Read the January 18 meeting.

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Caller with the last three numbers, 254.

If you would please select star six to unmute your call and announce if you want to speak on any closed session item.

Caller with thank you. You've unmuted yourself. Did you want to provide a comment on any closed session items?

No, Daisy. This is Dale. I'd like to comment on item 31 though.

Okay. Wonderful. I will go ahead and put you back on the speaker queue. Thank you for that.

Okay. Thanks. Bye.

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All right.

David Penaloza

I'm not.

I don't want to do that. Thank you.

Thank you.

Recording in progress.

Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to City Council meeting here in the City of Santa Ana for January 18, 2022. Let me go ahead and call the meeting to order.

Today, let me see, let me go ahead and just read a couple of opening remarks. It's been a while since we've been back, so it's been about a month. This meeting is taking place with in-person attendance by teleconference via Zoom And the public can access the meeting via the Santa Ana YouTube channel and the city's website and as usual We may have some technical difficulties that may interrupt the meeting So please bear with us and I'm going to go ahead and ask the city clerk to call roll

Thank You mayor councilmember Hernandez

Yes

councilmember Lopez

Councilmember Mendoza present councilmember Peña Losa

Here.

Councilmember Pham.

Here.

Mayor Pro Tempecerra and Mayor Sarmiento.

I'm here. And so let me go ahead and ask the council if there are any items on the closed session calendar that they'd wish to announce any abstentions or any recusals.

Go ahead, Councilmember Pham.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Thank you, Mayor. I will be recusing myself and therefore will not be in the room for discussion on item two on the closed session agenda as Dyer 18 LLC is a client of my employer along from Rutan and Tucker. And that's a disqualification under regulation 18707. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Fan. And just for the public's information, I believe both Councilmember Fan and Councilmember Hernandez will be joining us remotely, and I think the other Councilmembers are expected to hear in person relatively soon. So, Madam Clerk, do we have anybody that wishes to address us? I don't see anybody here in public, but do we have anybody on the phone or virtually?

No, Mayor, not for this item. And we also did not receive any written communications.

Great. Thank you for that. Let's go ahead and recess into closed session. We'll be back out here in the public in a little bit. Thank you.

Recording stopped.

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Good evening everybody. Let me go ahead and call the regular session of the Santa Ana City Council meeting to order. for january 18th 2022 uh happy new year everybody i hope everybody had a restful time spent some time with family spent some time getting some rest and staying healthy and safe let me go ahead and just make a few opening remarks before i hand it over to the clerk to 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 Santa Ana YouTube channel and the city's website and as usual our technology may

fail or disrupt the flow of the meeting so please bear with us I also for the public's information just want to make sure you know that two of our council members will be joining us remotely both councilmember fan and councilmember Hernandez will be joining us virtually so they will be here in attendance just not physically here and I'll go ahead and turn it over to the clerk to

call roll. Thank you mayor. Council member Hernandez?

Council member Hernandez I see you're logged into Zoom if you would please select them.

Present if you're able can you hear me now? Yes I can hear you thank you.

Council member Lopez?

Councilmember Mendoza? Councilmember Peñalosa?

David PenalozaItem 1

Present.

Councilmember Phan? Here. Mayor Protembecerra?

Here.

Mayor Sarmiento?

Here. And let me just remind everybody as well that we have a public hearing this evening to discuss redistricting. So that is item number 31, and that is an item that we will buy a public hearing this evening. by state law have to hear exactly at 7 p.m. So whatever we're doing at that time at 7 p.m. we have to, you know, go to that item. So we'll go ahead and have Madam Clerk remind me when the clock strikes seven. And let me go ahead and move along and turn it over to the clerk before we do our pledge of allegiance to go ahead and make some opening remarks for those who are online.

Thank you, Mayor. To request to speak on any agenda or non-agenda items, within the city's jurisdiction with the exception of public hearing items 31 32 and 33 please dial star 9 from your phone or click the button labeled raise hand from zoom at this time please hold your comments until the mayor opens the public hearing items for 31 32 and 33. please announce your name and ward or neighborhood you reside in within the city of santa anna for

the record. Thank you. Thank you and I'm going to go ahead and call on Mayor Pro Tem Becerra to lead

Phil BacerraItem 1

us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Would you all please join me in saluting our flag? Place your hand over your heart and begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the

David PenalozaItem 1

Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. And if we can have Pastor Matt Doan, please join us here for our words of inspiration. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, council members and fellow residents. You can stay standing if you'd like. It's my joy to be here tonight. I'm a pastor, as I said, at Calvary Church Santa Ana, which has been in the city since 1931. I haven't been here since 1931, but I have been in the Park Santiago neighborhood for the last 20 years with my wife and four kids. So it's just a joy for me to say this blessing over us as a city tonight. So let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the chance to gather tonight, both in person and virtually. God, I thank you for our council members and their dedication and love for this city. Strengthen them tonight, God. encourage them and grant them wisdom and unity not just for our sake but for the sake of those to come the generations that come behind us and God I thank you for yesterday and in the honoring the legacy of dr. King thank you God for the incredible strides that our nation and our state and in our city of Santa Ana have made through his leadership and example but God I also acknowledge that

we have so much room to grow and so God would you give us strength and and the courage both as leaders in the city and as residents of the city to stand up for justice for all and God I thank you and pray for those in our city who are even experiencing just health challenges right now God I pray for those particularly who have kovat God would you give them hope would you give them healing both men women and children God be with him right now tonight in our city and finally Lord I pray a blessing over the 300 plus thousand residents in

this city God you know and somehow love them all thank you God and Lord I just pray that a that God you just unite us around a common desire to strengthen and bless our our neighborhoods our schools our families and our businesses and so So God, I pray this in the name of my Savior, Jesus. Amen. Thank you.

Thank you, Pastor Matt, for those words of inspiration. Appreciate those.

Let me go ahead and move along to the ceremonial presentations. And we have two present, actually three presentations.

Council Member Lopez. Let me go ahead and I'm going to be pinch hitting for Councilmember Hernandez who is going to be recognizing contributions to the literary arts and poetry and recognizing two poet youth one youth poet laureate and another poet laureate Dr. Natalie Graham and our youth Poet Laureate Tina Mai so if they can join me up here To be recognized. Let's give them a big round of applause as they come up here

Thank you.

So Councilmember Hernandez, you know, wanted to be here. He's with us virtually, but it's never the same as having somebody physically here present to go ahead and recognize somebody for such incredible work. And tonight we're really blessed to have two people. And I know, Sarah, you're going to be pinch hitting here for Tina, right, who wasn't able to make it. But let me go ahead and just give you a little bit of background on what we're doing here tonight. So on August 28, 2021, two local poets were appointed as Orange County's first Youth Poet Laureate and Poet Laureate, Tina Mai and Dr. Natalie Graham, who's here with us.

Tina's a 16-year-old writer and student residing in Newport Coast, California, and she is the first Orange County Youth Poet Laureate in the Orange County history. Dr. Graham is a resident of Buena Park and currently chair of the African American Studies Department at Cal State Fullerton and is the first Orange County Poet Laureate. So we have two firsts and that is amazing to have in the county. Both were chosen by a panel of esteemed judges which included local author and LibroMobile founder who's with us here tonight, Sarah Rafael Garcia and thank you Sarah for being here tonight and thank you for everything that

you do in our community with LibroMobile.

She along with OC Poet Laureate librarians and an Orange County based community advocates selected these two Poet Laureates who we're recognizing here tonight. And the program is important because it celebrates and it creates viability for local poets who utilize empowering words to impact social change. The OC Poet Laureate program collaborates with local literary arts organizations across the country and will seek and engage with leading national literary organizations.

Dr. Graham and Tina were chosen because their work elevates the intersection between artistic excellence and social justice in a region that is 60% people of color, where most literary and arts institutions do not reflect the majority. So we want to congratulate both of our Orange County Poet Laureates tonight, Tina and Dr. Graham, and we want to thank them for their outstanding contributions to the literary arts and poetry, and we wish the very best for them to continue their readings across the county at local libraries,

museums, and cultural centers. What's so important, I guess, is for me that, you know, this effort is not only in the county but it's really helpful to have you know somebody as strong as you know Sarah here her voice and elevating the you know the voices and sometimes those that are voiceless and having our you know poets tell a story that sometimes only through you know an artist's words can we really move the community and so we want to recognize that effort because we know it's lost a lot of times it's unsaid it's unheard it's not elevated and you know I want to thank

them I want to thank you Dr. Graham I want to congratulate you first of all and and Tina you know in in her absence Sarah you know please let her know how proud we are of her work and you know as a youth it's even more important to show that you're exercising that voice early on in age so on behalf of council member Hernandez and the entire city council I want to recognize and have you join me in thanking and congratulating our new poet laureates here in Orange County congratulations

so I know poets have a much better flair for words than I do so I'm gonna let both of you or either one of you go ahead and speak but let me go ahead and present these to you let me go ahead and hand this over to you sarah so you can present to our youth poet laureate tina my and maybe you want to say a few words on behalf of her what she would say and on behalf of little money thank you

so obviously i'm not tina my because i'm not 16 years old but she did text me a thank you message that she would like me to read on her behalf

Tina would like to say that she's really honored and grateful to have this position and recognition in Santa Ana and Orange County wide. She knows that Orange County is such a diverse place with valuable voices and that she's proud that she gets to have a place in the poetry scene here, especially alongside talented poets like Dr. Graham. She hopes to do the best that she can to continue amplifying the importance of poetry, especially for historically marginalized voices. So that was from Tina. One of the initiatives our youth poet laureate has is to create a zine with the community,

so she'll be working on that for the next couple of months. And additionally, I do want to give a special thank you to Council Member Hernandez and Mayor because they have been extremely supportive over the last six months and making sure that Libromobil has a place to welcome our Orange County Poet Laureates and I would also like to announce that we are going to be extending Dr. Natalie Graham's position into 2023 so that she has ample time to continue to do the work that she has envisioned for this county as a Poet Laureate So please welcome Dr. Graham.

Thank you so much. There's one thing that I kept thinking about this quote by icon of poetry, Lucille Clifton, and one of the things that she said was we what we cannot imagine what we can we cannot create what we cannot imagine. So much of the power and the beauty of art, of literature, of performance is that we allow ourselves to imagine a world. We create worlds in our minds and then we actually get the opportunity to live those out. So I'm so excited and so grateful for all of the folks, for Libremobile, for our libraries. I love the libraries.

I think the libraries are transformative spaces. They're like no other space. And so I hope that we can all join together and continue to support the libraries and the work that they do and the way they allow our children and adults and all of us to imagine a different way forward. So I appreciate so much. I thank you so much, Mayor Sarmiento and Councilman Hernandez. I was taught not to come to anybody's house empty handed, so I do have a collection of my poems for you as well. And so thank you all so much for this honor. Thank you.

That's a great way to start the year. Let me go ahead and now call on Councilmember Lopez, who is going to be recognizing the work and the outstanding service and contributions to the community by Gerardo Moet so I'll turn it over to councilmember Lopez

Jessie LopezItem 2

Good evening, everyone. So I want to tell you a little bit about Gerardo or Mr. Moet, as I should say, I don't personally have a relationship with him. Gerardo was born and born and raised in Tijuana, Mexico. He came to the United States as a young man and earned an education that would eventually land him in public service. and mr moette was hired you know at the city of sanana in september of 1990 as an outreach program coordinator and he worked his way up the ranks working as the assistant to the city manager in

Jessie LopezItem 2

2002 then later promoted to assistant director for the parks and recs and community services agency and mr moette was promoted again and served as executive director for parks and rec and community from 2004 to 2018. And during his tenure in Parks and Rec, he helped add 10 new parks. And the park expansions included Pacific Electric Park, Mariposa Park, Raiden Myrtle, which was just celebrated, and Memory Lane Park. And he also established the quality joint use agreements that we now use with our school district here in the city of Santa Ana.

Jessie LopezItem 2

and those included the construction of the roosevelt walker community center which is a community center that is very much adored by the community there the garfield community centered and the willard park sports and track fields he also started the installation of the popular outdoor guard field fitness equipment at memorial park the garfield fitness Park and the Santa Ana Senior Center. And because of his experience and leadership, Gerardo also served as the acting city manager for the city from December 2016 to April 2017. And during his

Jessie LopezItem 2

time in that role, he worked very hard to support projects that ultimately continue to support the quality of life of Santa Ana residents. And, you know, Gerardo eventually moved on and went to serve as the director of Parks and Recs and Marine Life for the city of Long Beach in 2018 to 2020. And he assisted in adding new parks for Long Beach as well and community to build and continuing to build community relationships with their local government. And he also served on the board of directors for the Orange County Fair for eight years. And after many years in public

Jessie LopezItem 2

service Mr. Moet retired in 2020. He is married to his wife Jenny who is here with us tonight and they have lived in Santa Ana, Park Santiago specifically for many years and are proud parents of their two adult children Monica Moet and Andrew Moet and he enjoys reading, riding a bike and walking Santiago Park and Gerardo started his career with the city of Santa Ana during a time that was I can imagine very challenging to navigate as you know sometimes these systems

Jessie LopezItem 2

are not as culturally sensitive and he understood the dynamics of the community very well and one of the things people admire about Mr. Moet is his love for the city and so when I was speaking to people about what is it that you can tell me about Mr. Moet you know working alongside of him or working in the same city that you both shared, this is what people had to say. Gerardo was good at his job. He understood the politics and was always professional. I also heard he loves this city. He is a public servant through and through,

Jessie LopezItem 2

and this wasn't just a job for him, a place he checked in and checked out. You know, he was very invested and always made sure that the community's input was included at the highest level that was possible. And so we want to thank Mr. Moet and his family for the years of outstanding service and his dedication to Santa Ana residents and to Mr. Moet and his family. I just want to relay that his impacts are still felt all around. And to end, you know, Mr. Moet and Jenny continue to work with the liver transplant program.

Jessie LopezItem 2

at UCLA, where he is currently listed and was accepted in July of 2021 as a hopeful future Oregon recipient. And so I can only imagine that it has been a very challenging time for you and your family. And we are here to say that we support you and that whatever we can do, we want to be there for you.

on behalf of myself my husband Gerardo Moet and our two adult children Monica Moet and Andrew Moet I want to thank you council member Jesse Lopez for your leadership and for presenting this beautiful recognition of Gerardo Moet this evening thank you also to mayor Sarmiento and the entire city council for allowing this time for this recognition thank you also to Angie Morris for her support in coordinating this recognition. Our family is grateful. When Gerardo and I decided to get married almost 30 years ago, he explained that he had one non-negotiable

in terms of how we would establish our family roots. He said, if we are to stay in Orange County, our roots need to be planted in Santa Ana. So we bought our home in the beautiful Park Santiago neighborhood where we have raised two babies and several fur babies. It is the home where we continue to live with comfort and with peace as we enjoy the soothing shade of the majestic magnolia trees that is cast upon us and that line our street had either had fallen in love with santa anna during his days as an outreach coordinator for

uc irvine as he worked to diversify the student body of uc irvine he fell in love with santa anna's streets, its parks, its trees, its eateries, and most of all its people. He felt that there is no other place as exciting to work than Santa Ana where through the nobility of public service, innovative programs and policies could unleash the potential of an entire community through authentic engagement with its people. During his tenure with the City of Santa Ana, I witnessed Hedda pursuing that innovation through engagement. I don't think I ever

saw him work because work for him was fun. I saw him have fun every day. After this month of January is over on February 1st, Herada will celebrate nine years of having survived surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his bile duct. As additional medical complications have occurred to affect his liver, we have worked with the outstanding teams at UCI Medical Center, the UCLA Medical Center, to get him qualified and listed into UCLA's liver transplant program. At this moment, Gerardo is at home resting with gratitude and observing with hope for all good things to continue happening for his beloved city of Santa Ana.

Muchísimas gracias otra vez a Councilmember Jesse Lopez, Mayor Sarmiento, y todas las miembros del City Council por este reconocimiento de Gerardo Muert. Gracias.

Thank you.

You know, Jenny, before you go, if you don't mind, Council Member, I just wanted to say, I was here when, you know, as a new Council Member and Gerardo was here to greet me. And he was one of the first members of the EMT to actually introduce himself.

He's a gentle soul. And he was then, and I know he is now. But one of the things that came through very clearly to me was that he was so dedicated to his city. And I remember he would talk about him growing up in Tijuana. right and we would we would have conversations about you know how the city was evolving and how it evolved when he came into the city but I know that he had a lot to do with diversifying our staff because we you know he demonstrated how you know a person of color could make such a difference in an impact in a city that had so many residents who had certain needs that had although identified with as a young person.

And being our director of Parks and Recs, he's affected countless lives of youth here in the city. I mean, his footprint on all the parks and open space and joint use agreements, everything that we see has a little bit of him in it. So, Gerardo, if you're watching, I just want you to know I want to thank you for you loving the city but you being a friend to me. you giving so much of yourself and to thank your family for allowing you to you know do that because you can't do that without their permission and without their blessings so Jenny please give them a hug on behalf of all of us

so let me go ahead and have a council councilmember Pena Losa who's going to be pinch hitting for Councilmember Fan on our last recognition and we are a little bit past seven so we're gonna try to compress this one a little bit I apologize councilmember but this is going to be for the Santa Anita neighborhood Association volunteers good evening everybody I'm councilmember

David PenalozaItem 3

David Penalosa and on behalf of council members Tybiet Fan and councilmember Hernandez I'd like to recognize the Santa Anita neighborhood Association some members of the association who on October 30th, 2021, the Santa Anita neighborhood association organized a field trip to Knott's Berry Farm for 30 neighborhood kids. They titled the event a day of fun and Knott's Berry Farm. The trip provided the youth the positive team building experience and wonderful lifetime memories that would not been possible without a strong team of individuals that selflessly gave their time and effort to the kids. Today, we want to acknowledge and

David PenalozaItem 3

AND CELEBRATE THE GROUP OF VOLUNTEERS TO MY RIGHT THAT HELP MAKE OCTOBER 30, 2021 A MEMORAL DAY FOR THE SANTA NITA YOUTH. THEY HELP SUPERVISE AND SAFELY NAVIGATE THE KIDS THROUGHOUT THE THEME PARK. I HOPE YOU GIVE THEM ALL PENNIES TO DROP FROM SUPREME SCREAM.

David PenalozaItem 3

THANK YOU FOR MAKING A DIFFERENCE BY SHARING YOUR TIME, ABILITIES AND ENTHUSIASM AND FOR EXTENDING A HELPING HAND TO THE SANTA YOUTH. YOUR TIME AND DEDICATION IS VALUABLE AND APPRECIATED. AND ON BEHALF OF COUNCILMEMBER fan and Hernandez. I'm happy to send the period. They're here virtually. They could say hello. But just, you know, happy to be here to present you guys with these.

David PenalozaItem 3

Well, there's a couple of names. I won't read off all of them. But if whoever wants to accept if one of you want to say a few a few words or anything.

On behalf of the Santanita neighborhood. Thank you to Jonathan and fam for sponsoring the kids to go to knots thank you thank you all

Thank you.

Congratulations, everybody. Thank you for all that good work that you do for Santanita. As I mentioned, we're a little bit past 7 o'clock, so I'm going to go ahead and interrupt where we are on the council meeting and accelerate one of our public hearings. And that is item number 31. And I'll turn it over to the clerk to make some opening remarks on that to give us instructions for those who are wanting to address us on that item. So, Madam Clerk.

Thank you, Mayor. Members of the public who are joining us by way of Zoom or conference call and would like to make a comment for only public hearing item 31 regarding redistricting, please dial star nine from your phone or select raise hand from Zoom now. I do see that there are several individuals who have their hand raised. If you did not want to speak on this item, if you could please lower your hand virtually. And we will, and then once the item is done, then you can go ahead and raise your hand for the next items.

Thank you. Yes.

And we have also our redistricting partners, Paul Mitchell, who has joined us virtually.

Great. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Let me go ahead and just state that this is the fifth public hearing regarding redistricting ward boundaries, and I understand that we may have a presentation from Mr. Mitchell, and I'll go ahead and just formally open up the public hearing on this item, and we'll go ahead and hear from Mr. Mitchell, and then we'll take some public comments, if there are any, and then bring it back to the Council.

Thank you very much. My name is Paul Mitchell. I'm with Reditioning Partners. Happy to be back with you again. We were the firm that drew these current lines that you're currently in, that we'll be talking about adjusting through the redistricting process. Those were drawn just a few years ago, and in fact, I don't think they've even been fully utilized. We only had one round elections in those boundaries um will i be sharing my screen or will those be shared on your end

you can share it from your screen so you have control of the slides

wonderful um let me just go ahead and get that ready then

It needs to, oh, I guess it'll let me do it. I just have to stop somebody else's screen share.

Yes, that's correct.

Great. And you can see that, I hope?

Yes.

Great.

So, again, thank you very much for having us here. I'm going to cover a number of different things. I know that many of you on the council and staff have seen these discussion points before. A lot of people maybe who are checking in for the first time or members of the public might not have had the advantage of being able to kind of fully digest this stuff. So we'll go through it briefly. And then if there are questions about any of these kind of general ways of redistricting or other questions about the process or the work that we've done in Santa Ana, then I'm happy to go back to that. further on in the hearing.

So the Fair Maps Act is the operative law for the redistricting that we're doing. For those of you that were around when we did it the last time, that was actually done under the rules of the California Voting Rights Act and their safe harbor provisions that allowed for you to conduct the redistricting process in an expedited way and convert to a system where each council member is elected from one district and only voted on by the citizens or the residents in that district so that change that she went through last time again was under the california voting rights act this

redistricting is being done into the fair maps act which is actually a new law that took effect in 2020. The Fair Maps Act is both process, number of hearings, you know, the maps are available on the website, outreach. A lot of those are process elements that were drawn from the California Voting Rights Act. And then criteria and the way that lines are drawn, again, trying to draw from some of the work that was done in the California Voting Rights Act, and then drawing down from traditional redistricting principles. And the Fair Maps Act really is following and expanding on

some of the principles around the country in fair and open, transparent redistricting. The first rule in redistricting is that we need to draw districts that are equal-sized. The reason we draw districts that are equal-sized is so that people have the same representative power and the same voting power. You can imagine if somebody has a street light out or a crack in their sidewalk or a pothole or a concern about access to public safety or other services the city provides, they want to have the same right to reach out to a council member as somebody on the other side of the town and the other part of the city.

