Read the February 1 meeting.

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February. Chukman Namoy. Happy New Year, Happy Lunar New Year to everybody. Black History Month this month as well, so a lot going on in February. We're off to a great start. I want to go ahead and just make a few opening housekeeping remarks and remind you that this meeting is taking place with in-person attendance and by teleconference via Zoom. The public can access this meeting via the San Ana YouTube channel and the city's website and as always please bear with us as our technology may disrupt the meeting Let me go ahead and turn it over to the clerk so she can call roll

Thank You mayor councilmember Hernandez

Thank you councilmember Lopez

Councilmember Mendoza present councilmember Pena Losa

here

Councilmember Fan? Here. Mayor Potem Becerra?

Phil BacerraItem 1

Here.

And Mayor Sarmiento?

Here. Thank you. Let me just go ahead and remind everybody that we have a public hearing, item number 16, which is on redistricting. By law, we're going to call that out of order no matter where we are. That'll be at 7 o'clock, so it's approximately 6.15. I still have an analog watch. 14 minutes. works so we're close but as soon as we hit seven whatever we do we're going to have to interrupt that and begin our redistricting public hearing so let me go ahead and before we begin with the Pledge of Allegiance and I know I'm going to be making a comment regarding a closed session item that councilmember

fan recused herself on I'll go ahead and have her recite that before we go into the rest of the business calendar but madam clerk go ahead and make your

opening remarks as well. 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 16, 17, and 18, please dial star 9 from your phone or click on the button labeled raise hand from zoom at this time. Please hold your comments until the mayor opens the public hearing items 16, 17, and 18. Please announce your name and word or neighborhood you reside in within the city of Santa Ana for the record. Thank you

Great. Thank you. Madam Clerk. Councilmember Fan. Do you want to recite your recusal of one of the closed session items?

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

I was recused or I have recused myself from a closed session item number three regarding the Carnegie Shelter as the property owner, Dyer 18 LLC, is a client of my employer, the law firm Rutan and Tucker. I arrived late, so I was not able to state this recusal prior to the closed session, but I was not in the room while I was discussed. Thank you.

Thank you for putting that on the record. Let me go ahead and turn it over to Councilmember Peñalosa to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. And if you'll still, if you'll remain standing as we receive our words of inspiration from Dr. Willie Holmes after.

David PenalozaItem 1

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

I'm not sure if Dr. Holmes is with us. Is he on virtually or is he here in person?

He was running a little behind schedule. I'm not sure if he's here yet.

All right. Should we wait till he arrives? We can always do that afterwards?

Yes. Thank you.

Is that okay with everybody? Go ahead, everybody. Take a seat. Let's go ahead and move along with the balance of the agenda. calendar so let me go ahead and turn it over to mayor pro tempus Sarah who's going to be presenting a certificate of recognition to our public works agency our parks and recs and our community services for the winter village so go ahead mayor pro temp

Phil BacerraItem 1

So good evening, everybody. I couldn't be more happier to be up here doing this tonight because this is such a wonderful experience for our city as many of you know from December 8th to January 2nd the city of Santa Ana hosted the Winter Village right in the Plaza of Flags in our Civic Center in the heart of the county it was quite a change from what we saw there previously for I'd say a couple years ago It was a dramatic transformation. What we saw were residents and visitors from all over, especially those here in Santa Ana that were coming out and testing their skills on a world-class ice rink. Come here. Sure.

Sure, sure.

Phil BacerraItem 1

How's that? All right, perfect. So one thing that I really appreciated when I was out there on the rink was there were so many first-time skaters, and most of them were from right here in Santa Ana. We were providing that opportunity to come to our Civic Center and enjoy something that residents in other parts of the county and other parts of the country frankly are able to do so approximately out of 11,000 tickets sold almost half of them were purchased from Santa Ana residents so I think that's an amazing statistic the Winter Village wasn't just the ice rink it had plenty of other things to offer it had

Phil BacerraItem 1

a trackless train live entertainment for those of you who are skating you heard of many local bands that were performing. You saw cuisine from local food trucks, and especially a little shout out to our folks at Friday Night Munchies who come out there in the plaza. I thought it just did an amazing job just collaborating and putting all that together. The community event was presented by the city of Santa Ana as part of the city's Revive funding that we got through the Federal American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA. The rink contractor was ICE America,

Phil BacerraItem 1

and they indicated that they had a great time working with our community and we appreciate the work that they did for us as well today what i wanted to do i wanted to take this opportunity i was so happy to see what happened and see the community coming together i wanted to make sure that we showed our appreciation to those who helped make that happen so what i wanted to do was recognize ice america and all the city staff and it's not just a couple there are so many that were a part of this. But what I'd like to do is call up from the Public Works Agency, Robert Gonzalez,

Phil BacerraItem 1

Yasmine Vasquez, from Parks and Rec, Sonia Buttress, and Kevin Eaton, and then from CDA, I see Julie Castro Cardenas, come on up. And then Scott Williams from ICE America, if you're here, please come on up. So while they're coming up here, I just want to say, know if it wasn't for their dedicated efforts all these uh folks both our staff members and ice america this would not have been possible so you know there's there's a rumor we may have a short meeting i'm going to extend it by a couple of minutes because i'm going to run through really

Phil BacerraItem 1

super quick and i want to because i think it's such an important accomplishment what we had i want to run through real quick and just go through the names of those that really helped make this possible as i mentioned scott williams from ice america julie castro cardenas from parks we had javier avalos wayne baker sonia bottras matthew bozflug ali borgerdi julio cazares kevin eaton juan garcia robert garcia eric hernandez chuck kinsuke enrique laguna juan lopez paul murphy michael swingholm caesar taren from public works we had gabriel avina eduardo belmonte

Phil BacerraItem 1

DeShannon Braswell, Joseph Brown, Mario Camarena, David Carbajal, David Carbajal Jr., Ruben Cornejo, David Correa, Nick De La Torre, Danny DeLeon, Juanel Dunn, Miguel Escalona, Zeke Garcia, Lee Garrett, Kyle Gillespie, Robert Gonzalez, Brandon Gray, Luzana Guillen, Andrew Heyer, Keith Knudsen, Vince Lopez, Paul Madrid, Andre Montanaro, Octavio Montez, Edgar Montoya, Armando Morales,

Phil BacerraItem 1

Antonio Munoz, Jorge Navarro, Thomas Nunez, Jaime Pena, Ryan Pilato, Ivan Quiones, Philip Ramirez, Victor Ramirez, Miguel Renteria, Enrique Reynoso, Magdaleno Rodriguez, Jose Roman, Adrian Salas, Eric Sanchez, Luis Solas, Carlos Treas, Elliot Valdez, Andy Varela, Jonathan Vargas, and last but certainly not least, Yasmine Vasquez. So I apologize if I butchered anybody's name, but I just wanted to make sure I recognized everybody. So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Phil BacerraItem 1

i want to ask for the folks that are here in the audience that i read your name off correctly or incorrectly if you guys wouldn't mind standing up and just be recognized please

Phil BacerraItem 1

thank you each and every one of you and thank you to those of you who are here in the audience

tonight and thank you great thank you for that presentation and thank thank you to all of our city family that does so much not just at you know special events like the winter village but all year long every day you know 24 7 thank you all for your service to us we um we have one more presentation that council member fan is going to do recognizing um you know the lunar new year but I know that Dr. Holmes just arrived, so I'm not sure if, Councilmember, why don't we go ahead and allow Dr. Holmes to provide us his words of inspiration, and we'll go ahead and go to your presentation right afterwards.

So if everybody will please listen to Dr. Holmes.

Thank you, Council. Holy One known by many names and beyond all names, Spirit of Life, Spirit of Love, Spirit of Community, Spirit of Justice. We ask your blessings on the people who have been called to lead the community in which we live, work, and play. Help them as leaders to not ask first, how do we fix this, but how do we need to learn? how might we need to change and how do we need to listen or nine them because of we all forgot from time to time especially in the noisiness of what passes for political debate today that they are not only leaders but also

servants and that is their responsibility and ours to serve the common good of all remind them that no matter where we live everyone gay straight transgender black or white Hispanic or Asian Muslim Jew Hindu seeker atheist is our neighbor our sibling and throughout the ages prophets have called the leaders of these peoples to respect and protect the least of them among us our children the elderly the poor those who are hungry those who have no homes those who are ill in body mind or spirit the strangers and immigrants in our midst those who live on the margins those who are alone those who are

forgotten grant them and us the wisdom and the courage to know and to do what is right and good and true. May they and we speak out when it's time to speak out and listen patiently and receptively. And we always be guided by the spirit of community, by the spirit of justice, and by the spirit of love. This we pray in the name of all that we hold sacred and holy, all that we hold good and right and true. May it be so. Amen.

Thank you so much for those beautiful words, Dr. Holmes. Thank you for joining us. Let me go ahead and now turn it over to Council Member Fan, who's going to be presenting a proclamation declaring February 1st as the Tet Lunar New Year. So, Council Member?

And by the way, we were at a temple last night, the Hu Quang Temple, and it was a beautiful ceremony a lot of people were there but everybody was masked that i could tell but just having a great time so thank you so much for this proclamation council member

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

thank you hi everyone so i'm very excited as the first vietnamese american to sit on this dais to proclaim for february 1st 2022 as lunar new year also called dead in vietnamese So it's typically celebrated on the second new moon after the winter solstice, and that can fall any time between late January and the middle of February on the solar calendar. If you're like me, I just Google Lunar New Year after Christmas and it'll tell you. According to traditions in many Asian cultures, including Vietnamese culture, February 1st, 2022 marks the first day of Lunar New Year, 4720.

Thai Viet PhanItem 2

And this is the year of the tiger. People born in the year of the tiger are known to be charming, confident, and full of valor. Today, we want to present Hope Community Services with its proclamation and recognize them for their contributions to the Vietnamese American community. Hope Community Services is a non-profit organization located right here in the city of Santa Ana and founded in 1995 with the mission of serving Vietnamese refugees and immigrants facing hardships related to migration and integration and preserving Vietnamese heritage

Thai Viet PhanItem 2

and culture. Hope Community Services has expanded its service to include providing culturally responsive education training and referrals related to COVID-19. Here to accept the recognition on behalf of Hope Community Services is Katie Jung. Please come up Katie.

Thai Viet PhanItem 2

Thank you Katie for joining us today and for all that you and Hope Community Services do for the Vietnamese community in Santa Ana. So now, therefore, the city of Santa Ana declares February 1st, 2022 as the, or Lunar New Year, and encourages all residents to celebrate the richness of the cultural heritage within our community and recognize the valuable contributions of the Asian Americans in our city. We wish you all happiness, longevity, and good fortune, and hope everyone celebrates the year of the tiger. Thank you.

Thai Viet PhanItem 2

Would you like to say a couple words? And I'd actually love to invite our Vietnamese community liaison, Tina Do Lee, as she was the one who helped connect me to Hope Community Services and hopefully everybody can recognize the services they provide both in our city and with nonprofits in our city.

First I would like to say, which is Happy New Year in Vietnamese. It's just such an honor to be here and to be recognized as a part of the city of Santa Ana. I have served here the last four years and we have served more than just the Vietnamese community. And it's just such a great community to be in with such diversity, such beauty and such inclusion and I'm just so excited to continue working in this community and making it better and more inclusive and more diverse for each and every of the Santa Ana resident and once again thank you so much for this honor and I'm just love to be here and represent my culture in my Vietnamese

and hope you guys will also celebrate out that as well thank you

Thank you.

Great. Thank you for that presentation, Councilmember Phan, and thank you for receiving that. It's such a special time in our city's life. I know that a lot of people forget that Little Saigon was born here in Santa Ana, and so we have been the proud home of many Vietnamese-American families from the very beginning, from the early 1970s and that's a proud legacy that we continue on and we want to thank the council member for proclaiming today the Lunar New Year. So let me go ahead and turn it over to staff for their first presentation. I understand that the presentation by the AQMD is going to be continued

to some future date, but we have two other presentations that they're going to give us an update on. So I'll turn it over to the city manager to give us our homelessness update.

Thank you. Good evening, honorable mayor and members of the city council. This is our third reoccurring monthly update on homelessness and homeless services provided by the city of Santa Ana. As an engaged partner, the city of Santa Ana remains at the forefront of addressing this issue using all tools possible. And you'll see I have joining me Mr. Ken Gaminski, who we brought in to specifically oversee our new expanded efforts in this area. He's going to, are you as good as Daniel? Do you know how to load the presentation, Ken?

So an overview of what we want to talk to you about tonight. We want to update you on the quality of life team activities and highlights. We want to talk about our new SMART team. And we want to tell you about the date for the county of Orange Point in time, which was delayed from January. And then cover ongoing homeless services provided by the city, as well as give you an update on the construction of our permanent Carnegie Shelter. With that, I am going to turn it over to Ken Gaminski, and he is going to handle the Quality of Life team highlights and also introduce to you the CityNet Smart team who are in the audience tonight.

Okay, it's all you, Ken.

Thank you, Madam City Manager, and thank you City Council. Our Quality of Life Team, also known as COLT, remains active and engaged in all areas within the city.

By looking at this slide, you'll see that in December, our Quality of Life Team continued its daily coordinated responses throughout the entire city. During December, Colt contacted 251 individuals currently experiencing homelessness, providing outreach services as well as enforcement action when necessary. 307 individual cleanups of various sizes occurred. These cleanups are generally larger in scale and require more time to perform than the routine public works responses.

COALT also issued 61 arrests or citations for various misdemeanor offenses and placed or assisted into some form of shelter 69 individuals.

Some of the highlights for January. A multi-agency outreach and cleanup event occurred last month in cooperation with CHP, Orange Police Department, Caltrans, the Orange County Healthcare Agency, and our partner CityNet. The team started off the morning at Hart Park, where several individuals were contacted, but only one accepted shelter.

The team then moved into the Santiago Creek area, underneath the 22 freeway, and under the train tracks, where Caltrans and Santa Ana City crews cleaned the area of any abandoned property and graffiti with the support of the California Highway Patrol. The team then moved further and found large encampments located under the Broadway and five freeway bridge overpasses. Twelve individuals were arrested and an additional 23 individuals were contacted by CityNet and again offered services.

The individuals that we contacted on that morning were very similar to a majority of the individuals. We continue to contact daily, and we found the population to be service resistant. However, with our partner CityNet, they have continued with case management resources to try to move that resistant population towards some type of shelter. starting January 19th Union Pacific railroad cleanups began being performed throughout the city five days a week Monday through Friday beginning in the early morning hours when

individuals exit railroad property generally they're allowed to sit and remain on the railroad or on the city property until the railroad cleanup is done. During these cleanups, we're using that opportunity for our outreach partners and our Colt team to engage all of these individuals. It's the intent of this program that individuals choosing to reside on the railroad tracks are again educated to the illegality of this concept. They are offered services and crimes discovered or observed are addressed. These individuals will have an opportunity to engage with Colt personnel

and trauma-informed specialists on a daily basis, not just the three to five times a month that UP generally comes out. These individuals are given an opportunity to either engage in services, to accept help, or to choose other places to reside. This is an attempt to turn the corner on this specific issue, which has plagued the city for many, many years. When this program started, it was taking cleanup crews all day to simply address portions of the total railroad property.

As of this morning, I'm happy to report the entire railroad property, everything within the city covered by Union Pacific, had been cleared and cleaned in less than three hours.

Lastly of note, the Honorable Judge Carter has been busy visiting sites in Santa Ana, including East First Street, the railroads, the Carnegie Homeless and Navigation Shelter Center. Judge Carter expressed his appreciation to the contractor, Jeffrey Ogolnick, who continues to work tirelessly to bring that homeless navigation center to reality. Carter also was impressed, as we spoke at length, about the size and scope of what that

shelter will mean, not just for Santa Ana itself, but for the individuals that choose to seek shelter there based on the amount of service providers that will have access to that site.

Smart. Santa Ana began its enhanced partnership with CityNet on December 1st.

Santa Ana's newly formed Smart Program, Santa Ana's multi-disciplinary response teams, is a pilot program between the City of Santa Ana and CityNet. The program is our newest effort to provide trauma-informed care services to address homelessness within the city. Santa Ana has had a strong and successful relationship with CityNet for several years, and it is through this program that the city expects to expand and enhance outreach efforts. Reports into the My Santa Ana app and a community call line go directly to teams in the field.

The goal of SMART is to provide more effective outreach and engagement while better utilizing city resources through a diversion of homeless calls from the Santa Ana Police Department and Orange County Fire Authority. COLT, along with code enforcement and Public Works, stand ready to assist on any homeless calls where additional support is needed by our partner CityNet. This frees up law enforcement to focus on calls for that require public safety responses or involve some type of criminal activity.

SMART will address all non-emergency homeless calls in an effort to increase outreach focused on providing services, addressing mental health, and helping more individuals transition out of homelessness.

business. As you'll see on the screen, this is an example of a report the City Reads receives monthly, and this is a total outline of all activity the SMART teams have performed from December 1st, its inception, through January 24th, 2020.

The information provided clearly shows that our SMART teams are operating throughout the entire city based on calls for service. SMART has responded to 859 dispatched calls from CityNet's dispatch center. 171 of those calls have been diverted from either the Santa Ana Police Department or the Orange County Fire Authority. 146 were self-initiated proactive contacts created by SMART.

31 were reported via the My Santa Ana app, and a total of 511 calls were received from the community at large. In addition, SMART had 773 contacts with individuals experiencing homelessness. Their case managers are currently engaged with 253 individuals providing that service. They have exited 102 individuals off the streets of Santa Ana and have provided 34 COVID responses from their teams.

Hey, Ken, can I just interrupt you really quickly? Yes. I'm going back to slide nine on that sort of heat map and where the calls seem to be coming from and the concentration of effort and work. Is that, you know, it looks like it's running east-west along 1st and 4th Street. Is that what it looks like to me? I can almost see my house from here. So if... So is there like a corridor or something that's drawing the concentration of those two arterials?

So, sir, what you're seeing is 1st Street and 4th Street along the east and west, and then 17th Street on the north. Those are the highest concentrations of homeless-related calls for service to the smart team, and I would be willing to bet the highest calls for service to both police and fire agencies as well. Running north, that street running north is Main Street.

Right. And is it a busy corridor for any particular reason, or is it just because those two... You know, one of the theories I know somebody had mentioned to me was that there's some sheet metal salvage yards, sort of, you know, a little north of 4th Street, and a lot of, you know, folks experiencing homelessness will find something that they can turn in and receive some, you know, recyclable, you know, monies for that. And so, you know, maybe that's the draw. Is that or do we have any theories on

that? Mayor, First Street will continue to be a problem, I believe, as we work with our code enforcement partner on certain different types of businesses that may be increasing the negative impacts of homelessness on our community, as well as 4th Street. The issue with the recycling centers, the motels, the issues that you're discussing with the recycling centers,

Santa Ana is uniquely or uniquely accepts a multitude of different types of recyclable materials. In my discussions with the homeless population, we will accept recyclable materials that many other cities don't allow. As such, it's not unusual to find individuals currently experiencing homelessness stripping the plastic off of copper wire outside of these recycling centers before they will then

take the recyclable inside and leave the trash out and about. It is not uncommon for individuals currently experiencing homelessness to utilize scavenging

to come up with items for recycling. And so you will see an increase in the amount of calls for service and activity generally around our recycling center, sir.

Got it. Thank you for that. Thank you.

I would like to take this opportunity if I could have the individuals stand up when I call your name I'll be introducing some of the individuals that are responsible for this the current successes of our smart teams in Santa Ana Brad Fieldhouse who is the president and executive director of

CityNet, Yoli Negrete, and Meg Munoz. They're regional program supervisors for our smart team. I have an opportunity to work with these outstanding ladies almost every day. Our city could not be any better served than by these fine supervisors.

We also have Amy Hurtado, who is our lead case manager. She routinely works day in and day out with not the immediate responses to homelessness, but going back over and over trying to get individuals to get document ready, to go to their appointments to take them places so that we can move them out of their current status. We also have Natalie Malouf and Kiara Gray, who are both case managers and involved in outreach and engagement.

When our residents call the SMART team, they're getting these professionals that will respond to their calls for service, that they will, that, and we can be sure that when the SMART team responds on the city's behalf, they are offering trauma-informed care and services to individuals currently experiencing homelessness. I am so incredibly proud to have an opportunity to work with this fine staff because they truly do an absolutely amazing job in incredibly difficult circumstances.

