Read the December 21 meeting.

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Okay, Mayor, a meeting is being recorded.

Great. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Let me go ahead and reconvene the Council meeting tonight for December 21st, 2021, and we're back out in regular session. Let me just make a few opening remarks before I turn it over to the clerk so she can call roll. So this meeting is taking place with in-person attendance and by teleconference via Zoom. The public can access the meeting via the the San Ana YouTube channel or the city's website. And as usual, please bear with us as a technology may disrupt the flow of the meeting. And I'll turn it over to the clerk for a roll call.

Thank you. To Councilmember Hernandez.

For a roll call. Councilmember Lopez.

Councilmember Mendoza. Present. Councilmember Peñalosa.

David Penaloza

Here. Here.

Councilmember Fan. Mayor Pro Tem Becerra.

Here.

And Mayor Sarmiento.

Here. So we do have quorum. We'll have our council members be joining us throughout the meeting. Let me go ahead and turn it over to you, Madam Clerk, for some of your opening comments.

Thank you. For any member of the public who has joined us by way of teleconference or Zoom to request to speak on an agenda or non-agenda item within the city's jurisdiction with the exception of the public hearing items 41 and 42 please dial star 9 from your phone or click on the button labeled raise hand from zoom at this time for public hearing items 41 and 42 please hold your comments until the mayor opens that public hearing please announce your name and ward or neighborhood you resided within the city of Santa Ana for the record. Thank you, mayor. Great.

Thank you, everybody. Let me go ahead and call on mayor pro tem to go ahead and lead us in the pledge of allegiance. And if you'll all please remain standing after that for the invocation.

Phil Bacerra

If everybody will place a right hand over their heart. Ready and begin.

David Penaloza

which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all

and if we could have our police chaplain join us here for the invocation thank you sir

thank you mayor for giving me this opportunity to do the invocation this evening let's pray together shall we our father in heaven we we thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight pray for these council members our mayor the leadership of this city that you would give them the wisdom they need to make the important decisions that i know that they're going to be making this evening bless them with your truth protect them keep them safe as we're here in this meeting tonight we also pray for our police officers who are out keeping our city safe

protect them keep them safe and lord we pray for our first responders and lord we pray for our fire our firefighters and all the people that are involved in taking care of the city that way we just pray for them that you would protect them as well so lord bless this meeting we ask and again thank you lord for giving me this opportunity to be here tonight for we ask it in jesus name amen thank you thank you for that

moving along to the ceremonial presentation section of our meeting let me go ahead and call up Director Neil Saba, Mr. Rick Howard, and Cecilia Aguinaga. This is an award for the Mosquito Campaign presented by the Orange County Mosquito and Vector Control District. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council, staff, public here in the audience, and the public at home. My name is Rick Howard. I'm the District Manager of the orange county mosquito and vector control district and each year the orange county mosquito and vector control district works in partnership with all the cities there's 34 cities in the county and we had participation this year from 30 of the 34 cities however there were four cities that really stood out um la harvard yorba linda garden grove and santa anna and we're really proud of that

partnership because we worked really really hard over the last few years to develop it IT'S SOMETHING THAT'S BEEN A PRIORITY OF MINE SINCE I'VE BEEN DISTRICT MANAGER TO MAKE SURE WE HAVE A GREAT RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CITY OF SANTA ANA. WE'VE BEEN DOING THAT FOR THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS. EACH ASPECT OF THE CAMPAIGN THE CITY PARTICIPATED IN, INCLUDING THE TRUCK MAGNETS, MAYBE MANY OF YOU SAW THOSE DRIVING AROUND THE CITY. the city of santa anna had over 100 co-branded truck magnets that we've provided for them and we also want to acknowledge them for participating for messaging on the billboard

social media newsletter articles all the sorts of things that we need to get our message out to protect the residents of santa anna from vectors and vector-borne diseases we understand 2021 brought many new challenges to public agencies and we appreciate the partnership of the city and want to present this plaque to recognize the city's hope in the 2021 tip toss and take action campaign and it says present the city of santa anna in appreciation for your outstanding contribution and level of commitment to improving awareness about vectors and the these and the diseases they carry to the city of santa anna and i'm going to hand

hand this over to our trustee from the city uh cecilia agenaga and she can present it to the city thank you so much

Thank you, Eric. Thank you, Cecilia, for this recognition. We're honored to receive it. And I'm looking forward for our continued relationship with the vector control and mosquito control district. Looking forward for many years for the partnership. Thank you. Yeah. Trying to get that message out about those Inco-biting mosquitoes that you guys are all complaining about. So pay attention for next year's campaign. Thank you so much. Yeah. And you're going to have to be you, the community, taking advantage that there is so many people here wonderful right that you

need to listen and not to have any standing water in your houses please not standing water everybody has my number that's why I'm you trustee and I'm very proud to be here and be representing the mayor thank you Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you for that award and that presentation. We appreciate all the work that you're doing, Cecilia. Why don't I go ahead and call up the Santa Ana Pony 12 and under baseball team and the coaches up here with us. We want to do a recognition. I'm going to be with Councilmember Lopez.

So we have the distinct honor and pleasure of recognizing these handsome young gentlemen here with us. And I'm just here for the right. I'm going to actually introduce council member Jesse Lopez who's going to be making this presentation. We're just proud to have You guys with us here today. Are you guys the storm? All right. Are you guys the storm? All right, there we go. Council member Lopez. Come on up

Jessie LopezItem 2

Thank you mayor Samantha and hi welcome everyone So the Sonana Pony baseball is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing youth baseball players the opportunity to develop and enhance their skills potential and prepare them for high school baseball and beyond and the team has been together since the spring of 2018 and during this time they have participated in tournaments in various states like California Arizona Nevada Utah and they've even been playing

Jessie LopezItem 2

baseball internationally and some of their titles include champions at the 2020 campeonato eduardo arce busera tournament in mazatlan mexico and they were also finalists last year july 2020 during the baseball challenge in hurricane and at utah and they were also champions at the 2020 Southwest Premier Tournament in Yuma, Arizona. And I've had the pleasure of meeting the president, which is a West Floral Park resident. And I've heard so many great things about all of the work that they do,

Jessie LopezItem 2

but also the contributions that they do for our community. And one of the big projects that we've been working on together is making sure that the Riverview Park is updated. And so one of the things we did today was, or not today but this year was give them new lighting and so Elias and the rest of the parents I know next year are going to be working to revamp you know where they sell snacks out of the Riverview Park because they use that park a lot and I'm going to hand it over to the mayor now so he can

also say some remarks. Let's just give it up for these guys that did a great job. Come on let's hear it.

So look, I know how important it is to not only the players who played their heart out, but let's give a big round of applause to the parents with all those cameras back there. I love it.

I know you guys had a little something to do with that, right? All right. Well, listen, I have some certificates here that I want to present to everybody. I'm going to call the coaches up here to go ahead and receive their certificates. And then I'm going to name all the players by name before I call the coaches. up so raise your hands as you get as I'm calling on you Michael Contreras all right Michael congratulations Lupe Contreras David Cruz is Adrian Cueva here with us Andre Haro Anthony Haro and we got some brothers right or is it just a coincidence no Carlos Landeros Jaden Ramos

Charlie Saliva Adrian Soto Evan Tejas and David Verduzco all right you guys you make us proud all right let's hear it let's hear it for them all right so we spoke about the players we spoke about the parents they need good coaches too right so let's call these coaches up here one by one coach Jerry Tejas where you coach come on up stay stay up here Jerry stay up here coach Alex Otto and

last but not least coach Alfred Contreras so we've got certificates for each one of the players as well but I want to see if maybe there's a coach and a player who wants to talk about the experience and how meaningful this is for them because we'd love to hear from them all right so which one of you uh is going to be brave and say a few words all right coach there he is thank you thank you first off thank you for this

recognition amazing recognition for the boys they've worked really hard to prepare them not only in the field but also in school so they're all great students as well and it's a truly a pleasure to coach these amazing kids you know we have a a great coaching staff with alex and alfred and honestly it's it's remarkable to see the improvement they've they've overcome from the time they were seven years old so now we're 11 and 12 so with that you know just thank you to the parents for entrusting in me to be able to coach and lead this team and also to the kids for being very coachable and

very driven so thank you very much all right so who's gonna be the lucky person who's gonna speak on behalf of the players? I think they're athletes they

don't with it you know athletes don't say much they just you know kind of just play nobody wants to say thank you? All right well we'll say it all together one two three there we go well listen thank you everybody

thank you storm santa storm for making us all proud we believe in you would love you all right so let's take a picture

one, two, three Santa's gonna be Santa's gonna be Santa's gonna be Santa's gonna be Santa's gonna be Santa's gonna be Santa's gonna be Santa's gonna be Santa's gonna be Santa's gonna be Santa's gonna be Santa's gonna be

Thank you.

Congratulations.

Thank you, everybody. So that was our last presentation for the night because I understand the third presentation is going to be continued to the next meeting on the 18th of January 2022. So let's go ahead and move along to our staff presentation, the update on homelessness.

Thank you. Good evening, Honorable Mayor and members of the City Council. This is our second reoccurring monthly update on homelessness and homeless services provided by the City of Santa Ana. Homelessness continues to be a complex issue, and the City of Santa Ana remains at the forefront of addressing it and using all of our available tools. So this evening, I have a brief presentation for you, and I want to update you on the County of Orange Point in time count, which is happening next month, the quality of life teams, activities, and highlights, and the rollout of our new SMART team that started this month,

and then ongoing homeless services provided by our city and a brief update on the Carnegie Shelter. So the point in time count. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires that all continuum of cares complete a biannual unsheltered count of all individuals experiencing homelessness on a single point in time during the last 10 days of January. The last point in time count in Orange County took place on January 22, 2019 and the next count will take place this January 24th through January 28th. The count obtains an unduplicated number of homeless people in our entire county

at a specific point in time. To gather the number of unsheltered individuals, the street-based counts will use volunteers walking or driving to count at homeless encampments on our streets, sidewalks and alleys, parks, vacant lots, business centers and neighborhoods. Volunteers will also contact all shelters, transitional housing and other residential programs to gather the number of sheltered homeless individuals. Organizations involved in this effort will be led by the Orange County Community Resources Agency and will be supported by CityNet, 211 OC and numerous other non-profits and volunteer organizations.

In addition to the 34 city agencies from across the county, law enforcement, OC Public Works and independent community volunteers play very important roles. The next slide shows a table that depicts the homeless counts for the last time this was done for 2017, 2018, and 2019. The 2017 and 2019 counts were official point-in-time counts held by the Continuum of Care. The 2018 count was conducted just by us, the City of Santa Ana.

The most recent, that being the 2019 point-in-time count, shows that there were 1,769 people experiencing homelessness in Santa Ana, and that was made up of 939 sheltered and 830 unsheltered. For the county as a whole, there were a total of 6,860 individuals experiencing homelessness. The second table just shows how we compare to other cities in the central service area in 2019. According to the 2019 count, approximately 53% of all individuals experienced homeless in our county are found in our city.

As I talked about before, the county is carved up into different service planning areas or spas. So our city falls into what's called the Central Services Planning Area, also referred to as the Central Spa. There are currently 125 maps identifying known locations where homeless individuals frequent and that have been prepared and will be distributed to the volunteers for this upcoming count on Tuesday January 25th. Other counts will be held Wednesday January 26th in the Northern Spa and Thursday the 27th in the South Spa. The final day of counts the 28th

will just serve as a gap filling any redos or complete maps that might need additional support.

Over 400 volunteer opportunities are available for the January 25th count. Individuals can participate in the count either on the street or at a deployment center. Each team member will be equipped with an identifiable count t-shirt, a branded everyone counts OC tote bag with snack kits and survey incentives for survey participants. At this time volunteers are required to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination or a negative PCR tests within 48 hours of the scheduled volunteer shift. Volunteers are also required to wear a face mask regardless of their vaccination status and face coverings will be provided at the

deployment center sites if the volunteers do not have one. Items will be distributed to homeless individuals and families encountered during the 2022 point in time count to encourage participation in the survey. Donations continue to be accepted such as snack kits, water, grocery store, and fast food gift cards to volunteer or donate to the 2022 point in time count please go to the website it's very easy it's everyone counts oc.org there also is a phone number you can call if you're interested in being a volunteer and that is 714-494-9418 preliminary count surveys will be

available in April and the finalized city specific information is usually done by July. So next moving on to the quality of life team activity they remain very active and engaged in all areas of our city. This is the stats just from the last month so for November the cult continued its daily coordinated responses throughout the city they contacted 222 individuals currently experiencing homelessness, providing outreach services as well as enforcement actions when necessary. 189 cleanups of various sizes occurred. These cleanups are generally larger

in scale and require more time to perform than routine public works responses. There were 81 citations issued for various misdemeanor offenses and we were able to place or assist the placement of 62 individuals into shelter.

So some other highlights. Colt assisted public works with clearing a very large flood control tunnel in Santiago Park following the clean out the drainage tunnel was secured. Throughout the month, Colt officers assisted the Burlington Northern Santa Fe and the Union Pacific Railroad with clearing out encampments that were set up along the train tracks in the areas of 1700 Standard, 1800 East Dyer, 2700 South Main, 1000 East McFadden, and 1500 North Grand, as well as some other known hotspots. Once their cleanup crew began working, Colt addressed the surrounding areas where some

properties had been stored and hidden in an attempt to keep railroad staff from accessing it. It resulted in a full truckload of debris being cleared as well as an entire truckload of abandoned property being stored. Colt responded to the area of Bristol North of Memory Lane to address ongoing complaints of illegal and transit related activities occurring in and around a liquor store and code enforcement and the city attorney's office have already began evaluating possible enforcement remedies. Colt officers also responded to a vacant building located on Ritchie due to numerous calls for

service and numerous complaints through our app system. There was an encampment that was found in open space between private property and the 55 freeway and due to the high visibility the Colt crews conducted a clean up of the location and the location has been referred to code enforcement and important to note that at any time our first approach to homeless is to offer services to them not just to clean up and do enforcement action and so I'm really excited to share with you the new program that we kicked out under your leadership which we've now officially given the acronym SMART so this is the

Santa Ana multidisciplinary homeless response team it operates currently seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. and it takes calls to the police and fire departments regarding non-criminal or non-emergency homeless related situations and it transfers them to CityNet dispatch. Specifically trained response teams are then dispatched to address and engage with the homeless population. Issues that involve criminal conduct or activity outside of the capabilities of course do go back to the first responders. So via the 911 they can be diverted to the CityNet Dispatch Center or our residents should they

encounter a homeless person in need of assistance they can reach the dispatch center directly if they call the number that's depicted on the slide that's 714

242 3706 and the city will begin marketing efforts around that number to try to limit the amount of calls that go to 911. SMART has established a weekly dashboard. So just for this last week, so this is the 6th through the 12th, this is all of the accomplishments this team has already achieved. They had 104 outreach contacts, they did 40 instances of case management, and they had 19 street exits. Seven COVID engagements, and this just means the number of times that the case managers have given COVID-related support, such as face masks, hand sanitizer, hygiene kits. SMART responded to 53 dispatched calls.

45 of those were calls that were diverted from our first responders and eight of those were self-initiated calls. So the evaluation of the weekly completed outreach contact map also shows where the work is being conducted and you can see from the dots on the map they pretty much were citywide in their efforts.

so next homelessness as we know it affects the quality of life of all of our residents and visitors and so through collaboration and coordination with city state federal community groups non-profits faith-based businesses and residents we are working towards providing relief to the homeless and for those at risk of homeless so this is the area that we we do a great of providing housing options for individuals experiencing homelessness. Currently, the city is utilizing both the Salvation Army Hospitality House and the Link on Commonwealth to provide emergency shelter beds with wraparound services

until our Homeless Navigation Center on Carnegie is complete. In total, the city of Santa Ana has provided shelter beds for 499 persons currently experiencing homelessness at both the Hospitality House and the Link during the calendar year 2021. As of today, the Salvation Army Hospitality House has 49 residents, leaving 26 beds available, while the Lincoln Commonwealth has 61 residents, leaving 39 beds available. The Santa Ana Homeless Navigation Center on Carnegie remains in construction and will initially provide 200 beds with capability to expand to over 300 beds.

Construction is progressing, and we look forward to an opening in the new year. As further demonstration of Santa Ana's commitments to the homeless crisis, We are proud of the 227 current permanent supportive housing units completed and located within five different sites in our city. An additional 207 units are currently in pre-development or under construction at five additional locations within our city. In total, the city very soon will have a total of 437 permanent supportive housing units. In addition, through the use of HUD emergency solution grants, rental assistance funding

for individuals experiencing or at risk of becoming homeless, Santa Ana is typically awarded about $500,000 for this program annually. These funds are used for homeless prevention, rapid rehousing, shelter, as well as data and street outreach. Funds for homeless prevention and rapid rehousing include short-term rental lease payments, as well as utility and security assistance to help an individual through any temporary situation. Housing vouchers are also issued by the Santa Ana Housing Authority, and currently there are vouchers that are set aside specifically for individuals experiencing homelessness.

To date, 422 vouchers have been issued.

That concludes my update. I know that was a lot of information, but a lot I wanted to share with you, and staff and myself are available if you have any questions.

great thank you for that presentation a lot of good information so let me go ahead and bring it back to the city council to see if they have any questions or comments councilmember fan and

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

councilmember peñalosa thank you chris thank you christine and i really appreciate that um there are a lot of numbers but it's really helpful to to know what the numbers are because we know that we've done a lot of work in this space um the one question i had was regarding the vouchers So regarding the vouchers, you know, we've had constituents and residents asking for support for those who are LGBTQ or trans who are experiencing houselessness. So, you know, how do we get these vouchers if they get a voucher? You know, how does it work? Can they just go get an apartment?

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

that because you know a lot of folks who are LGBTQ or trans are not going to be comfortable in any type every type of situation. I'm going to see if Jetson is

available because we've done he can explain just the the normal voucher process as to when someone receives a voucher how they go about finding but he can also talk about work he's done specifically for LGBT community and and giving them ideas and how to get a unique housing development started.

Yeah, thank you very much, Council Member Phan. So when a voucher is issued to an individual, they face substantial barriers in finding and locating a unit, right? But one benefit we have is that the three housing authorities in Orange County, Cardin, Anaheim, our housing authority and the Orange County Housing Authority have an MOU in place, So that they're able to actually search with their voucher issued by our housing authority and find it and locate a unit anywhere Throughout Orange County. So it broadens their housing options and streamlines the process for them to find and locate a healthy and safe unit

Regarding the housing up Oh, sorry. Yeah Regarding the housing options for for LGBTQ individuals and families You know, they are, our vouchers that we issued are accessible and available to them equally, right? And when we issue a regular voucher to those families, we provide them with assistance, with guidance on locating and finding a unit in our community and elsewhere throughout Orange County.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

Okay, so the voucher is open to anyone who potentially qualifies, but there's nothing specifically targeted right now toward those who might be LGBTQ or might have issues say you know going into congregate shelter or something like that

that's correct we do not have a voucher specifically for individuals LGBTQ

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

individuals do we have any shelters or other services that are specific to those who are LGBTQ or trans it falls under the umbrella yes so maybe Stephen

Can you talk about, so you met with Latinx and you were giving them ideas. So there's a model, I believe it's in LA, where a housing development was created specifically for the underserved community members, such as LGBTQ. And that was done, and I think I did the letters wrong, but that was LA. And so one of the things that we did have a meeting with Latinx locally here to provide them the steps of how they could go about achieving that through when we do an RFP FOR AN AFFORDABLE HOUSING DEVELOPMENT. SO IF YOU CAN PROVIDE JUST A LITTLE MORE CONVERSATION THAT YOU HAD WITH THEM.

YEAH, WE HAD AN EXTENSIVE CONVERSATION WITH THEM, COUNCILMEMBER FAN, REGARDING GROWING AS AN ORGANIZATION, LEARNING THE GRANT PROCESS, LEARNING AND COPYING AND MIMICING WHAT WAS GOING ON IN L.A. JUDSON AND I SAT DOWN WITH THEM FOR ABOUT AN HOUR AND A HALF IN, I BELIEVE IN OCTOBER, with a number of staff members who are leading the efforts on both our RFP that Judson just released, as well as our CDBG RFP, which provides opportunities for nonprofits. And we asked them to do some legwork on their own of how to mimic the LA model. Because what they're wanting and what their goal is is to have almost a house,

a house that's dedicated to them that they would probably purchase and then rent out and act as landlord. SO WE'RE HELPING THEM MATURE AND GROW AS A NONPROFIT IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND THE PROCESS, THE LINGO AND THE GRANTS THAT ARE OUT THERE BOTH STATE, LOCAL AND FEDERALLY.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

SO THAT'S REALLY HELPFUL. I GUESS MY QUESTION WAS JUST TO SEE RIGHT NOW AS WE'RE PROVIDING A MYRIAD OF SERVICES TO THOSE WHO ARE EXPERIENCING HOMELESSNESS, YOU KNOW WHAT IS SPECIFICALLY AVAILABLE. SO THAT JUST GIVES ME A BETTER FRAME OF REFERENCE OF, YOU KNOW, THE FUTURE WORK THAT I MIGHT WANT TO PURSUE.

Judson has two different categories of vouchers. There's some that are portable and then some that are actually project-based vouchers. And those stats were individually stated on the presentation.

Thank you, council member. Council member Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 4

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. And thank you for that presentation, Madam City Manager. The only question I had was in reference to slide number 12 in your presentation under November 2021. My question is why did we see a 50% reduction in the cleanups conducted, 189 total in November down from 331 in October?

The answer to that question is that the cleanups that were conducted in the month of November were large scale and much more complex than easier ones. So the larger scale ones require more time to perform and require a lot more resources from public work. So while the the number decreased for the month of November the actual volume of work was probably the same

David PenalozaItem 4

Okay for future reference. Thank you for that I would appreciate if there's some kind of asterisk if that is why there's that difference there Because that is a substantial drop and I want to make sure that we're not It doesn't look like we're losing track of the situation in the city and trying to maintain it clean So just would appreciate that for any future presentation, but thank you for that

Phil BacerraItem 4

Great, thanks for those comments mayor pro tem. Thank you. Mr. Mayor. I love seeing the stats that 62 shelter placements Excuse me and 81 arrests So the fact that we have so many shelter placements says so much about how this city is addressing homelessness And so we have critics that come out and act like we come out with force first or arrests and citations first. But as it's showing, even though there are a little bit more arrests, the fact is we know that there are a lot of homeless folks that do not want to accept services and want to continue certain activities here in our community.

Phil BacerraItem 4

But the fact is that our staff has been able to get as many as they have into shelter should be commended. So I thank you guys for that. I just wanted you guys, I was looking at that slide in regards to shelter beds, and I didn't see Yale on there. And I know we have access to beds at Yale. And I think that it's helpful for folks to know that as we're trying to offer placement for folks into shelter, we do have options more than, I believe, the two that you had listed on the slide. So can you remind me how many we have at Yale?

You're absolutely correct, and we will add that to future presentations. So we have a guaranteed 125 beds at Yale.

Okay, that's all I have. Thank you very much. Great. Council Member Mendoza.

Yes. Similarly, I would like to see if we have any information on the cold weather shelter at the Army Reserve.

Such as their capacity and their hours or?

Does Santa Ana have access to that shelter?

Yes. So the cold weather shelter that's conducted at the Armory serves the entire central spa, which does include Santa Ana.

How many beds there?

I believe it's 90? 80 beds. Thank you.

Great. Thank you for those comments. Appreciate the presentation. And I do, you know, want to echo some of what Council Member Phan said. I know that when we build out our shelter, and I know we did this with the link, which was our temporary shelter, we created sort of zones or areas, some for families, right, and some for single men, some for single women. And I think those separations make sense because we don't want to just put everybody into sort of one general space for obvious reasons, but to the extent that we can work with our trans community to make sure that they also have some dedicated area

and to the extent those aren't being used, they can be used for anybody that comes in. but I think it's important for us to understand that. I am very excited about the SMART team, by the way. So it's active now and it's activated, and so I know this council did a lot to make sure that we have those calls pivot from just our police officers responding to a civilian professional team. So it's really, really great news. I know a lot of other communities that have done this and seem to be having success. I wasn't sure if I heard correctly. So right now the calls, 911 calls are being diverted.

And at the discretion I would expect from the dispatcher and then they would go ahead and distinguish what could be handled by the civilian team versus our officers. But then people can call directly to the number that's here at the bottom of the page. And I assume we'll be pushing that out.

We are. We would like to further market that number. So if we educate our residents and our businesses, then they aren't even placing the call and clogging the 911 line, which will let 911 focus on other types of topics.

So that's really sort of an ancillary goal, which is not just having civilian professionals respond to some of these welfare checks, mental health issues, and people experiencing homelessness, but it will also allow for our officers to respond quicker to some of the core police functions and calls that they're receiving. So those are two huge, huge benefits of having this team. So thank you for that update. And let me go ahead and seeing no other comments or questions, I'll go ahead and move on to the next item.

And let me just ask before we go to the public comments section, I'm going to ask the city attorney if there's anything to report at a closed session.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 1

Mayor, council members, members of the public, the city council did have one closed session discussion regarding labor negotiations with all sub-innovates bargaining units, and there's no reportable action.

Great. Thank you for that. So before we go into public comment section, let me just take something out of order with the indulgence of the council. I'd like to take item number 16 out of order. That is just basically an appointment by Council Member Fan of Brandon Wynn to the Youth Commission, and we'd like to have maybe... First of all, we'll take a vote, obviously, and if there's a motion and a second so we can take Brandon swearing in. I'll make a motion to approve, Mayor. Second. Great. We have a motion and a second, and I don't think we have devices, so we're going to be voice voting tonight.

You should be able to cast your votes. Does everybody have their votes? I don't even have a device.

Oh, you don't have your device?

Do you need this?

Are you able to, Mayor?

Well, I've got the city logo in front of me. I don't see anything else. Why don't we just do a voice vote for this one, and then in between we can go ahead and work on this.

Thank you, Mayor.

Council Member Hernandez?

Yes.

Council Member Lopez? Yes. Council Member Mendoza? Yes. Councilmember Fan. Yes. Councilmember Peñalosa. Yes. And Mayor Potem Becerra. Yes. And Mayor Sarmiento. Yes.