And keeping districts equal size means that every council member is representing an equal number of people and nobody's representative power is being diluted. The second principle for equal size is that the idea of one person, one vote, and that nobody's voting power should be diluted. And so drawing districts of equal size so somebody on one side of town isn't in a district that's twice as big as a district on the other side of town, and that their vote by being in a district twice as big is essentially diluted by half. So equal size is the number one kind of ruling principle of the redistricting process.

Districts should be contiguous, meaning that they're whole pieces and don't jump around. They need to maintain communities of interest, and that will include both the Voting Rights Act, communities of interest, which is a very high ranking criteria in the process to make sure that we're not violating the Voting Rights Act. but also more subjective communities of interest. Like I said, somebody on one side of town maybe

that needs access to services or has problems with public safety might be a community of interest. And then somebody else on the other side of town that has new shops popping up and more concerned about the businesses in their area, that could be a different community of interest. Somebody in an area where there's a number of ethnic markets or churches or other things that have to do with our culture, that could also be a community of interest. Following existing neighborhood boundaries, following other governmental boundaries, that is also a way of defining a community of interest in a way. And in fact,

in the last redistricting, one of the things we looked at in shaping the council district boundaries was the boundary of the Garden Grove Unified School District on the western side of the city and utilizing some of that as a basis for drawing one of your new districts. And then finally, keeping the wards compact, keeping each of your election districts compact is a criteria, but a very low ranking criteria. So you don't want to have districts that look like octopuses dancing around. You want them to look more like squares and circles.

but if there is a higher ranking concern and you need to draw a district that has maybe a little bit of a shape that's less compact then that's perfectly okay as long as it's based on following those higher ranking criteria. The data that we use for the census is actually two different parts and actually two different parts structurally and then also two different parts in terms of types of data. So to think about structure of the data, that means the geography, the way that a census block is drawn and the way census blocks fall into census block groups and census tracts.

Think of those as kind of like the honeycomb. And then data, meaning 14 people are living in this census block and 23 people are living in this census block, that is put into each of those cells in that honeycomb that is the U.S. Census. The data that we look at can also be in two different flavors, let's say. One is point in time. It's asking the question, how many people lived exactly here on exactly this date of April 1st, 2020? And the answer is 17. The other could be a multi-year average. And that multi-year average might ask every household over the course of a decade,

you know, questions about transportation or education or health care or even citizenship. And then that seeks to answer that in this cell of a census block group, how many people there live in three bedroom homes? How many people there speak a foreign language? How many people there are citizens? How many people there have long commutes? That data is multi-year averages. So it means that it's taking data that is from many years of surveys and kind of estimating it out. And that's where we get some real critical data around the citizen voting age population of each of the districts.

So the geography, those honeycombs come in blocks, which are really small and literally can be a street block. Block groups, which are numbers of blocks all nested in there. And then tract. So they are all nested together. And this is an example of just those three areas. Really, really tiny blocks. They get congregated into block groups and those get built into tract. so when we talk about a track that can be a big thing it can be 8 000 people or 1500 people we talk about block groups it can be 200 people or 2 000 people when we talk about blocks we're

usually talking about anywhere from zero to 30 or 50 or 70 or maybe up to 200 people or something like that the data that goes into each of those little honeycomb cells uh that point in time data when I said there's 17 people in that little honeycomb cell. That comes from what's called the PL file. It's the decennial redistricting file based on April 1st, 2020 and the total population. And that was released last year in August. The data was released and then there was kind of a pause.

and during that pause, the state actually went through and started adjusting that data based on prison population adjustments. So there's some prison population adjustments. In fact, if you see some of our maps, we might have them titled like PPA. That means prison population adjusted data. What that does is it allows for more equitable redistricting. You can imagine if you're drawing legislative districts and there are five prisons in Little Kings County, If you counted those prisons in the districts, that area might get more congressional representation.

But when you take that population and distribute it all throughout California, where these people were living prior to their incarceration, it spreads that political power out too. So now the districts are more representative of the true California rather than having these distorted situations where an area where the prison gets this outsized political representation. that american community survey that i mentioned that multi-year average data that comes in larger geographies it's estimated it's not very helpful you know to look at that

data and say well this one says 20.07 and this one says 21.1 like that that is a big difference because these multi-year averages are only estimates. And so when you look at those data points, it's good to think about those as being more maybe fluid than the point-in-time data that we have to take as being more specific and direct and literal.

The American Community Survey provides this really critical data point for us in the redistricting process. It's called the citizen voting age population. Think of that as a proxy for potential political power. In some states, you might have a citizen voting age population of 1,000 in an area. And then in that 1,000, you have 700 registered voters. And in that 700 registered voters, you might have 500 actual voters that turn out. And maybe in a primary election, maybe only 250 voters that actually turn out.

Well, what they determined in federal courts is that when you're figuring out how to calculate the potential voting power of these communities for the purposes of a majority minority district, it's that citizen voting age population, that kind of top number, its potential total registration number, rather than its actual total registration number that we use to determine if a district, say, majority minority. So that data point is really critical in redistricting. It can be supplemented with other data, but when somebody says, oh, a majority minority district, you have to look at the citizen voting age population number,

not all the other myriad numbers that are out there.

The critical piece in redistricting, the way that it's different now than it was 10, 20, 30 years ago, is that there's a process, kind of an arc that happens in the redistricting process. To be blunt, in the past, the arc was somebody goes into a city manager or an attorney and says, here's our lines, here's where the incumbents live, this is the list of places that they want in their new districts. And then some backroom redistricting happens and a final plan gets put out and voila, you have your redistricting done, but the public is never front and center in that process.

In the last two decades, the culture around redistricting has changed and the law has has changed with it. And now the arc begins with the community. And it begins with the idea of communities of interest in building those, getting public testimony, and then building those into maps. Now, one of the things that's important to know is that people, when we go out there and ask them to provide input and ask them to provide maps, we have to still make all those pegs fit.

We can't just take somebody's public submission, even if it's a really prevalent public belief, and make it fit in a redistricting if it were to, say, violate the Voting Rights Act. We couldn't take the greatest idea in the world and put it into a redistricting if it didn't allow for equal population of districts. So the community of input to map process is one that people all across the state and countries that are and all across the state and all across the country in places where they've been building out this more open, transparent redistricting. That challenge has been kind of the big change in the redistricting process.

So what we see is a number of submissions that have been made. So the city of Santa Ana has a public submission portal that allows us to have the public draw their own lines. There was a hosting of six public community workshops, online trainings on the distrctor tool. And as a result, you got almost 20 total plans that were full citywide submitted in this redistricting, which is more than the city has had in the past and more than most cities would have ever gotten

in prior redistrictings you also got partial plans and community of interest submissions which is normal to get some that aren't complete we've converted all those plans that were received up until a few january 11th and we've put those in alice formats and made sure that those are available to the public. It's really those plans that we should be considering and looking at. Any draft plans that have been public for seven days, we don't want to be in a situation where somebody comes forward today and says, hey, I've got this great new map. I want to start discussing

it because the public hasn't had a chance to actually see that. So we really want to focus on maps and any input that's been received seven days prior to today. When we do this, we have these packets we call it an atlas and that atlas has the first cover page with all the districts a second page with all the data tables with the total population that point in time data i talked about and then the citizen voting age population from that american community survey i talked about and then each of the wards is shown in its own page so you could look at a specific

ward with a little bit more street detail, see those ethnic breakdowns of that ward, and then see the data table for it as just kind of a standalone one-pager for each of the districts. So the community of interest maps that were received have also been submitted, and they're also still available on the distrctor site. Each of these maps has also been made into web format so you can zoom in and look at the district lines uh in more detail you can even uh search for an address there so that if somebody from the public wants to see what

district they're in they can search that and have access to that the zoom in allows you to get down all the way to the street level and see uh where an actual boundary is even what side of a street the boundary is on. So the 31 public plan submissions and 10 COI submissions, they've all been not only drawn down and mapped, but we've actually, and this is a real, Sofia Garcia on our staff who's been working with you a lot, has been doing a lot of work to kind of organize these into

kind of buckets and so we have the communities of interest we have a number of maps that are have non-contiguous parts or a real big population imbalance i want to note that even if those maps don't have all the things to be turned into into a final redistricting plan today they are just as valid in that they might point us to concepts or ideas or express a community of interest uh goal that the city council and we at redistricting partners and the staff should be really receptive to. We don't want to take these plans that aren't technically correct and kind of segment them away.

We want to make sure that they still are made public and that we can consider them. There are some that really focus on following those main streets. There are some that focus on compactness And compactness, I said, was one of the lower criteria. But you see sometimes redistricting plans where everything is a neat little box. And so we have many that kind of focused on that. We have some that focus on you take the central portion of the city and having districts that each come in towards this central portion of the city. Now, this might be something that the council would wanna entertain.

there is a little bit of pushback maybe in the state law that would suggest that this might not be the ideal way to draw districts and that is that the state law says we want to take communities of interest and we want to draw districts in a way that maximizes their represent representative and voting power and so if we have identified a central area and that that's a community of interest drawing all the districts to come in and split that up might mean that all those districts have to care something about the downtown area or the central area of the city.

But it also might mean that that central area of the city doesn't get a true council member that represents them kind of full-heartedly and has only that interest in mind or primarily that interest in mind. And that is more in line with the concepts in the Fair Maps Act. There are plans that follow McFadden for the Southern wards. and there's one that we just have categorized as other kind of major significant changes from the existing lines and then the Viet Rise plans and I think there's a couple of those that we can

show. Now there are other plans and we'll talk about this to create that Asian plurality ward on the western side and I'm just going to show these real briefly. I know that you've seen them before but these are some examples of communities of interest maps these population imbalanced or non-contiguous maps these maps like these ones with the stripes um they might be interesting thought pieces but generally these kind of plans don't really uh of it's hard to draw a plan like

this where you're not splitting up communities and also connecting areas that might not be truly kind of part of the same community of interest when you look at the plan in the lower left-hand corner you see one that has a non-contiguous district it has a district that is that western side west of the san anna river and then down here in the south on the eastern side of the san anna river uh plans that follow major streets uh traditionally i i think that that can help a lot when people are looking at districting plans. And one of the criteria in the Fair Maps Act, it mentions

that districts be easily understood by voters. And those kinds of maps can be easily understood by voters. And maybe in your final plan, we can talk about where you have those kind of elements. Because I think in most redistricting plans we've seen for Santa Ana, even your old previous lines, they try to utilize major streets as part of the boundaries. Districts that are compact, remember I said lots of square shapes and kind of like looking like that they are more compact.

But these districts, while they are favoring compactness, remember compactness is one of the lower criteria in the law. Northern neighborhoods together, we see that even in the current plans. This is one kind of factor that we saw in a number of different redistricting plans. Multiple central wards, there were a whole bunch of these, but that's again the idea that you've got these multiple districts that are all kind of touching in the middle.

Following McFadden for the southern wards, you can see that line there, and there were a number that kind of followed that relationship. I'd say also you've got this boundary of the Santa Ana River that oftentimes is used as kind of way too and then we have a whole bunch of district plans that just have other changes uh to the current architecture the via rise plans uh two plans here and i think that they have um both addressed the shape of this westernmost district a that is a district that was drawn

in response to the Vietnamese and Asian communities in your last CVRA conversion that I believe completed in 2019 and took effect in 2019, that plan. And those districts are drawn in these plans, but also they draw the remaining districts and do provide a couple options for those remaining districts but i think that if there's intent there from the creators of those plans we can look to them for why those districts were drawn that way we have in order to

kind of absorb all these maps that you've seen we have created a document sofia garcia created this for you that is a submitted plans report it provides a little thumbnail and a little description of the plan. It'll say when it was submitted. It'll say whether or not it's contiguous, whether or not it, what its total deviation is, whether or not it's a complete plan or a partial plan. And then have that, that little thumbnail allows you to kind of like flip through these and see, you know, does this create a whole Northern district? If that's your criteria,

does it create a Western district that looks like that same Asian plurality district that's there? And so all of those questions can kind of be answered in this little summary. Then when you want to dig in, we do have the full packets of all of those and the web map for you to go in and look at it. We found this kind of a summary report is helpful for the public and for the council members to distill all the tons of information that's coming at you through this process. We also have this thing called placemats. and the reason we call them placemats is because my daughter, who's now 12, was two during the last redistricting,

and we used to print out these big laminated maps and she'd use them as placemats. And so now we just still call them that, but they are laminated or large-scale maps that people can use to draw lines and either draw their community of interest or draw full redistricting plans. So we've had those as well and there have been 18 placements received that are on the website. Another way of receiving community of interest testimony is through community of interest responses on the form on the website. So again, another way of trying to solicit information from the public.

And these are all in addition to what we'll have tonight, I'm sure, which is people calling in, people testifying in person or verbally. So there were some council amendments that were posed in the last meeting. And for members of the public who want to know more about that, not only is that recording still available and on the city's website, but by law, that recording will be available and on the city's website for the next 10 years. So there will be a lot of this information, even this hearing tonight, that will always be kind of

available to the public as they want to understand how and why these decisions were made. But there were directions that were given. I'm not going to go through all of these. You can see them on the list, but we can also address these when we look at the draft plans. So the current lines. This is a place for us to start and look at the boundaries as they are today after a result of the transition to single member districts that are CVRA compliant just after your 2018 election

cycle. So these have been implemented and they've been used for the 2020 election cycle. And the second round of elections under these boundaries will be in 2022.

So this cover page is the first thing you'll see on all the plans. After that is our data table. I want to show first off this westernmost district is the Asian plurality district. and you can see that in the data here, the Asian citizen voting age population down here at the bottom is 41.4%. The rest of your districts are all Latino majority minority districts and you can see that here with the Latino citizen voting age population ranging from a high of 78.2

in District 4 to a low of 50.1 in District 3. So that's the current construction of your districts. The total population numbers of your districts. When we did your conversion, we were having to use the 2010 census and we weren't able to predict the future very well, at least. We weren't able to make major adjustments to kind of future proof these plans against the deviation growing in a way that would necessitate a redistricting because they were

outside of that 10%. Your current deviation is 13.4. Now, that might sound large, but it really, really, really isn't a lot of deviation. We've had some redistrictings where the deviations were 70% in cities that simply had really outsized growth in some parts of the cities. So having a deviation that's just outside of that 10% puts you in a position where if you choose, a lot of the existing architecture of the districts that you just established could be carried forward into

the next decade. So number of plans, and I want to point out that as we go through these, we're no longer going to be looking at district numbers. We're going to be lettering districts so that we can deal with numbering them again later. That lettering allows us to not think about

that relationship to the existing lines, but just think about these districts as a relationship to the communities. So each of these plans has been created with a less than 10% deviation, so we can check that box. All of these plans

maintain an Asian influence district on the west side. In this first plan A, that's at 42.4% citizen voting age population. And then this plan creates four wards that are 50% plus citizen voting age population. It's this district C that I believe falls right underneath that metric in this plan. It follows a lot of major streets and it makes all the adjustments necessary for population growth. And we have packets for you that go into each individual district so you can

see where the neighborhoods are in draft plan A. Draft plan A2, again, very similar to the existing lines, creates that Asian plurality ward at 42.9. It again uses draft A as a base, which is built off of the existing architecture, and it follows a lot of major streets like we've talked about before. There were some changes to this in respect to District A and its boundary along the Santa

and a river and where the downtown is placed from district E to district D.

Plan D is a plan with a 9.1% deviation. Again, creates the four Latino citizen voting age population districts. And it creates an Asian plurality ward at 42.8.

This is the overlay with the existing line. so you can see that there is some more departure from the existing lines in this relationship particularly d which takes up portions of three different districts district b is roughly half of one district half of the other roughly same thing with district e this really does change some of the architecture in there in keeping certain neighborhoods together both in the north and the south side you can actually see a lot of these neighborhood lines in this map and the full packet of this would allow you to look at each individual district and be able to see which

neighborhoods each of these are draft e has a plan deviation of 8.6 um and the asian plurality district again at 42.8 you can see again the way that this changes the overall construction of these districts um in this plan district b you can see takes in portions of that northern district and then goes down and takes in portions of this more southern district. District E is essentially half and half the old lines. District F takes in parts of four different districts.

So this districting plan definitely is a large departure from the existing lines, except for the Asian Plurality District.

Again, when you look in the full packet and you want to look at District E, you can see each of the neighborhoods or any of these districts and see which neighborhoods are kept whole. But you can definitely see from this viewpoint that a lot of these neighborhoods are kept whole. And that is a real primary way in which to consider drawing districts under the Fair Maps Act. So where we're at is if we have suggestions about amendments to plans, we can start doing that and we can come back to you with new plans for you to consider.

There's three types of changes that end up happening in redistricting because you're trying to create that equal size at the same time as you're trying to keep neighborhoods together, at the same time as you're trying to make sure you're not violating the Federal Voting Rights Act, at the same time as you're trying to keep other communities of interest together. And oftentimes moving one piece means or necessitates moving things in other areas. So the three types of changes that we might see is one might be that you say, hey, can we just move this line a couple of streets?

And potentially we could even look and see, oh, that's not going to be that many people. And we can make that change and all the deviations still are OK. And there's no need to make anything else. And you're just done. The second type of change is one where you move something out of one district and then from that district you move something into, you move something out and back. So it's a swap. So you say I'm going to take 500 people from that district and I'm going to give the district back 500 people somewhere else.

Now it doesn't have to be exactly one to one. It just needs to at the end of the day, make sure that it is doing the work of balancing those deviations. And the third kind of change is kind of a wholesale change to the map. You say, I want district A to take these 2,000 people from district B, and then I want B to take 2,000 from C, and C to take 2,000 from D, and D to take 2,000 from E, and then E goes and gives 2,000 back to A and we're all done. That kind of thing. It's called a rotation. But that kind of thing would be a much more elaborate, more involved bit of work in the redistricting process.

if there are changes we can look at those and you know come back to you in the future hearings or

potentially if we were looking at them we might be able to give some feedback tonight as to kind of the magnitude of a potential change and give some advice as to whether or not those changes could be made without having other implications so any changes that we make to your draft maps. These are the maps that are labeled A, B, C, D, E. Those are meant to be draft maps. These are maps that the public should be looking at as maps that you might actually be considered implementing. That is a little distinction from when you see a map that has

a five-digit code. Those five-digit code maps are from Districter, and that means that it's a map the public submitted. If you want to say elevate one of the public submissions and say well we want to make that one of our draft maps then we could you know assign it a letter and move that up and have that be something that you're putting out there as being a potential plan that you actually want to implement. Any council drafts that you wish to go to that final plan selection hearing will be essentially the maps that you can consider.

You won't be able to consider any map that hasn't been made public for seven days. That's the law. So if you say a day before the hearing, you know, I sat in my basement, I drew this amazing plan. It's the best plan we've ever seen in our lives. We're in awe of this plan. We still won't be able to adopt it because it won't have been public for seven days. and your only recourse would be to extend the process and hold another hearing in order to hear that plan after it has been public for seven days.

Numbering of the words is generally done at the end of the process. If you wanted to tonight look at one of the draft plans and say, well, I want to see that plan for the final selection hearing and I want to number A, District 1, and B, District 2, and C, District 3, that's fine, we could do that too. But while we're still working with multiple plans and while this is still emerging, especially in those plans where we have half of one old district over here and half of another old district over there being drawn into one district together.

If it's labeled District E, it's probably safer just to keep it called District E until we get to the final hearing when there can be a numbering assigned to each of those districts, you know, following the discussion that you've had, understanding that that is the final plan that you're going to be adopting. And then finally making that tough decision about exactly how you're going to number districts, which also will mean when districts are up for election. So with that, I'll go ahead and stop sharing and happy to take any questions or stay around through public comment and do anything they can do to help out.

Great, thank you for that presentation, Paul. Let me go ahead and see if there's any members of the public that wish to address us. We're already in the open portion of the public hearing, so Madam Clerk, is there anybody that wishes to address us on this item? And I'm sure we have, do we have some on the call as well?

Yes, we do.

Great, thanks. Let me go ahead and start with Victor Mendez and Oscar Reyes. Those are the only two in-person speakers we have, and then we'll go to our virtual calls.

GOOD EVENING HAPPY NEW YEAR YEAH I JUST HAVE A BRIEF COMMENT AFTER SOME A LITTLE BIT OF RESEARCH I FOUND WHERE I LIVE RIGHT NOW AT 22 I'M SORRY 2222 2222 YEAH WILL NOT BE INCLUDED AS PART OF THIS MAP SO TO SPEAK BY THAT I MEAN THE VOTERS WHO ARE CURRENTLY THERE don't really count uh and i the reason being is by law you have to be using only 2020 data census data and since the building was not they uh was not occupied uh at that time it didn't occupy to

like early 2021 it's therefore those voters will not be included in this map obviously they'll get the location will get drawn in etc but just be advised there's several hundred voters in that building that probably aren't being included in this analysis. The same would apply to the new development that's going down the street. I don't know how it will exactly address, but it's going to be quite a large development, and I'm sure there will be quite a number of new voters at that development right down the street on First Street. Just something to be aware, it's really outside of your control,

given what I come to understand as being the law. but you know there will be several hundred voters who will not be counted in the so-called decision thank you thank you Victor Oscar Reyes and then we'll be going to our public comments that are on call

hello and good evening mayor mayor pro tem council members well thank you for THE INFORMATION THAT YOU GUYS PROVIDED AS WELL I'D REALLY LIKE TO URGE YOU TO SELECT SORRY I HAVE SOME NOTES ON MY ON MY PHONE SO IF I'M LOOKING DOWN IT'S TO MY PHONE FOR SOME NOTES BUT I'D LIKE TO URGE YOU TO SELECT MAP 86566 ALSO KNOWN AS SANTA ANA GOALS 2021 AND CONSIDERATE FOR FINAL APPROVAL AS THE WARD MAP FOR THE NEXT 10 YEARS AS A LIFELONG RESIDENT OF SAN ANA IN THE CITY

I HAVE A LOT OF KNOWLEDGE OF OF THE CITY I WORK CLOSELY WITH OUR CITY AND OTHER ITEMS I GREW UP IN THE CITY REALLY THE THIS MAP WHAT IT TRIES TO ACCOMPLISH IS TO KEEP NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATIONS together as much as possible and this map accomplishes that also the regions of the city that are kept together within with award in the north award in the south award in the west and three in the central city the western ward gives

our Vietnamese neighbors a strong plurality in eligible voters to continue TO ELECT A REPRESENTATIVE OF THEIR CHOICE. THE MAP ALSO GOES ALONG MAIN STREETS IN ORDER TO RESPECT NEIGHBORHOOD INTEGRITY AND AVOID USING RESIDENTIAL STREETS AS A WARD BOUNDARY. NEIGHBORHOODS ALSO THAT HAVE ASKED TO BE KEPT TOGETHER IN THE SAME WARD ARE AND APARTMENT COMMUNITIES WITH MANY WORKING CLASS RESIDENTS ARE ALSO UNITED WITHIN THIS WARD. AND I ASK YOU to please approve the Santa Ana Goals 2021 award met. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

Madam Clerk, do we have any members of the public online that wish to address this?