Thank you all very much for being recognized and for more importantly doing what you do and you know what you're going to be continuing to do for the residents of Santa Ana. Thank you all very much.

I'd like to turn it back over to the city manager now.

Okay, Mayor, I know you're on a timetable. I think I can get this wrapped up by 7 o'clock. So next, just briefly, I want to talk about the point in time count. As you know, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development does this biannually, and it was delayed from January, but the County of Orange and the Orange County Continuum of Care will conduct the sheltered count the night of Monday, February 21st, and the unsheltered count starting the morning of Tuesday the 22nd through Thursday the 24th. The City of Santa Ana's count will be held on Tuesday the 22nd. Some benefits of the point-in-time count.

It provides the public the opportunity to get involved. It's the opportunity to reconcile and update the Veterans Registry and brings us one step closer to ending veteran homelessness, and it's also an opportunity to count families and transitional age youth experiencing homelessness. For those of you that are interested in volunteering, they do need a lot of volunteers to pull out this point in time count. There is training for the volunteers. Anyone that's interested, you can go to the website www.everyonecountsoc.org. And the preliminary point in time count results will be available in April with the finalized

city specific information available by June. For the volunteers, they need 400 for the February 22nd count, and each team member will be equipped with an identifiable count T-shirt, a branded Everyone Counts OC Tote Bag with snack kits and survey incentives for survey participants. The organizations involved in this effort will be led by the Orange County Community Resources Agency and will be supported by CityNet, 211, and numerous other nonprofits and volunteer organizations. In addition, 34 city agencies from across the county, law enforcement, OC Public Works, and independent community volunteers

will play very important roles. Volunteers are required to show proof of COVID vaccination or a negative PCR test within 48 hours of their scheduled volunteer shift.

Next, I would just want to talk briefly about the,

we know the impacts of homeless has on the quality of life and through collaboration and coordination, I'm very proud of what we have done. So briefly, I want to talk about just the shelter and housing. Santa Ana remains at the forefront of providing housing options for individuals experiencing homelessness. Currently, the city is utilizing the Salvation Army Hospitality House, an interim family motel program, and the link on Commonwealth to provide emergency shelter, beds with wraparound services, until our homeless navigation center at Carnegie is opened.

In total, we have provided shelter beds for 499 persons currently experiencing homelessness in 2021. And today, the Salvation Army Hospitality House has 65 residents leaving 10 beds open. The Carnegie Center remains in construction and will be opening this month. And as a further demonstration of our commitment to the homeless crisis, we're proud of the 227 permanent supportive housing units completed and located within five different sites in our city. And an additional 207 units are currently pre-development or under construction at five additional locations.

So in total, the city will very soon have 437 permanent supportive housing units. In addition to that, having our own housing authority, We currently have vouchers that we set aside specifically for individuals experiencing homelessness and to date 422 vouchers have been issued Let's talk about the navigation center and we have some additional update you can see from the picture It looks quite differently than the picture that you saw at the last homeless update Flooring painting lighting and tiling is currently underway inside the shelter outside the building a lot of improvements are taking place and

And staff continues to work tirelessly to keep the construction moving forward. Also assisting the contractor with various permits and also issues with Southern California Edison. By mid-month we hope to begin moving the furnishings and equipment into the building and then as we prepare and transport for the new shelter to receive 115 guests who are currently at our other shelters.

If you have any questions, Ken and I are available. And I think I left you two minutes, Mayor.

I made it right under the wire. Thank you for that presentation. I appreciate it. Thank you. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the Council, see if there's any questions or comments, being aware that we have two minutes before we start our redistricting public hearing. Councilmember Peña-Bosa.

David PenalozaItem 3

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento, and thank you, Mr. Gaminski and Madam City Manager, for that presentation and update. I do want to ask a couple things because I know that we keep referencing to individuals experiencing homelessness but as a lifelong resident of the city and driving around daily there this is more than just individuals experiencing homelessness this is a lot of individuals experiencing mental illness and severe severe drug addiction I could tell you right now that the reason why we see a concentration of homeless individuals along first street is the

David PenalozaItem 3

methadone clinic for one and the half a dozen rundown motels that we allow to just run wild with no checks or balances I don't know how they get an operational license given the amount of cause that are that we get for those areas along first Street which are very problematic and what I want to ask is you mentioned that at Hart Park when we did the the sweep there was I forget the number of individuals you came in contact with only one accepted service I

believe the number I gave was 23 and we were only only one person sought shelter so what happened to the other 22 seven were arrested and the remainder were left if they were not violating the law. The park was open.

David PenalozaItem 3

But were they not, I guess, encamping in a public park?

So when we started at Hart Park and moved our way all the way down the creek bed, it's unlawful to reside or camp out or to be under some of the bridges. Those are violations of law. Those people were issued citations. People that had warrants were arrested and taken. But if we found people that were just in the park or in the creek that were not violating a law, they were offered services and we moved on from there.

David PenalozaItem 3

Okay. So, and I'll try to wrap up in the next minute because I know we were, but, you know, I also want to make sure that our community hears and understands because this is the biggest and most critical issue that our residents asked me a dozen times a day today in Henninger Park. We were dealing with this. If you recall, I want to call you Deputy Chief Kaminsky. That was your last title. When we did that ride-along early last year, we drove down 1st Street.

David PenalozaItem 3

And I remember that there was about, we came across a crowd of about 12 individuals by one of the motels. And a young woman had a bag of fentanyl in her panty lining. And she took it out and she was high out of her mind and all her friends were as well. And so how do we address that? how do we keep that, because that concentration on First Street, I can guarantee anybody listening that it is not just people experiencing homelessness, it is people experiencing severe,

David PenalozaItem 3

severe drug addiction, breaking the law, and participating in criminal activity. So how do we keep that from happening along that street? I mean, what kind of continued, because I don't think that, and thank you so much to the CityNet individuals that are here, that are offering resources, but a lot of those people are not going to, you know, want to even talk to our CityNet personnel because they're not just experiencing homelessness.

Quickly.

David PenalozaItem 3

Quickly.

I would answer that in saying this, sir.

I've had several ongoing discussions with the chief of police about what drug activity along East 1st Street looks like. And the chief is completely engaged in trying to come up with some long-term solutions for that problem. Additionally, I have had several conversations with Alvaro Nunez, who oversees code enforcement as part of the planning and building department. And there are discussions as to what long-term solutions along that corridor can look like.

David PenalozaItem 3

Thank you for that. And I just want to also emphasize that it's not specific to that corridor. It's Main Street, it's Bristol, it's Edinger, it's Fairview, it's Harbor. I mean, it is a just sad, sad situation happening on our streets because it's not, you know, they are severely addicted to drugs and suffering from mental illness and doing anything they can to get that next fix. Breaking into people's homes, breaking into people's cars, stealing Cadillac converters. I mean, you name it. It is a huge epidemic that is our residents are paying the price for it.

David PenalozaItem 3

And it's just unfortunate to get call after call after call regarding this issue and running out of things to say because it just seems like it never ends. So I appreciate it. Thank you so much to everyone involved. But let's make sure that we get these at least monthly reports and time them after the public hearings because it is the number one important issue in the city. residents are asking for and to quickly run through it because we have a public hearing is also not appropriate but thank you thank you both yes thank you

for that presentation thank you for the question what I want to do is we're now going to interrupt the meeting to go to our public hearing on redistricting but I do madam clerk and with the indulgence of my colleagues and staff and public we're I want to keep ourselves at three minutes so please time us the public has three minutes to speak. I'd like us up here to respect that unless there's some overwhelming reason why we can't. I don't want us to continue restating the obvious. We know things are problematic and let's try to get to some solutions as opposed to talking about what the concern is.

What I would suggest for the next homelessness update, Madam City Manager and Madam City Attorney, if you'll please give us some guidelines as to what legally we can do because I think there's confusion about what we can and what we can't do and we are bound by law you can't arrest somebody for being poor you can't arrest somebody for not having a home you can certainly arrest somebody for trespassing for doing something illegal but we have to separate the two I don't want us to speak in convoluted statements or over overly broad comments I want us to be specific as what the

what the law allows our not only our officers but our team our civilian team to do so that clarity would be helpful at the next presentation so let me go

ahead and move a council member Hernandez has his hand virtually raised

go ahead council member briefly because we're backed up that's absolutely I just

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

wanted to say thank you mr. mayor you're absolutely right when communities of colors struggle with addiction they go to prison when affluent communities struggle with addiction, they go to rehab. We need to shift how we respond to people in crisis and people that need our help and assistance. Thank you for that comment.

Let me go ahead and now take us to item number 16, which is the public hearing, the sixth public hearing on redistricting ward boundaries. I'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing formally so we could go ahead and address that. I know we have a presentation from our consultant, Paul Mitchell. Paul, I'm going to, I think you're on the line. I thought I saw your face in one of the inserts here on the image. I'm just going to ask if you can spare us with a lot of the slides and presentation that we've already had. And if we can kind of go to the meat of the presentation. I think this is the sixth presentation.

So we don't need to have a recitation of what the Fair Maps Act requires. I think all of us up here and the public has had that several times. If you can do it briefly and get us to where we need to get to on the slides and the maps, that'd be helpful. And again, Madam Clerk, if you'll please time us as well when we respond.

Okay, and then Paul, you should be able to share your screen unless you want to.

I need to still set that up, but let me try now. There we go. Thank you.

Thank you very much. And I will try to shorten this down to be aware of time and also the fact that this is, like you mentioned, the sixth hearing and those who were here just a couple years ago, we had probably six or more hearings on the same issues back then as well. So I'm sure that you and a lot of the council members and people who come regularly as meetings have become as much of an expert as I am in these issues now. I'll cover some of these issues about redistricting. Then we'll go straight into draft maps that have been submitted and then go into kind of what are the next steps and get feedback from the public

and then feedback from you as we keep moving along in this process. So the Fair Maps Act, just because there's 41 people online who maybe some of them don't know, they can go back to prior hearings and look at some of our longer, more detailed discussion about these issues, but there are criteria we have to follow in the redistricting process. We can't just willy-nilly draw districts. We need to make sure that they're relatively equal size, that they're contiguous. We need to try to do what we can to make sure that they are protecting communities of interest. We need to work around existing neighborhood boundaries or other

governmental agency boundaries that the city might find helpful. As an example, in the original redistricting work we did in 2018, we used some school district boundaries for Garden Grove Unified School District Boundary as a way to help drive some of the lines.

And then keeping districts compact, which I can describe if people have questions, but there's a little bit of a new definition on that. We are working with census data, but we're not just working with one census data set. Most people who know something about redistricting know that it happens every 10 years because that's when the census comes out. But the census isn't one monolithic thing. The census also includes a second data set we use a lot in redistricting called the American Community Survey. It is kind of the color to the census. The census short question doesn't ask, are you a renter or a homeowner?

It doesn't ask citizenship. It doesn't ask, how long is your commute to work? But the longer American Community Survey does get a lot of that information and some of that is what we use in the redistricting process. So whenever we talk about census, we'll probably slip into talking mostly about the decennial census. But sometimes that data also is coming from long term surveys like the American Community Survey. One of the challenges in redistricting in this decade that's different than in past decades is that it is not a process of you know hiring a demographer going and and figuring

out what all the elected officials want and then just delivering a map and being done with it there's a process of community engagement of making sure that the public has a an opportunity to give it input and then taking that input trying to make it fit within those requirements of the law and then get the council to a place where it can adopt a map that has benefited from that public engagement and all of the decisions about lines where lines go conversations about communities all that is happening in open public hearings like this one whenever we get to new lines we also make

sure that they're on the city's website that they're public and no maps can be actually passed by the city that haven't been public for seven days so the public has an idea of what is the mapping plan that will ultimately be adopted and how to give input. One of the things that we did in this redistricting that we didn't do much of in the last redistricting is really utilize the power of these online tools. We used a program called Distrctor that's been used around the country to get public submissions and we've gotten a lot of these publicly drawn plans. When we get a

publicly drawn plan, we make sure that it gets the same treatment as any plan that's created. One that we create will get the same treatment as one that, you know, John Smith or Alice Rodriguez creates. It will get a map with a cover page showing all the boundaries within the full jurisdiction of the city of Santa Ana. It'll get a data table with data from two different census datasets to allow the public to see that and compare it to other plans. And then it'll give you individual district page layouts to be able to look more closely at a potential district.

In addition, different than last time, we now have these web maps. These web maps allow any map that's made by us or by the public to be viewed, zoomed in, look at the street level, and see exactly where those lines are dividing each of the districts. Now, we got a lot of public map submissions, some of which fell into kind of themes. There were community of interest maps where people just said, this is my area of renters, let's say.

There were some maps that just created non-contiguous or, you know, more creative maps that might not follow the state law. There were others that created multiple districts around the central wards. Following major streets was a theme. There were also a series of maps from Viet Ries identifying potential districts from that community. So the current lines that have been in place, used for the 2020 elections, but still, these lines are kind of still in their infancy.

Not all these district lines have been utilized yet in an election because the lines took effect after the 2018 election cycle. so these current lines are based on that last redistricting that again public hearings community input and so on now the challenge is that those lines were passed based on the 2010 census we now are in the 2020 census data seeing a total population deviation here of 13.4 percent districts don't have to all be the same size but they have to be within 10 percent of each other So we're going to strive to try to reduce that deviation as a part of the process of reviewing these lines and getting to new maps.

So first we developed some maps that were A, A2, D, and E. Note that when I show you these, the wards are going to be done as letters, not numbers. Each of these maps is within a 10% deviation. Then we created more. Some of these were from public submissions. When they were from a public submission, we actually still identify that submission number so that we're aware and can look back at Districtor to see what plan that was. Each of those is also within a 10% total plan deviation.

I'll flip through these quickly because we've discussed these already at length, and if you want to go see more information about these plans, the prior hearing recordings are definitely available. we have plan a and with each plan we're going to show an overlay of the lines and the old districts a2 again similar to the existing plans and then you can see the overlay how just how similar those districts are plan d um with a nine percent deviation follow some more of those neighborhood lines and you can see that in all three of these in a a2 and d you're starting to see that there's

kind of a little bit of a theme that this western side district this district a which is a district that is largely around a plurality asian or close to it in all these plans is the um one of the newer districts from the last redistricting plan f with a smaller five percent deviation now this was the first one that we're talking about that's based on a uh on a district or submission and so So you'll see in the left hand side in this green sidebar, it says ID 86566. And if somebody were to look back at the last hearing, you'll see or hear that there were

a set of plans that we were asked to elevate up to being these draft maps. You can see this map and the existing lines. This actually shows you how much these plans, these maps actually differ from the existing districts. um plan g id 77539 again a public submission uh that was elevated to be one of your draft plans and the overlay plan h id 77567 again uh this is a draft plan we can see some more significant

differences to that district a on the western side and we can see how that these districts are related to uh your existing lines plan i is id 87613 a very narrow deviation and we can see how that looks with the existing lines

JID102694 and an overview of how that looks with the existing lines

and now there's a couple new ones that we wanted to make sure that you got a chance to see within this presentation these are not elevated to be any of the draft maps with the letters These are submissions from the Santa Ana Redistrian Coalition. This one has a small deviation of 2.3%. You can see its relationship to the existing lines. And then map number two, a deviation of 1.7, and you can see the relationship to the existing lines. These maps, since we didn't create them and they weren't a big discussion point in the last hearing,

I might expect that the creators of these maps will either testify during public comment or council members in the public should have access to a letter that they submitted that discussed these plans and can give us some of the information we might need to help understand the rationale behind drawing these districts within those ranked criteria, protecting communities of interest, being compact, and so on. so these are those plans then of course i mentioned at the outset the v at rise one

and the and that plan in the v at rise two and those plans again we've had a much more thorough discussion about these in the prior hearings so where we're at is if the council members want to propose changes to any of these potential plans. We can talk about doing some swaps between districts. We can talk about, you know, making maybe some shifts that don't even require an offsetting swap because they're so small of a change. And if there is a need to make big global changes with kind of rotations of districts in order to achieve that, this would be a chance to try and discuss those.

Although I will say we have so many maps that we're looking at. I think that if somebody were to say, hey, I want to do A, B, and C and make these shifts, we might end up just turning a plan into one of these other existing plans because we really only have so many real great ways to draw these maps. And I think that what you have in front of you with something that sounds almost like about a dozen maps or so that I just talked about should provide something almost for everybody who's looking at something that they want to see in a final plan.

The idea with this is a process of building up from public submission, from the council's discussion, to build up the number of plans that you're looking at and ensuring that we hear from the community, that every community voice is being respected in the process, and that we're actually looking at and considering all these plans, and then a process of narrowing down the list. I want to emphasize that as we narrow down the list of potential plans, we want to do that based on the rank criteria and ensuring that we're not doing anything that would be contrary to the Voting Rights Act.

So we want to make sure that as we're doing this, we're coming up with rational basis for how we're going to maybe select a couple plans that can move forward. and the idea is that we can narrow the number of plans that are on the council's agenda in a future hearing and then ultimately get to a point where the public knows like either this is the one plan the council's considering or these are the two or three plans the council's considering and they can focus their comments and their attention on those plans as you get to the point near the end to adopt a final plan. And I believe your deadline is right around April 17th

to have the council make its final decision. And then we will, every district partners, work with the county and the county registrar to implement those plans and make sure that they have all the data they need to make sure that it can be used for the upcoming election. And with that, I'll go ahead and take any questions.

Great. Why don't you go ahead and hang on, Paul? We have a couple of members of the public that are here in person that want to speak and then I'll Have the clerk calling anybody that's Online, so let me go ahead and start with Anna Charco followed by Sarah Arpero.

Good evening Mayor Sarmiento and City Council members. My name is Ana Charco and I am here with the Santa Ana redistricting coalition to promote greater community engagement in restricting. The SRRC has created a space through which Santa Ana residents have identified and articulated communities of interest and we have also worked with them very closely to create a map that addresses the needs of low-income communities of color working families together we have identified various communities of interest throughout the city these communities of interest are mobile home residents Vietnamese residents

residents affected by the environmental justice burden low-income residents and residents in the Doha and Zulivan community. These communities of interest are thoughtfully captured by both SRRC 1, SRRC 2, something that the Revised Santa Ana Goals map, or the map,

104,634 map fails to do. Both map also thoughtfully capture the historic Alphamoree Northern District and the Southern District. These communities of interest were brought forward by the community for their interest to maintain a unified voice and for their needs to be accurately represented. Therefore, we urge you to adopt one of the two maps proposed by the Santa Ana

redistricting coalition. Thank you for your time. Thank you for those comments. Let me go ahead and call on Sarai Arpero.

Buenas noches, señor alcalde y miembros del Consejo de la Ciudad. Mi nombre es Sarai Arpero. Soy promotora y residente en Santa Ana Ya por más de 20 años. Estoy aquí para hablar sobre el punto 16 de la agenda. Vivo entre la calle Chesney Holladay y también trabajo en las comunidades de aquí de Santa Ana, donde la mayoría de los residentes son latines. Las necesidades de esta comunidad son vivienda, trabajos bien pagados y puedo nombrar muchas otras cosas más. Por lo tanto, creo que los distritos propuestos alrededor de mi comunidad por la coalición de redistribución de distritos de Santa Ana respect to my community and their needs.

The map proposed by the coalition defends the communities of interest and the residents of Santana more vulnerable. It is an opportunity to maintain our communities of interest together to also see the results of the equitativo of the which is not talked about, but that is not seen. It is not a consequence of the poverty, the lack of opportunities, the risk of opportunities, the risk of the rents and the lack of opportunities for our young people. and families, living every day, please support the map SARC number one. Ms. Nelly D'Amendoza, we are frustrated with the fact that you, as a member of the Council,

expressed strongly your true interest in the redistribution of districts during the last meeting and expressed interest in adopting a map that support for posturing again for re-election and not the need of the community. The districts have to represent a community of interest, no power. of the poder. Usted no escuchado a la comunidad desde que adopto su cargo y no esperamos que lo haga en este momento, pero sea más respetuosa hacia la comunidad que dice representar y no olvide sus privilegios y que es usted una servidora pública. Gracias.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council members. My name is Sarai Arpero. I'm a promoter in Santa Ana for over 20 years. I'm here to talk about item 16. My community is around Chestnut and Holiday, and it's a community made up of the Latinx, primarily of Latinx residents. Our communities of interest are interested in housing, well-paying jobs, and many other things. We are asking you to support the Santa Ana Redistricting Coalition's MAP because this respects my community.