So why don't we have Brandon come on up here and join us, and let's get him sworn in so he doesn't have to hang out the whole night with us, even though I know he'd like to. But he'll have his own meetings to go to as a youth commissioner.

Brandon, no way.

Do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies foreign and domestic

that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion that I will

Well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I'm about to enter. All right, perfect. Thank you.

All right, congratulations.

Let's give him a big round of applause.

Thank you so much.

Great. Congratulations, Brandon. Thank you, Councilmember Fant. I think we may almost have all our youth commissioners appointed so that's a that's a good thing let me go ahead and move along to the public comment portion of the meeting and just make a couple of remarks before I turn it over to the clerk so this is a time place for the meeting of the City Council to receive comments from members of the public on agendized and non-agendized items pursuant to the Brown Act the City Council may not enter into any discussion or dialogue with the public

but we will hear from members of the public that are physically present here first and then we'll call on people who are on zoom or Online and so madam clerk do we have anybody That wishes to address us

Mayor yes, and also be I provided to you the in-person cards But for those that are joining us by way of zoom or conference car Call if you would like to provide a comment on any agenda or non agenda items with the exception of the public hearing items 41 and 42. When unmuted, please announce your name, ward or neighborhood that you reside in within the city of Santa Ana for the record. Thank you.

Great. Thank you for those comments. Let me go ahead and begin with calling on members of the public that are here presently with us physically, and then I'll go ahead and turn it over to the clerk so she can call on people who are online. And let me begin with Chad Kroger followed by J.T. Parr, followed by Tom Shook. So if you guys will all kind of get ready and we can go ahead and go through this quickly.

And everybody will have three minutes. You don't have to use the three minutes. If you want to be more concise and more brief, feel free to do that. And that would be appreciated.

What up, council? My name is Chad Kroger. I come to you today with a story, a lesson to the wise. We thought we could get back into Zed's good books by sending all the shmoles to Catalina Island. So we did. And we realized in doing so that we made a massive, massive error.

You see, when you boke a shmole from the squad, the rest of the squad naturally becomes more shmole-y to balance things out. Something called equilibrium. We had to return to Shmoll Island one last time to retrieve Kevin and bring balance to the force. But by the time we arrived, our metamorphosis and the Shmolliness was complete. We had been away from Kevin for too long. We couldn't shake the Shmolliness that took over our souls.

Because of our activism, Catalina Island, aka Schmoll Island, was full of Schmolls enjoying our Schmoll discounts. It was too late for them, but we could still save ourselves and bring Kevin home. Due to his relentless Instagram posts, we knew there were only a few places he could be. getting his wiki-whacked, fishing by the pier, hunting for buffalo crap, or humping the statue of Old Ben.

Sure enough, there he was. The urge to hump Old Ben was too strong. I thrusted with veal. One particular local joined in, and after that we felt like locals, and nothing could stop our desire to be schmoles. Kevin beat a golf cart in a race which was actually pretty sick. JT did a Mangina tourist photo shot. We wrestled on the beach. We hit the promenade to chat up some MILFs. JT also chatted up a dude. But as the day drew to an end, JT and I started to notice something. We began to feel

less shmoley. Kevin's presence began to neutralize the poison and we knew we had to leave before we stayed on Catalina forever. So like Ulysses on the island of Kalypso, we tied Kevin to the mast of the Catalina Flyer and escaped the schmoll sirens back home to LA. And here we are, back to our normal chill selves. What up?

Council, we ask you to revoke the schmoll discounts you put in place. They're too dangerous. The world needs Schmoles. The world needs Kevin. We have only two weeks to get uncancelled and re-invited to Zed's End of Summer Rager. Time is running out. If you dudes have any thoughts on what we could do, we'd be all ears. Do you have any ideas?

any more causes that could get us uncancelled

thank you Chad okay all right JT Parr followed by Tom Shook followed by John Kelly

what up council I come to you today with a story a lesson to the wise

we thought we could get back into Zed's good books by sending all the shmoles to Catalina Island so we did but we realized in doing so that we had made a massive massive error You see, when you boke a shmol from the squad, the rest of the squad naturally becomes more shmol-y to balance things out. Something called equilibrium. We had to return to Shmol Island one last time to retrieve Kevin and once again bring balance to the force. But by the time we arrived, our metamorphosis and the shmol-ness was complete. We had been away from Kevin for too long and we couldn't shake the shmoliness that took over our souls.

Because of our activism, the island was full of shmoles enjoying our shmole discounts. It was too late for them, but we could still save ourselves and bring Kevin home. Due to his relentless Instagram posts, we knew there were only a couple places he could be. getting his wiki-whacked, fishing by the pier, hunting for buffalo crap, or a hunt. We knew there were only a couple places he could be. Getting his wiki-whacked, fishing by the pier, hunting for buffalo crap, or humping the statue of old Ben. Sure enough, there he was.

The urge to hump old Ben was too strong for us. One particular local joined in. After that, we felt like locals and nothing could stop our desire to be schmoles. Kevin beat a golf cart in a race which was actually pretty sick. I did a Mangina tourist shot. We wrestled on the beach. We hit the promenade to chat up some milfs. But as the day drew to an end Chad and I started to notice something. We felt less schmolly. See Kevin's presence began to neutralize the douche within us and we knew we had to leave before we stayed on Catalina forever. So like

Ulysses on the island of Calypso, we tied Kevin to the mass of the Catalina Flyer and escaped the shmol sirens back home to LA. And here we are, back to our normal chill selves. Council, we ask you to revoke the shmol discounts that we put in place. They're too dangerous. The world needs shmoles. The world needs Kevin. We only have two weeks to get uncancelled and re-invited to Zed's and a summer rager. Time is running out. If you

dudes have any thoughts on what we could do, we'd be all ears. Do you guys have any ideas?

JT, we can't go into a dialogue, and I think your three minutes is up, but you've given us a lot to think about. Thank you.

Well, I appreciate the response, Mayor Sarmiento. Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Email us.

Tom Shook, followed by John Kelly.

I do appreciate the response, Mayor Sarmiento. Thank you.

Fred Bascaroon.

Hi.

I'm going to try to top that.

Yeah, first of all, that's tough to follow. But I just want to say thank you for giving me the privilege to address the council this evening. My name is Tom Shook, and my wife Gail and I are missionaries from Calvary Church of Santa Ana. We've spent the better part of 30 years serving in Asia, where we lived and worked. We returned to the United States in 2019, and we have started an organization called His Refuge, and it serves refugees and immigrants here and around the world.

One of the things we're doing through Calvary Church is we're sponsoring Afghan refugees. And just to throw our attention back to August, with 100,000 people being evacuated out of Afghanistan, and they are at five bases in the United States. Many of them are obviously still there. I would like to see our city be involved in sponsoring some of these Afghan refugees. And I would actually like to see each ward receive two Afghan refugee families. We will do all the heavy lifting.

We just need some cooperation from the city to see if we can work this out. We are partnering with Home for Refugees, a South County-based organization that is a refugee resettlement assistance agency, building teams surrounding the families, the wraparound model, and helping these families resettle. So again, I look forward to an opportunity maybe to sit down with you or if you're interested. We would like to see this happen. I'd like to start with Ward 3 because it's where our church is. And that's really all I've got to say.

Thank you, sir. Thank you. John Kelly followed by Fred Bascaroon followed by Guadalupe. If you all could get ready and be ready to speak as soon as the speaker in front of you is done.

Good evening mayor members of the City Council City staff My name is John Kelly a vice president with TNT fireworks the wholesale distributor to 55 nonprofit organizations Here of fireworks here in Santa Ana safe and sane fireworks are a great fundraising mechanism here in Santa Ana. We know this because last year the groups grossed over two million dollars resulting in about three quarters of a million to one million dollars in profits for them. The problem in Santa Ana is illegal fireworks which flows in unchecked into Southern California from Nevada as well as through the ports of Los Angeles and Long

Beach they are distributed tens of millions of dollars are distributed through residential garages through Craigslist and through organized crime as you ponder this issue this evening I wanted to leave you with a couple of points to think about first are there any statistics available on the numbers of citations and arrests related to fireworks available for the past year or past years. Illegal fireworks are already banned in Santa Ana and in fact all of California.

Safe and sane fireworks are tested and approved by the California State Fire Marshal for distribution and use by the general public. People who use, buy or sell these are doing so legally from July 1st to July 4th in the city of Santa Ana. We're talking about three and a half days here. So the discussion about banning all fireworks, just a reminder, they're already illegal 362 and a half days in the year. When reviewing the Orange County Fire Authority statistics, they don't distinguish between between causes of fireworks, between safe and sane, legal or unknown. Please pay attention to that.

The idea that removing safe and sane fireworks will eliminate illegals is not true. And if you doubt that, please ask the City of Los Angeles and the City of Long Beach, who have never allowed the sale of safe and sane product if they have problems with illegal fireworks. In closing, TNT fireworks has been a partner with this community and with the city since 1989 we had 120 groups selling back in 1989 that number is reduced substantially we've worked with comlink we've worked with PD we've worked with fire and we hope to continue

to have a seat at that table as we work through please don't punish the people who are obeying the laws in your city thank you thank you for that Fred

Red Bash Garun followed by Guadalupe with Mini Market Store and Pastor Doña Casanova.

Mr. Mayor and Council Members, thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about the banning of the tobacco flavor.

It's very hard for us as the owners. I own a place for 14 years on, located at 2431 North St. Austin Avenue. For the past 14 years, I've been doing the same business and I have five employees. By banning this product, you guys got to cut at least about 25 to 35% of our revenue, which I'm going to really cut down on employees that have been working for me in the past probably 13 years. So I really appreciate it if you guys can consider this. I also prefer that if you guys can give the fine, a bigger fine for people that really

sell into minor and instead banning the flavor, because what's got to happen is the people, my customer that been with me for the past 14 years, they got to go to the next city to really purchase whatever you guys got to ban. So I really appreciate if you guys can consider this because this is really going to hurt us so bad. I really thank you.

Thank you. Guadalupe followed by Pastor Doña Casanova.

Okay, I wrote it down what I wanted to say. Okay, good evening, everyone. My name is Guadalupe from Mini Market here in Santa Ana. First of all, I appreciate the opportunity to be here as a small business owner for so many years. I will say close 30 years now here in Sanana. I am aware of the consequences of tobacco products as you members of the city council are aware too. And we all here for this important issue. Okay.

What I wanted to say is myself at the store and my husband and my daughter, we are very careful not to sell tobacco products to minors. Okay? And believe it or not, sometimes we're very, very nice to those minors because they're in six and they tell you so many things, but we have no idea. You're a minor. We can't do it. I'm sorry. And we say a lot of things, but finally, those become our friends. So they come later.

and we take very seriously responsibility not sell to minors at my store. And I say that because I never got a citation or never a warning or nothing in all those years about tobacco products, okay? So it's been so many years. I have customers for many, many years. no matter what, they're going to go and get what they want in another city. Okay, right here, I see I'm losing profit, not only selling tobacco products.

I'm losing profit in the water, the use, the cookies, bread, milk. So might as well, if I can get my cigarette here, I go another place. That's where we are losing profit. that's how I see but I am very very careful I know I really I want to make money but I don't want to make money selling out to my nurse so thank you

thank you thank you for that pastor Casanova followed by Irma Hauregui followed by Dale Helwig followed by Jose Rea if you'll all be ready to speak

please. Hello I'm Pastor Una Casanova from the Church of the Nazarene and we are in Ward 3 and I'm speaking on Agenda 43. Hello I firmly believe that we need to keep TNT fireworks booths open in the city of Santa Ana. According to KTLA Santa Ana has experienced an uptick in violent crime with four out of eight homicides being gang-related since the start of 2021. Police have done an excellent job launching the program Operation Community First to keep Santa Ana safe, but the program only addresses

part of the issue. The full solution includes what the U.S. Department of Justice says beautifully in its juvenile justice bulletin, which is to prevent youth from joining gangs. Communities must train teachers and parents to manage youth and teach students interpersonal skills. In other words, what keeps people from joining gangs in the first place is being connected with those who will teach them compassion and kindness. And how does that happen? TNT serves for fundraisers for groups like Little Leagues, Scouts of America, and churches. Anyone speaking here today on behalf of TNT can

tell you how youth and children make friends, go to camp, learn new skills through all of these different programs that are funded through these fundraisers through TNT. Now this doesn't just happen, they grow from the intentional instruction of leaders who dedicate themselves to these programs. Your option here of removing the sale of safe and sane fireworks in the city of Santa Ana could not come at a worse time. Over the course of the pandemic, events and programs have been canceled for children

and youth. And now, I don't know about other not-for-profit organizations, but I know that giving in our church is down. The Santa Ana TNT booth is our biggest fundraiser of the year, And if that goes away, the city of Santa Ana cannot fund all of those programs that give back directly into the community of Santa Ana. There's just no way. So now here we are again. Our greatest sources of funding is threatened. So you can see.

here we are TNT fireworks support programs that enrich the lives of youth in all of the city of Santa Ana Santa Ana Police Chief David Valentine said in reference to in operation community first that a commitment to continue to communicate and engage with the community is an essential part of our success here we are communicating please do not ban fireworks in the city of Santa Ana they serve more than just a flashy purpose thank you thank you for that um irma hauragui followed by

dale helvick followed by jose rea followed by adolfo sierra again three minutes everybody there should be a timer right in front of you and please speak into the microphone welcome good evening

council members and mayor a pleasure to see you thank you so much we appreciate all the meetings we have had previously with everybody and the information we have sent uh i am first and foremost going to say I love fireworks but over the years we have seen a detriment to health and community and we were curious about the data because in order to support and I'm trying to be very fair-minded but the whole South Main corridor has been tremendously impacted and we started looking into research and we have found an astounding amount of information on the health issue there

were many studies done by UCI by several groups that you have already the material and the glaring reports were that the fireworks related pollution was twice as much in neighborhoods with lower housing and socio-economic residents and more minorities have higher asthma rates and the fire related pollutions was higher than northern cities of Orange County where safe and same fireworks are allowed that was really a shocker but more than anything also it's not that we don't support having fab the fun but it's something that happened that bad love the ordinance was done about 37 years ago which we had a totally

different city and when the math started coming out of the combination of all the the data we saw on police enforcement we went up from 17 there was a very interesting of the um overtime costs and I put the percentage there a 263% increase of phone calls 25% increase of concerned about the fourth of July weekend disturbing the peace 102% increase but of the fireworks sees there was a 3440.9% increase of fireworks

seized of the nonprofits using safe and sane there was a 25% increase from 217 which was 74, but apparently was higher, as the gentleman proceeded to me, said there were a higher number of nonprofits. Today are the 57. We love to help nonprofits, but this is an issue about fireworks and the safety of the city, the safety of our neighborhoods. And our concern is the percentages going down, the possible dangers in the future.

there was an incident in Los Angeles in the beginning of June and one in Ontario mid-March where two places were housing fireworks and there were massive explosions and death and injuries and hospitalization. And it's so unfortunate that the illegals have hijacked the safety of our city. So for that reason, we need to abolish and find different ways and have a different workshop of how to fund fundraising, but the fireworks should be banned. It has been such a health detriment to our city and our citizens. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Idma. Dale Helwig, followed by Jose Rea, followed by Adolfo Sierra, followed by Drew Smith.

Good evening, Mayor, Council members, staff. I'd like to wish you all a happy holiday season. and it's been a tough year for everybody, and I hope we get through the season, and next year is a lot better. I do support Irma on the issue of discussing fireworks in Santa Ana. I think as we know, the illegal fireworks have gotten really out of control over the last few years. It's amazing that we haven't had an episode like Los Angeles where a house has exploded or more houses haven't burned down. So having a discussion on getting rid of the safe and sane,

getting rid of the illegal, I think is needed. It's been discussed many times at city council, but I don't know to what depth. So hopefully tonight you guys look at it a little bit more thoroughly, maybe direct staff to look at it and see what's a viable solution to curtail the amount of fireworks that are coming into Santa Ana, whether it's stopping them at the border of Nevada to get rid of the illegals or whatever. But we need to have a discussion on it, a serious discussion. Thank you. Thank you for that.

Jose Rea followed by Adolfo Sierra, followed by Drew Smith, followed by Catalina Iniestra.

Buenas tardes. My name is Jose Rea with the Madison Park Neighborhood Association.

And four years ago, 4th of July, I was flying from the East Coast, dropping my son at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. And it was dusk and landing on John Wayne Airport. You can see the entire city of Santa Ana covered by a cloud of smoke and sparks. and it was the only city in Orange County that had that characteristic that night and as you know the Madison Park neighborhood Association is looking at

the quality of air in Santana and sadly the California EPA tells us that the city of Santa Ana has the dutiest air in the entire county all year round and so and we also know that fireworks is not a fourth of July once a year event I can tell you that fireworks started right now a week ago in my neighborhood legal

and illegal and they will last way into January and so in the summer they begin in May and they go way beyond 4th of July so here's an opportunity for you to place the health of the residents at least on the same level as the business generating whatever, nonprofits, whatever it is. So protect the health of the kids and the elderly that have breathing pulmonary issues.

And then also, you know, protect our pets. Our pets are being really traumatized by the sounds of explosions. it sounds like you are in a war zone for God's sake and it's not a one-day thing. So here's your opportunity to protect our health and the health of the vulnerable population of Santa Ana.

Adolfo Sierra followed by Drew Smith followed by Catalina Iniesta followed by Sonia.

Hello, hi. My name is Adolfo Sierra. I'm from Madison Park Neighborhood Association. And I'm going to speak about this is a letter that was sent by Susana Sandoval. This is a coalition, Santa Ana Healthy Neighborhood Alliance. And so good evening, Major Sarmiento and Council Members. Thank you for the opportunity. And we respectfully request a vote on item 43.

We have previously submitted for your review on October 21st the research documents that demonstrate that there is, it greatly outweighs the benefit of the fireworks today.

The tremendous devastation to our community, the safety, the public health, the environmental air and noise pollution. There is great concern from the burden on the Santa Ana police as well and the increase in the cost for the management of this crisis created by fireworks. Fireworks created crisis not only on the 4th of July but it's approaching but throughout the year during the day and night. We submitted documents back in October 21st to all of you,

an ordinance 1727, which is 37 year old ordinance. We also provided UCI research on all Orange County fireworks in June 30th, 2021. We also provided fireworks, public health health hazards, the Journal of Atmospheric Research, Hidden Hall of July 4 fireworks, the Anatomy of Safe and Safe Fireworks in Orange County, and the 2017-2021 San Ana permits from fireworks that went from 74 in 2017 to 54 in 2021.

We also say that the peace, the disturbing the peace phone calls to the Santa Ana PDE went from 2012 in 2017 to 438 in 2021. So they double. And so we urge you to vote yes on item 43. And also I guess to finalize, I want to say that TNT, it's a business that is not located in California nor in owners county. I believe they're coming from Arizona out of state. So the businesses I think in this case,

I don't believe is more important than our citizens or children. the elderly and yourselves you also breathe in this this pollution so thank you very much for the opportunity and Felices Fiestas happy holidays thank you very much.

Gracias a lot Drew Smith followed by Catalina Iniesta followed by Sonia followed by Jasmine Torres

Thank you Mr. Mayor and City Council Drew Smithson pastor of Orange County First Assembly of God Church. Good evening. Thank you for this opportunity. I would not be in favor of the fireworks ban after COVID took a hit, as all the churches did, of not meeting, then coming back and meeting. And the hit across the board, but especially with children's ministries that we have at our church. And so with the fireworks being able to sell legal fireworks, then we are revamping our boys and girls programs, even our Christian scouting program. So it's

really helped us with that as far as that goes. We have a tradition with not just folks from our church but people in our area come to us and trust us with that particular business so it is helping us but I do feel that if you ban the fireworks I still believe you'll have illegal fireworks all over the city of Santa Ana. At least with us doing and others like us doing legal fireworks sales it gives an alternative for people who want to do fireworks they have a church a company what-have-you that they can trust for many years they will not have to resort to having illegal fireworks as part of any celebration that they have

thank you very much thank you Catalina Iniesta followed by Sonia followed by Jasmine Torres followed by Lourdes Juarez

Good evening, Mr. Alcalde and Mr. Vice President.

escuela porque supuestamente es de moda o porque se están normalizando cosas que lejos de que nuestros adolescentes triunfen sean mejores jóvenes en esta ciudad los están destruyendo yo no entiendo cómo es posible que acepten que haya a una cuadra de las escuelas centros de venta de tabaco de sabores que los alumnos o estudiantes los están consiguiendo como si fueran dulces no es posible que la ciudad de santana acepte más monetizar sus prioridades y no las de la

comunidad las de las familias que quieren salir adelante aquí en esta ciudad para tener una santana mejor y unos jóvenes mejores estamos luchando por su salud for their lives and their goodwill here. I ask you to consider this issue, which is very important, because it is not only affecting me, it affects all the adolescents here in Santa Ana, being more menore of age. So, it is very important to consider that and try to see how it is affecting families. We are not going to build families, we are not going to destroy them.

Entonces, no seamos parte de esto. Las industrias tabacaleras están llenando de dinero mientras están destruyendo familias. Y se supone que eso no queremos para esta ciudad, mucho menos para nuestros hogares. Reconsideren este tema que es muy importante para nosotros. Gracias y buenas noches y que tengan una feliz Navidad.

Good evening, Mayor, members of the City Council. My name is Catalina Iyestra and I live in Ward 3. I'm very confused and I'm disappointed that you're taking out item number 3, the flavor tobacco sales. This is affecting me directly because I have two teens that are going to school and in school they're pushing this because they're saying it's what it's like fashion it's new it's normalized and this does not help our students to be successful a flavored tobacco is destroying our kids it's not it's a

problem that they can sell tobacco products a block from school and the students can buy it just like they buy candy and Santa Ana is looking just for their own profits and this is not helping the communities. We are working for a better Santa Ana, we're working for a better youth. We want a better life for them, for our students. So please consider this issue that is affecting all of Santa Ana teens, all of Santa Ana youth. Please consider how this is affecting the families that are not thriving, they're being destroyed. And the

tobacco industry is making lots of money and not focusing on families. This is not for the benefit of families, so please consider the importance of this topic. Thank you for listening and Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays.

Sonia, followed by Jasmine Torres, followed by Lourdes Juarez, followed by Veronica Garcia.

good evening good evening my name is Sonia Hernandez and I am resident of Santa Ana for 15 years I live in the district number 6 I am a volunteer from America on track and putting the end of the sale of Tabacos in Santa Ana is a matter of importance for me because I have three children and I don't want to be exposed to Tabacos de sabores y para proteger a los jóvenes de santa ana creo que los niños y los jóvenes y nosotros las familias de santa ana merecemos estar protegidos del tabaco de sabores les pido por favor que tomen en cuenta este tema de de la venta de sabores

Thank you.

teens for our youth this will protect our Santa Ana youth and our families need to be protected from the sale of flavored tobacco and please consider this ending the sale of flavored tobacco

thank you thank you Jasmine Torres followed by Lourdes Juarez followed by Veronica Garcia

followed by Alejandra Cook hello good evening council members my name is Jasmine I am a resident of Santa Ana. I live in Ward 1, and I am here to please urge you to ban the sale of all flavored tobacco products here in the city of Santa Ana. As a lifelong resident of Santa Ana, I know firsthand how vulnerable and at risk our Santa Ana youth are when it comes to substance abuse and addiction. So please, again, I am here to urge you to give our youth a chance of a life without addiction. Thank you.

Thank you. Lourdes Juarez, followed by Veronica Garcia, followed by Alejandra Cook.

Buenas noches. Mi nombre es Lourdes.

Puede acercarse un poco más al micrófono o lo bajan.

Good evening, my name is Rourdes and I live in Santana. And I ask you please, if you can remove it from the tobacco. I have my father, he is a major person, and I have neighbors who fuman and that affects him. I want to take into account that it is for the good of all the young and the ancients, all the people who live in Santana. Gracias.

Good evening. My name is Lourdes, and I'm a resident of Santa Ana, and I'm asking you to ban all smoking. My dad is elderly, and we have neighbors who smoke, and this affects him, and this is for the benefit of the youth and the elderly in Santa Ana. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Veronica Garcia, followed by Alejandra Cook, followed by Yayana Hernandez, followed by Eder Lopez.

Good evening, Mr. Alcald. Mr. Sarmiento, members of the Council. Honestly, I'm very disappointed, because I realized that they removed this issue of the agenda number 39. For us it is extremely important, because, unfortunately, our young people are now looking very incited to put this in fashion. So, we urge you to reconsider and support this for our children, our community and our parents. Gracias.

Good evening, Mayor Sarmiento, City Council members. I'm disappointed that you took this out of the agenda, item number 39. This is important for our youth because our youth are being driven to this as if it were fashionable. Please reconsider this because this affects our youth, our community, and the elderly. Thank you.

Good evening.

Go ahead.

Good evening, Councilmember. Mayor Sarmiento. My name is Alejandra Cook and I work here for the city of San Ana and I focus specifically working with youth. You hear them speak and I please urge you to stop the selling menthol and flavored tobacco products for here for our city and for our youth to be without addiction. Thank you.

Yayana Hernandez followed by Edith Lopez followed by Cecilia Mora

good afternoon mayor Vicente Sarmiento and council members my name is Johanna Hernandez I live here in Santa Ana with my parents since I was born I came here to talk about banning the selling of flavored tobacco in Santa Ana. This is an important topic because it has caused a big impact in the youth and it is something that has become normalized when it shouldn't be. I suggest that today you vote to end the selling of flavored tobacco. Thank you. Thank you for that. Eder Lopez followed

by Cecilia Mora. So just so everybody knows on this item it hasn't been pulled it's gonna be heard tonight so your comments are fine. I think that you know there'll be there'll be consideration of it so your comments are appropriate

buenas noches a todos mi nombre es cecilia mora yo soy residente santana por 41 año y últimamente visto muchas personas cerca de mi casa y hay un callejón y veo que se están drogando y fumando y como veo yo veo como retan a los menores les dicen hasta nombres que eres

good evening to all my name is decilamora i'm a resident of santana for 42 years and I see a lot of people near where I live that are doing drugs and smoking and they're challenging minors and they're calling me fags if they don't they don't smoke so it's it's a very important this is important for you to do something about this this I don't want my grandchildren to be affected this is that this might affect the grandchildren great-grandchildren and the future of the world thank you

Edir Lopez, followed by Daniela Hernandez, followed by Alexis Bravo.