Yes, thank you, Mayor and members of the Council. We also did receive written comments, which we printed and made sure that Council members had in front of them. Before in meeting callers in the order received, I will report out the following summary of emails received in our office. We received one by Mr. Dale Helweg that provided information to help aid in selecting the map. Carl Benninger, who supported map number 86566.

Araceli was providing information regarding community of interest for her area around 1st Street, Chestnut Avenue, and Main. Alejandra Luciano, who provided information regarding community of interest for the area around 1st, McFadden, Flower, and Broadway. George Collins, in support of MAP number ID 86566. Rosa Ramirez, information regarding the community of interest for area around McFadden, 1st, Bristol Street, and Main Street.

Martin Zambrano supported map ID 86566 and Alexander Garcia supported map 86566 and with that caller with the last three numbers 254 if you would please select star six to unmute your call thank you you may proceed with your comment yeah

Dale Helbig, Park Santiago, Ward three. Good evening, Mayor, council members and staff. When redistricting is put in the hands of the politicians at the end of the day, they're going to do what suits their interests. We know it's inherently political when politicians pick voting maps. Of the six consultant maps, two essentially maintain current boundaries with only minor tweaks and two other maps ignore communities of interest. Several community maps have been submitted. 26 maps have Asian plurality of greater than 40%.

And so I think there's a lot to be learned from the community maps that are being presented. The council has the opportunity to rise above the politics and pick a map that's fair for the next 10 years, not just for the next two years. If a map that is selected keeps all incumbent council members alone in their own district, we know well, we know it's going to maintain the status quo. So I'm hoping that we can pick a map that will cover the next 10 years, not the next two. And let's make 2022 the year of change. Thank you and good night.

Thank you.

Caller with the last three numbers 969, if you would please select star six to unmute your call or the microphone icon.

Caller with the last three numbers 969, if you would please select thank you. You've successfully unmuted yourself.

Thank you. My name is Patricia DeSantos. I'm in Ward four. And I have been doing some surveying of our neighborhood. We're in South Coast Metro neighborhood. And I can see from the demographic of this neighborhood, how we are a community of interest with many other neighborhoods along the South side of the city of Santa Ana. And as you travel north from the south side of the city of Santa Ana, you can see some very clear areas of demarcation.

What I saw in the previous redistricting maps, that many of them go vertical, that a homeowner or a resident in the southern part of the city is going to be thrown into issues and items that are from another part of the city that don't reflect them. And so I believe that using a horizontal map that will break up the different communities in the city is probably a more rational one to keep a more cohesive type of community interest.

And I would propose that map 86566 would be able to do this. And so I would say that that is the closest map to getting to a cohesiveness in the different communities of the city.

Thank you.

Thank you. Zoom ID, OCCCO, if you would please Thank you, you may proceed with your comment.

Good evening, Mayor, Honorable Council Members and staff. My name is Karen Alvarado. I am lead organizer with Orange County Congregation Community Organization, short for OCO. And OCO has been spearheading the Santa Ana redistricting coalition alongside Viet Rice, Latino Health Access and Orange County Environmental Justice. This coalition was established in September of 2021 want to ensure community voices were heard in the Santa Ana redistricting process, centering the lived experiences and needs of low-income communities of color and working

families. The coalition has pursued maps and other redistricting outcomes that maximize opportunities for year-round organizing and policy advocacy, working towards a city that that treats everybody equitably and with justice. And last week, the coalition submitted two maps for the council to consider. And then we emphasize several key communities of interest that at times intersect one another, including the mobile park communities, which prioritize keeping the Willowick and Silicon communities together, environmental justice, the Vietnamese polarity community,

low income Latinx population, the Delhi community, and those impacted by the soil-led crisis as well. These maps in the proposals outline six distinct districts that have been drawn to reflect direct community input, but also complying with the Federal Wording Rights Act and the Fair Maps Act. The maps strive to not only update the current maps based on natural shifts in populations, but to provide all residents with an equitable opportunity to elect their candidate of choice in this governing body. for that we urge the council to please consider the map submitted by the

Santa Ana redistricting coalition because the members that have the roots uh community roots through the members uh have not been uh made even though these maps have not been made public in this last seven days we urge you to consider them moving forward and just lastly uh given the current spike in covet cases and the fact that Santa Ana residents are still amongst the most impacted we asked the council to consider extending the deadline for map adoption beyond the current February 1st deadline thank you so much for your time thank you

zoom id Maria Valencia if you would please select the microphone icon on your device

good evening mayor and council members my name is Maria Sala Valencia I am a San Ana resident and and a community organizer with Orange County Congregation Community Organization. OCO is a part of the Santa Ana redistricting coalition, which in these past months, they've been focused, we have been focused on ensuring that Santa Ana residents were engaged in the redistricting process and ensuring that their community voices were heard.

I would just like to describe the area where I live in. The area that I live in is first in Grand, which is part of district three. In that, in my community, there is a majority of people who are renters, low income. And also there's a large community of people who are houseless, which makes it a little bit different compared to other areas, but it also shows the richness that Santana has. The city of Santana, as we know, is home to the largest and most established Latinx community in Orange County. This population crosses and constructs other communities of interest.

This includes immigrants, renters, low income, and families of mixed immigration status. And the two maps that were proposed by the Santa Ana redistricting coalition really focus heavily on that in ensuring that all of our communities of interest are represented equally among Santana and ensuring that both the Vietnamese community and Latinx communities are represented equally and making sure that those communities have their voice represented. And we would like for you to consider and looking at and analyzing more deeply the map submitted by the coalition.

We would also like to ask for you to consider in extending the timeline process in the redistricting as my colleague had said before, we wanna ensure that there's enough time for our community to continue to engage in this process and also making sure that our community voices are heard. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you.

Zoom ID, Biff Baker, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device.

yes thank you uh good evening mayor sarviento and members of the council my name is biff baker uh like uh karen alvarado and maria valencia who just spoke i'm a member of oko the orange county congregations community organization i attend the episcopal church of the messiah in santa anna as you know oko is part of a coalition of community organizations the santa anna redistricting coalition with a keen interest in the redistricting process in Santa Ana. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you briefly tonight. The historic downtown area of Santa Ana, where Messiah is located, has a special character

and is particularly vulnerable to changes currently affecting the city. It is an area traditionally inhabited by Latinx members of the city, often densely populated with areas of low income. It also includes the civic center area with its concentration of homelessness and the downtown commercial area, which has become a focus of gentrification. Through Church of the Messiah, along with Oko and other churches that have chosen to remain in this area, I've been involved in various community initiatives over the last 30 plus years

and seen how with information and organization the people of the neighborhood can affect positive change for this reason it is critically important that this community of interest the historical center of santa anna remain unified through the redistricting process we would urge you to give the most favorable consideration to the district maps proposed by the santa anna redistricting coalition. They have been months in the making and reflect painstaking attention to community concerns and the legal criteria for voting districts. They're sound, fair proposals. They're

compact and aesthetic. We also urge that you extend the timeline for finalizing the districts so that all concerns can receive adequate consideration and equitable decision can be

reached thank you for your time thank you zoom id irene

zoom id blanca reylaz if you would please select the microphone icon on your device

Hello, good evening, my name is Blanca Ruelas, I am a community leader of OCO, I am a part of the coalition distribution district of Santa Ana. I currently live in Santa Ana. Mi comunidad está en La Flower, está cerca y se divide en dos áreas, de categorías clase media y clase vulnerable, y son muy diferentes a otras áreas de la ciudad de Santana.

Ejemplo, el norte de La Flower y de La 17, son áreas residenciales. The point 31 of the agenda, I consider that before taking a decision, consider to see and analyze more deeply the maps that are submitted by the coalition and that taking months to make the community alcances, I would like to ask that the more atent, to extend the time line. of time. Thank you very much.

Good evening, Mayor, members of the City Council. My name is Blanca Ruelas. I'm a leader with OCO and I meet with the Episcopal Church of the Messiah. I am with the coalition, with the OCO coalition and the redistricting coalition for Santa Ana. I live in Santa Ana and around the um flower in the city of Santa Ana around flower and two areas that that define us are we're middle income and we're a vulnerable community and our community is different than other areas

of Santa Ana for example the north of flower and 17th which is more residential areas and I'm talking about item number 31 and before you make a decision I would ask you that you please analyze the maps that were presented by the coalition. These took months of outreach and work, and we are also asking that you extend the deadline to make your decision. Thank you and good evening.

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

Hello. Can you hear me? Yes we could hear you now thank you. Thank you. So I first want to say I

truly appreciate the city clerk staff's work and efforts in making this process accessible to the public with all the outreach and the workshops and then additionally the online distrctor app is awesome and that's enabled a lot of community folks to make their own submissions and it really helps if you browse that site to see all the wonderful variety that our city holds here and all the beautiful communities that exist. As with any tool, hegemonic powers will collude to use it to their advantage as well. New technology which aims to democratize access to information and

active participation in shaping social and human needs can also be used in smart ways to either push agendas of those who are creating a computer and software tools and services or those who are able and willing to pay others to learn that and utilize it to maintain their power and positionality in the world. And that's the worrying concern I have with Plan E, also known as District or Map Number 86566, also known as Santa Ana Goals 2021 Map. Having done a lot of walking and bicycling all throughout our city because of the pandemic, I noticed that Plan E Map, while it conforms with all the requirements under the law,

it offers two seats of the council possibly to areas of the city where the majority of voters will consist of homeowners who live in low-density detached single-family homes. While the maps and census considers everyone, not all voters do. I do agree that some of the community-drawn maps were very much an exercise in imagining what our city could look like, such as with the map of the vertically-drawn stripes. And while it's understood that any feasible maps to be considered must have a fairly numbered distribution of all people in each ward, not just voters, I can't help but wonder who or how this map in particular

managed to guarantee increased political power for the demographics of Floral Park all the way out to the river, alongside the increasing number of high-density condos in the south. What triggered me to realize this was that part of this proposed map is a drastic annexing of the Washington Square neighborhood, which consists of detached single-family homes with lower density of people living there, a part, it annexes it into the Floral Park neighborhood, a part from the Willard neighborhood, where it's traditionally been included literally across the street where population density is

drastically higher and median incomes are drastically lower so my request is that any final maps that are picked for possible implementation for the next 10 years include at minimum details of the population broken down economically and by population density additionally given that the next 10 years might make or break the future of our climate forever more it behooves us to at least know the minimum details regarding the pollution levels of of each of the proposed maps wards districts. Lastly, I think it would be great to see how the final chosen map drafts were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which is continuing to rage on

as we speak in our most densely populated neighborhoods. So my final question is this, in each of the proposed wards of the maps by plan E specifically, who has the best quality city streets and best ease of access to transportation to provide economically for their families?

Thank you.

Maybe that will bring us closer to knowing who made and sponsored this map.

Thank you.

Zoom ID Nancy Murphy, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device.

Good evening.

Thank you. You may proceed with your comment.

I have a comment.

Zoom ID, Nancy Murphy, it looks like you've muted yourself. If you would please select the microphone icon to unmute. Thank you, you may proceed with your comment now.

Okay, good evening, Mayor Sarmiento, pro tem Phil Becerra and council members and all the staff of Santa Ana for hearing us as neighbors and the community regarding the redistricting. I'm Nancy Murphy and I'm from Ward 4 South Coast neighborhood. My husband and I are lifelong Santa Ana residents. I'd like to voice my opinion of the redistricting of Santa Ana. I feel map 86566 would be best for the city of Santa Ana. There have been numerous improvements in many areas of Santa Ana. The momentum of the south end of Santa Ana

has numerous neighborhoods that have worked together to improve many aspects of our community. I have many family members throughout Santa Ana and see how the city has thrived and map 86566 with horizontal divisions of the neighborhoods keeps adjoining neighbors together to achieve improvements and cohesiveness. Thank you. Thank you.

Zoom ID, Anna Charco, if you would please select. Thank you, you may proceed with your comment.

Good evening, Mayor Sarmiento and City Council members. My name is Anna Charco and I am here with the Santa Ana Redistricting Coalition. To promote greater community engagement in restricting the Santa Ana Redistricting Coalition has created a space through which Santa Ana residents have identified and articulated communities of interest. These communities of interest are Vietnamese residents, primarily located in West Santana, mobile home parks located within the Western parts of Santana, families affected by the environmental concerns located in the East side of Santana, the Delhi High community and low income

mixed immigration status family located in mid and central city Santana. Another point that we also wanted to mention is if it would be possible for the redistricting timeline to be extended. As we have seen, there is more participation of our Santa Ana residents, and we would like to continue that happening. As instance, looking at the emails, some of our residents are LHA base have submitted those comments and would like to submit comments in their communities of interest. Thank you for your time and have a great night.

Thank you. Thank you.

Zoom ID Irene, if you would please select your microphone icon to unmute your call.

Are you hearing me?

Si, we can hear you.

Okay, okay, buenas noches. ah buenas noches mi nombre es irina bautista y soy líder comunitaria en oco y comparto la iglesia episcopal del mesías oco es parte de la coalición de resolución de distritos de la ciudad de santana en mi comunidad la mayoría de personas somos latinos y viven en apartamento que es muy diferente a otras áreas de la ciudad por ejemplo la mayor parte de la comunidad al norte de la calle 17. En lo personal yo me he involucrado en el proceso de redistribución al nivel condado y

también en los nuevos mapas del distrito escolar. Como líder de fe es mi obligación moral el abogar por representación equitativa y eso es muy importante en una ciudad como Santana, ya que en el hogar de la comunidad latina más grande y establecida del condado de Orange, esta población se cruza y constituye muchas otras comunidades de interés. Incluidos inmigrantes, inquilinos, poblaciones de bajos ingresos y familias con estatus migratorio.

Mixto con estatus migratorio mixto. Por eso me gustaría que ustedes consideren ver y analizar más profundamente los mapas submetidos por parte de la coalición, ya que se han tomado meses en hacer alcance comunitario. Este proceso es sumamente importante y por eso también nos gustaría pedir que consideren extender la línea de tiempo para así poder extender más sobre su preocupación en nuestras mapas propuestos y tomar una decisión, ya que tengamos la oportunidad de contestar a sus comentarios de manera pública. Muchas gracias. Buenas noches.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. My name is Irene Bautista. I'm a leader with OCO. I attend the Episcopal Church of the Messiah. As a community leader, we are here. We participated in the redistricting process and the Coalition for Redistricting in Santa Ana. Our community is mostly Latino. We live in apartments, which is very different than other communities in Santa Ana, most notably people who live north of 17th Street. And we have been involved in the redistricting process for the community and as well as the school district.

And as a faith leader, it is my place to advocate for equal, equitative representation. And this is important for Santa Ana residents because we are the largest concentration of Latinos in Orange County. And our communities of interest include immigrants, renters, people of low income, and mixed status families. So I'd like you to consider to please, we need to consider this more deeply and analyze the maps that the coalition has presented. it and because we have spent months in this outreach process.

We also like to ask that you extend the deadline to make a decision so that when you make a decision you consider the maps that we have presented. Thank you very much and good evening.

Thank you and now for our last Zoom caller. Kayla, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Awesome. My name is Kayla Asato. I am a member of the Santa Ana redistricting committee. And I just wanted to make a comment on the environmental justice district from the Santa Ana redistricting committee maps. I don't know exactly what number they are. I had a hard time sorting through all of them, but as far as our district F is concerned, we need it to go vertical all the way down past Dyer

because that district is really, really impacted by environmental burdens. And many of the other maps that I've seen split up the communities of the Madison Park neighborhood, the Cedars Street neighborhood, and other environmental justice neighborhoods. So the map that we put forth as a Santa Ana redistricting coalition

really uplifts a lot of those environmental justice concerns because those communities in that district F, the Cedar street, Madison park,

and going all the way up to the lion community are heavily impacted by a lot of environmental justice burdens, not just on the calendar screen, but the soil leg crisis as well um so i would urge you to keep those maps to keep those communities together as we have put forth in the maps and i also wanted to speak quickly on something that vincent wanted me to relay about the vietnamese community um the mobile home communities together in west santa ana ensuring an asian plurality district are of the utmost importance West Santa Ana represents the origins of Little Saigon, which began in Santa Ana and moved westward.

And West Santa Ana continues to be an important gathering place for the Vietnamese community due to the large concentration of Vietnamese churches and temples, such as the Vietnamese Catholic Center, which were built early on in the development of Little Saigon. There's a high concentration of Vietnamese residents living in apartments and mobile home parks, especially Vietnamese seniors, low-income Section 8 recipients. The districts that we drew out in District A uplift a lot of those Vietnamese communities with a 42.8% Asian CVAP, if I'm not mistaken, and also keep together the mobile home parks

in those communities. In addition to the District D, which has the largest concentration of mobile home parks in the city with 12 mobile home parks, together, so we urge you to keep those maps, to consider those maps as we've put in a lot of work into not just the districker filters, but other filters as well. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Okay, Mayor and Council members, that was the very last virtual.

Great, thank you for that, Madam Clerk. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the Council and see if there's any questions or comments on the presentation. I'm not sure if Paul's still on the line or if he's-He's-Great, thanks. Hang in there, Paul. We'll be fast. See if there's any questions. Members of the Council, go ahead, Mayor Pro Tem. Yes. Let me go with Mayor Pro Tem and then we'll go with you, Council Member Hernandez, if that's all right. That sounds great, sir. Thank you.

Phil BacerraItem 3

Thank you, Council Member Hernandez, and thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Phil BacerraItem 3

I frankly have been a little disappointed in how the community-drawn maps have been treated, especially in comparison to the consultant-drawn maps. All one had to do was see the presentation tonight and see how it implies that we're going to use or have to use one of the consultant drawn maps. Or take a look at the interactive comparison mapping tool on the city's webpage. All that are included on that tool are the consultant drawn maps. I'd like to see it integrate the community maps because I think it'd be fair for all of us to take a look at how those compare, truly compare.

Phil BacerraItem 3

If I'd taken the time tonight, if I was anybody here that had drawn a map and then saw that the only maps that are getting the height and attention were the consultant drawn maps, I'd be disappointed, frankly. And I think that the council, I would think that the council was not paying attention to especially for all the work that I put in to draw on those maps. But let me be clear, this council is paying attention to your maps and is carefully considering your submissions. Over the past few hearings, I've heard a few things that have been consistent from many of us up here on the dais.

Phil BacerraItem 3

Keeping the Sullivan community together, maintaining a ward that has an Asian plurality, providing a ward that neighborhoods on the south side of town where they have shared interests, development patterns, etc., be kept together. And, of course, the north side, which has been together in one ward for decades. So with the six of us who represent wards not even living close to each other, there's no need for drawing lines, as people said, down small streets or alleys to keep us, you know, we could, I think we can be able to stay in our separate wards and we can avoid incumbent targeting.

Phil BacerraItem 3

We do not need to engage in the types of shenanigans that we saw take place across Ross in their activities when they redrew their maps. I think we can do a much better job of that. So I, again, want to thank all of those in the community that submitted maps, took the time to get on Districtr and draw them, because as I looked through the consultant-drawn maps and the community submitted maps, it became very clear to me that the maps that came closest to the concerns that we expressed on this dais over the last four hearings, especially the ones that were expressed on behalf of the communities that we all represent

Phil BacerraItem 3

and the residents that we interact with throughout the city, those maps were drawn by the community, the ones that really represented what we spoke of up here. So of the six consultant-drawn maps, to talk about those for a second, only two of them actually had an Asian plurality ward, two of the six. And only two of those kept the Sullivan community together. So there seems to be a disconnect in what we're saying up here and what's being drawn and then insisting that we have to kind of focus on and look at. Of the two that actually keep Sullivan together and the Asian Plurality Ward,

Phil BacerraItem 3

either one splits the north end or one splits the south end. So you can tell that the output is not there, especially when, as I'm looking at all these other maps, I'm seeing, and I think as you heard tonight from many folks that called in and spoke and submitted emails that there's really only one map that really has checked all the boxes. And I think that map that came as close to the concerns expressed by us and by the community was 86566. So to me, as much as I appreciate those that were asking for us to push out the process

Phil BacerraItem 3

a little bit, tonight, for those I'm not sure if you were aware, that tonight is our fifth public hearing. Now, no matter what we do, whether we were to somehow approve a map tonight or whether we were to select a few to move forward with, there will be other hearings on this item. But I think at this point, I want to thank our clerk for all the work that she's done with her staff to go out to the community and educate everybody. I walked into her office one day and she was getting off the phone and she says, I got another request for another meeting. And she was fulfilling everybody's requests.

