against us. and pretty soon we found ourselves at City Hall at 2 o'clock in the morning. So Jesuits showed us how we could do that. We had families in here with babies. They brought in their bottles and fed their children here in this hall.

We had to do stuff like that or everybody would be kicked out of the neighborhood. And again, you've got to give the thanks a lot to Chepa Andrade. She was able to convince everyone to show up here. that's why it's a great honor as far as we're concerned and another family and all the neighborhood folks everybody is real happy what's happened here today and I want to thank the present council they have seen what we had seen way back okay so I applaud you guys for moving forward and make our neighborhood a better neighborhood so let's give these guys a little hand

And again thank you for showing up here tonight okay anything else Joe.

I'll make it short and sweet you know her legacy lives on and not only you know through her heart but with her family we still I'm second generation I still reside in that neighborhood and there's her heart her belief still lives on and you know we thank you guys for this opportunity and this great um uh legacy that will continue throughout many many years thank you

thank you mom we'll keep fighting

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

make some noise for them please congratulations guys thank you

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

So since we have a large family here, we're going to take a picture here and then we'll take a picture out in the back.

Thanks, everybody. Thank you, Councilmember. It's a great day. It's a great day. Let me go ahead and move it along to staff presentations. I know we're going to begin with COVID-19 update, then we're going to have a presentation by the Orange County Transportation Authority to give us an update. So we'll go ahead and start with staff on the COVID-19 update.

Yes, they brought the whole familia.

Okay. Sorry, sir. So good evening, honorable mayor, mayor pro tem, and members of council. For tonight's COVID update, I want to talk about the status of vaccine mandates and our collaborative efforts with our labor groups on this topic, and then share some results of an employee vaccine survey with all of you. So our human resources team has had preliminary discussions with the city's bargaining groups regarding the requirement of vaccinations. However, we have not implemented any vaccine requirements and or testing yet.

Some of the reasons why we haven't done so is because of current litigation at the federal level relating to vaccine and testing requirements by employers. So to update you on this, I want to talk about those mandates and where they stand. So the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's vaccine or test rule would have required that employers with 100 or more employees determine which of their workers are vaccinated and which are not and enforce a mask mandate for unvaccinated employees beginning yesterday, December 6th. Additionally, this rule would have implemented a requirement that all employees

either be vaccinated or get tested weekly beginning January 4th. However, a U.S. appeals court upheld a lower court's decision to issue a stay on the rule, meaning to stop or suspend its implementation. The appeals court cited grave statutory and constitutional issues with the mandate. Additionally, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services rule requiring most healthcare workers to be vaccinated by January 4th with no option for testing has also been halted by the federal courts. And just this morning, a federal judge in Georgia blocked the Biden administration's vaccine mandates for federal contractors nationwide.

We will continue to track this matter and share updates with you as we attempt to address vaccine mandates in our employee population. In the meantime, I want to share with you the summary results of a survey that we conducted when we asked our employees to self-report their vaccine status. So in agreement with the city's bargaining groups, the Human Resources shared a quick survey to all city employees to ask them to self-report their vaccination status. Specifically, employees were asked to self-report whether they were fully vaccinated, which means two doses of Pfizer or Moderna, or one dose of Johnson & Johnson.

And for those that weren't fully vaccinated, if they had planned to receive their second dose to be fully vaccinated. There were 769 employees that responded across all bargaining groups. The vaccination levels vary across the bargaining groups, with levels as low as 65% and as high as 100%. And you can see on the slide broken down by bargaining group that we have some very high vaccination rates. When you extrapolate these results to the entire city population, it is estimated that 82% of our city employees are vaccinated. So significantly higher than the vaccination rate in our very own state of California.

Ongoing, the human resources team is managing a COVID-19 prevention program. And this complies with all of the OSHA rules, and it's aimed at providing employees with a healthy and safe workplace. The comprehensive program includes elements such as developing a system for communicating quickly with employees regarding potential exposure, the use of face coverings and personal protective equipment, employee training, and more. The COVID-19 prevention program is prominently posted on the homepage of our intranet, and that is our website specifically for our employee population. That is my brief update for tonight's presentation.

And as always, if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer.

Thank you for that update. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the council if there's any questions or comments from members of the council. Nothing. You know what? Go ahead. Councilmember Phan, did you have a question?

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

Yes, I do have a question.

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

Madam City Manager. So a lot of I've been getting a lot of questions about testing because the federal government is allowing reimbursement with insurance. But do we have any locations in the city that has rapid tests that are available either for free or for low cost?

We have we have multiple locations in the city that offer testing and we do include that information on our city's website.

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

Okay, so I'll direct people to the link.

through our COVID page and they'll find it there.

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

Thank you so much.

Great. Thank you for that question. The only other thing I was going to add is if next time we do an update, because we do it every other meeting, we get an update on which neighborhoods or which census tracts, I guess, have lower or which zip codes have lower testing or vaccine rates. And I know some of them are performing really high. Some of them are not doing as well. and to the extent maybe we can take some resources there. We've done it before, and we should be able to do it again to get ours at least to the state average, because I know some of those zip codes in the city are still hovering right around 50 or 60.

So we certainly want to improve on that. So I think that's all I had. Let me go ahead and move along to the next item, and that is an update from the OCTA, the Orange County Transportation Authority, And if somebody is here on their behalf to go ahead and give us a presentation.

Thank you, Mayor. We actually are joined by two representatives from OCTA, Ryan Maloney and Teresa Olivera. So I will turn it over for them. Right there, the mic is on. And we can advance your slide for you.

Good evening, Council Mayor. My name is Teresa Olivera, and I'm joined by Ryan Maloney. We're members of staff from the Orange County Transportation Authority External Affairs Team.

Teresa, maybe pull the mic a little closer. There you go.

It's our pleasure this evening to provide some general information about OCTA's programs and services as well as an update on the status of several projects. Next slide, please.

First we'll just provide a very quick overview of OCTA. OCTA is the county's regional transportation planning agency, which means that we fund, plan, and build Orange County's transportation system. We do everything from operating transit to delivering freeway and street improvements to managing our half-cent sales tax information for transportation improvements, all while doing our part to protect the environment. Next slide, please. OCGO, also known as Measure M, is a vital funding component in advancing the projects that improve and maintain Orange County's transportation network.

The first Measure M delivered more than $4 billion worth of transportation improvements and was renewed by voters in 2006. Our current Measure M is a balanced plan and is expected to generate approximately $13.2 billion investment through 2041. Next slide please. This is my favorite project that OCTA does. I'm the outreach manager for the streetcar. The OC streetcar will be Orange County's first modern electric streetcar running down a four-mile route through your city's thriving downtown to a new transit stop at Harbor Boulevard and in Garden Grove. The streetcar will provide a

convenient connection between Metrolink trains and other transportation modes at the Santa Ana Regional Transportation Center, an important employment restaurant and retail centers in Santa Ana and Garden Grove and the surrounding areas. The streetcar will also directly connect with more than a dozen of OCTA's busiest routes along the way. It will provide benefit to the communities near the route by providing a high frequency transit and improved connectivity, allowing residents easier access to destinations throughout Orange County and beyond. The streetcar

will also provide cleaner air and reduce congestion. Significant progress has been made on construction of the project, including utility platform and track work. And we understand that heavy construction is never a good neighbor. We're doing our best to move as quickly as possible with a minimal amount of disruption to residents and businesses. We also have a program called Eat Shop Play to help promote businesses along the streetcar route, and we appreciate the patience and partnership of those businesses. And in my role as the outreach manager for the project, I work closely with the public works staff,

Julie Castro Cardenas and the members of the leadership of the business community represented by Downtown Inc in the Santa Ana Business Council and we look forward to streetcar operations testing and operations beginning in 2023. Next slide please. The I-5 central county improvements project was recently completed and OCTA appreciated the city's partnership throughout the construction. The project added a second carpool lane in each direction of I-5 between SR55 and SR57. It also removed the concrete barriers between the carpool and regular lanes in several locations

and re-striped the carpool lanes for continuous access, which allows drivers to move freely between all lanes. Proud that we were able to complete the project several months ahead of schedule, in part due to the decreased traffic early on in the pandemic. On the next slide, we'll be talking about another freeway construction project starting soon, the SR55 in Santa Ana. And we are committed to continuing our strong public outreach efforts to keep the community informed throughout construction of that project as well. Next slide.

The SR55 improvement project will add a regular lane and a carpool lane in each direction between the I-5 near Santa Ana and Tustin and the I-405 in Irvine. in Costa Mesa. It will also add a merge lane to help traffic smoothly enter and exit the freeway. The improvements will increase access to job centers, health care, and educational facilities, South Coast Plaza, John Wayne Airport, among other destinations for the region. More than 260,000 vehicles use this stretch of the 55 freeway every day, and that number is expected to grow to nearly 275,000 vehicles by 2040.

The project is estimated to cost $475 million. Late last year, the California Transportation Commission awarded OCTA $140 million in SB1 funding to help build the project, with additional funds coming from our own Measure M, along with other state and federal funding. The construction on this project is anticipated to begin next year, and improvements are estimated to be finished in 2026. Next slide, please. In May, the OCTA board awarded $28.7 million to cities to improve Orange County streets. These improvements are funded through Measure M on a competitive basis and include projects to widen streets and intersections

and synchronized traffic signals. Santa Ana received funding for two projects, more than $5.6 million to make improvements to Fairview between 9th and 16th Street and more than $9 million to improve Warner Avenue between Oak and Grand Avenue. Santa Ana also received approximately $3.1 million to synchronize traffic signals along First Street and Bolsa Avenue. And approximately $32 million was available for street and intersection improvements to help reduce congestion with the recent call for projects. In addition to this Measure M funding, we have pavement management funding, which is available to all cities in Orange County.

This program provides more than $10.9 million to local agencies for local streets and roads rehabilitation and maintenance projects. Funding will be distributed through a formula based on population with a $200,000 minimum guarantee and Santa Ana will receive $972,882 and there is no local match required for this program. Next slide please. Next just to highlight a couple of OCT's efforts to make it easier and safer to walk, bite, skate or use another form of active transportation around the City of Santa Ana. The Safe Travels

Education Program or STEP is a partnership between OCTA and the Orange County Health Care Agency to deliver safe routes to school activities at elementary schools throughout Orange County. The goal of STEP is to encourage families to walk, roll, or bike to school and around their communities as a safe and normal part of their everyday lives. STEP is funded by Caltrans and we received a $500,000 grant that will allow us to serve 25 elementary schools and disadvantaged communities including seven in Santa Ana. P.O.P.E.CO, Heroes, New Hope, Martin Luther King Jr., Montavista, Carver, and McFadden Institute of Technology.

And OCT also recently received a $300,000 grant from the Southern California Association of Governments for bus stop safety and accessibility study. The grant will allow OCT to evaluate a quarter-mile area surrounding Orange County bus stops with the highest ridership and develop a set of recommendations for pedestrian accessibility and improvements. and the majority of those bus stops are located here in Santa Ana and in addition OCTA was also awarded a three million dollar grant from the California Transportation Commission to complete an environmental assessment and

preliminary design phase of the Garden Grove Santa Ana rails to trails gap closure this will support a possible funding construction possible future construction of an approximately four mile trail along the OCTA owned Pacific electric right-of-way between rate street and santa ana and euclid street and garden grove this potential multi-use path would connect downtown santa ana to downtown garden grove provide a connection to the santa ana river trail and be part of the 66 mile county-wide oc loop bicycle trail next slide please um also oct is working on updating our 2022 long

range transportation plan. We update this plan every four years to ensure transportation projects and services accommodate continued population and growth and job growth in Orange County. The plan acts as local input for the regional transportation plan and sustainable community strategy developed by the Southern California Association of Governments. To address future transportation needs, the long-range plan reflects OCTA policies and commitments, transportation study findings and input from local jurisdictions business and community leaders residents and transportation professionals and

since our last update in 2018 a lot has changed obviously kovat kovat has had a tremendous impact and social equity continues to receive renewed nationwide focus in addition California's enhancing its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and these themes and more will be addressed in our upcoming plan the The public engagement process for the long-range transportation plan is ongoing, and we expect a draft of the plan to be ready next summer, with the final being released in the fall of 2022. Now, it's my pleasure to turn the presentation over to Ryan to discuss several marketing programs. Ryan Duffy Good evening.

Next slide, please. I'll start with OCTA's College Pass program, which has been a successful way to introduce new riders to public transit and allowed access to higher education for students, some of whom have said they won't be able to attend without this program. The program currently gives close to 200,000 students at nearly all of Orange County's community colleges free access to OC bus system as part of their student registration. The program began at Santa Ana College and the School of Continuing Education of Rancho Santiago Community College District in 2017 and was later expanded to Santiago

Canyon College, Golden West, Fullerton, Saddleback, and Cypress Colleges. Irvine Valley College joined the program when school resumed in-person instruction this fall and OCTA is continuing to work with continuing the remaining community colleges to join the program in the future. Funding to start this program in each school comes in part from the low-carbon transit operations program through the California Climate Investments, a statewide initiative that puts billions of cap and trade dollars to work, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening the

economy, improving public health and the environment, particularly in disadvantaged communities. Next slide, please.

In closing, I wanted to highlight a fantastic program we launched in September. OCTA's Youth Ride Free Pass allows youth 18 and under to ride OC bus for free during a six-month promotional period starting september 1st and going through february 2022 funding for this program was also provided by california climate investments when we first started developing this program it was proposed as a discounted age-based fair program specifically for ages 13 and under in presenting the program plan to the octa board of directors we did receive some interest and i want to note the feedback from our honorable mayor here to include high

school age students and thankfully caltrans and the california air resources board agreed with that modification so the resulting program includes ages 18 and under and is a great way for all youth to ride to school work and play and is particularly valuable for high schoolers to help them access education and jobs as they enter the workforce next slide please so we're about three months into this program i'll come to the results in just a moment here we are distributing the passes and marketing information in partnership with Orange County Schools, which is why you'll

see a lot of information about Santa Ana schools here. So to implement this program, OCTA provides the physical youth ride free passes along with program instructions and parental request forms in multiple languages to each school. The school's responsibility is to help share information about the program and distribute the parental request forms to students and to parents. When a completed form is returned to the school, they can immediately provide a pass to the student. Youth Ride Free passes are also available by parental request from octa.net slash youthridefree, our website, or for walk-in requests at the OCTA store.

In addition to partnership with K-12 schools, OCTA has been sharing information about the program with email blasts, social media posts, and multilingual onboard information and service change materials. I mentioned the multiple languages before about the parental request form. We've created versions in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean, and Mandarin, and most of our materials are available in at least three languages including the online request form. As you can see here, this is a result of essentially the first three months of this six-month promotional program.

You can see on a weekly basis we've shown continued boardings of youth using the PASS, which is again connected to the number of participating schools and the number of unique youth that are using the PASS program. As of mid-September, all of Orange County's public school districts were participating in the Youth Ride Free Program. AND YOU CAN SEE THIS CONTINUING GROWTH ON A WEEKLY BASIS HERE FOR SANTA ANA SCHOOLS SPECIFICALLY. I WILL NOTE THAT WE SAW A GENERAL INCREASE ON A WEEKLY BASIS RIGHT UP UNTIL THE WEEK OF THE LAST WEEK OF NOVEMBER WHICH OF COURSE WAS THANKSGIVING SO THERE WAS SOME HOLIDAY IMPACT THERE.