Hello. Honorable Mayor San Miento and City Council members, my name is Edir Lopez and I am a Santa Ana resident and I live in Ward 5. I'm 17 years old and I volunteer with America On Track and I strongly urge you to end the sale of flavored tobacco in Santa Ana. this issue is extremely important to me since it will help me protect my community, protect my brother and all my siblings. I've lived in Santa Ana all my life and I know this will only be a good thing for our community. People all night have been saying about how we need to protect the youth. I'm a youth

telling you that we do need to protect us. We have targets on our backs. They have said that today's teenager is tomorrow's customer. They said they're spending millions to billions of dollars on us. How are we supposed to compete with that? I advocate for ending the sale to try and compete with that, to try and protect my community, but I can't do it alone.

No, we, as a community, we need your help. Please, I ask, I ask of you as a government made by the people and for the people, listen to the wishes of the people, and end the sale of flavored tobacco in Tana, please vote in favor of the ordinance tonight and help us protect those of only their best interest and mine at the cost of our lives.

We may only be dollars in numbers to them, but I assure you, we're much more than that.

We are stronger than that, and we will continue to try and protect our community. So I urge you once again, please vote for your community. Thank you.

Thank you, Daniela Hernandez followed by Alexis Bravo followed by Jennifer Grajeda.

Hello, Honorable Mayor Sarmiento, Mayor Pro Tempeneurosa, and City Council members. My name is Daniela Hernandez, and I am a Santa Ana resident. I live in Ward 2. I am 17 years old, and I attend Syracuse Grum High School. I volunteer with America on Track, and I strongly urge you to end the sale of flavored tobacco in Santa Ana. This is such an important issue to me because, well, because I don't want my family and friends to experience the harmful effects of smoking, even if it's secondhand smoking. We can make this community a better place by taking these first steps today.

the tobacco industry can only sustain itself by recruiting replacement customers for adult users who quit or die they spend 581.1 million dollars each year marketing in California I believe Santa Anna kids and families deserve to be protected it is important to make sure that we end the sell all flavors all products all locations and no exemptions thank you

thank you Alexis Bravo followed by Jennifer followed by Lenny Spina followed by Victor Mendez

good evening sorry good evening Honorable Mayor and City Council members my name My name is Alexis Bravo and I live in Santa Ana resident and live in Ward 3. I'm 16 years old and I attend Nova Academy Early College High School. I volunteer with America on Trek and I strongly urge you to end the sale of flavored tobacco products in Santa Ana. This is such an important issue to me because I'm a skateboarder and go outdoors daily to go to school, to skate, or just for transportation.

WHENEVER I SKATE ALONE OR WITH MY FRIENDS, WE SEE TOBACCO WASTE OR OTHER PEOPLE SMOKING. AND ON SOME SKATE SPOTS WE EVEN SEE, I MEAN ON SOME SKATE SPOTS WE EVEN GET THE SMELL OR THE STENCH OF CIGARETTS OR STUFF LIKE THAT. SO THIS ALSO AFFECTS US. WE ALSO HAVE NEIGHBORS THAT SMOKE WHICH AFFECT MY FAMILY MEMBERS DUE TO SECOND TOWN SMOKE.

And I also see minors smoking, vaping, and this is a huge problem because it's affecting their education and they're ruining their lives and their health as well.

and yeah, that's pretty much it. Sorry, my first time doing this.

You did good, you did good.

Thank you. It's my first time doing this, I'm sorry.

Jennifer Grajeda, followed by Lenis Baena, followed by Victor Mendez, and our last in-person speaker is John Hanna.

Hello, good afternoon. My name is Jennifer Grajeda. I'm a resident of Santana and I urge to please stop the sale of all flavored tobacco products for all the youth here in our city. This is very important because I don't want my family to get any health defects due to flavored tobacco or secondhand smoke. I have several nieces and nephews who are exposed to flavored tobacco and this is a huge issue because this is a bad influence to them. And I know we can prevent this from happening not only for my family but for my community. I believe we ought to serve to be protected. Thank you and happy holidays.

Thank you Lenny Spina followed by Victor Mendez followed by John Hannah.

Hello good evening I'm hello my name is Laniece I'm a resident of Santa Ana I'm here to urge you to vote on banning the cell of flavored tobacco products item number 39 this is an important matter not only for the people that reside in Santa Ana but also for our youth who are being targeted by big tobacco companies by stopping the sale of flavored tobacco products. We're moving an access point where youth can buy these flavored tobacco products. So council members, mayor, I urge you to please stop the sale of all flavored tobacco products for all the youth here in our city. Thank you.

Thank you. Victor Mendez followed by John Hannah.

Good evening. Number item 39 of the prohibition of tobacco products. I think the issue is much larger than just banning the sale. Santa Ana leads Orange County in 7-Eleven stores, and it leads it in Jack-in-the-boxes. That's a very unhealthy combination of smoke and high-fat food being sold out to not only our youth but to our community. I think we just need to step back and also do better quality of planning. And I understand 7-Eleven is one of the top tax generators for the city. but I don't think being the top place for 7-Eleven selling tobacco products is a good start. Number 31 on the Grant Thornton services.

I hope some money will be sent to housing in terms of helping them with the potentially fraudulent case files. It looks like it might, but I hope they can spare some money there and get that situation under control. Number 32, the Chase Bank recommendation. The report says there is no environmental impact. I think there is. Chase is the number one lender for fossil fuels in the world. Now, whether you choose to put the climate change policy into effect with this tonight or down the road, I think it's something that you definitely need to consider if you're going to have a consistent policy.

I can recall a very young man advocating that the ASUCLA move their banking relationship from B of A to another bank because of the there's B of A support of the then apartheid government of South Africa and I consider that kind of on the same scale. Number 38, your budget report.

I think a lot of good information in there but it's just not a consumable report for the public and I would request and just beg the council to defer on any action tonight. certainly get your information but if you're going to be spending 25 million dollars of general fund money the tax money that these people generate I think you owe them at least the opportunity to weigh in on what some of these options are and if you've heard sure decide to go with those projects it's fine but to do this on the 21st before Christmas I think it's a little indigenous and not reflective what I consider a progressive council lastly there was about 18

$15 million in liability funding between your GL and a work comp, 12.9 in a work comp. Six months ago I offered to come in when the problem was $2 million and see what I could do as a citizen. The problem has now grown to 12.2. The offer is still there, never heard from anyone, but now instead of a $2 million issue, you're looking at a $13 million issue. How why I can't begin to fathom, but there may be some quick fixes or it may be just a long-term structural problem you're going to have to deal with anyway so again I hope you can defer on action tonight on spending and try to give the public more opportunity to weigh in thank you

thank you Victor John Hanna our last in-person speaker

thank you Mr. Mayor council members and staff John Hanna with the Southwest Regional Council of carpenters and for my hat of the Rancho Santiago Community College District I want to thank this council for being a great partner with Santa Ana College I I just can't tell you we don't have that same relationship in the other part of our district for other cities Santa Ana has always been there for us and we appreciate that and we've we've got other opportunities in Centennial I I think there's some thoughts and ideas we should share about how we can work together to make that a better place for the entire community.

All right, that out off and Southwest Carpenters. I just wanna, first of all, I wish everybody a Merry Christmas. And I wanna thank the staff on number 17, the Housing Opportunity Ordinance. This has not been easy. There's been a lot of conflict in here, but I have to say, Min Tai has been very open, always accessible, very transparent and even when he wasn't real happy with some of the things that I had to say was always pleasant about it. I think that that's a real asset for you to have a staff person in

that position and I felt some of the criticism that was in the record about not being transparent was unfair. In fact, the percentages of the workforce that were going to be impacted immediately on a skilled and trained were in fact noticed in the in the docket. So it was there and the amendments that were made about future were all germane appropriate and and fully discussed and by the way the door was always open

as it was for me for people who didn't like it to talk to men to give input who men then could talk with the city manager and the staff so on 17 it's not perfect i know this council had a split vote and some of you didn't support it some of labor didn't support it but I think on balance the carpenters are supporting it because we do need more on a fur on affordable housing but we also need to remember the people who actually build that housing and this the in past the council

made aspirational language, which was nice, but it wasn't even followed by the staff who studied it, the consultant. So this is a start, and we look forward to working with the council improving it, particularly in the area of affordable housing where they use the WHO fee, because that's prevailing wage, and it's actually less if you have a skilled and trained workforce. Thank you very much again and thank the staff city manager and everybody for the way they've handled this very difficult subject. Thank you John thank

you for those comments let me turn it back over to the clerk to see if there's anybody online that wishes to address us for public comments. Thank

you mayor. Before unmuting the callers or those who have joined us by way of Zoom did want to announce the written communications we received for item 17 on the second reading of the Housing Opportunity Ordinance Amendments. There was one Santa Ana organization in support and one county organization in support. One Santa Ana resident commented on the possible FPPC violation by Councilmember Fan and Planning Commissioner Ramos. and one county organization comment on possible charter violation due to the substantive amendments

made to the ordinance at the first reading item 39 three santa anna residents or organizations in opposition to non santa anna residents or didn't disclose in opposition and one non santa anna resident who commented on the research to consider when making decisions. Item 43, 15 Santa Ana residents or organization in support and 5 Santa Ana residents or organization in opposition. And with that, Zoom ID Tim Gibbs, if you would please select the microphone phone icon to unmute your device.

Announcements. Hi, my name is Tim Gibbs. I'm with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and we are glad the Council is going to hear the Flavor Tobacco policy tonight.

Thank you. You may proceed with your comment.

Zoom ID Adam Wood, if you would please announce your name.

Hello, Mayor, Council and staff, Adam Wood with the Building Industry Association. Thanks for the opportunity to comment here tonight on item 17. The last meeting where we discussed the WHO, we said it was gonna be continued until we heard back from the FPPC. I might have missed it, but I have not heard that that report's come in, but I see it's back on the agenda tonight. we've raised multiple concerns on this on policy and procedural grounds uh and now i'd like to add one more uh to that list as i reassert everything we've raised previously uh you know at the last

the last time we had this brought up um well i guess at the hearing where it was uh approved on the first reading we're here till at least one o'clock in the morning 1 30 in the morning with amendments motions sub motions uh it was all moving pretty quick and by the time something was approved uh it was really if we're being honest with ourselves a couple days later before we sorted out what exactly was uh in there that was moving forward so if you look at uh what did get approved to advance in the language of the who i think uh it becomes pretty clear in line with the

letter that we submitted that uh we are straining the definition of the quote-unquote general scope provisions under the city charter uh basically what we're doing here is it's gone much beyond what the staff language had originally suggested for this uh proposal and this in line with everything else all the complications that uh have surrounded this policy it really does call for this to be returned back to the planning commission to get this right this is a policy that is going to severely curtail housing opportunity within the city and now is not the time to try and rush

through a policy unless we know exactly what it's going to do. The planning commission has not looked at everything that this policy is proposed to do and I would suggest that if you can't individually answer how much does this policy add to the cost of general housing within the city then we're not ready to vote on this. You have to know the cause and effect of what your policies are doing. The inclusion of the skilled and trained language in there it's nice but the way it's structured it's not going to work. There's ways we can make it work. Let's sit down and talk about it. But we haven't had a chance to do that.

Hope to get the chance. Thanks.

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

Good evening. I'm Lindsay Freitas with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and I'm in strong support of a comprehensive policy to end the sale of all flavored tobacco products in the city of Santa Ana, including e-cigarettes, menthol cigarettes, flavored she should tobacco, and I urge the council to move forward on this measure tonight. Last year, the state legislature overwhelmingly voted to pass and the governor signed into law a bill that would have ended the sale of flavored tobacco products in California. And within days, the tobacco industry mounted a multi-million dollar effort to halt this policy

by placing it on the November 2022 ballot. The policy under consideration tonight is in alignment with the one that was adopted statewide, except Santa Ana does not have to become victim to the tobacco industry. We can do this right now. The residents of Santa Ana can't and should not wait. Every day we lose, more of our youth become addicted to this deadly product. Flavored tobacco products are designed to alter the taste and reduce the harshness of tobacco products so they're more appealing and easy for beginners who are almost always kids. These products are pervasive and are marketed and sold in a variety of kid-friendly flavors

with their colorful packaging and sweet flavors. Flavored tobacco products are often hard to distinguish from the candy displays near which they're frequently placed in retail outlets. In California, 9 out of 10 high school tobacco users report using a flavored tobacco product. We can't let that continue. I ask for the City Council to end the sale of all flavored tobacco in all locations with no exemptions. Thank you so much for your consideration.

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

Good evening, Mayor Sarmiento and City Council members. My name is Alexa Warman, and I'm with the American Heart Association of Orange County. It is critical that the council prioritize the health of Santa Ana residents by ending the sale of all flavored tobacco products without exemptions tonight. The health of our community depends on it. This includes local kids, adults, and the African-American, Hispanic, Latino, Asian-American, and LGBTQ plus communities who are targeted by big tobacco every day.

The tobacco industry regularly uses scare tactics to stop communities from protecting their residents from flavored tobacco and nicotine addiction. A key tactic of the industry is to delay, delay, delay. But this simply provides time to create doubt, derail the effort, and hook more local kids on flavored tobacco. The industry also says that this issue should be the responsibility of the state. But they fight state-level protections as well, as described by the previous caller.

The tobacco industry also claims that this policy will harm small business. Yet this policy will only affect flavored tobacco products, not all tobacco products. Research shows that these policies have a minimal economic impact on tobacco retailers. And this is consistent with research on other tobacco control policies. declines in cigarette consumption have not shown a negative impact on the number of convenience stores or employment in convenience stores.

Finally, there are local supports like the Santa Ana Healthy Retail Team that help small businesses profit from selling healthier items that support our community.

In addition, the industry consistently exaggerates the risk of a black market to discourage communities from taking action. But research from areas that have ended the sale of flavored tobacco products show that this is just another hollow scare tactic from the industry. Every day that we delay protecting residents from these products is another opportunity for big tobacco to addict more lifelong customers. Please put our community over tobacco profits financed by addiction and end the sale of all flavored tobacco products without exemptions

tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Zoom ID Manny Escamilla if you would please select the microphone icon to unmute your device. Okay can you hear me there? Yes we can hear you. Okay so I was just

be commenting on item 38 and 40 but i did want to be put back into the queue for 41. sure thank you okay thank you uh so yeah just number 38 in the budget so glad to see that uh things are going in the right direction says many is going to be a self-quarantining uh hover and ward 2. so i hope everyone's safe out there um the direction looks good right so it looks like there's definitely some additional money coming in from online sales i just wanted to kind of point out that maybe you kind of old considerations as far as the cost benefit analysis of adding additional residents

to the city, whether or not that has changed under kind of an online sales world. So I know before, we used to really focus on bringing in commercial storefronts as kind of a supplement to our tax base. Maybe that might not be the case or as needed anymore, but just something for folks to consider as we're looking at our economic development strategy here. The one item I did, I guess one or two items I wanted to pull out of the actual budget, though, is I'm a little bit worried that some of the funding that go into Sartic definitely agree with improving the building itself.

But I don't think that, you know, repaving a parking lot is going to drive the traffic needed to make the station more sustainable. The original transit zoning code actually indicated the creation of residential towers on those two empty lots. And I think that that would actually be to the benefit of the city if we had some additional either commercial or residential utility there at the station to actually activate the space. And I wouldn't really invest money on a new parking lot when you can invest money in kind of coming up with a plan there. Again, it was zoned and allowed under the transit zoning code.

We haven't really moved forward with the trolley. I think it would be a wonderful way to move forward. under let's see the other possible upgrades. If we can bring back the Mcgadden library, I think that would be a wonderful win for Ward 2 residents. And just on item 40, I think there's still more work to do in relation to the SB9 language. So I'll dive into that in more detail. And then regarding fireworks, I think it's a divisive issue that should be put in front of the voters. Thank you and I will come back for item 41.

Thank you.

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

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Perfect, thank you. Good evening, Mayor and City Council. My name is Daisy Cruz and I am with the Kennedy Commission. I'm calling for item 17 on the Housing Opportunities Ordinance. We support the recommendations modifying the WHO, the Housing Opportunities Ordinance to make it more effective and help create more affordable housing. We encourage the city to continue to make affordable housing a priority. Thank you.

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

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Thank you. My name is Nathaniel Greensides, Ward five resident. I want to start with item 35. In reviewing it, I saw that it would be adding money for protected class 2 bike lanes, and I think that's awesome. I just think that we also need public education regarding, first, how drivers should navigate those sections of streets dedicated for cyclists, and that we also need more class 4 protected bike lanes, like what we see along Bristol, close to Santa Ana College, especially along major thoroughfares like that, which brings up my next point, that dedicated bike and bus lanes on major thoroughfares during commute hours

might actually reduce some of the traffic issues, and it might also incentivize more eco-friendly commute options. And one other thing that could be added to that would be city resident discounted fares on buses during those heavy commute hours along major thoroughfares. And then item 36, you know, drought in California, especially in our region, is not going to cease being an issue, especially since we have paved over so much of what used to be a floodplain here in Santana. As soon as it rains in our region, the waters directly channel quickly out to the ocean instead of the earth being able to absorb the water like it once did.

And to the extent that the city can find ways to incentivize drought-resistant landscaping, which might also reduce the amount of carbon emissions from gas-powered landscaping machinery as well as noise pollution, I urge the council to do so. The last point I'll make is item 37. And not just because of the pandemic, but also for our residents who are differently abled and thus not always able to attend in-person council meetings or commission meetings, I support the city finding ways to make public meetings available in as many mediums as possible so that public participation

and attendance can take place as well as for archival purposes of meetings for future reference. I applaud the energy offered by the Office of the City Clerk, Daisy Gomez, and all her staff all throughout the pandemic, which has ensured that our residents can participate in our civic life as well as increasing transparency and trust between local government and residents in our city. Have a good night.

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

I was never a pilot.

Yes.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council members. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Thank you. My name is Lori Bremner and I'm the California Grassroots Manager for Parents Against Vaping E-Cigarettes PAVE. I appreciate the opportunity to bring the parent voice to the conversation around flavored tobacco products. We hope to be thanking you tonight for your vote to stand with us to protect our kids from the predatory practices of the tobacco industry. We hope that item 39, the ordinance to end the sale of flavored tobacco in Santa Ana, will be supported tonight.

The industry tactics around the state and the country is to delay, delay, delay, because every day that they can sell their deadly products is another kid addicted, another lifelong customer, another life cut short by people who put profit ahead of health. The industry spends millions of dollars to influence legislation in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., but we want to think that we can count on our local elected officials to do what's right and protect our kids.

Santa Ana is already behind more than 100 other municipalities around the state, and we do not want to have to wait any longer. It is flavors that attracts kids and a time is now to end the sale of flavored tobacco products in Santa Ana. We want small businesses to make more money by selling products that are good for the community. Santa Ana kids cannot wait on the state nor the federal government to take action. The need is urgent and I strongly encourage you to pass a comprehensive ordinance tonight. Thank you.

Thank you.

Zoom ID, actually conference, our last three digits are 097. If you would please dial star six from your phone or select the microphone icon to unmute your device.

Last three numbers, thank you. You successfully unmuted yourself.

Hi, my name is George Johnson. I'm a founding member of the National Hookah Community Association, a grassroots organization dedicated to preserving the rich cultural tradition of hookah smoking. We have worked with many municipalities in drafting exemptions for hookah. We had an exemption made on SB 793 on the state level as well as SB 38. The hookah has been exempted in Irvine, it's been exempted in Long Beach. Long Beach made it very easy. They just mirrored the state bill SB 793, which protects premium cigars, loose leaf tobacco, and hookah tobacco.

Although we do have flavors, the flavors are not, according to the CDC, because of its low prevalence of youth, they know that the hookah tobacco only comes in flavors. So by saying we're not banning hookah, we're just banning flavors, it is a de facto ban on hookah. I manufacture traditional wooden hookah pipes, the shortest of which are two and a half feet tall. They're not easily concealable. No one is, it takes 20 to 30 minutes to set up. No one is setting up a hookah on campus or lighting charcoal on the back of AP history.

I stand firmly with my community and the Middle Eastern community that I've been serving for 20 years. We seem to be collateral damage to a youth epidemic that we didn't cause and we're not part of. So please make this easy on yourselves and as well as us and our small businesses and organizations by just marrying SB 793. Do what the state has already tried to do. they've given careful consideration. If you also look at the data from San Francisco, three large studies show that their flavor ban was grossly ineffective. There was an increase in cigarette smoking,

which is unheard of now. And carefully consider it, think about what is right, what would be the best way to get youth to not initiate an addictive substance such as nicotine. And it will take education and within its own community of peer groups saying what they said to us. You know, I was on the tail end of smoking being cool. It took my own peer group saying, you smell like an ashtray and you're not cute and I'm not going to kiss you too, for us to all say, okay, you know what? I don't want to smoke anymore. And that's what's going to have to happen with vaping.

And until that happens, you know, it's just going to put a detriment in legal adults and legal businesses that were legal today, federally and statewide-15 seconds left. That will lose their entire thing. Thank you so much for your careful consideration and Anaheim has a very large, your neighboring Anaheim is a very large air community that I'm part of. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

Zoom ID, Rima S. Cowrie, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. I'm speaking on agenda item number 39. Again, my name is Reema Corey. I'm general counsel for Fumari, which is a premium hookah tobacco manufacturer. And I'm also one of the founding members of the National Hookah Community Association. Before you ban the thousand-year cultural tradition of hookah that is practiced by Middle Easterners, Armenians, Turks, Indians, North Africans, and other minority groups, please understand the facts. Hookah is not the problem with youth. There is no teen hookah epidemic.

Hookahs are generally three feet tall. They're very hard to conceal in your backpack or in your pocket. They take 20 to 30 minutes to set up so kids aren't smoking hookahs in the bathroom during recess. Hookahs are not being confiscated at schools. Even Governor Gavin Newsom stated that hookah is just simply not the problem in classrooms. Hookah was exempted along with premium cigars over $12 in loose-leaf tobacco from the state flavored tobacco ban because it is not used by youth. In fact, the FDA and CDC have also stated in their 2020 surveys of high schoolers who

use tobacco products that hookah tobacco use amongst teen is one of the lowest at nearly two percent versus vape which is at 20 and that number has stayed consistent for over a decade hookah is just not the problem with youth the FDA has stated in their draft guidance to the industry that although they see a prevalence with youth usage amongst teens and tobacco products that they do not see the same correlation with youth usage of hookah so why are we solving a problem that does not exist and creating a collateral damage for a culture tradition that's practiced by many

minority communities in the city of Santa Ana. Hookah is not the problem. So we just want you to take a moment and understand the facts. Don't let hookah, which only comes in flavors, to be conflated with vape. Hookah is not vape. Hookah has been around for hundreds of years. It only comes in flavors. Therefore, it is a part of these broad flavored tobacco bans. And SB 793 was reached, was proposed by Senator Hill, who at first did not want any exemptions until he learned about the cultural tradition of hookah and how hookahs are the centerpiece for celebratory events.

It is how people bond, especially with Muslims who don't drink. This is what they do in their pastime to bond and socialize. I am Palestinian American and a hookah is in my home almost as a ornamental piece and it's offered to guess as a sign of hospitality and respect like it did hundreds of years ago by sultans and kinks. So please please exempt hookah and mirror SB 793 so we don't have a patchwork of laws so that we can stay consistent so that no one can follow.

Thank you. Thank you. Zoom, caller with the last three numbers, 884, if you would please select or dial star six from your phone or select the microphone icon to unmute your call.

Caller with the last, thank you, you successfully unmuted yourself.

Good evening, City Council. My name is Nolan Spence. And for the sake of not being redundant, I just want to say I'm the boyfriend of the previous caller, George Johnson. And I would like you guys to please consider the cultural exemption in your legislation and exempt Tuca, just like Long Beach and Irvine have and many other cities in California. The SB 793 exemption is for 21 and up establishments only. And I also wanted to just kind of speak on behalf of the hookah community that we really

would like to work and have been working with legislators to eliminate youth access to tobacco. And that is important for us. And I'm a graduate of UCSD. I got a degree in aerospace engineering. And so I've been helping my boyfriend run our very small business and it's higher end pipes. the market has completely shifted to an older demographic our products are all at a cost prohibitive price point and I just would please implore you to consider the cultural exemption

for hookah thank you so much thank you caller with the last three numbers 833 if you would please dial star six on your phone or select the microphone icon. Thank you.

Good evening, Council. My name is Niamh Donahue. As stated by use today, vaping is the issue. I am asking Council members to please mirror SB 793 and exempt hookah. Hookah is a cultural tradition practiced by many of my friends, including my boyfriend who had to unfortunately flee Lebanon due to the Civil War. He was able to come to America and build a new life and live the American dream. Blanket laws like this will kill many of these minority-owned businesses, and I would hate to see this happen. Hookah is a pastime that I am able to enjoy with many of my Muslim friends who are unable to go to bars and clubs

as they do not drink alcohol and do not work for these types of environments. We are able to enjoy hookah in a private setting, and occasionally we go out to adult-only hookah lounges. It has connected me to many cultures and brought communities together. I am all for protecting our youth in a safe, smart and fair way to everyone. Thank you so much and please mirror SB 793 and Exemptuka.

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

Good evening Mayor and City Council members. Can you all hear me?

Yes we can hear you.

Okay wonderful. My name is Nicole Turks and I'm representing the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council, also known as the AAT CLC. And we advocate for the African American and African immigrant communities and all vulnerable, marginalized communities of color on the issue of tobacco products, especially menthol cigarettes. I just implore the council to not forget that. The availability of tobacco products in our communities is also a social justice issue. The tobacco industry has a legacy of intentionally marketing these products to African American communities, to Latinx communities, and usually

the flavor that is marketed heaviest and made cheaper in these communities is menthol. And And we're also seeing that hookah is becoming an issue in these communities as well. The hookah industry is using hip hop culture in the same way that the tobacco industry use jazz culture and other aspects of African-American culture to market these products to the black community. And what it's leading to is really a health equity issue. So once again, I just wanna thank the council for taking up this issue and for prioritizing people over profits. Thank you.