Phil BacerraItem 3

So I know that she's been receptive and responsive to the community. So again, whether we decide to move one map forward or whether we move multiple maps forward, I would insist that we keep 86566 in the fray. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Hernandez. Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm going to keep my comments simple. I'm not supportive of a lot of the maps that were submitted. However, I am supportive of Map A and Map A2. And that concludes my comments.

Mayor Redekop, Mendoza, Mayor Mendoza, Mayor Mendoza, Mayor Mendoza, Mayor Sarmiento.

I don't know why we're still using the prison population. That was one of the items that we asked that that not be used. And the consultant maps use the prison population. And in looking at all the submitted maps, including the consultant and the public maps, and by the way, thank you to everyone who submitted maps. Your civic involvement is much appreciated. However, none None of the maps actually meet the six requirements that must be met legally.

For example, draft plan A does not keep the North Communities of Interest together, and it does not keep Delhi neighborhood intact.

I apologize, it was the other way around.

Draft Plan A does not meet four of the requirements. The only two requirements that it does keep is that it keeps North Communities of Interest together and it keeps Delhi neighborhood intact. So that's only two. Draft Plan A 2 meets three of those six requirements. It does not keep the South Communities of Interest together. It does not keep the Sullivan neighborhood intact.

And it does not meet the one member per ward. There's no incumbent targeting. Draft Plan B only meets one requirement. It keeps Delhi neighborhood intact. Draft Plan C only keeps the Del High neighborhood intact. Draft Plan D only meets four other requirements. It does not keep the South Communities of Interest together and it does not keep one member per ward.

Similarly, draft plan E only meets four of the requirements. It's similar to draft plan D. It does not keep the north communities of interest together. And it does not keep the no incumbent targeting.

Viet RISE 1 only meets three of the requirements. It keeps Sullivan neighborhoods intact, keeps Delhi neighborhood intact, and it keeps one member per ward. Viet RISE 2 meets four.

Actually it does not meet the six requirements. It only meets two requirements, which is the Sullivan neighborhood and Delhi neighborhood I kept together.

Draft plan 70404 only meets. From now on I'm just going to tell you how many they meet.

70404 only meets three of the requirements. Plan 70524 only meets three of the requirements. MAP 70537 meets three requirements. MAP 76209 meets four other requirements. MAP 76306 meets four requirements. MAP 76339 meets four requirements. MAP 76576 meets three requirements. Map 77239 meets three requirements.

Map 77539 meets two requirements. I apologize. Map 77539 meets four requirements. Map 77567 meets two requirements. Map 80649 meets three requirements. Map 80650 meets three requirements. Map 8666 meets six requirements. Map 86619 meets four requirements.

Map 86638 meets five requirements. Map 87613 meets five requirements. Map 87739 meets four requirements. Map 87836 meets two requirements. Map 87849 meets one requirement. Map 89989 meets three requirements. Map 89993 meets two requirements. Map 90353 meets two requirements.

Map 90376 meets three requirements. Map 90378 meets four requirements. Map 90447 meets four requirements. Map 90501 meets two requirements. Map 92322 meets four requirements. Map 93044 meets four requirements. Map 96223 meets four requirements. Map 96937 meets two requirements.

And I apologize for being long-winded, but I want it on the record that the maps do not meet the six requirements. In order to have legal and proper maps, we need to meet the six requirements. And I reiterate again, map 86566, Santa Ana goals 2021 is the only map that meets the six requirements.

Great. Thanks for those comments. Council Member Lopez?

Jessie LopezItem 3

I guess I have a question. Am I not seeing maps that are that meet all the legal requirements?

I'll just, I can speak to the fact, first off, when it does come to legal questions, like under the Voting Rights Act concern or something like that, then we definitely want to make sure that your legal counsel is diving in a little bit. I will say I'm not familiar with what these six requirements are that were spoken of by the prior council member. The requirements under the Fair Maps Act have to do with population equality following the Federal Voting Rights Act, districts being compact and contiguous and those other criteria I talked about. She does mention incumbency as one of the requirements that maybe she would like to see,

but absolutely incumbency is only listed in those ranked criteria under the Fair MAPS Act once. And that is saying that incumbents cannot be considered a community of interest. So if if districts have an incumbent in there or not that could be a lower ranked or outside of the ranked criteria choice for the council, but it can't be placed as a primary criteria ahead of other criteria. I will mention that if you were to want to have these public maps, the ones with the five digits, elevated up to B, your next draft plan F or your draft plan G,

that's exactly the process that we would envision and hope that you would do.

And with regard to that one plan, we might want to look with your legal counsel at contiguity is one tiny concern but I can address that further if you have more questions about that but with regard to legal all of our draft maps that we have put together and have the letter assigned we view those as being legal maps meaning all the fair maps act criteria if there are maps submitted by the public we don't go through every one of those with a fine tooth comb to determine whether or not it's fully legal but if you were to want to elevate it up to be your draft plan we could

Jessie LopezItem 3

take that closer inspection. Thank you. So I don't know if our city attorney wants to chime in.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 3

I would say we have hired our consultant to prepare for us these maps. I think what he's really mentioned is we all we have times where the community will present their own maps. We don't take the time to evaluate each and every one of them until or unless the council says these are maps we'd like to consider. Then the consultant will go back and look at the criteria if they have any concerns about are they legally enforceable, do they carry out the requirements of the law, do they comply with that settlement agreement that we entered into a few years ago, then we will take a look at that and we'll render a legal opinion.

Okay.

Jessie LopezItem 3

So is it fair for me to sit up here and make the assumption that I am seeing maps that are legally compliant?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 3

Yes. The consultant would make recommend, if the consultant has elevated them to a level where he's saying consider these, THAN THOSE BEFORE YOU WOULD BE DEEMED LEGALLY COMPLIANT.

Jessie LopezItem 3

OKAY. THANK YOU. SO I GUESS JUST FOR CLARIFICATION PURPOSES, I'M NOT NECESSARILY TAKING INTO ACCOUNT WHETHER I'M GOING TO BE PLACED OR MOVED INTO ANOTHER WARD WITH ANOTHER COUNCIL MEMBER. I DON'T THINK THAT SHOULD BE MY TOP AREA OF CONCERN WHEN I AM DECIDING WHAT THE LINE SHOULD LOOK LIKE FOR THE CITY IN THE NEXT 10 YEARS. I don't think that it should be anybody to be fair I think that's when you start getting into that political field that a lot of the residents talked about that they don't want to see this process be

Jessie LopezItem 3

and so you know thank you for I know that this is the fifth public hearing so thank you for all the work that has gone into it I really do appreciate the clerk's office and our partners with the redistricting partners and just staff in general putting this together one of the things I am continuously hearing is if people can have more time to add their input or for whatever reason talk with the council members or with the clerk's office to to discuss different maps and so I would be supportive of adding more

Jessie LopezItem 3

time to this process. I am also looking at the maps that were presented and given to me today and out of those maps I am leaning towards plan A and plan A2. I'm sure that more maps can be submitted for me to consider and speak with residents about but that's where I'm at for now.

Great. Thank you, councilmember. Do you have any comments, councilmember Pena Losa? I think you're the only one who hasn't spoken aside from me.

David PenalozaItem 3

Yes, thank you, Mayor. I, you know, also very thankful for all the residents that have submitted maps, all the communities that took the time to come out today and speak. I'm definitely ready to start dwindling down the list of maps that we see before us because I think we've had more than enough time over the last six months to go over the the maps and and and really be get creative with our community and see these come before us I continue with the same sentiment I don't want to see I want to see make sure that that we use that we meet all the criterias that

David PenalozaItem 3

that were presented before us. The ones that were mentioned earlier in regards to whether we're using census data or prison population, I believe from the last public hearing we had, the idea was to use the census data and the census data only. And if there was another reason why we couldn't get a letter from, you know, the formal opinion on why we had to use that prison data population.

David PenalozaItem 3

I do want to see some of the community submitted maps elevated to a proper draft number. That would be 86566.

David PenalozaItem 3

and at this point Mayor Sarmiento that that is one of there are some maps that cut through neighborhoods and cut through through residential streets which I'm not supportive of I don't want to see that because that just looks very like it's being gerrymandered there was a couple maps I think one specifically

David PenalozaItem 3

submitted by one of the Viet RISE maps that was a literal staircase through a residential neighborhood which just looked really really funky and out of place so would want to make sure that we that these district boundaries were there wherever they do lie end up running along major corridors like Bristol 1st Street 17th Street Main Street where we could keep these neighborhoods intact neighborhoods on the north end intact north of 17th neighborhoods neighborhoods

David PenalozaItem 3

east and west of Bristol neighborhoods north and south of Warner I think it's important that we really keep all those neighborhoods intact because that is what I'm constant reoccurring message and I'm hearing from residents and it would be the right thing to do those are my comments from now mayor Serminto thank you great thank you I think everybody's had an opportunity to speak on this so

So yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead. Council Member Fan, go ahead. My apologies.

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

Before you make your final and fancy comments. Hi, everyone. Hi, Paul. First, I'd like to say thank you to the public and to redistricting partners for working on this. I know how difficult it is. I know how hard it is. I know that we have a ton of interests and the Fair Maps Act is new to everybody. We don't really have a ton of guidance other than what case law has held before us i do want to say um that you know one of the biggest issues has been the community of interest for the asian american population here in santa anna

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

that is pursuant to our settlement so with that i would like to move to actually remove all maps that do not have an asian plurality district so that at least when we're considering maps for the next round that it will only include maps that have an Asian plurality district. And I think that might call 80% or 90% of the maps that were submitted both by the consultant as well as the public.

Great. Thank you for those comments and council member fan, I promise not to be too fancy.

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

Let me, let me just for clarification. That was a motion.

Oh, got it. Thank you. Motion for the maps that don't include an API plurality. Yes. Pursuant to the settlement that we have on record as well. Let me go ahead and, well, is there a second for that motion? Mayor, I have a question for Councilmember

Phil BacerraItem 3

fan uh council member fan when you made that motion when you made that motion um does that include the consultant maps that also don't have an asian plurality as well correct it would include

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

all consultant maps as well as publicly submitted maps that do not include an asian plurality i would remove them all from consideration i'd be inclined to second it but i i think for for some

Phil BacerraItem 3

of us up here we we've expressed that we'd also like to move certain maps forward but it would

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

still meet the criteria of your motion i i just wanted to do that so that we don't have 50 maps to look at we only have probably 10 or 15 and then we can fight over that so let me go ahead

and interrupt on on this i don't know if we need a motion per se i think we need to give direction to our demographers to say that we, you know, that as you mentioned, Councilmember Fann, I think all of us would be in agreement that legally we have to keep that API plurality district reward, and I'm not sure what we're calling them these days, but that district add an API plurality. So I think, you know, I would certainly agree with any maps that don't meet that threshold, that's sort of a baseline fundamental legal threshold that we have to

meet. So anything that doesn't comply with that I think would be ineligible for us to consider. So maybe Paul you can go ahead and take that into account as you're you know thinning out the maps and you know receiving others. So that said I don't think there's any disagreement with what a council member Fan is articulating. I don't see anybody up here and I'm sure nobody on the council remotely would dispute that as well. So thank you for that. What I guess I was going to mention is look what we have to remember is that you know it's going to take five of us to adopt this map so it's going to take a two-thirds supermajority to

to figure this out I do have some concerns about what you know criteria versus you know meeting six elements I'm kind of lost on that I think we just have a threshold legal criteria that we have to meet pursuant to the Fair Maps Act and that's based upon federal Voting Rights Act law. I guess my comments to the demographer would be, and maybe to our city attorney as well, to the extent that this council cannot meet that two-thirds agreement on a final map, and I know we always have in the past, at least the two times I've been through this

before we did this in 2010 and 2018 again, what happens and maybe when does that need to be established for us to be able to take that next step whether does it does it does it revert back to the original map does it go to a court what's the what's I guess the the relief or the the remedy to that if the question was for me Mr. Mayor is that right if you have that available in handy Paul go ahead um you had said something about a two-thirds vote um I'm not aware of it requiring a two-thirds vote for you to... Our charter does, Paul. Your charter does, okay.

Well then that would be to your legal counsel to answer that question because the Fair Maps Act doesn't have a vote threshold requirement. No, but the question's still the same even if it was, you know, a majority that couldn't agree with it. But let's just say we can't establish a majority that agrees with a map. What's the relief? Yeah, if a majority couldn't agree to a map, and you weren't able to pass a plan by April 17th, then on April 18th, any member of the public could go into a state superior court and ask them to take jurisdiction of the redistricting process from you, at which time it's really unknown

as to what steps would be taken by a court as they are basically given the jurisdiction over your redistricting. Would they take your most recent draft plan? Would they do a whole new brand redistricting themselves? Would they extend your current lines for two years? Would they send it back to you and give you 14 days to approve a new plan? It's really open season then as to how a court would interpret their responsibility once given the jurisdiction of your redistricting. But any resident in the city of Santa Ana could basically hand that responsibility over to the courts. Got it, and I think our city attorney wants to comment.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 3

Well, I just, you know, I don't like to give legal advice in public, and I'd like to do all the analysis, but one of the things, the first thing I would do is want to know for certain that your current maps are absolutely undefensible, right? And I think that's a threshold question we would take a look at. We want to assess the risk of that, and we will do that and make sure you get a response.

Got it. And look, I'm just looking at the doomsday scenario. We've never had to go to that. We've always been able to reconcile at some point and agree. but just in case it's good to understand what the recourse is and maybe what that next step is in the event that

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 3

I just want to address the question of you know people might ask well do we have to meet the two-thirds requirement and you know is there does the state law preempt the city charter it does not because your charter can make requirements that are more strict than state law and that's what your voters have done by requiring this vote

this five person vote to approve the maps right it was done for a purpose you know for me I guess the only thing I would be I would want to call attention to and I I think the comments on on You know plans a and a2 I think are are Are well received I think they meet a lot of the criteria that we went through in 2018 Right so I guess you know when I when we went through that exercise and also in 2010 We were looking at a lot of those, you know, same, you know same concerns that we're looking at now Now, there are some different things though that I know we are elevating to areas of concern

and I guess areas of cohesiveness amongst communities which is, you know, the environmental justice question and that corridor of sensitive uses next to, you know, actually heavy industrial, you know, uses next to sensitive receptors. And so there is a corridor that almost goes down if you look at standard and it affects neighborhoods like Logan, it affects neighborhoods like Madison, it affects neighborhoods like Delhi. So that is a corridor that's received a lot of attention recently. It's been an existing use of having you know those incompatible uses next to one another and I think they share a common goal of

relieving themselves of that. You know my concern of creating things north of 17th, south of a certain, it's almost income balkanization you know and you We want to be careful with that.

That's a concern to the north that we want to keep those neighborhoods as cohesive as possible because, again, they've been together for decades. Others creating other areas of interest, I think, for those that have a common challenge, like those in mobile home parks, those that are in heavy renter or tenant areas. It's important for us to consider those. So I would also, you know, even look to neighborhoods that have a historic element to them. I mean, you have neighborhoods like Hanninger Park, you have neighborhoods like French Park that have fought really, you know, effectively to keep themselves together because of that

unique commonality of, you know, having this preservation element to them. So just some things for us to consider. The last thing I would say is, you know, on extending the deadline, my concern is that I guess some of these maps have been kicked back because the data that they've been using has been Incorrect so to the extent that people are trying to propose maps based upon data That's flawed and it prevents them from submitting a map I think that's troublesome because that means that some people are being silenced not by their you know not intentionally

But because you know, maybe they're just drawing from you know from a source. That's not You know that's not correct, but maybe we can work on that. Madam Clerk, you and your team have been doing a very good job. The good news is I guess we don't have a statutory deadline until April 17th, so we have a little bit of time. I just want to make sure that we don't take this on forever, but at some point making sure people are able to draw from at least a source that's valid for data. So those would be my comments, I think, in addition to some of the other comments that

you've heard and now that Paul's on the line, I guess he's going to be sort of the demographer that's going to be helping us with this and he helped us in 2018. Hopefully those items are incorporated. I think they're all valid. They're all fair.

Mayor Sarmento, just real quick, I want to clarify that the six requirements that I referred to is what I heard from our constituents, not necessarily the legal requirements. And so I want to just reiterate that the six, that way it's clear on the record that these are, this is what I heard from my community. They would like to have the Asian plurality, that the south communities of interest stay together, North Communities of Interest stay together, Sullivan neighborhood

stays intact, the Delhi neighborhood stays intact, and then the last one that one member per ward be looked into. But personally that's not important to me. I do not mind and I will welcome the challenge to run against one of my colleagues. I don't want to, but if that becomes a necessity, then I am prepared. And so, and I wanted to just let you know again that the draft plan A, the Asian plurality, there's my culture,

is 42.4% Asian versus 42.8 Latino. And then draft plan A2, Asian percentage is 42.9 versus only 41.6 for Latino. So you see how these two plans do not meet what our constituents are asking? Thank you, Mayor.

Great. Thank you. No, I think that was the that's where I think some of us were confused because the criteria I think we've heard not only at these public hearings But I think all of us have been receiving information from constituents some you know through our own you know platforms And and I'm hearing a lot on you know environmental justice corridors and you know communities that are being impacted through that Historic neighborhoods that are being impacted and so I think all of us have internal criteria as well as some of the some of the criteria that have been

mentioned here by the members of the public. Mr. Mayor, I just wanted to ask a quick question of

Phil BacerraItem 3

our clerk. Go ahead. Excuse me. Daisy, what was the hard deadline that everything, total maps, data, all the stuff has to be in to the registrar? April 17, 2022. So help us understand like what you have to do. So can we in theory have a meeting on April 16th and you'll be fine? No, we can approve it on April 16th and then you're just going to have it ready to go in less than 24 hours? Or do you need to do some more things to prepare to get it to the registrar?

No, to your point, Mayor Pro Tem Becerra, what I would do is make sure that those maps are reviewed by our GIS team and then we would send that out to the county the county would then give us their shape files that data would bet then be submitted to our GIS in the city of Santa Ana and they would review that and geocode it and then we can go ahead and it's so it's a process involved so it

doesn't sound like a 24-hour process no not a 24 hour the April 17th deadline is only the state deadline. It's not the county registrar deadline. The county registrar will be giving time after the April 17th deadline for all those files to actually get to the county registrar. They won't even start using those files until after the primary is concluded. It's just a deadline for you. The Fair Maps Act requires that April 17th so that if there had to be a court process, there would be time for them to be able to do that before filing for the November

election. Perfect. Thank you for that, Paul. Thank you. Great clarification. Great question.

And Councilmember Fan has her hand virtually raised. Great. Let me go to

Councilmember Penelos and then Councilmember Fan

David PenalozaItem 3

Thank you mayor This question is more for the consultant in regards to draft a 2 In looking at it, and I think I brought this up at the last public hearing Was my concern of downtown Santa Ana being split up? as map as a draft A2 currently does. Was there a reason behind that why you did that?

These maps were drafted by both me and our staff trying to balance a number of different criteria, not set one criteria as being the predominant one in every one of the maps. So showing that as an option is a way of kind of exploring that, how it affects other districts, other areas around it and other neighborhoods around it and the trade-offs that you might choose to make. So if you did say, I want to see draft plan A2, but I want to unify this neighborhood, then those kinds of amendments can be made and brought forward in future drafts. So I think that

that's the best answer I can give you on that. We try to show a variety of different things when we present draft maps.

David PenalozaItem 3

Okay. I guess all I would ask is as we move forward that we whatever draft we I guess list of draft maps that we come up with as we start dwindling away whether it's 86566 or Draft A2 or D, B, whatever we want to call them. We keep that in mind. And downtown Santa Ana in particular has a lot of businesses, business districts that would like to remain together, neighborhoods. There's a lot of new development coming into the downtown Santa Ana area,

David PenalozaItem 3

hundreds and hundreds of units, of apartment units that would, we should keep in mind in the horizon that will change the population of those areas. So whatever we could do to keep our downtown together, because it is the heart of Orange County, it is the downtown of Orange County and the county seat we are. Santa Ana is the county seat. I would hope that all those government buildings and businesses stay together as much as possible.

I would clarify that when you said this was an A or an A2, I'm looking at A2. Okay. Yeah, in A2, it appears as though at least the downtown neighborhood is defined by the shapefile we received for the neighborhoods, that it doesn't seem as though that is in of itself split. It might be disconnected from the other neighborhoods that are also considered themselves part of the greater downtown area. So definitely we can look at that and and but it seems as though the intent when this

map was drawn was to kind of keep that downtown neighborhood drawn. And if you look at the district if you look at the plan, the packet that has all the individual neighborhood maps underneath it, it should show that as being entirely in one in District D.

David PenalozaItem 3

But that can be clarified later. So you're probably just looking at the downtown neighborhood what is I guess recognizes a downtown neighborhood but I'm thinking of you know the the entire downtown Santa Ana corridor and kind of and maybe the executive director planning could remind me on the correct name of that transit zoning I don't want to say it incorrectly or Steven that whole area that lies I know it has its own zoning and and there's gonna be a street car going through there um the transit zoning code transit zoning code thank you i had it i said it

David PenalozaItem 3

i just wasn't sure um that runs from the train station all throughout our downtown um so just just to keep in mind um whatever yeah maybe we can i guess an entire area west of main street

or east I'm sorry. Great. That's it. Thank you. Thank you for those comments. I think all of us had some good things to share with the oh I'm sorry Councilmember Fan go ahead I keep on

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

overlooking that. Thank you Mayor. I know I just I'm not there today. So I guess Paul since we did ask for some maps to be elevated specifically i do have a list of a few maps um which include map

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

77539 and these are all as far as i can tell have um the asian quality district 77567 87, 86, 1, 3, 8, 6, 5, 6, 6. And I think also the two maps that were recently submitted by the coalition also have Asian plurality districts. And I believe Jeff map a two has an Asian plurality district. I also want to just quick clarification because I know at our last hearing or maybe the hearing

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

before there's a lot of confusion about the ACS data compared to the California prison data which are both technically based on the census. I do want to ask Paul that we did in fact update the data and the maps to reflect the ACS data. Yeah so let's clarify that because I think there's

confusion about this. You are required by law that that top part of the data set, I always talk about that as being the point data, the moment in time data for the decennial census, where you use that top data set to determine how big each of your districts are. You have to use the prison population adjusted data for that. Now, in the midstream of our redistricting, the state released a prison population adjusted data set for the citizen voting age population. That confused some people because all of a sudden your citizen voting age population changed.