The MAP defends the community of interest and the vulnerable people, and we need to this will provide results and for better equity for our community the pandemic is not the issue the issue is poverty the lack of opportunities and many other things we support the santa ana redistricting coalition map number one so miss neda mendoza we are angry that you didn't support us the last time you supported a map that would support your re-election

the districts should represent the communities of interest, not power votes. You did not listen to your community before. We hope that now you respect the community that you represent. You are a public servant.

Thank you for those comments. Let me go ahead and turn it over to the clerk to see if there's anybody online or on the phone that would like to make a public comment.

Thank you. for those members of the public who are joining us by way of zoom or teleconference please make sure you have your hand raised virtually on zoom or select star nine to raise your hand only for the redistricting item number 16. and before i start unmuting callers i did want to announce that we did also receive written communication 17 santa ana residents in support of map plan f one Santa Ana resident in support of keeping West Floral Park, Jack Fisher Park, Floral Park, Morrison Park, Park Santiago together,

and one local organization, Southern California, in support of Santa Ana redistricting coalition maps. And with that, Zoom ID, AraceliLopez714gmail.com. If you would please select star six.

Can you lower your volume on the other device you're using?

Phil BacerraItem 3

They have an ex-amount of subscribers.

Si, buenas tardes. Buenas tardes. Si puede bajar el volumen, por favor. Si, permita un segundo. Gracias.

¿Me escuchan ahora si? Si, ahora si.

Por favor, puede continuar con su comentario. Yes, good evening. My name is Araceli Robles. I am resident of the city of Santana, district 6. And I am doing my comment to support the map that is propone the coalition, because it is really what we need in these moments as community. A veces me wonder how can they pay so consultants, experts, when the experts in the city of Santana is the community that we are suffering day to day. All the resources, the work, the people who are dying from COVID, not having medical insurance. hasta cuando vamos a

a pensar de esta manera, yo me pregunto mi nieta tiene 7 años y aquí a 10 años va a ser 17 años y yo estoy abogando por ella para que tenga mejores oportunidades de vida, para que podamos seguir permaneciendo en Santana y la verdad para mí y discúlpeme señora Nélida, es una pena de que usted esté tomando una silla cuando usted ni siquiera tiene interés por la comunidad ni siquiera le preocupa how we live in our community. A few years ago, they gave us a recognition for support the community. I would like to know what type of community is the support you. I'm worried that I'm my representative

and I'm not listening to what the community needs. I support the council that is supporting all the community. I know that sometimes they receive some comments or some political pressure. no se preocupen nosotros como comunidad estamos aquí y vamos a estar con ustedes para tomar la mejor decisión y que los mapas realmente reflejen lo que nuestra comunidad necesita y merece porque nosotros somos dignos de respeto de confianza para poder continuar viviendo en santana gracias y que tengan buenas noches gracias

Good evening. My name is Aracelio Robles and I'm a resident of Santa Ana in Ward 3. And I'm here to support the coalition, the map that the coalition is presenting. We need that to support our community. And I don't understand how you're spending all this money with consultants and with experts when we the residents we are the experts we are the experts because we we are the residents we don't we don't have jobs we have family members dying of covid we don't have health insurance

and my granddaughter is seven years old and in 10 more years she's going to be 17 so i'm looking to provide a better opportunities for her for her life and i'm sad to sit to say that miss Nelida, you are sitting there and you're not interested in our community. You don't care how our community, Latino community does. I think that you were recently recognized for supporting the Latino community, and I want to know what Latino community that you are supporting. I am concerned that you are my representative because you don't represent my community.

So I'm here to support the community, and we are here to make this decision and to choose a map that reflects our community. Thank you.

Persona con el nombre en Zoom, Señora Hernandez. Si, por favor. Ah, okay. Ya va.

Gracias. Yes. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of the City Council. I'm Mrs. Sylvia Hernandez. I will talk about the agenda item 16. I have lived in Santa Ana for 30 years now. I live on the corner of Chestnut Avenue and Hickory Street in the east side neighborhood where most of the residents are Hispanic, hardworking, low-income workers who live with two or three families because even with two or three jobs we cannot each afford a home we don't have enough parks for our children but we are a community that came together to work on our needs and we appreciate when we

are included in deciding how to improve our neighborhood like the sanana active streets program that teaches us how to share the streets and how to travel safer on our bicycles or the community gardens program that offers a physical activity and an opportunity to generate organic products in a sustainable and very healthy way that united our community in my opinion the districts proposed around my community by the sanana redistricting coalition faithfully respect the needs of my community and consider us as a community with the same

and interests and as a community in a situation of greatest vulnerability. Thank you for listening and consider that.

Thank you.

Person with the last three numbers, 477, if you would please select star six to unmute your call. Thank you.

Yeah, good evening, Mayor, City Council, and City staff. This is Dale Heldig, Ward 3. I appreciate the fact that redistricting is a very difficult decision for all of you, and it's gonna last for years to come. So I just encourage you to keep communities of interest intact, but don't base your decision on what is being best for you guys. base it on what's best for the city of Santa Ana. So I hope you make good decisions and keep the criteria that Paul has addressed as what is important. My only concern is the maps that we're creating

aren't based upon prison populations. So even though it's a pretty transparent process, I feel like we're working with incomplete data. I don't think the prison population numbers are that great, but it's still a difference between what you guys are doing and what we're doing. So thank you and good night.

Thank you. Caller with the last three numbers, 010, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device.

Zoom ID, Hiro, if you would please select the microphone icon. on your device. Thank you, you may proceed with your comment.

Hello, this is Victor Mendez. I had called and asked me for the public comment, not for the hearing. So I'm not too sure how that happened. I can go ahead and put you back.

Mr. Mendez, I can go ahead and put you back on the speaker queue until we open up the.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thank you.

Zoom ID Jairo, if you would, you may proceed with your comment.

Thank you. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of the council. My name is Jairo Cortez. I'm the executive director at Chispa, an organization that organizes and advocates for young Latinxs in Orange County and working class Latinx communities at large. I'm calling in support of the proposed maps by the Santana redistricting coalition because it respects the most vulnerable communities of interest in Santana. The communities of interest the coalition acknowledges and respects are mobile home residents, Vietnamese residents, residents affected by environmental justice burdens,

low income residents, and residents in the Delhi and Sullivan community. More importantly, we want to emphasize that the District F and both the SARC maps accurately represent and thoughtfully consider the residents of the Delhi community, Madison Park community, and Cedar community. Residents of these communities are primarily composed of low-income, mixed immigrant status, Latino families who are heavily impacted by environmental issues according to the CalEnvirus screen and UCI soil led analysis data. It is crucial that these neighborhoods are kept together to ensure that their cultural

background, socioeconomic needs, and environmental justice demands are accurately represented. Therefore, we are concerned that the revised Santana goals, Southern District, supported by Councilmember Becerra, disturbs these residents' needs and this community of interest as they put in a district with a very different community when it comes to income levels, housing situations, and environmental justice impacts. I urge you to adopt one of the proposed maps by the Santana Redistricting Coalition. Thank you.

Thank you.

Zoom ID Gerson Nunez, if you would please select the microphone icon to unmute your call.

Sí, buenas noches a todos. Mi nombre es Gerson Núñez, soy miembro activo de OCO de la Iglesia Episcopal del Mesías, en Santana, vivo en la calle 17 y la Spurgeon, y consideramos que el mapa wall no es compacto, nos perjudica porque no hace igualdad. Son solo beneficios personales, no involucran a la comunidad en el proceso de distribución. y rogamos a Dios que se considere los mapas sometidos por la colisión. Muchísimas gracias a todos y Dios los bendiga.

Good evening to all. My name is Garcon Núñez and I'm a member of OCO. I attend the Episcopal Church of the Messiah. I live on 17th and Spurgeon. And I'm here to say that the wall map does not represent the community interest. their personal reasons, personal interests, and not the community. So I ask God that you choose one of the maps that is presented by the coalition. Thank you and God bless you.

Zoom ID, Biff Baker, if you would please select a microphone icon. Thank you. You may proceed with your comment.

Yes, thank you. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Sarmiento and members of the city council. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to this meeting. My name is Biff Baker. I'm a volunteer with OCO, that is the Orange County Congregations Community Organization, and a longtime parishioner at Episcopal Church of the Messiah located in downtown Santa Ana. I'd like to express my support for the maps proposed by the Santa Ana Redistricting Coalition, SARC1 and SARC2. The maps are compact with a high degree of contiguity.

They're scrupulously aligned with relevant laws. They have low deviation. And most importantly, they're based on close attention to the needs and concerns of the communities that will be affected by changing districts, especially low-income communities. I think everyone realizes at this point that it is not possible to take a flying leap and and arrive at a district map that is truly equitable and well-designed. From the comments of our friends from the redistricting partners, we can see that the technical issues are daunting. The redistricting coalition has done the needed research

and work to help the council and the city to achieve an equitable and well-designed map. In particular, we're concerned that a recently proposed map entitled Santa Ana Goals may not adequately consider the interests of vulnerable residents. Communities of interest, such as the mobile home parks around Willowick and the Eastern area of the city with its problems of lead levels and other environmental challenges are not respected in their integrity. So again, this is in support of the essay one and two. Thank you very much for your attention.

Thank you. Zoom ID, excuse me, Zoom ID Maria Valencia, if you would please select the microphone icon. Thank you. You may proceed with your comment.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members. My name is Maria Estela Valencia, and I am a Santa Ana resident and a community organizer with Orange County Congregations Community Organization. OCOA is a part of the Santa Ana redistricting coalition. I currently live by first and grant As a long life resident of Santa Ana, this process is very important to me, especially when it comes to uplifting community voices and lived experiences. I wholeheartedly believe that the two maps submitted by the Santa Ana Redistricting Coalition do that exactly. These maps uplift those voices of the residents that are immigrants, renters, low income,

and families of mixed immigration status. It also uplifts the environmental justice issues that we are currently facing in Santana, such as high levels of soil lead contamination. These maps also ensure that the Vietnamese community voice remains strong. Maps SARC one and two open up the opportunity for the community to feel empowered within the city of Santana. There have been other maps that have been submitted that are not compact and that they heavily divide marginalized disadvantaged communities. It dilutes the voice of the community by putting affluent voices above those that have been marginalized.

That is why I would like for the council to consider the map submitted by the coalition that have taken months to outreach and engage the community. This process is extremely important to us in ensuring that the community voices are heard and empowered. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you. Zoom ID, Irene, if you would, Zoom ID, Karen Alvarado, if you would please select the microphone icon. Thank you. You may proceed with your comment.

Good evening, Mayor and honorable members of the council and city staff. My name is Karen Alvarado. I am lead organizer with OCO, Orange County Congregation Community Organization. And as you know, we're part of the Santa Ana Redistricting Coalition. First of all, I just want to start off by thanking the council for extending the redistricting process to allow deeper community engagement for all residents. Especially, of course, those most impacted by the recent wave of COVID variants. So I really want to acknowledge that and thank you all.

Secondly, as you've been hearing tonight, a couple weeks ago, we, the coalition submitted two maps for council's consideration. And these maps, as you know, are a result of several months of deep community engagement that centers the lived experiences of low-income communities of color and working families to ensure equitable representation in the city. these maps are legally compliant with the Fair Maps Act and Federal Voting Rights Act they are compact they are contiguous but most importantly they keep keep keep key communities of interest

together specifically they keep the mobile park communities prioritizing the Willowick and Sullivan community together which stands all the way down to McFadden they also maintain a district in the westmost part of the city with Asian polarity they maintain the Delhi community and communities most heavily impacted by the soiled crisis together within the same districts other maps do not have the level of engagement that these maps provide especially specifically the santa anacols map under number um 104634 does not prioritize compactness and maintaining communities

of interest together it breaks up the mobile home parks community um breaks up the willowick and sullivan communities to share very similar interests additionally it separates the delhi community from other environmentally impacted communities this alongside several other reasons is why we do not believe this map should be considered to advance in this process the most enriching part of the santana redistricting collision maps is that they reflect direct community input from diverse communities across the city this is why i urge you the

council members to support advancing maps sarc1 and sarc2 thank you so much for your time god bless

Thank you. Zoom ID Blanca Ruelas, if you would please select the microphone icon.

Hello. Hello, you may proceed with your comment.

Blanca Ruelas

distribución de distritos. Estos mapas son más equitativos para todas nuestras comunidades. Y para la ciudad completa de la ciudad de Santana, muchas gracias por darnos la oportunidad de poder dar nuestros comentarios y esperamos sean escuchados por ustedes. Buenas noches. Gracias.

Good evening. My name is Blanca Ruelas, Mayor of City Council, and I'm a leader with OCO, and I attend the Episcopal Church of the Messiah in Santa Ana, a resident of Washington Square for over 22 years, and I'm here to support the maps from SARC1 and SARC2, which are the maps that were presented by the coalition. These are the maps that are most equitable for all of our communities and for all the city of Santa Ana. Thank you for the opportunity to comment, and we hope that you listen to us. Thank you very much. Good evening.

Caller with the last three numbers, 496, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device to unmute or select star six.

Dear Mayor Jarmiento and Santa Ana City Council members, my name is Indigo Vu. I'm a staff member of Viet Rise, one of the leading organizations of the Santa Ana Redistricting Coalition as well as a long-time resident of Ward 1. First, thank you for undergoing a process that ensures that all communities in Santa Ana, particularly vulnerable, low-income, and at-risk communities can participate in this redistricting process. I'm advocating for the adoption of one of the two masks developed by the Santa Ana Redistricting Coalition because they prioritize working-class marginalized communities of color, including

Vietnamese communities, the Willowwood community. It keeps the Willowwood community with the Santa Ana, Santa Anita neighborhood and the Sullivan neighborhood, maintains the integrity of the mobile home parks of First Street and Fairview Street, keeps environmental justice interests together and maintains compact interests that maximize the representation of vulnerable and housing burdened communities. I would like to express my concern for plan F number 86566 map. This map version splits multiple communities apart and does not create compact districts in accordance with the Fair Maps Act.

District A splits the Willow community from the Santa Anita neighborhood and instead pairs it with the community by Edna Park, which has little in common with the Willow community. District B cracks environmental justice interests and puts them with rich communities unaffected by environmental issues. It also separates the Logan and French Court neighborhoods from Delphi, which is a heavily impacted neighborhood with environmental issues. District C does not maintain a compact district as it brings in communities south of 17th Street up to Civic Center Drive without any special communities of interest present and

in relation to the communities north of 17th Street. District D separates Willowitt from the Sullivan neighborhood. These two communities face housing issues that must be addressed and should be kept together. The Sullivan neighborhood is also split into two. District E splits up the mobile home park community particularly those located on First and Fairview Street. District F heavily cracks the environmental justice communities in the city and lumps them with residents that are predominantly higher income and occupy single family homes on the other end of the city. Please reject plan F map and support the Santa Ana

redistricting coalition one and Santa Ana redistricting coalition two maps. Thank you.

Thank you.

Zoom ID, Daisy Cruz, if you would please select the microphone icon and proceed with your comment.

Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and City Council.

My name is Daisy Cruz, and I'm calling on behalf of the Kennedy Commission for the redistricting process, item 16. We urge you to consider and adopt one of the proposed maps by the Santa Ana redistricting coalition. Through a series of meetings, the Santa Ana redistricting coalition has educated members and residents about redistricting and created a space to which they identify and articulate communities of interest important to them. These communities of interest are mobile home residents, Vietnamese residents, residents affected by environmental burdens, low-income residents, and residents of the Delhi and Sullivan community.

As others have already mentioned, the community members that live in these areas know best what know best what their needs are we believe that the proposed maps by the santa ana redistricting coalition accurately represents these communities interests and their needs we urge you to adopt one of the proposed maps by the santa ana redistricting coalition thank you thank you

zoom id vincent if you would please select the microphone icon to unmute your device and proceed with your comment can you hear me yes we can hear you you may proceed with your comment

hi council my name is uh vincent tran i'm the community engagement coordinator for viet rise viet rise is a leading member of the santa ana every district immediate committee or coalition along with oko lha and ocj uh the santa ana redistricting coalition has been meeting since September 2021 working with Santa Ana residents to research work towards advocating for equitable redistricting for our communities. I'd like to express my support for the Santa Ana redistricting coalition maps. These two maps does the best job ensuring that mobile home residents, environmental

justice impact communities, and also apartment and low-income Latinx API communities are fairly represented. They're most compact and address very specific issues in terms of allowing the best representation to take place for these communities. As housing price increases, we need to center the needs of communities such as mobile home residents, apartment residents at the forefront. And they should be kept together to include,

to allow for representations that will address their particular issues. And these two particular maps bring together the Willowick and the Sullivan communities along with mobile home parks together into one district, but also creates another district and furthest west brings together the highest concentration of mobile homes together. This district keeps that environmental justice interests together rather than pairing it up with higher income communities in southern

Santa Ana. And in addition, I would like to express my concern for Plan F number 86566 map as this map breaks up Bulewick and the Sullivan community and also cracks the environmental mental justice interests. So please reject plan F and support the San Ana redistricting coalition map one and map two. Thank you.

Thank you. Zoom ID, Julia Gomez, if you would please select the microphone icon to unmute your device. Thank you. You may proceed with your comment.

Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Julia Gomez and I'm a staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California. We sent a letter to the council today in support of you adopting either SARC map one or map two. These are maps submitted by the Santa Ana redistricting commission. I'm sorry, coalition. We urge you to adopt either of these maps and urge you not to adopt any map that splits of communities of interest, including communities identified by the coalition.

In addition to requiring that jurisdictions follow federal law, the Fair Maps Act also requires the city to, in order of priority, adopt a map with contiguous districts that maintains communities of interest that follows easily identifiable lines and that are compact so that nearby areas of population are not bypassed in favor of more distant populations. Both of the SARC maps follow these federal and state criteria. For example, the districts in both maps contain substantially equal population in each district and neither map impermissibly dilutes the Asian or Latino votes so it complies with section 2.

The maps also don't violate the constitutional prohibition against racial gerrymandering which prohibits the use of race as a predominant factor when redistricting absent a compelling government interest. The coalition, while it considered race and ethnicity also looked at other interests and issues such as maintaining shared interest and concerns, maintaining mobile home parks and so on. The maps also comply with the state's mandatory redistricting criteria.

As I've mentioned, both maps contain geographically contiguous districts. And importantly, and as detailed much better in the map narratives, the maps maintain several communities of interest. Districts A, B, D, and F are largely the same in both configurations. And the characteristics that they capture include, to name a few, a high number of mobile home parks and shared restaurants and faith institutions in District A, more affluent and historic neighborhoods in district B a high number of mobile home parks and shared environmental justice concerns in district D and low income mixed immigration status households

facing environmental justice issues in district F district F also keeps the Delahive community in fact there is also a large community of interest in the southern core of the city that includes low income working class and mixed immigration status households and these communities are kept together in districts E and C. So again, we urge you to move forward, SARC maps one and two, and to reject any maps that split communities of interest identified by the San Antonio redistricting coalition. Thank you. Thank you.

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

Hello everyone. My name is Leonel Flores, lifelong resident here of the Madison Park neighborhood. And I'm calling in support of the San Ana redistricting coalition map one or two. And also to ask that you reject the the what's it called the proposal for 86566 I believe it's the the map proposal F

um and the reason for that as previously people have mentioned um it it divides multiple communities of interest um i think someone also mentioned like um it's a lot it looks like there's a lot of germ gerrymandering going on there um not only is it dividing um communities of interest but it's dividing neighborhoods including the madison park neighborhood um so instead of holding communities is intact and in, you know, like they said in square or compact shapes, it's dividing actual neighborhoods, not just communities.

So yeah, I support

the Sanana Redistricting Coalition map one or two. Thank you.

Thank you.

MID Kayla Asato, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device.

