Read the April 5 meeting.

頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭頭 Thank you.

Thank you.

Are we live?

Recording in progress.

Great, thank you. Let's go ahead and call this regular session of the Santa City Council meeting for a closed session to order for April 15th.

I'm so sorry, Mayor. Let's wait one more minute to make it five o'clock.

All right.

Thank you.

Okay, Mayor, we are at 5 o'clock now. Thank you.

I think this is about as punctual as we've ever been. This is exactly 5 o'clock. Let me go ahead and call the special closed session meeting to order for April 5, 2022. And let me just begin with some opening remarks that this meeting is taking place with in-person attendance and by teleconference via Zoom. The public can access the meeting via the Santa Ana YouTube channel and the city's website. And please bear with us as the technology may disrupt the flow of the meeting. I'm going to turn it over to the clerk to call roll.

Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Hernandez? Present. Councilmember Lopez? Here. Councilmember Mendoza? Councilmember Peñalosa?

David Penaloza

Here.

Councilmember Fan? Mayor Pro Tem Becerra? And Mayor Sarmiento?

Here. Any members of the Council wish to abstain from any of the items on the closed session calendar? Seeing none, do we have any speakers, Madam Clerk?

No, we do not and we didn't receive any written communication

Great councilmember fan just walked in so I had just asked if there's any abstentions on the closed session go ahead and you can recite that on the record

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

I will have to abstain From both items relating to Dyer 18 LLC as they are a client of My employer written and Tucker so I will not be in the room all that items being discussed. Thank you

Great. Thank you, Councilmember. And so with that, we'll go ahead and recess into closed session and reconvene back in the public after. Thanks.

Recording stopped.

Okay.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So it's I have two. Yeah. I have two. Yeah. That's like fire. Thank you.

So. That changes. You just make me feel optimistic.

But if we start soon like we are, then we'll just go on.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I love you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Here we go.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

piano plays softly

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

Thank you.

Right now. Right now. Right now. Right now. Right now. Right now.

Right now. Right now. Right now. Right now. Right now. I've had so much fear

Why are you going to forget

If I just want to be more love?

It's the love that tells me, that tells me to follow you.

I want to give you all your forgiveness I don't know how to love, my heart

Yo sí sé de amor Sí sé de amor Corazón, corazón Oh, my God.

Right. Right. Right.

Right.

Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Right. Right.

That's love, I understand And I have a pardon, I have a pardon I have a pardon, I have a pardon I have a pardon, I want you to give everything

Right. Right. Right.

Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Goodbye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye

Right.

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Right.

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No one Thank you.

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piano plays softly

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Right now, fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire

Thank you.

Thank you.

Right now. Right now. Right now. Right now. Right now. Right now. Right now.

Right now. Right now. Right now. Right now. Right now. I've had so much fear

Why are you going to forget

If I just want you to love me

Right.

Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Corazón Yo sí sé de amar Sí sé de amor Corazón, corazón

You'll find me more

Save my heart

Right Right Right Right Right Right Right

Right Right Right Right Right Right Right Right

Right

I

Oh

It's the soul that tells me that I'm going to be here

It's the soul that tells me that I'm going to be here Here we go.

Here we go.

Thank you.

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We're all set.

Recording in progress.

Great. Good evening, everybody. Let me go ahead and call this regular session of the Santa Ana City Council meeting to order for April, is it already April 5th? April 5th, 2022. Let me go ahead and begin with some opening remarks. This meeting is taking place with in-person attendance and by teleconference via Zoom. The public can access this meeting via the Santa Ana YouTube channel and the city's website. and as usual please bear with us as the meeting may be interrupted because of technological problems and I'll go ahead and turn it over to the clerk so she can

call roll Thank You mayor councilmember Hernandez present councilmember Lopez here councilmember Mendoza present councilmember Pena Loza present councilmember fan mayor Potembe Serra here and mayor Sarmiento here thank you

and before we go to the Pledge of Allegiance, I'm going to ask the Clerk to go ahead and make her opening comments.

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 39 and 40, please dial star 9 from your phone or click the button labeled Raise Hand from Zoom at this time. Please hold your comments until the Mayor opens public hearing items 39 and 40. Please announce your name and word or neighborhood you reside in within the city of Santa Ana for the record. Thank you.

Thank you. Let me go ahead and call on Mayor Pro Tem Becerra to go ahead and lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Phil BacerraItem 3

Everybody would stand.

Phil BacerraItem 3

Place your hand over your heart and begin. 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.

Great, and I'm going to now welcome our friend, Pastor Tommy Cota, if he's with us. Is he with us? There he is. Come on up, sir. And if you'll all please join Pastor Tommy Cota, he's going to go ahead and lead us with words of inspiration for our city council meeting today. Welcome, Pastor.

Well, thank you, Mr. Mayor and city council members for this opportunity. The Bible says, For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans of good and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, and when you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you, declares the Lord. God, we thank you for the declaration of your word. And we thank you, Lord, for being the creator of heaven and earth, for loving us, Lord, and demonstrating that love for us, that your son would die for us on a cross.

And, Lord, we ask now that you would just meet, meet us all here. We pray for wisdom here in these chambers, Lord. Father, there are plenty of matters that are going to be discussed, things voted on and Lord we know that these things aren't meaningless Lord they do matter not just to what's happened not to those that are just in here but matter to the people of the city of Santa Ana and so father we pray for that great wisdom that only you can give an insight for everyone to make the decisions Lord that would be best for this city Lord we also think of all the

other entities Lord our law enforcement we pray that you would protect them and be with them and give them great wisdom. Lord, our first responders, such as the fire authority, there's our school district and all that takes place, the students and teachers. Lord, I also pray for our small businesses, Lord, in the faith community. Lord, I pray that all of us here in this golden city, in which we called Santa Ana our home, Lord, would thrive and that there would be a great unity that would take place. And so, Father, we look to you now during this moment, Father, for

your great wisdom and understanding and insight. In the name of Jesus, amen.

Thank you, Pastor Tommy.

Let's go ahead and move along to the ceremonial presentations. I'll go ahead and do the first one. Madam Clerk, is there anybody to receive this proclamation, or is this just simply going to be proclaiming the month. Thank you.

But really, this is so universal, it applies to all of us. So I'll just make these comments just generally, because April is DMV Donate to Life Month. And for more than 100,000 men and women and children in the U.S. who need a life-saving organ transplant, this is a significant effort. This is obviously a significant month for us to recognize, because donating to someone's life, keeping somebody alive, is so important. So during DMV Donate to Life Month, we give thanks to the families and friends of the donors who've supported their loved one's decision to save lives by donating organs or tissue.

We show our appreciation for the professionals who serve the transplantation community, and we encourage our community to become organ, eye, tissue, marrow, and blood donors. In doing so, we honor those who have given this most extraordinary of gifts. At the request of our one legacy ambassador, Rachel Rodriguez, I would like to honor her grandson, Malachi Thomas Payne, a hero donor. Malachi was a happy, vibrant, giggly little boy with so much life and spirit within him, but at a mere 16 months old, after an alleged fall, he was admitted to LA County USC Medical Center and slipped into a coma.

For three days, his family anxiously awaited for his recovery, but instead, their beautiful boy entered the gates of heaven. His death immediately went from being listed as accidental to a homicide. Someone was responsible for Malachi's death, and in the darkest hour of his father's life, Malachi's dad chose to donate his son's organs. Because of his selfless decision, Malachi went on to save the lives of four people. His recipient's ages range from nine months to 65 years of age. Malachi's legacy is that of giving the miracle of continued life to his recipients.

In honor of Malachi's life, please become an organ or tissue donor next time you are applying or renewing your California driver's license at the DMV. You may be that one miracle that someone is praying for. So to those who are donors, to those who are recipients, we know how important this is. And all it takes is just a selfless act. And sometimes, you know, what's difficult is, you know, in the example that I just read off, a parent making that decision was probably very, very difficult to do in the moment of grief, to be able to do that.

But for those of us who are adults, you know, this seems like it's something that should be just an extension of our life, to extend what we can to hopefully benefit somebody who is, you know, going through a very, very difficult moment of waiting for an organ or tissue or anything that will save another loved one's life. So I want to proclaim, you know, the month of April as DMV Donate to Life Month. We have a proclamation that we will make sure we send out to one legacy ambassador and Rachel Rodriguez in honor of Malachi's memory. and hopefully you'll all do your share by when you're renewing your license or those of you who

are young when you're getting your first license make sure you check that box they put a little pink or they used to put a little pink thing on your on your license and it shows that you know in a moment when maybe we can't give informed consent and hopefully none of us are in that situation but if that happens you know so much good so much love and so much life will be given to others. So with that, thank you, and I'll go ahead and turn it over to our next speaker.

Council Member Hernandez, come on up here.

You know, while we wait for Council Member Hernandez, Councilmember Lopez, do you mind going up? Why don't we go ahead and have Maritza Rubio come on up and join her so Councilmember Lopez can recognize her for the literary arts and all the contributions to the artist community.

Jessie LopezItem 1

Hi everyone. So at Boca de Oro this year, I had the great fortune of introducing Maritza, who was the keynote speaker. And like so many of us, Maritza is a santanera, born and raised in the city of Santana. and she attended St. Ant's and Saddleback High School and was part of the first graduating class of Middle College High School in 2000. And Maritza is founder of the Makara Arts Center, Center for the Arts, a non-profit library and arts center that was a brick and mortar space

Jessie LopezItem 1

on Main Street from 2017 to 2020. And Makara was founded with a vision to provide access to free books for Santa Ana residents and really anyone that needed that support. And also, you know, helped establish bold artistic programs for the community. And Makara hosted over 350 free arts and culture programs that included anything from yoga to writing and arts workshops to film screenings, guest speakers, and letter writing campaigns for political prisoners.

Jessie LopezItem 1

Now Maritza works as a director of community engagement at the Stegerstrom Center for the Arts. And Maritza supports artistic excellence by engaging all community through free public programs and by managing Studio D, an all-inclusive art school for all individuals of all abilities. But Maritza just doesn't help improve the conditions of Santa Ana residents. she is also a very well accomplished writer. And Maritza has received creative writing fellowships from PEN America, VONA, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference.

Jessie LopezItem 1

And her work has been nominated for a pushcart price and received honorable mention in the Best American Short Stories. And Maritza has publications in the OC Register, the LA Times, and several fiction anthologies and literary magazines. And her love for the arts is something she, I like to say, inherited because, you know, her mom is a founding member of El Centro Cultural de Mexico and some of us, for those of us that grew up in the city, we have also seen her father's work in our own backyards.

Jessie LopezItem 1

And so I want to thank Maritza for being a longtime supporter of the arts and cultural Literacy in Santa Ana. Her first book, Maria Maria and Other Short Stories, will be published on April 26, 2022, so very soon, so please support Maritza. And the book contains a collection of short stories, many which feature our city of Santa Ana. So join me in congratulating Maritza on the upcoming publication of her first book and in recognizing her for her outstanding contributions to the literary arts and to the artist community in Santa Ana. We are so proud of you.

Thank You Councilmember Lopez and the City of Santa Ana. All I have to say is I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the Santa Ana Public Library. So I urge you all to continue supporting the library and access to free arts and culture throughout the city and beyond. So thank you.

Thank You Councilmember Lopez and congratulations Maritza. Let me go back to item number two which is a proclamation that councilmember Hernandez is going to be issuing to Latino health access

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

Alrighty welcome everybody if we can please have Latino health access to come to the front please

thank you

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

Hello, welcome. Please, please.

I'll move over here.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

All right. Hola, ¿cómo están?

Muy bien.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

Okay.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

Para que todos nos podamos entrar aquí. Hello.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

All righty.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

We're all wearing blue.

Yes.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

All right. Do we just all like the same color? Is there a coincidence here, huh? I think there is. Well, welcome, everybody, and thank you to all my neighbors, and more importantly, Latino Health Access for being here today. This is a proclamation that is very important to us in the city of Santa Ana, and we're recognizing National Child Abuse Prevention Month. We are presenting it to Latino Health Access today. April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month, and it was first declared as Child Abuse Prevention Month in 1983 by Presidential Proclamation.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

The same year, the Orange County Child Abuse Prevention Center was formed under the Reagan Administration. This month, families and communities work together to acknowledge and prevent child abuse. The City of Santa Ana is home to 90,423 children, ages 0-17, and compromised 49.6% of households with children. In 2020, Santa Ana had a rate of child abuse allegations of 8.5 per 1,000 children, 27th annual conditions of children report per 2020. Providing an environment that is safe, healthy, and secure for our children and families requires

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

the collaboration of all sectors in our community. A community that cares about early childhood development, parental support, and maternal mental health is more likely to foster nurturing families and healthy children.