Thank you. Zoom ID, Jamie Rojas, if you would please select the microphone icon.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members. My name is Jaime Rojas with the National Association of Tobacco Outlets. We are the trade group and the retailer voice representing most of the retailers in the city of Santana. Many of our members here in the city of Santana are unable to attend tonight's city council meeting due to the busy retail holiday season and recovering from the close down of the pandemic. Our retailers have not had the opportunity to speak to the issue to city staff and council on finding alternative solutions to youth usage on vaping. The city did not outreach to our retail stores about tonight's meeting

or like many other California cities like Los Angeles County or San Jose have done is schedule a retailer workshop to discuss alternatives, options, and work with the business community prior to considering any ordinance. Santa Ana's retailers are exemplary in keeping tobacco products out of the hands of underage persons. According to the FDA's website in the state of California, Santa Ana's retailers have a near-perfect 92% compliance record in the past four years by refusing to sell to anyone underage. Why would the City Council want to harm responsible retailers

and chase their customers to other jurisdictions or to illicit markets? It is already illegal to sell to anyone under the age of 21 in California and the rest of the country as of last year. The real issue here is on compliance and the city should consider increasing penalties and even taking away tobacco retail license for those not following local, state, and federal rules and regulations. As mentioned before, a recent study of the San Francisco Flavor Band from Yale University with the funding from the FDA shows that the Flavor Band in San Francisco does not work

and has caused youth usage to increase in traditional combustible cigarettes instead. This is a dirty little secret that anti-tobacco does not tell you that is not successful. Flavor Bands do not work. We urge the City Council tonight to pull the agenda item. Scheduled once all stakeholders have been considered prior to impacting businesses on an ordinance that has not worked in California nor will work in the future without any changes. We thank you for your consideration.

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

Good evening. This is Claire Braburn with America on Track. We're a local Santa Ana based nonprofit organization serving youth and families in Santa Ana for the last 26 years and throughout Orange County. And tonight I'm here actually representing the Santa Ana Fights Flavors Coalition. And it's a broad diverse coalition of organizations committed to protecting the most vulnerable in our community. And we are here as a team to talk about this life-saving ordinance and to ask for your support in passing this ordinance on urgency tonight and I'd like to take a moment you've heard a lot of us

speak already but I want to read the names of the organizations represented in this coalition coalition who are asking for your support this evening and that includes America on Track, American Cancer Society, Cancer Action Network, American Heart Association, American Lung Association, African-American Tobacco Control Leadership Council, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Americans for Nonsmokers Rights, Orange County Tobacco and Vape Free Coalition, Partners for Wellness, Parents Against Vaping E-Cigarettes, Phoenix House California, and the Cambodian Family. Now let's talk about who is spending money against policies like this.

The tobacco industry. That's it. In fact, they have spent nearly $60 million just in California since 2017 fighting flavored tobacco policies. Jewel, RJ Reynolds, and Philip Morris have spent just about all of the money opposition opposing these policies because they are desperate to hook the next generation of tobacco users and they know candy flavored tobacco is the way to do it. We know this ordinance will save lives right here in Santa Ana. In fact four out of five youth kids who have used tobacco started with a flavored product.

70% of youth e-cigarette users say they use them because they come in flavors I like. According to the 2018 California Healthy Kids Survey, 13% of Orange County 11th graders are current e-cigarette users. Another fact for our Santa Ana community is that the city of Santa Ana already dealt with the issue of hookah. You've heard from a lot of speakers right now that we should have exemptions for hookah, but that would not be in alignment with the fact that the city already wisely decided to ban hookah in the city of Santa Ana years ago.

And their hookah is sold in many forms, they have many hookahs, and which kids can conceal and put in their backpacks. So the city's had this discussion already. and so for more than 60 years the tobacco industry has targeted the african-american community and other communities of color with minty sweet menthol cigarettes and other candy flavor tobacco products and they're profiting off of addiction your time is up thank you

mayor and council this is that was the last caller great thank you madam clerk let me go ahead and

ask the council members if there are any items that they wish to pull off the consent calendar or abstain or accuse themselves from any items on the consent.

Council Member Phan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 17

Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to ask that we, again, continue item number 17. That's regarding the Housing Opportunity Ordinance. Last time this item came up, I asked for similar continuance in order to receive advice from the fpc subject to a complaint or referral comment from the public i also did confirm with madam city attorney that a request to continue the item in order to receive advice is not a violation of fpc regulations so that's one item and the other is i'd like to specifically

Thai Viet PhanItem 17

I will specifically state that I have a conflict of interest on item 29 only as to the contract for item 1, which is relating to Atkinson, Anderson, Loya, Rudd, and Romo, AALRR, as they are a client of my employer, Rick and Tucker. So I will be able to vote on the remaining items on item 29, but not that particular agreement.

Thank you. Got it. Thank you. Any other items to be pulled or considered? Council Member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 17

Thank you. I'd actually like to pull 18 and 30.

Great. Thank you. Any others?

Phil BacerraItem 17

Mayor Samuotto, actually, before we move past item 17, I wanted to ask our city attorney, are we still expecting an FPPC opinion letter on this item, or is it going to be based on the complaint that was filed?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 17

So in accordance with the direction that was provided at the last meeting, we did the next day file a request for an opinion. We did receive some communications from the FPPC asking a series of questions. So we've met with the councilwoman, we've gotten some more information, and we'll be submitting the answers to those questions. And so all I can tell you is in the letter that they sent us, they said they did confirm that a response would be expected within 21 days. They did say because of COVID, it could take slightly longer. it was somewhat we were somewhat optimistic because they responded to us

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 17

the day after we sent the letter and they responded to us within a week with questions so we're getting the answers back to them and then we'll wait for

Phil BacerraItem 17

them to give us a final response so to be clear it's answers to the inquiry not necessarily the complaint that was filed correct I know nothing about the

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 17

complaint that was filed that would be handled by their enforcement division we simply submitted a request to their civil division which provides advice and

immunity. Well why don't we just sorry to interrupt but maybe since it's not pulled we can have this conversation as the items being pulled. Okay. Any other

David PenalozaItem 17

items? Councilmember Ben-Yanis. I believe it was pulled number 18. 18 was pulled.

Okay that one's it. Councilmember Mendoza. 39. 39 I believe is not on the consent calendar that's a business calendar. So we'll be calling it. Great so I'll entertain a motion for the balance of the consent. I'll second. Go ahead and you go ahead and make the motion. I'll second that. I'll make a motion to move forward. Council member Hernandez makes a motion. Councilmember Pañalosa seconds. No other questions or comments. Let's vote on these.

Council members, you can provide your vote. Sorry.

Okay, motion passes. with Council Members Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Phan, Peñalosa, Mayor Pro Tempocera, and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes.

Great, thank you everybody. I believe the first item is item number 17, pulled by Council Member Phan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 17

I've made my statement on it.

Great. Any other comments or questions? So would that be a motion, Council Member?

Thai Viet PhanItem 17

I think, did you have any more? Oh, I would move to continue the item.

I'll second it. Great, we have a motion and a second to continue the item. Do we have any other questions or comments on this?

Seeing none.

Council members, please vote.

Okay, motion passes with council members Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Peñalosa, Fan, Mayor Sarmiento voting yes and Mayor Pro Tempesar voting no.

Great, thank you. Moving along to item number 18, I believe that item was pulled by Council Member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 18

It was. Thank you, Mayor. I just have a couple questions.

Jessie LopezItem 18

During this budget cycle, we often talked about having designated budget workshops, and I just want clarity. is the March 15th policy discussion and the May 3rd one, are those gonna be individual budget workshops or are those compiled with the council meeting?

So, council member, the ones that are labeled city council budget workshop, it wouldn't necessarily be with a council meeting, but it would be with the full council. Does that answer the question?

Jessie LopezItem 18

It does answer the question. So I guess that would be a request that the full council or the majority of the council makes during the budget discussions,

right, if we wanted separate budget workshops? Certainly, and also if you wanted to add additional ones, you could provide us that direction as well. Okay, I think I personally

Jessie LopezItem 18

would like to see that. I would make that motion to add a budget workshop that only discusses the budget, you know, sometime between March and May, so the council can have that time to only discuss the budget.

I'll second your motion, Council Member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 18

Thank you.

Great, we have a motion and a second on item number 18. Any further questions or comments? Council Member Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 18

Thank you Mayor Salmiento and thank you Council Member Lopez for pulling this item. I had similar, just questions and requests in regards to this. I noticed that in March, April, 2022, we have community budget meetings and budget hearings with city departments. I know that last year it was very limited on how many budget workshops and budget community meetings we had because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I would like to request that as we move forward into 2022, we have all of the options available for the public to attend and participate, not just virtual, but have in person.

David PenalozaItem 18

if we have to do it out in the open at a park on the field, there's ways where we could just be creative and really make cross, you know, make sure every opportunity to participate is available. And I wanna make sure that's known now as we start this process. Not sure how many community budget meetings we're going to have in March, April, 2022, but I would hope that whatever amount of meetings we have, they're accessible both virtually and people could attend in person because I had a lot of feedback from members of the community the last time we went

David PenalozaItem 18

through this that you know it was only a virtual option or there and there weren't enough so whatever we can do there I know I know with a finance department is always good at making those happen but I'd like to see that and I also support Councilmember Lopez's motion.

Thank you, Councilmember, and we can. We are required to have a set number based on the Sunshine Ordinance, but you are right. In the past two years, we've had an issue with that and the complexity with the pandemic going on. So my understanding is that you're okay to make a motion with the addition of a standalone budget workshop somewhere in the April-May timetable, and then as well as the community budget meetings that take place in March and April, having those be in multiple different formats?

David PenalozaItem 18

Yes, because this past time we only had them through Zoom virtual options, and then rightfully so that it was at the just ending the hype of that pandemic, and now we're entering another one, but hoping that as we move on, there's ways where we could safely have every option available.

We can do that, sir.

David PenalozaItem 18

Thank you.

Great. So we have a motion by Council Member Lopez, a second by Council Member Hernandez with those amendments, including Councilmember Peña-Losa is our maker, the first and the second good with those additional amendments.

Jessie LopezItem 18

Accept the amendment. Thank you.

Great. Okay. Council members, please vote.

Okay. Motion carries with Councilmembers Hernandez, Lopez Mendoza, Peña-Losa Fan, Mayor Plotem Becerra and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes.

Great. And just for clarity, I know item 29, Councilmember Fan asked that she be recused on the first, with respect to the first firm that's on that list, but everything else was approved as a part of the balance of the consent. So we'll go ahead and move along to item number, go ahead.

David PenalozaItem 18

Just really quick, and I should have said this earlier, I just had a, may I make a general comment on just... On 29? Go ahead. uh not 29 but just uh there were on a couple just uh in regards to the minutes madam city clerk i hope that as we move forward you know if there's something that's needed from us so that we could better and quickly address those um in a timely manner uh just i mean i hope it would be asked of us of what resources we need um but i hope that i i don't i'm not comfortable seeing so many minutes on one council agenda, you know, just for future reference. And also there were a couple

David PenalozaItem 18

contracts in here for public works. Item number 23 that didn't state if that person or the company were awarding the contract to, if we had worked with them before or other projects they had done in the city. I know that's something I had requested in the past, that we continue to to make sure that we include what projects they worked for in the past if they had. And that's it, Mayor Sarmento.

Thank you. Great. Thank you for those comments. Moving along to the last item, which is item number 30 that was pulled by Councilmember Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 30

Yes, thank you. So I pulled this item because I have brought up before issues with our procurement process, and I've also heard other council members at this dais talk about the procurement process that's in place. and so I've noticed that we are going to be contracting with kind of bids which we've been with for a really long time and You know some of the issues we've had in the past is the low number of applicants the low number of applicants specifically from the city of Santa Ana And the concern of just in general. How does the city support?

Jessie LopezItem 30

Businesses that are women-owned, you know black POC owned or lead and I just want to know how So continuing to contract with Planet Bids is going to help us address the issues that staff has heard from the council members at this dais. And really, you know, in short, are we looking at other contracts, other servicers that could help us move in a different direction than what we are doing now with Planet Bids?

Thank you for that question. So Planet Bids is a pretty gold standard that's out there that's utilized by a lot of agencies. It actually is a small business woman owned company. But one of the things that we did in response to some of those concerns that you had mentioned, and I think either Steven Mendoza can talk about it, but we have done outreach to Santa Ana businesses to help them educate themselves on how to use the simplicity of Planet Bid to help increase the number of responses that we receive from Santa Ana businesses. We have gathered a lot of data and I'd be more than happy to bring that back if you're

interested in seeing it as to some of the reasons why Santa Ana businesses choose not to submit a proposal for some of our bids that are placed out there. But it really is a good system to use for it. And I think it's more about helping educate businesses on how to go about using it that will increase the number of responses.

Jessie LopezItem 30

So with the educational part, do we have any workshops planned for the upcoming year?

I'm going to defer to Stephen on how many we've done and if there's any in the works.

Thank you, Madam Councilmember. There is one in the works. Economic development is leading the charge to do that training in the spring of this year. To bring in more of our residents into the fold and our commercial businesses so they understand what's available for the city and what's coming up in the future.

Jessie LopezItem 30

Okay. Okay, and then lastly, since we're speaking about Planet Bids, when we're doing, like for example, I got an email about a small nonprofit here in the city that had never used Planet Bids before, but needed to use it to apply for the youth programming money that we provided through the Revive. Is that something that nonprofits need to go through, through Planet Bid?

So what we did, and I believe for, you're talking about the revived dollars, in order to, we had a lot of inquiries from nonprofits that were interested in receiving some of the revived dollars. So to streamline it, we opened up a portal where they could pre-register and then list what services they offer. And then when we were ready to issue an RFP for the nature of that service, we would automatically send it to all of those that had registered. We worked really hard. If we had heard from someone and they didn't register on it, we still would send them an RFP,

but it was a way to streamline it and make it easier on those nonprofits and administer the revived dollars.

Jessie LopezItem 30

Okay, thank you.

Thank you for those comments. Any other questions or comments? Mayor Pro Tem.

Phil BacerraItem 30

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just to kind of piggyback off the comments made by our city manager, I wanted to thank staff for adding that educational component and actually doing the workshops. I know we did one last year, and I remember our director for public works, Nabil Saba, was on there as well. And it looked like we had a really good attendance for that. And so to Councilmember Lopez's point, I hope that we will see more of those at the very least quarterly in the upcoming year, just so that we can really keep drilling down to get more local businesses comfortable with

Phil BacerraItem 30

planning bids and comfortable with doing work with the city and so i'm happy to hear that economic development is stepping up and is going to be a part of that process so i just wanted to thank

you guys for continuing to do that great thank you for those comments any other comments on that Before we entertain a motion to move the item, just a couple of additional comments. So I'm really glad that we're working with a procurement firm that is woman-owned. I mean, that's great. But I think that it's more the policies that they pursue. So I know a lot of minority-owned consulting firms that don't do progressive work. So I think it's more the policies that they're moving forward, right?

So to me, it's great to educate the firms in Santa Ana that are going to be submitting bids and proposals. But as we work with other folks that we contract with vendors, some of them have bad workplace policies. Some of them don't allow their employees to collectively bargain. Some of them have litigation going on for a number of different things.

And I just think to the extent that we can work with Planet Bids to maybe focus on some of the policy priorities that this council has mentioned in the past on what we'd like to see in our partners. Because really the vendors are an extension of who we are in the city. So we certainly wouldn't allow our employees or staff to do certain things that are inconsistent or irresponsible. possible, we certainly want our vendors to have that same high level of standard of care. So I would just say if we, as we approve this, we've worked with them for very long.

If we could just reiterate and maybe stress the fact that as we procure, we want them to also consider the types of firms that they invite to submit proposals for, if that makes sense.

I believe I understand. And so it's a technology and it's a portal that the businesses submit. But we certainly can research with Planet Bid if they, you know, do they allow multilingual? Is their website ADA compliant? We could look at those types of issues. Is that what you were?

Yeah, that and maybe just even showing what, you know, our policy principles are on who we, you know, who we want to work with. We certainly want to work with as many local. If we can't go intra-city, maybe it's intra-county and try to keep our contracts as local as possible as well. Certainly. Great. With that, I'll go ahead and entertain a motion to move the item.

Jessie LopezItem 30

I'll make the motion to move to approve.

Great. There's a motion. Is there a second? Second. Great. We have a motion and a second. Council members, please vote.

Thank you. Thank you. With council members, sorry, Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Fan, Pinalosa, Mayor Potembecerra and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes.

Great. Thank you. Moving along to item number, that was the end of the consent calendar. moving along to the first business calendar item item number 38 which is the first quarter budget

update and i'll turn it over to staff for an update thank you mayor our finance director has a presentation for you it's overall it's a good news presentation and we have additional money that we have recommendations for you and also would like to hear direction from you on areas you would like us to invest in so with that i will introduce katherine downs our finance director to PROVIDE THE PRESENTATION.

Okay. Okay. Thank you, Mayor and City Council.

Council. Although this agenda item focuses on the first quarter of the current fiscal year, it will also cover actual general fund performance for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2021. The independent audit is complete and the financial statements have been posted to the City's website. We expect to provide a full report to City Council on January 18th for those results. In addition to an overview of the general fund revenues and expenditures for the first quarter, this report also includes an update on staff vacancies as of September 30.

First, our fiscal year 2021 sales tax and business tax both performed better than anticipated. We'll go into that a little bit more later in the presentation. We did have fiscal year 2021 expenditure savings during the pandemic. Now this was primarily driven by the fact that our parks and libraries were not at full service during that time. Our staff vacancies remained vacant. Pandemic priorities funded by federal cares money supplanted regular operations and departments overall were more careful and controlled with their spending during the pandemic uncertainty.

So our updated sales tax estimate for fiscal year 21-22 means that the city does not need to use general fund balance for the 21-22 operating budget. And the final result is that the 21-22 budget is balanced and the general fund has $42 million available for one-time spending.

This is a snapshot of the general fund balance at June 30, 2021. We maintain the required 18% reserve which is $63 million and the amount available for spending is $42.3 million. Our total fund balance at June 30th was $109.4 million. This report includes a proposed spending plan for the $42 million. If the City Council approves the staff recommendation, there would still be $16.4 million available for other one-time costs. So the $42.3 available for spending. We have proposals of $24.7 million.

There would be a net increase to the operating reserve with the increase in the sales tax estimate and that would leave 16.4 million available.

In a moment I'll provide more detailed information for sales tax. In the meantime, this is a snapshot of actual revenue collected through September 30th. Factoring in the timing of revenue receipts, the amount collected for the first quarter is within expectations. For example, property tax representing more than a quarter of our revenue is primarily collected in the months of November through May.

Other than the jail revenue, there is no lag in collection on these other key revenue sources which leads to a higher percentage of revenue received for this particular group. There has been a spike in plan check activity. With a few more months of data, our revenue estimates may be updated with the mid-year report but we are not making any proposals at this time for that particular revenue source.

This is our sales tax performance broken down by the 1% Bradley Burns allocation and the local one and a half percent measure X rate. Last fiscal year Bradley Burns outperformed estimates by 5.8 million and measure X outperformed by 13.7 million. Now this is primarily due to three factors. The Wayfair court decision to require out-of-state vendors to collect California tax on sales made to California buyers, the federal stimulus money injected into the economy, and the dramatic increase in online sales.

Our estimates were conservative due to the unprecedented economic environment during the pandemic. We're not alone. The state and many other cities across California have reported higher than expected sales tax performance. As a result of last year's performance, we've updated our current year revenue estimates by a combined $16 million for these sales tax sources. The current year budget included a $12 million use of the general fund balance.

With the increased revenue estimate of $16 million, our current year budget is now in a surplus position of $4 million, which is only 1.1% of the general fund budget.

This is an overview of actual quarterly sales tax since Measure X became effective in April 2019. There is an upward trend even through the pandemic.

This is a snapshot of general fund expenditures for the first quarter. Spending at 22.6% overall is within expectations. It should be noted that we pay one month in advance for fire services.

Finally, we have the employee position vacancy report as of September 30. There were 97 general fund vacancies, but 30 of them are subject to the hiring freeze, leaving 67 funded vacancies in the general fund. When combined with 57 vacancies from other funds, we have a total of 124 funded vacancies. This is approximately 10% of our staffing positions.

The staff report includes a spending plan for your consideration this evening and at this time we are prepared to answer your questions and receive additional direction from the City Council.

Great. Thank you Director Downs for that presentation. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the Council for some questions or comments and before I begin with Councilmember Hernandez and then Councilmember Fan. And let me say, you know, just thank you for the good news. And, you know, it's certainly timed well right before the holidays. So I think it's good news that we can share with our residents. I think it's good news that we can share with our city family that there's been some responsible performance by our staff, performance by our residents and you know vendors that work with us as well in

businesses that are with us. Other cities are experiencing you know some positive numbers but some of them are relative right. This is a very very positive one that I don't think you know anybody saw coming and it's a combination of yes sales but it's also you know in addition to being responsible with respect to expenditures. And so I know that there's been, you know, sometimes some discussion about, you know, are we being responsible in our expenditures? Should we be investing money in things that are maybe non-capital related or non-infrastructure related, you know, like youth,

like, you know, social policies that I think are important, you know, internships, you know, rental assistance, different things that I think all of us, you know, feel that the city needs. We certainly need to fix our streets and roads, which there's plenty of taking place. We see a lot of construction. I think a lot of calls that I receive are because there's so many detours and so many construction sites all over. But that's progress. That's how a city rejuvenates itself and makes sure that it stays relevant and it has the streets for people to conduct commerce, for people to move around safely.

But I want to thank staff because I know the numbers. it's really sometimes difficult to be conservative with estimates. And when you forecast wrong, you could say you over forecast. You think sales are going to be maybe more excessive than they are, and then we're looking at an inverted number, then we're looking at a budget shortfall. Here I think the forecast was responsible. I think it was something that was very realistic given what we were facing with this pandemic. But I want to thank them especially for being restrained in the way that we expended city funds. And I think that is also the responsibility.

That is one of the main responsibilities of this council. And for us to bring these numbers back, over $40 million in excess of what we expected this time is something that we shouldn't ignore. And I hope that our residents understand that this has been a difficult time to predict how things are going to be done. but I'm certainly much, much more content delivering this report card than delivering one saying, we're looking at a $42 million hole. So thank you to staff, thank you, Madam City Manager, to all your staff that helped realize this

and obviously to our residents that continued believing in the city. Obviously this is a one-time snapshot, but this is trending well. and that's what we look at in these things and you know we should think about one other thing we have a double-a rating with you know our credit rating rating agency prior to this most rating agencies because I've worked with a couple look at not really the revenue because that fluctuates but they look at the expenditures and showing what we did with ours and being restrained and still being able to meet the needs of the residents

is something that is impressive so I know they'll be looking at that the next time they review us and they rate us So we're looking forward to that. So let me go ahead and begin with council member Hernandez and then with council member fan.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 38

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to commend staff on putting such a comprehensive staff report together. I want to thank them for some of the recurring items that I see here. Most notably the sidewalk improvement program being funded at 500,000 with future annual costs of 1 million traffic traffic calming program, alley improvement program, the graffiti removal program enhancements for the areas adjacent to the public pathways and railroad corridors is funded currently at 300,000. I think that there could be a shift in how we approach graffiti removal.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 38

I think it's absolutely important to have graffiti removal, but I see that the future annual costs increased to 600,000, which indicates a recurring problem. And this could ultimately just continue to be a waste of taxpayer money. If we don't divert this graffiti and create, there's clearly a need. There's, for one reason or another, there's people that are painting on walls. So I want to introduce the graffiti arts program, GAP. This is a program that exists in San Francisco.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 38

I think it would be wise for us to create a reserve with some of these monies that are in the graffiti removal program to maybe activate a parcel of land that is vacant to a location where people can engage in the arts. There's a program in San Francisco called the Graffiti Arts Program. It's a youth prevention and intervention program that teaches graffiti arts as a tool for positive self expression and an alternative to unsafe behaviors. If we don't create an alternative and divert these behaviors and give kids a safe place to do it, they'll continue to write on train tracks.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 38

They'll continue to write on our walls and that doesn't help anybody. So I think that if we can look to divert some funds, maybe create a small reserve for us to activate a parcel of vacant land so that kids can engage in the arts there, graffiti arts program, I can assure you would attract kids that are both, you know, interested in the arts and kids that are at promise. So we can develop a really, really great program for community members if we get creative with some of these funds here. So I wanna echo my support for looking at the graffiti removal program

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 38

and shifting some of those monies from that 300,000 and at least maybe starting at 75,000, starting some sort of an arts pilot program at a vacant parcel. And we can call it the graffiti arts program. And I think this would be a very good use of public land, vacant land, and it'll be a good introduction. and it's always important to support arts. Something else I'm really excited to see is the protected bike lane sweeping program being funded at 75,000 and increasing to 150,000. And then lastly, I'm so excited and humbled to see that a reoccurring item we have in our budget

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 38

is a Juneteenth celebration starting in 2022. I fought really hard with my colleagues to get this done. I see that it is funded at full cost necessary for our fiscal year 21 to 22 at 50,000. I'd like to ask my colleagues to support me in increasing that to at least $75,000 with the recurring budget for the future annual cost increasing hopefully from 75 to 100,000. But I like to stand firm that 75,000 minimum is what I would like to see the Juneteenth celebration and see monies allocated to that.

Great, thank you, Council Member Hernandez. Thank you. Council Member Fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 38

Thank you, Mayor. So when I had my one-on-one with Director Downs, when she told me about the budget stuff, I took a minute and like a few minutes to gasp at how much that is.