And so the council made a request to revert that back to the raw citizen voting age population data from the census. So what we have now is essentially a blend. The top data set is always going to be the prison population adjusted data. It has to be by law based on the Fair Maps Act. But you're using the below citizen voting age population data that is straight from the census without having been put through the statewide database process. So the data that you're seeing in your maps is the correct data that you've asked for. We're still referencing it as PPA data because it is prison population adjusted for

the total population first top part of that spreadsheet. Perfect.

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

And that was a really clear explanation to me. I just, I understand that everything is still technically in some way an estimate. it. I think it's just helpful for residents as well as us just to have the same standard across the board in comparing apples to apples. That was all. So I do understand 1% of difference here could really be 5% depending on what the spread is, right? And how good the actual census data was for that area. So I just wanted that clarification. Those are the maps that I wanted to elevate based on what I did see. And I do hope actually another thing

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

that would be really helpful is when you bring it back, I do know that we did get a lot of, there are neighborhoods and neighborhood associations throughout the city, of course, but there were a few that were specifically called out. So for example, Sullivan, like Sullivan is not a neighborhood association, but they are in fact, you know, community of interest or the Cambodian, you know, community and the South Coast community, etc. It would be really helpful if you maybe did an overlay for those maps that I did ask for,

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

maybe council might or might not agree, just to show those areas to understand that, you know, those are the communities that really did speak up about it. And I would like to see them be respected in adopting a map. Thank you.

So Mr. Mayor, one of the things that's been requested of us, and I wanna make sure that we have clarity on this is to, the word was used was to remove certain maps from consideration. I'd caution against using the word remove because any public submissions that have been made need to still be on the website. They need to be on the website for the next 10 years. So none would be technically removed, but we would only have elevate maps to be potential draft maps that meet the criteria of having a Asian plurality district. Is that the better way of articulating

that request? Yeah, I think that's the intent of what you heard from everybody. Basically, you have to keep a record of everything that's been submitted because you can't just delete. I get that. But I think what I think what the council and council member fans intent and everybody I think agrees, is that we have to focus in on those maps that keep a plurality Asian district. And that has to be compliant with the settlement that we reached in the last election cycle. So that would mean that in our draft maps, we would probably look at taking out draft map A

for the next hearing. We would retain draft map A2. Draft map D is also plurality Asian. 42.8 is greater than 42.2. And draft map E is also plurality Asian in district A, that's 42.8 over 42.2. However, the draft map that has been requested by a couple of council members, 86566, in our look, and we can look at this again after the hearing if necessary, the Asian citizen voting age population is 42.4 versus 43.7. So it actually is not Asian plurality in the maps

that we've been able to see for that draft. So if we were to do that, we would be bringing back A2,

D, E, and then there's a question that maybe you can help us clarify prior to the next hearing, which is there were three additional maps mentioned by Council Member Fan that if they are Asian plurality in that one District A, we could elevate them. We would make them A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H, or something like that, give them letters and elevate them as draft plans. Is that the intent of the Council? Yeah, I think if, you know, if they do meet that criteria, there is no reason why they couldn't be

considered by by the council and you know at that point we start hopefully whittling down from that and maybe we you know we we decide we decide to start selecting maybe the top four the top three and then we narrow it down from there and that's the rationale of having these maps be elevated and we do love having maps elevated by the from the local locally created public maps in most of our redistrictings actually it's public maps that end up becoming adopted as as the official city council maps. But at the same time, we heard people in the public today say, well, there were so many maps that confused me.

And so elevating certain maps, giving them the letter designation and having them be considered potential draft maps is helpful to the public and being able to give feedback. So we'll do that for the next hearing. Thank you. The only thing I didn't hear was, I know there wasn't a numerical number given to the coalition maps that I think council member-Yeah, that was the 86566, but in our look, it doesn't meet the plurality requirement. I think that was a different map. Yeah.

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

Yeah, I think it's called Santa Ana goals. I think the coalition maps we received via email, so it's not in the files that you were able to create.

If we can get that, then we can process that and give sign it a letter if it meets that criteria. Thank you. Great.

Phil BacerraItem 3

Thank you. Mr. Mayor? Go ahead. So when we're talking about the Asian plurality for 86566, this is coming from the data that was available through what the consultant provided in their formatting of data. So I don't know how the data is presented that showing that the Asian plurality for 86566 was 43.5 percent versus 41.7 percent latinos so i'm kind of unclear how the numbers changed on

us i can look at it if it is if you're right then i'll go ahead and make sure that it's included in

Phil BacerraItem 3

the list i i just you know because i think that's been unfortunately a little bit of a theme throughout this process is consistency when it comes to data and so i i'm just a little concerned when i'm looking at data that's been provided to the entire community and then all of a sudden our consultant who's the professional is telling us that same data is not correct so I'm just hoping that we can button that down and make sure that we're operating off the same data.

Great thank you for those comments let's go ahead and I guess with that we can go ahead and close the public hearing and is there anything else that we need to take up on action on this Madam Clerk? No unless you had any other questions or

you needed any other input on Paul? No I think Paul is going to get back to us and

make sure that you know certain maps that were discussed you know meet the criteria hopefully he'll be contacting you and you can contact us. Okay

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

Okay, sounds great. Mayor, I'm sorry.

Go ahead, Council Member Fran.

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

Just for clarification, because we did all hear that residents asked for an extended timeline. I know that on our website, the next meeting and technically the meeting is supposed to be February 1st, 2022. Are we just going to place it on every single council meeting or add more meetings? I just want some clarification as to the timeline and what we can all expect.

Well, I can definitely make sure it's on the agenda every meeting and we can have it set at 7 p.m. I think that works really well for public input and also advances all of our comments. So if the Council doesn't have any objection with that, I can definitely continue to do that and update the website.

I don't see any heads that are nodding no, so I would assume that that's an acquiescence by silence.

And to the extent we can start narrowing this down and elevating maps, selecting maps that we want to continue to elevate like a pyramid, and that's kind of the way we've done it in the past. So hopefully that works, and that should incorporate the public as well. So if there's nothing further on this, I think I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and move along. We haven't even had our COVID update yet. But before that, I wanted to ask for the council's indulgence in advancing a couple of items, and one in particular, which is item number 32, another public hearing on the general plan.

And I believe that we have some members of the public that are online and here in public, possibly that want to address us on that but this may be an item that will be continued or may be continued so to the extent that we can address that and not have to you know keep anybody on any longer it's it's already been been a while so if you don't mind why don't I go ahead and advance that item number 32 which is the public hearing for the general plan update and madam city attorney

I know that we were waiting for some communication from the FPPC, the Fair Political Practices Commission, on an opinion letter that we requested them to respond to. So I know we have to keep noticing this as it comes before us. And so to the extent that they maybe have given you or your department expected time of response, maybe we don't have staff burdened with having to notice this at every hearing or at every meeting and maybe get an estimate of how long it will take for them to respond to us.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 3

Yes, so Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem and Councilmembers, on December 9th we made the initial request to the FPPC for legal advice as requested by the Councilmember at the public meeting. A few days later we did receive a response from the FPPC and on December 28th we responded to several questions from FPPC staff. This is very typical that they might ask us questions. We were very hopeful that based on the timing and how quickly they had responded and how quickly we were able to respond back that we would get a final ruling from the FPPC. We later learned that an individual filed a formal complaint. Once that formal complaint was filed

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 3

with the FPPC, both processes can lead to a final decision, but the complaint will trump a request for advice, assuming because the complaint assumes that action has already been taken. So the FPPC has opened up that complaint process. I understand that our council member fan has submitted some formal responses they ask questions they're gathering data and so that letter my understanding went out today they gave us a deadline of this coming thursday so we got in front of it quickly so all i can say at this point is i think the letter that she has submitted

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 3

is very comprehensive i think it answers all the questions under the law and i'm very hopeful that they will take that information and render a decision so i can't tell you when they are on their own timeline. Under the request they have 21 days to respond but under a complaint there is no specific timeline. The only thing I would say with respect to the general plan is I know that there has been hesitancy on the staff's part to take it off the agenda because they don't want to have to re-notice. I think the question and the expense on the re-noticing is a decision that the city

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 3

made to mail notice out to many people. Some concerns I would have at this point is that we keep continuing anyway, and so the question is, all those people who got mailed notice, will they even understand that this is still going forward? So that may be a consideration for you, but answering your question about timing, I cannot give you a date.

Got it. So is your suggestion maybe to continue to notice, irrespective of the cost that's involved?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 3

and that's all I'm saying is I think that I that there's a difference between what's legally required to be noticed and what we've chosen to notice because we went above and beyond which is a good thing it's a transparency thing so for

clarification sir if it's continued to a date specific we are not re-noticing

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 3

right so the question is every time you put it on the agenda you can save yourself from having to go through the cost of re-noticing right but I guess

because we don't have that certainty of time that's what makes it difficult for us to continue to a date certain in any event look I just wanted to bring that back because I don't want people waiting if they you know if we're not going to address it here tonight and if we are then then we go ahead and address it but if not you know I know that this is a question specific to you know council member fans well I'll defer to her but I certainly think that this is a again a large enough item that to the extent we can have all seven of us who represent you know now six separate districts you know have an opportunity to speak on

this and address this it is very important and I do think that we are very close to getting a response I know that you know there hasn't been any lethargy or any slowness on our part we've certainly been getting as much information to them as possible but I will defer to councilmember fans so So Councilmember, is there, you know, your motion that you've made before, would you like to address it now?

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

Thank you, Mayor. So I just wanted to clarify that the complaint was actually regarding the WHO and not specific to the general plan. Maybe Madam City Attorney can correct me, but that's what I recall when we submitted the response to the complaint. It was just specific to the WHO. however the request for advice didn't involve the general plan with that I would ask for administrative continuance to a date specific specifically for the general plan to you know maybe not the next meeting but two meetings from now so I think that's February 15th because again

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

I work on a law firm that represents a variety of clients including developers and public agencies and whatnot and waiting for advice regarding that. If that is not the desire of the Council, I will remove myself from the room during discussion. So I would move to continue to February 15th. Thank you. I will second that.

Great. Thank you, Councilmember Fan. And I believe we have a motion from Councilmember Fan to a date specific, which is, I believe, the 15th of February, which is not next meeting, but the meeting after, and we have a second by Councilmember Lopez. Is there any discussion by the Council on this continuance?

Seeing none and hearing none, Madam Clerk, if you'll please call roll.

Members of the Council, if you can go ahead and vote from your machine.

Madam Clerk, this is Councilmember Hernandez. I'm having some issues with the application to vote. So I just want to let you know my vote is yes.

Thank you.

And council member Fan.

Thank you.

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

I just have clarification because this is a, I guess electronic meeting, teleconference meeting. Do we have to do a roll call?

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

I

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 3

YES THE ANSWER TO THAT IS LEGALLY YES WE HAD WORKED OUT A SYSTEM WITH THE CLERK WHERE SHE WOULD TAKE THE VOTE THIS WAY BUT THEN SHE WOULD ANNOUNCE IT BY A ROLL CALL VOTE

THANK YOU AND WITH MOTIONING BY COUNCIL MEMBER FAN AND SECONDED BY COUNCIL MEMBER LOPEZ Councilmember Hernandez Lopez Mendoza fan Pena Loza mayor perl-tem Becerra and mayor Sarmiento voting yes

Great. Thank you everybody You know because I know the items are sort of intertwined with also the housing opportunity ordinance Which is item number eight should we take that up as well because it's probably going to use the same premise for the For the continuance so I'll advance that out of order as well And that is item number eight the housing opportunity ordinance. I believe it's on second reading pending the same response from the FPPC that's been requested. And Council Member Fan, I'll call on you if you'd like to make the same motion to move this item as well to continue it to the same date, I guess, on February 15th.

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

Yes, Mayor, due to the pending FPPC complaint and previous request for advice, I ask that we administratively continue this item for potential consideration on February 15th. I will second that.

Thank you for that motion to continue to February 15th. That's seconded by Councilmember Lopez. Is there any question or comments from members of the Council?

Hearing and seeing none, Madam Clerk, if you'll please call roll and we'll do, I guess, a voice vote for those of us who aren't here.

Councilmember Hernandez, if you could please announce your vote.

Yes.

Thank you. With Councilmember Lopez, Mendoza, Fan, Peñalosa, Mayor Pro Tem Becerra, and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes.

Great. Thank you, everybody. Now we can get back to the sequence of items before us. Item number four, this is on the update on the COVID matter, COVID-19. And I'll go ahead and turn it over to the Madam City Manager.

Okay. Good evening, honorable members of the City Council. Tonight I'm going to talk about where residents can get tested, where residents can get vaccinated, and then also a little bit of positive news on a data modeling that can predict the spread of COVID-19. So with that, I do have a presentation for you. So free confidential COVID testing is available to everyone, but I do want to say get vaccinated to reduce the need for testing. So beginning just today, all U.S. households can order free at-home COVID-19 test kits from the U.S. Postal Service.

starting today people can visit www.covidtest.gov in order to to order their free at-home test the Biden administration says it will also launch a free call line to help those unable to access the website to place orders and will work with national and local community-based organizations to support the nation's hardest hit and highest risk communities in requesting these tests once Once we receive the call line number and information about the participating local community-based organizations, we will certainly share that information on the city's website.

So COVID-19 testing is available for Santa Ana residents free of charge, also through the OC Healthcare Agency. Residents can access a test using any of the resources displayed on the screen. If testing is recommended if you have symptoms of COVID-19, whether or not you are vaccinated, don't have symptoms but have COVID-19 exposure or exposure concerns and are an essential worker with frequent contacts with the public. COVID-19 testing is also free of charge to individuals who have health insurance. If you need to find a health care provider call your customer service

number on the back of your insurance card. Now to switch over to vaccines. We encourage all of our residents to get vaccinated right now everyone aged five and up can get vaccinated for free regardless of your insurance or immigration status Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is authorized for kids age 12 and up and a lower dose of Pfizer vaccine is now authorized for kids 5 to 11 both are safe and effective in protecting children from COVID-19 all other vaccines including Moderna and Johnson and Johnson are available for adults 18 and up.

These vaccines are proving to be effective against many of the variants of the virus. Where to get vaccinated? If you're looking to get vaccinated or even to receive a booster, there's ample supply and several ways to find an appointment that's convenient to you. The links on this screen will connect you to a number of options. You can also call the OCCOVID-19 hotline at 714-834-2000 to make an appointment. If you do have health insurance, you can receive a vaccine through your health care provider, and most of all the national drug stores are offering health-insured vaccinations.

In addition, locally, Latino Health Access hosts COVID-19 vaccine clinics every Monday from 2.30 to 8, and CalOptima is hosting a vaccine clinic this Saturday January 22nd from 9 a.m. to 3. Make sure that you do register on othena.com or call the OCCOVID hotline. Our staff continues to stay on top of the COVID-19 metrics for Santa Ana to track hot spots in our community. To date there have been a cumulative total of 62,140 positive COVID-19 cases in our city and 956 loss of lives.

To minimize the effect of COVID, we encourage all of our residents to do their part, get vaccinated, wear a face covering when you're indoors, and get tested if you're experiencing symptoms or you've been exposed. Self-quarantine or self-isolate if you are required to do so, avoid large gatherings and limit unnecessary travel. Together, we know Santa Ana will recover. Since the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic, the California Department of Public Health has been collecting data to inform state and local government's response to COVID-19.

One of the results is a data modeling tool that's called the California COVID-19 Assessment Tool, or CalCAT for short. CalCAT uses a metric called the R-effective. The R-effective is the average number of people each infected person will pass the coronavirus onto, to, and it represents the rate at which COVID-19 is spreading. If the R effective is greater than one, the number of infected persons will continue to increase. If the R effective is less than one, the number of infected persons will decrease. When R effective is equal to one, the number of infected person remains constant.

It might be a little hard to see, but on your screen is a plot chart that depicts the R EFFECTIVE FOR ORANGE COUNTY FROM NOVEMBER 2021 TO PRESENT. AS OF JANUARY 16th ORANGE COUNTY'S EFFECTIVE RATE IS .77, WHICH MEANS THAT THE SPREAD OF COVID-19 IS LIKELY DECREASING. SO A LITTLE BIT OF POSITIVE NEWS IN THIS ENTIRE PANDEMIC. THE NEXT SLIDE ALSO SHOWS YOU HOW THE STATE IS DOING. THIS MAP REPRESENTS THE STATEWIDE ARE EFFECTIVE AVERAGED over three days by county the green and orange colored counties have an are

effective of less than one and the pinkish and red color counties have an are effective that is greater than one so currently Orange County ranks 18 out of 58 counties from the smallest to the largest are effective additional resources to get help while we're hoping that COVID spread and transmission is going to decrease we do recommend that residents remain vigilant to stay safe and protect themselves and others community members that have just general questions related to COVID-19 can contact the OC COVID-19

hotline once again that's 714-834-2000 and for medical questions residents can call the health referral line at 1-800-564-8448 and I am available to answer any questions you may have.

Great. Thank you for that update, Madam City Manager. Excellent information, especially those last two slides that gave us a real, you know, easy way to see where we're doing as a county. I think maybe one of the things I'd like to see is if at the next one, because I know we're not going to be talking about this at the following meeting, but I think on the 15th of February, if we can see how we're doing by ward or by neighborhood, I know there are some wards that are doing better than others and some neighborhoods that are doing better than others, so we can look at those spots and maybe we can work with some of our

partners and get some resources and some attention to those areas. So thank you for that. Let me bring it back to the council to see if there's any questions or comments on this

item. Seeing nobody here, council members virtually, are you guys, are you both okay? Yes, sir.

Great. Thank you. Thank you for that update. Let's move along to the closed session report from Madam City Attorney.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 4

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem and members of the council, members of the public. We did have a very active closed session discussion meeting this evening. We had three matters of existing litigation, and by unanimous vote, three settlements were approved. In the Miranda versus City of Santa Ana case, a settlement of $200,000 was approved. In the case of Victor Hernandez, a settlement of $126,900 was approved. And in the Mark Waldo versus City of Santa Anna, $87,693.84. The City Council also authorized by unanimous vote the initiation of litigation in relation to a lease that the city has with Dyer 18

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 4

LLC. We were authorized to initiate litigation to protect the city's interest in the lease and with this entity and with that I have no report

no more reportable action. Thank you for that Madam City Attorney. Let me go ahead and move along to the public comment section of the meeting. So this is the time and place of the meeting for 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 at this time We will now hear from members of the public that are physically present and those Who are with us joining us by conference call or zoom? I do want to remind you if you'll state your name We don't want to know a specific address

But if you have a war if you know the ward or neighborhood that you live in please recite that and you will have three minutes to speak and if you are speaking in English or Vietnamese please know that your comments will be translated into English. Madam Clerk do we have any members of the public on that wish to speak to us via Zoom?

Did you want to take in those in person first? I do have one person who did

virtually raise their hand. I have four cards here for members of the public that are here physically present let me take those and then I'll turn it over to you that's for that single speaker that's on the line. Thank you. Salika Diaz followed by Francisco Gomez followed by you know actually is Louis Bratcher here? There he is. Can I call you out of order? Because I know you've got a zoom meeting that you need to go to or maybe you're late for but Councilmember Mendoza put this in my ear that if you can come up here and I apologize Mr. Bratcher. I'M ALWAYS OUT OF ORDER. YOU'RE ALWAYS IN ORDER HERE WITH US. COME ON UP.

AFTER, ACTUALLY, AFTER MR. BRACHER, THEN WE'LL GO WITH SALICA DIAZ AND FRANCISCO GOMEZ. MY APOLOGIES.

I DON'T ENVY THE DECISIONS THAT EVERYONE IS MAKING.

OH. THERE YOU GO. I DON'T ENVY YOUR DECISIONS THAT YOU GUYS ARE DEALING WITH TONIGHT. AND ON A LIGHTER NOTE, FIRST SERVED SANTA ANA, WHICH HAS BEEN IN EXISTENCE SINCE 2007, IS KIND OF ADDING TO ITS TENNIS FOCUS PICKLEBALL. AND I DON'T KNOW IF YOU KNOW WHAT PICKLEBALL IS, BUT THERE ARE 4.2 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES NOW PLAYING PICKLEBALL, OF WHICH WE ARE GOING TO GIVE YOU AN OPPORTUNITY TO COME OUT, SEE IT, TOUCH IT, feel it over at sanana high school and at a time when we're going to be having a tournament and

pickleball fest as it's called it's going to be this saturday at san high school tennis neil machander tennis center and uh it's going to be taking place eight to four o'clock and which is on the corner of flower and walnut we have thank yous going out to the city of sanana for allowing us to have the tournament there as you might know or might not know the courts on on the weekends belong to the city of sanana and come under the city's supervision we also have the kiwanis club

of which i'm a member is very supportive of our efforts both financially and moral support And then of course we have the Santa Ana staff with Lisa Enloe being very responsive to our holding the tournament on her campus. You might run into Miss Nelly de Mendoza out there playing on Saturday. She's a convert to pickleball from tennis. Myra Ruiz had just left a little while ago, is our president pro tem of the Kiwanis Club

and everybody is very supportive of what we're doing. And while we were standing here, and this is going to make Lisa Ruffalo very happy, we received notice that we have our official certificate of liability insurance that was approved while we were standing back there. and I was a little tense about that effort. So we've got everything in order, hopefully. We're going to have a good event and come out and see it, touch it, feel it. Thank you, Mr. Bradshaw. Saturday. This Saturday.

We have secured like five national champions, pickleball champions, and then to do exhibition at 10.30 and 1.30. And then we'll offer free introductory lesson to the community, there's a lot of things. Thank you. You were looking at me when you said that for the novices and the beginners, right? Thank you for those comments. We'll see you on Saturday. Thank you. Thank you. Celica Diaz followed by Francisco Gomez followed by Victor Mendez who will be our final speaker here in person.