Latino Health Access LHA has been providing services to the City of Santa

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

Ana community for over 28 years. They have worked with our communities to ensure our children grow up in a place where they feel secure, protected, and free from violence. They have taken a comprehensive approach and not only increasing awareness about childhood abuse prevention through workshops, resource fairs, and programs, but they also provide educational opportunities for families to learn to identify and, more importantly, break the cycles of violence for future generations. Over the last two years, Latino Health Access has housed the Downtown Family Resource Center,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

which works with families that have children under the age of 18 that are at risk to child abuse and neglect. Latino Health Access is a member of the Blue Ribbon Committee along with a number of partners that include over 25 community organizations and public agencies which aim to hold activities throughout the month of April to increase awareness about child abuse prevention and to assure our community's children are protected all year long. Today the city of Santa Ana recognizes the month of April as Child Abuse Prevention Month and asks that as us as a community we do all our very best to protect children.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

On your way out, make sure to get a list of free community events and activities and get involved. And more importantly, join me in celebrating April's National Childhood Abuse Prevention Month in the city of Santa Ana. Thank you.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

Now, before I give this proclamation to Latino Health Access, I want to acknowledge the important list of attendees. and forgive me if there's some names that I do forget, but Kalina, Iniesta, Rocio Paredes, Veronica Garcia, Hope Salazar, Alma Gonzalez, Abel Morales, Brianna Serna, Alejandra Luciano, Rosa Isela, Maria Victoria, Anabel Para, Jiromi Minacata, Sarai Arpero, Elia Sanchez, Lorena Montero, Carolina Lima, Ilete Espinosa, Carla Lima, If there are any names that we left out here, please forgive us.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

But I just wanted to acknowledge some of the people that reached out to me as we were working on this and thanked them for their advocacy. And there's a number of Blue Ribbon activities happening all throughout the month of April. April 8th, 15th, 22nd, and 29th, Latino Health Access is doing food distribution and distributing Blue Ribbon educational materials and resources at their Latino Health Access building here in downtown. April 8th they are also having a zoom meeting in Spanish which which is about the downtown resource centers adult informational session and craft

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

respect my body you can learn more about childhood abuse prevention and create your own sugar scrub to stand in solidarity and lastly April 15th they are having a zoom meeting from 5 to 6 30 on presenting healthy relationships teen dating violence prevention so last but not least let us join them in a round of applause and celebrating national childhood abuse prevention month in the city of sanana thank you so who can i present this to thank you do you mind

well on behalf of latino hold access the downtown frc we thank you and yes this shouldn't be just one month right it's the whole year we want our kids to be saved healthy and happy and all together we're creating a community that cares thank you so much

Oh, gracias. Thank you. So they're giving us a shirt here.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

And this is a logo that they have created. And this is the... Can I leave a little bit of the history? Yes, please do.

Yeah, a little bit of behind the history of the design. As you can see, there's the blue ribbon. The blue represents prevention month, a child abuse prevention month. There are 16 daisies that represent the 16 family resource centers across the Orange County and each each they see has 16 petals representing each of the 16 FRC Family Resource Centers so that they see we chose that they see as

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 2

a symbol of the child's innocence thank you so much thank you everybody thank you so much we're gonna get a picture Right.

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Right. Right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hopefully, some of you watched Spanish-language TV. This past Sunday, on Univision, there's a segment called Univisionarios, and they featured Latino Health Access and Director America Bracho and they I think devoted almost a full segment to what she does not only in Santa Ana and the county but really how she serves as a model and example to other other health organizations throughout the country. So congratulations to them. Let me go ahead and turn it over to Councilmember Nelly Mendoza to recognize Fred Flores and Andre Roberson for their outstanding contributions to the community.

So Fred and Shawnee, I guess, if you're going to be standing in, come on up.

Good evening, guests, residents, and people of dignitary positions. Thank you for staff as well. Hello, Shawnee and Fred Flores.

So come on on either side, please.

And so today we're honoring these two individuals because during the month of December, they made a significant impact to our low-income families. And you know how it's been during the pandemic where many of our residents lost their jobs and so there was income was a very difficult issue. people were not even able to buy their own food pay their rent let alone purchase toys for their children during this special and crucial time which is

the holidays and for December and so lo and behold come two angels down to earth and give our families the the significance of what Christmas is really

about enjoying the being together with their families and opening up the birthday gifts. The gifts were the birth of Christ took place. And so the children have a special place in my heart because we're actually celebrating them, the children, the innocence, and what it means, the meaning of Christmas. And so many of these families would not have had that without the generosity of Fred Flores from the Medica Talent Group and Robert and, sorry about that, Andre Roberson of the Power of One Foundation.

Both contributed in different ways. However, both contributions made a significant impact on these families. And also behind the scenes was another very special person who wishes to remain anonymous, but I want to say from the bottom of my heart that I appreciate his generosity, his time, his networking, his countless hours in getting this project through. You know who you are, and thank you so much, and I will respect your privacy. Today, I would like to recognize Fred Flores right here from Medica Talent Group and his

representative Shawnee is accepting the certificate of recognition for Andre Robertson from the Power of One Foundation. So these two organizations were extremely instrumental in sharing a successful Winter Wonderland holiday toy giveaway in December at Centennial Regional Park and by the way we are acknowledging Centennial for their generosity in providing their facility as well so that's upcoming the holiday season tends to be the worst time of the year for families struggling financially trying to provide gifts for

their little ones but thanks to Medica Talent Group and the Power of One foundation as many as 1,100 children in Santa Ana received toys. Medica generously

supported the toy drive with a donation of $15,000. Now imagine what $15,000 worth of toys looked like. It was amazing. So we purchased toys and other gifts for the youth of Santa Ana with a generous donation. The Power of One Foundation collected the thousands of toys and secured volunteers to sort through the toys to help coordinate and even distributed the toys at the event. Together, Medica and Power of One Foundation

help put smiles on the faces of children, leaving everlasting impression on their hearts, in their hearts. Thank you, Fred, and thank you, Shawnee. Please give my heartfelt thanks to Andre for all that he does for the children. And you're probably thinking, we're in April. This event took place in December, right?

Well, if you see my house, you wouldn't wander because my Christmas tree is still up.

And that's exactly the reason is because COVID has taken place. And so I have not distributed the gifts to the various families that I give gifts to. So there was a lot of COVID infections during the month of December, January, February. And so I think maybe by July I will be able to take down my Christmas tree. So please congratulate these very, very generous entities in giving something so powerful and meaningful to our residents of Santa Ana.

A big hand for Medical Talent Group, Fred Flores, Andre Robertson, and we're going to take some photos. Oh, why don't you say a couple of words, Fred? Okay, thank you.

Hello, everyone. Thank you all. This is really an honor, but I can tell you right now we're going to do it again. We're going to help the City of Santa Ana once again this year because it still touches my heart to see the smiles and the impact that it made. So thank you all and thank the children. Thank you.

On behalf of Andre Roberson, I'm his partner and co-founder with Power of One. We do a lot of the work together that our foundation does. And we care so deeply about this city. He spent his whole life here and continues to serve it with his whole heart and we will not be pausing anytime soon. So stay tuned for Power of One events this year and more ways that we'll be helping the community.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember, and congratulations, Fred and Shawnee. Give our best to Andre. Shawnee, please. Our last proclamation is going to be presented by Councilmember Peñalosa and Councilmember Fan, declaring April as Sexual Assault Awareness Month. I'll go ahead and turn it over to the both of them.

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

I'm short.

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

Hi everyone. So Sexual Assault Awareness Month is an annual campaign to raise public awareness about sexual assault and educate communities and individuals on how to prevent sexual violence. I want to specifically actually thank you my dear friend Garter Grove Councilwoman Kim Bernice Nguyen for being a champion for SAM, raising awareness by sharing her own survival story and lifting other survivors. I actually found out about SAM from her and we commemorate this month every April. So Sam calls attention to the

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

fact that sexual harassment, assault, and abuse are widespread and impact every person in this community. Sexual harassment, assault, and abuse can happen anywhere including online spaces. Last year the National Sexual Assault Awareness Month campaign uplifted the message that we can build safe online online spaces, calling on audiences to practice digital consent, intervene when we see harmful content and behaviors, and promote online communities that value safety and respect.

David PenalozaItem 5

This April, the SAM 2022 campaign continues to build on this vision with a call to action, building safe online spaces together. We know that we can build and are building online communities centered on respect, inclusion, and safety. Where harassment, assault, and abuse are taken seriously. Please join the City of Santa Ana this month in making the respect the norm everywhere. Not just in the month of April, but year-round moving forward. Taking actions to promote the safety of others and showing survivors that they are believed and supported.

David PenalozaItem 5

Together, we can make a difference to build inclusive, safe, and respectful online spaces. Chances are that someone in your life is a survival of sexual harassment, assault, or abuse. Even if they have not shared their story with you, it is a big possibility. And with that in mind, today's Day of Action campaign is to wear teal. So I wore teal to show those survivors that I stand with them and support them in any way they can and try to raise awareness to the issue. I would also like to remind everyone listening that April 27th is Denim Day, so I encourage

David PenalozaItem 5

everybody even here at City Hall, City Manager, if we could send out a memo, to wear denim, wear denim out and about. And just a little brief, I guess, context to background to what denim is, Denim Day is in the Italian Supreme Court overruled a rape conviction a number of years ago and their argument was that the young woman was wearing very, very tight jeans. So in order for assault to have happened, she had to have helped her abuser take off

David PenalozaItem 5

the tight jeans, which is why we wear, and the next, if you want to finish, just so,

David PenalozaItem 5

the next day, I guess I'll finish. All the women in the parliament, out of anger and frustration with the Supreme Court's ruling, they all wore denim to work, kind of in a show of solidarity and protest to the awful overruling of this rape conviction. So April 27th, please put on your calendars, wear jeans, wear denim, take a selfie.

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

Yes, and make sure you use the hashtag DenimDay2022. We do that kind of every year now. and I do want to share a somewhat personal story that I myself have been a victim of online sexual harassment many of you may not know but for a young woman in public office and in public spaces you know a lot of us we might get unwanted messages on social media and things like that because we're public figures and it's it's disturbing it's horrible and on top of a lot of the anti-Asian violence. So, you know, I want to share this all with you because none of us are really

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

immune to this. And when people are anonymous online, they feel empowered to take that action. So I ask that those of you who have seen this behavior, who know about this behavior, speak up, because for many of us, we just are tired of having to do it ourselves. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmembers. Let me go ahead and now go to staff's presentation. I think we only have a single one from staff, and I'll turn it over to the city manager so she can give us the homelessness update.

Good evening, honorable mayor and members of the City Council. This is our sixth reoccurring monthly update on homelessness and homeless services in our city. I do have a PowerPoint, so hopefully we can get that loaded up. There we go. So I'm just going to briefly go over our cult activities for the last month, the SMART program, which we rolled out and talked about the last time, and then the services we provide, and then give you an update on our Homeless Navigation Center. So starting with the Quality of Life team, as I mentioned last time, they are engaged throughout the entirety of our city,

and we do have their stats for the month of February 2022. So in February 2022, they contacted 436 different individuals that were currently experiencing homelessness. They provided outreach services and enforcement action. This was an increase from the previous month being January. We conducted 399 cleanups. This also was an increase from the previous month. And performed 123 arrests or issued citations for various offenses. This was also up from the count we had in January. We were able to place in shelter 60 of the individuals that we did performed outreach for.

Some of the other March highlights that we had, cult officers contacted two individuals that were experiencing homelessness in Santa Ana that were actually from Dana Point. They were two brothers and they were known in Orange County's skateboarding community for their YouTube videos. And they were also previously sponsored by a shoe and a skateboard company. One of the brothers had a foot condition that was deemed serious enough that hadn't had any medical treatment.

So Colt contacted the healthcare agency, and with their assistance, we were able to transport this individual to a local hospital to get the medical attention that he needed. Our public works agency continues to conduct encampment cleanups within our storm drain system. Oftentimes, some of the homeless are attracted to our various channels. And so for several priority locations, Public Works has identified and actually fabricated metal gates to prevent individuals from climbing down into the channels, which is a dangerous environment for any individual to be doing so.

And we have two capital projects that are slated to start construction in the next few months to install several thousand feet of new fencing. And then in response to our outreach efforts in January, CHP did organize a cleanup effort in Santiago Creek under the 5 Freeway Bridge. Colt assisted CHP and the Orange Police Department homeless liaison officers were also under the bridge and we had Caltrans crews and graffiti removing debris and assisting with the cleanup efforts. Santa Ana assisted with these outreach efforts via our contractor, CityNet, and unfortunately

we only had one individual that was encountered except the shelter but a walk along the creek from the 52 flower freeway found no encampments in that area and i believe this was a request from council member lopez to get the different jurisdictions together to perform that type of a cleanup the smart program which i introduced the last time this is a new program that we launched and it's to try to divert the 911 calls for non-emergency homeless related calls away from dispatch and directly to the phone number that you can see on your screen. The goal is just to provide a more effective outreach and engagement while better utilizing

city resources through diversion of homeless calls from the police department and our Orange County Fire Authority. So we did have a little bit of stumbles when we first rolled out the number, but hopefully we've got all of the kinks worked out with that and individuals can find this a useful tool for them when they do engage with a homeless encampment that is not an emergency situation. We have the graph that we track showing the infographic on the screen. This is the activity from its December launch up through March 30th. They're deployed throughout the whole city and to date they've had 2,152 outreach contacts

and they've responded to 2,818 calls. Notably, 300 individuals were assisted with exiting the streets of the city. and as I always like to remind everybody of the other homeless services that we offer here in Santa Ana we are responsible for providing shelter at three different locations we utilize the Salvation Army hospitality house which is a shelter for single men we have a facility that we refer to as the link it's really the second link this one is located in Fullerton where we provide and pay for beds for individuals that need shelter and then we have a program with Families Forward, and this is for the homeless families

that we encounter that are seeking shelter, and we do that by doing so utilizing hotel rooms to do that. And then as always regarding housing options, we have several permanent supportive housing units completed. We have additional in-pre-development or under construction, and in total when the ones under construction are completed, this city will have 437 permanent supportive housing units. and in addition to that as well we do have our HUD voucher program. So the Carnegie Navigation Center, we are hoping it is going to open up very soon. I do want to get you guys out there for a tour of it.

By mid-month we will begin moving some of the furnishings and equipment into the building in preparation of transporting and receiving the guests, which we will have to do in a phased approach from the three locations that I had just previously talked about. On construction, we are hoping the construction is nearing completion. You can see from the pictures of the interior that there's wall coverings, there's a commercial kitchen, we have the playground out in the back of the building just about completed.