Thai Viet PhanItem 38

I'm very excited. And I do want to first mention that at the league conference, Councilmember Lopez and I she's a voting member I was on the general resolutions committee and a few bedroom communities who did not you know benefit from the Wayfair decision wanted to lobby the state government in the state legislature to change the law regarding online sales and we fought vigorously to prevent that because we knew here in the city of Santa Ana our residents benefit from that decision so I'm very excited that you know we were we stood strong on that position and we are seeing the effects of that and it's being proven

Thai Viet PhanItem 38

today so the first thing I wanted to bring up I want to agree with council member Hernandez regarding graffiti prevention I support the amount for graffiti removal you know there is a lot of need but I would like to see I think the GAP program is fantastic to have a location in the city however one of the items I had brought up with our Park Strategic Plan consultant was to encourage murals and art in all of our parks and pretty much any empty public wall the same way we do with our electrical boxes I do believe that we have a lot of artists and they don't have to be professional artists they can be students

Thai Viet PhanItem 38

and residents who are hobbyists and really promote that kind of work throughout the city. And these walls don't have to be permanent. Some of them may be, some of them are not. But having these blank, sad, pinkish beige walls have murals and art on them I think really helps prevent this type of graffiti, especially when we can get those artists from our local community. So I'm not putting a number on that, but I would like for us to explore, you know, how much something like that would cost and and I would like actually for the input from the Arts Commission as they are the expert and to really think about

Thai Viet PhanItem 38

you know what would that look like how much would it cost and how do we implement that in the city of Santa Ana as we know we have so many artists so that would be the first thing the second issue is regarding sidewalks and so I I talked to Director Saba and with this amount of money, I talked to our city attorney and we have a lot of trip and fall cases. In the last couple of years, we're paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to settle and spend on trip and fall cases, not including just to fix the areas where the person tripped and fell.

Thai Viet PhanItem 38

And so I asked Director Saba, how much would it cost to fix all of the areas in the city that we know of that require updates to the sidewalk. Said we actually have an omnibus sidewalk improvement five-year plan that is not well-funded because we've never had this kind of money before. In total, it's $8 million over a period of five years. I would like for us and the council to support funding over the next three years. I spoke to Director Saba and he mentioned it would be, I believe, approximately 3 million, 3 million, 3 million. give or take at the end, and inflation. So I would like for us to program that in

Thai Viet PhanItem 38

with these one-time funds to fix all of the areas in the city that we know are hazards. And you know, when I'm in Lacey and you're walking around or downtown or even near Thornton Park, we really have to fix these areas because not only is it a safety issue, it's a quality of life issue. We're all walking out more now. It increases property values. IT MAKES IT MORE INTERESTING AND FUN TO BE OUTSIDE AND IT ENSURES THAT WE'RE ADA COMPLIANCE. SO I WOULD LIKE TO DO THAT. I DID ASK IF YOU TOOK THE $8 MILLION ALL AT ONCE AND SAID NO. WE DON'T HAVE THE STAFF TO PROGRAM THAT.

Thai Viet PhanItem 38

BUT I THINK OVER A PERIOD OF THREE YEARS, THREE MILLION EACH YEAR, I THINK THAT WOULD BE IN ADDITION TO THE RECURRING MAINTENANCE COST THAT IS A MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR. because you know you got a fixture roof but you also got to maintain it right so the next item that I would like to expand on is we we do have funding for the economic development South Main corridor I you know restaurant incubation and art I think that's really fantastic however I'd like for us to look into and work with our economic development team to provide a local Santa Ana

Thai Viet PhanItem 38

small business incubation and education program. We do have some training for you know businesses for example to respond to RFPs but I would like for us to also just help those who might be you know pursuing micro businesses, home businesses and to really figure out how to start up in the city. I think economic development is so important and today things have changed. It's not always opening up a storefront but it might be a you know a sidewalk vendor or a food truck or just starting an Etsy business from my home office and I really think that we should do a better job of encouraging that and of course if any

Thai Viet PhanItem 38

online sales happen we get the sales tax so I I would really like for us to look into it you know I don't want to dictate the value that would be because I would leave it to staff to figure out you know what is a an appropriate amount however regarding the sidewalk i did place a value based on our omnibus sidewalk program thank you thank you council

Phil BacerraItem 38

member fan mayor pro tem thank you mr mayor um this is exciting news i mean we're talking about you know coming out on the right side of this you know thanks to our federal partners for helping us through the pandemic as far as some of the funding that they've provided us which allowed some of our estimates to come out the way they have. So the way I see it, so we have 42.3 million over. Staff has recommended how to appropriate 24.7 million, so we're looking at 16.4 that staff has left for the council to further review. But as far as from the 24.7 million,

Phil BacerraItem 38

And so we've got 5.4 million to address deferred maintenance at the Santa Ana train station, which is great because that is a gateway into our city. If there's an entity that's been impacted by COVID, it's this particular facility. You have, in addition to the streetcar construction, you also have reduced ridership because of folks not taking the train during the middle of the pandemic. But what I wanted to ask was, so we have another line item that's going to make the fund for the train station whole, and this is additional funds for deferred maintenance.

Phil BacerraItem 38

So my question is, is this $5.4 million enough for the deferred maintenance, but also for improvements that would allow us to commit more for actual tend improvements that would make the commercial spaces in there more attractive? BECAUSE I'LL TELL YOU RIGHT NOW, I DON'T BLAME STARBUCKS OR COFFEE BEAN OR ANY OTHER REPUTABLE COFFEE PURVEYOR FOR NOT WANTING TO BE IN THAT FACILITY RIGHT NOW. SO MY HOPE IS THAT WITH THIS VENUE BEING SUCH A HUB FOR NOT JUST METROLINK AND AMTRAK BUT GREYHOUND CRUSERA BUSES, IS THE 5.4 MILLION REALLY ENOUGH OR SHOULD WE BE LOOKING AT MORE FOR EXCEPTIONAL TENT IMPROVEMENTS?

So for detailed information, I will certainly defer to Nabil Saba, but we believe the 5.4 would do enough in maintenance at the train station that would make it an attractive, and I couldn't agree with you more, area to activate, which would then in turn turn around and generate additional revenue for the train station.

Phil BacerraItem 38

That's exactly what I wanted to hear, being able to generate a little more revenue, because for the past couple of budget cycles, we've been bailing it out, but again, for the reasons that we were talking about. I also like what I see. I mean, there's many items that staffs recommending that I think are excellent. I like seeing the $1 million going towards the rehab of the Cypress Fire Station. I'll just say I think it would make an excellent location for San Anipal.

Phil BacerraItem 38

The $4 million in revenue that's become available for these ongoing costs,

Phil BacerraItem 38

it's wonderful to see and hear my colleagues support our commitment to improving our sidewalks. I just, that was something that frustrated me when I got on the council to see that we had no dedicated revenue stream for sidewalks. Such a basic municipal operation 101, and here we are today talking about not just simply funding sidewalks and talking about what Director Saba needs just to kind of patch up what's out there, but to actually proactively improve our sidewalks and make it safe for our community to walk. We are so blessed in this city to have a walkable city, and for us not to have grade A sidewalks is a sin.

Phil BacerraItem 38

So I'm really appreciative of that. I also, sorry, Director Saba, a little focus on you right now. So in here, staff is recommending the addition of one full-time meter reader collector. The report goes on to say that this area has been experiencing staffing shortages, and it's impacting timely reads and rereads of water meters used for water billing. My understanding, and I forget how long ago it was, but it wasn't too long ago, we approved quite a substantial amount for these smart meters. So I guess my question is, I'm thinking to myself, why are we adding more staff

Phil BacerraItem 38

when I think the future is that you won't need folks to physically go out there, but rather the information will be coming to us. SO IF YOU CAN HELP ME UNDERSTAND WHY WE WOULD NEED TO ADD ANOTHER PERSON, I APPRECIATE THAT.

I'LL DEFER TO PUBLIC WORKS DIRECTOR. BUT I DO BELIEVE IT HAS TO DO AS A RESULT OF TIMING. THE SMART METER PROJECT IS A MULTIYEAR VENTURE.

GOOD EVENING, MAYOR PROTEM AND MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL. YES, THE ADDITION OF THE METER READER IS NEEDED RIGHT NOW. The position will be integrated with the overall AMI project where we would transition to a remote read type mirrors. And these positions and classification would be integrated and changed into a mirror technician. So for the time being, we are short-handed and meter readers, and we need to have additional resources to do a proper reading and timely reading.

But again, we are transitioning into the AMI project, and that is about three and a half years away from being fully implemented.

Phil BacerraItem 38

Okay, so this position would at some point transition from a meter reader to more of a meter technician.

That's correct.

Phil BacerraItem 38

Okay, perfect. Thank you for that explanation.

You're welcome.

Phil BacerraItem 38

So right now, so again, we have this $16.4 million that is left for the council to appropriate. We've already heard a couple of ideas of what we may want to do with it. I would say that I absolutely would not support taking any money away from graffiti removal. I think that no matter what we try to do to reduce or limit the graffiti, the fact is right now it's there. I hope at a future date we will see less graffiti and then we can address it accordingly. But I think right now one of the things that's wonderful is with the My Santa Ana app, our contractor that we have working on graffiti removal,

Phil BacerraItem 38

we're seeing so much graffiti being removed. It's wonderful. In fact, you know, someone called me the other day and said that they were so appalled that they saw writing on the side of a wall along South Main Street. And I said, well, did you use the By Santa Ana app? And they said, yes, of course I did. But it was just such a shock because, you know, they've seen graffiti being covered up so quickly and so often that it was just appalling and a shock to their system to actually see the graffiti there because our contractors are doing such a great job. So I really appreciate that. I would not want to somehow cripple that effort

Phil BacerraItem 38

because I think it's been one of the positive notes as far as what the community sees day in and day out. So as far as maybe as part of that $16.4 million, taking that and going towards something kind of in between what Council Member Hernandez and Council Member Fann had talked about, some sort of arts program again rather than diverting from the graffiti removal fund maybe it's something where we can take some of the 16.4 to possibly do a pilot program and see if we can you know just test it out see how that works i think as council member fan mentioned there's

Phil BacerraItem 38

plenty of walls in the city that you know the drab you know beige could really be touched up a little bit um so i think we all know some places that we could see that done um but i would recommend to my colleagues at this point, you know, I hate it whether it's trying to design a project or a budget from the dais. I would really love to take the $16.4 million, put it aside, and ask staff to come back at a subsequent meeting with some recommendations above the $16.4 million just to give us an idea of the priorities that are still out there, and that would allow us to kind

Phil BacerraItem 38

of pick and choose where we think that these funds should be prioritized. But I don't know that THAT WE'RE IN A GOOD PLACE TO BE ABLE TO JUST START THROWING OUT DOLLAR AMOUNTS WITHOUT SOME SORT OF PROFESSIONAL, I GUESS, SUPPORT ON, YOU KNOW, JUST TO SAY HERE'S A MILLION AT THIS OR 5 MILLION AT THAT, I THINK IT JUST, IT WOULD BE NAIVE AND IGNORED ON OUR PART, BUT TO HAVE SOMETHING COME BACK FROM STAFF THAT GIVES US AN IDEA, ESPECIALLY BECAUSE I'M SURE THERE'S A LOT MORE DIFFERENT MAINTENANCE THAN WHAT'S IN HERE THAT YOU GUYS WOULD PROBABLY WANT TO ADDRESS.

Thank you for that comment and I concur. I think probably the easiest way would be to do it and so far I'm feeling pretty good because you're not really changing, you're not decreasing or taking away anything that we've recommended. So it would be very simple for us to prepare a staff report to come back and do those additional appropriations should the majority agree on, well, we can bring it back and you decide at that time so you don't have to agree right now. But I can make notes on everything you're suggesting and as long as no one is changing

something in the staff report you wouldn't need to amend the motion to approve this and we would return with all the extras that you're asking for should you want to change something that's in the recommendation you could do so but you'd have to amend the motion that would be the cleanest way

Phil BacerraItem 38

to do it i appreciate that ma'am sid manager i think that also too the 16.4 million is not a solid locked in number this is a projection so maybe it's something that you know maybe if you don't come back to us at our absolute next meeting maybe it's returning to us in February and just kind of seeing how things write out because at that point we're starting to get into our third quarter and we can have a better idea of really if that 16.4 is really 16.4 million I think as we look at if you want comments as far as something I would like to see I think kind of in line with

Phil BacerraItem 38

what councilmember Fannin talked about where if we have some of these basic municipal functions where we can kind of you know appropriate future years so that you know because the reality is you know we keep hearing that there might be a recession on the horizon and to be able to have uninterrupted maintenance on some of these basic core functions i think it would be wise of us to pay it ahead just so we can be ready for that that's my comments at this point thank you mr

Thank you for those comments. Any other comments from the left side here? Councilmember Mendoza.

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I agree with many of these recurring projects and

to beautify our city and also with the proposed

PROJECTS TO BRING SERVICES TO OUR RESIDENTS. I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO HAVE A FEW PROJECTS FOR CONSIDERATION WHEN THIS COMES BACK. AND THOSE HAVE MORE REVIEW ON THE PARKS AND OPEN SPACES TO SEE IF WE CAN PURCHASE SOME OF THOSE IRREGULAR PARCELS THAT CAN BE MADE INTO POCKET parks. I know that our citizens are always asking for more parks and along that line,

maybe we could allocate some money for concerts in the park for this coming summer. Surrounding cities are always having music in the park and so that's where I see most of the Santa Ana residents enjoying concerts in the park in other cities, so we want to keep our residents here in Santa Ana and bring that entertainment to them. In addition, I would like to see about improving and getting going on our veteran recognition program in naming parks after Santa Ana veterans, in naming our streets or renaming some of

our buildings, also a statue commemorating our heroes here born and raised in Santa Ana who are military and who are veterans. So a veteran recognition program, a stronger one. And that includes banners of lining our main streets with our either current or past veterans to give them the honor that they deserve. In addition, I know this one's a pretty tough one. It's a big one because land is so scarce.

but I would like to see a cultural event center, something that has indoor performance area, where our local artists could have live theater performances, music, or maybe our schools can come and do some concerts there and also have our Ballet Folklorico events there and an educational center so that we can have something to show.

I know we're working on a campaign to try and bring more tourism to Santa Ana and that will happen because the trolley is definitely one of those avenues that will bring more people to Santa Ana. So we need to give them something that they can look forward to. We have the Discovery Cube. We have a museum, Bowers Museum, but we don't have a cultural event center where we can show the tourists what it's like to have Aztec dancers,

cultural food, clothing for sale. We can have some of our local businesses come and bring their goods and services to this area. But mainly something where we could have these arts and cultural educational event center. If we could find a property that's big enough that can hold, I don't know, maybe 300 people, 500 people, it would be a lasting legacy for Santa Ana to draw on the tourism that Travel Santa Ana campaign will bring to us.

And lastly, the Grandparents Appreciation Day, the event that was held at the Southwest Senior Senior was a huge success. and it was filled to capacity with many of our third generation senior citizens and I would like to see that become citywide so that we can include more of the senior centers and invite other seniors from the surrounding cities to come and see what is available here in Santa Ana. Who knows we may even get more

increased sales tax from the vendors that we have here on that day. And I mentioned the concerts in the park. Oh, here it is. One more item is that the trolley is coming straight down 4th Street, 4th Street, downtown Santa Ana, and that really needs to be beautified. We need to be proud. We need to show the people that are coming in that we have this gorgeous downtown,

and it needs to be revitalized perhaps with better signage from our businesses and better trash can beautification project, attractive, matching uniform trash cans. And also our parking structures are very much in need of updates and facelifts. Right now our parking structures are dark and dreary and leaking.

So we need to make these really attractive and safe for the people who are visiting us. I can envision what we have with South Coast Plaza Haas, what it shows the vacant parking, how many vacant stalls are available or the red indicator light where it says that the parking is not the parking stall is not available and and well lit lots of bright lights and also to make

these parking structures attractive we could incorporate using the arts from our local artists murals on the inside and and which this depicts Santa Ana life and make it to have that protective

graffiti prevention coding on these and have security there so that we discourage any homeless people from using this parking structure as they have been for sleeping, for bathrooms and so we need to make this a very beautiful downtown area along these lines with beautification of our downtown, we need to look at that alley that's behind the businesses.

Some of those are the roads, the pavement needs to be fixed, the asphalt is really in need of repair. Those walls there in the alleyway can be used for more murals. and currently the business, the San Ana business, SABC, is using this alleyway as events every month. So if we could make it more of a recurring event and using more of the alleyway as a productive area

and to clean it up, make it well lit, get some more lighting up there, and to get planters, make it green, and make it inviting. It'll be a very inviting area, and I think with all of this beautification downtown, at the same time that the trolley will be finished, and also there will be more people moving into the area because around that time the project should be completed or nearly completed.

There will be more residences crossover from the first American building that's being developed. And so those are some of the things I'd like to see and maybe explore and analyze and see if that $16 million will bring in more money and more sales revenue to our city.

Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 38

Yeah, thank you. Well, I want to say thank you to staff. I thought the staff report was really well written and I really liked the breakdown of the reoccurring versus the one-time expenses and also thank you for the really great news as was mentioned earlier sometimes we often hear this rhetoric about not being responsible with our spending and I think that this item really proves that that's far from that that is not true and you know one One of the things that as Council Member Fan mentioned earlier was that,

Jessie LopezItem 38

you know, we really advocated for other cities to not take some of our sales tax revenue that we generate here in the city. So I kind of want to move into what I support. And so I definitely support the Juneteenth reoccurring event. I'm very happy to see that be brought back as something that we're going to be budgeting moving forward. I also support 100%, you know, the sidewalk improvements, the traffic calming program. I think Public Works hears from me almost on a weekly basis about these issues,

Jessie LopezItem 38

and I also want to say that we have to have funding for the lighting because I know that in in my ward, that's something that different parts of Ward three desperately needs. And it's something that I wanna see happen. And, you know, I have also said in the past, and I will continue to say it, that we need to bring back the McFadden Public Library. And we have funding to do that. And that is one of the top priorities for me, but really it should be for the city as well. Because I think that that can be an asset to the youth in the area, and not just them, but really anyone that uses our public libraries.

Jessie LopezItem 38

I also would want staff to give us more information on the graffiti removal program that Councilmember Hernandez mentioned. I know it's an ongoing issue now in the city, but for me, I'm not okay with just saying this is an ongoing issue. Let's just throw more money at the problem without trying to prevent that, without trying to see what more we can do to intervene so that so that you know long term we're not spending more and more and more and in fact we should be looking at solutions to decrease

Jessie LopezItem 38

that um i i didn't catch the entire public comment around the train station but i do like the idea of building housing there so that that in fact can revitalize that space and reactivated and provide funding for all the things that people want to see happen at the train station but I don't know that I can commit to allocating more money to the train station as of right now and you know I definitely support the fiscal sustainability recommendations that the staff have made, especially, you know, contributing to Section 115 trust and possibly looking at

Jessie LopezItem 38

the payoff of the current debt that we have. So that would be my input. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 38

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. And I want to thank staff for putting this presentation together. Thank you, Catherine, and for meeting with me last week. and I also want to thank the residents of Santa Ana because of them and Measure X that unfortunately has this city paying the highest sales tax in the county is why we could sit here today and have this additional close to 20 million from just sales tax revenue that we wouldn't have had five six years

David PenalozaItem 38

ago. These are one-time funds that by 2028 they will hopefully start sunsetting and reversing back to the standard Sussex that every other city in Orange County or most of the other cities in Orange County have. This is a great thing but it's just not, I keep thinking that it's not fair that our residents in the city have to just pay more than anyone else in the county for just basic stuff. But with that said, because this money is here now, one thing that I'm fully supportive

David PenalozaItem 38

is seeing the full and complete facelift of the Cypress fire station. So I'm happy that that's in there, that staff is recommending that, because that is something that needs to get addressed, you know, and taken care of three years ago. And I'm happy that now we could sit here with these funds available to address it and take care of it as a and that would be a great second PAL Center 100% I know that it through the past budget cycle we we approved about half a million dollars for a second PAL program within the police department and that would be a great location to have one so seeing

David PenalozaItem 38

that full complete facelift would be great I want to thank Councilmember a fan for for talking about the sidewalk improvement program definitely 100% supportive of that and seeing a multiple year program put together to address these sidewalks because they are costing us hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in trip and fall cases and we should invest into our infrastructure. I know that in the past budget cycle public works we saw a

David PenalozaItem 38

decrease in our tree pruning program, pruning program, that there was a reduction about about half. I have fiber call and and when the executive director public works please you know if that it was a huge cut in the amount that was getting that we were using to fund this tree program and that is another you know very expensive liability that we have in the city is a numerous trees that are

David PenalozaItem 38

rotten old and falling on cars people etc homes you know so it's important that we try to see if we could potentially replenish some of those funds that were reduced over the last budget cycle for the tree program I am NOT supportive of removing funds from the graffiti removal program, given that we have dozens of very active gangs that are way past that hole of trying to help them not tag. I mean, that's a lot of, you know, maybe we could focus on the younger kids when it comes

David PenalozaItem 38

to graffiti and changing that, but the very active gangs that are graffitiing all over the city is a problem today, so I want to make sure that we don't lose track of that. But I'm also very supportive of creating a set of funds to educate and create spaces where residents could express, if they have that art expression, to express their forms of art via graffiti. I know that, Madam City Manager, you may recall when we first hired you back in April, May of 2019,

David PenalozaItem 38

I, you know, aside from picking you up at midnight to go visit the Harbor Corridor to see what our residents were dealing with, I also picked you up one morning and we drove around up and down Flower Street, up and down Ettinger, and I talked a lot about the cinder block walls, beige and white, that were not pleasant to look at and also a constant graffiti problem.

David PenalozaItem 38

There's ways where we could... I know that a lot of these residents and neighborhoods in the middle of the city are not gonna want graffiti, even if it's art on their cinder block walls. So maybe we could find and designate areas where we could potentially have a graffiti art program, but also a lot of areas in the city on MacArthur have the green ivy along the wall that is a huge deterrent for graffiti and it looks really nice. It you know helps absorb water, it helps the environment in adding just green screen, natural green screens to a lot of these walls. I think there's a lot of areas where we

David PenalozaItem 38

could potentially do that along flower and and ettinger where we could look at ways or we could plant green screening natural green screen along these walls that could help not only deter graffiti but also just create a cleaner air and just that we'll have it won't do much but you know any little bit helps I want to talk a little bit about the the smart smart the smart water meters as well because I know I mentioned this to executive director Downs and you madam

David PenalozaItem 38

city manager that aside from not only our our cell sex being the highest in the county which is why we're here exactly two years ago in December of 2019, the city council at the time approved raising our residents water rates over three or four years to the close to 45% increase of what they were at the time. You know, I was the one council member that did not support that rate increase, but the reason why Public Works brought that forward was because it was going to be used, that

David PenalozaItem 38

increase to invest in these smart water meters that would over time remove you know just the costly process and staff to that that takes to go physically to each water meter in the city and read them so i think that's great but if we you know even with the president's infrastructure bill that was approved last month with these additional funds with additional arpa dollars that are coming next year, I think we could find a way to try to invest directly, tap

David PenalozaItem 38

into these funds and invest directly into these smart reader programs or smart readers, water meters, tongue twister, so that we could say, you know what, residents of Santa Ana, we now found or have $20 million where we could invest in these smart water meters. So because of that, we're going to reverse a lot of these water rate increases that the city has implemented over the last couple of years. I mean, that is really going to save our residents hundreds of dollars a year across the city. And what more can we ask for in saving our residents money?

David PenalozaItem 38

So if there's opportunity there to just directly fund this investment in water infrastructure and save our residents hundreds of dollars by reversing those water rate increases, I mean, that is more than I can ever ask for. And that's one of the reasons why we're here, is to really service our residents. The one question that I had, Madam City Manager, and this might be for Public Works Director, the street sweeper, the mini street sweeper that you have listed on here for purchase.

David PenalozaItem 38

Is that, is one street sweeper going to be enough to sweep every protected bike lane in the city? Because, I mean, I was driving, I know it's been windy, and we've had bad weather, but just driving today, there's a lot of trash just accumulated in these protected bike lanes, and it's not looking any better.

To answer your question, yes. I believe that Mini Sweeper with an equipment operator or a maintenance worker that will be driving that Mini Sweeper will be sufficient to do our potential 10 miles of protected bike lanes.

David PenalozaItem 38

And that would be like a once a week basis? I believe it would be once a week, yes.

The funding is to purchase the piece of equipment and then to fund an operator to run it. on a weekly basis.

David PenalozaItem 38

Okay, because I've seen the amount of debris inside these protected bike lanes. They're an eyesore. I'm getting complaints from residents daily on the amount of trash that's accumulating on the protected bike lanes. I'm supportive of them, and I'm happy to help build something in our city that could provide different ways of transportation for our residents. But, I mean, if they're going to be filled with trash, you know, that's going to be a problem. So seeing where we could, you know, look at this long term with that, because I don't see one mini street sweeper being enough to cover all the 10 miles of the city.

David PenalozaItem 38

Or maybe it's a thing where I don't know.

We can reassess. Our initial thought here is to purchase the sweeper along with the staffing that comes along with it. And to let you know, I think street sweeping contract will be up for renewal in 2024. So we will assess how we do with a mini sweeper. And if we need an additional resources, we will include bike lane sweeping with a new contract.

David PenalozaItem 38

Okay. Thank you, Director Saba. Sure. I just, one question that I had for you, Director Downs, in regards to all these additional fundings. And I want to thank staff for being across the department, all the different departments for being conservative in their spending. but a lot of these additional funds available from last fiscal year do they have anything to do with the with the with the funded vacancies that exists in each department is that part of this excess in money yeah yes there was

across the board in just about every department there is expenditure savings and some of those expenditure savings are derived by the staff vacancies yes so I

David PenalozaItem 38

I understand the access in funds in like parks and recs, for example, there was funded vacancies because a lot of we didn't have any programming. So I could see that. But in departments like the police department where there was no hiring freeze, how are we doing on funding those vacancies that are still there? I mean, I know that's not you, Director Downs, but I want to make sure that we're, I mean, can you talk a little bit about that, Madam City Manager, in the funded vacancies that have been approved for hiring within the police department. I mean what does that

look like over the next year? I don't have specific numbers on that but I can say that the in the presentation the position the vacancy report that's a snapshot in time so you're going to see funded vacancies that are currently being recruited and it's a it's a changing cycle. We have new people coming in the door and we have people going out the door particularly in the large police department I certainly can provide you where they're at with the hiring what's in the pipeline it's a little harder read on estimates as to retirements within that department but I could give you additional details in that one of

the things the city has used the vacancies and the hiring freeze over the last several years as a means to help reduce the structural deficit that we were facing so that has been one tool that we've used so what's exciting about tonight is if we're able to fund all of them and continue with a funded and a balanced budget that that is good news because I know a lot of the great things you want us to do entails using a lot of employees and and we're working very hard to fulfill those so any opportunity we can to hire an individual to assist us with the workload is is good news for for all of the departments of the city

David PenalozaItem 38

Okay, thank you for that. And then one final point with with them in the staff report there were some reoccurring costs using the remainder of fiscal year 21-22 and then with the future annual cost as well. I noticed the Juneteenth celebration fully supportive of seeing that because that was something that we we all unanimously agreed on but I I want to also ask if with all the other city events. Are they, I don't recall if they were fully funded when we approved the 21-22

David PenalozaItem 38

budget. I know that, you know, we have, I guess that's now going into the next budget, because I'm thinking 4th of July, Fiestas Patrias, which would be into the 22-23 budget.