Hi, yeah, my name is Kayla Asato. I am the redistricting organizer for Orange County Environmental Justice. As Leonel so wonderfully mentioned earlier, the Santa Ana goals map, I think that is still 86566 does split up communities of interest in the Southeast part of Santa Ana. but also it splits up in the communities like this Madison Park, Delhi, Cedar Street communities and separates them from other environmental justice communities known as the environmental justice corridor in northeast Santa Ana like the Logan neighborhood,

French Court and other accompanying communities. That community those communities along the eastern side of the city are very much burdened by like same levels of pollution soil lead and it would really be in the city's best interest to keep them together instead of putting the madison park uh and southeast parts of santa ana together with the most absent parts of the city so yeah if you could uh disregard map 86566 or satana goals for that reason in addition to it's putting up several communities of interest and vote for

uh the san ando redistricting coalition now that would be amazing and yeah thank you very much

thank you zoom id danny if you would please select the microphone icon on your device

uh thank you good evening my name is danny vega resident of ward 3. i'm calling to show my support for map f it keeps neighborhoods of interest together for both the south and north end of san anna and of course it also maintains asian plurality on the west side of san anna um but you know what at the end of the day regardless of what map gets adopted i just want to say that all san anna residents should have an equal voice regardless of what you look like or how much money you make you know at the end of the day we're all neighbors and we I just feel like we needed that needed to be said. Thank you and have a good night.

Thank you.

Zoom ID, Jeffrey Katz, if you would please select your microphone icon to unmute your device and proceed with your comment.

Yeah, thank you. This is Jeffrey Katz. I live in Ward three and like Danny, I'll be advocating for map F. There are a number of reasons which justify the unanimous support of the city council. it doesn't prioritize any community. It supports a fair representation throughout the city. But I wanna focus on two aspects of this proposed map. The map's unification of the Southern neighborhoods and the maps absorption of Washington Square into the Northern neighborhood district and the designation of the neighborhoods west of the Santa Ana River and a park in Concord to another district.

And I say this for the benefit of both of these sections. And in the analysis, I wanna focus on the community of interest criteria that set forth in the California constitution. Case law and legal literature indicate that a community of interest analysis should consider these sorts of factors and I'm not going to expand on this but I know our council members know these neighborhoods Washington Square and Edna Park very well. So consider how these factors truly dictate why Washington Square should be with Northern and Edna and Concord should be in

another district. One, lifestyle, for example, community character, recreation, shared social gatherings. Two, demography, for example, income, immigration status, housing, education levels, graduation rates, medium household income, poverty levels, access to technology, home ownership rates, language isolation, voter registration rates. Three, geography. Enda and Concord sit on the other side of the Santa Ana River. Political subdivisions. Those particular neighborhoods are actually in the Garden Grove School District. And finally, economy.

And with economy, I want to focus on commercial areas. I know it's routine to use main streets as boundaries, but I'd like to suggest that doing so with 17th street is nefarious and it's divisive as I've often heard the euphemism of the people north of 17th to be distinguished from the people south of 17th and we need to stop doing that. A number of residents here have been working extremely hard on revitalizing 17th street and I think to absorb Washington Square this is on the southern side would facilitate. But I really liked what Danny said. I think everybody that

has spoken here tonight is really looking to make lives better for every resident of Santa Ana. And sometimes we get the euphemism of gentrification, revitalization, but I think when it really comes down to we're all looking for representation that makes life better, not for any single community, but for all Santa Ana residents. Thank you.

Thank you.

Zoom ID policy team, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device and proceed with your comment.

Hello. Hi. Awesome, all right. Hello Santa Ana City Council members. My name is Christina Nguyen and I represent the Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community Alliance, or Ocapica. While our main office is in Garden Grove, we do provide services to enhance the health and well-being of all Asians and Pacific Islanders in Orange County including community members in Santa Ana. I would like to first of all thank the council members for all the work they've done to ensure that all communities in Santa Ana particularly vulnerable low income and at-risk

communities can be heard and participate in this redistricting process. I would also like to express my support for the Santa Ana redistricting coalition one and Santa Ana redistricting coalition two maps. These two proposed maps address issues raised by plan FID 86566. It keeps the Willow Wick community and the Santa Anita neighborhood and Sullivan neighborhood together. The integrity of the mobile home parks on first street and Fairview street together. And it keeps the environmental justice interests together while maintaining compact districts that maximize the representation of vulnerable and house burn communities.

In addition, I do have some concerns regarding the plan F ID 6, 8, 6, 5, 6, 6 map. As this map splits multiple of the previously mentioned communities of interest apart and does not create compact interest um compact districts in according to the fire maps act please reject plan f um and support these and anna co redistricting coalitions

one and two maps thank you thank you zoom id fatima paquet if you would please select the microphone icon on your device

buenas noches

puede bajar el volumen en el otro aparato

buenas noches alcalde y miembros del consejo de la ciudad de santana mi nombre es fátima paque soy voluntaria de oco orange county congregation community organization y pertenezco a la iglesia de San José aquí en Santana. Vengo a apoyar a la coalición que hemos trabajado por varios meses escuchando las voces de nuestra comunidad y sus necesidades, que queremos abogar por una política que defienda la dignidad de todas las personas para transformar los sistemas injustos en nuestra ciudad, poniendo nuestra fe en acción para promover cambios positivos para nuestras diversas

communities with their own cultural characteristics, religious, economic and social, which are vulnerable with the distribution of districts. We seek the best alternatives in pro of our city to increase the access and opportunities of our communities, staying united. We need to work together with authorities and y líderes comunitarios para tener mejores distritos, como por ejemplo, mi vecindario está en medio de dos par el French Park y el French Court. Estamos divididos entre apartamentos y casas históricas,

las cuales se denotan la diferencia entre dichas comunidades y el cambio que ha sufrido el downtown de Santana, especialmente la forestry. Nosotros tenemos que tener en cuenta que hay mucha importancia porque de de aquí va a depender que los 10 años que nosotros tomemos en cuenta para nuestros hijos sean esenciales y queremos que garantice que el futuro de los nuestros siguientes concejales nos representen equitativamente a la población de santana y en su diversidad sin olvidar todas las necesidades especiales en cada uno de nuestros vecindarios agradezco tomen en

los datos de nuestros mapas S R C 1 y S R a C 2 por porque nosotros no solamente tenemos que tomar en cuenta a los votantes, sino a toda la población que vivimos en Santana. Que tengamos una misma voz para los residentes, sin importar su situación migratoria, económica, racial, política, cultural y que todo sea en pro de nuestra ciudad. Muchísimas gracias por escucharnos. Buenas noches. Gracias.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. My name is Fatima Paque and I'm a volunteer with OCO and I attend the Saint Joseph Church and I'm here to support the the Coalition map because we've been working with the community, listening to the community's voice for months. This policy is going to give dignity to all of us in the community, and we are here to fight against unfair systems in the community, to put our faith into action, and our community volunteers, we are here to

support the redistricting the coalition map this is a time this is going to be the best for our community to unite our community we need to work together for to have better districts in our community and for example my neighborhood is between french park and french court which is which has apartments and historic homes surrounding it, next or near to 4th Street. We know that this is important for the next four years so that this is going to benefit our kids for the next 10 years.

This is going to also affect future council members that we hope represent the Santa Ana residents and its diversity. and thank you and we are here to support maps for SARC 1 and SARC 2 so not only this should not only support the voters of Santa Ana but all Santa Ana residents in the economic diversity racial cultural situations thank you for listening and good evening

Zoom ID Annabel Parra, if you would please select a microphone icon on your device.

Persona con el nombre en Zoom, Annabel Parra. Por favor, active el sonido en el aparato en que está usando Zoom.

a lot of questions.

If you can see the comments.

Yes, I'm not sure my name is Annabel Parra perfect as well district number 5. I'm resident of Santa Ana for 23 years. I'm here to talk about the number 16 of the agenda. I live between the calle McFarren and I, where the majority of residents of this area. My community is from the business of the business and business and from my business and I I I I I I with various needs.

So I think that the district of Santa Ana Sharp respect my community and their needs. And around my community, on the map, on the map and the needs of the coalition to defend a lot of communities and that is the Santa Ana most vulnerable is crazy. And I'm going to say home for that. And I'm going to say home for that. And I'm going to say home for that. And I'm going to say.

Good evening. My name is and I'm in the Ward 5 resident of Santana for 23 years. I'm here to talk about item 16 on the agenda. I live around McFadden and First, and most of my community is low income, and we have several basic needs. We need to support our youth that have a great need. Our youth and children have great needs, and the redistricting needs to respect my community and its needs. and around the, for the map, the proposed map for the coalition needs to support our communities of interest and the most vulnerable. Thank you, Mayor and City Council,

for supporting our community.

Zoom ID, Manny De Leon, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device and proceed with your comment.

Hello, can you all hear me?

Yes, we can hear you. you may proceed with your comment.

Hello, my name, hello council. My name is Manny De Leon and I'm a field coordinator with the Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community Alliance or CAPICA for short. While our nonprofit organization based in Gardner, we do provide service throughout Orange County, which does include Santa Ana. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you all for the hard work you've done to ensure that all communities in Santa Ana, particularly vulnerable, low income and at risk communities can be heard throughout this redistricting process. I would also like to express my concern for Plan F number 86566 map.

This map divides multiple communities and does not comply with the Fair Maps Act as it does not create compact districts. It splits up numerous communities within Santa Ana. In addition, I would like to express my support for the Santa Ana Redistricting Coalition 1 and Santa Ana Redistricting Coalition number 2 maps. These two maps proposed addresses the issues raised by Plant F, again number 86566, by keeping the Willowwood community with the Santa Nea neighborhood and Sullivan neighborhood. It also keeps the integrity of mobile home parks on 1st Street and Fairview Street.

It keeps environmental justice interests together and maintains compact districts that maximize the representation of vulnerable and housing burden communities. Again, please reject plan F number 86566 map and support the Santa Ana Registry Coalition 1 and number two maps. Thank you.

Thank you.

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

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rc1 s a rc2 porque si ustedes a se fijan en las coordenadas que nos presentan estos mapas nos están presentando una equidad igualatoria de lo que es la democracia en representación de una sociedad individualista para bienestar de nuestra población que viene representando nuestros centros culturales nuestras iglesias nuestros parques y la unidad que representamos como latinos en

estas comunidades las coordenadas que nos presenta el mapa voz no se especifica claramente esa desintegración de una comunidad de equidad igualatoria donde no se da el valor a nuestra democracia creo yo que es muy importante porque esto se viene representando o se viene presentando desde meses atrás esto yo creo que se va va a tener un impacto y un reflejo tremendo en las urnas de los votantes porque porque nosotros los votantes somos los que los sentamos a ustedes en

the silla of power, between comillas. We are the ones who give us that we are going to be there sent out as a representation of us for our interests, but not as interests of a individualist. I think it's time to be as people who have time in this struggle of a coalition, we work in conjuntividad y trabajemos tomados de la mano por una equidad igualatoria porque esto va a representar a la larga una perjudicial situación para nuestros

estudiantes porque se están le quedan 15 tanto distritos a muchísimas gracias gracias

Good evening, Mayor, City Council. My name is Laura Sandoval. I'm a leader at OCO, and I go to the Santa Ana Church, and I'm here representing the coalition, the Santa Ana Redistricting Coalition. And the city of Santa Ana is very important because it's the largest concentration of Latinos in Orange County. and we have other communities of interest are several. We have immigrants, we have renters, low-income people, mixed immigration status people. And it's important to be here to support MAPS SARC1 and SARC2.

If you look at the coordinates in the MAPS, they provide equality for the democratic representation. And this is to benefit our community, our culture, our churches, our parks, and our unity as Latinos. Map 2 clearly has this equality. This doesn't value our democracy. And it's important because we have been moving along and working together for months. and this, the maps that we have should be reflecting,

this will be reflected in the polls and you have to remember that the voters are the ones that put you into, quote unquote, into power. We give you the vote for you to sit there as our representatives, not to represent individuals' power. So I believe it's time to fight as a coalition, to work together for this equality to this representation. And this is for the benefit of our students.

Zoom ID, Jesus Santana. If you would please select your microphone icon and unmute your device. Thank you. You may proceed with your comment.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the council. This is Jesus Santana, a community organizer who's currently supporting the resident group known as Sullivan in Acción. I would like to start off by saying thank you to the city's arts and culture office, as well as the neighborhood initiatives team for involving Sullivan and Action leaders in the planning of the Willits and Sullivan beautification project celebration. Thank you as well to all the city staff, council members, and mayor who joined the Sullivan residents in unveiling the 14-foot sculpture of a coyote. We really hope to see ongoing support from all the council members

and staff who attended the event on Saturday, June 22nd. With that being said, the Sullivan and Action team and I would like to encourage you all to consider implementing one of the maps that the Santana redistricting coalition has proposed to you all. In particular, Mayor Pro Tem Becerra, who currently represents the southern half of the Sullivan community, and Council Member Jonathan Hernandez, who currently represents the northern half of the Sullivan community. We strongly believe that both of their maps are inclusive and reflective of the needs of our mobile home residents, low-income, immigrant, Vietnamese,

and most vulnerable community members here in Santana. We thank the Santana redistricting coalition for taking Sullivan into account and for ensuring that the city has options for equitable maps that do not continue to separate communities of interest, such as Willowick and Sullivan. Thank you for your time, and I hope you all have a great night.

Thank you.

Caller with the last three numbers, 631, if you would please select your microphone icon to unmute your call.

Persona con los últimos tres números 631. Por favor. Marquez Trella 6 para reactivar su llamada.

Y buenas noches, señor alcalde, miembro del consejo y los demás representantes. My name is Ariana Cabello and I've been resident of Santana for approximately 10 years. I'm going to discuss the point 16 of the agenda. I live between the 3rd Street and Flower, where most residents are individuals, immigrants, of low income and vulnerable. The needs of my community are quite, and among them is the fact that we are listening by our representatives that we chose. So, I believe that the districts proposed around my community

by the Redistribute District of Santa Ana, S.A.R.C., represent firmly to my community and their needs. The map proposed by the coalition defends the communities of interest and the residents of Santa Ana more vulnerable. I would like you to listen to what we as residents want to hear. expressat donde apoyamos en la coalición de redistribución de distritos de Santa Ana. Gracias.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council members, and everyone else. My name is Ariana Cabello. I'm a resident of Santa Ana for 10 years. I'm here to talk about item number 16. I live around Third and Flower. Most of our community is a working class community, immigrants, low income, and vulnerable. Some of our needs need to be listened to by our elected representatives, and the proposal by the Santa Ana redistricting coalition is supporting and representing my community and its needs.

the maps that they present, the coalition present, it defends, the maps defend our communities of interest. So I'm here to respectfully thank you for listening to us and I support the SARC maps. Thank you.

Persona con el Zoom ID, Irene.

Buenas noches, ¿me escucha? Sí, puede continuar con su comentario.

Buenas noches a todos. Mi nombre es Irene Bautista y soy líder comunitaria en OCO y la Iglesia Episcopal del Mesías. OCO es parte de la coalición de redistribución de distritos de la ciudad de Santana. En mi comunidad la mayoría de personas son latinos y viven en apartamentos que es muy diferente a otras áreas de la ciudad. In personal, I am involved in the process of redistribution at the level of the state and also in the new maps of the school district. As a leader of the FE, it is my obligation moral to advocate for representative and that is very important in a city like Santana,

because it is the largest community of the Latin community and established in the Orange County. This population is crossing and is also a large number of communities of interest, including immigrants, inquilinos, low income and families with migratory status. That's why I would like to consider and analyze more deeply the maps submitted by the coalition, as they have taken months to make a community-wide. También me gustaría mencionar que el mapa de Santana Gold divide nuestras comunidades de interés y no es apropiada para nuestras comunidades.

Este proceso es sumamente importante y por eso les quiero agradecer por extender la línea de tiempo para poder tomar una decisión. Buenas noches. Gracias por su atención.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council members. My name is Irene Iren Bautista. I'm a leader of OCO, and I'm a member of the Church of the Messiah. And most of our community is a vulnerable community, and this supports our community.

I have been involved in this effort in the county and in the school district community as well. As a person of faith, it's important to get involved in Santa Ana because this is the largest Latino community in Orange County and its population encompasses several communities of interest, such as immigrants, renters, low-income people, and mixed immigration status people. It's important that you analyze the maps that have been submitted by the coalition because they have been developed over months of outreach.

And the Santa Ana Goals map does not divide our communities of interest and is not good for our community. and also thank you for extending the deadline. Good evening and thank you for listening.

Thank you, Mayor, and that was the very last caller that we...

Great, thank you, everybody, and thank you everybody who spoke here in person and those who called in. Let me go ahead and actually close the public hearing and bring it back to the City Council for any comments or questions, and I do see a hand raised by Council Member Hernandez, but let me start with Council Member Lopez, go to Council Member Hernandez, and then go from there. Madam Clerk, if you'll please just give us gentle reminders as we're going through and speaking when we hit the three-minute mark. Thank you.

Jessie LopezItem 3

Thank you, Mayor. Paul, I'm going to tell you what maps I'm considering and my thoughts on what I heard from the public regarding Map-F. As it was stated, it divides Madison Park. it removes a section of Henninger Park, it separates Sullivan and the Willowick community, and it removes Washington Square from its current ward. And you know just like War III, we don't want to see our communities be separated nor divided and we cannot do that to other communities either. That would not be

Jessie LopezItem 3

fair and we cannot do to others what we don't want to see happen in War III and it makes me really sad it's really upsetting to hear that War III residents are advocating for a map that would include Washington Square because they are affluent because they are white less immigrant it's really upsetting to hear that and that is not giving all Santa Ana residents regardless of what they look like or their income level the opportunity for fair representation that is a complete opposite of what you are advocating for and if we do not want to

Jessie LopezItem 3

be perceived a certain way then we need to do the internal work of making sure that our actions align and are not hurtful to other communities so Paul I am supporting Santa Ana coalition map one I am also going to be supporting draft plan A. I think draft plan A is what we talked about during the last public hearing and I also am going to be supporting plan J. I know plan J looks a little bit different on the west end but it does have an Asian plurality ward of

Jessie LopezItem 3

43.6 which I think it might be one of the highest ones that we are seeing out of all of the maps. And from looking at the map, it keeps most of the transit zone corridor together, which is what we heard about. It keeps northern neighborhoods together. It creates a southern map. It keeps Memorial Park together, Santa Anita together. It keeps our environmental justice communities together. And from what I hear or what I've heard, it reaches the goal of making sure that all the communities that we have heard one are represented and I know

Jessie LopezItem 3

that that in itself has been for some folks inequitable because we continue to hear from the same people and I appreciate that but we're not hearing from new people and so that lets me know that whatever we're doing whatever step it is we're not you know new voices are not being included in the process but I do think staff for all of the work that they've done I know it's been an an extensive process and it's hard to get people to call in or show up. So those are my thoughts for now, thank you.

Thank you for those comments, Council Member. Let me go to Council Member Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

Thank you, Council Member Lopez. Your comments were refreshing to hear because it's important that these conversations happen and that we call it what it is. We have to center environmental justice, but we must not forget about social justice and equity many of which most of these maps have taken have not taken into account there has been multiple homicides this year in the city of Santa Ana last year in September Brandon Lopez was murdered by Anaheim PD in my district the very district he was raised in when we talk about uplifting voices don't exclude the black community

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

don't exclude communities that have been hyper-policed and struggle with representation justice impacted communities have not had a voice at city hall until people like me got elected um i'm not going to speak in code so i'll tell you which maps i think are horrible plan d e j and viet rise one map um and in addition to that i'm only supporting plan a and plan A2 at the moment. The reason why I can't support the Santa Ana redistricting coalitions map one is because it completely separates the black community from the heart of its representation.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

And it places it in the same in the same district with the South Coast Plaza border in map one. um srac2 um what it does in ward b is it cuts out the black community and the townsend community and as a result it actually perpetuates inequity by placing in the same in the same district which would be made up of the border of costa mesa so most of these maps are excluding black community black voices justice impacted communities and what you are doing when you do that is you are

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

accentuating white supremacy i know that there's there's a lot of discomfort in truth and um unfortunately that's that's my job is to just to speak truth there is a reality that we have to face and that reality is that marginalized disenfranchised communities have been left out of the conversation and it's because of processes like this so if we want to see more grassroots people power candidates get elected and see them have equity and actually see our residents have representation that they deserve include black voices in your in your coalitions

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

include justice impacted communities in your coalition the majority of these maps are horrible and i will only be supporting plan a and plan a2 thank you council member let me go ahead and now

go to Councilmember Mendoza. Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I want to reiterate my support for map 86566, map F. I have read large amounts of correspondence. I have spoken with many residents and I've heard their concerns. Residents have made it very clear that they want to see the southern neighborhoods in one ward and the northern neighborhoods in another ward. Residents have also expressed their desire to see the Sullivan neighborhood kept together.