And what's before you tonight on your regular agenda for the individuals that we are currently providing shelter, we do need to extend the three agreements. So that's the agreement with the Hospitality House, with the Family Forward Motel Program, and the Fullerton Recuperative Care Center. So we want to extend those tonight so that we'll have a time when the shelter is completed that we'll be able to transition the individuals in an orderly fashion to the new Homeless Navigation Center. Next update for homeless will be on May 3rd. And if you have any questions, I'm available, and so is Steven Mendoza.

We don't have Ken Gaminski with us tonight, but we can do our best to answer any questions you may have.

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

Council Member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 6

Yeah, I do. Thank you. Christine, I really enjoy, you know, the presentations, but I think what I also would like to see be part of these is a cost breakdown of how much we're spending for each service that we're providing and I think a bed count as well just so that the public knows how many beds were paying for the cost of each bed and what shelter has beds available I think that would be helpful I also I also just have a question I know that we have a

Jessie LopezItem 6

homeless services manager and I want to know if at any point in time we will get to hear from that person do a presentation I love okay thank you that

will relieve me and certainly we can bring that individual and then you'll be able to see a face with the name on the request for bed counts and cost are you also interested in seeing the funding sources that we use for the homeless

Jessie LopezItem 6

efforts yeah that'd be great thank you also I think you know all of us know what's that there's been some media around Carnegie and the construction halting without the city really knowing or our permission and so I'd like to know if you have a cost estimate or already a cost that has gone out that we've had to pay because of the construction that was stopped and we can

add that to the next presentation I don't have the exact numbers okay right

Jessie LopezItem 6

got it and then also I have a couple requests for staff if staff can please forward me a copy of all the invoices that have been paid regarding the Carnegie shelter I'd also like to see a timeline of you know the cost amendments that have come to this council that have been approved you know I'd also I guess would just like to meet with the homeless services manager to just have a conversation about what's going on at Carnegie and I also would like to request the original project budget documents that I think should include

Jessie LopezItem 6

the rent, the furnishing, how much was originally budgeted for this project, for this shelter.

Jessie LopezItem 6

And, okay, and can you let me know also by what date we expect this shelter to be open?

Certainly, as you know, we do have some litigation matters, so it's out of my control, that exact date but when we do have a firm and I will let you know on the invoices the documents you're requesting to be emailed to you we're talking very voluminous documents may I suggest we'll set up a meeting with you with our homeless services manager and then you can have copies of the items that you

Jessie LopezItem 6

you're interested in perfect that works with me and can you let me know what's the monthly rate that we're paying right now are you inquiring about the actual rent yeah for Carnegie what are we paying them sixty six thousand dollars okay and then who's that owner who's that owner who did we contract with

Dyer 118 LLC who owns the LLC I believe it's a subsidiary of another corporation are you asking who the principals are with Dyer who do we I believe the two names that are associated with it is Ryan Oglenick and Chris Lee.

Jessie LopezItem 6

Okay.

Jessie LopezItem 6

And, okay, that's going to be it. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Councilmember. Any other questions or comments on this item? Councilmember Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 6

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. Thank you, Madam City Manager, for that presentation. One thing that I just want to make sure that we're staying on top of is I know that the governor in the State of California in the last month or two have brought forward a CARE support, which is about $10 billion plus in state dollars that are going to be dispersed amongst the counties to have court ordered care for mentally ill individuals. And I know that a lot of the people that are living on our streets are either mentally ill or just severely addicted to drugs. So I want to make sure that we're staying on top of that as well, making sure that if

David PenalozaItem 6

if we could, by court, you know, through the court system, force people to get the care they need, that we're looking at that as well. As we, you know, at the next update, possibly give us a small update of how that could work here in Santa Ana, how that could be incorporated into, I guess, the scope of what our homeless services manager is already doing here in the city.

Certainly. I'll work with the city attorney and the county who would be the ones that would be implementing that program.

Right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember, for that. Any other questions or comments?

I have a question.

Go ahead, Councilmember Mendoza.

Yes. I'm wondering whether when these individuals who are, who want the services, are they asked whether they're veterans? Because I'm thinking that maybe we could create some kind because the VA actually offers lots of housing and other resources to the veterans, so maybe we could refer them over and allocate that funding to other people who are not veterans.

Certainly, and we do coordinate, so there's a central intake that's used throughout the county, And so for individuals that have veteran status, there are standalone programs for them. And in fact, we've done housing projects specifically for veterans. But we do coordinate to ensure that we're using the full breadth of what the services are available for the individuals. All right. Thank you.

Thank you for that. I think I'm seeing no other questions or comments. The only comment I was going to make is to the council member's point on the care courts. So that's still being drafted by the governor and his staff. And I know the governor's staff met with the big city mayors on conversations about what that's going to look like. You know, unfortunately, it's a very sensitive topic because it talks about reducing the threshold for conservatorships and whether or not you can impose and mandate care on an individual. So, you know, you're talking about informed consent.

You're talking about so many other civil liberties that people have that it's difficult. But it is born sort of out of the challenge of having people not accept care or placement. So that's where the challenge is. I think it's still going to be a very debated issue, and they're still working on that. So more to come. I think that was it on this item. So let me go ahead and move it along to ask the city attorney if there's anything that she wants to report at a closed session.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 6

Thank you, Mayor, Council members, and members of the public. We did have several closed session items this evening as listed on the agenda, but we do not have any reportable action.

Great. Thank you for that. Let me go ahead and let everybody know that we are now at the public comment section of our meeting, and this is for agendized and non-agendized items. and we will go ahead and have the public both in person and those of you who are with us virtually and online and by the phone go ahead and communicate and make your comments to to the City Council. Pursuant to the Brown Act you we cannot enter into any conversation so once you make your comment it you know it's not an exchange. We ask you that you don't give us your address but let us know if

you live in Santa Ana and if you do, maybe what ward. But you'll be given three minutes to speak and there should be a timer right in front of you just to let you know when you're getting close to that end. And so let me go ahead and turn it over to the clerk to see if she has any comments.

Thank you, Mayor. For any of those who have joined us by way of Zoom or phone, if you can please dial star knife from your phone or select raise hand from Zoom now and we will unmute you at that moment when it's ready.

Great. So I've got the cards here. So I'll ask those who are in person here to go ahead and address us and then we'll go and I'll turn it over to the clerk so she can call on those that are on the line waiting to be heard. I'll start with Ivana Unger followed by Hector Bustos followed by Delilah Snell.

Hector and Delilah, if you guys will please approach the diocese. Please go ahead, ma'am.

That's okay.

You're welcome.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, and good evening to you, Council members.

I would like to apologize first that English is my first language, so please bear with me.

In light of the recent news about the financial blackmail being conducted by the Oglenaks, at the city homeless shelter, it highlights the fact that the organics still have not paid their fees. They owe to the city for failed 2525 North Main high density project.

I believe that the city staff has had the responsibility of collecting what we understand is more than $6,100 and perhaps as high as over $100.

And certainly it remains unpaid. We officially ask you again to reach out to the party and try to secure those taxpayer dollars.

Miss City Manager, can you please provide neighborhood leaders a status of the money's owed? Thank you very much that you were able to listen to me.

Thank you. Hector Bustos followed by Delilah Snell followed by Laura Morfine.

Hello, my name is Hector Bustos and I am a resident of Ward 4 and the Communications Director at CHISPA. I'm here today to speak on Agenda Item 38, the Police Oversight Ad Hoc Committee's Informational Report. As we all know, the core purposes of civilian-led oversight of law enforcement are to increase transparency, ensure accountability for misconduct, and expand public safety. Given the nationwide and local civic engagement for racial justice and the reimagining of the role of police, the City of Santana's effort to examine police oversight models is an important step forward.

Since 2017, Santana community-based organizations have advocated for a police oversight model that is independent of law enforcement, community-led, transparent, fully funded, and empowered with auditing, investigative, and disciplinary authority. We are calling on the City Council to take swift action on police oversight today. We ask that you support the Police Oversight Ad Hoc Committee's recommended police oversight model and direct staff to prepare an ordinance to establish the police oversight board with the support of community-based organizations and consider the ordinance before the end of the 2021

22 fiscal year several city surveys of santana residents have shown that police oversight has broad support and the effort to establish a strong oversight model must not be delayed further if the council considers and approves an ordinance to establish a board model before the end of this fiscal year we can begin an implementation process that can take up to a year or longer in order for the board to have the powers that efficacy requires the city charter must also be amended the ordinance that establishes the infrastructure of an effective police oversight

body can be written and passed in parallel with the efforts to amend the charter to that end we also recommend that the city council direct staff to prepare a charter amendment to be submitted to voters at the November 2022 election that authorizes the board to impose discipline upon the chief of police and the Santa Ana Police Department officers for cause. The charter amendment should also enshrine a sustainable budget to fully fund the board with public safety funds derived from cost saving measures from the police department budget. The consideration of an ordinance and charter amendment must happen concurrently to ensure

police oversight is promptly enacted and that residents of the city of santana are empowered to remediate and prevent police violence our community has been calling for the creation of police oversight board for far too long so we ask that you take action today and let's move police

oversight forward thank you thank you delilah snell followed by laura morfine followed by amy

Cavanaugh Mason hi good evening my name is Delilah Snell I live in Ward 4 my business Alta Baja market is in Ward 6 as you've all been hearing for the past two months this community's been hurting and harmed by the negligence and mismanagement of the OCTA streetcar project I've been here a few times talking about it I wanted to thank the city's leadership and management for assisting us with some of the relief and at least a little relief with parking because parking is more of an issue with this project. However, two weeks ago, there was an event that closed Bush Street between 3rd and 4th. This event gave no notification

to other areas in downtown that would be affected, which is what they should have done because the smallest changes right now and disruptions are having major effects to an area that's so vulnerable. This event had speakers blurring music with explicit, explicit, explicit is, sorry. And I will email that to all of you so you can actually hear this because it was quite embarrassing. this was a daytime event um i was located across the street i had to literally yell at my customers to communicate them with them it was absolutely insane um this event took up an entire parking

lot off of third and bush taking even more parking away and despite the city saying we would have the first two hours for free for parking the parking structure was charging a flat five dollar rate so what is it two hours for free or not now i think most of you that know me know that i am not against events. I've had an event business for a decade, many times in this city closing streets and using spaces for for activities. I've also done events across the state of California. So I've worked with a number of different agencies. I've always conducted my business with respect for others I was

intruding on and I gave notice for areas that was affecting and always conducted my events with professionalism. And I did something that boosted the area and was great for everyone. Having events like this cutting off the area without notification is just the same as what OCTA is doing right now. It's hurting taxpayers, choking them, and limiting access. And who benefits? The event promoter at our expense. There are plenty of areas to do, areas without just with without disrupting the area like the Paseo. We have two promenades, we have the Plaza of the Flags, we have the stadium, we have all these other areas that

can be activated without closing down streets. Please do not permit any street closures or parking blockage until this construction is over. You are not helping those who are trying to get through this, you are just causing more harm. And I also wanted to say last week we just had a town hall to unite the downtown. It was very positive we had about 100 businesses there. I want to invite all of you including management to join us this Friday at 9 a.m. It was a really great thing to see the entire downtown unified against the OC Street car and the injustice that's being done

to us. So thank you for your time. Thank you, Delilah. Laura Morfine followed by Amy Cavanaugh Mason followed by Kelly Krause Lee followed by Victor Mendez. Good evening, mayor

and council members. My name is Laura Morfine. I am with Santiago Springs Homeowners Association and I'm here to speak today on item 35 and to share other concerns and suggestions. My first concern is a recommendation by some council members at the last council meeting to reduce the budget for graffiti abatement we are in the middle of an inflation period and so services may be at a higher cost it is extremely important to keep and maintain our city clean of graffiti our mayor will remember when residents implored the council at that time to clean up all the graffiti

because it is directly connected to our quality of life as evidenced in the criminology and sociology articles of the broken window theory. Please do not undo the work previously done to keep our city clean. We recommend the city partner with local academic institutions and private businesses to offer mural art classes or projects at little or no cost to the city. Also do not, I repeat, do not use money from our city's budget for reentry programs. These programs are already in existence through the state, county, and nonprofits. Our focus should continue to be prevention and intervention programs such as the city's

summer job program. Let's augment these programs along with our police cadet program to encourage and recruit more young women to participate. The city also needs to duplicate the PAL program. In other sections of the city, this program has proven data of successful outcomes. Why reinvent the wheel when we already know these programs work?

We are also concerned about the new types of retail businesses popping up on South Bristol. There is a new Hustler lingerie store next to a motel and down the street from Saddleback High School. There is also a huge retail space for the Love Store, a sex toy shop with two new massage parlors a few feet away. We are not against business. We just want the council and planning staff to be more conscientious of where these types of businesses are installed. We fear this retail trend will attract prostitution, human trafficking, and so Bristol will become a new Harbor Street that we will have to contend with down the road.

Perhaps it is time this council reevaluate and reconsider its mission to govern and work within the scope of having our best, our city's best interest at heart. Perhaps getting back to core basics. Nine out of ten residents want the same things. Public safety, including youth programs. The reality is that crime is up and we cannot afford to defund our police. We want our streets repaired. We want our parks refurbished with good lighting and restrooms that work the basics. It appears some of you are... Now, if you could start... May I please wrap up, Mayor? Thank you.