Your memory is very good, and you are correct. So in addition to, so we had roughly 4 million that we were comfortable with, with programming for reoccurring. A lot more on the one-time front. But of the reoccurring, in addition to the amount programmed in for Juneteenth, there also is just an additional amount programmed in for city events budget to increase it. And that's what's recommended as an additional $50,000 for the remainder of this current fiscal year, which is roughly six months, and a full $100,000 for the next fiscal year.

David PenalozaItem 38

Okay. I see that now. Last point, the contracted administrative support for city council, annual allocation of $60,000 per council member. Can you talk a little bit more what exactly that is?

Certainly, sir. So one of the requests that several of you have made to me is the workload that you're facing, the workload that my office has, and that you require additional assistance. So in a way to provide you that additional assistance under the constraints of our charter and of our civil service system, I thought the best way to reach that would be to provide a fixed budget for each elected official in order to contract with an aid, whether it's a policy aid that you're looking for, a communications person. It would be a contractor that would be solely paid through accounts payable,

and they could assist with the other areas where you're not getting enough assistance from my staff in the city manager's office.

David PenalozaItem 38

So it would be us as individual council members hiring somebody?

You aren't hiring them, so this is a contractor, not an employee.

David PenalozaItem 38

Contracting somebody to the amount of $60,000 a year per council member.

Or you would have the flexibility. Maybe you want to contract with a policy researcher for 20,000 and you want to contract with someone that's an analyst for another 20,000. It would be at your discretion as to how you use the 60,000.

David PenalozaItem 38

That's only for this year or reoccurring?

What we are asking for is that to be... Did you divide it between... Yeah, so for six months for this year and then for the full next year, the full 60,000.

David PenalozaItem 38

Okay. I just personally don't think that's appropriate at the time because these are one-time dollars that we're dealing with and we are looking at a sunsetting of Measure X by 2028 or at least that half percent. So seeing an additional body to each of the council members, including myself, to the tune of $60,000 for a policy aid or whatever it would be. I don't see that appropriate as now. I think that's something along with that could potentially go if we really wanted to go that direction, maybe look at ways of looking.

David PenalozaItem 38

Maybe the conversation needs to be had of having a full time counsel again and maybe sending that to the voters.

David PenalozaItem 38

Because I just I'm not comfortable allocating more dollars to us in any, you know, whatever it is staff. I think we all know what the job entail and what we signed up for. So seeing that per council member just doesn't sit well with me because I think it's something that should go to the voters and let them decide if we want to become full time with full time staff or get this additional resources to us for an independent contractor. That's basically it for my items at the moment. And thank you, Madam City Manager and Director Downs.

Great. Thank you for those comments. I think everybody had a chance to speak on this. So, yeah, I think there's a lot here. I think to somebody's point, I'm not sure if it was maybe even Victor Mendez talking about how much there is here before us.

So it's sort of a good news, not great news, because there's not enough time to really discuss what the priorities are. And I feel like we're asked to be making decisions on some things on very short notice. And to everybody's point, this isn't our funding, it's really the people's funding. So to the extent that I want to hear a little bit more from the public and to be able to make a wise decision even on this infrastructure, right? I don't know if I like the numbers and how they match up to some of the priorities that certain members of the public see as important.

So I would maybe consider putting this over because I'd like to see how we look at the $16 million as well. because I you know I analogize this to sort of what the federal government is going through with the infrastructure bill and it's built back better bill right so one is hardcore infrastructure and it's easy and those are things that we do we can certainly make some adjustments and again we don't want to make adjustments on the fly as somebody said but I also see that there's some social policies that we can address here as well you know I think about you know

libraries and I you know really like seeing Cyprus here maybe not as a pal program but maybe as an e-library where kids will have a place to go you don't need a huge footprint for an e-library you just need monitors and a safe place for you know kids to be able to congregate. I also see things like you know we have a new inclusion and equity director how do we empower that office to do good things how do we make change across departments across the community So we have mental health needs. We have things like internships for youth. We have things like the GAP program that was talked about.

We can graffiti over all the graffiti in the world, but if we don't prevent it, we're just going to continue growing that fund and spraying over problems that we should be trying to prevent. And if we can give others an outlet, I think to Council Member Hernandez's point, that's really what we should be doing. I think that's what we were talking about when we were talking about shifting monies away from the MET program, the MET division and the police department, rather than looking at militarizing our department, incarcerating people, enforcing people and arresting people. Let's give kids an

outlet. Let's give them an option to do something different so we can prevent them from going into the criminal justice system. So all those things I think are important. I'm not prepared to make a decision tonight because I want to see what we have in store for that 16 million as well. We should break this up into realizing that 4 million is recurring, I believe, right? So that's something that, you know, we know is going to be fixed. And I think the talk about, you know, I think, you know, it's prudent to talk about how measure X is going to be sunsetting at some point, but we also see some other things that are on the horizon.

We know that we've refinanced our bonds and that's going to be coming back to, you know, for a net benefit that the city is going to have. We also know that we're going to be retiring the debt in 2024 for our jail. That's going to be $9 million less that we have to pay per year. So there are paths that we can see out of this if we're forward-looking, if we're not just looking at doing things. Sidewalks are great. I mean, we need to do those things. But that's not the only thing we should be doing. We have many, many complicated, multifaceted needs in the community. So I think we just need to look a little broader.

We want to be as comprehensive in our support as we possibly can. To me, quite frankly, if we can use some of the funds that we have from Revive that we're going to be looking at next year, and maybe some of these one-time funds, why not look at purchasing a 100-acre park like Willowick? That would be something that would change lives generationally. That would be something that these monies could look forward to purchasing for families in perpetuity. And there's not that much land left in Central County. I mean, it's rare that that's something that we can do. So those are things I think that we want to look at.

I believe that these are moments in time, just like what we did when we received the rescue plan and we created the revive program. we took a little time to step back and see what are the line items, what are the expenses that we know are priorities of the community. So to me, I just think, you know, I would feel a little bit more comfortable taking a little bit more time, even if it is coming back because we've given a lot, you know, I mean, you guys have been writing feverishly, and I don't know how we, you know, change all the things that we've all said.

Some of us have repeated the same things. Some of us have said things that are different. but I just think that we need to take a little bit more time, maybe have you incorporate those changes, and maybe those of us here can maybe send some changes to you individually and adjustments and maybe looking at how we can spend that 16 as well. If we choose to, maybe we decide of those 16, we want to set aside 10 and put that into the reserve fund. I mean, there's nothing to say that we can't do that as well.

So, I mean, I'm open to all those things, but I just don't, you know, I'm not prepared to do that tonight because it is a big chunk of money and there are many needs. And, you know, I think it just needs a little bit more time. So that would be my recommendation just for us to kind of maybe take the holiday to look at that. Hopefully visit, you know, all of us, you know, visit with our representatives from our own individual wards and, you know, talk about how we can come back and look at this money. And again, I don't want to approve an infrastructure bill without looking at some other social policies that we can also improve on.

So I think it should be a comprehensive look. So that would be my direction or my suggestion. Mayor Pro Temp.

Phil BacerraItem 38

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to, after a couple of other folks had spoken, there was a couple of items that I appreciated.

Phil BacerraItem 38

had spoken about that I wanted to compliment. I appreciate that we were talking about additional lighting, tree maintenance, and green walls especially, because I think that's one of those things where if we can't do a mural, I think a green wall is definitely a more than welcome alternative to many neighborhoods. But I want to say I agree with the mayor on this, but I feel like the recommendations that are before us are great. I was really pleased at what I saw and I would think that at this point we could go with what the staff has brought to us and

Phil BacerraItem 38

Visit the 16.4 in the new year. So I'm just gonna jump out there and make a motion that we accept the five recommended actions and that staff comes back to us with recommendations for the 16.4 million Based on the comments that they heard from Council tonight. That's my motion.

I will second that.

Great. And I'll make a substitute motion to continue the item until the next meeting.

I'll second your motion.

So seeing no other comments or questions on the substitute motion, let's vote on that first.

Mayor Redekop, and just for clarity, Madam City Attorney, we're going to need five votes for approval of any allocation of...

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 38

Mayor Redekop, Yes, when it comes to the appropriation, yes.

Mayor Redekop, Got it.

I'm a little confused, Mayor. So you're asking that we continue it without any action?

Mayor Redekop, To continue until the next meeting.

David PenalozaItem 38

Can I make an amendment? Yes. The amendment that I'd like to offer, Mayor, is to continue to the, probably the, whatever meeting in January, I think it's the first or second, first, the only meeting in January, but to incorporate a lot of what we've heard tonight into the staff recommendations.

That's exactly it.

David PenalozaItem 38

Okay.

That's the motion. And again, I forgot to mention the Juneteenth and, you know, I'm supportive of the gap and all those things that you spoke about. But I think, you know, hopefully with what you heard, but there may be some things that we hear from the public that are important, right, to them. And I want to be able to hear from them, hey, this is important to me. You know, we want to maybe adjust a line item on, you know, I don't want to pick on traffic calming, but let's just say let's keep traffic calming static at 500, and then let's use that additional 500 for something else. That's just an example.

Don't lose your mind, Director's. Your head's going to explode right now. So, but you know, I mean, those are the small adjustments I think we could make in the interim, but it would be making, you know, the staff coming back to us with a revised sort of look at both the recommended items for the 25 million, and then for the recurring also incorporating some of the changes that were mentioned tonight.

So to clarify, we have a motion, a first motion that was seconded, that was going with the staff's recommendation and returning with additional items. and what you're voting on now is the substitute motion that was made, which is not approving anything tonight, but returning with these items plus what we incorporating what we heard.

Correct.

Okay.

I'm fine with that. I really like the idea of buying Willowick, though.

We'll get there. We'll get there. So I'm okay and accept that amendment.

I think there's a sub-motion on the floor that we're voting on. Yes.

Okay, let me go ahead and do the roll call vote. but it looks like it's not popping up for all, or the votes are not being visible for all of the council members. Council member Hernandez? Council member Lopez? Yes. Council member Mendoza? Yes. Council member Fan? Yes. Council member Peñalosa?

Phil BacerraItem 38

Yes.

Mayor Patan Becerra?

Phil BacerraItem 38

Yes.

And Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes, thank you everybody and thank you to staff for taking all that into consideration. Moving along to item number 39, this is the ordinance prohibiting the sale of flavored tobacco products. I'm not sure if staff has a brief presentation. Very brief.

Yes, sir, we do. Daniel Soto from the City Manager's Office has a brief one to walk through. And just to emphasize on this item, it is being presented to you to either introduce it as a first reading of ordinance or to actually enact it as an urgency ordinance. So with that, I will turn it over to Daniel. He'll just need a second, but he's pretty quick with the computer.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. We have a brief presentation for you tonight regarding an ordinance prohibiting the sale of flavor tobacco in Santa Ana.

Some quick background information. This policy item was brought forth at the November 16th City Council meeting by Council Member Mendoza and there was consensus among the City Council to move forward with directing staff to prepare an ordinance that would prohibit the sale of flavored tobacco products in Santa Ana.

And here's a little bit about our current regulations relating tobacco sales. Back in 2006, the City Council adopted an ordinance entitled the Tobacco Retailer License Ordinance. It established processes for the city issuing tobacco retailer licenses to those who sell tobacco in Santa Ana. The ordinance also establishes definitions for terms such as tobacco paraphernalia, tobacco product, and tobacco retailer.

and also outlines provisions for the application, renewal, suspension, revocation, appeal, seizure, and enforcement of the tobacco retailer license program. The current ordinance does not reference flavored tobacco.

Flavored tobacco is defined as any tobacco product with added flavorings. Examples of added flavorings include fruit, menthol, mint, wintergreen, chocolate, cocoa, vanilla, honey, molasses, or any candy, dessert, alcoholic beverage, herb, or spice.

federal government agencies such as the US Centers for Disease Control Prevention have partnered with studies or with universities that have conducted peer-reviewed studies that that show that tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death in the US and worldwide

specifically more than 16 million US residents are living with the disease caused by smoking tobacco and worldwide tobacco use causes more than 7 million deaths per year. The FDA has also taken note as well as the US Surgeon General and has looked at studies that showed the use of tobacco and tobacco products among youth and peer-reviewed studies show that as youth are exposed to tobacco and nicotine products that there is an increased likelihood that those individuals do

become addicted to tobacco and nicotine. The FDA recognizes this and in 2009 the FDA banned cigarettes with characterizing flavors other than menthol and more recently earlier this year the FDA announced plans to propose revised tobacco product standards that would ban menthol cigarettes and would also ban flavorings in cigars. Bringing it back to Santa Ana, at the direction of the City Council, staff has prepared an ordinance that would prohibit the sale of flavored

tobacco in Santa Ana. The ordinance also, in addition to making it unlawful for any tobacco retailer to sell, offer for sale, possess with intent to sell, or offer to sale flavor tobacco product, the ordinance also updates the definition of tobacco product to what you see on your screen. In summary, the updated definition generally means any product or substance that may be derived from tobacco or nicotine regardless of how it is consumed, any related electronic device such as an

e-cigarette and any auxiliary components such as filters and wraps. The city's current tobacco retailer license ordinance is enforced by the Santa Ana Police Department. In order to enforce such regulations that would prohibit the sale of flavored tobacco, the Police Department would be able to work within its existing budget to expand current operations by weekly business compliance checks to ensure that no flavored tobacco products are sold on premises, to increase the use of undercover decoy programs to identify businesses that may

be selling flavored tobacco products, and to issue additional infraction citations. It's also important to note that the proposed ordinance provides that any flavored tobacco products that are offered for sale in violation of the ordinance are subject to seizure and any tobacco retailer that violates the proposed ordinance could have their tobacco retailer license suspended or revoked for a period of anywhere between 60 days and five years. Tonight there are two options for the City Council to consider. There is an ordinance that the

City Council may consider to approve the first reading of to prohibit the sale of tobacco and the City Council may also consider an urgency ordinance and declare emergency findings to adopt an urgency ordinance tonight. Staff is available if you have any questions. Thank you. Great thanks Daniel. So let me

go ahead and bring it back to the Council on this. You know what I did want to just start by saying is that I wanted to thank all the you know speakers from America on Track. You all worked with us in the past to you know ban cigarettes and parks and you know when we knew that that was directed at youth and to all of you who've been advocates you've been you know very vocal you've been very strong your presence has been a good one I mean your your advocacy work has been really effective to help youth so one of the things I know that to me is important as well is that we're consistent with state law and that we're

consistent with just our respect of diverse communities right and I know that for me we have a large and a very important Muslim community here in the city. So I want to make sure that we're respectful of you know their cultural traditions as well and I think we could do both. I think there's a way that we could be respectful and make sure that we protect kids because I think it's not a matter of just banning the product. It's really to me the intent was I mean I want to thank Council Member Mendoza for bringing this forward. It's really to prevent the marketing of it to kids because I'm you know now speaking not just as a member

of the council but as a parent you know to somebody who has a 16 year old daughter that's my goal is that we prevent access to this we prevent marketing to you know this demographic which are you know younger people but I don't want to hurt our Muslim community who who has you know this in their cultural history I mean so I want to see how we can reconcile the two things to the extent we can, that would be my goal, that we definitely adopt something that is going to be done that's going to prevent and protect kids from being able to access this,

prevent the marketing of the product, but also at the same time be consistent with state law because if we could get preempted by SB 793 or SB 78. So I think, you know, again, when we talk about, you know, certain products that are extremely harmful, the vaping has just been off the charts harmful, you know, towards our youth. And that's something I think we can tailor well. And I'm hoping that, you know, maybe our city attorney can work with both, you know, the advocates who presented the ordinance as written. And I'm sure that they would be open to working with making sure that we're respectful of everybody in the city.

But that would be something that I hope we can try to reconcile going forward. But those are just some preliminary comments I'll go ahead and open it up to the council mayor pro-tom. Thank you, mr. Mayor

Phil BacerraItem 39

Well, like what the mayor said, I want to echo the my appreciation for Excuse me councilmember Mendoza for bringing this item forward to us tonight and for all the folks that came out took the time to speak especially our youth and And I just, you know, as much as I'm proud of this council for always thinking about inclusivity, this is literally a life and death situation. And to me, the way that it got brought before us, it was, I mean, relatively a slam dunk. I mean, there was nobody up here that voiced a peep of concern. I think now that it's before us tonight, I'm very excited and happy to support the urgency ordinance

Phil BacerraItem 39

and let's get this done. I think we're not doing this. I mean, we of course want to prevent liability and we want to be compliant with state and federal laws, but at the same time, I have to believe that this ordinance that's before us tonight was reviewed by our city attorney. Was that reviewed? Does it check the boxes? Are we in compliance with federal and state laws?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 39

Yes, we reviewed this for compliance. What I would just say is I carefully listened to the comments today. We'll go back further and double check this if you want to move forward with this ordinance. if we do need to make any adjustments, we'll come back to you as soon as possible to make those adjustments.

Phil BacerraItem 39

Hold on, I'm sorry, I'm a little concerned.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 39

The ordinance I presented to you was reviewed and is prepared and we believe is legal, but I also heard a lot of comments this evening that I heard for the first time that were given to you during public comment. So what I will do is I will review those comments carefully and if any further adjustments need to be made, I'll come back and make recommendations.

Phil BacerraItem 39

Okay, that's fine. I, you know, hopefully when things come to us on the dais, they've been checked and double-checked. So I'm going to...

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 39

They've been double-checked and checked, but I can't anticipate what speakers are going to say, and I don't have time to listen to go through each and every word that they said. So I do want to double-check. I'm going to review the tape, and I'm going to look at each and every comment that was made, and if we need to make adjustments based on those comments, I'll come back. But I stand behind the ordinance that's presented to you in the staff report.

Phil BacerraItem 39

You do stand behind it? I do. Okay, that's what I wanted to hear. So with that being said, so I really want to see this move forward. So I'd be happy just right now to go ahead and make the motion to move this item forward as an urgency ordinance.

Great. Seeing no second, why don't we go ahead and continue comment? Council member. Council member Mendoza and then Lopez.

Thank you. I did bring this, I wanted to propose this because of it is a matter of life and death and it's public health. I see a few issues though with it as it is. I would like to see, have a minor, I have a recommendation for a minor change because because the ordinance needs to be a little more specific because as it stands, it's not specific on the definition of the flavored tobacco.

And we need to do a little more close analysis, and also we need to look at the hookah issue. And I think that we should look at the American Cancer Society's definition of the, which is the definition provided by the commercial tobacco control program at the Public Health Law Center, which is more specific, and I like that to be included because it also includes any device,

not just the e-cigarettes because who knows something. You know, the device might change. It's not an inhaler. Maybe it's aerosol, and so that might change our intent here. So I would like to have it include that it, that it, that it, that it, I would like the ordinance to include that it encompasses any device whether the substance contains nicotine or not.

Because there's chemicals that is not actual a nicotine, but it's nicotine-like. So I don't want any loopholes so that we can protect our youth. So I'm recommending that we continue it to January 18th and have the definition looked at a little more closely.

Mayor Redekopoulos- I'll second that motion.

Any other? I think Council Member Lopez, you had it in your hand.

Jessie LopezItem 39

Yeah, I mean, I'll support Councilmember Mendoza, since this is her item, but I do want to just say that, you know, I think we can all agree of bad practices, especially with the dangers of marketing, right? And one perfect example of that is the opioid crisis that we have in this country. That is due to bad marketing and the federal government really looking the other way. But, you know, I do know that also the city bans hookah parlors, which could arguably be said is also part of our racist history here.

Jessie LopezItem 39

And I want to be respectful of the cultural traditions that other minority groups that live in the city partake in. And just because maybe we don't understand them, that doesn't make them bad. And so, you know, I'm going to also be supporting the motion to continue the item. If there is something, if staff could get me the actual, what's already at the state level, I'd like to compare that to our actual ordinance. And I think I also agree with public comment. When we're talking about health equity, we can't really work in these silos, right?

Jessie LopezItem 39

If we're going to have a jack in the box in every corner, what does that say about the health equity or how we value health in the city of Santa Ana. So, those are gonna be my comments for now. Thank you.

Thank you, council member. Council member Fan and then council member Peñalosa and then Hernandez.

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

Thank you, mayor. So I wanted to address a couple items. I do wanna say that, what is it? A lot of commenters had mentioned SB 793 that was approved in 2020. I do wanna say that that bill does allow local jurisdictions to impose greater restrictions on the access to tobacco products than the restrictions in that section. So, you know, we would not be in violation of any state law or anything like that. That was the one bill that I had heard of. I didn't hear about another one. The other thing I want to mention is

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

the definition of tobacco products or tobacco product in the ordinance does in my opinion cover a wide variety of items derived from tobacco or nicotine for human consumption whether smoked heated chewed absorbed dissolved inhaled snorted snuffed or ingested by any other means I think that would include pretty much any way of consuming that product so I think it's quite broad enough to anticipate much of what I don't know potential future use would look like. I did meet with you know advocates

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

discussing the issue of hookah. I am very you know I really appreciate their perspective and their point of view but to me as someone who grew up with asthma because smoking is incredibly prevalent in the Vietnamese American community you would be hard-pressed to find a Vietnamese American male who's an adult who doesn't smoke. And part of that is because of the way colonization has happened, capitalism has happened, and how these products have been exported to these low-income countries or third world and developing countries. And that continues on because the habit of smoking,

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

just as the habit of drinking in many cultures and families are passed down from, you know, parent to child, even if early on they might learn don't smoke, don't drink, etc. So I'm particularly sensitive to that issue. I am also very familiar with the, well, somewhat familiar with the idea of using hookah and hookah lounges. Going to UCLA for undergrad, we had a lot of hookah lounges in Westwood and just West LA in general. and why I do feel for the cultural importance of this product hookah is

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

often perceived by young people to be less damaging and less harmful than a typical tobacco product which is not true you can look at the CDC's website they talk about how many adolescents aged 12 to 17 years old you know believe that hookah is less dangerous and in fact it's the opposite. So there is that aspect there and speaking to the advocates they said well you know we don't have hookah lounges in Santa Ana but we have you know it's really used at home it's hard for teens to get access to it's really used as a way for families

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

to get together and we're not saying you cannot do that you can still use hookah in your home. You can still practice those cultural and historical practices that are important to you. But what I think I want to say is that we will not partake in proliferating the sale of these flavored tobacco products. Just like the United States has said, we will not allow tobacco companies, which spent billions of dollars over decades lying to the American in public saying that it was not dangerous. And then also advertising to children and young people with Camel. I think we all grew up with cartoons

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

on tobacco products and cigarettes that was directed at young people. Similarly, there are many lawsuits against Juul and these other e-cigarette companies that are in fact using these flavors in order to attract young people. And while I understand a lot of the comments like, well if you ban it it doesn't mean they can't get access to it that's true we have a you know prohibition on the use of heroin people still get heroin but it doesn't mean that we have to support the sale of those items here in the city

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

the one thing I did want to I guess ask and maybe men I know this is a little bit you know maybe you can help explain to me you know some of the residents or local businesses said well you know we we do work really hard to not sell this to those under 21 I guess I want to understand how our cannabis retailers you know because when I visited planet 13 they had several layers of security you had to show your ID check in I they scan it I don't even know if they have it on record somewhere and then you go through multiple levels of security is

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

Is that pretty typical of any cannabis retailer in the city?

I might also, in addition to Director Mintai, you do have acting chief Rodriguez in the audience, and they are the ones that do the enforcement of that, if you'd like to hear from him as well.

Okay. What you'd describe as correct for cannabis.

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

Okay, because, you know, I would propose that if it's not an outright ban, because I am curious to learn about how it's taking place in San Francisco and whatnot, is to impose these requirements on those who want to sell these flavored tobacco products. Comply with the extremely stringent, difficult, but safety measures that we have in place that we have for cannabis. And, you know, because if you're saying you go in, an 18 or 21-year-old goes in, buys Cheetos, milk, soda, whatever, they come out and they just share it with their friends. we're not seeing that same type of activity when you go to a cannabis

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

retailer so you're not seeing the same similar activity as far as I'm aware with our local cannabis retailer so that would be you know I guess my request and it would be supportive of the continuance if we can look into that and potentially looking at that mechanism of whether it could be a potential alternative to a ban and whether that is something that others might support. Thank you.

Jessie LopezItem 39

I'm sorry, can you repeat again for me the alternative to the ban?

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

So I am supportive of a ban, but given that there were some comments about, you know, the impacts in San Francisco and whatnot, I'd like to see, well, if you are a tobacco retailer and you want to sell flavored tobacco, then you have to comply with the security and checks requirements that our cannabis retailers have to comply with. You have to have those multi-layer security. You have to have those, it's like ID screening. It's pretty extensive. It's not just, hey, show me your ID, you know, that you kind of get when you go to the grocery store and buy,

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

you know, liquor. It's much more extensive. There's like a registration process or something. You go but there are multiple levels before you get to enter the location.

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

That's all me, I thank you.