Because of the settlement made by the previous City Council in 2018, we must have an Asian plurality ward. I believe that MAP 86566, MAPF, comes to the closest to accomplishing all of these. and I ask my colleagues to strongly support and approve map 86566, that's map F, and to approve it without delay. Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento.

Thank you for those comments. Let me go ahead and see if there's any other questions or comments from the council.

Mayor Proton.

Phil BacerraItem 3

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I'm going to do a little hybrid comment here. So right before this hearing began, we were talking about homelessness. And one thing I wanted to comment on was noticing that on the smart heat map that was shown by Mr. Gaminski. I, too, almost wanted to say Deputy Chief. On that map, you saw on the southern end of town, you saw South Bristol, South Main, and a little heat path along an east-west axis. And that was along the railroad tracks that go all the way from Susan, which is essentially

Phil BacerraItem 3

about a quarter mile west of Fairview, going all the way through to Delhi and up north through there. And so I would just say to that fact that among the things that the South have in common, that is one thing we have in common. We face those same things together. But to come back on to the presentation that was given to us tonight, there was one thing that stuck out, the idea of keeping wards compact. And that is one of the reasons why I'm supporting what is now labeled as MAPF.

Phil BacerraItem 3

So the coalition that spoke tonight, I want to thank you guys for coming out, and I want to thank all the folks that also sent us emails and gave us their input as to which maps they support. I know that I received, and I'm sure my colleagues as well received, many comments in support of MapF. One thing, though, that I was hearing a lot from commenters that were on the line tonight was the idea of keeping communities of interest together. Well, there's another statistic that comes in and that is the Section 2 provision, which is to keep folks that are 50% that are

Phil BacerraItem 3

Latino, Black, or Asian together. And the F-MAP creates five of those districts, while the coalition maps that have been brought up only bring up or only create four. So that's something to keep in mind. The other thing that I thought was kind of interesting was that someone said that Edna Park and Willowick have nothing to do with each other. And I know for a fact because a lot of the folks in both of those neighborhoods were my schoolmates. So I know that they have a lot in common. And just to keep my comments brief and wrap up here, you know, this coalition says

Phil BacerraItem 3

that they want to keep communities of interest together. And they named all kinds of interests, communities of interest, but they didn't want to keep the South together. The southern neighborhoods have worked excellent together and have addressed so many problems. So I think it's unfortunate that while we want to keep every other community together, even the North, we somehow forget the South exists and we forget that they too have a lot of shared commonalities in our community of interest. So I'm going to continue to support MapF and those are my comments

for this evening. Thank you. Great. Thank you for those comments. Let me go to

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

Councilmember Fan. Thank You Mayor. I first like to say that I understand that there's community of interest is a difficult thing to establish especially in a city like Santana right we have neighborhood associations we have different types of households we have different immigration status we have different socioeconomic status there's there's not going to be a perfect map that we can adopt that addresses all of those areas so I do want to put it out there because I think that at least I feel that we're all trying to create the best map or adopt the best map to address the most pressing needs in the

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

city so the first thing I do want to ask though and I'm not sure if it's supposed to be directed at our consultant or madam city attorney but regarding the Santa Ana redistricting coalition so I was under the understanding and please tell me if I'm wrong that if there are districts or wards that have a 50 plus 1 percent that creates a Latino Asian or black let's say Latino here that creates a section 2 district and that's required

right yeah and I would refer that to our consultant yeah so um so this is definitely something that gets into the area of legal interpretation. There is such a thing as a majority minority district and that is 50% plus one of a particular population, Latino, Asian, African-American. We've done redistricting in Alaska and looked at Alaska native 50% plus one district. So that is an actual metric that's used in redistricting. There are subtle legal interpretations that you might need to speak with your counsel with under attorney-client privilege

to look at whether or not something's actually a Section 2 Voting Rights Act district. Because in order to be a Section 2 Voting Rights Act district, there are additional tests called the Jingles tests. Not only does it have to be that 50% above, but also has to have racial polarized voting from that group so that they vote as a block. And there has to be a dominant or white population that's voting as a block against that population. And then there can even be deeper analysis in some cases where, like in the Central Valley in California, there was a question about whether the commission at the state level

was required to create three majority minority districts that were just above 50% or whether it would be better to draw two majority minority districts that were at 55, 56, 58%. And so yeah, you'd have less that were above 50%, but you would have those two be more effective than they would be if every district was dried at that 50% mark. So there are legal interpretations that have an interplay with the policy of majority minority districts. And I don't think we as the consultants are in a position right now to tell you what you would be required to do under section two of the Voting Rights Act, other than to let you know that, yes,

there is such a thing as a majority minority district. And there are plans here that have, you know, different numbers of those for the Latino districts. What's unclear at this time is whether or not there is some percentage that a district needs to hit in order to be a quote unquote effective district and how that interplay is with the section two requirement of the Voting Rights Act.

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

Thank you. That was a really complete answer. And that helps me better understand because as mentioned by council member excuse me mayor for 10 basara i hadn't realized that you know the two sarc maps only have four 50 plus one latino districts and you know i'm not asking for legal interpretation on the spot but that does give me pause as i'm looking at this particularly as i'm sitting here advocating for an asian plurality district that was created subsequent to a settlement in a California Voting Rights Act lawsuit. That is particularly important to me because our city is, I believe, about 80, 85% Latino,

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

almost, maybe 80%. So some of the other areas that I am concerned about is I think I hear the Sullivan community quite clearly. I think they, from day one, have advocated to keep them together into the same district, So that's something that I am looking for specifically in all these plans. I also believe that the southern community around South Bristol deserve to continue to be together. I used to live in that area, and I do know that there are a lot of really close relationships at these neighborhood associations and community members. They collaborate. They work together.

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

It's an economic corridor that is very particular in the city, and I do think that they face somewhat different concerns in addressing you know issues that they face in the city I am having a hard time actually particularly elevating any particular map I do hear that there have been a lot of support for the I think it's plan F I actually saw on a districter there's an updated plan F which I like better I think it's more compact I think it actually addresses some of the other divisions as well as some of the concerns that folks have raised

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

so I would like to elevate that one it's ID 104634 and with that I'll conclude my comments thank you

Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 3

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento, and thank you to all the people that came to speak and that we heard from via email. I just wanted to say for the record that I am, from looking through all of these maps, I mean, it's been buried in the last week, just really dissecting each one of them, and And one that I would like to see move forward and fully supportive of is draft plan F with ID 86566. Because it, like Councilmember Fan said it best, you know, to try to incorporate every single community of interest into one map would just be nearly impossible.

David PenalozaItem 3

Even when you're just thinking of the mobile home parks. There are plenty that are scattered throughout the city. And if we were to try and sit and advocate for all of them to be in one district, you'd have one funky-looking puzzle piece right in the middle of the city. So I think the one that best closely gets this done and gets a little bit for each one of these districts or communities of interest is Plan F. Keeps your Asian plurality ward, your northern communities together, your southern communities together, and it does something that hasn't been in a Santa Ana district map in a long time,

David PenalozaItem 3

which is three central Santa Ana wards, which is something that I've always heard for years of the community advocating for. One thing that I would like to kind of push back is on the notion that Madison Park is split in this Ward F. I don't think that is true.

David PenalozaItem 3

There is a border from what I see along the Maple Street bike trail, but something that I would like to point out is that the neighborhoods and the residents that live to, I guess, would be west of the Maple Street bike trail, and I have plenty of family members there and have spoken to a lot of residents there as of today dealing with some, you know, homeless and drug issue in that neighborhood. is that all those, it's like two or three streets where it's all historic homes that believe, you know, in that historic preservation of those historic homes that are over 100 years old

David PenalozaItem 3

and are of the same interest in preserving their historic homes as a resident in Wilshire Square.

David PenalozaItem 3

So I am supportive of draft plan F and would like to see that move forward. And that is it, Mayor Salimino. Thank you.

Great. Thank you for those comments. I'll keep mine brief as well. I just want to recite something that I know I asked an open question at the last public hearing on redistricting and it was about the threshold of votes that we need, whether it's a simple or whether it's a two-thirds majority. So according to article 1 section 101.2 of the charter, it appears it is a two-thirds majority. So that's just a little bit of housekeeping to make sure we know where we are. So I did want to go back to some of the comments that were made by our consultant, Mr. Mitchell, on the maps as they were amended in 2018.

They really are in their infancy. You know, they really are relatively new maps when we had to take a look at those when we were faced with the transition from at-large election to by-district elections. And we were using 2010 census data. I think he saw that the deviation was about 13.4. So, you know, I think a lot of these questions, even though we're now dealing with the Fair Maps Act, were still considerations that we were thinking about. How do we keep neighborhoods together? How do we keep communities of interest?

Whether you want to calm communities of interest, communities of color, communities that have commonalities together. And I know that for me, what we're doing, and I want to thank the staff, and I want to thank our consultant and our clerk, and the council because we, you know, this was on track to be done before the end of last year. And that would have been, I think, not a good thing for everybody because I think we've been able to look at some maps and look at different iterations of maps as we started. And I think we're off to what we're doing, which is narrowing it down to maps that we may not all agree on.

We're probably not going to agree on the final map. But that's what the process entails. So I want to support everybody's map that they proposed. My personal concerns are having to make sure that we comply with the settlement that we've already agreed to with respect to the API award. I think that's Ward A and making sure that we have, you know, continue to have a plurality there. We also want to respect the EJ corridor, obviously. And for me, Willowick is important. It's becoming more and more of a pressing concern and an area of

common interest there. So, you know, I would simply say these aren't final maps or versions of the maps. We're still going to tweak them. They still can be adjusted and I think according to our consultant and we can still make minor changes. So I would say the ones I'm looking at right now are Plan A and Plan A2 and SARC1. So in addition to some of the others, I think what we're doing is we're narrowing it down, which is what we need to do. We can kind of tweak and move and get those things done, but it's the beginning of February. It gives ourselves a little time to meet that statutory deadline in April,

so I think we're going at a good clip. And with that, Madam Clerk, I guess my question to you is, when does this come back to us? Does it come back to us at the very next meeting or can we push it out to maybe the following meeting? What are your thoughts?

I think we need to bring this back to the very next meeting. And if the council has a heavy agenda on the next meeting, we could definitely meet on a special meeting.

Yeah, and maybe to our consultant, let's thin out the preface and sort of the preliminary slides. I mean, we all get those and they're online. I'm sure that they're accessible to the public. He can give sort of a high level overview, but look, we just can't keep going through this over and over again. We've got other business that we need to take care of that's equally as important. This is no less important, but it's equally as important. So with that, why don't we go ahead and, I guess we would go ahead and just continue this to the following. Yes. Sure, go ahead.

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

I just want to make sure that what I have written down is what I think specific maps everyone had mentioned a a2 f j sr s a r c 2 as well as s a r c 1 and then I had mentioned map ID 1 0 4 6 3 4 those are the only ones I think any of us up here had elevated I think those are the ones

Jessie LopezItem 3

I heard I was just on a redistrictor and I saw that there was a modified version of plan J so I'd like to see that come back so that the full council can can look at that because that other one map plan j now currently has the five districts that create that 50 plus um the 50 plus districts that we were just talking about and again the southern district and um the asian plurality and a deviation of 1.5 got it did you get that madam clerk

yes i have okay so we'll go ahead and bring bring this back to the next um next meeting so we could go ahead and revisit it again and maybe we narrow it down even further. Who knows? We may even get to some closure.

Phil BacerraItem 3

Mayor Paterson- Mayor, if I may, just real quick. Madam St. Clair, could you read back the maps that you have as elevated?

Dr. Amy St. Yes. So it's draft plan A, A2, J, and then there's a new version of J that you said that was on redistrictor, so I'll have to look at that one.

Draft Plan F, and then an ID number 104634, SARC1, and SARC2.

That's the same list I have. Yeah, that's everything. Does everybody consistent with that?

Phil BacerraItem 3

Okay, I just wanted to confirm that. Thank you.

All right, thank you. So we're good. So we'll go ahead and move along. Let me go ahead and turn it back. Let's go back to staff presentations. We still haven't even gotten to public comments yet So let's go to item number five, which is the residential permit parking update And I'll turn it over to our director of Public Works

Or did madam city manager want to give him the lead-up and a big in certainly yeah

So just a very brief presentation on a parking program study that we want to embark on and we wanted to share with you The RFP scope of work and I will turn it over to executive director of Public Works Nabil Saba

good evening mayor mayor pro tem members of the City Council the purpose of the presentation is to provide you with a quick update on our progress with the residential permit parking program I'm going to skip really quick we we have a background, as you know, we do have 27 parking districts, up to 9,000 permits that we've issued, good for two years, and there is a lot to deal with in the parking permit program.

We have a lot of challenges, as you may know. Some of the challenges are our growing number of vehicles per household, number of neighborhoods originally designed for lower parking demands, limited parking within multifamily communities. And our plan to deal with these challenges is to retain a consultant to study what we have and come back to us for recommendations. We have developed a scope of work to analyze all existing permit parking regulations and

trends, survey other cities and agencies for best practices, conduct extensive public outreach, and develop options and alternatives for improvement. This is the scope of work that we have so far, and we are reaching out to you, to the residents in the city, for feedback on the scope of work so we can send out the RFP to to conduct these studies and come back to you for recommendations. We have so far went to CommLink, RTG Pillar, and Neighborhood Association meeting just recently, and this council meeting,

and we plan to offer this presentation, short presentation, to all communities, neighborhood associations that want it. And we have also established an email address that can residents can use to email us, share with us their difficulties and issues with the parking permit. This way we could take all of the feedback to our consultant to study, tabulate, and bring back hopefully good revisions and improvements on the program. The tentative schedule for this is we're going to do an outreach from February to March of this year, issue the RFP, then conduct the study

in July or start the study in July 2022 of this year and come back for you hopefully. And we also have a June, we anticipate having the study completed by June 2023 and then come back to council by September 2023 for any appropriate revisions that the consultant will be recommending. And again, we will be reaching out and I will be providing you more updates as the consultant is hired and our progress. This is the website. Public Works is seeking input, comments, and suggestions on items to be included in the scope of work.

And this is the email that we'd like for residents to use, permitparkingatsanana.org. And I'm open for any questions you may have.

Great. Thank you for that presentation. That is going to be a busy email. So let me go ahead and bring it back to council to see if there's any questions. comments let me start with council member fan then mayor pro-tend thank you nabil i think there are

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

a few of us on this dais who have been banging our heads against the wall regarding permit parking i can tell you that my mom's neighborhood they've been asking for permit parking since i was a kid but they're never they're all tenants so okay so question or comment can we add considerations for overnight permit parking only. So one of the things that I personally feel that we don't really implement here in the city of Santa Ana is in busy places like LA, you might have streets that are no parking during the day but allow overnight parking. One example I always bring up, only because it's something I see all the

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

time, is I live right on Fairview. There's no parking on Fairview because, sure, during the day it's really busy, but at night it's empty. And we have a lot of condos a lot of townhomes that don't have parking so I understand some of those have traffic engineering considerations but I really do think that we need to look into that because there are a lot of areas in the city that could I think benefit from that use as well as Really address some of the concerns of you know people have their cars parked out there Maybe there's more activity and there's less how do I say?

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

unsupervised areas is something that a lot of people have complained about. Another item I do want us to look into is a possible use of technology or apps. I know that that has been implemented in many areas including parts of New York, Minneapolis, some of these big cities where whether it's an apartment or a neighborhood association HOA, they use apps to figure out what's empty, whose car it is, and similar how to with how we use the My Santa Ana app, you know, this car has been parked there for four days, etc. Those are two areas I'd like for

the consultant to look into. Thank you. Thank you for those comments. Council Member, Mayor Pro Tem.

Phil BacerraItem 5

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You know, I'm so happy to see this before us, even as an update at this point, because this is something that I brought before the council back in May of last year, And I appreciate my colleagues supporting this push to look at a program that's, what, Nabil, is it 20 or 30 years old? 30 years old, right?

30 years old.

Phil BacerraItem 5

30 years old. It's time to open the hood and look under and see what we can do to fix it or improve it at the very least. As Council Member Fan mentioned, the idea of taking a street like Fairview that's not utilized at night, I think that's a great idea and it really rolls into what my thinking was when I brought this item forward back in 2021 was that we need to start looking at parking on a neighborhood-wide basis. And that, I hope, is one of the essential planks in the RFP because this Hunger Games approach that we keep perpetuating in the city is not working. It creates hostility among neighbors. It's ineffective.

Phil BacerraItem 5

And so really the hope at the end of the day is to come up with a way and a policy that we can do this on a neighborhood basis. You know, Frank from your staff brought a map to Comlink last Thursday. And what was fascinating is we approve districts in the city, but the actual permits where they're actually effective along each street goes through that Hunger Games process of petitions and street by street, block by block. And the only neighborhood that I saw, and I'm kind of proud of this, is South Coast Neighborhood. They're the only ones that over time were actually able to get all their streets through this petition process.

Phil BacerraItem 5

But there's so many of these districts through the city, and they have one line in it, or maybe two lines. So you have a designated district, but permits only apply to one or two of the streets. So again, the emphasis, I can't emphasize enough that we need to look at this on a neighborhood wide level. The other question I have for staff is enforcement. And Nabil, you were at Comlink on Thursday, so I'm sure you heard the resident from Wilshire Square who brought up the fact that while she has permit parking on her street, the problem is we don't see enforcement on, say, a Friday night or Saturday night.

Phil BacerraItem 5

And so, you know, for her, she's saying how much she loved the program, but how frustrating it was for her because it doesn't work without the enforcement aspect. So can you touch upon how the enforcement is conducted? Is it done through PD? Is it done through a contractor? And can we improve it to also include later at night if it isn't already? But obviously with this resident's express concerns, it obviously isn't being done in that particular neighborhood. So can you elaborate on that, please?

Sure. I believe that enforcement is enforced by PD. Okay. Maybe through a contractor, but I can double-check. By PD and a contractor that does parking enforcement. So it's managed by PD.

Phil BacerraItem 5

So just so I can understand this, so the contractor who's out there doing parking enforcement is managed by PD, not Public Works?

Not Public Works. That's correct.

Phil BacerraItem 5

Okay, so Public Works manages the permit program, but the enforcement is done through PD and a contractor that PD hires?

That is correct.

Phil BacerraItem 5

Okay. I would like for you guys to bring back some information for the Council. It could be emailed to us. That's fine. But I want to have a better understanding of what that effort looks like, because obviously that is something that the Council is concerned with. But I just want to have a better understanding what what are the hours that we're seeing coverage? Because obviously for that resident to come to Comlink and express that concern it just it shows a Potential flaw in the program and I I concur with that resident that the program is excellent But it does need to make sure that we have that enforcement

Phil BacerraItem 5

Aspect to it. So those are my comments. Thank you. Mr. Mayor. Thank you for that

Let me go ahead and go to my left. Let me go with councilmember Peña Losa

David PenalozaItem 5

Lopez and then Mendoza. Thank You Mayor Sarmiento and thank you Nabil for for the presentation and happy to finally see this you know getting done. One thing that I want to touch on and I agree with everything that's been said by my colleagues but one is simply on the actual physical permit that we place on vehicles I've heard from many residents that they just don't like the the giant ugly sticker that they have to stick on to their bumper cars our residents you

David PenalozaItem 5

know the ones that that have cars they're there that's you know people it's their property I mean I wouldn't want to put any sticker on my car at all if I had this permit parking so I've heard in other cities the City of Orange I have family that lives in Orange. They have the placards that hang on the rearview mirror. And the state of Anaheim, I believe it's Anaheim, or if it's not Fullerton, also have rearview mirror placards. They're convenient, they're easy. I feel that these stickers are very restrictive to our residents as well because I know that

David PenalozaItem 5

you know my uncle for example lets his daughter borrow their her his car and and she goes to school and I think it's UC San Diego or Cal State or what doesn't matter the she's out and she now she has her his car with this parking permit somewhere in San Diego and he has another car that doesn't have this point is you can't swap these out easily amongst the cars any particular family that lives in a home. So I would like us, as we're looking at this, to consider moving away from the stickers that we force residents to stick on their cars. I know a lot of residents would agree with that

David PenalozaItem 5

and maybe getting something that's more convenient to move around and swap with their cars. And that's visible. I know other cities have it and it works. Why can't we do it? Is that something that you guys have considered?