Please wrap up. Thank you. I'll be brief. I'll wrap up. It appears some of you are splintering and carving out sections of our community for purposes of your own personal agenda. Our community is becoming more and more diverse every day and yet we have more in common than differences. And so instead of having several individual events, why not highlight our diversity with an annual three-day summer festival of sorts with several music stages featuring different types of music with booths that offer different kinds of foods and that it includes our LGBTQ community as well. This council does a very good job of

recognizing individuals and organizations and so we can continue to do that. Noura, if you can start wrapping up. I will. This is it. Finally, so please unite us instead of segregating us. This will only pull our community apart. We know you have a tough job to do. We appreciate everything you do. Thank you so much.

Thank you Amy Cavanaugh Mason followed by Kelly Crouse Lee followed by Victor Mendez followed by Carla Reina

Good evening mayor and members of the City Council. My name is Amy Cavanaugh Mason. I am managing director of Peoples and Which is part of unrivaled brands both companies Operating within the city. I'm here tonight as the vice president of the Orange County Advocacy Alliance and we make up 85 percent of the Santa Ana cannabis license holders. And my goal is just to let you know we're here. I do want to share our aim with you so you understand as well.

Our mission is to engage the city by providing clear communication to create a win-win ecosystem between the city, your voters, and and your tax paying operators, and to combine our super powers for good, for positive and meaningful community impact. Excuse me. So we really believe that the city can and should continue to be a pioneer in cannabis. You're the first to go. We've made dramatic improvements on how we're running our businesses. Your staff has been extremely collaborative.

and there's more we can do because the competition is coming. Cities all over Southern California are passing legislation and ordinances that are allowing legal cannabis shops. On the other on the flip side so representing retailers manufacturers and distributors the reality is our businesses are being impacted. The business climate's changing. Illicit operations continue to flourish. We would like to reach out and offer ourselves out as partners to the city. There's the saying

that says, if you go alone, you go fast. If we go together, we can go far and continue to show leadership in cannabis as a city. In order to do that we do need to address some more immediate pressing issues. One of them is tax in the city. There are other areas that we believe can be addressed. We have reached out, we did send a letter last month, so hopefully the city manager and staff receive that as well as City Council. If you haven't we will be sending that again next week along with some signatures from community members here.

So really my only goal here today and on behalf of my fellow board members is for you to know us, know we are here to collaborate. We wanna do great things. We also recognize that we haven't had the opportunity to really make an impact in the community by coming together and we're starting to do that now and we appreciate the collaboration there. just seeing what we saw tonight it's very inspirational and there's more to do

so thank you for having me thank you for those comments Kelly Kraus Lee followed by Victor Mendez followed by Carla Reina good

evening council members my name is Kelly Kraus Lee I'm a homeowner in Santa Ana I can never quite figure out the ward but I live in the Lacey neighborhood right on the OCTA streetcar construction project I'm here tonight to address two things I'll get to the streetcar but first regarding item number 38 I urge the council to approve an ordinance to establish the police oversight committee while simultaneously pursuing the city charter amendment process for the voters to have a say in November because it's going to be a lengthy implementation process and so by pursuing an ordinance now in addition to the

charter amendment we can start building that groundwork now and I think the ad hoc committee did a great job determining the best model for the oversight we desperately need and I want to thank them for their work on this matter. Regarding the streetcar, I'm really concerned with how the construction is negatively impacting the downtown businesses, but also the local residents like myself. A few weeks ago, I sent you all a Google Drive of photos of the disgusting mess that OCTA has left all over Santa Ana Boulevard, including random signs and cones

being strewn about the neighborhood, construction sites filled with litter, broken sandbags all over the sidewalk, including on the accessible curb, and giant open holes left completely open on the sidewalk. It's honestly only a matter of time before we get a trip and fall lawsuit from the mess that we have on Santa Ana Boulevard. Not to mention the porta-potties I've had the pleasure of looking at from my couch for the last three years. It's honestly become my second job just documenting all of the ridiculousness and calling OCTA every day to come and clean up their mess.

I'd like to see the city council continue to put pressure on OCTA to expedite the construction timeline and increase the cleanliness of the construction sites, not just on 4th Street for the businesses but for the whole neighborhood because all of us that are walking our dogs and going about our business every day shouldn't have to look at this. I've never seen such a messy disorganized construction project and it's really unfair that we have to live in this mess. Additionally, Delilah mentioned an event recently and that same day I went to an event at the

library and as I was walking home on Bush I saw three cars going the wrong way on Bush because they couldn't go down 4th Street to get into the parking structure. And then when I mentioned that to my spouse when I got home, she said, oh yeah, I was walking down to do some business downtown, and I also saw a bunch of cars going the wrong way. And then I mentioned it that night to my neighbor who owns a business downtown, and she said, oh yeah, when I was walking home from work, I saw a bunch of cars going the wrong way on Bush because no one can go on 4th Street right now, and they all wanted to get into the

parking garage for the event. So if we're going to have these events, we need to figure out a better space for them because right now it's just dangerous for those of us who are walking around in the downtown area with cars flying by. Thank you.

Thank you. Victor Mendez followed by Carla Reina.

Good evening. I will talk on item 36. Congratulations and thank you for getting the boundaries together. And thank you most of all for rejecting the politics of balkanization, deviceness and bigotry, and going forward with a map that truly reflects what Santa Ana is about. I'm very sensitive to the environmental justice situation. I myself am environmentally impacted. I live right above the 55 freeway. I inhale fumes every day. I'm also the direct pathway of John Wayne Airport. So more than anybody I understand, but I think that Kensington done just an excellent job so let's move forward together let's be productive

about this great work that's been done and let's try to get some great results out of what's what you've been done over the last several months item 38 the police review board I agree with the vast majority what's been suggested but I have some comments that I hope will be considered supplemental perhaps to round out what is a good solution one of the things there that's kind of missing is an explicit authority for fiscal oversight. There's a lot of money involved with police operations, workers compensation, vehicle management, litigation management, overtime. I'd like to see something very specific about

fiscal oversight to make sure there's no conflict with other committees or with the council itself. I disagree with the exclusion of having retired officers on the committee. I think they might be able to offer something and if somebody wants to serve, they should be given the opportunity provided there's a window of time since they've left the force and with good cause. Who are we to judge who's qualified? Shall we disqualify defense attorneys? Shall we disqualify probation officers? Shall we disqualify judicial reform advocates? Let's not be cynical about this. Let's look for the best people to serve that committee

and can offer the best perspective possible. On the issue of subpoena, I would only suggest that this be used judiciously. I know Riverside has a supermajority that's required, and I would think that we should kind of incorporate that as well. Subpoenas are traditionally only used for outside jurisdictions, and that jurisdiction has every legal authority to fight it. So rather than create a wave of legalities, let's try to use that subpoena power judiciously and appropriately.

along that way I wouldn't want this to also become an effect on response times today I was informed about an investigation going on in a deadly weapons assault at my apartment building and the last thing I need is to have something like that upheld because the police are busy responding to frivolous subpoenas or other requests you know let's let's think about that and just be judicious and how we approach this authority lastly I'm just not sure where you're going with this in terms of the you know whether it's gonna be a charter or whatever if it does go to the voters let's be very explicit about what they're

approving let's be very clear what the model suggests so people know what

they're voting on thank you Victor thank you thank you Carla Reina our last speaker and then I'll turn it over to the clerk so she can call on those that are waiting online

Good evening, Mayor. Good evening, Council members. My name is Carla Reyna, and I'm a Community Engagement Manager at Unite Us. So I'm focused on serving the needs and connecting organizations, cities, nonprofits in Orange County. Unite Us is a technology company, and it has created a platform where these different entities can come together on a shared platform and be able to communicate so today as you mentioned the homeless intervention liaisons this we are always talking about resources we need resources in the community how do we connect people to care so through our

platform we're able to coordinate with different organizations with the city and through our platform we're able to provide wraparound services for nonprofits that are on the platform it's completely free there's no cost to them Nonprofits typically and traditionally don't have extra money to be spending on technology and coming up into the 21st century. So they are able to access this platform for free and when an individual comes to their organization, they're able to one, serve that individual's need and they're able to find other organizations that serves that individual's needs.

So say they need housing, they're able to search for housing providers. they're able to look for food providers. What's different about this system where traditionally you may have know of other resource directories is that this is a platform where one individual is being served by multiple entities and all of those entities can see that individual's journey. So this allows for everyone to be involved. If I'm an organization, I can send an electronic referral to multiple different service providers, and I'm able to see if that service provider accepted a referral,

rejected a referral. I'm able to see if they got connected to services, if they didn't. So that concern of is that person connected to care, is that person getting the services that they need, is addressed. It's answered. And we know what they got and what they didn't. And that continuum of care is all in one place. So thank you for your time. I'll be reaching back out to you in the future to continue the conversation.

Thank you for your comments. Thank you. Let me go ahead and ask the clerk of the council if there's any members of the public that wish to address the council that are online.

Yes, thank you, Mayor and council members. We do have callers. Before unmuting the callers, I'd like to begin to report out written communications we received as of this afternoon. Item number 20, we received two Santa Ana residents or organizations in opposition. For item 36, we had one Santa Ana resident who commented on the process of the map selection. Item 38, on the police oversight report, we had five Santa Ana organizations and two county organizations in support of a robust oversight model in 19 Santa Ana residents and for non Santa Ana residents in

support of a hybrid model item 40 for the public hearing item I will announce that later when the mayor opens up the public hearing and with that we have Jennifer Rojas zoom ID if you would please select the microphone icon thinking

may proceed with your comment good evening mayor and City Council my name is Jennifer Rojas. I am the policy advocate and organizer for the ACLU of Southern California based in Orange County. I'm speaking to you this evening in support of a robust police oversight model in the city of Santa Ana. According to the California attorney general's open justice report, 26 civilians were killed by Santa Ana Police Department during the process of arrest between 2011 and 2020. The community is still reeling from the shock of the unjustified

murder of Brandon Lopez by Anaheim PD last September. Now just over the weekend it is being reported that Luis Guerrero Amescua died after Santa Ana PD used force during the process of his arrest. We're at a critical moment and it's imperative that the city build an effective police oversight model to help avert future unjustified use of deadly force against civilians, hold police officers accountable for misconduct, and intervene in systemic problems within the Santa Ana Police Department. This afternoon, we sent the council a letter asking for two actions

on agenda item 38. First, we urge the council to their rec staff to prepare an ordinance to establish a police oversight commission with the support of community-based organizations and consider the ordinance before the end of this fiscal year. Second, we urge the city council to direct staff to prepare a charter amendment to be submitted to voters at the November 22 election to further strengthen the authority of the police oversight commission. It's clear from several city surveys to residents, community-based organizations, and the majority recommendation from the ad hoc committee

that a hybrid investigation focused and auditor and monitor focused model of oversight is the right model for the city. That said, we have several recommendations that will make this model effective. First, current and former law enforcement must not serve on the commission. This will ensure independence and public trust in the model. Second, attorneys working for the commission must not provide legal advice or representation to any department or function of the city of Santa Ana other than the commission. Third, the commission must be adequately staffed to handle the number and breadth of investigations into civilian complaints,

allegations of serious misconduct and deadly force. Fourth, the commission must have the authority to respond to critical incidents. And fifth, when the commission issues an investigative finding of fact, those findings must be binding on SATB. not merely recommendations. Thank you very much, Mayor and City Council for taking up this agenda item tonight and for your work on police oversight. We look forward to collaborating with your offices in the near future. Good evening.

Thank you.

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

Yes, good evening. My name is Biff Baker. I'm a volunteer with OCO, that is the Orange County Congregations Community Organization, and also a longtime parishioner at the Episcopal Church of the Messiah in downtown Santa Ana. And I'm speaking tonight to thank the council members and Mayor Sarmiento for the opportunity to comment tonight and especially for their work in structuring the process of redistricting Santa Ana in a broad and

inclusive way so that community concerns could be fully heard not just oco of course those of us who've attended the hearings have heard dozens if not hundreds of residents who have had the opportunity to uh to speak and this is um i think the the council has recognized that this uh redistricting is not just a bureaucratic matter or a matter uh an administrative matter in in some trivial sense but in fact it it's a matter highly relevant to the character of democracy

in the city in particular map n2 which i understand is under consideration tonight reflects the following concerns it contains the um asian american plurality to the to the west of that is District 1 contains the Asian American plurality to the west of the city. District 5 brings the mobile home neighborhoods together. District 4 unites the South Coast Metro area. And District 6 maintains the integrity of the Eastern Environmental Impact Corridor. So yes, I'm just commenting to say thank you

to all involved and to congratulate you on what seems to be a successful outcome to this process.

Thank you. Zoom ID, Maria Valencia, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device to unmute your call. Thank you may proceed with your comment.

Hi, good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Maria Estela Valencia and I am a community organizer with Orange County Congregation Community Organization, also known as OCWO. I am a resident of Ward 3 and a lifelong Santana resident. I'm here just to give a public comment on item number 36 on the agenda. I would like to thank city staff, the mayor and the council members for seriously listening to our community concerns and for having a robust dialogue with community members on the redistricting process.

I'm really grateful that these map allow representation to the environmentally impacted communities, that this map also creates an Asian plurality district that has a really large concentration of mobile home parks and that the map unifies previously divided communities of interest, which allow opportunities of housing advocacy within Willowick and Sullivan. So again, thank you for listening and working with us to ensure that this map highlights our lived experiences as Santa Ana residents. And I look forward to seeing our city flourish with this new board map for the upcoming 10 years. So thank you.