I'M HAPPY TO REPORT THAT AFTER WE WENT TO PRESS ON THIS SLIDE THE NEXT WEEK WENT BACK UP TO 21,000 BOARDINGS. SO ALL TOLD THROUGH DECEMBER 4TH THERE HAVE BEEN OVER 227,000 BOARDINGS FROM SANTA ANA youth, that is students that are affiliated with Santa Ana schools using this youth ride-free program. If you refer to the chart, the pie chart in the upper right there, you can see a breakdown of boardings by school level. In addition to elementary, middle, and high schools, the individual category represents individual requests or combined grade schools that didn't fit into the high, elementary, or middle school categories.

But as you noted, there's been significant interest from high school age students using this program. that it comprised nearly 70% of the overall boardings in the Santa Ana area.

In the lower area chart, you can see the number of Santa Ana schools that were reporting participating students. Those are the green bars. That rose to an average of over 60 schools. Again, you can see on a weekly basis there. That red line is the number of unique youth riders on a weekly basis. Again, toward the last few months, WE'VE SEEN AN AVERAGE OF OVER 3,000 UNIQUE RIDERS ON A WEEKLY BASIS AND MORE THAN 6,000 UNIQUE YOUTH RIDERS TO DATE. THE OVERALL PROGRAM THAT IS THROUGH OVERALL THROUGH ORANGE COUNTY AS OF SATURDAY DECEMBER 4TH WE'VE HAD A TOTAL OF 441,000 BOARDINGS

WITH MORE THAN 15,000 UNIQUE YOUTH RIDERS. AFTER THE PROMOTIONAL PERIOD ENDS IN FEBRUARY 2022, OCT will evaluate ridership and costs and for potential next steps. So again, I do want to mention again our website is octa.net slash youthridefree for anyone that wants more information about the program or might be interested in applying for it. So that concludes our presentation and we'd be happy to answer any questions.

Mayor Redekopoulos- Great. Thank you, Teresa. And thank you, Ryan, for that presentation. There's certainly a lot of information, a lot of really good information. So we wanted to make sure that you came and shared that with members of the public so they could understand what's happening at the Transportation Authority and how closely we work with you. Both agencies are closely connected for many, many different projects, but I think none more important right now than the streetcar that we know is going, the construction is right along 4th Street, right along Santa Ana Boulevard. And so there are impacts.

We certainly appreciate you working with our merchants, with our residents there. But this program of 18 and under writing free, complemented by the college pass, I think is really exciting because what we saw and I think what was most compelling to us is that many students don't have a fixed schedule, right? Some have to stay after school. Some have to go directly to work afterwards. And transportation is a real burden and obstacle. So, you know, this helps them because it's not just an intra-city pass. This is a county-wide pass. So if somebody has to go outside the city to work or be with, you know, a friend or anything else,

this is something that they can use. And obviously for our college students, this is great. The numbers look great. I think hopefully this promote, because it is a promotional program, it sunsets in February, as you said, to the extent that we're really successful. And I think the numbers are strong. you know hopefully my goal is to you know make sure that we extend it and we embrace it and becomes part of the you know just part of the services that the that OCTA provides it also introduces just public transportation to young people right and I think for many people once you see how efficient the system

could be look you don't need a car and you know you you stop using that you become a writer and you realize you can access anywhere in the in the county that you need. You know the last thing I'll say before I you know extend it and have members of the council go ahead and make comments and questions is that you know we know Santa Ana has such high ridership on the on our bus system on our sort of rubber tire system that you know our residents and families really do use the system and believe in the system and I know COVID was really difficult on everybody because that was sometimes their only way to get to and from work

and so I know that you all did so much to make sure that the buses and everything was as safe and experienced for everybody as possible. We know that we're still recovering from that because we lost so many riders as a result, right, because people were staying home, they're working virtually, and some haven't returned to the system. But to the extent that we are making strides to get everybody back on our system and introduce the system to many others who haven't used it, I think is a good thing. Final thing is on the infrastructure bill that was passed by the administration,

I think what sort of our responsibility is is to work closely and identify projects that we will compete well on because our demography really lends itself to competing well for those infrastructure dollars, both at the transportation agency level but also at the city level. So our public works director, I know, is creating a list of projects that we can work together on. There's so many, and I always say we apologize to our residents for a lot of the detours and cones and construction and the bumpy roads, but it is progress.

Many communities don't have these dollars or construction or projects going on because they don't compete as well as we do. And so to the extent that we will have a city that's going to have much smoother roads, many options and alternatives available to everybody, and more importantly, safer streets for everybody. That's really the goal of what we're trying to accomplish here. So enough said from me. Let me go ahead and bring it back to other members of the council to see if they have any questions or comments.

Mayor Pro Tem.

David PenalozaItem 4

Thank you, Mayor Salminto. And thank you, OCTA staff, for the update. I do want to say that I appreciate you guys working with our downtown merchants to accommodate for the holiday shopping throughout the next month in downtown and the streetcar construction. So the only question I had is, has the streetcar construction stopped completely for a period, or is it just that portion of downtown?

There's work on every segment. The project is broken up into five segments. We're working everywhere except 4th Street. So right out here in front of your city hall at the intersection of Parton Street, there's a lot of work going on to install the duct bank electrical system. Right in your parking lot adjacent to Santa Ana Boulevard, there will be a traction power substation installed. So Aldridge Electric is busy, as I said before, running that duct work. where Lane Track is just recently pulled right in front of right on Santa Ana Boulevard and then

I think the next we're going to have a meeting tomorrow to see where's the next kind of location that we move to Ross Street intersection is coming up as well as a shift in segment two which is Santa Ana Boulevard between Bristol and Parton right now all of the traffic is shifted over to the south side so that they could get the work install the track on the north side we need to flip that now and we're going to have a meeting to discuss that tomorrow to see what the timing is for that and then we'll be in fourth street shortly after the new year begins okay so I just wanted to

David PenalozaItem 4

make sure that the contractor hasn't stopped working in the entire stretch of the four mile track because I was thinking you know I hope that's not the case I hope it's just a downtown merchant area where where construction has stopped just because I'm I'm very frustrated with the the you know the delays we're seeing the construction our residents are extremely frustrating with the with the construction and how long it's taking not only that the the quality of the construction you know I'm not a street guy or anything but you know when you're driving around and and

David PenalozaItem 4

you even though these these patches and and and and intersections or it were temporary work is temporary while we do the permanent or OCTA does a permanent fixture it's still even if it's a week or a day it shouldn't be left you know with a one two inch dip where cars driving I mean I have to deal with that I mean it should be flushed as flushed as it can be for our riders and our community to really not have to be inconvenienced by the construction so So whatever you guys could do on that end with your contractor, I just appreciate it.

David PenalozaItem 4

You know, I know the greater Santa Ana community will appreciate it because it has been a long time. And I feel like we're just seeing delay and delay. And I don't, you know, it's frustrating. But I appreciate the update. And I'm just hoping that we could find a way where we could really just improve the timeline on this for our Santa Ana residents.

We are really looking for every opportunity to advance work, and the city's been great working with us in order to compress phases of the project so that we can do multiple things at the same time. And I appreciate the fact that it's frustrating. We have to go into the same intersection multiple times for multiple utility work and, again, to set up the signaling. It's a very complicated system. So we're doing our best, and we appreciate all the feedback that we get from your city staff to bring areas of particular challenges to our attention and we'll continue to work forward and

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

do as best we can thank you councilmember fan thank you so I lived actually in West LA when the expo line was put in and when the Santa when it was extended to Santa Monica so I'm very very familiar with how difficult it is to put on grade metro one of the things I am concerned about is you know, we are obviously the counties investing all this money. I hope that, well, do you know if the streetcar will have the right of way or is it going to be, you know, just...

So all of the right, the streetcar is broken up into, it's a 4.15 mile route. Approximately half of it, so about two miles is street running, which means the streetcar will run in the same lane as people, as the travel, will be in the travel lane. So basically what you see right now down by between rate and Bristol is what it will look like all over Santa Ana You drive right over the tracks and when the system is in operation you'll be it's similar to going behind a bus except you'll be going behind a train and When you get to the station the dwell time what we call the time at the station is much less than it would be

When you're behind a bus because we have level boarding so there aren't the steps to negotiate and all the doors open at the same time So the on and off for that 12 time is less than a minute. And then we own the Pacific Electric right of way that was where the old red line used to travel from LA down into Santa Ana. And so that we just have to negotiate going across for example at Fairview and at Fifth Street which actually is under detour this week because they're laying track across Fifth Street.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

So yeah that's really what I mean when you know hopefully part of public transportation is also the fact that it's convenient and fast, and whenever it has to stop for a red light because there's at an intersection, I think it sort of defeats the purpose of using public transit or one of the benefits of that. So I would love for OCTA to look into that and to hopefully help that whenever there is an intersection that the streetcar does get the right of way. My other question, and it might be for Madam City Manager, and because I didn't get this PowerPoint in advance, I couldn't prep you for the question,

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

but the Safe Travels Education Program, it says that seven elementary schools are enrolled I guess what exactly is it paying for because you know y'all know I'm mad about the crossing guards and the almost seven million dollar contract that we're paying without the school districts help so is any of that funding helping to pay for these crossing guards or what what is the safe travel education the picture shows a crossing guard so that's why I'm asking I don't know does anyone have the answer it says seven elementary schools in San Anna are enrolled in this program for safe traveling for students for routes

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

does this include paying or helping to pay for the seven million dollar cost

for crossing guards that the city is paying for let me ask if he knows up so he is saying no we do not receive any of that type of funding to offset the cost

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

of the crossing guards so if it is duplicate I do know that in the last action we took on this item you know we did ask that staff take a look at any type of intersection that had updates or anything like that if there are duplicates I think maybe you can look at it not saying take an action I'm just saying take a look if there's any duplicate action thank you there is

traffic signal prioritization for the streetcar which means it will hold the streetcar will talk to the signal and will hold a signal so we should be able to get you know better efficiency and throughput through the intersections

it's fantastic thank you thank you for that councilmember Becerra thank you

Phil BacerraItem 4

Mr. Mayor, kind of echo some of the sentiment of my colleagues. I'm excited about the streetcar. I've been excited about the streetcar coming. But in addition to some of the, I just say, less than good quality work that's being done as far as patching up the streets, one of the other things that I've received calls on and have experienced myself are actually just being able to cross as a pedestrian or a bicyclist over some of the track work. Some of it is, I'd say, very less than safe. You've got plywood over certain pieces. I've seen it kind of buckle and bounce. That doesn't seem like a healthy situation.

Phil BacerraItem 4

It seems like something that could be a very liable situation. So that'd be something I'd ask you to go back to your construction staff to make sure that, in addition to the road work, that you also work with your staff to make sure that bicycle and pedestrian crossings are safe over where they can be. I understand you guys are going to have certain places where you just can't have that happen, but there are some where it is just, I mean, it's like a circus, frankly. I mean, just to put it bluntly. I am very excited, though, about the success of the College Pass program. I see Rancho Santiago trustee John Hanna in the audience,

Phil BacerraItem 4

and I know I lobbied the heck out of John back in the day to get SAC on board, So I'm very proud of the fact that SAC was the first school to participate in the program and you know Anything that our mayor can do and anything that you need from this council to encourage more youth to be Riders because especially as we get the streetcar running I think you know Santa Ana has long been the transit center of Orange County from when the red cars were rolling down 4th Street So now we're gonna see a OC streetcar rolling down 4th Street So I'm very excited and thank you again for coming to the council and giving us this update

Great, thank you for that. Councilmember Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 4

A quick comment. Hi, thank you and to the rest of the board and to the mayor for making sure that we have this pilot in place that's going to hopefully elevate the ridership here in the city. And on the streetcar, I, like so many other Santa Ana residents, want to see it be completed sooner rather than later. and to Councilmember Phan's point about public transportation being convenient and efficient, I do think that the city and the OCTA agency in general should be looking at how to make a dedicated bus lane here in the city because as we know a lot of people rely on the bus and with

Jessie LopezItem 4

all the construction in Bristol and the traffic, I think that would be very helpful for the people that rely on the public transportation here. Thank you. Great, thank you for those comments.

Councilmember Mendoza. Yes, thank you for that informative presentation. My question, I have two questions on those temporary patches downtown What is defined as temporary a month two months three months?

So when we first when we first started the project we you know OCT goes in and creates a schedule But when the contractor comes in they really get control of their they have they get control of their own schedule And unfortunately, we had a series of delays. Some of it was things that when, you know, San And is an older city, so we were surprised by some of the things that we discovered when we opened up the area. As I said before, we've had to go in multiple times, and so we do some work. You know, there's been new sewer lines, new gas lines, new electric service lines, all as part of the streetcar,

and every time we have to coordinate with these outside utilities to come in and do the work. In addition to that, there are over 100 foundations that have to be placed for the overhead contact system. And many times we've opened up the hole in order to do the exploratory work, and there are things that are in conflict. Then we have to identify what they are, have services, and they have to get moved. So as I said before, unfortunately, it is a very complicated process, and we've had more delays than we wanted. We had old rail ties that we discovered that hadn't been removed.

There's a very specific way those things have to be removed. We completely redesigned the track bed depth in order to avoid some of these areas in the future. Once we learned where the problem was, we got smarter as we went along. on 4th Street and now in segment 5, which is Mortimer to Santiago, we did what we call a slot trench. So rather than opening up the full track bed like we did in segment 3, where you saw that area where the track bed was opened up for a long period of time, as we were working through those, identifying those conflicts and addressing them,

we did a slot trench so that we could take a look and see what they are without, again, making that bigger intrusion into the roadway. So as we've gone along, we're working more efficiently, and I think the contractor really is starting to have pretty good production now.

That's good to hear. My second question is regarding the Youth Ride for Free program.

Is there a termination date, or does that go on indefinitely?

THE CURRENT YOUTH RIDE FREE PROGRAM STARTED SEPTEMBER 1ST AND WILL GO THROUGH THE END OF FEBRUARY MEANING IT WILL BE VALID THROUGH FEBRUARY 28, 2022. SO ESSENTIALLY A SIX MONTHS PROMOTIONAL TERM.

DOES IT GET RENEWED ONCE YOU LOOK IT OVER AND UPDATE IT? STUDENTS ARE REALLY TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THAT AND IT COMES IN VERY HANDY BECAUSE WE DO HAVE A LOT OF LOW INCOME HOUSEHOLDS. And so this free transportation for them means much less expense for them to be able to afford their college expenses.

I would say we're very pleased with the results of the program. And while I can't, we're currently looking at what the next steps could be for this program. So I think we'll be coming back on that in the future.

Good. Good. Well, I hope it does and it goes on indefinitely. Thank you.

Thank you council member that certainly is the goal so we hope that it becomes just a program in perpetuity But you know what's really exciting is I know that you know the city is going to be working with our friends in Sacramento to seeing how we can receive some funding for Internships for our youth and if we can bundle the internships with these passes then Look we're really doing something special for a lot of youth in the city So with that I appreciate you both giving us an update and giving us a presentation I think the council had some excellent questions for you.

And we should know that this is the first street car in the entire county, right? So we knew, you know, beginning in Santa Ana because it's an older city, and I think as you were mentioning, Teresa, you know, I wasn't on the board when the contractor was selected, but there are things that slowed this down that were sort of beyond anybody's, you know, control. Some of it was unforeseeable. Some of it was foreseeable. but I know that there were things like historical artifacts that were found. I'm going back to sort of, you know, native and indigenous people.

And we certainly want to be respectful of those and make sure that those are treated carefully. So those are, you know, that's just one of the things that caused some delay. But I think now, you know, hopefully there is a much better rate of work that's being done. And so we're encouraged by that because we certainly want to go ahead and have that system available. because the great thing is our city and its residents use and believe in public transportation. And that's something that we want to continue encouraging and supporting. So with that, thank you for that update. We'll talk to you soon for the next update.