Yes, it is in the scope of work. Right now, the stickers are specific to the house and the vehicle. That's why it is on the vehicle. So we're looking at some changes and that will be considered in the scope of work.

David PenalozaItem 5

And there's no reason why the placards can also be color coded and have that specific to a home. Maybe it's be a sticker on the placard. The point is residents have brought up to me that concern on numerous occasions.

Thank you. Sure. Thank you for those comments. Let me go with councilmember Lopez Mendoza and then Hernandez. Thank you mayor. Hi director

Jessie LopezItem 5

Saba, so we're talking about a 30 year old program. It's pretty old We know that it needs to change it has to adapt with what we are seeing here in the city Um, and you know when you do your outreach I want to make sure that staff is being very intentional about targeting the neighborhoods that have the condos the apartments In Ward 3, we have a mix of condos being in single-family home areas, and you and I know that's caused issues. We've done a lot of background work on that to help residents. And so I want to make sure that the RFP is going to take into consideration the difference that we do now here

Jessie LopezItem 5

and how we treat single-family homes from multifamily units. and city attorney I want you to follow up with me because that in 2015 former general attorney of California Miss Harris she issued an opinion stating that local governments cannot discriminate among residents based upon their dwelling type like dwelling type permits for single-family homes but none but none for the apartments I should say and so I don't know if that is binding That is the question and I just want to make sure that if it is if we're if we're compliant if it's not more If anything has changed, please let me know

Jessie LopezItem 5

I want to make sure that we're all aware about what's happening there. Thank you

Thank you council member council member Mendoza

I know that the handicapped and disabled placards Persons who hold those special permits are in a different category So I just want to ensure that there's a section in there that addresses whether they're exempt from the parking regulations that we're going to enforce. That was it. Thank you.

An excellent point. Thank you for that comment and that question. Let me go to Council Member Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 5

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I agree with a lot of my colleagues comments, particularly council member Penalosa. I think having something that would be visible and hanging from a rear view mirror would be a good route for us to take. A couple of communities of interest that I know have reached out commonly to me, expressing their concern with parking is that the Logan community, the Santanita community and the Artisa Pilar community, particularly in the area closer to Santa Ana College and the Our Lady of the Pillars Church. So if staff can take a close look at that so we can mediate some of those issues related to parking.

Thank you. Thank you for those comments. Yeah, I think they were all excellent comments made and hopefully you'll incorporate those Mr. Saba and as we go through the RFP and configuring that, I'm gonna go ahead and just mention something I could always mention. I think the better relationship we have with our school district here in Santa Ana, we somehow come to some understanding of using those campuses when they're not in use. After school, on weekends, to maybe use those parking spaces for our residents, especially in some of those impacted neighborhoods.

And there's some small commercial properties as well. I know there was a deal that the Archdiocese had struck with the DMV actually on first and grand when they would have large events They would use overflow parking there So there are creative ways where we can do that, you know make some impact I know you know other big cities do the same thing or you know who struggle for parking and one other thing I know this is more of a comment for our director of Planning and building but I always you know think that you know the more we compel or try to persuade our developers

who introduce new multifamilies to start looking at the stacked parking. That is getting a two for one sometimes. And so you see places like Vista del Sol and some other high population, densely populated cities have that. So something to look at. I'm sure that they could probably incorporate it with their costs. But anyways, I think you received a lot of good input. Hopefully we're looking forward to speaking with you more about this. And we know it's been an age-long problem. that will be nice to have addressed over time. So let me go ahead and move along to the city attorney

and ask her if she has anything to report at a closed session.

No, Mayor. We do not have any reportable action from the discussions this evening.

Great. Thank you for that. Let me go ahead and move along to the public comments section. So this is a time and place for members of the public to address the city council on any agendized and non-agendized items pursuant to the Brown Act. the council may not enter into any dialogue or discussion with any members of the public. We will hear from members that are here physically, and then we will go to any members of the public that are on the line or virtual, and I'll turn it over to the clerk at that point, but I will go ahead and take the cards from those who are here ready to address us.

And please, as you know, we're limiting everybody to three minutes, and you should have a timer in front of you and if you can please mention your name you don't need to mention your address but let us know if you're in the city and if you're in the city what ward or neighborhood you're in so that would be very helpful let me go ahead and begin with Larry Gonzalez followed by Nathaniel Greensides

Good evening. My name is Larry Gonzalez Rivas. As many of you know, the City Arts and Culture Office unveiled the first ever sculpture at the City of Santa Ana two weeks ago. I am the artist and I am here to personally thank the Mayor and City Council members who attended the unveiling ceremony. Councilwoman Jessie Lopez, Mayor Pro Tem Phil Becerra, Councilwoman Nelida Mendoza, as well as you, Mayor Vicente Sarmiento.

beyond that I want to encourage you to continue to foster this I thank this council as a whole for having discussions about the topic related to funding art specifically public art the investment is minimal it less than the cost of a Honda Civic four-cylinder with no tint in this system instance for the coyote in this instance for the coyote it was actually several thousand less and I'm not kidding anyway the point is that investment into communities can take many forms please give this a more critical second look at these

alternative forms to turn around improve inspire and uplift the community who traverses daily whether it be the children of Lincoln Elementary walking across the school street every day the jogger the dog walkers residents can all come see approach interact and read poetry in what would otherwise be a dirt lot with no lighting in the far from the city center part of sanana the art is often overlooked but carries potential many orders of magnitude the roi can be exponential if we're using that kind of number or wording then you

You know what I mean is that one has the return on investment potential for tens, hundreds, etc. So why not fund a little? Or a little more? This time, the neighborhoods around Sullivan and Willits get a unique sapphire gem encrusted in the corner. It features a blue coyote howling, flowery poetry. The poems below are from Aztec times, sung by Prince Nesahuacoyot hundreds of years ago. It also recognizes and incorporates the late Mr. David Vasquez's script style. And Mr. Vasquez was a San Ana resident and teacher.

Finally, I want to use this opportunity to invite the residents of the city and surrounding communities to come and take a look at the statue. You can simply drive by since it's on the corner. And the easiest way to find it is to simply Google Abraham Lincoln Elementary School in San Ana. It's right across the street. You can't miss it. It's huge. It's 14 feet tall. Thank you to all the neighborhood residents who came out to take pictures and told me they really liked the statue. I really appreciate it, and that was the number one goal, to make sure the neighborhood liked it.

Bella Vista, Casa Bonita, Sullivan en Acción, thanks a lot. Also to Lincoln Elementary staff kids. Lastly, I want to say thank you very much to Tramlay and Gabby Kramer, who both work at the city of Santa Ana. They are two of the most professional and courteous people I've ever had the pleasure of working with. Please continue to support the arts so this great city can become a beacon of inspiration for residents today and always. Thank you and have a good night.

Thank you and Larry, we let you go a little longer because what you were saying was so powerful and your art that you displayed and I want to thank the colleagues that attended and those that are supportive of the arts. Thank you on behalf of all of our residents, not just those neighbors there, but on behalf of the entire city. Thank you. Thank you for that. Let me go ahead and go to Nathaniel Greensides, Patricia Bowe, and followed by Lori Ortiz.

My name is Nathaniel Greensides. I'm a Ward 5 resident. First, I want to give acknowledgement to the land upon which we're sitting and conducting our business that once belonged to the Ahachamen and Tongva peoples, who without their stewardship for millions, let's go with millennia, millennia made this place as beautiful as it is, this place that we call home. So here we are in February, Black History Month, which also happens to be the shortest month of the year, and that's a shame. But nonetheless, our nation was built upon the outright kidnapping and subjugation of human beings from Africa to become slaves

in pursuit of economic prosperity for a few white men. And the descendants of the people who did the hard work in the fields and plantations got the shortest month of the year to celebrate the beauty of being black in America. To celebrate black American history is to recognize, reify, and respect the history of oppression inflicted upon our families and ancestors simply because of a made-up belief in white superiority. Respect, when broken down into its morphemes, means to see again. to not only see again the achievements and wealth of culture which our black skin

community members contain in every cell of their existence is to recognize the wrongs that are still being perpetrated today. I think it's no accident that a lot of the ardent supporters of Plan F's map come from neighborhoods where they're literally covenants on the properties where non-Caucasians were not allowed to buy or live in those neighborhoods. Well I do believe that the future looks brighter when we can acknowledge that race has played a determining role in shaping one's positionality in our society, we need to ensure that it is coupled with a critical analysis of who is pushing for changes in the motivations behind those.

I find it suspect that Anaheim High School's vote regarding the changing of their mascot from The Colonists is also the same city where alt-right neo-Nazi posters and individuals happily still in this day in 2022 make their presence and teachings known. And so with all this, I say to you, happy Lunar New Year, happy Black History Month. May its teachings exceed the short month in which we celebrate it, and finally, in the spirit of art, I want to leave you with the last two stanzas of a very well-known poem that I've incorporated into my being since high school

by Maya Angelou called Still I Rise. Out of the huts of history's shame, I rise. Up from a past that's rooted in pain, I rise. I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide. Welling and swelling, I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise. Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear, I rise. Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise. I rise. I rise.

Thank you for that. Patricia Bowe followed by Laurie Ortiz.

Good evening. My name is Patricia Bowe and I am a proud resident of Santa Ana for these past five years in Jack Fisher Park. I'm also the Orange County Group Lead for Moms Demand Action, one of the largest grassroots advocacy networks in the country with more than 8 million supporters and today I'm here with our group behind me representing the hundreds of supporters and volunteers who live and work in Santa Ana we are mothers and others fighting for public safety measures that can protect people from gun violence first I'd like to thank council members Lopez and Mendoza for their request to

consider a secure firearm storage ordinance which is agenda item 19 so thank you this request is It's also very timely as today is the first day of National Gun Violence Survivors Week, honoring the 58% of all American adults and the 68% of Black and Latin ex-Americans whose lives have been forever impacted by gun violence. This week is designated as National Gun Violence Survivors Week because this first week in February marks the approximate date that gun deaths in the United States surpass the number of gun deaths experienced by peer countries in an entire calendar year.

And I'm aware that there are members on the council whose lives have also been forever changed by gun violence, and we have survivors here tonight in our group as well. We have a saying in the gun violence prevention movement that we honor with action, and that's why we're here tonight. This proposed secure storage ordinance goes right to the heart of public safety. More than half of gun owners in the United States do not lock all their firearms securely, leading to an estimated 200,000 to half a million guns stolen every year. Many of these stolen guns are funneled into the underground market,

where once legally owned firearms can be transferred to people with dangerous histories. Data shows that gun owners who securely store their firearms, and this means storing them locked, unloaded, and separate from ammunition, have a lower risk of gun suicide and a lower risk of loss by theft. Research also shows that secure storage practices play a vital role in reducing the risk of gun violence. Storing firearms securely protects children and adults by preventing unintentional shootings and gun suicides. In addition, there's a wide variety of affordable options for firearm storage that

provide owners with quick access to their guns while still preventing access by children and people at increased risk of harming themselves or others. Lastly, as I'm sure you may have heard from some of our advocates, while there are over 70 California cities with a similar secure firearm storage ordinance already on the books or in the works, there is no city in Orange County on this list. If you pass this measure, Santa Ana would be a leader in Orange County on gun safety, giving me yet another reason to be proud of my adopted hometown. So I'm asking the Council to please support and proceed with this requested item to introduce

a secure gun storage ordinance. Thank you.

Thank you very much for those comments.

And thank you all for joining us. Let me go ahead and call on Lori Ortiz to join us.

Good evening, Council. I've been a Santa Ana employee for over 25 years, and I've never been prouder than I am today, with Santa Ana taking the lead in Orange County concerning consideration of a firearm safety issue that's very important to me. I'm here tonight as part of Moms Demand Action and the focus on gun safety, speaking in favor of item 19 to consider drafting an ordinance to secure firearms and for

taking guns safety seriously I thank you I'm a mom I'm a Nana and the issues concerning gun safety are a priority to me and to mom's demand action to every town USA supporters and the many parents and grandparents throughout the nation that have been affected by gun violence.

Tragedies have increased. So to Mayor Sarmiento, the council, and especially to council members Lopez and Mendoza, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your leadership, your critical leadership on this important issue. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Lori, and thank you for everything you do for the city as one of our city family members. I think that is it for the members of the public here in chambers. Let me go ahead and turn it over to the clerk. Do we have anybody online or on the phone that wishes to address this Madam Clerk?

Yes we do, Mayor. And before I unmute the caller that we have, we only have one, I did want to announce the written comments that we received. So two non-agenda comments, one on a Santa Ana organization in support of the downtown art walk and another in support of the flavor tobacco ban.

Also, item number three, the Santa Ana resident commented on stricter laws against those unhoused in harassing citizens in the city of Santa Ana. And then item 19 on the firearms ordinance, two in support, one Santa Ana resident and another residency not disclosed. And with that, caller with the last three numbers, 010, if you would please select your microphone icon on your device.

Thank you. You may proceed with your comment.

Hi, Victor Mendez, Board 3. Item number nine, as you know, I've spoken to this ad nauseum for the last year, and you have a situation in front of you where you're about to award a $1.2 million sole source extension to a contractor. I'm not trying to disparage, as far as the contractor's qualifications, this has been awful a lot of money on the sole source award it's further difficult to understand it in line of the fact that at least a half a million is being used uh from the budget surplus

money that was created by the citizens you know for their benefit and i would think there would be at least some level of sensitivity to the council that they can maybe get local business to get involved in these types of contracts this is just a little bit too much in fact it's far or too much, a couple hundred thousand, whatever. That's not so bad. We're talking a $1.2 million sold source extension with no major justification at all. So please pull this after reconsideration. And let's just see if we can get some small businesses or local business involved in this contract and give them a little piece of the pie. Thank you.

Secondly, I did review the complaint from the San Ana Police Office of Association versus various parties of the city. My only advice is let's try to get that sick. I see a lot of information, a lot of issues that can probably be resolved internally. But the ones that stand out to me are one, the sexual harassment charges against our police chief, and two, the apparent conflict of interest that think will come from our city attorney, who's also named, or the city attorney who's being contracted through the law firm.

I think you need a separate attorney to look at this situation objectively relative of her involvement and what type of counsel you have and whether or not you can legitimately defend the law firm in this process. I think you owe it not only as a matter of governance, but to the citizens themselves. But again, I think a lot can be fixed. The sexual harassment claims of the chief are very serious. I don't think you should necessarily deny him as appears to be the case versus the quote in the Orange County Register. Let's be fair about it. Let's be objective about it. Let's be neutral about it and do this thing appropriately

to the benefit of all concerns. Lastly, there was a mention of the arts, which I fully appreciate. I myself have a budding artist in my family. I asked him why he likes to paint and he said it allows him to paint freely. And he's also a diehard Bernie Sanders supporter, which God help me, you know, between that, that thinking freely and bringing a pretty supporter, I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I think you get the point. So I fully support what's said by Larry. The arts are an incredible venue for children, even for adults to express themselves, to liven our city up. Let's try to look for various avenues

to get our city up and running and be the true cultural center of Orange County that it is. Thank you.

Phil BacerraItem 5

Victor, thank you for that. Now we're at the consent calendar, so I'm going to ask my colleagues if anybody has any items that they need to abstain from. Council Member Pham.

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. So I will be abstaining from item number 15. Out of an abundance of caution, although the primary contractor or party in that case is not rancho santiago community college district the item is relating to their use of the property in some way and they are a client of my employer rattan and tucker so i will be recusing myself from that item another one is related to item number 13. statewide traffic safety and signs inc is again a client of my law firm

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

Rattan and Tucker. I've never worked on those projects, but I will be recusing myself from that

Phil BacerraItem 6

item. Thank you. Thank you. And with that, are there any items that my colleagues would like to

David PenalozaItem 6

pull? Council Member Panaloza? Thank you, Mayor Pro Tempacerra. I'd like to pull item number 10, just to propose a license agreement between the City of Santa Ana and Santa Ana Unified School

Phil BacerraItem 6

District to use the Memorial Park parking lot. Thank you for that. Council Member Panaloza,

Mayor Sarmiento? I'm good without with that I'm not gonna pull anything do we have anything besides mayor pro our council members that I think that was it great why don't we go ahead and if we let's move the balance of the consent calendar if there's a motion I'll second all right I'll move it and then mayor pro tem will second so madam clerk if our colleagues if you'll please vote

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 6

Madam City Clerk, my vote is yes.

Council Member Lopez, are you able to vote?

Okay, I will go ahead and call out your vote. Council Member Hernandez, your vote was a yes.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 6

That is correct.

Okay, thank you. Councilmember Lopez?

Thank you. Councilmember Mendoza?

Yes, yeah, if you can verbalize it since I can't get everyone showing their votes on. Councilmember Fan? Yes. Councilmember Peñalosa?

Yes.

Mayor Potembecerra?

Yes.

And Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes. Thank you, everybody. Was the only item number 10 polled by Councilmember Peñalosa? Go ahead, Councilmember.

David PenalozaItem 10

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. Again, item number 10 is a proposed license agreement between the city and the school district, San Antonio Unified, for use in Memorial Park parking lot. and Madam City Manager, you let me know who I should direct the questions to, to you or the Executive Director of Parks and Rec. And then I have a couple.

I will ask our Executive Director of Parks and Rec, Lisa Rudloff, to step up to the mic. I'm not sure what your questions are yet, so you have both of us present.

David PenalozaItem 10

Perfect. Thank you so much. So as, you know, I live near Memorial Park and also attended Washington Elementary, class of 2000. So go Patriots, Washington Patriots. But anywho, so I was calling because I wanted to see a few guys. I know that the tentative agreement is from February 1st today to June 30th of 2023. And the questions I have is through 6 p.m.

David PenalozaItem 10

I know that Memorial Park is very active when it comes to the baseball little leagues, the Pop Warner football leagues, the swimming classes and recreational swimming that goes on at Memorial Park. So a lot of the little league games, Pop Warner, the cheerleading that goes on, starting soon and going through most of the fall, happens, you know, starts, you know, parents start arriving around 3, 4 p.m. In years past, remember, I've lived next to Memorial Park my entire life, parking has always been an issue

David PenalozaItem 10

during this programming, this various programming. And it's for good reason. You know, a lot of parents from across the city that are coming to Memorial Park to use these fields. Did we check to see how we will be able to mitigate this parking concern when that programming starts with any of the Pop Warner or Pony Little League or the swimming?

Yes, Councilmember Penalosa. we talked with staff who have the reservation permits for those activities that go on and felt that it would not impact or or if there was something special that was going on and we needed the parking earlier than 6 p.m. we would just communicate with the school district and see if we can make some adjustments there's the school is out earlier but the the staff stays a little LATER. THAT'S WHY THEY PUT THE END TIME AT 6 P.M. SO I THINK WE DO HAVE SOME FLEXIBILITY.

THEY CAME TO US WITH THE NEED BECAUSE OF THEIR CONSTRUCTION AND WE SAID WE WOULD LIKE TO HELP YOU OUT. CAN WE UTILIZE YOUR PARKING LOT WHEN IT'S COMPLETED IN CASE WE HAVE SOME ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS THAT HAPPEN AFTER IT'S FINISHED. AND SO WE WANT TO JUST KEEP THAT RELATIONSHIP OPEN. So I think we're flexible with that in case there's any tournaments or special events or things that are happening during Monday through Friday to 6 p.m.

David PenalozaItem 10

So I'm trying to understand because, I mean, I'm happy that you had those conversations with the school district in case in the event that we do need that parking. They would be flexible. But what would they do exactly? Are teachers going to park on their soccer field if we need it? or are they going to park in the neighborhood? Because, I mean, I know it's a concern. Every year during these numerous events, that entire strip of parking along Flower and St. Gertrude and I forget what the other two streets are, but they're all full. Every parking spot is full, spills out into the neighborhood.

David PenalozaItem 10

And it is, I've gotten some complaints, but a lot of them are like, you know what? it's literally will be gone in a couple hours it's fine right but I just know that by completely omitting this stretch along flower for a year and a half I mean that's going to I know I could I know it will have an effect I don't I've never seen us have to use the Washington elementary parking so I don't know why now we would ask them if we could use their parking if we need it in the future once once they're done I'm just I'm just worried that this is gonna be a nightmare for our residents that are used to using Memorial Park for pop

David PenalozaItem 10

Warner Little League swimming I mean the cheerleading I forget the actual name of the cheerleading that goes works out of there because parking is limited along that park so um yeah it is there a way that it could the hours could be restricted to 3 p.m. no because elementary gets out at 2 right you know

2 30 they have after-school programs and so 6 p.m. you know if there's any flexibility we can perhaps occasionally be earlier than 6 p.m. but I would have to speak with them about that.