Salca Diaz, Francisco Gomez.

Dick, you're up.

I think it's kind of symbolic that I'm batting cleanup because I do have some cleanup issues to talk about but before I begin those I'd like to thank the council for item 27 as an uncle who is an uncle of two very fine young men who are practicing the Jewish faith and I submitted said a Muslim is something I detest and will fight against with everything I got these gentlemen these These two young men are also tri-racial, black, white, Mexican, Latino, and they're just going to be great people and great contributors to our society if they don't drive their mother nuts before then.

That said, I did review the CAFR for 2021, and your liabilities are exploding. I've talked about this before. I've been talking about this probably for seven years well before Ms. Ridge came aboard it's just really bad in 2011 you were at 24.3 I'm talking total liability work common GL I won't break that out for now and now you're at 50.8 and this is without the fire department liabilities or workers compensation anything associated with that so you take out your fire

department out of that equation and you literally have doubled in 10 years and that's a real big problem i know i heard about a 12 million dollar hole that's developing i heard about management trying to look at a long-term plan uh i would suggest getting that plan going sooner rather than later um because like i said this has been going on for quite some time and uh i don't think it's TO GET BETTER AND IT IS HITTING YOUR EXPENSES AND YOUR ANNUAL BUDGETS AS WELL SO IT'S NOT MONEY JUST SITTING THERE WEAVY TO BE PAID OUT. IT'S GOING TO BE A REAL PROBLEM. AND IT TAKES AWAY FROM

YOUR GENERAL FUND, WHICH COULD BE USED FOR OTHER PURPOSES. THIS TIES BACK TO NUMBER 30 ON YOUR BUDGET. SO I CONSIDER THIS MONEY THE PEOPLE'S MONEY. WHEN YOU'RE TRYING TO FUND WORKERS COMPENSATION OR PLUG A HOLE OF 1.5 MILLION, I THINK THAT'S SOMETHING YOU SHOULD BE TALKING about in your budget, not as part of this particular plan. It's an issue. It's got to be addressed, but certainly not part of this money that was created and generated by the people of Santa Ana. In that respect, I would request $18 million be deferred out, specifically the 1.5 and work comp, the $3.4 million in employee benefits,

certainly the 3.3 in for an employment attorney and other staff positions. You just recently approved $300,000 in employment legal attorneys. I don't think there was something needed there. And also maybe look to defer out the maintenance and costs associated with the SARC and maybe hire a developer who can give some long-term perspective to this and use that money wisely and appropriately. And certainly if there is no interest from the development community, go to plan B. That's okay. But I think you need to step back from all this money that's going to be thrown out or proposed and really find the best use for it.

Thank you, Victor. Thank you. Thank you. Go ahead, Madam Clerk, do we have somebody on the line?

Thank you. For those that are joining us by way of Zoom or conference call, if you would like to provide a comment, please dial star 9 or raise your hand from Zoom now. and before I unmute the callers, we did receive written communication. One Santa Ana resident on a non-agenda item commented about police response to homeless harassing people in the north part of Santa Ana. One Santa Ana resident commented regarding the solid waste contract and possible conflicts. For item 24, one Santa Ana resident in opposition

in relation to item 24.

And that is all. And for Zoom ID, Christopher Fortin, if you would please select the microphone icon. Thank you. You may proceed with your comment.

Hello, good evening, mayor and city council members. My name is Christopher Fortin. I'm a resident of Ward five and I'm the project director with Santa Ana Active Streets. And I'm calling in opposition to item 24, the approving agreement with Focus Media Group on installing, repair, and maintaining of bus stops and shelters. The main purpose of the opposition toward this item is specifically around the bus stops and the bus shelters themselves. in investing in kind of infrastructure, specifically the benches that are currently being, that are currently accepted as being installed.

Basically just opposition to the benches themselves. Specifically the benches currently as designed, or like the new ones, the black new ones that have been coming out in the city, have armrests in between the benches. They give you about 21 feet of space. And what, at least in terms of design standards, what usually we see when we actually see those armrests in the middle of benches is really it's hostile design. It's a hostile kind of architecture. What it's saying is a couple of things. One, it's saying, you know, we might not want necessarily

unwanted activity like soliciting or somebody laying down, AKA somebody who might be houseless. It's also saying too, specifically with the new design of about 20, 21 inches of space in the seating is, it's also saying maybe not overtly, but it's saying overtly for our plus size community, only a certain person of a certain body type can actually fit in these bench benches. So when we're looking to actually repair and install these new benches, what we're really saying is we're only wanting a kind of certain type of folks to actually be able to interact in these spaces. And additionally too with the design as we see it, it's also,

we talk to a lot of bus riders, a lot of pedestrians are bus riders, and the experience of riding a bus is one of resignation. But the bus shelters themselves have really poor lighting. We've heard from another bus rider who's actually says that they won't even sit in one of the bus shelters because at night, it's so dark in that space that they also with the digital advertisement, it actually blocks your view of the sidewalk. So you can't even see who's around you. So there's just a general lack of sense of awareness around even safety in these kinds of spaces. So really when we're trying to advocate is that

what's designed currently and what's accepted currently in when we're talking about what we're investing in, we're definitely don't want this-15 seconds left. We definitely don't want this kind of infrastructure. We want stuff that's safe and also as actually supported by bus riders like y'all did in 2017 when you installed the bus shelters on first and Bristol and all those really open open benches and shelters but still needs better lighting but thank you for your time

thank you

zoom id daisy cruz if you would please select the microphone icon on your device

thank you you may proceed with your comment

great thank you um good evening city council my name is daisy and i'm calling on behalf of the kennedy commission in support of the changes for item 8 um the housing opportunities ordinance not sure if that's been continued as well but just wanted to make a quick comment about that thank

Thank you. Thank you. That has been continued. Thank you, Daisy.

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

Hi, thank you, Daisy. And Mr. Mayor, council members, John Hanna, you know me well. I'm a resident of Orange, former resident of Santa Ana. And...

My apologies. I think I muted you. Thank you, John. Okay. My apologies. Should I start over? Yes, sir. Please.

Okay. Is the clock going to start over too?

Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. This is John Hanna and I'm sorry I'm not there. One of our members was, but I think when it got continued, he must have left. But I just want to briefly comment and representing the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters

that both you all in the council, the staff and the planning commission have heard me and some other carpenters speak on occasions in support of requiring a skilled and trained workforce for projects that pay into the housing opportunity fund, as well as for projects that receive money from the fund to construct affordable housing. while we still have concerns about some of the provisions i want to make two things clear tonight even though this matter is continued first the southwest carpenters recommend the council

support the proposed ordinance on its second reading when it finally does come up it's got some problems but it's an improvement over the prior program and it's providing incentives is for contractors who pay into the housing opportunity fund to use a skilled and trained workforce. The second point I'd like to make is that the Southwest Carpenters are committed to working with the council and staff, and you've got a great staff, I gotta tell you that, as well as the community, and as well as members in the construction community to improve the ordinance for the benefit of workers, business and the residents of Santa Ana.

Thank you very much and appreciate all your hard work and trying to make this the best possible ordinance.

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

Hello, Mayor, Council and staff, Adam Wood with the Building Industry Association. Thanks for the opportunity to comment also on the housing opportunity ordinance. I appreciate that it's been continued. And part and parcel of that, we've got time to get in there and make this a policy that works. Let's not let this just sit kind of wasting on the vine. Let's send this back to Planning Commission. Let's make the changes that some of the prior speakers talked about and find a way that benefits everyone. The policy that you have in place that is ready to move forward is going to seriously harm housing supply in Santa Ana.

and ultimately is going to increase the cost of housing at probably the worst possible time. So we'd love to work with you guys to make sure we get this right. I think there's a lot of opportunity here, but what we have today isn't it? Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. That was the last caller.

Great. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Let's move along to the consent calendar items, and I'll ask members of the council if they'd like to pull any items off the consent calendar or state their recusal for any of those items.

Council Member Lopez.

13, please. Council Member Fan has her hand raised.

Great. Council Member Fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to state my recusal for item 15 and 20. Centis Corporation and Illumination Foundation are clients of my employer, Ritiana Tucker. I've never worked on those cases, but just out of an abundance of caution, I am recusing myself. pursuant to regulation 18707. However, because it's on the consent calendar, I do not have to remove myself from the room. Thank you.

Great, thank you for that. Seeing no other and hearing no other items being pulled. Mr. Go ahead, Council Member Hernandez.

Thank you, sir. I would like to ask to pull item 24.

Great, thank you. I'll go ahead and entertain a balance of the the balance of the consent calendar with the two recusal items by Councilmember Fan, item 15 and 20. Is there a motion? So moved. Second. Great, we have a motion by Mayor Pro Tem, a second by Mendoza. Councilmembers, please vote.

Clerk of the council, I'm going to go ahead and cast my vote and let you know that my vote is yes.

Thank you.

Okay, council members Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Fan, Peñalosa, Mayor Protemba, Sarah Mayor Sarmiento voting yes.

Great, thank you everybody. Moving along to the first item that was pulled, that was item number 13 by council member

Jessie LopezItem 13

Lopez. Yes, thank you, Mayor. So I wanted to pull aside then because this is actually the first time that I heard about this program when I was reading the agenda and so I am wondering how many other people don't know that this program exists and I wanted staff to let us know essentially what the money is being used for, if you could tell us what the program is, the goals of the program and if you can let us know if any promotional materials have been

shared on social media or via email certainly madam councilmember this is our national dislocated work program it's a total for three hundred and twenty thousand dollars we received an additional hundred and sixty thousand this year we won't advertise it until you accept the money and allow us to start the program so we have not marketed it yet but when we do market we'll be able to serve 40 more individuals impacted by COVID-19. We're already serving a number of individuals with our first funding source. Now we're getting some more money, and we're going to be adding services for 40 new ones.

But they have to be impacted by COVID-19. And what are the services? They're re-employment services to get them back to work. Counseling and services they need to get back on their feet.

Jessie LopezItem 13

Okay. And once, if this is approved tonight, can we start advertising again on social media?

or via email. We certainly will probably beginning next week. Okay thank you. I'll move to approve if

Jessie LopezItem 13

there's no other questions. I'll move to approve if there's no other questions. Great there's a

motion to approve item number 13. Is there a second? Second. We have a motion and a second. Motion by Councilmember Lopez, a second by Mendoza. Council members please vote.

Madam City Clerk my vote is yes.

Thank you. Council members Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Fan, Peñalosa, Mayor Pro Tem Becerra, Mayor Sarmiento voting yes.

Thank you everybody. Moving along to item number 24, which was pulled by council member Hernandez.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to pull this item as a topic of discussion with my colleagues. This was brought to my attention by community members. and there was a number of concerns that they brought forth. In receiving that email, I went forward and met with Madam City Manager, and I also spoke to Director Nabil Sabo with Public Works. So Madam City Manager, could you give me some clarification? Does this item have anything to do with approving design of bus benches today?

Certainly, Council Member. The item before you is for a contract to do maintenance and advertising in the existing bus shelters. The bus design was approved some time ago, but the company does have responsibility. If there is a bus bench that has been damaged beyond repair, they would show proof to the city, and the city would have the inventory and would deploy the bus bench. But there's nothing in this contract where you're actually approving the design of the bench. It's really for the maintenance and advertising.

Thank you for the clarification, Madam city manager. What was brought to my attention was community members sent me an email just bringing to my attention some of the concerns that they had with some of the bus bench designs that have the armrests in between the center of the benches, which oftentimes unfortunately affects community members that have larger bodies. It also places a lot of community members in positions of discomfort where oftentimes you have a bus stop where, for instance, the 57 bus route, which is off of Bristol,

will run every 25 to 30 minutes, but then you have some bus routes that can run upwards to 45 minutes to an hour. And if you are a community member with a larger body frame and there are those armrests in the center, it can make it extremely difficult for people to be able to sit comfortably while they wait for their bus route to get there. And unfortunately, I just don't think that's the best design. It's a very harmful design and it doesn't embrace community members. So I just wanted to bring this up as a topic of dialogue with my colleagues and to bring some clarity to members of the community.

that this item does not approve design of bus matches.

Thank you, council member. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the council to see if there's any questions, comments, or a motion. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. As somebody that's

Phil BacerraItem 24

actually ridden the bus here in Orange County exclusively for many years, not today, but in the past, it is troubling to think that we hear from folks that are saying that they're transit advocates And they're advocating for removal of certain elements of a bus bench that would, in an essence, turn these into de facto homeless camps. And that's what happens. So when you think about the hardworking residents of this city who have transferred from one bus to another, and those that have ridden the bus know those transfer points sometimes are a pain. They are not always close to each other.

Phil BacerraItem 24

And you walk to the next spot, and you're thinking, gosh, I can't wait to sit down because I've got to wait a little bit for the next bus. And guess what? somebody's there camped out and has taken over that bus bench. So to me a bus bench is there for transit users that are there. They're not there for a long time. They're there to get rest until the next bus arrives. So I appreciate the comments from the folks I called in and sent us an email in regards to lighting and I absolutely agree, especially later at night and because Santa Ana has the high transit usage that we do, we have thankfully from OCTA some late night

Phil BacerraItem 24

routes that run through our city and they definitely should be taken into account to incorporate more of a septic design, you know, crime prevention through environmental design, but at the same time these are not meant to be de facto

Phil BacerraItem 24

homeless shelters. These are places for our community, everybody, to be able to sit and enjoy and be able to use the bus from there. That's what they're for. So with all due respect, I think that I appreciate that the armrests are there. I appreciate that there are elements like that that we would try to keep these benches to be used for the purpose that they were intended for, which are transit riders. I mean, we have enough people that give reasons why they won't use transit, and I would like to make sure that we do everything we can to accommodate more transit riders and not have people say, oh god,

Phil BacerraItem 24

I don't want to go on the bus because if I do, I'm going to get off at a stop and it's not going to be pleasant. So my hope is that we continue to incorporate those design elements. Thank you.

Great. So I guess just for clarity, this isn't about bus design. So this is just approving the

maintenance contract. So I'll move it then. Correct, sir. It's for maintenance and advertising.

Got it. Thank you. I'll go ahead and entertain a motion on the merits of the item. I'll move it.

Second.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Just a quick clarifying question. Madam City Manager, can you give me an idea of what we will be advertising at these bus benches? I'm curious to know what the advertising is going to look like.

I will ask our Public Works Director to come forward. But in the attachment to the staff report, it certainly has a long list of things that WE WOULD NOT PERMIT BEING ADVERTISED IF YOU WANTED TO TAKE A LOOK AT THAT PAGE OF THE ATTACHMENT. BUT I'LL TURN IT OVER TO DIRECTOR SABA TO TALK ABOUT OUR HOPES FOR THE ADVERTISING.

YES, GOOD EVENING, MAYOR, MAYOR PUTIN, MEMBER OF THE CITY COUNCIL. THE ADVERTISEMENT IS TAKING PLACE AS WE SPEAK. WE DO USE OUR SHELTERS AS WE SPEAK FOR ADVERTISEMENT. THAT WILL NOT CHANGE. WE ADVERTISE FOR BUSINESSES AND COMMERCIAL, any commercial business or product can be advertised within our guidelines for advertisement and all in addition to using the bus shelter for advertisement they are available to the city for public public announcements so we've used these bus shelters to announce our water quality reports

in the past and talk about mosquito preventions and things of that nature that the city LEADS. SO IT IS USED FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES AND ADVERTISEMENT AND THAT REVENUE COMES TO THE CITY AND PAID FOR THE MAINTENANCE OF THESE SHELTERS.

GOT IT. THANK YOU. THANK YOU, DIRECTOR SABA. GREAT WORK. IF I COULD JUST MAKE A COMMENT, I WOULD LOVE TO ECHO MY SUPPORT TO SEEING US PROVIDE SOME DIRECTORY FOR RESOURCES RELATED TO COVID, RENTAL and programs of those sorts. I think that would be an innovative way for us to also be proactive in getting the word out to residents that are using public transportation. And lastly, my final comment is if we can, if we can send me an email just letting me know what that list of businesses or I guess,

advertisements that we're not allowing, that'd be helpful. Thank you.

THANK YOU FOR THOSE COMMENTS, COUNCIL MEMBER, COUNCIL WOMAN LOPEZ.

Jessie LopezItem 24

YEAH, I HAVE, I THINK, TWO SHORT COMMENTS. THANK YOU FOR BRINGING THE ITEM FORTH, DIRECTOR SABA. I'M VERY SUPPORTIVE OF, OF COURSE, KEEPING THEM CLEAN, MAINTAINING THEM. ONE OF THE THINGS THAT I BELIEVE IS IN HERE IS LIGHTING, RIGHT? ACHIEVING BETTER LIGHTING FOR THE BUS STOPS, THE SHELTERS, WHICH I KNOW IS NEEDED. GO AHEAD.

YES, ALL BUS SHELTERS HAVE LIGHTS, ALTHOUGH WHAT WE HAVE RIGHT NOW HAS BEEN DAMAGED, AND WE ARE IN THIS CONTRACT, THERE WILL BE REFURBISHED AND LIGHTS WILL COME BACK TO THE BUS SHELTERS OF WHAT WE HAVE RIGHT NOW AND THE NEWER ONES WILL HAVE LIGHTS, SOLAR-POWERED.

Jessie LopezItem 24

OH, PERFECT, SOLAR-POWERED, LOVE THAT. SO JUST FOR CLARIFICATION, THE DESIGN WAS APPROVED BY A PREVIOUS COUNCIL. THIS ITEM IS NOT ASKING US TO DO THAT, CORRECT?

THAT'S CORRECT.

Jessie LopezItem 24

OKAY, THANK YOU. And just lastly, you know, I think that you can be a transportation and active transportation activist or advocate, professional, and care about concrete solutions to homelessness like housing, as opposed to what we're seeing with different things. So, you know, I think both can be very valid opinions and concerns. And thank you to the public for sharing that with us.

Thank you for those comments. Councilmember Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 24

Thank you, Mayor. I know this wasn't related to the design of the bus benches, and I wasn't the city part of the council that approved the previous designs, but I am fully supportive of having the armrest on our bus shelters because of hearing from many members of our community that do use this form of transportation. And I, if we were going to start talking about, you know, being ADA compliant with these buses and bus, we should reach out to OCTA and have them, you know, expand their seats because I've been on public buses and those seats are super narrow.

David PenalozaItem 24

So let's work there first. Thank you, Madam City Manager and Director Saba.

Great. Thank you. Seeing no other comments and hearing no other comments?

I would just say, you know, I want to echo what Council Member Hernandez said about the advertising. I think it's a great space to advertise some of the information and programs that we have. Sometimes we say, you know, how do we get this information out? I think it was to Council Member Lopez's point on an earlier matter. Should we mail it out through the water bill? Should we, you know, put it on social media? And we realize not everybody has access to social media, nor is it the, you know, it's an easy way for us to push out information, but it's not the best way to get information into people's hands.

Bus shelters and benches and areas are very visible to the public. They're on major corridors and people see them all the time as they walk by and drive by, so that would be a great use of that space. And on the design, maybe what we do as Director Saba, maybe we bring that back for a full-blown discussion on what we'd like to see. I certainly have opinions about it. I don't want to voice them now. I do think there may be a, you know, sort of a common, a commonality that we can all, a common agreement that we can come to on that item, but that isn't before us tonight.

But I do want to make sure that we're not hostile towards any community members and we do have some members of our public who have difficulty sitting. And I will take that back to the Transit Authority as well, as I mentioned to them also, that we have to be as accommodating, not only ADA compliant, but it go above and beyond to make sure that we know that we have community members that have a difficulty time getting in and out of small spaces. With that, I'll go ahead and entertain a motion on

this. Or do we have a motion? We have a motion and a second. All right, we have a motion and a second.

Council members, please vote. Madam City Clerk, my vote is yes. Thank you.

The council members Hernandez Lopez Mendoza Pena Loza fan mayor pro tempus Sarah mayor Samantha voting yes

Great. Thank you everybody moving along to the business calendar item item number 29, which is the City Council standing subcommittees and the interest list and appointing members to those subcommittees. I believe the two subcommittees are for public safety and homelessness standing committees and that the only one that there's another one right the legislative committee right so those are the two committees that we're looking for nominations for members of this council to serve on those two subcommittees I believe you may have received some responses

from members of the public that are members of the council that wish to serve on those

Yes, Mayor, I did. I received expressed interest from Mayor Pro Tem Becerra, Councilmembers Hernandez and Mendoza to serve on the Public Safety and Homelessness Standing Subcommittee. And then Mayor Sarmiento, Councilmembers Hernandez and Lopez have expressed interest on serving on the Legislative Ad Hoc Committee.

Great. So it's almost like we shifted the Ad Hoc Members to the Standing Committee Members, Which is kind of what it appears to be but we can certainly go ahead if somebody wants to drop off somebody wants to add on We can go ahead and take that up now Councilmember Penalosa

David PenalozaItem 29

Thank You mayor Sermiento and madam city clerk. I may have missed your email Asking for interest, but I never I don't think I heard from you. I maybe missed it and if I did I apologize but and I reached out to councilmember Hernandez earlier about So I have interest in participating in one of them, legislative or public safety. I will defer to Councilmember Hernandez since he's listed on both to see which one he's less interested in. And I will happily take that one. So I'll defer to my colleague, Mayor Sarmiento.

Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Hernandez, I know that we've got you on both and maybe you don't want to do double duty. and you're on both, you're nominated, I guess, for being considered for both legislative and the public safety committee.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I am happy to open up the legislative committee to Council Member Penalosa.

Perfect. So as I see it now, thank you for that, Council Member. As I see the two configurations of the subcommittees for public safety and homelessness, it would be Councilmember Hernandez, Mayor Pro Tem Becerra, and Councilwoman Mendoza. And on the legislative subcommittee, it would be Councilmember Lopez, myself, and Councilmember Peñalosa. Is that correct?

Yes.