Thank you.

Let me go ahead and call on the city attorney to see if there's anything that we have to report at a closed session.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

Mayor, we had two closed session discussions this evening, but we do not have any reportable action.

Great, so that brings us to the public comment section of the meeting and before I begin with my remarks and hand it over to the City Clerk as well for her remarks, let me go ahead and call on Councilmember Pham.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Thank you, Mayor. So this afternoon the City and I received a correspondence from an alleged resident stating that or alleging that I have a conflict of interest calling in my ethical reasoning and my judgment. This was regarding an alleged conflict of interest for the housing opportunity ordinance. I do not believe that I have a conflict of interest. However, out of an abundance of caution, I have asked the City Attorney's Office to seek a formal opinion letter from the FPPC regarding

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

the Housing Opportunity Ordinance. As a result and related thereto, I will move and ask the Council to continue item 9 regarding the Housing Opportunity Ordinance and again out of an abundance of caution, item 37, the General Plan amendment until the city receives a response from the FPPC. Thank you. Thank

you, council members. So let me just look to staff. Should we pull that item now or after public comments? What's the what's the direction of staff on that? My

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

recommendation would be that you pull it if you're not if if there is a support for this request then we would ask that you postpone and hold the official public hearing when you resume action on that item.

So pull it now.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

Pull it now, take action on whether you're going to continue it now.

Okay. So let me go ahead and, you know, appreciate the council members' comments, and maybe what we do is we pull it as we pull the other items and we can go ahead and take action on that then.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

No, my understanding is that the council member is making a request of her colleagues of you as to whether to continue those items. That is the request. So the question for you as the Chair and our colleagues are do you want to, is there a motion to actually do that?

All right. So let me go ahead and bring it back to the Council. I certainly think that it's warranted given the explanation that the Council Member just gave. I will, if that's a motion by the Council Member.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Yes. It would be a motion to continue Item 9. Again, even though we do not believe that there's a conflict of interest given how important this item is, seeking a continuance until we get formal response from the FPPC, I think would be warranted.

Got it. Is there a second?

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

I can second that.

Okay. So we have a motion by Council Member Fan, a second by Council Member Lopez to continue that. I'll bring it back to the councils if there's any questions.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Just for clarity, that's only for item nine.

Only for item nine.

Okay.

Any other questions?

Yeah. And before we continue to proceed, I just want to make sure I make an announcement that YouTube is not working for the Spanish channel. So any member of the public who's trying to find the Spanish translation in YouTube will not find it right now. However, it is being recorded, so it will be available after the meeting.

Got it. All right. Well, let us know if that gets corrected as we go through the meeting as well. So we've got a motion and a second. Okay.

Members of the public, yes, if you can, I'm sorry, members of the council, if you can please provide your cast your vote.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Daisy?

Councilmember Bissette.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Yeah, I don't see an item for abstaining. I'm going to abstain on that one. Thank you.

Okay. Motion passes with Councilmembers Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Fan, Mayor Fulton Peñalosa, and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes, and Councilmember Becerra abstaining.

Great. Thank you. So that passes 6-1 with one abstention. If anybody's here for Item 9, that matter's been continued, so you need not remain. that's the only item you're here for. Let me go ahead and make some comments on the before we start our public comments. This is a time and place for members of the public to address the council on any agendized or non-agendized items and pursuant to the Brown Act. The City Council may not enter in any discussions with you during this public comment section. We will hear from members of the public that are physically present here first and then we'll call on people who

waiting to address the council by phone or virtually. I do want to say that it's a three-minute limit, so please keep your comments limited to that. And we don't want to know your address, but let us know if you're a Santa Ana resident, specifically if you know what ward you reside in, that would be helpful. So I'm going to wait for the comment cards to be given to me so I can call on those of

Phil BacerraItem 1

you who are here before us. Mr. Mayor, just for clarification for item 9, what How does that continue to our next meeting?

From what I understand from the motion, until the advice letter is presented to the council.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Okay. Thank you.

Just for item one. Correct.

All right. So we have a big stack of comment cards for item number nine, which is not going to be considered tonight. So you're going to make our public comment section really short if you don't want to address it because again It's not going to be taken under consideration tonight. It's going to be continued so Unless anybody has some you know really strong feeling about talking about an item that's going to be continued

I'm going to go ahead and just go to the other cards If that's fine with everybody who's here raise their hands. I think we'll be fine. All right. Thank you Let me go ahead and call on Victor Mendez

Good evening

I'm commenting, I think, on item 18, the ERA program. So a few weeks ago, I was obviously extremely disappointed at the Council's decision not to include the residents of 2222 in the prepaid debit program, and I registered my disappointment publicly. With that said, I think this item does a lot to restore my faith in the city and our government. I'd like to thank Councilmember Pham and Mr. Hernandez for their work on this and listening. And when Mr. Hernandez told me, I think we can change this, I thought he was out to lunch. But it looks like here and below we're going to do something on this really important item.

The item itself had a gap of information, which was since addressed by staff. Specifically, it didn't include the matter of the program, including prospective rental payments in addition to arrares. and that in my view was was pretty important it also didn't mention the fact that applicable you can get recertified if you applied previously but that has since been cleared up by a staff email I received from mr. Brown today and I appreciate his attention to that detail because those are very critical items I'd encourage this item to be pulled by the council and just have a

further discussion on that I do believe this is a good step toward preventing homelessness and stabilize in our community. I heard the mayor refer to preventing homelessness and I think this is a good way to go. On a more critical note, I do believe the timing that has been communicating to me still needs work. I mean, the longer we wait on this, the more you put people at risk for homelessness. The moratorium has ended. Right now, people who are in arrares are running the risk of getting evicted. Even if they're able to get relief from the eviction,

they'll still be liable for legal fees the eviction notice could the eviction notice could stay on their record it's not some place where you want to put people if you can prevent them and as as i noticed how we're um has a skating rink up that's great but maybe this christmas will be people sleeping on the floor of the armory if we can't get this thing done sooner or later so i know it's not a it's a complex task ahead of them i'd only request out of the sense of humanity that you do everything you can to get this done as soon as you can. I don't know if there's some steps involved, but try to prioritize it multitask.

On the issue of fraud, I just encourage the staff to try to get a financial auditor to look at these files and get some help, because I think the goal of our housing managers, our housing team, should be to provide affordable housing opportunities and good housing opportunities and not get too immersed in the files. Along the way of transportation is information that I heard tonight. I'd also encourage the staff to get a or to get in this council to get a safety program going for residents as this trawler becomes more defutation.

Having had experience with this, the train may be in the light may be synchronized, but maybe not the people. And it's quite possible you will have cars and people crossing the streets trying to beat that train just out of habit. So thank you for your consideration on these comments tonight. Merry Christmas.

Thank you. Thank you, Victor. Thank you for those comments. I think Victor was the only in-person speaker, so I'll go ahead.

Can I have more time?

Don't push your luck, Victor. Merry Christmas.

Fifteen minutes. Come on, fifteen minutes.

Just kidding. Just kidding.

Let me go ahead and turn it over to the clerk, because I believe she has some people on the line that wish to address us, and you're going to let them know that item number nine was continued. So if anybody wants to speak on that, probably no need.

Thank you, Mayor. For speakers that are on the queue and want to provide their comments on agenda or non-agenda items, with the exception of public hearing items and also item nine that has been continued,

thank you. It looks like you've successfully unmuted yourself. if please announce if you wanted to speak on any item that I need to put you back on the speaker queue.

Yes, I'd like to speak on the general plan hearing.

Okay, I'm going to go ahead and put you back on the speaker queue and then when the mayor opens up that public hearing, then you will be able to provide your comment at that time. Thank you.

Zoom ID Araceli, if you could please select the microphone icon and identify what item you want to speak on.

Zoom ID Araceli, if you would please select the microphone icon from your device to unmute your call and announce what item you want to speak on.

Zoom ID Alana LeBron, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device and announce what item you want to speak on.

Item 37.

Thank you. We'll go ahead and put you back on the speaker queue until the mayor opens up the public hearing.

Zoom ID, Media Arts, Santa Ana. If you would please select the microphone icon. Unmute your device.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

You have to let them know if you want to do that.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, what item did you want to speak on?

Well, I wanted to do a general comment, but I also wanted to speak in one of the public hearings.

Okay, so you may proceed, and then I will put you back on the speaker queue when you're done.

Thank you, I wanted to thank you all uh city council for doing this good work and the important issues that you're dealing with i know you've got a lot of on your agenda i just wanted to um let everybody know that our third millennial producers academy for media arts santa anna this is victor payan director of media arts santa anna i live in pacific park uh we have online at massamedia.org the um signups it's a free class So we're really excited about it. It's our third session and it's for ages 13 to 17. We're teaching media arts skills and doing a lot of professional development to teach people to be producers.

Millennial Producers Academy, MILPA. It's a wonderful class. And if any of you have folks in your wards or organizations that are kids that you know of that are between those ages, it's a wonderful program. And we just want to let everybody in Santa Ana know that it's free. and I encourage you to sign up at masamedia.org. The dates are December 15th through February. It's scheduled for Saturdays right now. And we really want everybody to participate and become empowered with the use of media and filmmaking. Thank you.

Thank you. We will put you back on the speaker queue.

Zoom ID, Cynthia Guerra, if you can please select the microphone icon to unmute your call and announce what item you would like to speak on.

Hello, yes, can you hear me?

Yes, we could hear you.

Yes, I'm speaking on item 37, the general plan.

Okay, thank you. I will go ahead and put you back on the speaker queue. Zoom ID, Jesus Santana, if you would please select the microphone icon to unmute your device and announce what item you would like to speak on.

Hi, yes, can you hear me?

Yes, he can hear you.

Okay, hello everyone. My name is Jesus Santana. I just want to give a public comment on a non-agendized item, if that's fine.

Yes, you may proceed.

Okay, great. So I'm here today to just express my gratitude to Council Member Jonathan Hernandez, who joined residents and I virtually through a Zoom meeting last Monday to listen, converse, and more importantly, engage with a few of the Sullivan and Action leaders who reside in the Sullivan community. I just want to say that your leadership, time, and consideration is immensely appreciated. Muchas gracias. And I would also like to express my gratitude to our city clerk, Daisy Gomez, and her team for intentionally seeking public and community input during the community workshops regarding our city's ward redistricting process.

In addition, I would like to say thank you to our entire city council, its staff and the redistricting partners for the great amount of consideration you are all providing for the Suriband residents who voiced their desire to be represented by one city council member within the same ward. So I think in addition, I just want to overall, you know, give a highlight and just thank you all for for the great amount of of desire to really support this community because it's one that has immensely voiced frustration concerns so i think it's it's a matter of coming together and

supporting each other and i think for that i'm just going to say thank you and i hope you all

have a great night thank you zoom id daisy cruz if you would please select the microphone icon and announce what item you would like to speak on

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you. Great, thank you. I wanted to make a comment on item 8, the Sunshine Ordinance and the General Plan. Would I be able to do that now?

Yes, you may proceed with that.

Okay, thank you. Well, good evening, City Council. My name is Daisy, and I'm with the Kennedy Commission. I'm here to support the changes or the amendments for the Sunshine Ordinance.

to publish city council meeting agenda seven days prior to the meeting date, to expand the number of community meetings for certain development projects from one to two, and to increase the radius of distributing notice of said community meetings from 500 feet to a thousand feet. And then I think for the general plan, I'd have to wait, correct?

the general plan yes I could put you back on the speaker queue if you want to speak on that okay yes thank you thank you

zoom ID Laura Banta home if you would please or Pantoja excuse me if you would please select Hello, what's up?

Hello?

What's up?

Oh, yes, we can hear you.

I'm going to talk about the order of Sunshine, is it okay? Yes.

Okay.

Good evening, my name is Laura Pantoja. I'm a resident of the neighborhood of Artesia Pilar and I work in Latino Gel Access and a partir del 2010 in a collaborative with residents and organizations between Latin and Gel Access we did the task of working with the council to bring to the city of Santana more transparency and income of accounts through this ordinance that was approved in 2012 and I think that the people who supported this ordinance and requested I'm here to

I want to thank you for improving the order. I agree that I have seven days for when I publish the agenda of the Council. I will expand the number of meetings for projects of development with the city and increase the radio notification. Thank you.

Gracias. And our translator will go ahead and provide an interpretation.

Good evening. My name is Laura Pantoja, and I'm a resident of the Artesia Pilar neighborhood. I work for Latino Health Access. And in 2010, we came together, we collaborated, and we worked with the council members to bring forth this transparency and this collaboration, which is the ordinance that came to be in 2012 with everyone's support and I like that you we want to improve the ordinance to add to to seven days the the the agenda the publishing of the agenda for the City Council meetings to increase the meetings for

developers coming with projects and to increase the notification radius and this is recommended this recommendation is is to have oversight, it was recommended to have an oversight committee, and we brought this actually over 10 years ago, and this will increase the democracy and accountability in our city. This ordinance will work to bring transparency into our city. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Zoom ID, Tim Johnson, if you would please select the microphone icon to unmute your call.

Hi, Daisy. This is Tim. Can you hear me?

Yes, we could hear you now. Thank you, Tim.

All right. Excellent. Thank you. I'm on a different device than I was before. So I'm calling on item number 16, and specifically, you know, I write and speak often about those in our city that are experiencing homelessness. And we have an opportunity tonight to support a permanent supportive housing project with homemade FX residences. this will help multiple Santa Ana residents and families who are struggling with with with securing nightly housing that otherwise they may be on the street and subject to safety issues as well as

as other other issues that come with sweeping in inaccurate areas I ask that you support this project in full and allow home aid to start providing not only the housing that is needed but more importantly the the wraparound services that come along with permanent supportive housing as as we know shelter is is just one stepping stone to someone's journey with housing and we we really need to support these permanent supportive housing projects as they come about

I'd also on a separate but related note ask that you the city can continue to to help organizations with permanent supportive housing because it only continues to help those in our community with the same and I forget which item it is on a second second item that with regards to the flower street project but I hope that we can learn from the projects that we have going on right now with the with the street car as well as the south of Main Street corridor in terms of temporary patching. I appreciate multiple council members asking Therese OCTA questions about that,

but I hope that we can learn that patchwork on these projects is of paramount importance. Otherwise we will continue to have areas such as 4th and Broadway that used to be just a marquee intersection with phenomenal paving and bricking that is now tore up and very difficult, not only to drive across but yet alone be a nice one so I ask that you make sure that we hold our contractors accountable and and bring projects to our residents that even in a temporary time frame can be utilized and then if I'm going to run out of time I'd like to also go back to my close

comment item that I was not able to talk about but and this one's hard for me just because with regards to the opioid addiction pandemic that we see happening all across our city as well as the country. And I just ask that you continue to press these pharmaceutical companies. 15 seconds left.

If possible, Daisy, this is on a closed session item, which would be a separate item.

Tim go ahead and make it really quick because we've already deliberated on that so this is

after the fact. I know but you're but you're going to be addressing it in the future also I'm presuming but just go ahead go ahead. Go ahead it's fine um so thanks for all your consideration and um for your hard work for everyone. Thank you Tim. Thank you.

zoom id manny escamilla if you would please select the microphone icon to unmute your call and announce what item you would like to speak on hello daisy i'm just going to go through a

few quick comments uh everything not general plan related and then get back in the queue for the general plan stuff if that's fine yes thank you okay thank you uh so i just wanted to you know I thank Council Member Hernandez for the announcement with the Chepa day. So she really did a lot of amazing work in her community and appreciate the recognition that she was given today and the work that her family continues to do there. Also for the pointing of Nathan Greenside to the ETAC Commission. So I think it just goes to show that, you know, individuals that do start becoming involved do have the chance to impact policy

and really the direction of the city. So I do appreciate that. A quick observation on number 11, the destruction of obsolete city records. So I'm not too concerned about the records that are here with the Public Works Agency. But I do believe, in kind of keeping with the spirit of what the city would like to do, that there should be some kind of review process where the city archivist would be able to go through and check for any material that might be historically related. Obviously here, these files are not historic at all.