David PenalozaItem 10

So have you reached out to the Memorial Park Neighborhood Association about this at all?

No.

David PenalozaItem 10

No. So no Memorial Park Neighborhood Association. None of the various programming, athletic programs that run out of the park have been made aware that this will severely impact their parking. Another thing that I noticed in your contract, in the staff report it said that

David PenalozaItem 10

it just says that licensee will be responsible for opening the parking lot gates during usage times, be responsible for any loss. It doesn't say anything about closing. And I know that in an email, you and the city manager had told me that the city would be in charge of closing at 10 p.m. so that it remains open for public use. But in the contract, page 1, 1.3, it says licensee will be responsible for opening and closing the gates to the license area Monday through Friday during the term of the license agreement. I know that I foresee this happening.

David PenalozaItem 10

Tomorrow on February 2nd, they're going to open the gates at 6 a.m. and at 6 p.m. when that last teacher leaves, they're going to lock it up. then I'm going to have residents calling me saying, hey, these gates are closed. We can't park because it's happened before. So why does the contract say something different than what the staff report mentioned? Because the staff report doesn't say anything about closing the gates, but the contract does.

Right. So they will open the gates at 6 a.m. and they will lock them throughout the day and open it up again at 6 p.m. Our park security will close it at 10 p.m.

David PenalozaItem 10

So can we amend that section 1.3 to say licensee will be responsible for opening gates and state the specific time and closing the gates to the licensee? I mean, not closing, because we don't want them to close the gates. Because if school district staff leaves at 6 p.m., they're going to close those gates, because they're not going to come back at 10 p.m. to close them. So I want to make sure that that's clarified in that contract to avoid them closing the gates for the public to use at 6 p.m. One final thing.

David PenalozaItem 10

I noticed that the amount being charged for this will be going back into the general fund. Yes. Is that correct? That is correct. So another thing that I would suggest and I would ask my colleagues to entertain is, and I know that last summer I had a couple of neighborhood meetings at the park and I had a dumpster day that was very popular. We filled up two huge bins.

David PenalozaItem 10

I took liberty upon myself with the city manager to take one of the plastic drums that for, I don't know what reason, we've used as trash cans throughout our park system. I took one that was broken in half and I pitched it in the trash and Park staff had just replaced the bag in it. I'm like that's that's not acceptable So I was asked to get new trash cans and we got new trash cans aluminum trash cans that anyone can find that Home Depot Very low cost so I would like to ask if that those funds could be used to purchase Acceptable trash receptacles for that part

We certainly could earmark that for that purpose, should the council desire to. On the hours, the understanding is that they are going to open them for the teachers and then they're going to close it while the teachers are using it and then open it back up at 6. So they're not closing it at 6. And I don't believe that the current language in the license agreement conflicts with what our understanding is and their understanding is on the opening and closing.

David PenalozaItem 10

So section 1.3, I mean, doesn't, I just want to make sure it's clear to them that they're going to open, they're not going to close the gates when they leave, they're going to remain open.

They're going to close them while they're using the licensed area, but then they will leave them open at 6 p.m.

David PenalozaItem 10

Okay.

David PenalozaItem 10

Well, I just don't like that none of these organizations were reached out to, because I know parking does become an issue when it's in operation. So that's all I would ask is that if those funds could be earmarked to stay in that park for new trash receptacles at the very least, just because when I was asked why can't we have appropriate trash cans at this park, there was no funding for it. And now this, it's only $39,000, it's going to get lost in the general fund, probably fund I don't know what but those are it those are my comments sorry mayor is

there a motion or what do you want to do I mean I guess I'm kind of confused I

David PenalozaItem 10

mean I guess I would make a motion to to approve this with the agreement that 1.3 is is clarified that they will not shut the gates at 6 p.m. because I know that that will happen and also if those funds could remain in the park.

Okay.

David PenalozaItem 10

For park amenities as simple as the trash cans because there are not any appropriate trash cans at that park currently.

So that is a motion to approve with those, a clarification and a dedication of the revenue.

Yes.

All right.

So we have, for purposes of discussion, there's a second, but we have a question by Lopez Councilmember Lopez and Councilmember fan

Phil BacerraItem 10

Actually, I had a question as a second. Okay. Yeah Go ahead. Go ahead. Thank you. I just real super quick. So who actually is going to close the gates under this whole arrangement?

the school district and our private park security at

Phil BacerraItem 10

10 p.m. At night, so in other words from what councilmember pillows is asking so we won't have school district staff close it at six because that's not what we want correct we'll have essentially the they'll open it and then our staff or contractors will close it at 10 p.m yes okay thank you great council member lopez and

Jessie LopezItem 10

council member i am supportive of staff's recommendation as is um i think the earmarking of funds should be a completely different point of discussion and vote i don't think it should be bundled and if that is the train of thought if you know the school district wants to use a park or something near a park then that is something that maybe the school ad hoc can take up and say this is what we want to present to them or to staff or to the council that that money that is being returned to us be earmarked for the surrounding communities that the school district is

Jessie LopezItem 10

I'm going to be partnering up with the city. I think that's a fair ask and it's something that I've heard before from members of this council don't bundle things you know bring them forth as a council member requested item or have a separate conversation on them.

Thai Viet PhanItem 10

Thank you for those comments Councilmember Fan. Thank you Mayor. I am supportive of having those fees go back to the same community that it's impacting. I don't you know whether it's with the ad hoc or just here it's very specific right it's a very clearly defined park my I'm actually not supportive of this agreement right now it doesn't I guess I don't know maybe you can get me the information but has a school district spoken to any of the surrounding private property owners with what looks like an abundance of parking space because I think it'd be really

Thai Viet PhanItem 10

great if they were held to the same standard in discussing utilizing parking space as they demand of us because there are a lot of industrial and parking space in fact right across the street on Warner it's a couple of really large parking spaces and I think they really should go out there and talk to those property owners so that our residents are not negatively affected you know by their lack of

outreach thank you thank you for those comments so there's a motion in a second with some changes and there's there's obviously a difference of opinion generally. I think I'm supportive of staff's recommendation for a number of reasons. I think what it does is it promotes this this environment to being able to you know share resources and we're gonna have to you know look at some of their resources that we can share as well. But I do think if there's receptacles that are you know inferior at this park let's find some way to fund it. Maybe it's not through this specifically but let's just you know

figure those out. We should do an inventory of what we need. I'm sure there's some others as well other parks sorry yes yes we do have we do have

funding for trash receptacles which we'll be putting in this year there the cement receptacles they're going to be going into all parks as well as the doggy way station so those will be coming but if the the funding whether that remains you know where that is allocated I'll point to the city manager

to. Well look if it makes sense I think if it addresses the council members you know concern for the park and the ward he represents if that's going to be if those receptacles are going to be replaced and introduced there anyways maybe we don't do something you know from from the diocese and just go ahead and make it a make it a clean approval. I'm certainly supportive of it without that amendment because those those receptacles are going to be replaced anyways that that's those

David PenalozaItem 10

are my thoughts. But in any event, there's, what do you think? Well, I do agree with what Councilmember Fan said. I don't believe the appropriate outreach to any of these organizations have been done. And so I will rescind my motion. And if Councilmember Fan wants to make that motion to deny this contract, I will happily second that, or I'll make the motion myself. And I also just wanted to clarify that you know including $39,000 in trash receptacles for a park is not trying to it's very different than trying to bundle in you know half a million dollar cost with multiple

David PenalozaItem 10

staff positions so let's you know not compare apples to oranges when we're making these decisions so um I'll make the motion to to deny the agreement

Thai Viet PhanItem 10

I was I just wanted a continuance and make sure that they actually do this outreach and you know

Jessie LopezItem 10

the same standard we expect of all of our items so there's a motion so I'll make a sub motion of continuing the item and coming back and letting us know what type of outreach has been done and also let us know the urgency of this matter so that the teachers have access to parking because We certainly want them to be able to do their jobs as well. Thank you.

Great. Thank you for that clarity. I think there's a second here by Council Member Phan on that continuance. Hopefully that's something we can all agree on. If not, we've had enough discussion on this. So there's a substitute motion to continue the item. And do we need 30 days maybe? Or what do we need on this? This is time sensitive.

This is very time sensitive for them.

So the next meeting, if I can bring it back at that time. All right.

All right. And if things aren't done yet, then we can always push it out another meeting.

Thai Viet PhanItem 10

Just quickly, you know, I know we're about to vote, but we can't be, Mayor Potembecerra has brought this up multiple times. We can't have a time-sensitive agreement like this. I'm not saying it's your fault, but if the school district has a time-sensitive issue, they need to be bringing this to us once in advance, because there are a lot of concerns on this dais. And if it's something we were supposed to give to the ad hoc committee, that would have taken even longer. So I do expect that when they want something they need to approach us a lot sooner. Thank you

David PenalozaItem 10

Good point. Thank you. I just want to double down on that

Councilmember let's let's get through no we you know, let's you had a really long You know, I let you go on well, and I think you spoke really articulate when my other colleagues speak you say the same thing No, but look let's just you know You you did five minutes and I think that was more of a courtesy because everybody else has been really good about limiting themselves to three minutes So why don't we go ahead and vote and vote on the motion that's before us

Councilmember Hernandez if you would announce your vote, please. Oh Never mind. We saw. Thank you

Okay, motion passes with Councilmembers Lopez, Mendoza, Fann, Mayor Potem, Becerra, and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes, Councilmembers Hernandez and Councilmember Peñalosa voting no.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 10

Great, thank you, everybody. My apologies, Madam City Clerk. My vote was a yes vote. I misunderstood the motion.

Okay, we will go ahead and change your vote. Thank you.

Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you everybody. You know, we just went through the consent calendar. I just wanted to mention an item that I didn't want to pull and talk because everybody's supportive of and I'm very supportive of. Item number 15. So I just want to thank staff because I know it's been around for what 13 years it took to go ahead and figure this out. So Lisa, good job to you and your team. Ron, I see you back there smiling underneath that mask. But this might have been around a little longer had you guys not tackled it. But as a result of that, you're dealing with the National Park Service.

and Correa's office and everybody else that was involved, obviously the Chancellor. We have three new parks, three small spaces that we were able to figure out and be able to have that footprint there and not disrupt things. So it's nice to have it behind us. Congratulations. Thank you, everybody that worked on this. Moving along to item number 17, because we already took care of item number 16. This is the time and place for a public hearing to adopt a resolution of necessity determining the public interest for the acquisition of property located at 2702 North Bristol.

And so let me go ahead and see if there's a presentation from staff.

Honorable Mayor, Council, we do not have a presentation for this item. It is merely an adoption of a resolution, but staff is available to answer any questions.

Excellent. Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and formally open the public hearing and ask the clerk if there's any members of the public online or in person that wish to address this.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the council. We didn't receive any written communication. We didn't receive any in-person requesting to speak, but we do have one virtually who's participating and would like to provide a comment. Great, go ahead.

Zoom ID, Mark Rosen, if you would please, it looks like you've unmuted yourself. You may proceed with your comment.

Thank you. I submitted a letter to my name is Mark Rosen. I'm the attorney for the property owner which is Metro Star and Metro Star is not a big corporation. It's basically one man Cyrus Jazzamese who has been active in the city for a while. At one point he owned Caldwell's towing on Haster and this property is the northwest corner of Bristol in Memory Lane. It's been vacant for as long as I can remember. It's probably best known for all the signs, political signs to get

hung on the chain link fence in the election season. But he's been trying to develop this property for many years. And the problem is it's too small to be developed. So he has approached people to try to get developers. And more recently, when they see that the city is hoping to take the perimeter of the property, which would make it even smaller. He's been unable to get anybody who will commit to the property. So he decided to try to put up a spec building on his own rather than without having a tenant lined up first.

Now we had to, because of time limits, we had to file. And our view is if you take the perimeter property and don't allow for variances as to parking and as to setbacks, the property can't be developed and it's worthless. And the taking of the perimeter would essentially mean taking the entire property. So we filed in order to

let some deadlines run out, we filed an inverse condemnation action. We then got together with the city. We have submitted applications to develop with the variance and with negotiating that and processing these plans.

And we actually went to court and the court agreed to stay the action pending resolution of the submittals. So I was kind of surprised to see the city go ahead with this resolution to take the property, irregardless of the fact that we had stipulated to basically freeze the inverse condemnation action. I did submit a letter. It should be part of your packet. I wrote a letter dated January 19th, which you should all have. So what I'm asking is to allow the development process to proceed

and postpone this action until June when the stay of the inverse condemnation lawsuit ends and allow us to go through the whole city process to develop it with variances until then so we can avoid the need for additional litigation additional court work.

Madam Clerk I think that's three minutes.

Thank you, Mark. Thank you.

Thank you.

Great. Was that our only speaker?

Yes.

Got it. Let me go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to the Council for any questions or comments.

And this is just for clarity, this is just an RON, right?

This is adopting the resolution of necessity. So it's not a taking of the property and staff will continue to work with the property owner as they have been over the past over a year

Got it Well, I'll go ahead and entertain a motion. Yep. I'll move to approve I'll second. We have a motion in a second seeing no other questions or comments council members, please vote

Councilmember Hernandez?

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 17

Yes, my vote is a yes vote.

Thank you.

Okay, motion passes with Councilmembers Hernandez, Mendoza, Peñalosa, Fan, Mayor Proten Becerra, Mayor Sarmiento voting yes, and Councilmember Lopez voting no.

Great, thank you. Moving along to item number 18, this is the final public hearing. This is to adopt a resolution approving a study of mitigated negative declaration for the Washington Avenue Well project. And let me go ahead and ask Madam City Manager if there's a presentation.

We do have a very brief one. The Washington Avenue Well is in the design stages, but we did receive a few questions of what is it and what it's going to look like. So our executive director of Public Works will walk you through a brief presentation.

I'm going to do a rapid-fire presentation.

I'll make it short.

Good evening. Just a brief update on this request to approve a CEQA document for the Washington Well, proposed Well. Tonight's action is to hold a public hearing and adopt a resolution approving the following. Initial study and medicated negative declaration document in accordance to the California CEQA Act or California Environmental Quality Act and adopt a mitigation monitoring and reporting program for the same. The project basically is we propose to drill a well on the east side,

east Washington Avenue and Penway. It's a lot that the city water department owns. It includes the construction of a groundwater well, well building, a well resources material storage facility, the drilling of the groundwater well with a capacity of between 2,500 to 3,000 gallons per minute capacity. The well will improve the pressure and the reliability of the water system in the zone. It's right next to the elevator tank. The next steps in the project is the well drilling. We will complete plans and specifications for the phase one of the drilling of the well

and then award the contract for the same phase to drill the well. Phase two includes the development of the site. We would prepare plans, specifications, and construction of the phase two. Site development, which includes well building, chemical building, and storage material facility, and award the construction for the site development. This is an aerial of the site. As you can see, it is on Penway and Washington Avenue.

This is a view of the existing open site that the Water Department manages right now. This is how would the site look like when it's developed. This is the well house along with material storage area in the back.

and high level picture of the same and I'm open for questions.

Great. Thank you for that brief presentation and 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 us.

We didn't get any in person, no written communications and none virtual.

Great. So let me go ahead and close the public hearing, bring it back to the City Council, We'll see if they have any questions or comments or move the item. Go ahead, Mayor Proton.

Phil BacerraItem 18

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mobile?

Yes, go ahead.

Phil BacerraItem 18

Yes. So looking at that, I like what I see. One thing I just want to bring up and maybe just kind of bounce it off you and my colleagues, but that corner is such a very prominent corner. And so I like what I see there if that was a property that wasn't in such high view, because I think you have a lot of traffic that goes up and down Penn Way and along Washington there, and it just seems like a good opportunity for public art. I mean, it looks like a place where you could put something. And from looking at the plans and then looking at the zoning,

Phil BacerraItem 18

I think you guys are obligated to have a 10-foot setback between the back of sidewalk and the fence, in there, which my concern, of course, is with the landscaping. My hope is that it doesn't become something where it just, you know, folks are camping out, literally. So that's a concern. But obviously with staff on site, I'm sure that that won't be the issue. But is there a way that we can take a look at that corner to, you know, not necessarily just dress it up with landscaping and call it a day, but maybe take advantage of that location? It's right across from the Logan neighborhood.

Phil BacerraItem 18

I feel like there's more opportunity there with that corner. And given that we have the setbacks of what you guys are going to be doing there, maybe there's more that can be done. I don't know if you can answer that. Absolutely.

I think what we'll do when we get to the design phase, we would reach out to the Logan neighborhood and neighborhood association and meet with them and see if there's opportunities for public art on these walls. If that's what you're asking me to do,

Phil BacerraItem 18

that is always an option absolutely well you know I mean we just had a gentleman who did the artwork over there over on Willits and Sullivan and and I mean talk about taking advantage of an area that wasn't maintained not to say that this won't be maintained but it's just such a opportune spot in fact I would I would ask you to do it I know this is an extra step in the process but I would like you to proceed with the project but just to carve out that corner and maybe go back to our Arts Commission and look at something that we can do there just on that corner. I don't want to interrupt the project itself or what you're doing

Phil BacerraItem 18

along the sides, along Washington and Penn, but I think that corner is something that we should try to do something a little more imaginative, a little more transformative with. And so I would be supportive of the project as is, but I'd like to refer just that aspect, the corner, to our Arts Commission for Absolutely, we'll do so. So that's a motion.

Got it.

Phil BacerraItem 18

Second.

Is there a second? Great. Thank you. Councilmember Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 18

Thank you, Mayor Sambiento. Just Mayor Potembe Serra took the words right out of my mouth. In that concept design, I saw a lot of bushes, bushes that grow, and I already could, the last thing the Logan neighborhood sees is people living in the bushes in that area. So wherever we could make it easy, work with the Arts and Culture Commission to work on installing some really nice permanent art fixtures in that area, very supportive of that. That is it. Thank you.

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

Is this Council Member Hernandez's ward? Is he good? Yes. Are you good, Council Member? Absolutely. Great. Thank you. So we have a motion and a second. Great comments. I think anything, Nabil, you could do to just put the city seal on things and, you know, kind of dress things up whenever you can and things don't look so, you know, harsh and, you know, it softens things up. So completely supportive. Council members, please vote.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 18

Madam City Clerk, to avoid any potential issues with the technology, I'm going to cast my vote

verbally. My vote is yes. Thank you. Motion passes with Councilmembers Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Peñalosa, Fan, Mayor Potembecerra, and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes.

Great. Thank you everybody. Let's go ahead and recess the City Council meeting and convene the Housing Authority meeting and we will go ahead and ask the

clerk to call roll. Authority member Hernandez? Present. Authority member Lopez? Here. Authority member Mendoza? Present. Authority member Pinalosa? Here. Authority member Fan? Here. Vice chair Becerra? Here. And chair Sarmiento? Here.

I'll go ahead and entertain a motion to move the consent calendar items. So moved. We have a motion from Mendoza, a second from Peñalosa. Council members please vote.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 18

Madam City Clerk, my vote is yes.

Hear that?

Yes, and a second from Peñalosa.

Motion by Mendoza, second by Peñalosa, and I heard a yes by Councilmember Hernandez. Everybody else we can vote here. Thank you.

The motion passes 7-0 with authority members Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Fan, Peñalosa, Vice Chair Becerra, and Chair Sarmiento Borines.

Thank you, everybody. I keep looking at that clock and I'm thinking, man, we are making great time. It's only 4.15. So, you know.

Phil BacerraItem 18

Or 8.

Did you say 4.15? I know, man. We've got to put batteries in that clock. It's getting my hopes up. But thank you, everybody. We're getting punchy a little bit. So we're almost done. We're here at item number 19, and that's the item that the moms wanted to listen to. It's a council-led item, and I'll turn it over to Councilmember Mendoza and Lopez to talk about the Firearm Safe Storage Ordinance.

Jessie LopezItem 18

Sure. Councilmember Mendoza, if you don't mind. Go ahead. Thank you. So I just want to thank Moms to Mad Action for being here and for waiting until 10 to hear what the council members, their opinions on this. And so I am grateful for the work that you do. I know that many of the advocates are survivors themselves, so thank you for everything. And so, you know, I think we all know that unsecured guns increase the likelihood of violence through the risk of gun theft.