Great. Do we have to take these? Can we just go ahead and do them together?

Yes, we can do them together. All right.

David PenalozaItem 29

Go ahead. Just wanted to say that I appreciate that, Council Member Hernandez. Thank you. Absolutely. Excellent. Thank you.

Is there a motion?

Phil BacerraItem 29

So moved.

Second. Great. We have a motion and a second. Council Members, please vote.

Did Council Member Mendoza second or was it Lopez? Peña Luzza. Oh, I'm sorry. Peña Luzza. Neither one. Thank you for that.

Madam City Clerk, my vote is a yes.

Thank you.

Okay, motion carries with Council Members Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Fan, Peñalosa, Mayor Pro Tempecerra, Mayor Sarmiento voting yes.

Great, thank you. I usually restate who made the motion and who made the second, so I threw you off. That's my bad. Thank you. Moving along to item number 30, which is the first quarter budget update, and I believe this is an item that was continued from the last meeting.

Yes, thank you, Mayor and Council Members. this is a continuation from December 21st. It was a good news report on last fiscal year, as well as a first quarter budget update. It was continued so that we could make the changes to it that were requested by your discussion on the 21st. So all of the recommendations in the staff report for programming of one-time money and also reoccurrent money hasn't changed, but we've made the additions that you requested. So for one-time appropriations, we have added to the list a pilot's graffiti art program, commonly referred to as GAP, $50,000 funding,

a streetlight allocation for substantiated requests for those lights of $750,000, enhanced library services and maybe multiple locations for $750,000, and of the reoccurring additions, we increased the Juneteenth celebration from $50,000 to $75,000, and we added an additional $25,000 to the general city events budget to account for some other celebrations that you had discussed. And $100,000 allocated to the tree trimming program. And so our recommendations is that you approve the ones we recommended the last time plus the new additions.

And at this time, staff is recommending that the remaining one-time dollars of almost $15 million, you do not program any further at this time. and the finance director myself are here if you have any questions.

Great. Thank you for that. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the council to see if there's any questions or comments.

Mayor? Yes, go ahead. Council Member Fan, then Council Member Peñalosa.

Thai Viet PhanItem 30

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Madam City Manager. So just looking at the events budget, I'm supportive of them, but I guess, you know, I'm a little concerned just because these are typically one-time dollars and you know, one year like right now we're doing really well, but I guess I would like to consider them for both the Juneteenth celebration and the city events budget increase, at least for now go under the one-time appropriations

Thai Viet PhanItem 30

and to see what it's like, how much it costs. If we get vendors who buy in, maybe we recoup some of that and reassess in the future, just because these events are expensive. This is the cost, but we also have, for example, other staffing costs that are related to it, as far as I'm aware. So that would be my proposal to the council. I guess it might be a motion to approve, but to move the Juneteenth celebration and the city events budget to the one-time funds.

Thank you for that. Let me call on council member Pinalosa.

David PenalozaItem 30

I will make a substitute motion or in a friendly amendment and see if the maker of the motion accepts also removing the contracted administrative support for City Council for the amount of $210,000 for the remaining of this fiscal year, and then a future reoccurring cost of nearly half a million dollars in contracted administrative support for City Council. I still, as mentioned last meeting, I do not think that at this time a City Council aid, individual aid for each one of us is needed.

David PenalozaItem 30

I think it's a little bit responsible to do that during a global pandemic and seeing that these are one-time funds. So I would make that friendly amendment. And if the maker of the motion agrees to that.

Thai Viet PhanItem 30

I do not. Thank you.

David PenalozaItem 30

Okay. Well, I would make a substitute motion then to remove the contracted administrative support for city council.

Phil BacerraItem 30

I would second it with a question, and that is you made a mention of $500,000 going forward. So are you saying not to do the amount for this year, but then in future fiscal years?

David PenalozaItem 30

No, not to do it entirely for now. Maybe it's something that we look at during the budget process, but doing it during a mid-year budget review is basically, I guess if the city manager can really clarify and just define what exactly this role would be. I do not understand the cost. I mean, it's a lot of money for, we have executive assistants. We added a third executive assistant during the last budget cycle because of the added, the needed request for help. But I'm not sure what this would be, this administrative aid.

Certainly, Council Member Penelosa. So just a clarification, we did have dollars that we were recommending that you program for reoccurring and then we had one-time funds that we were recommending you do a program only on a one-time basis because we don't believe those would be reoccurring in the future years. So there's two categories that are covered in this staff board. For the contracted aides, it comes out of a request that several of your colleagues have spoken to me about and it's just the need for them to have further assistance,

whether it is on keeping up with constituents requests, whether it's keeping up on correspondence, whether it's doing policy research. We do have a limited staff in the city manager's office, and we are very, very busy in that office, and so this would just enable a way for the elected officials that believe that they do need additional services to assist them. It would be a contracted service that it wouldn't be employing another person in the city manager's office. It would be a contracted aide, whether it's a senior policy aide or whether it's more of a research position.

It would be determined by the individual council member based on their needs.

David PenalozaItem 30

So it would be someone that we get to the side who is, because if there was a request by, you said, several council members, I would hope that those council members this is something that would be a council item that would be requested as on the city on a future city council agenda and see if there's interest in bringing this forward because it is not fiscally Responsible to add something with half a million reoccurring costs With when we're dealing with one-time funds. I just don't understand the

There when we did our analysis we found out that you can we recommend and we project that you are going to have an increase in reoccurring revenues of a much smaller amount than what you have available for one-time programming. So the staff report is divided in those two sections. So staff is confident that with the amounts that are programmed for reoccurring that you will have ongoing revenue that can support them. Of the one-time, which is the larger bucket, those are just one-time, and we do not believe that that will reoccur in the future. So there's two types of funding.

The funding that's being recommended for any contracted aides is of the amount that we believe will in fact be reoccurring into the future.

David PenalozaItem 30

That's even with the sunset of Measure X in the next decade.

We do have as part of all of our analysis a projection that goes 10 years. So you're talking about a sunset which I believe occurs in 2029 is the first one. Did I get that right? Yes, 2029.

David PenalozaItem 30

Okay. So would this be something that could potentially go to the voters to see that increase in city council support on the staffing level?

It certainly is not anything that would be required to go to the voters.

David PenalozaItem 30

So what would these contracted administrative council aides, how would their role differ from our executive assistants that are on the eighth floor handling constituent calls and responding to emails and handling our mail? What is the difference there?

Okay, so you each have an executive assistant that you currently share, and those individuals are more of a high-level clerical support. So if you needed, if you wanted a position research done, It's more of the work that I think Daniel has provided exceptional service to a lot of you, but he can't keep up with all seven members doing that type of work. I can speak from experience at another city that I worked for where this is the path that they went down when the elected officials and they have the exact same form of government. It's a charter. It's a council manager form of government.

They did want additional assistance in performing their policy roles.

David PenalozaItem 30

And the qualifications would be what exactly for these aides?

It's not a position. It's not a city employment. It's not civil service. It's not one that we would create a classification and go through the civil service process because if we did that, you wouldn't be able to actually pick the person. You would get a person that was a result of that process. It's just a contracted individuals. So you can contract with someone that's like-minded, has the same political beliefs that you have, and has the same information on initiatives that are of desire for you. So it's not an employment position.

So the contract would be a professional services contract that would be customized for what the need is that you're seeking.

David PenalozaItem 30

So the city council members up here, including myself, would be able to contract anybody?

Well, there'd be certain parameters that have to qualify for the contract. I mean, they'd have to be capable of providing those services. They'd have to understand that they're an independent contractor. They'd have to comply with the IRS regulations for employee versus independent contractor.

David PenalozaItem 30

Okay. And would they be allowed on the eighth floor or to communicate with yourself, executive directors? Is it something that's going to be, are they going to be hearing, I'm just thinking about staff, are they going to be hearing now from 7 plus 7, 14 people total?

Yeah, the same parameters would apply with your positions of elected officials. You cannot direct any staff, neither would your contracted aides be able to do that, with the exception of the three that directly report to you.

David PenalozaItem 30

Okay. I just, it's concerning because, I mean, we all knew what the job was and if it's something that, you know, people are overwhelmed and think they need the help, I mean, it's sad because it was a job that we signed up to do and we knew what it was. So I've been able to manage and handle and be 100% committed to this role, but it's just, you know, unfortunate. But, you know, that is my substitute motion to remove that because of the high cost of half a million dollars in reoccurring costs.

Thank you. Do we have somebody?

Yes, Council Member Phan.

Council Member Phan, go ahead.

Thai Viet PhanItem 30

Thank you, Mayor. And I just wanted to explain why I did not support the friendly amendment. I understand council member Penielos has position. However, I think that we've done a lot more in the last year on this council than I think many councils can expect to do in four years. I don't think there are a lot of council members out there doing a year and a half of research on rent control, rent stabilization, just cause evictions. And in fact, actually draft up, edit, and work on the ordinances themselves. I don't think there are a lot of council members who are in some cases solely responsible

Thai Viet PhanItem 30

for being the only person responding to a whole community who only have one Asian American or Vietnamese American person that they can communicate with or call. And I also believe that there are a lot of policy areas that we can benefit from by doing the research on our own, but with the assistance of an aid. For example, if I want to pursue microgrids in the city, I would have to get the council to agree on what that would look like, what that means. And before I can do the research, I'd have to do the research on my own. I'm happy to do the research on my own.

Thai Viet PhanItem 30

However, there are many policy areas that we want to pursue and look at that can help the community. And having a council aid would help us to do that. The other issue is, although I think it's great that we have our administrative assistants, you know, kind of trying to route some calls or field some emails, frankly, she really is just clerical. For me, she might pick a few calls up, but at the end of the day, I'm the one interfacing with the resident. And while that is great when I can get to it, but this is a part-time position.

Thai Viet PhanItem 30

cities like Anaheim and Irvine are both charter cities and they have part-time council members as of right now and they have council aides who help them with the newsletters who help them do any type of town halls who help prep them for meetings and presentations who help prep them for events who actually do research to support any type of policy areas that they might be interested in recognition of the public and so on so forth there are a whole variety of areas that as of right now um at least i feel i'm doing the best i can maybe i just wasn't fully aware of what

Thai Viet PhanItem 30

the demands of the job are but um i know that i can do a better job if i can have some more of that support i think daniel is great but unfortunately at least you know for example regarding the sunshine ordinance that took a really long time uh because you know he's working on that as well as a million other things having someone that can specifically respond to the policy needs and constituent needs that i have or whomever the council might have i think would be very helpful and ensure that we provide better service for our residents and be more responsive or at

Thai Viet PhanItem 30

least as responsive as possible and so that that is something that i've requested before and that's why i would be supportive of that item i fully understand we all have different needs and maybe for those who don't have a need you don't have to use an aid you don't have to spend the money

thank you great thank you excellent comments thank you councilmember fan let me go ahead and see if there's anybody else on the council that has any additional councilmember lopez yeah i i

Jessie LopezItem 30

100 support the item about contracted admin support for city council i am very busy in this role and and I have managed, but also there are times when I need help in terms of researching, in terms of graphic design, and maybe, you know, as Councilmember Pham said, not everybody here is as busy as possibly, as maybe we are, and that's fine. Maybe you don't need that help. Maybe you've managed to come this far without doing everything that this job really requires people to do but I do need that support and I shouldn't be ashamed to

Jessie LopezItem 30

ask for that if you know work three residents expect quality of service from me then I need to be honest with them and let them know that our staff is tapped out they do everything above and beyond you know there are times where it's at nighttime or weekends and staff is responding to my emails and that is really unfair to them as well we can't be a city that talks and promote you know having a work-life balance and then demand our staff to do all of this work that another aid could be doing and this is another opportunity for us to open up

Jessie LopezItem 30

this you know institution to Santa Ana residents how many times have we've heard young people say I want to be an intern I want to have these opportunities and here you and we're gonna say it we're gonna sit up here and say yes and then we're going to turn around and shut that door on them how is that functioning for us you know and if and you know to counter my advice to you would be if you're gonna you know say remove that then you should also be advocating to remove the use of the offices for each council member because some of those offices stay empty you know people don't come in

Jessie LopezItem 30

here and use them every day so why would we need to have individual council members have an allocated office space. I don't think that's the best use of our office space. So I'm not going to be supporting your sub motion and that's where I'm at.

Great. Thank you for those comments.

And just for clarification, was there a second for Council Member Fan's original motion?

Yep. I'll go ahead. Oh, no, I'm sorry.

Yeah, no, Council Member Fan. Okay. Yes. Okay. Thank you, Mayor.

Jessie LopezItem 30

So it's not a substitute, right? It's a motion? Yes, so council member. The original motion. Yes, okay.

Can you read the original motion please?

Sure.

Thai Viet PhanItem 30

Do you want me to do it? Council member.

Sure, you can tell me what the original motion is, yes.

Thai Viet PhanItem 30

So my original motion was to approve the allocations or staff's recommendation. However, put the Juneteenth celebration and the city events budget increases into the one-time funds instead of the recurring funds.

So I want to support the staff's recommendation, council member Van. I want to see if you are willing to amend that and keep it as a recurring item. And here's my reasoning. The Black History Parade originated in the city of Santa Ana. It was founded by Helen Shipp, a Santa Ana resident that resides in Ward 5. May she rest in peace.

Eventually, they had a Black History Parade in the city of Santa Ana, which lost its funding in the late 2000s. That parade was never brought back to the city. Santa Ana was one of the largest thriving black communities in Orange County, dating back to the 1940s. Eventually, into the 80s and 90s, a lot of families moved out and moved to the Los Angeles County and to the IE. So I think it's important that we show our solidarity with the black community here. and I think that this demonstrates

that they are not a priority to put them on the backlist and just have them as a one time. I think it's important for us to show, especially in light of what we saw last year with the George Floyd uprising. It's important that we don't just say that we support black lives, but that we truly show it through actions. And I think us having this as a recurring item speaks volumes.

So would you be willing to have that amendment?

Thai Viet PhanItem 30

Yeah, just with a quick question to Madam City Manager. With these types of events, do we, you know, ask for, I guess, paying vendors and sponsors and things like that so we're not the only ones bearing the cost or maybe there might be some type of, not reimbursement, but recuperation of the cost?

The City traditionally of the events that we hold, it's both ways. there's some where we would foot the cost and then there's others where it's almost a co-sponsoring and there is other sources of revenue.

Thai Viet PhanItem 30

Okay, I would be amenable to the amendment. So just approving staff's recommendation. But I would just ask that staff look into having co-sponsored events or at least events where we have sponsorships to help address the cost. Thank you.

Phil BacerraItem 30

Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Council Member Fenn.

Great, thank you. And with that, I'm happy to second the motion. Great. Let me go ahead and call on some others that are here. Go ahead, Mayor Pro Tem.

Phil BacerraItem 30

So a couple of questions. So to clarify, we have the substitute motion that's on the floor right now.

Without a second?

Phil BacerraItem 30

No, no, I seconded his motion.

Okay.

Phil BacerraItem 30

But the question I actually have for staff, so on your staff report when we say city events budget to accommodate additional events, such as, and you list a couple of events, that's not exclusive, right? There could be others because as we talk about events and we talk about what to celebrate when it comes to our history, we, I think, many a times, neglect our totality of our history. We don't really celebrate. I mean, to ask for celebrating our city's birthday, I felt like sometimes I was pulling eye teeth. So I'm hopeful that could be something that gets added to the repertoire.

Phil BacerraItem 30

But I just want to confirm that that what you listed here in the staff report is not exclusive.

Mayor Prochem, you're correct. I know with COVID, it's been a long time since we've seen a normal year and done all of the events that we usually put on. But this would be giving additional dollars to do, in addition to what we usually program every year to do those events when we get back to doing them, but then plus some other ones.

Phil BacerraItem 30

Okay, thank you. And I feel uncomfortable saying this, but just given some of the comments that I've heard from my colleagues, the reason I'm supporting Council Member Penaloza's substitute motion is because, you know, personally, I do enormous amounts of outreach, constituent services, and yes, I do ask staff like Daniel to help me on research on occasion. But the thing that I'm hearing from certain members that kind of troubles me is that if you're going to commit a large amount of time to research, I think the way that we process some of this stuff right now works. In other words, you bring it to the council. If there's enough

Phil BacerraItem 30

support on council, we have wonderful staff, professional staff. I mean, I can go to Nabil or Min with some grand ideas, but they're the ones that are going to know whether it's feasible, how to execute it, and I'm going to trust their professional expertise. If I disagree, we can bring that back for a discussion at council, but to dive into that level of research that necessitates a separate staff person, I don't know. Now, if the folks on the eighth floor are really up at the wall where it comes to requests, right? Like we've given so many requests that

Phil BacerraItem 30

you need more help on the eighth floor, I would be open to looking at some way, somehow, giving you more assistance. But I don't know as far as for each of us to have somebody that comes And I know, Madam City Manager, in another city, you've experienced this system and its work. I'm a little reluctant here, especially just, I think it would, you know, like with any of these things, it would take time to get used to. But, you know, I'll be so bold to say I would prefer for the council to actually receive a full-time level compensation. But that is something that,

Phil BacerraItem 30

if that were ever to be posed as a question, that would go to the voters. But I know I'd put in plenty of time answering questions for constituents and a lot of times for some of my colleagues constituents frankly so when we talk about how much time we put in and oh my goodness you know what there's a lot of folks up here that I'm answering your guys as constituents calls but you know what at the same time with all that being said I as Nabil and men and Christine knows I with their assistance were able to get through it and I think that we see very very

Phil BacerraItem 30

satisfactory results. So I'm going to continue to support the substitute motion at this time. Thank you.

Thanks for those comments. Any other comments?

I have a question.

Go ahead, Councilmember.

In regards to the monies for the assistance, are these for interns or is it for permanent staff full-time?

Allotment council member for potential contracted work is each individual elected official would have a budget of 60,000 on a full year basis and it would be to utilize how you best see fit for contracted services. So let's say you want a policy aid that can assist you when you attend and events or maybe attend in your place, you could have an individual that meets the qualifications to do that as a service provider. If you wanted something more intense, you could have more of a senior policy advisor where you would be looking for someone to contract with that has that level of expertise.

I know in the previous city when we first initiated it, some council members selected a higher level senior policy aide to contract with, whereas others contracted with two separate individuals for a lower level of service. So it's whatever your needs are within that predetermined budget. Did that answer the question? Yes, thank you very much. That was it.

And one more thing, if I can. Our assistant city manager just pointed out a very important thing. As contracted individuals, they're not city employees. They don't have a vested interest in their job. and that would be necessary as the elected officials. We like you all to stay, but occasionally elections happen, and you do change out. So the employee, that's why it's not an employee, and it's a contracted individual.

Great. Thank you for that. I haven't spoken yet, but go ahead, Mayor, Councilmember Pinalosa.

David PenalozaItem 30

Thank you, Mayor. I just, one final question in regards to the role. How is it billed? billed? Is it hourly? Is it something that, I mean, is it just a flat out $60,000 check? Or if we decide to hire three, is it $20,000 each? I mean, how are these hours billed?

That's an excellent question. And sir, the most common way that I have seen, it's usually an hourly rate. And the individual would submit the hours that they worked, and they would be compensated for the hours worked at that hourly rate. Now obviously for a senior policy aid, it's going to be a higher hourly rate than it would be if it is a lower level policy aid. But staff would certainly work with you on that and then a contract would be drawn up that the city would execute with the individual or individuals. It really provides a lot of flexibility to the elected officials based on what they need to perform the best in their role.

David PenalozaItem 30

So the contracted aide submits hours for payment. Who signs off on those hours to make sure that they're accurate and they actually did work those hours?

The elected official that's assigning their work would be responsible for certifying those hours, and then it would go to accounts payable for a payment.

David PenalozaItem 30

That sounds very messy and gross, but okay. Thank you, Madam City Manager.

Thank you for those comments. I think everybody had a chance to speak on this. I'm supportive of supporting staff's recommendation on this. The only one, a few things I had were on the enhanced library services backslash location. To the extent that, and I think Brian left, but he's done an amazing job with his concepts and his transformation of the main library. To the extent that these could maybe be located at one location and you know 750,000 seems like a lot but maybe for a built-out library or even an e-library is not a lot and it can go quickly

I know that we also have here the Cyprus location the Old Cyprus fire station. Maybe that could be a site that these funds could be used in addition to all the you know the infrastructure improvements that we see there, but just a you know just a thought on that as opposed to having a bunch of kiosks. I like the kiosks, but you know, I think we may want to have a footprint at some location and that seems to be a logical one. So that's just something for staff to consider. On the events that we were talking about, you know, I remember when we used to do fiestas patrias, we would do like a, it would be a two or three

day event. We would actually make money on some of those events. I mean, it took a while. We didn't make money on all of them, but some of them would be in the black or some of them would be actually at cost because we had so many people attending. At one time we had almost a quarter of a million people that would come in to visit the town. And it's not just the expenses that they paid into at the event, but they would spend money at the restaurants, they would go to the stores. And so it was a really good injection of money and investment in the city. So I think these events when done well could actually, you know, be cost neutral.

You know, on the on the AIDS, I guess, you know, I've had this conversation over the years being, you know, in Santa Ana as a part-time, you know, public servant and talking to my counterparts both in Irvine and Anaheim and Long Beach and other cities that are comparable in size and comparable in the complexity of what we do. you know, we're not just directing, you know, our public works director to go fill a pothole here and there or fix a sidewalk crack. We are dealing with people, you know, losing their lives and sometimes not having a place to live and dealing with some very complicated issues.

And if people think that, you know, those things are simple to do, they certainly aren't. At least when you take your job seriously, the way I have, I think, you know, I want to do quality work. and I think sometimes you get what you pay for, you know, and unfortunately the residents of this city have been underserved because of this we have affluent communities that you know are able to have you know paid full-time positions for their council members They have staff in addition to that and with all due respect I think you know my my executive assistant Rosa Flores is probably one of the most

experienced professional quality people that I've ever met and I worked with a couple in my time I worked with Becky Magallon who was here for about 39 years and knew every aspect of the city. She wasn't trained to do policy work and sometimes I did need to have policy work done because there are complex issues that I think, you know, a previous comment by Councilmember Fan when we're dealing with drafting ordinances, reviewing them, looking at legal analysis by our city attorney's office, not everybody here is an attorney. Not everybody here is a professional.