Great, thank you, council member. Council member Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 39

Yeah, I'll keep my comments brief just cause I agree with a lot of what was said here. I support keeping tobacco out of hands of children. I do like the comparison of medical marrow of the cannabis and the process of purchasing cannabis here is a very stringent and it's a very methodical process where you have to submit your ID upon even entering the building. You won't even go past entry point if you don't have a valid ID.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 39

So I think that there are protections that we can implement that allow us to honor and celebrate cultures that are diverse and different from us, whether we agree with them or not, and also keep tobacco out of the hands of children. I was a council member that was proud to support the introduction of this from Council Member Mendoza. However, there were some comments and I do want to respect people's cultural practice. So I would really like to see this be brought back to us because this is ultimately something that I do support. I want to see us keep tobacco out of the hands of children by any means necessary

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 39

But I also want to respect people's cultures and traditions

Thank You councilmember councilmember Pena, no, sir

David PenalozaItem 39

Thank you, Mary submit I just want to also echo some of what's been said here by my colleagues. I do support continuing this item to a future date to see if we could incorporate a lot of these changes and and see what other alternatives that are out there as Councilmember Fan mentioned. I know that a big part of it is the enforcement issue. I know there's a lot of irresponsible stores in the city that do sell to minors. I've heard of many, not just, I mean, tobacco, but even alcohol. So it would be nice to see what kind of enforcement

David PenalozaItem 39

requirements we could you know further implement into these businesses not sure if the police department or code enforcement has ever done the these you know operations like you know to see you know which businesses out there are not liquor stores are not carting and selling to minors I had heard of one specific location from moderate a high school faculty said that the rioted on Ettinger and Bristol they believe was potentially selling tobacco to to

David PenalozaItem 39

minors without card because that's what they've the times that they had found that on campus the students were like hey we got it across the street so I I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT THAT WE WORK WITH CODE ENFORCEMENT AND THE POLICE DEPARTMENT TO SEE HOW WE COULD BEEF IT UP WHEN IT COMES TO ENFORCING ON ALL THESE KNOWN AREAS. AND DEFINITELY SUPPORT CONTINUING. THAT'S IT, MR. MAYOR.

GREAT COMMENTS. THANK YOU, COUNCILMEMBER. I THINK WE ALL HAD A CHANCE TO SPEAK, BUT I THINK YOU HAD AN ADDITIONAL COMMENT.

Phil BacerraItem 39

REAL QUICK. I HAVE TO ADMIT, I'M A LITTLE CONFUSED BY SOME OF THE COMMENTS THAT I'VE HEARD UP HERE TONIGHT. because either we're pushing for a ban, and I can understand if we're fine-tuning language because we want to make sure that there's no loopholes to let something slip out of a ban, but to start talking about, well, we can start to implement processes that mimic legal products. So that's not a ban. We don't have a ban on cannabis, but we are proposing, or at least we were at one point, proposing a ban on flavored tobacco products tonight. So I won't support a continuance

Phil BacerraItem 39

if all we're going to do is water it down and it's not going to be a ban. So let's just be clear, it's not a ban. And by the way, the last thing I'd want to add is that it isn't about cultural insensitivity or anything along those lines. And people keep saying hookah, but I think as Council Member Phan mentioned, people are led to believe that it's a less dangerous product, but the impacts are dangerous. And so nothing in this ban that I've seen would prevent somebody from utilizing hookah in their own homes. So I don't think there's anything here that's meant to be or was going down the path of being culturally insensitive.

Phil BacerraItem 39

I think we're looking out for the health and safety of our youth because we wanted to prevent the availability of these types of products. So again, I'm kind of disappointed that here we are talking about a ban, but then now we're really just talking about limiting access to it. But access will still be available here in Santa Ana for these products. Thank you.

Thank you for those comments. So I think everybody had a chance to speak. And I think what I heard in the, I guess, the arguments in favor of a continuance is to bring something back, Madam City Attorney, that will not only address the intent of preventing access from children, talking about enforcement abilities. And from what I understand, one of the reasons I'm very supportive of this is that I understand there's grant money available. for enforcement. So to the extent that we would be eligible for that and hopefully offset any of the costs that we would incur to enforce and enhance that enforcement would make sense.

And I think just to take a look at, as you said, Madam City Attorney, anything that you hadn't heard up till now, because from what I recall, this is an ordinance that was drafted, not drafted by us in the House, but an ordinance that was sent to us. So to the extent we can tailor it to what you just heard, I think makes a lot of sense. this is going to come back to us. This will be adopted as far as what I can hear. It just needs to be done well. And I think for it not to be done well, just in a matter of just approving it without any further review by our city attorney, I think doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

So in any event, let's go ahead and vote on the motion to continue.

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

Clarification.

Yes.

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

So would the continuance also include having staff look at kind of, yeah, whether it's enforcement or the security measures potentially, I guess, as an option.

Yes, absolutely. Hopefully to incorporate everything that was heard by, you know, by Council Member Fan, Council Member Danielosa, you know, everybody with the cultural sensitivity with respect to, you know, SB 793. You know, I think all those matters are important. Great. Thank you for that clarification, Council Member Fan.

Council members, please vote.

Okay, motion passes with Council members Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Peñalosa, Fan, and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes, and Mayor Pro Tem Becerra voting no.

Great, thank you. Moving along to item number 40, this is to disband and establish certain council ad hoc committees and resolve to create some new standing committees. This is something that we need to do with ad hoc committees when they're created. They're not standing committees or indefinite committees. They serve a singular purpose and they have a limited scope and time. So I want to thank staff for reminding me that there are some ad hoc committees that have outlived their purpose and we don't want them to go into perpetuity because then we go, you know, we get ourselves into trouble.

and so the items that we or the ad hoc committees that we will be disbanding as an ad hoc committee are the committee on people experiencing homelessness, the ad hoc committee on housing, and the ad hoc committee on legislative affairs. So that being said, let me just take this in two parts because you know that it's a two-part recommended item it's to disband those ad hoc committees and establish one an additional ad hoc committee that's going to have a limited purpose for the charter review and

that's something that was mentioned to me by Councilmember Fan I think it's a very good recommendation for us to establish an ad hoc committee having to do with changes to the charter that we all know needs to be need to have some issues addressed in. So that's one item with respect to ad hoc committees. The second resolution would be to establish now standing committees, no longer ad hoc committees, but standing committees that have to comply with the Brown Act. And those would be on issues that were once maybe considered by an ad hoc committee, but we realize they're so pervasive and so

important in the community that they should become permanent committees. And one would be on public safety and people experiencing homelessness and the other one would be on a legislative committee as well because we know legislation is perpetual. It's you know indefinite. It doesn't end. We're just going to you know have to continue addressing it and we obviously know public safety and dealing with our you know with our community that is unhoused that's something that's going to continue as well. I don't see an end in sight for either of those unfortunately so we should have those as standing committees.

I want to remind the council that this could be done under my authority.

I was just going to provide a clarification that for the disbanding and the creating, you have the authority to do it. You would probably just want to determine who you want to put on your charter review ad hoc.

Perfect. And I'll just go ahead and, you know, what normally I would do is, you know, for those ad hoc committees that are being disbanded and going to be made, you know, standing committees, I'll try to respect those that want to continue serving because you've already started and I'll make sure that you know I give you sort of first right of refusal on those on those seats and for those of you who want off and maybe transition to another committee please let me know I've already received a couple of requests but just to remind everybody I could do this unilaterally as chair of this of this body but I think because we started doing

this together I really enjoyed the fact that you all helped create this and we're doing this together so just as a reminder.

I just maybe it wasn't I don't know if my clarification made sense for the ad hoc. For the ad hoc. Absolutely. The resolution has to be done for the standing.

I understand that. Thank you for the clarification for the ad hoc. And so on the ad hoc committee with respect to the charter review that is a new ad hoc committee. So let me know council members if you are interested. I know council member Fan is interested. I know council member Peña Losa has served on it in the past. So I would look to them as being initial and we can't have more than three. So if anybody else wants to serve and we can have two people serve on that committee.

David PenalozaItem 40

Point of clarification, Mayor, with the under subcommittees. And I don't know if we're doing this in two parts. The public safety and homelessness is under one. Would that be two separate subcommittees or is that one one subcommittee? OK. And that's I don't have a problem with that. I was just asking for clarity and just I would. I would love to serve on the ad hoc for charter review, just because I just recently went through that and it kind of just, I know we fought, you and I, and Mayor Pro Temesera to really incorporate a lot of those changes and it just kind of fizzled. So I would love to serve on that again,

David PenalozaItem 40

if my colleagues would allow me that. Absolutely, thank you. Yes.

Phil BacerraItem 40

I just want to say I'm completely supportive of the two recommended actions. I would not want to serve on the Charter Review Committee because I had that opportunity and I served with Council Member Penaloza. So I'm pretty comfortable he can take the keys and drive it forward and hopefully get to a more productive outcome than we had last year. And with that, but I would also like to ask to serve on the Public Safety and Homelessness Standing Subcommittee.

Madam Clerk, just keep track of that because I know I'll forget my memory isn't as good as it used to be. So I have my moments. In any event, so the first one, does the first one need any action? Because that could be done under my authority. They're all ad hoc. And so why don't we just go ahead and vote on reso number two, which is to create the two standing committees. Do we need a motion? Is there a motion? I'll move it. I'll second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Council members, please vote.

Does that include members or is that done separately?

David PenalozaItem 40

Yeah, actually what's that for the motions that create the subcommittees does that include members or is that a separate action?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 40

Well need to create them to make them standing committees and what we've done in the past as I recall is that when you've appointed members to standing Committees you've done so by resolution and you set their terms which has normally been two years

Why don't we keep that practice in place? That's actually a good practice to have. We can do it now or we can do it at some point in the future.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 40

Correct. Yeah. I don't know what the staff's plan was.

We anticipated that you potentially would staff the ad hoc, but then adopting the resolution to just get the other subcommittees created.

Right. Why don't we just create the committees and then we'll go ahead and staff. I'll go ahead and work on the ad hoc committee for the charter review and I've already had two takers and then on the other standing committees, the two that are created, we'll go ahead and give those to, I guess, and now you all aren't communicating with me but you're contacting the clerk.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 40

Mayor Redekopoulos- Mayor, I just wanted to say that has been our past practice where you've asked council members to contact the clerk and to let the clerk know which subcommittees, standing committees they're interested in serving.

Mayor Redekopoulos- Perfect. Perfect. Thank you for that. Now we can vote.

Good question. Councilmember Peñalosa.

Okay. Councilmembers Hernandez, Lopez Mendoza, Peñalosa, Van, Mayor Putin, Becerra, and Mayor Samantha voting yes.

Great. Thank you. Moving along to item number 41, which is the first of our public hearings. this is the public hearing on the general plan amendment and update and before the hearing let me go ahead and ask the clerk to read some instructions to those who are maybe on the line waiting to speak yes go ahead council

Thai Viet PhanItem 41

member fan before that so this item was continued from last meeting in order for me to request an advice letter from the FPPC subject to potential concerns regarding conflicts of interest due to my employment. So because at that time I asked to wait for the item to come back when, or I would not participate unless I received an advice letter. So I do request that this item be continued until I can receive that advice letter. It should be coming hopefully in the next few weeks before our January meeting and that

would be my motion. I can second that. Great we have a motion and a second. Any let me go ahead and bring it back to the council if there's any other questions or comments. I think this is consistent with what you had mentioned at the meeting prior and also on item number 17.

Thai Viet PhanItem 41

Correct if the item is not continued I will state my recusal and leave the room for your discussion pursuant to regulations.

Understood. Any other questions or comments from the council?

Seeing none, colleagues please vote.

Okay. Motion passes with council members Hernandez, Lopez Mendoza, Peñalosa, Fan, and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes and Mayor Pro Tem Becerra voting no.

Great. Thank you. Moving along to item number 32, this is the adoption of the urgency ordinance adding division 2 and 3 to article of chapter 41 and this is to regulate the urban lot splits and two unit projects under SB 9. Let me go ahead and hand it over to the clerk. I'm sorry 42, thank you for that clarification. 42. Madam Clerk, why don't I go ahead and turn it over to you so you You can make some remarks to those who may want to address this that are online.

Thank you, Mayor. Members of the public joining us by way of Zoom or conference call and would like to make a comment for public hearing item 42. Please dial star 9 from your phone or select raise hand from Zoom now.

Thank you, Mayor. Great. I'll go ahead and ask staff if there's a presentation on this item.

Yes, Mayor, there is. Our planning manager, Fabioli Zaleha-Melliker, hopefully I set that name correctly, will be doing the presentation tonight.

Actually before you begin that presentation let me go ahead and formally open the public hearing because I like opening it before we do our presentation. So go ahead Fabiola.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Protan and Council Members. Tonight I'm going to be covering a new legislation that was passed, which is Senate Bill 9, which is the zoning ordinance amendments for urban splits and two-unit residential development.

The purpose of the hearing is to consider a zoning ordinance amendment, number 2021-05. This will be citywide and it's an urgency ordinance to amend Article 20 of Chapter 41 of Santa Ana Municipal Code, again to implement Senate Bill 9. Staff is recommending that City Council adopt an urgency ordinance amending the Chapter 41,

article 20. So the presentation tonight is to cover the new state legislation what's in SB 9, the proposed ordinance amendment and the next steps. As you know the Senate bill will become effective January 1st 2022. It was signed by Governor Newsom on October 16th and basically it allows ministerial approval

of two unit development as well as urban split basically splitting one parcel into two parcels that can subsequently be developed with two unit development.

ESPNI excludes certain areas where it does not allow for development or subdivision, which is prime farmland, wetlands, hazardous waste sites, lands identified for conservation, and those protected for habitats.

Also, some of the exclusions included is historic districts or those resources, historic resources on the state register as well as city's survey list.

Also excludes any development from areas where there's a very high fire hazard or there is earthquake fault zone or anything that could be not safe except if it complies with certain mitigations and measures to make it safe and that has to comply with all those requirements including the building code requirements that are special for those areas.

Also excludes housing that is restricted or protected for moderate, low or very low income, housing that is subject to rent or price control, and housing that has been occupied by tenants in the last three years. It also requires that any new units that are created cannot be rented for a short rental

for less than 30 days.

So some of the things that SB&I allows is for cities to adopt design standards. objective standards basically are those that are not subjective and cities can't put certain standards as long as you don't preclude from having two units that are each 800 square feet inside to be developed so this staff has prepared Dakota amendment proposing certain certain objective design standards this This is a map that kind of shows the parcels that were qualified.

And I apologize, the color looks kind of greenish, but it's also supposed to be yellow. It's just that because the city is very large, and when you put it in the PowerPoint presentation, it kind of lost the color. but basically translates into having about 30,000 in total,

30,600 parcels that potentially will qualify in the city.

So some of the proposed amendments will be obviously in compliance with SB 9, which allows that minimum requires a minimum of 2,400 square foot lot can be split it it could be 60-40 or it could be 50-50 that was again two units per lot most meet fire code in city parking and access design standards except if except if it's located within half a mile of a transit stop or any height

transit line or light rail. It must meet street frontage or access easement. SB 9 requires 12 feet and a half for a street frontage and they must be also the map and the two unit development must be also considered concurrently.

This is a table that compares what a single family parcel requires and what SB 9 allows. In our current zoning, we require a minimum lot size of 6,000 square feet. Under SB 9, the minimum lot size is 1,200, that result in 1,200 square feet. The front yard is 20 feet.

Cities can still require 20 feet, or what's required in the underlying zone. The rear yard setback is 20 feet. SB 9 requires four feet. So you can see that there are some things that the city can still require that there is an objective standard. Again, in here, the minimum street frontage per lot in the single family is 50 feet. SB 9 is 12 and a half. The lot coverage is 35 percent, and a staff is proposing that we keep the 35 percent,

but if the unit is one story that we allow 50% lot coverage that would allow a structure to be built that is more in keeping with the neighborhood fabric as well as make it a little bit more cost-effective for for the owner who wants to do an urban lot split by not having to pay for engineering calculations to do a two-story structure. Parking under single-family the code

requires four off-street parking spaces for units that have up to five bedrooms and after that it's an additional parking space per bedroom. Under SB 9 it will be one parking space or no parking is required which is half mile from a major transit stop or corridor or a vehicle share. The height allowed is 27 feet under we are proposing to allow up to 22 feet in parcels that are less than 2,000 square feet and that is to avoid having a very slim structure that looks

very tall. The number of units is under single family is one primary dwelling unit, one accessory dwelling unit, and one junior accessory dwelling unit. Under SB9, a maximum of two units are allowed. It could be either primary dwelling, it will be a primary dwelling unit, either one junior accessory dwelling unit or junior accessory dwelling unit.

In building separations, we require 15 feet and we will still require 15 feet for detached accessory units.

Under the California Environmental Quality Act, an ordinance to implement Senate bill is not considered a project under CEQA per state law. One more thing that is actually we included in the ordinance is that we actually are requiring one of the units that is created under an urban split to be affordable, get restricted for 55 years.

The next steps will be to adopt the ordinance, the ordinance and staff will take it back to planning commission to hold a study session, refine the ordinance for City Council consideration in the future. That concludes staff presentation. I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you for that presentation. Let me go ahead and ask the clerk if there's anybody online that wishes to address us or here in person.

We did not receive any written communication and we did not have any that provided in person, but I do have one person who is on virtual.

Do you wanna open the public? Go ahead. Go ahead. If there are any other speakers that wanna provide their comments before unmuting, I wanna make sure that you dial star nine to raise your hand virtually or select raise hand from Zoom.

It's open.

Oh, my apologies, okay. Okay, Zoom ID Mania Scamia, did you wanna provide a comment on public hearing item 42?

Yes, I did, thanks you so much. Okay, so I definitely, I guess I'm just starting off by, it does appear as though the city council will need to adopt this at least from the reading because otherwise you have absolutely no rules and regulations on the books in relation to SB9. But I think there are definitely some problems and some things that are maybe running counter to the council's desire to actually promote this type of low-scale development. So there are certain things in the language that actually require setbacks that are further than R1 zones.

So I'm not sure if that was a typo, but there does appear to be a 25-foot setback for urban splits. So that's actually even further back than our 20 foot requirement as it relates to R1 residential properties. These already thin lots also then require a five foot step back on the second floor. So that also increases costs for kind of developers and makes it less likely to be able to add livable space to the second floor. I know that maybe that's going to be countered by the 50% lot coverage, but I would argue that the city should really look for less lot coverage, but a little bit higher build

just because then that allows for additional water retention, more open space, and is I think just a much more efficient use of land. So there are little things like that within this particular proposal that I do think the city council needs to go back and take a look at in more detail. Obviously again, emergency ordinance, this thing has to be on the books by January 1st. So I understand that. But there are definitely other little things I'll probably try to write a more in depth letter. But the big thing here is that you're actually requiring moderate housing for any kind of four unit split lot development with two on

each and that's actually more onerous than what you have for your housing opportunity ordinance which doesn't require it for units under four which also makes it harder if these are to be owner-occupied kind of a small builder small-time developer projects it actually does make it harder for them to kind of make it pencil out so that's another thing that I would take a look at let's Let's see. Oh, the exemption for non-local, so non-residential use might not be appropriate in some locations. I do think the city should move towards kind of an accessory commercial unit model.

So a lot of the places we all go on vacations, we love how they have small coffee shops with the neighborhoods and two stories. And obviously it's not appropriate in every location, but imagine along McFadden and let's say Wright Street, you have a coffee shop in the corner in front of a house that gets built out. you know those types of locations might actually be a good place to have this mixed use of commercial and residential working together but again all those little details need to be ironed out in a way that actually promotes the ability of our local residents to be able to choose to build if

they they do choose to do so so that's what i have i'll try to email something a little bit more detail in the future but i do oh but please uh you know take a look at this you know two or three months to make sure that the details are ironed out. Thank you.

Thank you. And that's all the callers we have for the mayor.

Great, thank you. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the council. Seeing no other comments, I'll go ahead and close the public hearing. I think that was our only member of the public that wished to address us. Any comments or questions from the council? Mayor Pro Tem.

Phil BacerraItem 42

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Well, Sacramento has been handing down housing mandates for quite some time, especially on affordable housing construction. And the city of Santa Ana has very proudly exceeded those mandates. So much so that the city received an A-plus in a recent assessment by a local newspaper where they were talking about whether each of the cities throughout California were meeting these state mandated goals, aka the RHNA numbers. Garden Grove and Fullerton received a C. Anaheim received a C-, Stanton and Huntington Beach received a D. And yet lawmakers still

Phil BacerraItem 42

continue to treat Santa Ana as if we are performing with the D cities. We're an A-plus city and we're being treated like a D city. It makes no sense to take away local development control from a city that's performing well, but nonetheless we have what we have and we have SB9 in front of us. So I wanted to thank staff for being proactive and putting this this urgency ordinance forward. I too looked at it and I found a couple of items that I think if we have a little more time to react, I think we would probably wanna massage this a little bit. There was a couple of items that I think, I think tried to meet the need to act urgently,

Phil BacerraItem 42

but I think that again, it's just more kind of in the weeds on the development standards that as you take this back before the planning commission and coming back to council, I think we can address it then. but given the time sensitivity to not get caught without anything on our local books, I'll be happy to support this item. Thank you.

Is that a motion? I'd be glad to. I'll second. Great. We have a motion and a second. Council Member Fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 42

Thank you, Mayor. I understand the need for an urgency ordinance. I do wish, though, that we had received this earlier so we wouldn't have to do an emergency ordinance.

Thai Viet PhanItem 42

I wish that the state in mandating these housing you know laws would would have an exemption for those cities that meet the RENA requirements at the very least I feel like that would just make a lot of sense I support housing I support building but it's kind of like we're doing what you want but more and it just feels like they're moving the goalposts on us when everyone else is still 20 miles away with that however I do agree with some of the public comments that were made and do have some concerns regarding the yards

Thai Viet PhanItem 42

requirement well first I'll address the affordable housing requirement I don't support that I do understand why we have that however I feel that requiring an owner-occupied property owner to do a lot split and then mandate affordable housing requirements on the other units would be pretty onerous you know these are not developers these are not people with millions of dollars of venture capital or investments to come in to sit the city and just changing every lot they literally can't do that this is for someone who might own a lot on the west side who has a pretty big yard and wants to create another dwelling or two for

Thai Viet PhanItem 42

their extended family so I think having that affordable requirement could be difficult I just think that there's a lot of space also for middle-income housing or slight or somewhat moderate housing that could really be addressed by something like this the other item I am worried about is the requirements for open space it says you shall have a minimum dimension of 15 feet in each direction for private open space while I well as this individual small lots shall provide at minimum 300 square feet of private open space per dwelling unit Again, I understand the need for that.

Thai Viet PhanItem 42

However, I feel that it somewhat defeats the purpose of SB 9. The goal is to create more housing. And, you know, I think there's public open space that we can focus on. And I personally would prefer that we allow these, again, private homeowners to have the ability to create housing that's comfortable for their families. And if they feel that private open space is what's needed, they can do that. Or whomever it is that might occupy that space. So with that, you know, I will support the urgency ordinance, but I look forward to staffs addressing some of these issues

Thai Viet PhanItem 42

or bringing back recommendations when we are able to discuss the item more in depth. Thank you.

Thank you for that. Any other comments?

Seeing none, we have a motion and a second. I would just echo what was said. I agreed with a lot of what the member of the public stated and I think when it comes back to us hopefully as we see it evolve, hopefully those items are included. But we have to adopt this. That's just mandated. And really they should do something about cities like ours that have exceeded goals set by the state. if not an exemption, some sort of bonus on something else. But yeah, that needs to be looked at to, I guess, reward good actors because there's plenty of bad actors throughout the state and in our county. So in any event, colleagues, please vote.

I'm sorry?

Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you. It didn't capture it for some reason. Okay, thank you. Council members, Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Pinaloza-Fan, Mayor Potembe-Serra, and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes.

Great, thank you for that. Thanks everybody. Let's go ahead and recess the City Council meeting and convene the special Housing Authority meeting. And we will ask, I'll go ahead and call this meeting in order and ask Madam Clerk to go ahead and conduct roll, please.

Authority Member Hernandez?

Yes.

Authority Member Lopez? Yes. Authority Member Mendoza? Yes. Authority Member Peñalosa?

David PenalozaItem 42

Yes.

Authority Member Fan? Here. And Vice Chair Becerra? Here. And Chair Sarmiento?

Here. Thank you. Madam Clerk, do we have any speakers on the Housing Authority agenda?

We do not, Mayor, and we didn't receive any written communication.

Great. We have some consent calendar items. I'll go ahead and entertain a motion to adopt the consent calendar.

I'll make a motion to approve.

I'll second. All right. We have a motion by Council Member Hernandez, a second by Mayor Pro Tem. Seeing no comments or remarks, go ahead and vote.

Our vote is yes.

Phil BacerraItem 42

What just happened?

Phil BacerraItem 42

Can I have that password?

Phil BacerraItem 42

Be able to do it. If you could.

Phil BacerraItem 42

John had passed it all on his own. Wait, there's two of us.

Can the rest of the council members vote? It's not coming up.

Yeah.

Okay, why don't I go ahead and do it manually. Let's do a voice. Authority member Hernandez?

Yes.

Authority member Lopez? Yes. Authority Member Mendoza? Yes. Authority Member Phan? Yes. Authority Member Peñalosa?

David PenalozaItem 42

Yes.

Vice Chair Becerra? Yes. And Chair Sarmiento?

Yes. Okay, let's move along to item number eight, which is a joint session of the City Council and the Housing Authority. Is there a motion to adopt?

So moved.

We have a motion. Is there a second? I'll second. Did Mendoza? Okay. Mendoza, I think you did.

Let's vote.

With Council Members, or I'm sorry, Authority Members, Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Daniel Osa-Fan, Vice Chair Becerra, and Chair Sarmiento voting yes.

Great. Thank you. Let me go ahead and adjourn the special housing authority meeting and reconvene the city council meeting. Let me begin with the council requested items item number 43, which is introduced by council member Fan, Mendoza and mayor pro tem to discuss and consider directing the city manager to introduce an ordinance to ban the use, possession and sale of all fireworks. I'll go ahead and go in that order. Council member Fan, then Mendoza and then mayor pro tem.