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

Buenas noches, alcalde y miembros del concilio. Mi nombre es Gerson. Y Angelina. Somos líderes comunitarios con OCO y asisto a la Iglesia Episcopal del Mesías. Somos residentes del Distrito 3 y hemos vivido en Santa Ana por 17 años. Me gustaría darle las gracias al personal de la ciudad, al alcalde y a los miembros del concilio, por haber escuchado seriamente las preocupaciones de nuestra comunidad and for making the effort to maintain all the communities of interest in the MAPA number 2. We know and recognize how difficult it has been to be able to agree and consider a map that represents all the residents of Santa Ana

during the next 10 years. We are grateful that the MAPA number 2 provides a wide representation of the communities affected by the environment, creating a district of plurality asiatic with a large concentration of parks and houses. mobile is. This map also unifies the interest previously divided. This will allow opportunities for the defense of the house in the Willowick and Sullivan. We hope to see our city flower. God bless you. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. We are Gerson and Angelica. We are members of OCO, and we attend the Church of the Messiah. We live in District Ward 3, and we've been a Santa Ana residence for 17 years. We'd like to thank the staff, the city staff, the mayor, and the city council members for listening to the community concerns. We are happy with map number two. and this represents, you heard us, and this represents all of Santa Ana residents' interests for the next 10 years.

Map 2 represents the communities in the east, and the communities also has an Asian plurality and represents the mobile home communities as well, and the previously divided communities of interest. This will provide opportunities for housing along Willowick and Sullivan. And we thank you for this. We hope that the city will flourish over the next 10 years. Thank you and God bless you.

Caller with the last three numbers, 477, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device. Thank you. You may proceed with your comment.

Yeah, good evening, mayor, city council, city staff, Dale Helbig, 32 year resident of ward three. My interest in item number 36 is the process of keeping neighborhood associations intact. And at the March 11th meeting, councilman Hernandez requested the area west of Jerome Park represented by the Bella Vista neighborhood, be kept intact by moving the boundary west to Sullivan street. This change was rejected because it was incorrectly interpreted as splitting the Sullivan community. Another area that was modified and impacted was the Lyon Street Neighborhood Association.

What was adopted at the end of the meeting was the addition of south of 1st Street and east of Lyon Street, adding it to District 3. Doing so it doesn't necessarily split this association. And I'm hoping that you guys can take a look at that. And you know, if you need to add French court into district three, as it will balance the numbers out. Remember that the four of the six council members will have to explain why the Bella Vista neighborhood and the Lyon street neighborhood associations got split during this process, if we maintain it as is.

The public was not really allowed to properly input to the map N2. It was brought up right before the meeting on March 11th, voted on and tweaked on during the meeting. And this is really our first public chance to provide input to it. And so for the good of the city and the existing communities of interest, I request that you recognize the long term impact that this decision is gonna have by the council. On another note, it's interesting to see that Westminster, Fullerton, Garden Grove, and Irvine are all providing input on the who, something interesting and something you guys ought to keep an eye on.

I don't know why they're so concerned about what we're doing in Santa Ana. Also, I'd like to thank Lisa Rudolph and her team, the whole department, for their outstanding work on the Lincoln Street entrance to Park Santiago. It really looks nice and appreciate the work that they've done and the city staff have done in getting that project completed or very near completed. The last thing I'd like to mention is we're hearing rumblings again about another developer coming in, Taylor Morrison, and trying to develop town homes on the 2525 project.

I thought we were pretty clear. 15 seconds. When the referendum was signed by a thousand people that says keep the project professional office space. I don't know why the city's entertaining another project of residential status at that property. So hopefully you guys can kill it before it gets too far along. Thanks.

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

good afternoon, I'm sorry, I can continue with my name is Irene Bautista and I'm a leader comunitaria con OCO and I'm a church of the Messiah. I would like to thank the person of the city, the Mayor and the members of the Council for having heard seriamente the concerns of our community and for making the effort to keep all communities of interest united in the 2. Sabemos y reconocemos lo difícil que ha sido de poder estar de acuerdo y considerar un mapa que representará a los residentes de Santana. Durante los próximos 10 años estamos agradecidos de que

este mapa N2 proporciona una amplia representación a las comunidades afectadas por el medio ambiente. Crea un distrito de pluralidad asiática con una gran concentración de parques de casas móviles. This map also unifies the communities of interest previously divided. This will allow opportunities for the defense of the living within Willowick and Sullivan. Once again, thank you for listening and working with us to ensure that this map has in mind many of our experiences lived. We hope to see our city's future. God bless you. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. My name is Irene Bautista. I'm a leader with OCO and I attend the Church of the Messiah. I'd like to thank the city staff and the mayor and the City Council members for listening to the concerns of the community. community, and this brought the effort, it was a hard effort, to bring together the communities of interest in map number two. It was hard coming to an agreement as to map two, a map that represents the city of Santa Ana in all its parts, and for the next ten years this will serve the community, map two.

we have a good representation of all the affected communities the environmental justice community it creates an Asian plurality district it integrates lots of mobile home parks and also unites the previously divided communities of interest we provides a lot of opportunities for housing especially in Willowick and Sullivan so I'd like to thank you for listening to the community and for bringing this map forward that's going to improve the life of our community, our lives in the community. So thank you for listening to us, and God bless you.

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

Hi, counsel. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you. Thank you.

Great. Hi, my name is Roberto and I live in Santana on the West End and I work for Resilience OC, we're a nonprofit organization. And I'm calling in support of the recommendations from the Oversight Ad Hoc Committee to create a robust police oversight model. And then And also I wanted to bring to y'all's attention,

the director of Parks and Recs, I know she mentioned she's gonna be out, she's leaving, she announced her retirement, Lisa, and at the last meeting for Parks and Recs. But I was also, congratulations on retiring. I hope, I look forward to that one day, sometime down the line. But in looking at some of the discussion items, dang, I missed the opportunity to kind of mention it there for public comment. But I wanted to just bring it up now, which is the Santa Anita synthetic turf and parking lot expansion project. So that's kind of on the west end.

And yeah, so there was an announcement for bids that was announced on March 14th, and it's scheduled for April 4th. And you all anticipate contracting an award for June 7th. So a couple months down the line or two, we're close. So basically, it's to remove existing hand bought courts, so the court there, to expand the existing parking lot. So, uh-huh, I was like, mm, you know, because I was like, oh, I was a little shocked because, you know, I know there's been public debate around, you know, the tearing down of handball courts.

And, you know, I was saddened just to kind of, you know, see the, you know, the tearing down of that park. You know, and especially with the advocacy work of Chicanos Unidos and, you know, other partners to kind of highlight, you know, the impacts of criminalization and, you know, and the legacy of the war on drugs, you know, and kind of, you know, the removal of these handball courts. it's a continuation of that. And further for an expansion of the parking lot, and I understand maybe we do need more parking, maybe in that little area, but not at the expense of the handball court.

Maybe we can incorporate better public transportation to get folks to and from the park. But my support is to keep the handball courts in place. So, yep, that's the only thing. Yep, okay, that's it. Thank you so much, council. Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Caller with the last three numbers, 957. If you would please select the microphone. Thank you, you may proceed with your comment.

Yes, my name is Craig Durfee, founder of Parents with Right of Exhibit Children. The council has identified the month of national child abuse, the month of autism. And we have a precarious situation of children having youth impacted by suicide. And Congress has identified by partially. What the trouble is that we have not taken into consideration of what's creating it medically. And such the California by partially Cunningham Republican Democratic WICS AB2408. It's about TikTok and having to be able to sue them.

Well, here's the key. The content of it is described by Cunningham as mental harm and physical harm. And when you look at the Attorney General of our state doing Instagram, it's physical harm. So you go to the federal laws and say, hey, what's it say? But it says that it's causing anything physical and neglect as child abuse. So I would encourage you to consider that this is our day and age of speed. It's causing brain injury in three countries, Taiwan, Korea, and China, limited time. and Utah is Digital Wellness and Citizenship Safety Technology and the PPS supports it commission that our schools are not on board yet and I have

the research to prove it and then there's a state auditing this issue as far as the following our student's laws and so I hope that you realize that we have Chris now that are and what Thurman says and reading books that he's trying to get less students to pass you kids to read third grade and 70% according to Thurman's press release in prison is reading fourth grade. And so this is something that the local government should be talking in resolution and start getting your county of Orange involved as they don't seem to respond and your schools, Senate and others to join rank because this is the foreign of modern childhood.

As CR 73 and 2019 Dr. Panthetic nutrition, they voted anonymously for BOOA October 10th every month for eye safety. yet in the internationally last year, we like summit made it certified safe, but we continue to espouse modern technology with a lack of will of a community to take the ability to save a child. And I encourage all of you to realize that our children at age eight are trying to communicate and then at Congress, by partially is identifying they need to be done to be intoxified. It's in the registry of the 19th. So it's the will of the takes ability to save a child. And I encourage each of you elected officials

to get with your partners, the County of Orange, and your schools to bring change because it's not gonna happen and you're losing entire duration over it. At Kennedy, President of the United States warned us that potential could be a good or bad, but depends on that. 15 seconds left. So we get those guidance and our future is our children. I have about eight seconds, but I hope you will, my number is 714-321-8238, social emotional pause, RG, is my website. I hope you will respond to it. Thank you.

Thank you. Zoom ID, Jesus Santana, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device to unmute your call.

Hello Mayor and City Council. This is Jesus Santana, a community organizer supporting residents living in the Suedivan community, in particular the Suedivan Action team. Today I am providing a public comment on agenda item 36. And I'd like to say thank you to everyone involved in the redistricting process city staff, mayor and city council, and the Santana redistricting coalition. And more importantly, the Santana residents who voiced their concerns, thoughts, and provided public comments. The Sullivan Action team and I are really appreciative of all the mindfulness that you all took into consideration

to unify the Sullivan community. Again, the community is composed of mobile homes, condominiums, apartments, and single family homes. and this is the first time that we are, that both the north and the south side are being unified. So thank you. We appreciate all the support and we just want to say thank you for the ongoing support and that we look forward to being in touch and connecting with you all. Thank you again and have a good day.

Thank you.

Zoom ID Cesar Medina, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device to unmute your call. Can you lower the volume on your other devices? Thank you.

Buenas noches. Me escuchan?

Si, puede continuar con su comentario.

Allá. Gracias, muchas gracias. Dude por un momento de que no iba a salir al aire. A mi nombre es César Medina, de Zulia en Acción. Y mi intervención, aunque ya los que me antecedieron en la palabra,

has expressed his thanks to my intervention. My intervention also goes in the same way, of thanking our great friend, our great leader, the Alcalde of Vicente Tremiento, as well as his honorable Cuerpo Edilicio, the conceals, and for all the work also, to the people who made possible the elaboration of the map, the group SARS. and this means for us a change of time, a change of air, because the maps have been made with

much effort and listened to the will of the residents of Santana, because we have, with our interventions, with our presence, participated and expressed questions, and all this finally and that was confirmed in the final elaboration of the map. We have to support and support and work with our respective consejales to improve the level of life or the good life of each centenar. Because as I repeat, in Santana, we can live better.

Gracias, señor Alcalde Sarmiento, y al honorable cuerpo de concejales. Muchas gracias, buenas noches, y que pasen muy bien. Gracias.

Good evening. My name is Cesar Medina. I'm a member of Sullivan en Acción. And what I wanted to say, others before me have said it, so I just want to reiterate my thanks to you. Thank you to our honorable and good friend, Mayor Vicente Sarmiento, to the honorable council members for all the work, to everybody else who has worked diligently on these maps from the, that created the maps for the SARC. And these creates a change of times, a change of an era. These maps have lots of work. It shows a lot of work. It took lots of efforts, lots of meetings.

You were listening to the Santa Ana residents and we participated, we asked lots of questions and out of this came forth these maps. Now it is our turn to support our city council members to help improve the quality of life in Santa Ana. And as I said before, in Santa Ana we can live better. So thank you Mayor Sarmiento, thank you to the honorable City Council members, thank you all and good evening.

Thank you, that was the last caller, Mayor.

Thank you Madam Clerk and thank you to all the members of the public that called in and came in person as well. I'm going to, with the indulgence of the City Council, accelerate an item that I think we just heard on item number 36, which is the redistricting matter. And I believe we have a consultant that we're paying hourly. So to the extent that we can send them home soon, and it doesn't have to stay on too long, we've been with them for quite a while already. So let's see if we can dispose of this matter now. So let me go ahead and bring item number 36 before us, before we go into the consent calendar items.

And Madam Clerk, I believe this is from your department. I'll go ahead and turn it over to you. This is the first reading to adopt a resolution on the City Council Ward boundaries map.

Yes, thank you, Mayor and members of the Council. For tonight, we do have an introduction of the ordinance of the first reading and a request to also adopt the resolution of the City Council Ward boundary maps. I did want to identify that we did also attach a revised report of the description of the meets and bounds of each Council Ward. for clarification there was no revisions made to the actual boundary lines just for clarification and we do we also have with us Paul Mitchell and if council

has any questions great does so Paul's on the line in the event that we have anything does he have anything further to add or he's just here in case we have

any questions but now he has nothing further to add unless there are any

questions that come up great so let me go ahead and bring it back to the Council to see if there's any comment or question on the recommended action for

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

us to consider tonight. Councilmember Phan. Thank You Mayor. I am really excited to finally adopt this first reading as well as this resolution. For those of you who have followed the redistricting process, it's been a long and arduous process. I am involved in redistricting and other communities also and I have to say that the Santa Ana community has been actually one of the most engaged, one of the most vocal, and one of the most participatory. So I am really thankful to our consultants, our city staff, our city clerks team for all of their hard work, and thank you to my colleagues

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

for making compromises, for coming to some consensus, and for voting to approve this. A couple items I did hear from some of the public comments that I did want to address. The first is regarding Sullivan. So I do know Councilmember Hernandez brought up a really good point last time about Jerome Park and part of the reason why I didn't accept the friendly amendment was based on all of the hand-drawn maps that were submitted by residents during the redistricting public meetings. All of them included that portion and so in order to respect the public comments that

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

we received, although I do understand there are some neighborhood associations that are a little bit split, but again, to respect the community of interest forms and, you know, comments that we did receive, I did want to keep that portion of Sullivan together. And on top of that, I do know that there are also some comments about how we should update or fix some things, and I think we've really done the best that we could in this time. We spent a lot of time adding more community meetings, more public hearings, more time for folks to give input, and we are at the end of our rope.