And so for us to make quality decisions, you know, to just look at something and expect to understand it at first glance is really, you know, selling the residents short. It's not really what we do. It's the product. It's the performance that we convey to our residents. And so, look, I respect people disagreeing on this. That's fine. I just think that we have to see on par what type of service we want to provide to our residents. And, you know, I respect Daniel, I respect some of the other people, but, you know, when they're getting, you know, six different, you know, calls for doing research or just

trying to figure something out, and then, you know, if people are saying that they're responding to, you know, other people's, you know, constituents, well, I respond to all of yours. So, you know, my work is even more extensive than many of you here. So, look, I just think that, you know, we're going to disagree on that. I think to the resident, they're actually getting a net benefit because we're not getting paid much. So those funds are going towards an intern, and hopefully I can find somebody from St.

Ana that I can, you know, that I can retain and teach them a skill that will develop into something that, you know, will hopefully help that person's future. So, you know, I'm very supportive of the staff recommendation with all the comments that were made. So I believe we have a substitute motion. Let's go ahead and vote on that.

And Council Member Fan has her hand raised.

Go ahead, Council Member.

Thai Viet PhanItem 30

Sorry, just a quick question for Madam City Manager. Even though we approve, for example, this, I guess, council budget, would we be able to, or, you know, have parameters? So, for example, I know in our city municipal code, there are provisions against, you know, close relatives working together. So a parameter might be not hiring family members or your significant other, things like that, that would, again, I think still help prevent any type of issues, I guess.

Certainly council member, and I can assure you that the city attorney and your city manager would advise if we saw you heading down a course that it wasn't appropriate to do.

Thai Viet PhanItem 30

Great. So although it's not the city contracting, you know, we would still comply with other contracting or confidence of interest provisions, such as, you know, 1090 and the PRA and things

like that. Correct. The professional services contract would have all the needed requirements

in it. Okay, great, thank you. Great, thank you for that. Go ahead, Council Member. The question

David PenalozaItem 30

that I have is in regards to just materials for the council aides, business cards, maybe a t-shirt, a badge, or not a badge but a name tag, is that included in this expense or is that going to be

something that's just absorbed somewhere else the this recommended 60,000 per each council member is the maximum amount of the budget however you have to remember these are independent contractors so they do have to provide their own tools per se I think you use that as an example of one of yours but certainly we have badges for contractors that come and go at City Hall so that would be included in there and I guess any I'm trying to think of what material that

David PenalozaItem 30

you're thinking of that they would need business cards or name tags and the

contractor ID badges would be yes they'd be able to have those business cards I would have to I don't know off the top of my head if we allow business cards for

David PenalozaItem 30

contractors because I know the aides in Anaheim do have official Anaheim name tags and business cards, so that's where I'm asking because if they're going to be a detail

that we'd need to work out.

Okay. Thank you. Great. I think we're ready to vote on the substitute motion.

Madam City Clerk, is the substitute motion that was brought forth by Council Member Pengel, is that correct?

That's correct and seconded by Mayor Pro Tempessar.

Okay, I am a no vote on this.

Thank you.

Council Member Peñalosa, if you could. Oh. Thank you.

Okay, motion fills with Council Members Hernandez, Lopez, Fan, and Mayor Sarmiento voting no. Council Members Mendoza, Peñalosa, Mayor Potembe, Sarah voting yes.

CHAIRMAN BERNANKEY, Great, thank you. Now we'll vote on the original motion by Council Member Fan and seconded, I believe, by Council Member Hernandez.

CHAIRMAN BERNANKEY, And Mayor Sarmiento, just out of an abundance of caution, so this is with the amendment, correct, Madam City Clerk?

COMMISSIONER ATRITZ- This was the

the amendments to keep Juneteenth with the recurring funding.

Thai Viet PhanItem 30

Yes, so it goes back to the original staff recommendation.

Correct. Okay. I'm a yes vote, Madam City Clerk.

Thank you.

Council members, if you can please cast your vote. Councilmember Lopez.

Okay, motion carries with 6-1. Councilmembers Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Peñalosa, Fan, and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes and Mayor Pro Tem Becerra voting no.

Wow. All right. Let's move on to, I think we took care of item number 31 and 32 so we can move along to item number 33, which is the public hearing on the proposed events permit policy and the amendments to the miscellaneous fee resolution.

And I understand that there is a, is there a very brief staff presentation?

There is. This is an item that's been at least half before you. It is to approve a resolution that would approve the proposed events permit policy and a resolution that would adopt some of the miscellaneous fees, which are changing the old fees to updated fees. We can give you a short presentation on it, or we certainly can answer any questions you may have.

Let's go ahead and maybe keep it on a Q&A, if that's all right, unless council members need an overview. I think everybody had a chance to meet with staff, and I hope we're all doing that in between our meetings. Let me go ahead and formally open up the public hearing and see if there are any members of the public that wish to address this. I don't see anybody here in public, but is there anybody online?

No, and we didn't receive any written communication.

Great. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the council to see if they have any questions on the item before us. Questions from the council?

Anybody online?

No, I didn't have anybody virtually raise their hand. No, no, I'm talking about the council members. Yeah, I'm referring to the council. Sorry. Yes.

Nobody? All right, no takers? So let me just a couple of quick questions, Lisa, and thank you for being up here. I did have a chance to look at the fee schedule and

You know I recall that somebody had mentioned that Just for an example the zoo has an area that you can rent out I think if it were under one of the categories or criteria for a resident that wanted to do it for a you know for a public event has that amount increased, I guess what I was looking for is sort of the net difference if there was an increase in the proposed and what was that compared to the original? You know, so I didn't see a category for what the original fee was and maybe what the proposed and that net change, right, the delta between the original and the proposed.

And maybe I missed it in the report.

Thank you for the question.

The first of all, the zoo, I want to go back to that. That is in coordination with the Friends of the Santa Ana Zoo that are responsible for renting out spaces and places at the zoo for events. but the events policy that is before you this evening, the fees, what we did is we took what was existing, an existing fee that was already provided and approved by the city council except for seven fees.

And the seven fees that were created were specifically and primarily for non-residents and for-profit-making entities. So to answer your question specifically, there is no percentage, unless I can have Tim Pagano come up and help me out with this question on the increase. but we just we stuck with what was there before and utilized those fees and then added and created seven new fees. And maybe what I wasn't clear about is that I know that, you know, I guess where I wanted to see, you know, were there increases in some of these fee allocations?

So that's where I guess I didn't, you know, I wasn't quite clear if maybe there was another category, if it was referenced someplace else. But, you know, for example, there's, you know, for minor events, you know, actually moderate events here, it shows an $832 fee per day when it comes to a resident that is doing a nonprofit organization event from, I guess, less than a thousand people for a moderate event is what that category would fall into. WHAT WAS THAT BEFORE? BECAUSE I KNOW SOMEBODY TOLD ME, LOOK, I'M PAYING NOW, I HAVE TO PAY $800 FOR, YOU KNOW, MY NONPROFIT TO USE THE ZOO SPACE.

AND MAYBE THAT'S SPECIFIC TO THE, YOU KNOW, THE FOZAS. BUT, YOU KNOW, THEY SAID I USED TO PAY $300. SO I THOUGHT, WOW, THAT IS A BIG INCREASE FROM, YOU KNOW, $300 TO $800. AND, YOU KNOW, THAT'S WHERE I GUESS I WANTED TO SEE A LITTLE BIT MORE INFORMATION. SURE. THANK YOU, MR. MAYOR, FOR THE QUESTION AND CITY COUNCIL. WITH REGARDS TO THE MODERATE FEES THAT WE'RE RECOMMENDING THOSE FEES EXISTED PRIOR TO IN THE OLD STRUCTURE THAT WE WERE WORKING OFF OF SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE WE KNEW THAT THE CITY COUNCIL DIDN'T WANT US TO INTRODUCE NEW FEES UNLESS WE ABSOLUTELY HAD TO SO WITH REGARDS TO THE QUESTION

THERE'S A LOT OF DIFFERENT VARIABLES THAT COME INTO PLAY SPECIFICALLY WITH PRICING OUT MODERATE EVENT, YES, YOU ARE LOOKING AT AN INCREASE BASED ON SIZE. AND SO YOU'RE CORRECT IN SAYING THAT IT'S A EVENT THAT'S 100 PLUS PLUS INDIVIDUALS, BUT IT COULD ALSO GO UP TO 999 INDIVIDUALS, TOO. SO THAT THAT RANGE THAT WE'RE PROVIDING, THE CONTINUUM THAT WE'RE PROVIDING THERE IS TRYING TO COVER THOSE VARIABLES THAT EXIST WITHIN THAT FEED STRUCTURE. SO WHILE IT APPEARS ON PAPER THAT THERE WAS AN INCREASE, is it was still working within the same fee structure that we had prior to us trying to reorganize

so that we could effectively provide the priorities that we had for the groups beforehand in the old structure, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, I get that. I think when we talk about moderate events versus major events, major events are 1,000 plus. Moderate events are 1,000 less or less than 1,000, right? So if you had a moderate event that had 102 people there, they're paying 832. A major event that would have over 1,000 people, they're paying 1249.

That delta between those to me seems to be sort of harsher or more cost prohibitive for that moderate event sponsor or whoever's putting that on. But I guess my real question is, are these the same fees that we've adopted? Or are these higher than what maybe 2020, 2021 were? Are there any increases in these fees that we're going to be adopting tonight? Oh. Can I answer that real quick? Sure. So if you look at the – some of these fees have decreased. We have decreased fees for residents.

And we did that by charging premium rates for non-residents or for-profit making. So if you look at last year, there's a strike-through under Group 1 for a resident non-profit, which is the $832. And then you look down at the minor event, it's now $249.

So something new also to this is the minor, moderate, and major events, which we did not have prior. We just charged the $8.32 for resident nonprofit, and for a minor event, resident nonprofit is now $2.49. Got it. Got it. So those I see you making sort of adjustments there, reductions for residents, and the cost, maybe the increased cost is borne by the non-resident on those reservations. Okay. I guess that's maybe in the future what you could do to help me is like, you know,

this is what the existing fees, this is what the proposed fee would be on these new miscellaneous fee matters that come before us. That might be a little helpful. In any event, that was basically the question I had on just any potential increases. but that was clear. If there's nothing further, I'll go ahead and-

Council member Hernandez has his hand.

Go ahead, council member.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Great comments, just wanted to applaud that. So I wanted to make a recommendation to add to the following policy so that we can add to page two, section 2.0 of the policy, if we can add the following, to have city staff liaison work with the city recognized neighborhood associations to accommodate facilities for monthly meetings and special events. City recognized neighborhood associations should not be charged fees to utilize city owned facilities for meetings and or city owned or controlled public property for special events. Other fees may apply for special events,

depending upon a variety of special factors, such as attendance, utilization of private security and or Santa Ana Police Services slash traffic control, concessions slash alcohol service, et cetera. So I would really like to see us prioritize neighborhood associations and accommodate them. And I did speak to you, Director Rudloff, about this today. So is this something that we can add to this policy?

Yes, certainly we could add this to the policy. We work with the Neighborhood Association Liaison, Margarita Mencino, and so she will help our Neighborhood Associations with any type of special event permit processing. we would potentially or we would waive the fee for the permit but if there's like you said if there's any other variables of their event that they need police services or security services etc etc then they would have to pay for that so yes we can add this to the policy if that's amenable to the City

Council Council member is wonderful is that a motion with like I guess an amendment to the proposed staff recommendation. So we have a motion by Councilmember Hernandez, a second by Mayor Pro Tem, and I believe Councilmember Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 33

I did have a question to Councilmember Hernandez's amendment. So if a neighborhood association wanted to have a block party or movies at the park when you know off-season would not, they're not gonna have to pay this permit to the The permit fee, correct. Okay. So any neighborhood association event is exempt from paying the fee? Correct. The permit fee only. Yes. Okay.

Phil BacerraItem 33

Got it. Mr. Mayor.

Great. Thank you for that comment. Mayor Pro Tem.

Phil BacerraItem 33

I just wanted to thank Councilmember Hernandez for that amendment. That was fantastic. And especially given the current situation we have with our folks over at the school district, I think this is well-timed, very appropriate. it's good that we're taking care of our own neighborhood associations. So thank you, Councilmember Hernandez, and I'm looking forward to supporting the motion.

Excellent. Seeing no other comments or questions from the Council, thank you for those comments. Thank you for the presentation and the responses. We have a motion and a second before us. Councilmembers, please vote. I'm sorry. Madam City Clerk, I am a yes vote. And let me close the public hearing before we vote. So we are closed. I got it in right before you mentioned the vote.

Thank you. Motion carries with council members. Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Fan, Peñalosa, Mayor Potembe, Sarah, Mayor Sarmiento, voting yes.

Great. Thanks, everybody. Let's go ahead and recess the city council meeting and convene the special successor meeting. And I will ask the Madam Clerk, if you'll please call roll on the successor agency.

Council Member Hernandez?

Yes.

Council Member Lopez? Yes. Council Member Mendoza?

Yes.

Council Member Phan?

Here. Thank you. Council Member Pinalosa?

David PenalozaItem 33

Present.

Mayor Pro Tempecerra? Here. And Mayor Sarmiento.

Here. Madam Clerk, do we have any members of the public wishing to address the successor agency?

We do not, and we also did not receive any written communication.

Great. Thank you. I'll go ahead and entertain a motion and a second for the consent calendar items.

Amount.

There a second? I'll go ahead and second. Motion by Council Member Mendoza, second by Mayor Sarmiento.

Vote.

I am a yes vote on this Madam City Clerk.

Thank you.

Okay, motion carries with Councilmember Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Peñalosa, Fan, Mayor Pritam-Bacerra, and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes.

Great, thank you. I'll go ahead and adjourn the Special Successor Agency meeting and reconvene the City Council meeting and call on Councilmember Hernandez that has a Council requested item number 34. I'll go ahead and turn it over to you, Councilmember.

Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. I just wanted to bring this item forth. As we approach Black History Month, I am reminded of how far our country has came, but how much further we have to go. And I live in one of the most vibrant parts of Santa Ana, in Ward 5, there is a very strong black presence in this community. It was once known as Little Texas. and I am bringing this item forth because I think it is empowering for children and for families to know about local history and I think if we have the ability

as a city to honor residents of our community much like I live off of Raitt Street a lot of people are not aware but the Raitt Street was actually named off of a prominent family that did great things in our city and many of those family members are still with us today And so I would like to see us pass this today so that we can honor members of our community and commemorate special people like Helen Ship, like Modesta Avila, people that influenced, you know, the entire country. people like the actor that was in The Godfather,

Marlon Brando. A lot of people are not aware that he was a Santa Ana resident. So I think having the ability to have honorary street names empowers community members and also promotes the education of Santa Ana history. So I'm gonna keep my comments brief and I hope that my colleagues support what I brought forth today.

Great, thank you, Council Member Hernandez. I'll go ahead and bring it back to the council for comments. Mayor Pro Tem. Mayor Pro Tem. Mayor Pro Tem.

Phil BacerraItem 34

Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Councilmember Hernandez, for bringing this forward. I think it's important that we, because I think we all know folks or events, you know, that we want to commemorate here in the city. And I think it would be helpful for staff to help us prepare a policy and a procedure that helps us do that uniformly. One thing I'd ask staff to look into, in addition to what Councilmember Hernandez brought forward, is in Los Angeles and Chicago, I know they do a lot of intersections. If you go through certain intersections, you'll see signs up on the traffic lights

Phil BacerraItem 34

that'll commemorate it as something square. And so I'd ask you to possibly look at what some of these other cities are doing, because obviously I think they've already been out in front doing that. But I just wanted to thank Councilmember Hernandez again for bringing this forward.

Thank you for those comments. Councilmember Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 34

Thank you, Mayor. Almost. Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. Thank you, Councilmember Hernandez, for bringing this forward. Fully supportive of seeing something like this come to fruition in our city. There are definitely hundreds upon hundreds of residents, past and present, that deserve of worthy recognition neighborhoods, people that have made a huge impact on the world that have at one point or another stepped foot in our city and called it our home, their home. So definitely supportive of this, happy to see it.

David PenalozaItem 34

And I want to see if maybe we could also kind of at the same time look at ways where we could have, and probably not similar, but have areas of our streets that could, we often see it on highways and freeways, but kind of adopt a section of a corridor or a street.

David PenalozaItem 34

Maybe someone would, you know, if we have philanthropists up there in the city or out there that have done contributions to our city and would like to get back in a way of, like, you know, helping maintain or upkeep a certain area of the city or street to help beautify it, as well as having this commemorative and honorary street names. So, thank you, Council Member Hernandez. Fully supportive. Thank you for that comment. Council Member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 34

Thank you, Count Member Hernandez. I'm very supportive of the honorary straight name idea. I think it can be a lot of fun, especially for historical purposes. And I do have a suggestion, maybe ETAC can take care of the guidelines and setting some parameters within those guidelines so that there are clear boundaries as to who can be nominated and for what cause. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you. Any other comments from the council? Looks like everybody seems to be supportive. I certainly am very supportive. Thank you, Councilmember Hernandez, for bringing this before us. So I didn't know that more contemporary or more current Michael B. Jordan. Anybody heard of that guy? He is a well-known actor and the most handsome guy or the sexiest person last year. I don't know why I know that but I know that he played I know got too much time on my hands right

I don't know I look like yeah he was in Black Panther I think he was the he was the antagonist in that in any event he was a Santa Ana resident I think it's a great thing to go ahead and commemorate people not just famous famous people people who've made a difference here I know we were with somebody who turned 108 years old, and his name escapes me, Councilmember, but he was a veteran. Mr. Warren Bussey. And look, he lives in the same house or has lived there since the 50s, and it would be great to recognize that piece with this commemorative honorary. And Calle Cuatro, we didn't have to change his name.

We just put the honorary thing because it was such a historic landmark and corridor in the city. So, you know, these are good things and I think it's a way to just recognize districts. It's a way to recognize neighborhoods And you know and individuals as well. So with that, I think everybody is supportive moving along to City manager comments

Madam City manager, I'll turn it over to you. Just a happy first meeting of the new year and that's it

I love it off to a good start. Let me go ahead and start with the councilmember Hernandez Yes.

Thank you. Are these our closing comments, Mr. Mayor? Yes, sir. Oh, thank you, sir. I just wanted to thank the residents who took time from their day to join us for today's council meeting. I'm really excited to see that unanimously, all of my colleagues were supportive of the honorary street names. I concur with council member Lopez. This is gonna make it really exciting for us to honor history in a way that is going to allow us to really make sure that the pen is in the resident's hand. Secondly, I'm happy to see that we were able to pass a number of great things today.

I'm happy to see that Juneteenth now has a home and is a celebration that the city of Santa Ana is proudly behind. I thank my colleagues for supporting there. And I also just want to remind our neighbors to please wear your mask, please get vaccinated. My daughter and I had to quarantine right at the start of the new year because of a COVID exposure and it is not a fun experience. So please wear your mask and do your due diligence to protect your neighbor. And lastly, I just wanted to offer my condolences and echo my demands for justice for Valentina Orreana, who was tragically shot and killed

in a Burlington store by a Los Angeles cop. She was 14 years old. On behalf of myself, as a council member of the city of Santa Ana, I stand with you and your family, and I hope to see justice sought. And that concludes my comment, sir. Thank you.

Thank you, council member. Council member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 34

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. Well, first I want to thank Pastor Doan, who lives in Park Santiago and gave us today's words of inspiration. I appreciate you being here, and I'm sure that we will love to have you back anytime that you want to come back. One of the items that we passed today was a resolution condemning anti-Semitic violence, and an upcoming important day is the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, also known as Holocaust Memorial Day, which is celebrated on the 27th of January. and the purpose of the International Remembrance Day is twofold to serve as a

Jessie LopezItem 34

date for official commemoration of the victims of the Nazi regime and to promote Holocaust education and due to the recent events that have happened in other parts of the country I'd want to send the Jewish community my love and my support the third announcement that I have is I'm gonna have office hours We're back with office hours at the end of this month and more information will be shared via email and social media And finally I would like to offer my condolences to the Sigurstrom family for In memory of Ruth and Sigurstrom. Thank you. Great. Thank you council member council member Mendoza

Happy New Year everyone and enjoy your evening and that's those are my comments excellent. Thank you council member fan

Thai Viet PhanItem 34

We went out of order, so I was already.

Thai Viet PhanItem 34

So first of all, I'd like to say, I thank you to staff for this first meeting. I know that with the Sunshine Ordinance changes, there's a really quick changeover from the last meeting. I do want to echo Council Member Lopez's sentiments regarding antisemitic violence. It's really hard as an Asian American, we've been experiencing a rise in violence and hate during the pandemic and our Jewish community is experiencing that too. So it's really triggering and it's really traumatic to see this in the news all the time and it never feels like you're safe going anywhere and that is a

Thai Viet PhanItem 34

scary thing. I do also want to say happy MLK Day. It's really a day of reflection for me and thinking about his work, not just early in his work, but also his work later in life. It wasn't always as popular as some might make it out to seem, but his teachings stay with us. And I think those are all of my comments for today. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 34

Thank You Mayor Sarmiento. I just wanted to invite everybody to a historic historic community meeting this Saturday January 22nd at 930 a.m. At Centennial Park, we're gonna be hosting a community meeting to start brainstorming the future dog first dog park of the City of Santa Ana that I have been working so passionately to bring to the city the last couple of years there are so many people and families with with dogs as pets that

David PenalozaItem 34

for years like myself have gone out to Costa Mesa Fullerton and and have to leave the city to go just have enjoy a fun day at the park with your dog so happy to see that community meeting this Saturday January 22nd if you're able please join us in person bring bring your dog leash him up be a fun fun morning with staff and that's it mayor cemento thank you great thank you for