But I do believe it's worth considering that item at some future point in time, because you have a lot of really great items within the city's, I guess, bureaucratic and business collection that would be interesting to historic researchers down the road. So do appreciate that. You know, looking forward to the ice rink. And also, like Tim, very supportive of the Permanent Supportive Housing Project. I know that, you know, it's only like a two-story small, relatively small project, but anything we can do in that regard is super helpful. uh and then just a point of observation i just don't i was left unclear as to why the

abstention was made by uh the council member of a Sarah previously so i thought that that had to be announced as far as what that conflict was so i'm not sure if that's uh technically allowed and an extension without clarification uh so if that was something i missed i missed it but uh definitely trying to figure out exactly what the charter language is around that and with that i will be be back for the general plan.

Thank you, I will put you back on the speaker queue.

And Mayor, that was the last caller, but I did also receive written communication. A non-agenda item from a non-Santa Ana resident in support of the climate change reso. Santa Ana resident, a comment in regards to the ordinance banning ghost guns. And a Santa Ana resident commented on permit parking enforcement. Item four, OCTA presentation. The Santa Ana resident provided comments on the streetcar construction issues. Item eight, in support from a Santa Ana organization and one county organization.

Item 15, there were two in support from Santa Ana residents or organization. Item 16, there were five Santa Ana residents or organization in support, and 13 non-Santa Ana residents or didn't disclose their residency in support. One non-Santa Ana resident that did not disclose or didn't disclose in opposition. For item 21, the Flower Street sewer improvements, one Santa Ana resident commented on the street repairs with projects. And that is all I have.

Great, thank you, Madam Clerk. Thank you everybody who addressed the council on these items. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the council to ask if there's any items They'd wish to pull off the agenda of the consent calendar section of the agenda or any items they'd like to abstain or recuse from

Phil BacerraItem 5

Great, I don't see any hands. I don't hear it. I'll make a I'll make a motion to approve the consent calendar great. Is there a second?

I'll second. We have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, you'll put up the voting device or the voting opportunity on our device.

Yes.

Okay, members, please cast your vote.

Council Member Mendoza?

May we please cast your vote?

Okay, motion carries 7-0 with Council Members Becerra, Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Fan, Mayor Proton-Peñalosa, Mayor Sarmiento voting yes.

Great, that motion passes unanimously. That ends the consent calendar portion of the meeting. Let's move along to the business calendar portion, item number 33, which is to approve

the annual... Mayor, I'm sorry for interrupting, but we do have an oath of office that Councilmember Hernandez would like to administer. Let's do it.

Let's bring up... Is Nathaniel still here?

Nathaniel.

All right. Come on up.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 10

Thank you for joining us today. Can I call Nathaniel or Nate? Nathaniel. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm really just humbled to be able to administer this oath of office. As somebody who grew up in this council chambers, before I was an elected, I was always on the other side offering public comments. And on my short tenure thus far, I've seen you at a number of meetings, almost as many that I've been here. And I think it's important because I think there's a shift in government that we need to acknowledge that change starts here. And when you have a desire to create change, it starts here and oftentimes we end up there.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 10

but but it's really people power that helps us change the city and move it toward a new direction so in light of that I hope that this is this at administering this oath of office helps spark a stronger interest down the line so go ahead and repeat after me raise your right hand I state your name 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

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 10

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

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 10

that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion that I will well and faithfully discharge

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 10

the duties upon which I am about to enter.

which I'm about to answer.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 10

Congratulations.

Thank you. Thank you.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 10

Please make a round of applause for Commissioner Greensides. Thank you.

I did prepare a few words here. And in typical fashion, I'll make sure I do it in less than three minutes.

Time, even the most rich and powerful have a limited amount of it. Yet we know that time is valued very differently for each individual in our society based upon the perceived value of the individual to the world. People like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk currently earn more money in one breath than a minimum wage worker will earn in an entire lifetime. Yet I'd argue that those who harvest the very food which provides sustenance to hardworking families in our city every day are far more valuable to our society than any tycoon could ever be. Human beings in this region thrived off of the multitude of natural resources for millennia.

The flora and fauna was well respected and a deep reverence for the bounty which was provided was reflected in the cultural beliefs and daily practices of the indigenous peoples who once lived here. If and when there were temporary environmental events, it was believed that it came as a result of humans failing to properly revere nature. So humans would adjust their lifestyles accordingly so as to avoid further punishment by Mother Nature. The unfortunate reliance upon individual car ownership in our region results in long hours spent sitting in traffic, leading to further destruction of our environment,

as well as short-tempered drivers, increased accidents, ever-increasing costs involved with owning a car, and reduces the amount of time one can spend with their family at home in a relaxed mental state at the end of their workdays. Many cities have robust mass transit options and initiatives for reducing the individual necessity of car ownership and reduced individual transportation costs. The recent initiatives to create protected bike lanes here in the city reflects, to me, a willingness to cease the necessity of reliance on automobiles.

The general plans and corporation of mixed-use neighborhoods displays a willingness to think of more eco-friendly ways of living. I imagine a future here in Santana where families don't have to rely upon carbon-producing systems just to get to and from school or work or even just to enjoy nature. I became an Eagle Scout in 2012, participating in weekend camping and backpacking trips as well as week-long summer camp in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the coastal redwood forest, and even Camp Cherry Valley on Catalina Island,

instilled in me not only outdoor skills and a love for nature but also leadership skills and the life goal of serving my community and making the world a better place. Ensuring that our natural environment may recover from the harm we have caused as humans and to recover that time lost due to reliance upon automobiles is our charge of the 21st century. Yet I am confident that our decisions now might ensure current and future Santaneros are able to thrive and exist here in our beautiful city. It is for these reasons that I am excited and honored to be the Ward 5 ETAC Commissioner.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 10

All right, so you're representing Ward 5, so we do things a little different, so we're going to take one more.

Congratulations, Nathaniel. Nathaniel, so next time they ask you how you want to be addressed, just now you can say commissioner right commissioner there you go thank you for that council member let's go ahead now move along to item number 33 which is to approve the annual calendar of the regular city council meetings for 2022 any comments or questions or a motion or pro tem sure thank you mayor um i i

David PenalozaItem 33

I just want to, you know, this is pretty basic, the calendar. I know that in the past we've traditionally canceled, we've refused to cancel meetings leading up or right after the June meetings because we're approving the budget and it usually requires a third meeting. But I was thinking because there is a meeting scheduled after the 4th of July, I don't want to do that to staff at all. I would hate to do that to anybody. and our community as well tends to go on extended holiday vacations and or longer weekends so I would I would make the suggestion if we could cancel that

David PenalozaItem 33

fifth of July meeting versus the one in August August 2nd I figured that if the it takes us an extra meeting to approve the 22 23 budget we could just call a special meeting like we have in the past if it we if we if we need to so that's the only suggestion I would make mayor Sarmiento is that a motion with that amendment yeah make a motion to approve the item with can't with the cancellation of the July 5th meeting over the August 2nd meeting and if there's a reason why madam clerk that's not possible please let us know no that is completely

possible. Now I will say that with the new seven-day publication requirement it does move everything up just so you're aware. But yeah that's absolutely fine.

Thank you. Is there a second? I will second that. We have a motion and a second.

Thai Viet PhanItem 33

We have a comment by Councilmember Pham. Yes I remember last year Mayor Pro Tem you brought this very issue up and I'm very supportive. I've spoken to our Madam City Manager and say that that we should have a budget workshop that is only dedicated to the budget whether it's one or two in the month of May or June. Let's get it early this weird government shutdown situation that happens in July is not for the city of Santa Ana so I hope that we can all pass a budget by the end of June. So with that I'm ready to vote. Thank you. Great.

Seeing no other comments, Madam Clerk if you'll go ahead and do we have it on our device. All right, so everybody please vote. Okay, motion passes 7-0 with

council members Becerra Hernandez, Lopez Mendoza, Fan, Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa, and Mayor Sarmiento

voting yes. Great, thank you for that. Let's move along to item number 34, which is the election of the Mayor Pro Tem, and before we begin this, I just want to go ahead and thank Councilmember Peña Loza for his duty as Mayor Pro Tem. I know it's been exhausting for him, because he fills in and is able to handle things when I'm not present. And so I certainly appreciate him stepping in. And it's been, we haven't gone out to as many events as we normally do because of the pandemic and COVID and just safety reasons. but I know that it's just one more responsibility that you have, and it is sort of ceremonial,

but nonetheless, it's an important role. So I want to thank him for his service. We appreciate it, and as we said, we're going to go ahead and bring this back, so I'll go ahead and open it up to the council. Yes.

Absolutely.

David PenalozaItem 34

I just wanted to thank all of you guys as well, all six of you, seven, including myself, for your support for this. It's been an honor to serve as mayor pro tem for the city. Very ceremonial, very not really much else, but it's been a thrill and just wanted to thank all of you for that opportunity. And we used to do two-year terms and it started last year when we were looking at the charter amendments. It kind of came from myself and I know the mayor was also supportive and Councilmember Becerra about making this a one-year term so

David PenalozaItem 34

that we all get a get a shot or an opportunity to serve our city in that mayor pro tem role and I know in the past we've had mayor pro tems that go on for six years and and you know so it's it's just nice to have a change in in that level of leadership so thank you all again yeah thank you mr. mayor

Thank you. And go ahead. The only thing I was going to say is that I know that, you know, it is something that you step in and you do. But, you know, what historically we've done and, you know, and I appreciate now Councilmember Peñalosa stating it is that there's been sort of a tradition and sort of, you know, a courtesy that we've always extended it to the, you know, most tenured person and then the most tenured person after that. Just so everybody will have an opportunity to serve as as mayor pro tem again You know, it's it's um, it's it's ceremonial for the most part

But it is a privilege to serve in any role. So that's just a little bit of context

David PenalozaItem 34

But I'll go ahead and turn it back over to you councilmember. Well to add to that. That's why I wanted to Because you know our longest second longest serving member after myself is councilmember Becerra I will happily nominate him For the role of mayor pro tem

We have a motion for an appointment. Is there a second?

I will second.

We have a motion and a second. Are there any other motions or any other nominations?

Seeing none, I guess we're ready to vote.

Did we make it an oral motion just so or a voice vote?

I believe so mayor it looks like our

Let's go ahead and do it just by voice vote if that's all right. Well, there we go. Now it's up my apologies

Yes, thank you for your patience

Okay Okay. Motion carries 6-1 with Councilmembers Becerra, Hernandez, Mendoza, Fan, Mayor Pro Tempeñolosa and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes and Councilmember Lopez voting no.

Great. Thank you for that. Thank you once again, Councilmember Peñolosa for serving. Congratulations, Mayor Pro Tempeñolosa.

Thank you.

Let me go ahead and turn it over to you. So now you know I'm going to miss every meeting, so we're going to have to do a lot more work. Go ahead. Just kidding.

Phil BacerraItem 34

Go ahead. Well, I just want to thank my colleagues for this opportunity and thank former now former mayor pro-tem Penaloza. Looking forward to serving in this role and hopefully the mayor's attendance is perfect going forward. Thank you again

everybody. Thank you for those comments. Moving along to the that brings us to the end of the business calendar and we are going to go to the public hearing section of our meeting. And so let me go ahead and call on before we get to item number 35 let me go ahead and call on the clerk. She is going to make some brief remarks for those who wish to address us on the public hearing item. So Madam

Clerk I'll go ahead and turn it over to you. Thank You Mayor. For those members of the public who are joining us by way of Zoom or conference call and would like to make a comment for only public hearing item 35 please dial star 9 from your phone or select raise hand from zoom now and we do not have any but we do have

some in person great thank you so item number 35 is the 2022 downtown Santa Anna business improvement district and I'm gonna go ahead and see if there's any presentation from staff I believe there's a brief presentation yes your

mayor we do have a very brief presentation good evening mayor mayor

pro tem and council members welcome this is the our bid boundaries in our city as you know it's not not sharing there we go thank you very much this is our business improvement district in downtown Santa Ana these are our bid boundaries. We see this every year coming to the council for the renewal of the bid. It's a special type of assessment for a specific area or district and a specific purpose. As you know, the revenues can be used to improve and promote business districts. You'll see business districts all around the country in various large cities, and in some cities

you see 15, 10, 20 different business improvement districts like New York City. Our business owners came in together in 1984 to establish the bid and to have annual assessments for collection of each business. And there's over 500 businesses that are assessed in the district. Two downtown business organizations manage the bid, both Downtown Inc. and Santa Ana Business Council. As you know, we must comply with state bid law and municipal code and assessment reports are reviewed. There's been no changes to the bid boundaries. There is an anticipated budget this year of $200,000.

$100,000 would go to Downtown Inc. for promotional activities, and another $100,000 would go to Santa Ana Business Council for the promotion of activities. Tonight, we will conduct a public hearing. If there are no protests above the 51, I'm sorry, above the 50%, we would then levy the assessment, and that would be it. the detailed Downtown Inc. and Senate Anna Business Council budget plan is included in your staff report. If you have any questions, staff is here. And also representatives from the bid are here in the audience tonight.

Great. Thank you for that brief presentation. Let me go ahead and formally open the public hearing on this matter and let me begin with calling on members of the public that are here in person first and we'll do sort of the same exercise that we did during public comments, which is to go with those in person and then go with those by phone or joining us virtually. So the first speaker is Sarah Garcia, followed by Marilyn Montaño, followed by Madeline Spencer.

Is Sarah here? Thanks, Sarah.

Hello, Mayor Sarmiento and Councilmembers. My name is Sara Garcia. I'm the founder of Body Writers, Libromobil, and Crear Studio. I live in Ward 1. Collectively, Libromobil has been providing free arts programming for over 13 years to residents in the city of Santa Ana, and our bookstore is located in downtown, Ward 5. I'm here today to oppose the intention to levy an assessment for 2022 for the downtown Santa Ana Business Improvement District. I have witnessed several forms of biases through initiatives led by the Downtown Liaison, Santa Ana Business Council, and Downtown Inc., biases in who gets to organize events downtown,

and DTSA marketing strategies. Did you know that the Santa Ana Business Council president has been in that position for seven years, and one of their consultants is related to a board member? Did you know over 75% of bid funding is used to pay three consultants, two of whom have been in the same position since its inception, collectively receiving 96,000, nearly half of the funds dispersed by the city. Neither entity prioritized Art Walk, a historically downtown initiative founded and led by local artists. Now, under Downtown Inc. and Santa Business Council Management, vendors are charged a

fee and the first Saturday date is used to stack on other events, one which requires over 30,000 of organizational funding and fails to pay artists directly. Santa Business Council and Downtown Inc. failed to make meeting information, agendas, and minutes accessible in Spanish. It was also pointed out in a meeting that I am one of two businesses that attends these meetings regularly, which adds to my concerns on how inaccessible these meetings have been over the years. For example, we don't have access to meeting audio recordings since July 2021 and meeting minutes do not reflect the meetings in their entirety. Lastly, why is there

a need for two entities to do the same type of event planning and promotion? One compromise would be to have the two entities unite and not double up on budget line items and consultants, add terms for consultants, and expectations to rotate board members to be more inclusive of local businesses on a broader scale. Designate a hundred thousand of the funding to solely support collaborations between local businesses and local artists. This alone will help boost the local economy and reinvest in folks who already create collaborative events.