Jessie LopezItem 19

and guns are stolen on a yearly basis and now with the spike of property crime that we're seeing in different communities for various reasons I would not be surprised if guns are one of the things that are being stolen from cars and from the homes and so access to unfire to unsecure on firearms it just contributes to the gun violence that we see in our communities among teens and children and you know go doing some of the research for this I know that a lot of cities in California have something similar to an ordinance some of them

Jessie LopezItem 19

very specific where they only ban ghost guns some of them are resolutions and so every it depends on the type of ordinance or legislation that a city wants to see be implemented and one of the things that we have discussed previously that I agree with is you know the city of Santa Ana having different codes in place but not having the mechanism to enforce the laws that we want to bring forth and so I don't want to just pass laws to pass laws I want to make sure that we're being very intentional and that we have the resources to support the things that we're doing and so we just established a

Jessie LopezItem 19

Public Safety Committee not too long ago in the ask here for the colleagues today's to help me advances to the Public Safety Committee so that they can really help us do the research and talk to the different groups involved and advise this council and bring something back so that the council can essentially have you know some a public vote and some sort of Opportunity for folks to come back and express their opinions and their concerns or support for the item

Mendoza Thank You councilmember Lopez and thank you to the ladies in red Great great to see you here. I am always an advocate for public safety And so, if this issue, when Councilmember Lopez brought this to me, I was very gung-ho because whatever we can do as city leaders to prevent more deaths by way of guns, I am in favor. So, I would like to have staff do some more research and bring that back to us so we can

do something to keep our youth safe. There has been, in my opinion, a lot of crime here in the city of Santa Ana and it seems to be increasing with guns. So, I hear reports of, I mean, I hear the shooting actually, you know. And so, it's heartbreaking to think that at that moment another person has died or is going to be injured, permanently injured for life.

And so if locking up these guns is going to be one way to show support for my colleague and for you as an organization, I will definitely advocate that our staff keep, bring that back with further information so that we can have more detailed conversation with our colleagues.

Thank you both for introducing this item. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the council for any comments and direction for the city manager.

Council Member Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 19

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. Thank you to both my colleagues for bringing this forward. Definitely supportive of seeing something come back to the Public Safety Committee, whether it's an ordinance or a public safety campaign, awareness campaign, that we could put out there to our residents. still trying to weigh out, I think that would be best suited for the Public Safety Committee is to weigh out the differences between an ordinance and maybe a resolution or a public safety awareness campaign. Just because I know Councilmember Lopez mentioned that the idea of passing laws just to pass

David PenalozaItem 19

laws always kind of, you know, makes me think a little bit in ways of, you know, how can our police department possibly or code enforcement enforce this you know going into people's homes and and I just don't see that I'd like to see how that would look but I am you know I appreciate both of them for trying to think of ways where we could continue to keep our residents safe I just you know keep thinking of the numerous emails that I get from PD daily almost it seems of

David PenalozaItem 19

you know firearm violations and former significant events and regardless whatever law ordinance we pass or public awareness campaign we're still gonna have all the active gangs that are very active in the city still keep their loaded gun on those center console of their car in their waistband on the floor of the passenger seat I mean I read it weekly those people will not you know, follow any of ordinance that we bring forward. I mean, the the criminals are still going to break the law and participate in criminal activity, but happy to see this come back to the Public Safety Committee to see what we

could put together. Thank you. Thank you for those comments. Councilmember Fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 19

Thank you. I do agree in part with Councilmember Pinalosa and appreciate you to bringing this forward because I would like to see it at the Public Safety Committee. I think that's the best place for them to kind of hash out what the provisions would look like. I am supportive of an ordinance. A gun is a powerful tool as well as a powerful weapon. And if you're unable to securely store it and follow the regulations and laws that are relating to that tool, then you should not be using it. Additionally, I'd like to see how safe storage would be addressed when someone is transporting a gun.

Thai Viet PhanItem 19

Imagine, you know, if I'm going to the gun range, obviously I have to bring my gun with me, what that would look like, how that would be, because there would be a difference right someone's storing it in their center console loaded etc I would like to see that one comment I do want to make though is with all laws that are passed there's always going to be people who break it intentionally or unintentionally I don't think that prevents us from passing laws to ensure that we can enforce one thing I do just want to briefly mention is that in some cases you know someone can be doing a welfare

Thai Viet PhanItem 19

check and see that a gun is not properly stored or something might be related to an incident of a domestic abuse, sometimes that can be a basis for criminalizing someone who may not otherwise be criminalized. I'm just putting it out there. I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I just want us to take into account all different areas, all different aspects of something like this often as far as I'm under I understand the way these types of gun storage ordinances are enforced is when the officer does come to the house you know searches a vehicle and find them and it's an additional charge of some

Thai Viet PhanItem 19

sort in relation to all the other charges that might apply with that I would like to see it come back in the future thank you thank you council

Council member, let me go to council member Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 19

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I just want to thank my colleagues, council member Lopez and council member Mendoza for bringing this forward. I support seeing a firearm safe storage ordinance. I do think that it's good practice for us as a city to reinforce safety and ensuring that if you do own a firearm, that we are taking every measure possible to ensure that it is safely stored. So yes, I would like to see staff bring back a policy that is rooted in equity and safety. Thank you.

Thank you for those comments. Mayor Pro Tem.

Phil BacerraItem 19

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I would also like to see this item go to the Public Safety Committee. I appreciate the sentiment of what this is trying to accomplish. I'd like staff to come back with information just to show the practicality of how it would be applied and how it would be enforced and what a possible ordinance could look like as far as components. So I think what my colleagues have already said as far as the path to getting this done, I'd like to see it go through public safety. Thank you.

Great. Thank you for those comments. I think everybody's had a chance to speak on this. All I would say is thank you to the moms for coming here and spending their evening with us and sharing their stories. I am very, very supportive of this item.

Unfortunately, guns have played a very tragic role in my life. I lost a brother-in-law to it and lost other family members and others have been impacted, so I feel your loss as well and your concern. One of the things I would say is that despite what happens at the Public Safety Committee, I want it to come back to council. That's what I would say. So if there's some vetting there, there's some discussion, that's great, but it should come back to the council in whatever form, whether it's with a recommendation or whether Whether it's adjusted, whether it's a resolution or an ordinance, something that we can decide

on as a council body. One of the things that was interesting is that a colleague of mine, Mayor Sam Liccardo in San Jose, just had his council pass an ordinance that obligates any gun owner to carry liability insurance. It's the most expansive in the country. and the reason why is that the Bay Area up in his city, they had the largest mass shooting in the state last summer. So I feel his pain and the loss of his residents. A lot of those were families and members of labor, and so it was a very tragic loss for him and his city,

and I felt it. When he adopted this, it made me think to the extent that, yeah, we're not going to take anybody's Second Amendment rights, but that doesn't mean we can't limit those weapons from being out in circulation. And that's really the goal, in my opinion, is the more we allow these items to be out there, yeah, people are going to abuse it. But if there's less guns out there, there's less opportunity for harm and tragedies that we've all suffered. So in any event, those are my comments. I think everybody's had a chance to speak on this. And

Let me go ahead and thank everybody for coming and speaking on this item. Let me go ahead and move along to item number 20, which is councilmember fans item and that is to discuss review and amendments possible and then just a city council recognition policy

Thai Viet PhanItem 20

Thank you mayor and this is just Kind of cleanup with some other stuff that's updated with the sunshine ordinance a couple things one It wasn't clear to me as a new council member that we could actually issue proclamations as as proclamations without having to select any specific entity or individual to receive it. It was weird to me when I first came to Santa Ana that that I thought was a requirement because no other cities have that requirement. So clarification, we don't actually have to do that. But the other issues I want to update is, for example, the resolution states that we should be contacting the city manager's office

Thai Viet PhanItem 20

seven days in advance of a council meeting. however now that our agenda is being published seven days in advance we should update that to at least 14 to give staff the opportunity to vet look at and also you know make the agenda item the other issue is regarding certificates and other things regarding recognitions I know that typically the certs have signatures for all the council members I'm sure there are times when certification or certificates of recognition are being presented to folks I have no idea who they are and that's fine but I think we should also allow

Thai Viet PhanItem 20

individual council members to issue that cert and as well as actually talk to staff and see if there's anything that you think might need updating from your perspective your point of view with our recognition policy that might be outdated or just not useful and that's it thank you great thank you

Councilmember Phan any questions or comments additional direction Councilmember Lopez yeah I

Jessie LopezItem 20

I'm sorry Councilmember Phan I don't think I caught the first portion of when you were explaining about the recognitions to be honest I was a little lost yeah so typically when we say I declare you know

Thai Viet PhanItem 20

February 1st lunar new year mm-hmm and every city I've ever seen the City Council just declares it and has a proclamation and that's it Santa Ana is the only city that I knew of that I thought required that we have to issue the proclamation to an individual or an organization it turns out my interpretation was wrong so we don't have to update that language according to the current resolution you can issue a proclamation just as a proclamation without having to present it

Jessie LopezItem 20

to anyone without having it to give it to a specific org or person exactly okay I understand thank you and then so yeah supportive of that of course I didn't even think about that and then the second item was when we're doing certificates of recommendation of when we're doing the certificates do we do do we not have the ability now to just include like a specific counter members name is that without the second part so I was told that typically the

Thai Viet PhanItem 20

certs have all of our signatures attached because I've seen some

Jessie LopezItem 20

certificates that only have one or two so that's not technically officially in the policy okay so technically you're requesting to add that language into the

okay yeah great any other comments councilmember Peña Losa yeah just wanted

David PenalozaItem 20

to echo and voice my support for both my colleagues to see something come back and to see what because I also I know we visited this once and I also was a little confused I remember it was one of the I forget what it was it was like national you know something week and I wanted to recognize it and then I was told to bring in an organization to recognize So I always thought that was a little weird. So happy to see this come forward. Just wanted to voice my support. Thank you for that. Mayor Pro Tem.

Phil BacerraItem 20

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Councilmember Pham, for bringing this forward. It's always good to update our practices, and this is another example of that. So I'm supportive of the effort. Thank you.

Great. Hearing no other comments, I'm supportive as well. So we'll go ahead and bring it back. I think we only have one more item left, which is item number 21. That's Mayor Pro Tem's item to consider the support of Assembly Bill AB 485.

Phil BacerraItem 21

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Santa Ana is one of the very few cities that actually posts monthly reports of hate crime-related data. And that is because back in April of 2021, Councilmember Fan and I brought forth a Councilmember-requested item asking for our police department to post monthly reports of hate crime related data on the PD's website. Then as it is now, law enforcement agencies are only required to post that information annually and that's to the Department of Justice. And I think with what we've seen out there and

Phil BacerraItem 21

rise in hate crimes, especially to the AAPI community, I think it's important that we see this data posted more frequently. And I'm very proud that our PD was very cooperative in doing that and they have up-to-date data on their website today. But the fact that other agencies only post it annually is ridiculous. So Assembly Bill 485 actually would require law enforcement agencies up and down the state to post this data monthly on their own websites. The great thing about this is that it's received enormous bipartisan support. It's sailed through the

Phil BacerraItem 21

Assembly and the various committees, and I believe now it's in the Senate. And, you know, 64 to zero vote is very impressive. Obviously, this is something that crosses all party lines to advocate for. And so I wanted our council to be inclusive and supportive of such a resolution of such an assembly bill, excuse me. And so my hope was that my colleagues would agree to adopt a resolution in support of assembly bill 485.

Great, thank you for that. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the council, see if there's any guidance. Go ahead, Councilmember Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 21

I'm definitely supportive, but I do wonder if maybe the legislative committee or the standing meeting can take a look at it just so that we understand thoroughly what 485 states? That would be okay with you?

Phil BacerraItem 21

Actually I think it's time sensitive and the fact is if you take a read of the bill it's lightning quick. It's probably two sentences worth of a bill so I think it's something that could easily be digested in a very short read but it just simply is asking for law enforcement agencies to post the data monthly. There's no other caveats to it.

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

I'm supportive of this item. I think it's just a continuation of what we're trying to do here in the city, which is to be transparent with our data. And frankly, I think it also helps validate some of the actions that our police department are trying to work on regarding transparency as well as community policing and addressing issues that residents have raised. Thank you.

Great. Any other questions or comments? or oh, go ahead. Council member Hernandez. Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I just wanted

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 21

to keep my comments brief and say that I support this council member requested item by council member Sarah and I'd like to see it move forward. Great. Thank you for those comments. Council

member Peñalosa just wanted to voice my support for this resolution. Ditto and supportive.

Thank you.

Great. I'm supportive as well. I do agree. I think we need to come up with some sort of protocol where it goes back to committee, and I think if it can, it'd be great for us to go ahead and speak with the author, see what else we can do. I know that we also have worked with Attorney General Bonta on a roundtable that we hosted here in Santa Ana, and would like to get his opinion as well. But generally supportive of obviously bringing it back. So thanks, everybody. Let's go ahead and move along to city manager comments.

Only comment is just happy lunar new year. I'm not a year of the tiger. I'm a year of the snake.

Oh man. All right. I won't say TMI, but now we know. Thank you, city manager. Let me go ahead and start with the council members. Council member Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 21

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to thank our residents and staff that assisted us with this council meeting today and for everybody that took time out of their day and their night to stay with us here. Thank you. I want to wish our community a happy Lunar New Year. I also want to celebrate today being the first day of Black History Month. Santa Ana is the heart of Black Orange County. In the early sixties, there was a strong black presence here in the city of Santa Ana. I'm proud to represent the largest demographic of a black community as a council member in board five. In board five, there's a special history there.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 21

The current oldest black American that we have in Orange County is in board five. His name is Mr. Warren Bussi. He recently celebrated 108 years of life and history. We also want to shed light and celebrate Helen Schiff, the founder of the Black History Parade, which is taking place this Saturday in the city of Anaheim. The Black History Parade was originally a Santa Ana celebration that started off a humble with eight people off of Willits. It slowly evolved into what it is today where there are thousands of participants in this parade. It is my aspirations and goal to see this parade

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 21

be brought back to its home here in the city of Santa Ana. Myself and Mayor Sarmiento will be standing in solidarity with the community. this Saturday along with Councilmember Lopez. Happy Black History Month.

Thank you, Councilmember. Let me go to Councilmember Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 21

Thank you, Mayor Cerviento.

Jessie LopezItem 21

So, happy Lunar Year, everyone. There's going to be a couple of events happening this Saturday. It's a very popular date. I will be in Anaheim supporting the Black History Parade, and I will try to also make it to the TEP Parade because I've never been to one, and I've heard they're really awesome. So I encourage Sanana residents to pick an event and go and support. I also want to thank staff for working with me and UAB Foundation where we teamed up to bring free COVID testing to War III residents in the Prentice Park area at the Santa Ana Zoo. And so if you know of anyone, please help us spread the word. It is verified.

Jessie LopezItem 21

And, you know, I do want to quickly address, I didn't get to make my comments when we were talking about the homelessness update. So I want to thank staff one of the first requests that I had last year was essentially working with these multi agencies And I know it takes time to put these cleanups together but I want to thank staff for all the work that they did and city manager's office and sergeant Montiel for helping to bring everyone together and You know regarding East first street. This is something that

Jessie LopezItem 21

Christine and I our city manager and I continue to talk about we know it's been an ongoing issue and there are options that we are discussing we are moving forward fortunately we have a new supervisor that is a lot more meanable to working with us and understands that Sonata also has to be a priority and so we are hopeful that residents you know are going to see changes in the years to come and you know I also want to let the businesses of East First Street know that you have to be a good partner with the city because if you are not and you are not working with us in good faith

Jessie LopezItem 21

we will use all of the options available to us to ensure that, you know, we don't, that we exercise all of the options that we have. That's all I'm going to say. And so, you know, Happy Lunar New Year, as I said, and Happy Black History Month. I hope everyone has a good weekend. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Let me go to Council Member Mendoza.

Thank you. I'd like to inform the public that we have a lot of parks, so please come out and use them. Just a few days ago, we had the grand opening over at Thornton Park in Mayor Pro Tem's ward. and these exercise areas are going to be put in many, many of the parks in the area, so please get out there and use them. They're there for you exclusively.

Keep yourself healthy and safe, and happy Lunar Year to everyone, and we probably won't be meeting before Valentine's, So enjoy the friendship week and good night.

Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Phan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

You went out of order, so I got all flustered.

I know I'm not bouncing around. I'm just following the script, so I think we've got to get used to this order. You need to update the script alphabetical.

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

Anyway, hi, everyone. Of course, again, I want to wish everyone a .

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

It's, it's, I'm so proud, excited, and honored to have been able to wish all of you from this dais a happy Lunar New Year and a happy Thết. It is the most important holiday in Vietnamese culture. It's birthday, it's New Year, it's spring, it's all the holidays wrapped up into one, and it really focuses on family. It focuses on gathering together and it focuses on hope for a better and brighter new year I want to encourage all of those who can't make it to the Thet Parade Because I understand you know unfortunately they did fall on the same day I will be at the Thet Parade, but you can also visit the UVSA Thet Festival

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

And it will be running both Saturday and Sunday. It's going to be super fun. It's eight dollars to get in It's like a county fair. It's Vietnamese food culture comp eating competitions dancing performances, all the things. And I think it's really important for our community here in Santa Ana, whatever background you're from, to go visit. I think in this time of anti-Asian hate, it's really important for all of us to expose ourselves to cultures that are different from ours, to get to know one another, and to really experience what it's like to be a part of a community that isn't

Thai Viet PhanItem 21

yours. Finally, I do want to say that, you know, this year has been really difficult for all of us, but it's really important that we keep, I think, hoping for a brighter 2022. I think that's what the Year of the Tiger is about. I am born in the Year of the Cat, also known as Year of the Hair, if you're Chinese, but it's really about being brave. So I really want to challenge everyone out there to really think about that and to be brave in everything that you do because I think that keeps with the spirit. So again, Chokmang Namoy.

Great. Thank you, Councilmember Fan.

David PenalozaItem 21

Councilmember Peñalosa. Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I just wanted to wish everyone a happy Lunar New Year. Chokmang Namoy. And that is it. Good night. Thank you for those comments.

Mayor Prozambasara.

Phil BacerraItem 21

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to announce that for this month, my monthly community office hours will take place on Saturday, February 19th at 10 a.m. and not on February 5th. As my colleagues have talked about already, I will be at the TEP parade celebrating the Lunar New Year. As part of my AB, I forget which assembly bill, this is my disclosure for attending events on behalf of the city, I attended the annual UCLA Land Use Law and Planning Conference on behalf of our city. Despite my reluctance to admit that I went to anything UCLA or supportive of UCLA, I will admit that it was actually a good event.

Phil BacerraItem 21

To be honest, it annually is a great event. It provides some good updates on legislation and some land use law, some of the cases that come out. It really is a good event. I wish it was in person, but unfortunately it was not. It was virtually, but it was still a great event. And other than that, I just wanted to conclude my remarks tonight by wishing those who are welcoming in the Year of the Tiger a very happy and prosperous new year. And chuk mung nung mung.

Great. Thank you for those comments. All I can say is UCLA is the number one public university in the country. So go Bruins. in any event. Look, it's a healthy rivalry, but we are ranked number three in basketball, so I won't rub that into my Trojan friends. But I did want to just say, Man of City Manager, to your team, and especially, you know, a special shout out to Daisy Perez, Paul Eakins, and Rosa Flores. Really an amazing job with the state of the city, and to my colleagues up here who participated. I heard nothing but positive comments and when Sonia

and I kind of bumped into each other, we've been to quite a few of these, we just said we wanted to make it different. So I hope it was as pleasant for you as it was for others who attended. We wanted to have a departure from what we've lived through in the past two years and previous to something different which is a much more hopeful moment. So with that, I do want to wish everybody a happy Lunar New Year. I'm really, really bummed out that both parades, the Black History Parade and the FET is on the same day because I haven't missed a FET parade in a very long time. We need to work with

both those groups to see how we can figure out, you know, to make sure that they don't do that because we, you know, we certainly want to attend both of those but look, well, you know, that'll be a work in progress but to everybody else happy Black History Parade, happy Black History Month, and I wish everybody a good night. We're adjourned until February 18th. Good night, everybody.

Thank you.