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

We have to adopt a resolution and a first reading today in order to comply with the Fair Maps Act, which has a deadline of April 17th, as well as our city charter. And so with that, Mayor, I would make the motion to approve first reading as well as the resolution. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Councilmember Fan. We have a motion to go with staff's recommendation on Item Number 36. Let me go ahead and call on others. Councilmember Peña Loza and then

David PenalozaItem 6

Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I had a couple questions that we haven't really discussed, and I wasn't sure if this would be more of a charter conversation or now and maybe the City Attorney could chime in. When it comes to just something as simple as the use of the word ward versus district. I know that a lot of times when I'm just out in the community speaking to members of our community, they always kind of question why the use of ward.

David PenalozaItem 6

And you know, I hear more members of the community use the term district. Is that something that would be addressed here? or is that looking at the charter since it does come up on our charter?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 6

Your charter does designate you as being from different wards and not districts, but that's part of the cleanup language you could propose to your ad hoc committee if that's something they want to address.

David PenalozaItem 6

Okay. Thank you for that. That's good to know. And the only other thing that I would like to kind of bring forward is over the last 15 plus years, the communities of Henninger Park, or Wilshire Square, I mean, Memorial Park, and French Court, northern Madison Park area were known as Ward 2. And for some reason or another in 2018, when the map was changed,

David PenalozaItem 6

those two numbers were flipped, 2 and 4, and 6 was moved to the opposite end of where it was, so how would we flip the two numbers, four and six, within the districts or wards? Is that something that we could do tonight as part of this resolution, Madam City Attorney?

David PenalozaItem 6

Two and four, yes. I mean, I'm sorry, two and six.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 6

I believe you can, but I would direct that to your city clerk and to the consultant, I believe. How you number the different areas is discretionary. It's up to you.

Yeah, that's a non-substantive change. We can definitely do that.

David PenalozaItem 6

Okay, just part of this.

Yes, if that could be part of the motion of what the district numbers that we're switching, we do have an option of also changing it. The only thing I recommend is that the council keep the even numbers even and the odd numbers odd.

David PenalozaItem 6

Right, yeah. So in this case, it would just, the map as I'm looking at it now, it has the center ward as two and the eastern ward as six. So I guess my ask would be through a friendly amendment to the maker of the motion, if you would be willing to accept the, I guess, the flipping of making six the center ward and two the eastern ward to be consistent with, you know, what residents have known for the last 15 years.

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

I'm actually not sure. I would actually like to hear some comments about that because while you are correct with that assertion, however, the Eastern Ward, as many residents have come to know it in the last couple years, is Ward 6. And I know I've had to deal with that. People think I'm on the east side, I'm on the west side. So my preference is to keep it that way, but I'd like to hear further from our colleagues to see if anyone else has any other ideas. Thank you.

Thank you for those comments. Let me go to Mayor Pro Tem and then to Councilmember Hernandez.

Phil BacerraItem 6

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I support Councilmember Penaloza's idea of flipping the two numbers on two and six. Thankfully, that's really the only change that I would see as far as the map goes, of course. I think I just want to thank everybody who participated in the process, who, you know, and my colleagues. We went through quite a few meetings to get to this point, so I'm very happy that we're here at this point today. One thing I would like to ask the maker of the motion if she would be willing to entertain is for Section 2 of the Ordinance and Resolution, I would like to add after attached as Exhibit A, I'd

Phil BacerraItem 6

like to add the word, oh I'm sorry, let me take that back, after the words and incorporated herein by reference, I'd like to add the words effective May 20th 2022, because the reason being is that I want to make sure that these maps take effect immediately. I have so much time spent trying to explain to people what ward they are in, why the ward map looks different online, and why there's two sets of ward maps. And really, at the end of the day, for us to serve our constituents, it's important for our constituents to know what ward they're in. And I think the sooner that it is a simple explanation, like look at the map,

Phil BacerraItem 6

the better it would be. And so my hope would be that as soon as this ordinance, because the ordinance is going to take longer to be in effect than the resolution, I would like to ask the maker of the motion, she'd be okay with that. But before you answer, I'd like to ask Madam City Attorney, would there be any legal issue with us having the ordinance become, or I'm sorry, the maps become effective upon the effective date of the ordinance?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 6

So my recommendation to you would be that you need to leave the language that's in the ordinance or resolution there with respect to the reference to the use in the city's general municipal election of November 8th, 2022, because that language has legal effective meaning to be consistent with the Fair Maps Act and also with your charter. You could add also that the map shall be deemed effective May 2022 for purposes of city operations or something like that. So that it's something that how the city treats these maps in terms of how we communicate, how, I don't know, services are provided to those wards.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 6

But the language that's in there, in my opinion, you need it to stay there. Oh, absolutely. And you could give, right. And so if there were, for example, a vacancy or something like that, we could not make these terms effective because legally they can only be effective in the next municipal election.

Phil BacerraItem 6

Right. And thank you for that, Madam City Attorney. And just can you confirm for me, I just want to make sure I'm utilizing the right date, would May 20th, 2022 be the earliest that this ordinance could become effective?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 6

No, actually, in your charter, the charter provides the effective dates of ordinances and resolutions. For ordinances that have any relation to an election, those ordinances become effective upon their adoption after the second reading. So these ordinances, this

Phil BacerraItem 6

ordinance would become effective in April, per your charter. April 19th? Okay. So then I would ask the maker of the motion if she'd be okay with no omission of any language in Section 2, but rather the addition after the words here, and by reference, the words effective April 19th, 2022.

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

So I think I might have a question for staff on this, because as Madam City Attorney mentioned, And it has no legal bearing as to adding that language of being effective at the second reading. So say I stepped down, this quote, new map wouldn't be valid. So for all intents and purposes, it's still not a valid map. So for me, it's just more confusing to say it's effective, but it's not effective.

Phil BacerraItem 6

I think it's effective as far as for folks to understand what ward they're in. I think if we're starting to talk about vacancies, obviously we'll go down that path, but just for the simple idea that folks can look at a map and that they know it's effective that this is the ward that they're in. I mean, I think once we start talking about any sort of vacancies, that opens up a whole other discussion. But just to try to get a map that's simple for people to see as soon as possible, that's the whole...

So let's do this because it's an interesting question. Let's see if maybe the demographer and maybe the city attorney and the clerk can give us some direction. I can see both sides of this, but let's just instead of, you know, talking amongst ourselves, let's see if we can get our consultants and our staff to help us out on this. Any thoughts, Paul, since you're on?

Yeah. So what I think that the city attorney was suggesting was an elegant solution because the reality is these districts, based on the Fair Maps Act, can't be actually effective in terms of who's representing who and who would be voting in a replacement or recall until the 2022 or 2024 elections, depending on when those seats are up. We have to think about the most important part of the entire process is the vote cast by residents. And when they voted for each of you, they voted for you for the full four year terms. And so to respect that,

you are still the council members of whoever voted for you back when you were first elected. In fact, some of you might have been elected in the at-large system. So you are technically still representing the entire city that voted for you, while others are representing technically the voters who elected them in their last districted election. Now, the law has allowed for agencies that are going through this transition to acknowledge the fact that there will be this area, maybe of their future district. And in order to make it clear or to make sure that everybody's getting access to the city council,

you pass a resolution or include in this resolution language that suggests that for operational purposes, that these lines can be utilized. So maybe if there's an opening of a park or there's some kind of event or some issue that a resident has, for those operational purposes, they can know to call the council member that is on the map that says District 2. But for true representation voting purposes, it's the old lines that are in effect until the new lines come into effect in 2022 and 2024. Is that clear or helpful?

Yeah, I think that's helpful. It gives us a little bit more to discuss anything on your end, Madam Clerk, are you good with that?

Phil BacerraItem 6

That's correct, I agree.

Yes. Let me, I think it's, last thing, Madam City Attorney, I think you're the one who suggested what Paul, I think both of you are in agreement with that language. Let me go back to Mayor Pro Tem, then Council Member Hernandez, and then Lopez.

Phil BacerraItem 6

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just one last question. So looking at the County of Orange and how they enacted their map to take effect immediately, am I missing something? Did the county not do it correctly? Because I look at how their...

State law says effective immediately, and it's in the state law for Congress, for state legislature, for cities and counties, the same terminology effective immediately is used. And effective immediately means that the county now can start to adjust their parcel by their precincts, they can start to allow people to file for those new offices. But if there was a recall replacement, the attorney general just recently gave an opinion in San Luis Obispo for a replacement election, reaffirming what the state law says in the Fair Maps Act that the old lines are actually the ones that are in effect. So if another agency is doing this

where they're allowing the supervisors or council members to go out into different parts of the county or the city, they're doing that in kind of a non-voting capacity, a non-electoral capacity. It's just their capacity as a county supervisor or a city council member.

Phil BacerraItem 6

Thank you for that, Paul. And between you and our city attorney, perhaps we can craft language that, I think, Paul, you used the term for operational purposes. I think, was that one? Your city attorney used that term. Operational?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 6

So the language, let me just find it because I drafted that here on the fly, was effective May or April 2022

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 6

for purposes of city operations. But I actually think one of the things you could do is move forward with this tonight and maybe let us think through what it actually means to do what you're trying to do I think Paul had suggested maybe a future resolution that tells us how we're gonna treat it because there could be some things that we're not thinking about right now I just I keep looking over at staff because I'm thinking I don't know how Public Works does things with with different wards I don't know how newsletters are sent out so what we might want to do is take your if we get

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 6

the direction to do this come back with a resolution and say we adopted the map And from this day forward, this is how we want to treat those wards. This is what city staff would do. That may be a better way to do it rather than messing with our ordinance and resume now.

You know, that might not be it. I'm not sure if you had anything else, Madam City Manager. But I see the purpose, but I see also what Paul is saying, right? That, you know, it is technically not correct if you really want to stay true to what the Fair Maps Act is saying. But I think if we can reach some maybe some additional resolution that'll sort of clear this up, but maybe not from the dais right now But you know again, let me let me go to I know Councilmember Hernandez and Lopez and then I'll come back to Councilmember Fan. I believe she

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 6

Yeah, thank you Councilmember Fan. Just wanted to keep my comment very short I'm not supportive of changing the the district to district 6 to district 2 That concludes my comments. Thank you. Councilmember

I'll second the motion, by the way. Councilmember Fenn. And Councilmember Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 6

I was going to second the motion. But, yeah, I think, you know, we all have a genuine concern about, even though we have a really engaged, high engaged population here in the city of Santa Ana, I think starting to mess with the numbers is going to further confuse people. And, you know, we had a resident come up and say, I still don't even know how to figure that out. And so I have concerns about that. and yeah historically the east end of the city has been known as Ward 6 and I would like for it to reflect that moving forward. Great thank you. Seeing no other

comments let me bring it back to Councilmember Fan but just one thing you know I would say is that yeah if we maybe could have staff work on maybe clarity of what's been asked I'm not opposed to that maybe giving us an idea of what a resolution to clarify what's operational mean. You know, that to me is a little vague right now. I can't really wrap my head around it. But the second one is I did represent the area that is presently, I guess it's an iteration of the current Ward 6 and that was Ward 1, you know, even a few years ago. And then it transitioned and I think it flipped with Councilmember Fan's

Ward and, you know, when we went from at-large to district elections. So, you we've had a lot of numbers that have changed and I almost think you know I probably would rather it stay the way it is because we have a lot of things that are changing and if we continue to change more we may never end but I just think we're so close to ratifying a map that I almost you know want to want to do it as is just because it's taken so many meetings but I am also you know you know like councilmember fan I think you know we're all a little fatigued but

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

let me go back to her thank you and thank you to everybody regarding their comments with the operational or the actual map I would like to just approve it the way it is with the map with the numbers the way it is because I think you know the difference between us and the County Board of Supervisors is the County Board of Supervisors is very strict delineations on how each of the districts function so for example if you're representing district 1 and somebody from Eliso Viejo knows the supervisor, they try to contact them for support, that supervisor, as far as I understand it, is basically forced to

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

refer that resident to whoever represents Eliso Viejo. They have pretty strict boundaries, whereas here in the City of Santa Ana, I know when I first joined the City Council, everybody thought I was representing Ward 6, and there were many emails between me and Councilmember Mendoza where I'd CC her, you know this is your council member in Ward 6 and which is kind of weird because she actually lives central as somewhere else because it was under the old map my point is I think adopting it the way it is now and staff can take a look if necessary to bring back a resolution to let us know how best to

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

like I said deal with operational procedures as the mayor mentioned and this could be everything from you know potentially the council members who are represents Ward 2 and Ward 6. They kind of have overlapping areas now, and maybe however you want to deal with those newsletters, et cetera. I think when it comes to ribbon cuttings, many of us go to the ones, quote, in our ward. But I know, for example, Mayor Pro Tem has appeared at events that I wasn't able to make it to, or there might be three council members at a ribbon cutting, and that's OK, too. So with that, my motion stays the way it is,

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

with just some direction to staff to consider those technical aspects and maybe bring it back. And it might not even be a resolution. I don't know if that's even necessary, but just a general policy on how to implement this moving

forward. Thank you. Thank you. So we have a motion by Councilmember Fan, a second by Councilmember Peñalosa. Seeing no other questions or comments, Councilmembers, I believe we have the screen before us to vote.