Plus, at the moment, Santa Business Council receives $100,000 from the Orange County Transportation Authority.

And according to a year-to-date profit and loss report, the Santa Business Council, they have over they reported they have over 128,000 in the bank as of November 12 2001. Another option is to not fund either entity and open up for a bid like the Revive Santa Ana reimbursement grant. As a business owner I am requesting more equitable practices for our community instead of paying the same people year after year to do the same type of work for only a few of the artists and downtown

businesses. Thank you. Marilyn Montano followed by Madeline Spencer.

Hello Mayor and Council members. I live on Ward 2 and I work in Ward 5 and I'm here to tell you about LibroMobo. LibroMobo is in Calle Cuatro and intends to empower artists of color, culturally enrich residents in Santana through social engagement, diverse arts, and equitable practices, and direct action. And you can visit us online, we're on social media. But here, I would like to tell you about, because I'm imposing the intention to levy an assessment for 2022 for downtown Santana Business Improvement District.

and since the reopening in June 2021, Libro Mobile has had difficulty serving our community due to the increased festivals being hosted not only in La Calle Cuatro, but also in the parking lot off on 3rd and Bush Street. 85% of our monthly sales come from residents, those who don't come by foot or bike or drive into the parking lot on 3rd and Bush to park. When events are hosted there, our local supporters avoid downtown to either remain away from the crowds or simply to avoid parking issues, which includes the increase of the one-hour free parking garages to the $5 flat rate.

Through relentless efforts, the only bookstores Santana survived the stay-at-home mandate, and we paid our book advisors through the 15 months, including the artists we featured in our third anniversary Literary Arts Festival, which was held virtually, yet we somehow can't make it through the first six months of reopening because our city, because the city and our business neighbors as SABC and Downtown Inc., which are present here today, failed to prioritize us and the residents we serve daily. We are now considering of moving out of La Calle Cuatro by the end of January.

And did you know that we host our little free library in downtown? town, and we also stock several little free libraries throughout Santana regularly. Shouldn't literacy be a priority since you all were proud to award a teacher and we pride ourselves in education? What about the first bookstore? What about the only bookstore in Santana? We don't have another bookstore. We're the only one in Santana. And I'm sure you all remember the festival that brought over 5K visitors to our city and disregarding state COVID restrictions, which I had to deal with that day.

Yet it was the first festival to return to downtown upon the state in reopening, and we had to move our event out of Santana. And did you know that we have our first inaugural OC Poet Laureates, Natalie J. Graham and Tina May, which I invite you to check on our website. And I'm just, you know, here to state that I'm opposing the intention to levy an assessment for 2022 for the downtown Santana business.

Thank you for those comments. Madeline Spencer followed by Ryan Smoller.

Good evening, council and staff. I just want to say that I thought it was very awesome also with Chepe Andrade and also that our Vice President is Sam Romero and he just had his 87th birthday and I think that octogenarians in this community are living history and there's something really beautiful we need to figure out a way to celebrate those folks while they're still here and can share with us the stories in terms of the business improvement district i just wanted to i did an aggregate um snapshot of the last seven years that we've been in downtown and our program dollars raised have been

over a million one hundred and thirty seven thousand dollars and that's for things like boca de Oro, Saver Santa Ana Art Walk and Holiday Activations in our downtown. We've created 10 educational pipelines in Santa Ana Business Council. Those are including Circulo School, which we brought, I was a part of a team that brought 2.5 million to build that high school in the Unified School District. LitCon is 18 schools that are touched in our high schools that actually is a contest where students now write original prose and poetry and they come

and they celebrate and speak, the people who win that come down and they're a part of Boca de Oro. We also have our Visionary Studios, which is working on green alleys with some of our students, and Thrive and Go Live, which is working with our businesses to put up websites. You guys all got this in a magazine that I gave you. In terms of our communication in downtown, there's been over 600,000 people over the past seven years that have received a weekly newsletter from our downtown. There are 16 magazines that tell everything that's happened over these past seven years.

In terms of engagements of people, we've hired over 3,503 creatives in our downtown, and that includes chefs, that includes artists, and that's for all different programming, including Art Walk, etc. And we have over 1,450,000 people who've come into our downtown just by those programs alone. We have programmed over 446 workshops, classes, sector professional and professional development association meetings in this past seven years and we and the last thing is that our boards, our volunteer boards, made up of an

aggregate of over 30 with the two groups people in our downtown that are part of all the different sectors of downtown and those folks have given over 9,752 hours of their time to come and meet on a regular basis and it is open to the public. And the last thing is the staff hours is 153,720 hours that we've put in to make the downtown a better place to have programming and the residents hours of people in the surrounding community who've helped us with all of this has been about 19,600 hours. So I just wanted to put that forward. Thank you.

Thank you.

Ryan Smolar. Hi, good evening guys. My name is Ryan Smolar. I work with Downtown Inc, one of the organizations that helps run the Downtown Business District. We're also made up, like Madeline said, of about 12 Downtown Business Owners. The Downtown Neighborhood Association leader is also on our board, so it's a local voice of what the businesses want to see happening with this extra bid revenue. that is what our organizations execute on their behalf we submitted a three-page letter that you guys should have in front of you with our accomplishments for

this year in the areas of marketing communication placemaking and economic development it's great work and also I have this really cool thing that is the first time we've ever seen this and we just got this today so I just turned this in but this is a visitor data from travel Santa Ana that shows where Santa and a residents and visitors were this past Saturday they were at the art walk they were downtown supporting their downtown art walk is one of our highest priority programs that we manage and it's something that we've been seeking to restore the funding to for this whole past year so it's our highest priority

and it's the highest place where people are coming downtown the community is there and also visitors are attracted to this event also in this data shows on the bottom year to date where people have been at major points of interest this year and it's art walk it's downtown so we're here to advocate for support partnership and opportunity for everybody downtown we listen to everybody and take their opinions really seriously we worked great with some of the other people who have spoken today libramobile we gave a three thousand dollar competitive grant to recently to support a number of their events which were amazing they

PARTICIPATE IN THE ART WALK PROGRAM. SO THE BID FUNDING IS REALLY CRITICAL. AS OF TONIGHT, AFTER YOU APPROVE THIS ITEM AND THE ITEM THAT YOU APPROVED EARLIER IN THE KASENC CALENDAR, WE'RE BACK TO ACHIEVING TWO-THIRDS OF THE REVENUE THAT WE HAD BEFORE THE PANDEMIC. TONIGHT, YOU APPROVED THE CLEAN AND SAFE PROGRAM, WHICH IS ONE OF THE CRITICAL PIECES OF OUR DOWNTOWN. AND THEN THIS IS THE BID TAX, WHICH IS ANOTHER PIECE. THE PIECE THAT'S BEEN MISSING SINCE LAST YEAR IS OUR SHARE OF THE PARKING REVENUE. $100,000 TO EACH GROUP, WHICH HELPS ROUND OUT ALL OF OUR BUDGETS, OUR EVENT PRODUCTIONS, OUR ART WALK.

THAT'S SOMETHING WE'VE BEEN WORKING WITH STAFF TO RESTORE BY CUTTING COSTS AND ALSO FINDING WAYS TO INCREASE REVENUE, LIKE SUPPORTING MORE COMMUNITY EVENTS HAPPENING DOWNTOWN, MORE PLACEMAKING SO THAT DOWNTOWN CONTINUES TO BE AN ACTIVE COMMUNITY PLACE FOR EVERYBODY TO BE AND TO SPEND THEIR MONEY. Just today, we sent out to every business more information about the revived monies that you're giving out to local residents so that they keep those dollars locally and that we offer discounts to keep residents spending that money downtown.

So we look forward to continue to work together to find revenue so we can pay people, create programs, manage downtown, and rock our way out of the pandemic. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Madam Clerk, do we have any members of the public that are online or on the phone that wish to address us?

No, thank you, Mayor. But we did receive a written communication, one Santa Ana resident organization in support of the item. And I also did want to announce that there were a number of protests submitted was only one, which equals 2.91% of the total assessment protest. Therefore, there is not a majority protest.

I would like to speak on this issue. Victor Payan. Oh, okay. Okay.

Okay, on this item, I said, thank you. This is Victor Payana, I live in Eastside, resident business owner, artist in Santa Ana. And I want to say that I want to mirror Sarah and Marilyn's comments. I submitted to the council several months ago, a letter requesting an investigation and audit of Downtown Inc.

for issues relating to conflict of interest between Downtown Inc and East End partners for questions of censoring critics, unfair business practices, excluding residents, excluding artists. I submitted a letter from Ryan Chase saying that he does not fund organizations that are critical of Downtown Inc and East End. And the board members also, we have personally had an issue with the board members where they refuse to acknowledge or resolve our issues. and so just if you look at the history of Downtown Inc, this is nothing new. There was an OC grand jury report that found a lot of issues that were not addressed.

And I applaud Ryan Smolar and Madeline for throwing a lot of numbers at you. But the reality is is that Downtown Inc uses any money that they get to promote their own businesses, their own vendors, and to exclude competition to exclude other voices in controlling the downtown. And they siphon up a lot of other public money, very, you know, outside of the bid, which is illegal. And they are doing programs outside of the bid, which is also illegal. So I just wanted to reiterate that. And before you hand any more money to Downtown Inc., we need an investigation. Look at their seven-year history

and you will find seven years of community disenfranchisement, community activism, community complaints, and I think those need to be heard. So nice presentations today, but the reality is not what they present. So please, before you hand any more money to them, an investigation and audit. And I saw that the word audit was removed from their financial rules, but that's a financial audit. We need an organizational audit. And I can connect you with people to interview, but again, I myself, I can tell you from experience have been censored, have been excluded, and you're not getting the best leaders,

the best leadership, you're getting people that they are selected because they support and do not criticize Downtown Inc. Thank you.

Hey, Mayor, it looks like that was the last one. All others that are on hold want to speak on item 37.

Great, thank you. So let me go ahead and close the public hearing on this item and bring it back to the council to see if there are any questions or comments. Let me go ahead and start with Council Member Hernandez who represents the downtown area.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

Thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you to everybody who came out to speak in regards to this item. There's a number of concerns that were brought to my attention just over the course of my year being the elected that represents downtown, but also during the court over the course of my community work. Having lived in Santa Ana my whole life, I have not heard the best things about what is happening in downtown. And there's a reason why I refuse to take any money from any agency within the downtown district.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

I wanted to make sure that when I did arrive and was elected that there was nothing being held over my head. So reports of 75% of bid funding going to consultants, can we confirm that this is true? Who can answer this for me?

Thank you, Council Member. I will have Stephen Mendoza. But just as a reminder, this money for this item, it's not the city's money. It's the businesses that are self-assessing themselves, and we're just a pass-through. So just as a point of clarification.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

Okay.

Mark, can you step up for a moment and help me out with this question?

Mr. Mayor and Council, this is Mark Morley, our Economic Development Manager. Mayor, City Council, thank you very much. About roughly 50% of each of their budgets go to the consultants.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

So 50% of each respective budget, two different agencies. That's correct. Right? Okay. And what is that amount total?

So in Exhibit 1 in your attachment for Downtown Inc., the consultant makes $48,000.

In Exhibit 1 for Santa Ana Business Council, the consultant also makes $48,000.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

And what is the total budget for Exhibit 1? 100,000. So out of 100,000, 48,000 goes to consultants. It doesn't leave a whole lot of room for us to invest in artists or to invest in community murals. I mean, there's a reason why there's a lot of artists in this city that are still struggling to eat. And there's a reason why there's bookstores that are potentially closing. So you're telling me both of these entities have over 50% of their budget is going to consultant. Correct. Okay. And how long have these consultants been consultants for each respective agency?

About seven years.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

How long have these organizations been in existence?

Since 2013.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

So seven years essentially? Yep.

When we reactivated the bid.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

Why is there no bilingual options for any of these entities when it comes to representation?

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

Can we get an answer to that? I've seen a number of complaints from residents that have felt that they have not had a seat at the table due to the lack of languages or lack of translation.

Julie Castro, the Downtown Liaison. I can assist with that. For Santa Ana Business Council, there is the bilingual component there. and with Downtown Inc. that's always an available translation if you will. Okay. But your question is with regard to the consultants. Is that right? No, to

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

the meetings. To the meetings that are held publicly. Sure. So the board meetings.

San Ana Business Council just recently started translating their agenda and their minutes and having translation services at their meetings. Downtown Inc. is, I think that's something that's warranted and has been requested.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

I mean, seven years of history without, I mean, even bothering to translate is pretty concerning.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

Okay, and why are there two entities instead of one?

So both of these entities were born out of a settlement agreement with the city back in 2013.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

Okay, and give me just a very brief explanation of what that settlement history entailed.

The city tried to move forward with a property-based improvement district where it's similar to a business improvement district, but the property owners were assessed. There was a lot of controversy, and it ended in that the property-based business improvement district did not move forward, so the city entered into a settlement agreement with Downtown Inc., which included the Clean and Safe Program and also establishing two groups, which was Santa Ana Business Council and Downtown Inc.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

So essentially this is a tax that these businesses are placing on themselves? That's correct. And then they are coming to us to essentially say this is how we're going to spend the monies.

Yeah, the City Acts has the pass-through for that.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

Okay. And with that being said, with the designation of monies to artists, there's a growing demand that I've seen, whether it be via email. I mean I got contacted today by an artist I really, really respect. I had no idea what living condition this artist was going through, but the artist reached out regarding the Revive Santa Ana stimulus and said that they don't make any money in downtown Santa Ana events. So how is money being dispersed to artists? I'd like someone to answer that question to me. So for the Revive Santa Ana program?

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

No. This is an artist that regularly creates art in downtown Santa Ana reached out to me to find out if that area was going to have access to the Revive funding, the stimulus funding, stating what, when I asked, stating that the reason he was interested in knowing if he was eligible is because they're not getting paid to do a lot of the community work, the art walks, et cetera, and they're struggling. So there was a mention from one of the consultants that these monies are going to pay artists, so I'm interested in knowing what does that process look like and how do they decide which artists are paid.

Let me bring up Madeline or Ryan.

Thanks, council member. These are great questions. So one of our biggest programs is the Art Walk. And as you see, the budget before you is the bid budget. It's the $100,000 we get from the self-assessed tax. In previous years, there was $100,000 also coming from parking revenue. that was the money we were using for the art walk it also paid part of my salary so in 2019 I was paid $72,000 to work for downtown the number before you now is $48,000 my salary has been cut 50% from where it was a few years ago because that parking revenue isn't there as well as the money

for art walk was cut we have been talking to as many staff members city council people as we can to get those parking revenues restored or other revenues to replace those revenues because they get passed directly through to the programs that you're speaking of we recently submitted a grant request to the arts commission who has a hundred thousand dollars right now for the next six months we asked for thirty five hundred dollars per art walk which was all going to go to musicians live art projects uh i'm sorry a few art workshops etc that was voted against four to two so it did not

pass i resubmitted another package for less funds for the artists but this is the problem that we're running into where we're trying to get this money so we can spend the money on the local artists and to create it because we know as seen in this data from travel san anna people are coming downtown They're coming to the Art Walk. It's underpinned by tons of galleries. It's supported by businesses paying this tax, which there's funds in this tax to go to the Art Walk. I think it's $10,000 that we were able to put directly from this bid funds into that program. But it's my highest priority to raise the funds for artists and Art Walk.