Thai Viet PhanItem 43

Thank you, mayor. And thank you to all who came to speak today regarding this particular item especially for the nonprofits fundraisers churches I was part of orchestra band sports I did all of those fundraisers I do understand how difficult it is however you know this this actually started last July when I was coming home from my mom's house and she lives on the far west side and in order to drive home I would drive through Fountain Valley and so you know lots of fireworks are going off there's a there's a lot of smoke and everything

Thai Viet PhanItem 43

and sound noise I drive through Fountain Valley and the decimal level just drops the air clears up and then I go back to Santa Ana and it goes back and from there it was something I noticed at the time and then subsequently a few community members residents approached me and you know had this proposal for a ban on the use of quote safe and sane fireworks and so I really thought about it and think that it is something that we need to look into I am interested in obtaining additional information regarding it for example you know we heard a lot of

Thai Viet PhanItem 43

statistics about how much the nonprofits get when you know after they pay the fireworks seller or the wholesaler and you know I want to understand better what are the costs related to specifically enforcement from police, fire, but also the street sweeping and trash that we have to deal with afterwards. I would also like to see information if we have any regarding the air quality impacts and how long that lingers in the city as a result of the use of fireworks. And with that information, you know, whether it supports a ban is what I'm

Thai Viet PhanItem 43

looking for. In addition, I would like to see in connection with the band potentially looking at ways to support these nonprofits that might lose the ability to fundraise in this way. You know we have 4th of July celebrations whether they can be brought in in order to participate in that and that might help them you know alleviate some of those fundraising concerns. Again I understand you know there's a handful of non-profits that do fundraise in this way but it shouldn't be at the you know the cost of the air quality that we

Thai Viet PhanItem 43

breathe the trash that we have to deal with and the public safety issues that we have now with that I turn it over to my colleagues

Phil BacerraItem 43

Council Member Mendoza.

Thank you.

Yes, I heard many of the speakers today pleading for us not to go forward with this because of the nonprofits that make their majority of their funds on this on this particular event however there are issues that I don't think they're aware of the of these the public safety and health that has occurred over the years

in allowing fireworks in the city of Santa Ana. An extraordinary amount of staff time is utilized, overtime, police officers, enforcement, fire department,

and not to mention the excessive risk to property and persons, even deaths in the past and so the profits that are made by the organizations really do not it's not a comparable to what the negative impact

of the what the fireworks have caused. There is that lingering smoke for days that we have not taken into consideration in the past. This is especially hazardous to our environment and so the the continued fireworks allowance here in the city of Santa Ana is detrimental, not just to our residents but

to the surrounding cities because that smoke does blow over to other parts of Orange County and it impacts so many factors besides our health, our pets, our city funds. And so it's time that Santa Ana take the lead in protecting its citizens in this manner by banning the sale and use and possession of fireworks.

And this does not mean that we're not going to have a 4th of July celebration. It's probably the beginning of something even better for our residents where we can hold a city-sponsored event, such as we did a few years ago where the stadium, Eddie West Stadium, was utilized for fireworks and it was controlled and it was legal and it was done in one day. It didn't start weeks ahead of the Fourth of July, disturbing the peace, putting

our neighborhoods in tremendous noise pollution. And so for these reasons, it is strongly suggested that we go ahead and put a ban on the fireworks ordinance here in the city of Santa Ana.

Phil BacerraItem 43

Thank you for that, Council Member Mendoza. Council Member Penaloza, did you want to make comment?

David PenalozaItem 43

Yeah, very quickly, Mayor Pro Tem Becerra. I just want to thank my three colleagues that brought this item forward and the neighborhood leaders that also have been advocating for this for a number of years now. It is a severe problem and detriment to our community in the city every year. It's not just one day, you know, it's beginning of May through the end of July, beginning of August. And, you know, if the Dodgers win, you know, that gets even worse with just the celebrations and the fireworks.

David PenalozaItem 43

I am supportive of this, of seeing a ban on fireworks across the board. However, the only, I wouldn't say hesitation, but concern I have is on that enforcement issue of things still happening and existing in the city due to lack of resources of enforcement or whatnot. I know this would mean that fireworks are not sold in the city, but it won't necessarily make them go away because of the bigger problem that we see is the illegal fireworks that are, you know, just jump on any roof in the city

David PenalozaItem 43

and you see a 360-degree view of these fireworks. You know, for the entire month of July almost, I think of all the things that are banned and illegal in the city. Prostitution is illegal. We have prostitutes up and down harbor. Drinking in public is illegal. Drive down Bristol and First, Flower and Ettinger, there are people out drinking in the open like it's nobody's business. Fixing bicycles on a public right away is just recently prohibited. Yet I can drive down every major street in the city

David PenalozaItem 43

and there are transients fixing bicycles, numerous bicycles, blocking sidewalks all over the place. So there are a lot of things that are banned and prohibited in the city, but we have no resources to really control them or really focus on and cite them and take care of the problem. So I would hate to see, you know, I want to see them banned, But at the same time, I want to see staff come back to us with all the potential and possible outcomes that this would bring. What exactly are these numbers that we're talking about with the nonprofits?

David PenalozaItem 43

What is the cost to the city in everything from emergency calls to the... And I want our air. I'm sure someone has actually tested the air during those days. And it is a problem that this has. So I fully supportive of seeing this come back to us as an ordinance of a full ban. And I know we're not supposed we're not getting into dialogue and I would like to. But I'll save that for when that comes to us. But I also would like to see what cities around us have a ban on safe and safe fireworks.

David PenalozaItem 43

because if I'm if I live you know on the south end of town and I could just cross Sunflower into Costa Mesa or I'm not sure if Costa Mesa has a ban or not or any city around us we border orange we border testing we border Costa Mesa Irvine Anaheim Garden Grove any of the cities that do sell I mean what stops a resident from just walking across the street and buying fireworks and bringing them back into the city. So what does that look like? I want to, you know, and I'd be more than happy to sit down with staff and just go every possible outcome and what every

David PenalozaItem 43

scenario looks like and help in putting that together and seeing what information we could put together. But I want to see it all come back to us when this ordinance ban does come to us, which I'm fully supportive of. But what does that look like? So with that said, Those are my only comments. Mayor Sarmiento and Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you again to the three colleagues that brought this forward. Supportive.

Great. Thank you for those comments. I think we have. Have you spoken?

Phil BacerraItem 43

No, not yet.

So I think let's go with Mayor Pro Tem, then with Council Member Hernandez.

Phil BacerraItem 43

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Phil BacerraItem 43

We use fireworks here in town. Well, we're supposed to be using them with the intention of celebrating our nation's independence. But obviously that goes well beyond the 4th of July weekend within a couple days before, not supposed to after, but yet it still happens. But the reality is we see it for weeks and weeks after the fact. We see the impact on our environment. We see the impact on our veterans. And very personally for me, we see the impact on our puppies. And so that is just intolerable, frankly.

Phil BacerraItem 43

And so while I do recognize that there are non-profits, non-profit organizations here in Santa Ana that open up firework stands and make a profit from that, but what gets me is that there are 24 other cities here in Orange County that have bans on fireworks. And these are cities where it's a range of socioeconomic factors, and those non-profits in those towns do thrive. So what I would like for us to do is I'd like for us to come back with a draft ordinance for a ban.

Phil BacerraItem 43

But what I would like for staff to come back with is research on how we can address for nonprofits kind of maybe a way to kind of pad the eventual ban of fireworks. So for instance, we're sitting here tonight talking about some money in our funds where we maybe allocate this for a couple years out, kind of a diminishing amount over time so that we can allow some of these nonprofits a soft landing. One thing I want to ask staff is we have each of these fireworks stands. They do have to pull a permit from the city, correct, to operate the fireworks stand?

Yes, but once again, this is a council discussion item, so staff hasn't done any.

Phil BacerraItem 43

I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I guess where I'm going with this is then if it's available, if the data is available, what I'd like you and your staff is to look at that data, because what I want to understand is who are the nonprofits? It's always been told in the past that they are Santa Ana nonprofits, but I would like confirmation of that. and if there is a way to try to understand what they're truly making from these fireworks stands, because I think that would help us determine what we could do to help wean these folks off of this funding that they're getting from these fireworks stands.

Phil BacerraItem 43

So I think that's something that we need to consider. So, I mean, to me, that's what's very important. I love the idea of us doing a municipal celebration, which we've done pre-pandemic over at Centennial Park. One idea that was proposed to me was instead of the traditional fireworks that create that cloud, that haze that's very unhealthy for all of us, frankly, is to kind of be innovative and do something more digital or electronics. And if you've seen these New Year celebrations where they've put graphics in the air above the Space Needle in Seattle and other worldwide landmarks,

Phil BacerraItem 43

I think that there's a way for us to do that here and let us, as the capital of Orange County, be on the cutting edge of some celebration. I mean, we've got a wonderful celebration of winter here in our Civic Center today. and maybe we can be that cutting edge for a celebration here in Santa Ana for our nation's independence on Fourth of July. So with that, I am supportive of having an ordinance drafted that is an actual ban on fireworks. But again, I want to see something come back that addresses our nonprofits and their potential loss of funding. Thank you.

Thank you for that. Council Member Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 43

And thank you, my colleagues for their comments. I'll be very brief. I'm not supportive of banning fireworks across the board.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 43

I am a Mexican-American and in our culture, fireworks play a central cultural role in celebration. And so in Ward five, which is a hotspot for fireworks usage, whether it's the day of, or I don't condone it, but I know it happens a lot days prior Ward five. I see it happen quite often. I've talked to a number of my constituents, a number of different neighborhood associations across Ward five and most were unanimously not supportive of this ban in my district. My job as a policymaker is to propose and not impose.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 43

And I don't wanna infringe upon the liberties that our residents have to celebrate at home. In Ward five, our challenges are a little different than a lot of other neighborhoods. There isn't as much densely populated housing in Ward five. There's a lot of multi-generational home ownership and some of the few times that some of the most impacted families in my district do come together to celebrate is the 4th of July. And I know that as somebody that grew up in an impoverished household, we always managed to come together, whether it meant family members coming from the IE, Anaheim,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 43

they would come to Santa Ana and we would have barbecues, we would have music in our front lawn and we would have safe insane fireworks. And I think to take these celebrations away from our community is only going to hurt the culture and the camaraderie that we have amongst neighbors. There's some families that can't afford these celebrations And all you have to do is stand out in front of your house and you can see your neighbors. And oftentimes that's how I've developed some of the strongest relationships I have is through the 4th of July celebration. So in Ward 5, I am not supporting the firework ban. That concludes my comments.

Thank you, council member. Council member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 43

Yeah, thank you. I actually think this is something that the voters of Santa Ana should have a say and like decide. We established a charter ad hoc and I think this is something that we should give to them to finally let the legislators of the city know where they stand on. Because I think this is something that for years has been discussed from both sides. I just recognized a group of people in the city that rely on 4th of July for funding. And it's not just nonprofit, it's the Santa Ana High School Marching Band.

Jessie LopezItem 43

It's the Settle Back folks too, it's a Phoenix house, it's Century High School baseball. So I do think that this is something that the voters should decide on once and for all, have them settle this. I don't think that government needs to have a say in every aspect of our lives. And so I personally would like to see this be given to the voters so that they can finally have a say in this situation.

Great. I think everybody had a chance to speak. I'm not sure. Hopefully everybody did.

Councilmember Penalosa.

David PenalozaItem 43

I just want to say that I agree 100% with Councilmember Lopez. I would much rather this at the end of the day, send it to the voters. and yeah, just wanted to echo my support for that. Thank you.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 43

I do want to echo my support for that, Mr. Mayor.

Apologies. Thank you, council members. Actually, that's where I was going. So again, I think that, look, I want to thank the council members that put this on because, you know, I need my will note, this goes back to the council years back and I'll date myself. When I was a kid, we used to buy fireworks from stands that were called red devil fireworks. So if anybody remembers those, that was the precursor to TNT and Freedom or whatever they were called. So we've had iterations. So the problem with that is that back then there weren't M80s. There weren't like half sticks of dynamite or whatever they are. They were M80s.

They were just simple like sparklers and piccolo peats and whatever they're called. Those have evolved into like now, like torpedoes and things that explode and could cause harm. I don't know how much harm legal fireworks have on people. That would be an interesting, I think, study. But I would assume that illegal or unpermitted fireworks that are manufactured outside of the state of California probably cause a lot more harm. We're missing limbs, fingers, and all these accidents that we hear of. So I don't know if, and I remember what we did a few years back, well, many years back. We increased the fine.

I think the fine was like $100. We increased it to a thousand and so we thought okay this is really going to deter people and it just didn't you know and and so I think there's so much these this is one of those issues where you have interests that are really important like I have a dog right my dog loses his mind he loses his mind just generally and you know during you know during this time it's even worse so he is he's out of control but you know but we have these community groups that I think you know the council member was referring to Many of them are high school bands and groups and teams that have grown to rely on that.

And I remember at one time when we went to do our Centennial Park celebration, what I thought is maybe those groups can have a booth and maybe there's a way they can raise funds there. What I didn't want to do is just eliminate that source altogether without any relief or without any sort of substitute for raising funds. So if we can come up with that together, how we get another funding source, maybe some other means that they can have booths or sell things or in Spanish, we call them que de meses, where you just raise money where everybody comes together, every team member comes together. I don't know what that solution is,

but I think to the council members' points, I think the three council members who spoke, So I also think this is just such a complicated issue that sometimes we're not going to agree up here because we have such deep interest, right? And we all care. We care, I care about the, you know, the impact it has on our PD, the impact it has on our air quality, the impact it has to safety, the impact it has to people. And, you know, look, all joking aside, talking about pets, I, you know, my wife is a disability attorney. So she represents families with children who have autism.

Those kids who are autistic really, really suffer when they hear things going off. And that to me is really, really important. But again, we need to balance that with groups that need this funding. And you have done this and have celebrated this their entire lives in a safe way. So I just think that sometimes, well, many times, the residents and the voters are smarter than us up here and can probably figure this out. So that would be my thing. And maybe what we could do as you bring it back, maybe the options could be the ones that we just mentioned, ban, going to the voters, whatever that looks like.

So those are my two cents. From my notes, it does appear that there is four individuals that are supporting letting the voters decide. That's correct. That's the direction I'm receiving.

Maybe that's a line, an agenda item for the new charter ad hoc committee to take up.

Thai Viet PhanItem 43

Yeah, so I guess, but even if it's for the voters to decide, wouldn't we prepare an ordinance or like a ballot measure that they can vote on?

Right? Certainly, and I think council member Lopez suggested it goes to the ad hoc that's doing the charter review and would be incorporated.

Thai Viet PhanItem 43

Yeah, I guess I'm just not, I guess it would just be a vote to add it into the charter then instead of just a, okay, all right, thanks, just for clarification.

Phil BacerraItem 43

Yeah, Mr. Mayor, I would just like to add, I'd rather at least see it live through being studied by the charter ad hoc versus just falling flat tonight. So if it means giving it life through that, then I'd support that as well.

Oh, I don't see it falling flat. I see that I've received direction from four individuals to pursue it through the charter review ad hoc and let it go to the voters.

Right.

Thank you everybody for those comments. I think they're well thought out. Go ahead, council member.

David PenalozaItem 43

Just one quick thing that I'd like to add. Madam city manager, as you go through this, I'd also like to see how we could possibly work with our federal legislators and state legislators

David PenalozaItem 43

through more vigilance when it comes to fireworks. through I know that a lot of these come from Nevada they come from Arizona they come from Mexico they come from as we heard from the ports of Long Beach and LA and I know that when you're traveling on the 15 into California there's a there's an inspection for architecture stuff I've gone to Vegas numerous times I never think I would bring back tomatoes or or as a child I had my mom buy me fireworks you know that was and we'd be in Nevada like mama one fireworks

David PenalozaItem 43

so it'd be nice if we could work with CHP on how to increase enforcement like that month leading up to 4th of July how we could work along that border to to try to intercept some of those illegal fireworks coming in to the state and yeah that's and along with our federal legislators thank you thank you for

those comments. Great. So I think we've given staff a lot to think about on that and a lot of directions. So let's move along to our final item, item number 44, which is an item introduced by Councilmember Fan to discuss revising or adding adopt quote, adopt order of business unquote to the city agenda and revise the agenda title on the invocation to words of inspiration. I'll go ahead and turn it over to Council Member Pham.

Thai Viet PhanItem 44

Thank you, Mayor. So that's exactly what I'm asking for support. I was actually at another council meeting and instead of invocation, they did have the term words of inspiration, which to me is very inclusive. And we have had discussions about inviting poets or local spoken word folks, all sorts of folks. And that I think would be really fantastic because inspiration can come from anywhere and it doesn't, and in my mind invocation is very specifically religious. The other item is adopt order of business or adopt agenda that is also a very routine item that is on pretty much every other agenda I've ever seen and it just isn't

Thai Viet PhanItem 44

here in Santa Ana and really it's just a procedural item that you know whether it's staff or or us can pull an item for some reason without actually voting on it substantively to continue an item and so I would request that we add those to kind of clarify the agenda and also streamline the process by which we

review items. Thank you for introducing that I know city attorneys chomping at

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 44

the bit to say something. I just wanted to mention with respect to the agenda item I believe that's a procedural thing that can be handled by the chair we could add that to the mayor's script simply ask prior to you taking public comment for example for affirmation of the agenda I don't believe that that kind of change would necessarily require a complete rewrite of your of your resolution so I think if council gave us directions do that we could incorporate it into a reso I don't think the resolution is necessary I think it really is a matter of practice you've seen another agendas of a matter of the chair's preference

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 44

because you usually do ask you ask staff if they have items to pull you ask your Council members so I think it can be handled informally and we can work with the City Clerk to incorporate it into your script. So I had the conversation

with with Councilmember Fan and I think yeah under again the Chair's authority under the Charter this could have been done. You know we began like kind of me just bringing things back that I could do unilaterally I just thought look it's a practice that I've done because I wanted to be again really respectful of of everybody's opinion, I could say, okay, forget it. I'm gonna do it anyways, but I just think sometimes you all have good suggestions. So that's why it's good to bring it back. And I just thank council member for bringing this up.

Thai Viet PhanItem 44

Yeah, and just quickly, this is something for the public to also know that this is totally procedural. Even if you're saying it, they don't always know that you have the ability to do that. And that would just increase the transparency.

Thank you for that. Mayor pro-tem and then.

Phil BacerraItem 44

Just a quick question just to understand. So in putting this on there is an adopt order of business. So procedurally, as we get to that point in the agenda, are we taking a vote to say, yes, we're going forward as is, or is it just a matter of kind of like with our council member items where we're not taking a vote, but it's all kind of just informally nobody objects?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 44

Well, it can be as it can be formal or informal. I think the request, as I understood in talking with the councilwoman is that some entities will look at the agenda and say we're approving this agenda moving forward or they won't wait until the item comes up in order to take action to continue it but sometimes the mayor says I'd like to move up an item like we did this evening on the consent calendar so that portion in the agenda would be the time to make any adjustments and then the mayor could ask for affirmation of the agenda there'd be like a motion to say okay now that we've reorganized things and that's more transparency for

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 44

for the public to fully understand. So that once you start conducting your business, then you've set the agenda.

Phil BacerraItem 44

I guess, going back to my question, I just want to know, would it require a vote then?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 44

It could be up to you. I'd say agencies do ask for a vote. I think I'd recommend that. If you're gonna add it, might as well have a formal vote.

Okay.

Sorry, Council Member Hernandez and Council Member Pinalosa, then Lopez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 44

I'll keep my comments brief. I support this Council Member Fan. Looking forward to voting in favor.

Thank you Council Member. Council Member Bagnalosa.

David PenalozaItem 44

Thank you Mayor Salminton. Thank you Council Member Fan for bringing this forward. I'd, you know, thank you for mentioning that as your power as the chair, but I'd like to maybe suggest we, as the way the text is written, we have invocation forward slash words of inspiration. Moving forward, I think that would be a nice step to have or moving forward or a step in the right direction moving forward is to include both because invocation could be anything you know along with words of inspiration would be I think more appropriate to have both on the agenda as a title that's that's all mr. mayor thank you great thank you

Jessie LopezItem 44

for those comments councilwoman Lopez yeah thank you well I guess thank you to Mayor Samantha for making sure that we're included in this conversation and to Councilmember Fan I'm very supportive of you know I'm finally changing the title of invocation towards of inspiration I'm indifferent to adopt order of business because I feel like we do that now anyway and we're not necessarily like taking a vote but yeah those are my comments thank you

Council member Mendoza I'm supportive of the change I think it'll be a nice

addition to our opening like it you know so I think that's enough comment from everybody all right so I think that's it so let's go ahead and turn it

back over to city manager so and nothing to report other than I just want to wish everybody a happy holiday and a happy new year.

Thank you, Madam city manager. Let me start with council member Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 44

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just want to thank all the residents who took time from their day to get involved in our council meeting today. I want to inform my residents of ward five that we are doing a toy giveaway on Thursday, December 23rd at La Placita Cinco from four o'clock to six o'clock PM. Um, we have a little bit over 2000 toys, so please do come by, bring your loved ones and, and enjoy the festivities. Happy holidays and we wish you a happy new year. Thank you,

Jessie LopezItem 44

council member. Council member, councilwoman Lopez. Um, I have no call, no announcements, but I just want to wish everybody a happy holiday, a happy and safe new year, and I'll see you in the

New Year. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Mendoza. I had a toy drive on Sunday, December 19th. It was very successful. It was a drive-by. We put the toys in the cars. There was no shootings. No, no shootings. Sorry about that. And so I want to let my colleague know, Councilmember Hernandez that extremely popular and there was a lot of people even though they registered ahead of time so hopefully there'll be extra toys for

those families who didn't register because it was terribly sad to turn away people at the onset but they didn't see me but I piled some toys in there anyway I mean the other people who were helping to collaborate.

And I want to wish staff a very Merry Christmas and a tremendously healthy and prosperous new year, and for all of you to spend some fabulous time with your families and relax and come back renewed in 2022, because I think we're going to have even more work than we did in 2021.

good night everyone thank you council member council member fan

Thai Viet PhanItem 44

thank you mayor i actually had a quick question for staff um do you know where i guess we might have it on our website but where residents maybe it'll get free or affordable rapid tests for covid

we do have the information if you go to our city's website and then you click the links for the COVID information, it would be on there. Although I have read in the news that there seems to be a shortage of them in some of the stores.

Thai Viet PhanItem 44

Yeah, so I just wanted to remind the public Omicron is now the most prevalent strain of COVID-19 in America and it is highly contagious. So if you are looking to see your family and hang out as and be vaxxed and boosted that I also recommend getting rapid testing to check we've seen evidence that you know within two days or within 24 hours you can go from negative to positive from various tests so just you know I think be alert be aware the virus is still around us and in order to have a happy and safe holiday season we really need to

Thai Viet PhanItem 44

continue taking all those safety measures I also like to just kind of I THANK STAFF FOR AN EXTREMELY RIGOROUS AND DIFFICULT YEAR OF LEGISLATING, DEALING WITH MY CALLS AND EMAILS AND WORKING WITH RESIDENTS. I THINK WE'VE ACCOMPLISHED A LOT IN A YEAR THAT I FEEL LIKE I'VE ACCOMPLISHED A LOT IN A YEAR THAT MANY COUNCIL MEMBERS DON'T GET THE OPPORTUNITY TO ACCOMPLISH EVEN IN A FULL TERM. AND THAT IS REALLY I THINK REFLECTIVE OF THE HARD WORK

Thai Viet PhanItem 44

and dedication that staff puts into each item that comes before you no matter how you might feel about it and no matter whether it's controversial or not or if it's i think that that makes us a really incredible city i also want to remind residents that in qualified census tracts regarding the um the 300 visa gift cards i am so excited to hear that after our previous comments that staff has reassessed the program and was able to provide those gift cards to additional seniors as well as some residents at mobile home parks and we

Thai Viet PhanItem 44

still have more to distribute at I believe the train station we have made

over 20,000 contacts but we did have a small number I believe it was around 300 that declined so that's how we were able to expand some of those efforts but the The train station is where the individuals that are qualified that received a letter because they weren't home, they can take that letter and redeem it. So they've been going to the train station daily to pick up their cards.

Thai Viet PhanItem 44

And I just want to thank you all so much. I, along with many of my colleagues, had volunteered to go knocking door to door. I was practicing my Spanish. And it was just really incredible to see folks come out and see staff doing that forward facing work because sometimes we're behind a laptop or a desk or a dais trying to make these things happen and it was just a really humbling and exciting experience. I had a resident call who's a mobile home park senior who was concerned about why people were asking for ID but they were excited because it was for money and then they started helping

Thai Viet PhanItem 44

all of the rest of their neighbors get signed up. So with that, happy holidays, happy new year and I look forward to another rigorous year

of legislating. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 44

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I just wanted to wish everybody a Merry Christmas, a Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, and a Happy Birthday to Executive Director of Planning and Building, Mintai. And yeah, that's that's basically it. Have a safe

holiday, everybody. Thank you for that. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Since

Phil BacerraItem 44

We won't be meeting before January 18th. I just wanted to let everybody know that I'll be hosting my monthly community office hours on Saturday, January 8th at 10 a.m. over at Thornton Park because the first Saturday in January happens to be New Year's Day. So I didn't want to have it on that day. Other than that, I just wanted to wish everybody a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and ask everybody to please celebrate New Year safely. And I'm looking forward to a productive and prosperous 2022.

Thank you for those comments. The only comments I have is to again wish everybody a happy holiday as well. To thank staff once again especially you know you three who are up here you know, Madam City Manager, City Attorney, Madam Clerk, you all do a heavy lift for all of us and your teams do a heavy lift for us so thank you for helping us you know throughout the year. This has been definitely a consequential and eventful year. So, you know, Councilmember Fan described the experience of handing out those stimulus cards, you know, exactly and graphically. I mean, I was moved and very close to tears many, many times because I

didn't realize what an impact it would have on people's lives. And it was really difficult sometimes to kind of just walk away realizing, okay, this has never happened and how grateful people were. So thank you to staff. Thank you to the employees that volunteered because I think without them, none of this gets done. And you know, it's funny because when I walked with Melissa or Yesenia or Antonio, I mean, they were as happy and grateful about the experience as anybody, as you know, the recipients. So we really do have a tremendous city family and we're blessed and the

residents are blessed to have them. Finally, I just want to say to my colleagues, you know, It's been a privilege to serve with you this past year. This is a new council, and I want to thank you for your service. I know we've done above and beyond on late hours and long meetings and complicated items, and we've done a lot together. Thank you to the residents for your patience and for your trust and confidence in us this past year. It's been a year unlike any other. I mean, that is for sure. So in the annals of, you know, I think history, there's, you know, eventful years and they're just regular years.

This is very eventful. So with that, I just want to wish everybody happy holidays. Feliz Año Nuevo. We'll see you in 2022. We are adjourned. Thank you.

Thank you.