Thank you. The motion passes 7-0 with Councilmembers Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Peñalosa, Fan, Mayor Potembe, Sarah, and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes.

Great. Thank you, everybody, and congratulations to everybody on this dice.

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

I thought this day would never come.

Good work. And thank you to all the members of the public that worked very hard to guide us down this tricky path. So that aside, let's go back to the consent calendar. I'll go ahead and ask any members of the council if they'd wish to abstain from any matters on the consent calendar or wish if they'd wish to pull any items from that Councilmember Fan and then Hernandez

Thai Viet PhanItem 7

Thank You mayor. I would like to recuse myself from item 32 as the illumination foundation is a client of my employer Rattan and Tucker but because it is on the consent calendar unless it's pulled I don't have to leave the room and I do just have a comment for number 14. I'm not intending to pull it

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 7

Great. Thank you. Councilmember Hernandez. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I would like to pull items 20 and items 24. Thank you. Any other? Councilmember Lopez? Yeah, I'd like to pull

Jessie LopezItem 7

38 and I would like to also pull 20 and 32 and 33. Sorry. So 38 is not on the consent calendar,

so we'll come to that.

Jessie LopezItem 7

Oh, okay.

Yeah, so can you repeat the ones that...

Jessie LopezItem 7

Yeah, so 20, 32, and 33.

Great. Any other members of the council wish to pull or abstain from any items on the consent calendar?

The only item I was going to pull, and I'm not sure if it was pulled already, was it... Did anybody pull 29? All right. It'll be quick. So, okay, with that said, I'll go ahead and entertain a motion for the balance. Motion. Move the balance. Second. We have a motion and a second for the balance of the consent calendar. Council members, please vote. Yes, go ahead, please. Go ahead, Council member Chan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 14

I think we can vote, but I did want to mention item number 14. This shout-out to the Windsor Village neighborhood. I know Nabil has fielded tons and tons of emails, and so has our code enforcement, Alvaro and Mintai, regarding the fencing on the channel right by Centennial. And we are so, so excited that the city is able to invest dollars into upgrading the fencing, and I'm really excited to see how it look, and the fencing by Heritage Elementary School near where my mom lives. So just thank you so much to staff.

Good stuff.

Has everybody voted on?

Councilmember Mendoza, if you would please cast your vote. Thank you. Okay, motion passes 7-0 with Councilmembers Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Peñalosa, Fan, Mayor Pro Tempe, Sarah, Mayor Sarmiento voting yes.

Great. Thank you, everybody. Let me go ahead and move to item number 20, which was pulled by Councilmember Hernandez.

Item number 20?

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 20

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I pulled item number 20 because I'm the council member of Artisa Pilar where this bridge is located. And I grew up in the Artisa neighborhood. I went to Fremont, Spurgeon Intermediate. And so if you know that area, you know that children would use this bridge to get home. So I want to address the needs that should not come at the cost of residents losing their housing stability. I believe that this Fairview corridor can accomplish its upgrades without expanding the number of lanes.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 20

The City of Santa Ana's own active transportation plan already proposes a roadway that is limited to two lanes in both directions and a multi-use plan. If this item were to move forward, I believe that the studies have shown that increasing street width and speeding of vehicles are the leading contributors to dangerous road conditions. according to our city's safe mobility plan. Our arterial streets and which Fairview is identified as a constitute only 20% of our roadway network, but 60% of all pedestrian-involved collisions and 68% of the collisions involving people on bicycles occur on them.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 20

So the city's own study also states that the number of lanes in an intersection is associated with an increased number of pedestrian and bicycle collisions. Increasing the roadway capacity would add not only another street to an already busy street network that has increasing speeds But it would increase the danger to motorists, but more importantly our most vulnerable movers being bicyclists and pedestrians So the city has a moral obligation to ensure that all of our residents are included in safety Dialogues and and for one of me for one of the big priorities for us

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 20

in our thesis is to make sure that these solutions are not just simply to expand streets to center automobiles But to rectify these high-speed Trafficking in the volume of traffic that we have because our city has the highest bicyclists and pedestrian deaths in the country in the county Particularly vehicle deaths So if this council wishes to add multiple lanes of travel to this section of this roadway It can be done without the acquisition and demolition of homes, but we must do the following number one if this project is truly about increasing safety then let's acknowledge

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 20

that this large intersection in the white streets are going to continue to be dangerous for our communities and especially youth disabled community members and the elderly many of which if we look at the data that we have many of the residents that live near these bridges are multi-generational homeowners where the homeowners are in their 70s 80s and some are in their 90s so we should create designs that put safety in a complete way forward and according to city documents like the active transportation plan we already have them designed but we just have they've been overlooked number two I

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 20

would like to direct city staff to adopt a study that is going to tell us about the active transportation plan and here to what is proposed in this document number three is it is absolutely disrespectful to residents if we do not meet with the community we need to host a town hall and meet with the residents of Artisa Pilar and the Marles neighborhood the neighborhoods that would be most impacted by this widening of the street so I would like to see a town hall before anything moves forward and if the residents said that this was something that they're acceptable and willing to to support then you know my

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 20

job here is to propose not impose but I don't feel that we did our due diligence and making sure that this process was equitable for all our neighbors. I would like it to be. So that is my direction, and that concludes my comment, Mr. Mayor. Thank you.

Great. Thank you for that comment. Mayor Pro Tem, and then Council Member Vinalosa, and then Lopez.

Phil BacerraItem 20

Council Member Lopez, I think, also pulled the item.

Jessie LopezItem 20

I did pull the item. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Sorry, go ahead. So I guess the biggest issue that I have with this is, and probably I won't come to anyone's shock, is that we're asking, you're asking me to approve the demolition of homes to expand the street. And so we are in a housing crisis and I want staff to take that into consideration. And you know as Councilmember Hernandez just said, wider streets are not safer streets. You know when they're wider people are speeding down the streets, doing donuts, you know driving recklessly. And I think there are

Jessie LopezItem 20

other ways that we can do the improvements that Fairview the Fairview Bridge needs to do and I definitely respect that and I respect the work that staff has done but I would like for us to at least consider you know having a traffic light there to kind of unite the neighborhoods to have it be have the flow be a little bit better you know to keep in mind the the pedestrians and the bicyclists that use the area because I don't think you know that right now I am going to be supporting this item as is and I would like for us to if possible

Jessie LopezItem 20

continue the conversation and think about other ways that we can support the improvements that are needed there but you know one of the other things I've talked about in the past is the city adhering to the EMPA which I have said is very old document it doesn't really reflect I don't think the need you know of when we talk about vision zero or you know being pedestrian friendly or being green in the city or being a smart city as the general plan wants to state that we are and so I really want us to kind of move away from that and really start taking into consideration the needs of the residents that live in the city now

so thank you thank you for those comments let me go to now mayor pro tem

Phil BacerraItem 20

and then Councilmember Peñalosa. Thank you. Nabeel, could you come up to the podium? I have a couple of questions for you.

Phil BacerraItem 20

Thank you, Nabeel. So just to clarify, how many homes are what would be lost through the action on the agenda tonight?

Only one, which is a duplex that we're talking about tonight.

Phil BacerraItem 20

That's that single home that's on the west side of Fairview, correct?

Yes. Okay. But it's a duplex. It's a two-unit.

Phil BacerraItem 20

And the reason, if I remember correctly, please correct me if I'm wrong, the reason that we are removing that home is because of safety concerns for visibility, correct?

Line of sight, yes.

Phil BacerraItem 20

Right. So it's kind of like a blind curve there.

That's correct.

Phil BacerraItem 20

Right. And so as far as community meetings, because you and I talked about this before, in regards to meeting with the community, I know because it was discussion of parts of the bridge. For instance, your favorite, I'm sure, the bike lane that I was very insistent on. So we have a bike lane that's a part of the bridge on both sides. And I know you met with the community to discuss that and I believe even the artwork that's going to be on the bridge. How many meetings did you have with the community for that and all the other items that led up to this point?

You know, Mayor Pro Tem, I know we have had a few meetings with the community. I don't know how many, but I know in the past we've done some and recently we've done some, but I have to check with staff on how many community meetings we've done on this particular project. I don't have that data, but I know we were out there and we've made a few presentations to the community already.

Phil BacerraItem 20

Okay. So, but I mean, at least you can say it's not one, it's multiple.

Absolutely. We've been out in the community for this, and more than once, but I'll have to double check an exact number for you.

Phil BacerraItem 20

No problem. Thank you for that, Mr. Saba.

If I could add, Mayor Pro Tem, this item is related to the public hearing later on, which has the relocation plan in it, which was made available for 30-day review at multiple locations on the website that entails this project, as well as the property owner having an opportunity to respond with comments back and receiving their own separate notice.

Phil BacerraItem 20

And I apologize, you're absolutely correct, Madam City Manager. So this is only for the actual purchase of the individual property as far as what we're starting to get into as far as the more detailed aspects of the project and the relocation component. Okay. I apologize for that. I guess I'll reiterate that later. Thank you, Mr. Saba, for that. You know, we'll discuss it more as we get to the hearing, but I know that as someone that has long been a transit advocate in this town, I hate the idea of widening roads. I absolutely do.

Phil BacerraItem 20

But I also know because I grew up not too far from this area that the bridge is a choke point and it doesn't help those that are taking transit. You know, if you're taking the 47 Fairview, you just get stuck there during morning and afternoon rush hours. And I, Again, I do not like the idea of widening any roads, and I absolutely hate the idea of losing any homes here in Santa Ana, but the idea that it's one, I think my hat's off to Public Works because I think that, I hate to say this, I could see an engineer drawing a straight line on a map and saying, oh, we lost five or six homes. I've seen that in other jurisdictions,

Phil BacerraItem 20

but I know that our Public Works staff has been sensitive to minimize the impact on the community. So thank you, Director Saba, to you and your team. I will be supporting this item. I can't say enough how much I don't like it, but I know that the long-term positive effects, especially when this item came before us, not as the purchase, but rather the projects environmental, it was something where we were able to improve this project to be a better service to the community. So anyways, with that, Mr. Mayor, I'll be supporting this item. Thank you for those

David PenalozaItem 20

comments. Councilmember Peñalosa. Thank you, Mayor Salmiento. The only question I had for staff, Madam City Manager, was with this project, not so much the property acquisition, does it come with, I guess part of the project now brings sidewalks, right, to the bridge?

I'll defer to the Executive Director of Public Works, and he can talk about the medians, the bikes, and the sidewalks.

If the project is comprehensive, the redevelopment of the entire stretch from 9th Street all the way to 16 through the bridge construction. So it will have sidewalks on both

David PenalozaItem 20

sides of the street. So it will have sidewalks on both sides of the bridge and protected bike lanes?

That I have to refer to staff on that. I know we have the protected bike lanes on the bridge itself, but I don't know exactly what the design would look like before and after the bridge.

David PenalozaItem 20

We can come back to you on that one. Thank you. Because I know that the project, my colleagues have said, anytime we're losing homes, that's a minus. But I understand that currently there's absolutely no pedestrian sidewalks and they're just kind of walking along the late the traffic lanes with no separation whatsoever so they're in more danger now than there would be at the completion of this project which is why I would which is put why I'm more inclined to support it just because it

David PenalozaItem 20

will make the the walkability and bicycle use of this bridge safer and I know that that my family I'll have some family that lives in Edna Park and just getting to their home anytime after 2 p.m. on that Fairview Street I mean you're there for forever so there's a lot of pluses to it more than there's minuses so um that's that's all mayor's argumento thank you thank you for those

comments councilmember fan and then Mendoza thank you and I'm not sure this

Thai Viet PhanItem 20

is to Nabil or madam city manager so as I was reading this item it didn't look to me like it was an eminent domain right we didn't get that far he negotiated

with the property owner, and they've reached an agreement. So the item that you're discussing is the purchase transaction for them on an agreed-upon amount. You're correct.

Thai Viet PhanItem 20

Right. So I want to emphasize that we are not kicking out anyone. This is a purchase, and they are getting fair market value. Correct? Or whatever the agreement is.

They are. There is going to be displacement, but under the law we will be relocating the individuals.

Thai Viet PhanItem 20

I mean, you know, in Eminem, Maine we're kind of making them against their preference, and here they are negotiating an agreement with us. And so I think that's important to note that, one, the property owner is selling their home. Two, the tenants are getting relocation. Three, I was looking at the map, right, because I drive down Fairview, And there, as my colleagues have stated, there is no sidewalk. And I don't see, and maybe I'm wrong, that it's protected bike lane. It just looks to me like my worst enemy.

There will be a sidewalk and bike lane. The question was, was it protected bike lane? That's the answer that I'm going to come back to you for.

Thai Viet PhanItem 20

So that, to me, is, so I am supportive of this particular item. I think maybe it's to the public hearing. I hate, look, you know, paint doesn't make a bike lane. People will still ride on the sidewalk, frankly, if it's not protected. But I'd like to see that. Otherwise, I am supportive of this item, and I'd like to move forward with it, or move to approve.

Great. Thank you, Councilmember Fan. We have a motion. Let me go to Councilmember Mendoza, then myself, and then we'll wind it up.

I will second the motion. And my question was also, similarly to my colleagues, as to eminent domain, but that was answered. And property value, the homeowners are getting market value. And there is option for placement of the tenants. And also because I'm supportive of this widening because of the safety issues. We have pedestrians and bicyclists who are in danger right now of being struck by cars.

And as you know, the traffic along that area is already fast. So another lane is not going to increase the speed. It will actually clear up that bottleneck traffic during those rush hour time periods. So it's a good project. The community does want it. If there was any opposition, we would have heard it by now. And so I support the motion and I seconded it.