I think that a lot of people have a problem with the fact that a business organization is the custodian of this program. And that's something that we try and make as transparent and open as possible. online you can sign up to participate in the art walk to perform to have a vendor booth or to work with us we work with everybody just recently a gentleman contacted me who wanted to do a vinyl night and shut down a street and so we were able to work with him and find actually one of your parklets that the city built where he could activate the parklet so we didn't have to incur

additional expense to close down the street we're also working with Oka right now they want to shut down another street or potentially do meters so we're a platform for everybody's success and we've really struggled at being able to tell that story and we seek assistance in figuring out how to justify this because even when I was getting paid twice as much we were being told that's too much now we're being paid half as much we're being told that's too much so I think there's there's a lot of narratives that go around that aren't helping the situation because when I talk to everybody their vision for downtown is identical we we just

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

fight about everything else. My vision isn't identical to yours. Okay well we'd

love to talk more about that because I think that everyone that I've talked to sees the same vision for downtown and it just takes money to operate, run it, and to pay people this money and so we need those numbers to go up not down and

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

that's where we're stuck. I hear you. So is this a part-time or full-time

position for consultants? So that's that's a great question because we don't have enough money to have full-time staff so we really rely on a ton of consultants who are working with a lot of heart. A lot of those consultants who work for downtown who are getting a bad name are people who've lived here their whole life. They're Santa Ana residents, they grew up here, they work for very little money and they're often asked to do much more than they're even being compensated for by other people who will draw them into downtown processes. So these are great people.

These are the same people I think you're talking about wanting to support. So we're trying to raise those funds to be able to pay those people to do those things.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

Okay. And... Can I add one thing? Yes, please.

When this was a P bid for a moment before the disestablishment of it, there was a million dollar budget that was going to a woman named Vicki Baxter, who worked in the downtown. These organizations have never hired full-time executive directors, so we don't get any employee benefits if I'm sick, if anything. We are working as consultants, and we are working as a retained consultant for the past seven years, meaning I have no employment stability. I actually can't live in this city. I make $4,000 a month with this job.

and the thing that is really interesting to me is that we also have other consultants it's not just us and all of them are slaving to make all of the programming and things that you see in the downtown happen and people have this idea that is inappropriate about what how people are paid what they're paid etc. and we have never been given a regular wage to be doing the amount of time and you asked for instance when Boca de Oro comes eight months it takes to plan that by the time of the month that

it's here we're working 24 hours a day to make sure every part of that project works so that this whole downtown can be activated and the downtown make more money during Boca de Oro than they've ever made as a district. But not only that, it serves 35,000 students from the city to be a part of processes, to meet people who are other literate, I mean to create a pipeline for people. And we are paying curators to come in and do literature in over 30 different spaces in our downtown. Those are all artists that we pay. And I raise that money outside of Santa Ana Business

Council. I've had to because we don't have that money inside. We only have, for instance, you guys paid $800,000 for one month for people to skate outside in the Civic Center. $800,000 is six, how many years for us? Six years. Like that's, that's, that's what we see. One month versus our downtown being programmed with Art Walk and everything with that $200,000 a year for us. That's how much your one month of $800,000 goes. So when people talk to us about money, you guys need to look at the numbers again. We're serving seven, it's now what, 500

businesses? But 796 businesses, there's over 30 sectors in our downtown. The artists are the sector that we've most organized. We have a registry of 250 artists where you can look up and say, I want someone to do steel work for me. You can find it because we built it did we get paid to build that no we've never been paid for any of the platforms that we've created to make a more fluid system for our downtown but at the same time we're being penalized continuously for the same thing that's getting folks paid Sarah got $40,000 from a local organization to open that Libra mobile and they're still complaining about

money. They complain constantly. I did not get $40,000 from global coordination.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

Excuse me, guys.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

So if we can just have quorum. So this just further validates the unfortunate disconnect between the organizations and some of the businesses because it isn't an attack on the consultants. This is a question that is valid. I would want to know where these dollars are going and how they're being spent. It's unfortunate to see, you know, a local bookstore and an organization, you know, have this friction but I understand why they are facing themselves with this challenge of

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

potentially leaving. I know that if there's one business that feels that way, there's probably going to be hundreds, dozens of them. I know a number of different businesses that have reached out to me saying that they've never been contacted by either of the organizations that are taking part in this bid process. So what do we say to that? Some of the businesses that have said they've never received contact from you guys. There's some businesses that have left downtown Santa Ana because they didn't feel that they had access to utilize their space the right way or to participate in the art walk? So both

groups have meetings. SABC meets was every month? Every month it's Brown Act open meeting. We meet every quarter, Downtown Inc. Those are our board meetings. We also have a newsletter that goes out every Thursday that's professionally written that everyone should have access to so that they know what's going on and can also share what they have going on we have one of the biggest social media followings in the city so people are highly connected through there we also appear regularly at community events like comlink we were just at the last comlink meeting giving an update to all the

neighborhood association leaders we go out to neighborhood associations like jack fisher park with willard we madeline's group has done door by door campaigns where they've gone knocked on every single door and educated the businesses, given them the contact numbers for security, for clean team. We've gotten them into a CRM database. We get updates occasionally from the city on who's paid their fees. There's quite a few businesses now who paid their fees this year because they wanted to get stimulus checks. So a lot more people came on the radar, which is great. So we're in constant contact.

And there isn't a person downtown who doesn't know one of our 30 board members who at any bid hearing you're going to hear one or two businesses be upset but there's 30 board members who spend considerable amount of time figuring out how to be in touch with our people of our district our downtown neighborhood association leader is on our board so there's not a person that doesn't know those 30 people that's not in a business near them as I said earlier with the revive we printed out signs for everybody and a letter for every business which our clean and

SAFE team is walking door to door tomorrow to bring to everybody to tell them about how residents in our area have a stimulus and could spend it downtown. We partner a la carte on all kinds of programs that people come up with their own ideas in the district. We also run competitive grants. So we did $15,000 of competitive grants this year out of the OCTA one-time funds that were mentioned and those went to groups like Libromobile, OC Vegan Fest, the Tamalata, the Pozolata. So we have hands in everything and we're trying to support all things.

But we have this issue where I think that it's not seen as something that should be supported when it's really the foundation of so many good things downtown.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

So with the Tamalada, Pozole, the Pozole Lada, those are just exclusive to businesses that are in downtown?

No, they're open citywide to people to participate in. so there are some i think businesses from outside there's also local vendors at those events so we've seen a huge uptick during the pandemic for demand for micro enterprise which we've provided in downtown by supporting the creation of several public markets madeline's really taking the lead on it but everything from the hentai night market to the witch walk to the art walk dozens of businesses get to pop up for very low cost at those events and sell their locally crafted goods their art, and that's an opportunity that we're creating those marketplaces.

We've seen over the years several people go from pop-up to brick and mortar in downtown, and so there's a relationship in all that.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

So a concern I had was I attended the tamalada before I was elected, and I talked to an organizer from that event, and they stated that it was only open to businesses in downtown. There was not one street vendor and some of the best tamales I've ever had come from our street vendors that walk these neighborhoods They could have benefited greatly from that capital and from being included into that So are you telling me that that organizer misspoke when they said that?

Well, the tamalata is a third party event. So it's organized by a downtown business But my board supported that event with a community sponsorship for some of the free entertainment aspects But we didn't control who could participate Eddie Quiares is the one who is the lead organizer and I know that he would be more than open. He was just at the very beginning he wanted to make sure when he created the tamalata that the tamalata it that our businesses weren't losing money that are downtown making the tamales. So he got about five different vendors from our downtown businesses to come out on the street and start this very

beginning event and he put that together very quickly and was able to do a very successful event. I am positive that if Eddie was told that there's vendors like you're describing, he wouldn't be more than happy to add more folks in and he needed to prove the concept in the first place and he saw such a success that he started the Pozolada and we saw what happened with that this year but I'm

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

sure that he would be open to that. So a tax that you guys place upon yourselves, you guys turned around and used that tax to pay businesses to

participate in an event you created? No, what we do is most of the money that comes into us gets redistributed back into the downtown. Most of the events that we're doing have to do with helping to tell the story of downtown through marketing. So for example, when we have a witch walk or when we had a hentai, which is now, as you know, because we've had discussions with them, those events help us to tell a story about downtown and when we market it because we're not allowed to market individual businesses we're not allowed to say come to this store specifically

we have to tell them about a district so in order to tell about a district it's easier to tell them about public markets about art walk about things and then that brings people into the district and once they come into the district now they begin to see all the other shopping centers and the more that they come back into the district the more familiar they become and we've watched literally an example is when we first started bringing the school district in a lot of families had never been in this downtown we saw by the third time families with strollers grandparents and everybody started

eating at the local restaurants and places and that was our goal was to see that the local people in a 30 mile radius of our downtown start to take ownership and be like this is our downtown. We actually saw that occur through a lot of the ideas and ways that we started to bring community together with the downtown and that's it and that's been building over the past seven years.

Let me just interrupt really quickly if you don't mind Councilmember. I just think that we want to understand what this public hearing is about. It's a public hearing on the protest and but I think the questions are excellent. I We're kind of going beyond the scope of what we're addressing here tonight. I think there is real concern. I share some of those. But to the extent that we're here simply to go ahead and determine whether or not there's been any achievement of the threshold on the protest to go ahead and prevent the bid from going forward, that's something that I just want us to keep focused on.

So I do think that if we want to bring this back to talk about more substantive issues, which I think, you know, is what the council member that represents this district has, I think that's probably, you know, maybe best left for another agendized item that we can, you know, talk about it fully within the scope of, you know, some of the concerns have been raised and explanations that have been made by the consultants, but merchants as well that we've received.

So we're simply, you know, I've received several emails as well, and I just, you know, in all fairness, we want to make sure we ask those questions, but within the right scope. So let me go ahead and, you know, if you had anything on the protest, Council Member Hernandez, if you wanted to wind up on that, if there's any.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

Yeah, so that was, those were a number of my concerns that I wanted to bring to you both, especially in light of talking about your seven years of employment. I mean, it just sounds like I don't know why they wouldn't just employ you rather than just making you consultants. I mean, I would probably just look inward at the organization and say, you know, these practices don't seem sustainable. Not for them, not for you, not for those dollars. I mean that just doesn't seem equitable for anybody for you guys to be consultants and not employees I'm just I'm starting to really question all right

Thai Viet PhanItem 35

well we don't want to have this back all right let's keep yeah last seven years

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

we're not having hold on we're not having dialogue right now I'm just telling you a trial does not last seven years a trial would last a year maybe two years but we're going to be coming up on 10 years and three years and you guys are still going to not be paid fairly you're not going to have access to benefits i mean i don't see this being good for you i don't see it being good for them that you guys both don't have access to retirement access to benefits you guys are being paid you know to be consultants it seems like you're being exploited along with the artists and the businesses that are struggling.

Yeah, I just want to say that when I started, Downtown Union had a $100,000 budget.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 35

I'm so sorry, but I don't want to interrupt. I just want to make sure that we're protecting the rights and the process. When we look at these types of assessments, there's a two-step process. On November 3rd, there was a resolution of intent to even ask the city council whether it wanted to move forward. And there was a budget presented. that's the time in the process to ask questions about the budget and how things are programmed. Tonight's hearing is actually for the benefit of the business owners. It's their hearing. It's their opportunity to come forth and protest. So having the representatives come and the questions

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 35

are kind of like interfering with the rights of the people who are affected by this. I think it is, as the mayor said, an appropriate conversation, probably just not at the appropriate time.

Yeah, and I would say Ryan if you don't mind, you know go ahead and take a seat because it's now before the council And if there are any other questions with respect to the to the protest Let me go ahead and call on councilmember fan, and then I'll go to their protest

Thai Viet PhanItem 35

Thank you mayor and so my question was for madam city attorney, you know There's a lot of this conversation about the budget and all this other stuff. Are we? Required to tonight because there was not a 50 plus one protest to approve the assessment.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 35

You are not mandated. You still have control over whether you do that or not. The protest is for the, again, for the impact, for the businesses that are impacted. If you did have a protest that met the legal threshold, then your discretion would be removed, and you would not be able to move forward.

Thai Viet PhanItem 35

Right. So I wanted to first, you know, just, I understand that there was this other item on the November 2nd meeting, but I do also believe that it matters right when we decide we are going to assess an entire business district to continue having that conversation but I do also believe that there is a lot of confusion as to what a business improvement district is supposed to do and art in Santa Ana I think they've been intertwined over the years but what you see here in my opinion is the local businesses in downtown assessing themselves to say we want some

Thai Viet PhanItem 35

consultants to promote our businesses. To me that is 100% clear that makes a lot of sense. I would do the same thing because there's always a collective action problem when it comes to a whole district that's why the city is the pass-through entity for things like this. So to me if Tamalada is is only promoting downtown restaurants selling downtown tamales, then that makes total sense because you are the downtown bid and the Downtown Inc. and Santa Ana Business Council for downtown, not for all the tamale vendors in the city of Santa Ana, not for all the posale vendors in the city of Santa Ana.

Thai Viet PhanItem 35

I think that is something that's really hard for all of us to kind of separate out. The other issue is with the Art Walk. Now I appreciate that you are spending $10,000 of this very tiny budget. In fact, the fact that you're only getting paid $48,000 is half the median income in the city of Santa Ana, so I do want to say that is very low. But the $10,000 investment in Art Walk, which I believe is trademarked are copyrighted or it's a proprietary event right in downtown the Santa Ana Art Walk that is to promote downtown Santa Ana businesses the fact that it

Thai Viet PhanItem 35

promotes local artists I think is incredible and I think that the Art Commission has brought up potentially looking at doing a separate art walk that is specific to that issue but the goal of all these events are to promote downtown Santa Ana businesses not art all throughout the city not businesses throughout the city, not organizations throughout the city, because this is specifically their own money. So with that, I support this assessment and I do hope that in the future when there are artists looking to have an art walk that is more inclusive of all Santa Ana residents, whether it's downtown or

Thai Viet PhanItem 35

elsewhere, that we can have that conversation with the Art Commission, artists, and local businesses. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Mayor Pro Tem.

Phil BacerraItem 35

Thank You mr. Mayor, I want to thank councilmember Hernandez for his comments

Phil BacerraItem 35

Yeah, no, I want to thank councilmember Hernandez for his questions and but I also want to thank the mayor and the Madam City attorney for clarifying that While this is an important discussion to have this is not the time to do it and so just for clarification sake Madam City Sorry, Madam City Clerk was there a valid majority protest lodged?

No, there was not a majority protest. We only received one, which equals to 0.91% of the total assessment protest.

Phil BacerraItem 35

Okay. And so I do hope that at a future date and a different venue that this conversation continues. But in the meantime, I'll just go ahead and make a motion that we adopt a resolution confirming the assessment report and levying the assessment for 2022.

I'll second. We have a motion and a second. Council Member Peñalosa.

Councilmember Peñalosa, did you have a comment?

David PenalozaItem 35

No, not at all.

Just a second. Any other comments here on the left? Seeing none. So, yeah, I'm going to support the motion because the motion is so, well, the issue is so narrow, right? We're just here to decide upon the protest vote, and obviously it didn't meet the threshold of 50 plus one. But I would like to give direction to staff to maybe come back. And obviously there's a lot of questions that I know I still have with respect to fairness, access, duplicative services.

And I think as the pass-through agency, we have that responsibility to look at that. And I think that that is certainly not out of bounds. and I think that we've received enough concern from those merchants. And really what the interest is, because I kind of disagree with a little bit of what Council Member Phan said, I think the downtown should be for the downtown businesses to benefit from because they self-assess themselves for that. But the downtown is not exclusive to just downtown merchants. That is a gathering place for the entire city.

And so that should be an area that is something that all businesses and all residents and, you know, all vendors should feel welcome at. And so we, you know, again, this is a more robust discussion than what we're looking at now. But if we can bring that back at some point, Madam City Manager, if that's all right.

Certainly, we can bring back an informational item and invite whoever you would like for a discussion.

That'd be great. Thank you. And with that, I think we have a motion and a second. I'm seeing no other comments. Council, please vote.

We'll wait for Councilmember Phan to take her seat.

Yes, thank you.

okay motion carries seven zero with council members um hernandez lopez mendoza fan Peñalosa, Mayor Pro Tem Becerra, and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes.

Great. Thank you, everybody. Moving along to item number 36, let me go ahead and turn it over to the clerk to go ahead and make some opening remarks on anybody that wishes to address the council that is not present physically.

Thank you. Members of the public who are joining us by way of Zoom or conference call and would like to make a comment only for public hearing item 36, please dial star 9 from your phone or select raise hand from Zoom now.

Great. Thank you. This item is to authorize the issuance of the fiscal year 21-22 RFP for affordable housing development and approval of a substantial amendment to the fiscal year 21-22 annual action plan. And I'm going to ask staff if there's a presentation on this item.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. This is an exciting item. It's not too often that we get to go to the streets for an RFP for new affordable housing projects. And we do have a brief presentation that Judson will be providing for you

Yes, thank you very much mayor and City Council tonight We are requesting approval to issue on RFP for affordable housing development for this fiscal year The available funds for this RFP are is a large amount It's one of the largest amounts of funding that we've had for available affordable housing for at least three years next slide, please

We this RFP will include ten million dollars from our inclusionary housing fund 3.1 million dollars from our home program fund and 5.2 million dollars in new funds from that we received through the American Rescue Plan Act for our home program AS WELL AS 25 PROJECT-BASED VOUCHERS. THE RFP IS ALSO GOING TO INCLUDE A LAND ASSET CURRENTLY HELD BY THE HOUSE AND AUTHORITY AT 302 EAST 22nd STREET. NEXT SLIDE, PLEASE.

THE TWO PRIORITIES THAT STAFF ARE FOCUSING ON AND RECOMMENDING FOR CITY COUNCIL CONSIDERATION TONIGHT IS TO PRIORITIZE PROJECTS THAT ARE ACQUISITION REHAB PROJECTS AND HOMEOWNERSHIP PROJECTS. AGAIN, BUILDING ON THE ASSET BUILDING FOR HOMEOWNERSHIP OPPORTUNITIES FOR OUR RESIDENTS. However, projects that do not fit those two priorities will still be eligible to submit a proposal. Now, meanwhile, staff do still have a priority for projects that have extremely low-income units for large families. And you see that in our points, our competitive selection criteria, as well as bonus points

for projects that prioritize extremely low-income units. As we mentioned the RFP does include six point one million dollars in new funds that we received These funds are restricted to people experiencing homelessness But with approval tonight it will approve that annual that allocation plan for those funds and with the approval of the issuance of this RFP we will Promote it and publicize it as widely as possible and bring back a recommendation for one or more projects for City Council consideration

Thank you. Great. Thank you for that presentation Judson. Let me go ahead and now formally open up the public hearing and open it up to members of the public that are here in person and those that are online or on the phone. Madam Deputy Clerk, do we have any members of the public that are present here in person that would wish to address us on this item? We do not have any members present. Do we have any members of the public that wish to address us by phone or on online?

One moment.

None?

The ones that were identified earlier were for item 37, public hearing item 37, so we do not have none.

Got it. So no members of the public on this item. Thank you. Let me go ahead and now close the public hearing on this item and bring it back to the City Council for questions or comments and possible motion. So let me go ahead and call on anybody that may have any comments or wishes to move the item I'll make motion to move the item mayors commendable a second great. We have a motion in a second motion by councilmember Peña Losa second by councilmember fan Any other questions or comments? I just want to say look and you know right before we vote this is very exciting I think one of the members of the public. I think my commissioner

Tim Johnson was speaking to this and it is really really exciting to see what we can do. Thank you, Judson. Thank you, Steven, to your team for doing this. You're right. I think this is one of the largest allocations we've made. So that means that we are certainly gathering some funds to be able to, you know, go out on the street with a proposal like this. And we're excited about what you bring back to us. Thank you for including those priorities for the extremely low and for large families. One thing I would mention that I always mention when it comes to these procurements is that to the extent we

we can prioritize Santa Ana families. And I know that based upon our previous history, you've all been really successful. We can't make it exclusive to Santa Ana families, we know, but we can certainly try to tailor the requirements for the benefit of our residents here in the city. So with that, council members, please vote.

Thank you. With Council Members Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Fan, Peñalosa, Mayor Sarmiento, and Mayor Potem Becerra voting yes.

Great. Thank you, everybody. Let's move along to item number 37, which is the public hearing for the final recirculated program EIR and the general plan amendment for the Santa Ana general plan update. So let me go ahead and bring it back to staff to see if there's any presentation on this item

Mayor yes, mayor. We do have a presentation actually before the presentation

Let me go ahead and just hand it over to councilmember fan. I believe she has a comment to me. Yes mayor

Thai Viet PhanItem 37

So as I mentioned earlier tonight There were allegations in a comment letter stating that I had a conflict of interest on the housing opportunity ordinance update due to my employment with a law firm here in Orange County and because of that out of an abundance of caution we're seeking a an FPC advice letter to clear up that issue prior to voting and out of an abundance of caution I'm requesting a continuance of this general plan update also because I don't want my vote to to potentially be a reason why we have to redo this process

Thai Viet PhanItem 37

or have to not participate if I could have participated based on you know unsubstantiated allegations so I would move or I ask that we move this and continue this item until we get a response from the FPPC regarding that ability to vote and discuss this item further thank you like a Matt great we

have a motion by councilmember fan a second by councilmember Lopez to continue the item let me go ahead and bring it back to the council on this limited question. Any questions or comments? Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mr.

Phil BacerraItem 37

Mayor. While I appreciate the abundance of caution, I know I've exercised it on another item before us, but at the same time the deliberations went on and I know this is a huge, huge undertaking by this Council. This is a document that hopefully will not be back before us for at least 20 years, but that's because It'll be a blueprint to move forward with for this council and future councils with that being said this is Very important very long overdue and I'd ask that we go ahead and move forward with it tonight

Great any other questions or comments councilmember Mendoza

Are there any items that are crucial that we must deliberate tonight?

Thai Viet PhanItem 37

From what I understand from staff, there's no legal deadline that we are meeting, correct? That is correct.

Correct. My other question is then if Council Member Pham recuses herself from this item, then we could go ahead and proceed with it tonight.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 37

Yeah, if she chooses to recuse, she could do that. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments from the Council? The only thing I guess I would ask for consideration of the continuance is that I think to Mayor Pro Tem's comment that this is such a large item. This is such an important item that we certainly want all seven of us to be able to provide our opinion, provide our comment on that. This doesn't come around that often. We've been waiting since 2015 to address this.

And I think Councilmember Fan represents a newly drawn district that was created to address the concerns and the rights and the voices of an API district. on the west end of town, and to the extent that her voice will not be part of the deliberation on a document like this is concerning to me. And so I don't know if six of us can certainly deliberate on this. We can certainly adopt it. But it is absent, you know, the voice of somebody on this council that's very important. We were, you know, we litigated this issue. We actually didn't litigate this issue.

We actually settled this issue because we knew it was so important to have her voice representing that community on this and I certainly think that you know all of us want to be part of that conversation And so in any event those are just my thoughts on on what has recently surfaced today, so Councilmember Banyalosa

David PenalozaItem 37

Thank You Mayor Sarmiento Madam City Attorney, I just want in your experience how long do we usually do these FPPC opinion letters usually take I mean if it's six months I definitely want to hear the matter tonight if it's something

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 37

like a couple days a week do you know yes you can seek informal advice but I think in this case we would want formal advice by law the FPPC is supposed to respond to us within 21 working days. Thank you. Any continuance would be

David PenalozaItem 37

seeing this probably not at the first meeting in January or potentially or

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 37

second meeting. Yes it will all depend on who this letter is assigned to and how quickly and there are times when we've requested legal advice and we've gotten a response literally within a week. There are other times where I've had to inquire after the 21 days. In my opinion, this should be a fairly easy one for the FPPC staff to review. So I would expect it to come back before 21 days.

David PenalozaItem 37

But the formal request has been made.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 37

Once the formal request is made, and this request that we would help prepare, we do that for many of you on occasion, they're fairly simple to draft. and based on the complaint letter that we received today, we'll have all the information so we could get this letter out tomorrow.

David PenalozaItem 37

Oh, so it hasn't, the request hasn't been made?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 37

No, and that was only because the complaint came in today. If I recall, maybe about 1 o'clock, 12, it came up around noon. I remember addressing it at about 1 p.m. And I think that is one other thing for the council to consider, is that this is not something we would have anticipated. The complaint was served, and because the person who drafted the letter is threatening to send the complaint to the FEPC, we thought it might be best to request the letter ourselves.

Mayor, if I may make a suggestion that if you do intend to continue it, that you do make it a date specific. Otherwise, the City Clerk's Office would be having to do the re-notification for it to continually appear on the future agendas, and this one does require significant public notification.

I think that's a good suggestion.

Phil BacerraItem 37

Mr. Mayor, then if that's the case, I would support it if we were to at least continue to the 21st, and then obviously at that time we can see what the status is of the FPPC letter.

Okay. Well, we have a motion, and is that a separate motion, or is that an amendment, a recommended amendment to the existing motion on the floor?

Phil BacerraItem 37

I'll ask the maker of the motion.

Thai Viet PhanItem 37

I'm okay with that if we think we might be able to get it by then. and I guess if it gets to that time and we haven't gotten anything I'd probably

move to another date specific so yes I agreeable to the first is it to the motion is that give me one second councilmember is that agreeable to the maker of the second okay we may get lucky we may have somebody that has nothing to do over at the FPPC and may just say I'm gonna tackle this and I'm gonna get this out before the holidays well also because that's an opportunity

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 37

need to do some more in-depth research. I mean, we've had some conversations about whether we think there's a conflict or not. So that may also give us an opportunity for the 21st to do that, and maybe provide our council member with even more comfort that she doesn't have conflict. But that could also be a possibility.

I think that's a good, I think it's a good motion. Because look, if we can tackle this on the 21st before the end of the year, because we've waited now almost six years to look at this, look, it's not that there's a deadline, but man, we don't want to break the record on, you know, waiting to address this. And so, look, there's a motion and a second on the floor, which is to continue this item to the 21st of December. So hopefully that addresses the concern with noticing that the clerk may have. The only thing I was going to mention is, well, look, I'll save my

comments for the next time because if we're not going to deliberate, there's no reason to do that. But did you have a comment?

David PenalozaItem 37

Yeah, just had a point of clarification. Or I guess if so, 21st of December, correct, is what we're suggesting. Let's say the FPC comes back tomorrow. Or I mean, obviously not tomorrow because you're making the request tomorrow. But they come back on Monday, next Monday or next week. Like you said, we're lucky. Someone's not doing anything over there and they send us something. Can we call a special meeting for it? Or would it have to be we would have to wait until the 21st?

You would have to wait until the 21st because you made a date specific.

David PenalozaItem 37

Okay. I see what you mean. Okay. Thank you. That's all I need.

Great. And I think for staff's comfort level, there's a reason why we brought it to this meeting just in case there was an issue and we had another meeting to come to because this isn't a second reading item. This is a resolution that can be adopted in one meeting so we would get it done before the end of the year. So hopefully that works and hopefully you get lucky. We'll send that letter out quickly. The only thing I would suggest is I know that there's advice that we're asking for on two items, right? The housing opportunity ordinance and this.

I'm not sure if that could be a question presented on the same opinion letter that we're requesting.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 37

We'll look at the strategy there as to whether we want to do two or one. And also we can look into the issue of what's called segmentation, which again, with more time, you know, if this letter had come in three days ago, we could have resolved these issues but given the lateness I think that the council member would like to do some more research I'll do some more research and we either wait on that letter or we can find this alternative way to make her comfortable that sounds

great all right any seeing no other questions or comments

David PenalozaItem 37

councilmember final point I just want to let the community out there know that December 21st is you know holiday week and and I'm hoping that you guys now keep that in mind to plan accordingly if you're going out of town vacation try to make some time to to dial in that day on the 21st thank you great thank you for

that comment council members please vote

thank you motion passes 7-0 with council members Hernandez Lopez Mendoza fan

and Mayor Sarmiento and Mayor Pro Tem Becerra voting yes. Thank you.

Great, thank you everybody. And Madam Clerk, do you need to advise anybody on the phone or anybody online that this item's been continued? If they've been paying attention, then they know it's been continued, so we should be good. All right, let me go ahead and recess the City Council meeting and convene the Housing Authority meeting. And let me go ahead and call the Housing Authority meeting to order and Madam Clerk if you'll please call roll of the Housing Authority.

Authority Member Becerra?

Here.

Authority Member Hernandez?

Here.

Authority Member Lopez? Here.

Thai Viet PhanItem 37

Authority Member Mendoza? Here. Authority Member Fan? Hey y'all, we're still having a meeting so please exit quietly. Thank you. Yes, here. Thank you.

Authority Member Peñalosa?

Here.

And Chair Sarmiento?

here madam clerk do we have any speakers for any of the items on items on the housing authority agenda we do not mayor great let's move along to the consent calendar items items one and two is there any authority member that wishes to move the item so moved back it we have a motion in a second Authority members, please vote.

Motion passes 6-0. Thank you. Authority members, Lopez Mendoza, Fan, Peñalosa, Vice Chair Becerra, and Chair Sarmiento voting yes.

Is authority member Hernandez here?

He's absent.

He's absent?

Yes, he did not mark his vote before stepping out.

All right.

But he was counted as part of the...

He was present. I just want to make sure he's present. Okay, great. Because then that does something kind of goofy with the attendance as long as he was present. All right, moving along to item number three. This is to approve a $1.6 million loan agreement with a 99-year ground lease for the item that we discussed, item number 16 on the regular agenda.

I assume there's no presentation. Is there a motion to move this item or any questions on this item?

I'll entertain a motion. I'll make a motion, Mayor, to approve.

Second.

Great. We have a motion and a second. Authority members, please vote.

Motion carries 6-0-1 with authority members Lopez, Mendoza, Fan, Peñalosa, Vice Chair Pocera, and Chair Sarmiento-Vorinez.

Great. Thank you. Let me go ahead and adjourn the Housing Authority meeting and reconvene the City Council meeting and call on Council Member Fan that has an item, item 38, to discuss and consider directing the clerk of the council to continue virtual public participation at all city meetings. Council Member Fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 38

Thanks, Mayor. So this item is pretty brief. I know that with COVID through the mayor, the governor's executive order as well as AB 361, the council is able to hold virtual meetings without posting the location you know where we live or where we're holding the meeting to comply with Brown Act however there's nothing in those laws discussing whether the public can continue to call in or use zoom to make public comments during hearings or any other items and I know there is some confusion when the AB 361 resolution had not been yet in front of the council so my goal with this is just

Thai Viet PhanItem 38

to have whether it's an ordinance or resolution to amend city policy to ensure that all public meetings in the city of Santa Ana allow residents and interested parties to call in or come in via Zoom to participate whether or not there's a pandemic whether or not there's some state law and whether or not the council is present in person.

Thank you for that Councilmember Fan. Any questions or comments from the Council? Councilmember Lopez and then Councilmember Hernandez. I just wanted to

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 38

support the item that you brought forth Councilmember Fan. And with that being said I'd like to to just make that be known that this is something I'm

Jessie LopezItem 38

supportive of. Thank you Councilmember. Councilmember Lopez. Me too and I don't necessarily want this to be a council requested item that has to come back every month if the clerk's office or the city attorney's office not the attorneys but the city manager's office could take the lead and just adding this to the agenda I think that would be helpful for everyone thank you thank you council

Thai Viet PhanItem 38

members oh just for clarification so the AB 361 resolution has to come back every month but I'm asking for whether it's a resolution in perpetuity or an ordinance however our team wants to organize it so that meetings are in public, whether or not the resolution comes back.

Mr. Mayor? Yes, go ahead.

Phil BacerraItem 38

Maybe just as a way to process it, could we just simply, I guess, as part of what we're deliberating here, to just have the item come back on our agenda monthly? The approval of the resolution, just as a matter of routine?

Thai Viet PhanItem 38

Well, oh, sorry.

Phil BacerraItem 38

Go ahead.

Thai Viet PhanItem 38

No, I mean you could however it requires under state law you have to have a pandemic or or some type of public emergency or that we have to declare social distancing is required for public health and safety so that that resolution requires certain legal check marks I'm saying that whether or not there is a pandemic everything is rosy I still want our residents to be able to call in at 10 p.m. Because they're at home with their families

Phil BacerraItem 38

I mean I'm supportive I'm just saying just as a matter of procedure do we just wait until we've declared that there is no longer an emergency if I may seek a

clarification so the way I'm understanding councilmember fan you're trying to achieve virtual participation for the public at your council meetings the other issue that I believe councilmember Becerra and councilmember Loeb as you're talking about is the resolution that provides for council members to participate virtually is that correct yeah i think so i don't care if the council

Phil BacerraItem 38

participates thank you for that clarification because i am more on in line then with what

Thai Viet PhanItem 38

councilmember fan is proposing yeah so all of us can be forced to be here but i don't want our

residents to be forced to be here right and and what we want is we want our comments to be directed to the city staff so the city staff can assess and bring something back. So, I mean, I like the discussion, but we can do that sort of offline. But right now, I think what we want is to give direction based upon what the council member has presented to us. And I think there was confusion. I think where this came from was some members of the public thought that we were going to reduce access, virtual access to the council meetings and their ability to comment, make public comments. And I think that's what this item is speaking to.

to address. I think AB 361, that's to us and any other deliberative body or any other commission that we have. So that is a different item that does need to come back to us for, you know, on a monthly basis, from what I understand. So again, just for me, for the record, I'm supportive, obviously, of not limiting the public to have access to our meetings and to comment publicly.

Phil BacerraItem 38

Any other comments? Mr. Mayor, just real quickly, if we're going to embark on this on a more permanent basis. I think we really need to tighten screws and make sure that we do what we can. You know, come to us if you need resources, Madam City Clerk, but I mean there's just every meeting we've got a new wrinkle or new hiccup and I know that we can get there. You know, we've been doing this for a while. I'm sure you're more of an expert than probably any of your colleagues in the county at this point because thankfully this council has been more transparent

Phil BacerraItem 38

and more accessible, but I would just say that please do a deep dive and assess where we're at and let us know what resources you need to make this work more seamlessly.

Thank you. So I think everybody's had a chance to comment that's wanted to speak on this item. Let me go ahead and move along to item number 39 to discuss and consider giving direction to introduce a resolution supporting the PFAS legislation that protects ratepayers and wastewater agencies. And I believe that's Councilmember Mendoza's item.

Yes. Thank you. We just need to offer support this because PFAS is a risk to the public. And so as a city, I would recommend that we support the continual education and research and in opposition to such chemicals being spilled into our drinking water. So I'm asking for support in bringing this to light and so that we can eliminate such contaminants from our drinking water.

Thank you, Council Member. Any other comments from members of the Council? I'm supportive of that. Thank you, Council Member Hernandez. Any other comments from the Council?

Just also wanted to voice my support. Thank you, Council Member.

Phil BacerraItem 39

Thank you, Council Member Mendoza, for bringing this forward.

Any other comments? I think you've heard enough. I'm certainly supportive. The whole PFAS question is very confusing. There's a movie called Dark Waters that talks about the whole, you know, origination of, you know, how this compound, and they call it the forever compound, it's a C8. It's like eight different, you know, elements that have been combined together, and you can't break them down so they don't dilute they don't you know eviscerate you have to burn it but we have to do treatment at the wellhead which is really really cumbersome really really expensive but all 19 agencies have

banded together to help address and and we're not even the most impacted community if you look at the upper watershed the most impacted communities like the city of Yorba Linda had to shut down all their wells because they're the closest to that upper watershed and where the water comes down. And we are impacted, you know, because it eventually makes its way down, down the groundwater to us. And we have, you know, some wells affected, but Anaheim, Yorba Linda, Fullerton, those sort of northern county cities are really struggling. So I am very supportive of this. And we, we, you know, started this discussion

when I was a president, I think at the at the water district, right, Nabil, and we were talking about this and I know that we did we all had no idea how difficult this was going to be what's scarier is there there are more compounds this isn't the only one so there are C8s there are C9s and different compounds that are out there so my worry is once we address this you know we may have other other issues that may we may need to deal with so in any event I think there's plenty of support for that so thank you for bringing that to us Councilmember Mendoza let me go ahead and bring it now back to the city manager I think that

was the last one right or is there yeah I think that was the last council led item let me go ahead and bring it back to the city manager for closing comments

thank you mayor and mayor Potem Becerra and council members I do have a few items I'm the first one as you've noticed there's a large skating rink next to City Hall we are very excited and a big shout out to our Public Works Department that worked very hard at presenting Santa Ana's first winter Village, a family-friendly community event. Today we had our employees get to test out the ice, and tomorrow is the soft opening. It will be open from 2 to 9, and then of course the grand opening is Thursday, December 9, and we look to see all of you there at 6 30 for some grand opening

celebrations, and the Winter Village will run until January 2, 2022, if you can believe that. This last weekend we did, it was the first weekend where we launched the Revive Resident Stimulus Program. Over a hundred city staff members went to some of our most impacted neighborhoods on Saturday and Sunday to distribute prepaid Visa debit cards loaded with a total of $300 for residents to spend. I have to say many of the executive directors were out there and thank you mayor and former mayor pro tem Penaloza for being there. We knocked on 4,700

doors and we did distribute 2,700 cards in person. Our goal of course is to disperse 20,000 cards before the end of the year. So we also encourage all of our residents to shop local during the holiday season and the recipients of that stimulus received information about the local businesses that will offer them further discounts if they're using their prepaid cart. Distribution of cards will take place again on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of this next weekend. So if any other council members want to come up, we'd love to see you out there. Also, the active streets on Thursday,

December 9th at 5 p.m. they're doing a bicycle tree and ride of lights on the holiday bike ride. And I believe that that is all. Thank you. Thank you, Madam City Manager. And let me go ahead and

bring it back to the council for their closing comments. But I think you were going to say, before we get on the ice, if we choose to make sure your, you know, your insurance policies are all paid up and you bring helmets or, I'm just kidding. What's that? You can rent helmets. Or those little, I think they're the, they're the equivalent of like, you know, you know, those tricycle things. So, you know, in any event, let me go ahead and start with Mayor

Phil BacerraItem 39

Pro Tem Becerra. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I will first of all want to thank all my colleagues who supported me to serve as mayor Pro Tem. I appreciate the opportunity to serve in this capacity. Well, thanks, Madam City Manager. You pretty much took everything I was gonna say is I'm looking forward to seeing everybody on Thursday at 630 out on the ice and 17 days left before Christmas. No pressure, but when you go buy your gifts, please go and shop at local businesses here in Santa Ana and with that good night thank you for those

comments councilmember Hernandez Thank You mr. mayor I just wanted to thank all

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 39

the residents who took time from their day to participate in today's City Council meeting I look forward to seeing my neighbors on Thursday at the tree lighting for people who know me the holiday season is an important time for my daughter and I so we will be there Thursday hope to see them thank you

Jessie LopezItem 39

Councilmember, Councilmember Lopez. Hi everyone, well I want to say happy birthday to my dad, I love you a lot and I also want to thank the Public Works Department for the ice rink, I was out there earlier and I was really happy to see all the staff and their families take advantage of the ice rink and it was a lot of fun so I encourage all of our residents to come out and partake and I also want to say thank you to all of the executive directors and staff that were out there this weekend. It was, we've heard a lot of funny stories about people not wanting to open

Jessie LopezItem 39

the door for various reasons, but thank you for being out there and volunteering and being in the community. I really appreciate that. And I do have a question for the city attorney. I guess I'm looking for guidance if I wanted to update or change the municipal code. How can I go about that?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 39

I think there's that you can always talk to staff if you have a question. Sometimes our municipal code provisions are dated and we can initiate a change if it's something like that. If there are policy decisions that you want to propose, the best way is probably to bring up an 85A and say you'd like to have a certain chapter reviewed. If your colleagues agree, then we would work on that with the city managers and staff, depending on which department it might impact. Got it. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Mendoza.

I'd like to encourage the public to come out and visit the Winter Village. It's a very festive and happy event. You can just feel the energy from the public as we've been indoors for the past two years. So it's very nice to have this event that brings the community back together. There's going to be a lot of activities for your family, the story time with Mrs. Santa, with Santa, hot chocolate, music, the elves, and the tree lighting ceremony.

So I encourage you to come out and take advantage all the way through January 2nd. It's an incredible event and we hope to continue to make this a yearly event. hopefully with some funding, maybe not from the pandemic funds. Hopefully the pandemic has been, will be a thing of the past and come next year in 2022. And I would also like to inform my colleagues that I attended the ACWA conference last week, and there was

a lot of information in regards to drought saving measures and conservation of our water. So I'm going to confer with our Public Works Director and see what... We do have some water saving measures already in place, and I am hoping and encouraging encouraging the public to begin being conscientious about the water use and to be on the lookout for hopefully some new programs.

Some of the cities that attended, some of the representatives mentioned the ways that they are saving water already and maybe even bring back the turf removal program where we could offer assistance, financial assistance for those residents who would like to remove the turf and put some in some drought resistant plants. and that's one significant way to conserve water. And so I'm going to also, and by the way,

there is money available through grants and I'm sure our director is aware, but I'd like to continue that effort before we run out of water. And I will also put our director in contact with some of the cities, the networking was significant and the projects that the cities have are something that maybe we can incorporate within our city and that's something that is valuable when we attend such conferences.

It's to exchange this kind of information to get them a lot of value for the funds that are available to us, that we exchange information with other cities, which doesn't cost us any money. And it's a common bond that we have with our sister cities that we share such information.

And lastly, there was one other item, but I'll come around if I can remember it.

Thank you, Council. I have those moments as well. You and I can relate. I get it. Thank you. Council Member Fan.

Sure.

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

Thank you, Mayor. So the first thing I'd like to say or remind everyone is today is Pearl Harbor Day December 7th. It is a day of remembrance for all Americans particularly those who have served and their families It is it is also a very trying day for those of us are Asian American Japanese American because it began the interment of Japanese Americans in this country a time when we chose and said it was lawful and appropriate to take away the property and rights of Americans in the name of national security. So I want us to

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

remember that because it is important to recognize that as an Asian American person, as an Asian American person who looks Asian, that you know perpetual foreigner stereotype still exists. It still exists despite the fact that I am sworn to protect the Constitution, that my family has service members, and that I, you know, continue to provide public service as something I value and my family values. And on a lighter note, happy birthday to all the Sagittarii everywhere. I'm a Sagittarius, and we're obviously very proud of it. So happy birthday, and have a good night.

Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 39

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. So on that birthday note, I want to wish a very happy birthday to our city clerk, Daisy Gomez, and our executive director of Public Works, Nabil Saba, that all have birthdays in the next couple days. And Nabil Saba, thank you and your team, Yasmeen, Public Works. I know you guys have been working extremely diligently and hard on getting that ice rink up and running. It looks beautiful. Can't wait to try it out myself and see our community use it as well. and to my colleagues, Hernandez and Becerra, for leading that effort on that ice rink.

David PenalozaItem 39

And I also want to take the opportunity to give an official and friendly welcome to our three new staff members up on the eighth floor, our Vietnamese community liaison, Tina Lee, and our new management analyst, Gaston Flores, and our equity and inclusion coordinator, who I see here in the room, Dr. Bernice, I want to make sure I don't mess up the last name, Ramallah.

Hey, welcome. So welcome.

David PenalozaItem 39

If you guys, if the members of the public see them around, please say hi. All three of them have been fantastic in the last couple of days that I got to talk to them. And that's it for me, Mayor Sarmiento. Thank you. Great.

Thank you for those comments. I just have a few comments. I want to kind of piggyback on what the city manager said. Look, I really want to thank our staff who stepped up and helped on this whole distribution of these cards. 20,000 households, 20,000 doors to be knocked on is nothing small. But remember, this is a privilege for us to go out to people's neighborhoods and to be able to bestow this incredible gift. I forget who I went with. I went with one of our staff members. I think it was Melissa and Paul was with us. We went to the senior citizens tower over on Ross and First Street, I think.

And, you know, the reception that we received from some people was really emotional and moving. And, you know, people were brought to tears. And some people didn't know. I mean, they were limited in what they could say because they were elderly. Some people were in their 80s and 90s and just really, really having a hard time physically. But we, this is the first time we've been able to do something like this. And many communities don't do this. So I just want to thank all of our staff members who volunteered to do this. And believe me, you're going to get more out of this than the actual recipients.

Because when you leave after knocking on those doors and giving somebody a gift like that. And one lady told me, nobody's ever knocked on my door and helped me with anything. And so those are moments that I think will resonate with me and stay with me for the rest of my time. and so anyways thank you to staff and thank you all for stepping up on that on the Winter Village welcome we want to welcome everybody on Thursday to come and join us one point that I want to thank staff on is not just on the construction but I know that we've made it very affordable for everybody to be

able to enjoy that and I know we're even gonna make it more affordable for our residents and that's something that I think councilmember fan brought to my attention and that's really important because we want everybody to enjoy it but we especially want our residents and families and children to enjoy it because not often does an ice rink come to Santa Ana, right? And so this is something that's going to be real special for everybody. And yesterday, I think it was, no, day before yesterday was the holiday parade in Wilshire Square, and I saw some of you there. So that was a very, very nice turnout.

Thank you to everybody for hosting us there. So I'm going to have to end on a sort of sour note because I'm going to adjourn in a young man's memory. His name is Christian Martin Miranda. And he passed away on November 19th, and he was a student at Mater Dei High School, graduated in 2019, and he was attending UCI. He was a pre-med student and he left home like many, you know, 20-year-olds do to go pick up a friend who wasn't feeling well.

And on the way home on the 405 going south, he got into a tragic car accident and he had severe brain trauma and was at Long Beach Memorial Hospital for seven days fighting for his life. And he unfortunately lost that fight, you know, and his heart stopped beating. but I've known Christian and his family since Christian was a little boy. He was a Bolivian-American, born in Bolivia but raised here as I was, and he represented this next generation of our community that is very small, but to the extent that he loved his culture, loved his roots, but was going to go

on to do great things, it really broke my heart when I heard the news. He was a 4.0 student at modern day and you know he was a star athlete he wore the number 10 on modern day's soccer team and if anybody knows soccer when you wear number 10 you are the person right you are the star so I just want to adjourn in Christian's memory and let him know he was a Santanero his family lived here since they emigrated here and know that we you know our part our city is diminished by his loss and his absence, but we wish them well and all our love to hopefully find some peace.

But with that, please hug your family, enjoy the holidays, be safe, and we'll see you here. We're adjourned until the 21st of December. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.