Great. Thank you for those comments. I know Councilmember Hernandez wants a final comment on this. Let me just go ahead and make my comment before we go back. So I certainly appreciate you, Nabil, tackling this because we know anytime there's a dangerous condition or some impairment with somebody going in and out of traffic, ingress, egress issues. It's tricky. And I'm glad Council Member Fan made the point to clarify this isn't a condemnation action. There isn't any taking. But this was negotiated at arm's length with the property owners. The problem I guess I'm having is that I think that all of us want to address safety concerns

and dangerous conditions wherever we can. And I think there's a less invasive way of doing this rather than, you know, have a full taking, not really a full taking, but a full acquisition. And maybe, you know, negotiating with, you know, property owners where there is some dangerous condition and maybe there's an easement, you know, a line of sight easement that we could have where you don't, you know, have landscaping or hardscape that'll obstruct the view. We do that with commercial properties a lot. And so, you know, rather than taking, you know, a duplex off the inventory of housing that we have. Because I

would believe that when we go into the relocation discussion, you know, later on in the public hearing, you probably won't find something comparable in the city. You may get compensation for that, you know, for the equivalent of a relocation cost, but it probably won't be something similar to that. So I appreciate what staff is trying to accomplish. I personally will not be supportive of this because again in principle I'm hoping that we as a city move to look at less you know less invasive efforts like a full acquisition and maybe looking at some easements that we can you know retain some of our

housing inventory on that so those are my comments let me go ahead and move one last time to councilmember Hernandez we have a motion in a second already on the

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 20

floor thank you the only person on this council that can speak for the neighborhood that is there is me. I grew up in that neighborhood. It's where I live, Director Nabil. And I know many of the residents contested the streetcar. The streetcar, it caused a hole right in the middle of where we're raising our children. So can you tell me, Director Nabil, what was the outreach like and what was the response from the Artisa Pilar community?

Councilmember, I know we have met with the community more than once on this project, maybe more, more meeting, and we presented the bridge project, but also this entire project to the community. I'm not sure how many times we've done this, but we've done it several times already, and we're more likely to do more once this project is developed. So we'll be reaching out to the community and doing more. That's what we've been doing for all of our projects.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 20

So I would be more inclined to support with the sub motion that we have additional community outreach and town halls and survey the community before this is brought back to us and we make a final decision. I think that it's the most equitable and democratic thing that we can do, and it's fair. Because if the people say, hey, we want this, then I'm in favor of it. But right now, I've just gotten a number of emails from residents that are in the surrounding area that just learned about this through Facebook. I mean, maybe a couple hours before the meeting started.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 20

So out of an abundance of caution and respect for the residents that live there, I'd like to make a sub-motion that this item be brought back to us under the condition that we do additional outreach to the residents in the surrounding area because those are the people that are going to be impacted. So that would be my sub-motion.

Great. We have a substitute motion on the floor by Councilmember Hernandez. Councilmember Fan, then Mayor Pro Tem.

Thai Viet PhanItem 20

Thank you. Actually, this is a clarification, so maybe Nabil, you want to... So this item is to pay the property owner to sell their home.

Yes.

Thai Viet PhanItem 20

And the home itself is the thing that's in the way of the line of sight. Not a bush, not a tree, but the actual structure. So you'd have to demolish part of the house if that was really what, if we tried to find a partial solution. Secondly, this item is not about what is being built on the bridge, but just the purchase of the home, correct?

Yes, that's correct.

Thai Viet PhanItem 20

So the conversation as to what the building on the bridge would look like, the bike lanes, whether it's protected, it better be, and the sidewalks and maybe even a crosswalk, all of that can be discussed later because it's not actually a part of this current item.

That's correct. Okay, thank you. Great, thank you. Let me go to Mayor Pro Tem and then

Phil BacerraItem 20

Councilmember Lopez. Thank you. Nabil, get comfortable up here. It's not the budget, but we do have a couple of questions for you. I only have one in all honesty. This project I know has been, I don't want to say on the books, but I know it's been something that Public Works has been looking into. I know there's been design work, all kinds of different work. Now I know you don't have the exact number of meetings that you've had with the community, but when would you say that this project became live with the city? Like when did it start?

Let me ask my staff, Jason, about five years ago.

Phil BacerraItem 20

Five years ago? Yes. You know, in all honesty, I know Jason's here. In fact, probably one of the first times I ever interacted with Jason was in talking about this bridge because I was concerned about design of the bridge. I wanted to see something aesthetic. I saw what we had done over on Edinger and McFadden, the crossings over the river, and they just, it looked like a freeway. off ramp. And then as you guys got further north, like First Street, it became far more attractive. And so my hope was always that Fairview was going to have that. But I remember

Phil BacerraItem 20

that as time progressed, I wasn't hearing anything about it. So I know that at least for you guys, it's been a long time coming. I know you guys have been working with OCTA and whatnot. But yeah, I was kind of trying to pinpoint when this was. I started on the Planning Commission in 2013. I want to say it might have been either around there or might even been a little bit before my arrival on the Commission. So it's been a project that's been around for a while and that I imagine you guys have been out there talking to folks. So okay, thank you for that. Thank you. Councilmember Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 20

Yeah, final thoughts. So thank you and I totally understand that we're talking about the purchase agreement here, but I remember last year I was getting we were all actually all getting emails from a family on Ward Nursery and we I think we had bought them out as well and they came back to the council and said listen we got bought out but we can't afford to buy and so those are the concerns that I have in my mind and I out of curiosity is the current unit owner occupied or is a tenant occupied do we know it's owner occupied owner occupied okay thank you

Jessie LopezItem 20

and so last you know last point that I want to make because I think obviously they think we all know that the council members are going to support the majority will support this you know even though you know the owners have agreed I do think that if this was you know councilmember Mendoza's home or councilmember Hernandez home or councilmember phantom or the mayor's home we wouldn't be having this conversation and so I just want us to keep that in mind when we're talking about how we do you know infrastructure changes in the city and who we approach to buy from where we do eminent domain I know this

Jessie LopezItem 20

is not an eminent domain but I've talked about eminent domain before for East first and staff was like no and so I want to make sure that though the concerns that I talked about staff keeps at the forefront and again thank you for the work that you've done I know this doesn't just happen and so thank you for

that great thank you I think we've heard from everybody almost twice there's a substitute motion by Councilmember Hernandez for the sake of just you know going through an exhaustive we kind of know where this is going but look I'll second it because I do think if there's more information you know that you know the councilmember is receiving I'm not receiving it but I'm not the ward representative there so if he is doing that to the extent that they feel they haven't been reached out to enough I'm certainly supportive of that if there isn't any time sensitivity to this so to the extent that I'll substitute the

motion for purposes of discussion and a vote. I'll go ahead and second that substitute motion. Let's vote on that first and then we can get back to the

Thai Viet PhanItem 20

original underlying motion as well. Can I just say I will sell my townhouse for $980,000. All right council members please vote on the substitute motion.

Okay motion fails with council members Hernandez, Lopez, and Mayor Samantha Voting yes and Council Members Mendoza, Peñalosa, Fanna, Mayor Potemba, Sarah voting no.

Great. Thanks everybody. Now we have a motion to support the recommended action by the Council, and I believe we have a motion and a second on that. So let's vote on that underlying motion.

Thank you.

Motion passes with...

Let me guess.

Yes, it's the opposite. It's council members Mendoza, Peñalosa, Van, and Mayor Potembecerra voting yes. and then Council Members Hernandez, Lopez, and Mayor Sarmiento voting no.

Thank you. Thank you for that clarification. You had me in suspense there for a while. Let's move along to item number 24. That's a Council Member

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 24

Hernandez's item as well. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I pulled item number 24 and let me see here. Item number 24, let me see, is the authorizing of the city manager nope sorry agreements with stage plus gig roster professionals entertainment for entertainment performance services at city events for an annual aggregate amount not to exceed 100,000 for the period April 1st 2022 to March 31st 2025 so I am overall in favor to see that we're bringing back

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 24

city events I'm very excited about it there's just a caveat I do want to make sure there's a couple of key events that we that we that we move away from this contract because these are culturally more sensitive events that I think we do have to approach certain events with this with a level of cultural competency and and I do think it's important as we celebrate cultures that these events are put on by the respective cultures that we're acknowledging most notably we now have a city of Santa Ana funded Juneteenth celebration which is being organized by the Orange County Heritage Council this

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 24

event here as we all know Juneteenth is celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation it would only make sense that a celebration of that sort would be put on by members in the black community councilmember Mendoza and myself and a couple of my colleagues supported seeing the staff bring back Chicano Heritage Month so we can have celebrations it would only make sense that any events related to that community is organized by that community we also have Hispanic Heritage Month and fiestas patrias I think it's important that we contract locally there's a number of different production companies

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 24

that do put on culturally responsive and culturally accurate you know fiestas and I would envision us having a celebration where we have you know groups that you know some of our elders and seniors enjoy and all the way down to our young families and I think it's important that for these types of events we work with local organizations and companies and then lastly we introduced indigenous peoples day I was proud to champion that I only want to support this event being organized by indigenous people and being and being directed by indigenous people in our community so those are the only events that I did want to make sure I

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 24

got some clarification if this was going to be something that this particular contractor would be helping us produce so if there's anyone that can answer my question to see if this is potentially something that would overlap and

certainly councilmember Hernandez so there's six contracts before you and they're all lining up for a three-year periods as we roll back into having our events so all of the events are city city organized but we do contract out with various people. This is not an exclusive agreement. So should there be a single event that we want to contract with another entertainment company, we certainly can do that as well. And so it's not precluding that from happening.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 24

That's exactly what I needed to know. And thank you for the clarification. And with that, I'll move the item.

Great. We have a motion from Councilmember Hernandez to move the item. Any other comments? We have a second from Mendoza. And Councilmember Vinaldo has a comment.

David PenalozaItem 24

I was going to second, but I also just wanted to kind of as a tip, more of a thought, just because I ran into this a number of times, with many groups that were reaching out to me personally. I saw it last year with Fiestas Patrias, well, we all did actually.

David PenalozaItem 24

I started now reaching out to those same organizations that were reaching out to me because, you know, people don't realize that Fiestas Patrias, yeah, it's six months away, but now it's when we should start planning. So, I mean, any event that we have in mind, I hope all my colleagues, whether it's Indigenous Peoples Day or Black History Parade or any of these, I hope that we all start having those conversations now with these organizations so we could just make sure all our ducks are in a row and and and not have any upset organizations like we did last year so just for thought that's it thank you thank you for that comment

any other questions or comments on this item the only one I would you know make is I think referring to fiestas patrias I know that committees are formed sometimes because there's 32 states that participate in this and it becomes really difficult to manage. It is it's really challenging. But also the Mexican consulate plays a role in it because they do the ceremonial part of the event. So to you know I'm not sure if there's a term or a provision that we can include in the agreement with the contractor this one and any others that you know that that do work with us that they understand I think to the to Council

member Hernandez's point that we have community members that are very vested in these events, right, that they've been doing them for years, and to the extent that they have a role to play in the maybe, you know, decision-making, maybe they're an advisory body, maybe it could be like an advisory body provision that's included in that contract. So that way they're aware that we will have members of the community that will hopefully help them navigate on these events.

There actually is an item on your agenda that has to do with sponsorship and partnership. So we routinely do both of those. We just don't have any guidelines in place that govern them right now. But for events, we get approached by a lot of community organizations and they want a sponsor. They want to be a sponsor for events. And so whether they want to donate goods or whether they want to get some advertising for them, we do that routinely. And the same thing with partnerships where, and most definitely we already are working with the Mexican consulate because they're critical for that particular event.

Yeah, so that's why I pulled item 29, just to make sure that they, you know, there is express language in there, that, you know, we do have partners that may not be sponsoring partners, right? They may be more, you know, civic partners, I guess, you know, that want to help dictate how an event is rolled out, I think, to the point that was being made. So in any event, I think you get the, you know, the theme of what I'm trying to say. So seeing no other questions or comments, let's go ahead and vote on the item.

Motion passes 7-0 with Councilmembers Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Peñalosa, Fan, Mayor Pro Tempecerra, and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes.

Great. Thank you. I'll go ahead and call on myself for item number 29. And I wanted to see if, Lisa, if you could just give me a few minutes on this, on the sponsorship. I think we touched on it already in the previous item. But I wanted to make sure that we are able to work with, you know, sponsors, partners on this, and just some flexibility and maybe to add some language that will allow flexibility for the city manager to incorporate a partner or a sponsor on an event. And I think she has that under her authority already, right up to 50,000. So in the event that there is a sponsorship opportunity,

I think that might be something that we can incorporate in that as an additional term. Does that make sense?

Yes, absolutely. We can add an authority to award section, which we can make it consistent with the city manager's contracting authority. And so that will give us flexibility. Then we don't have to come back to council until it's $50,000 or more.

Right. Yeah. And to my point, I guess, you know, when it's a non-fiscal partnership, you know, that as well to maybe just incorporate a group. So again, if there is a tribe, you know, here, and we have many in Santana who want to participate as, you know, as part of the Indigenous People's Celebration, we certainly want to be able to make that role available to them and have the, you know, organizers respect that and, you know, the vendors that we contract with respect that as well. Absolutely. Great. Thank you. Those are my only comments on that. I'll go ahead and move

the item with those with those additional items is there a second I'll second mayor thank you we have a motion in a second council members please vote

I think councilmember Hernandez can you cast your vote

Yes. Okay. Okay. Is that a yes? Yes.

Okay.

Is that your vote a yes as well? Yes. Okay.

Okay. Motion passes with 7-0 with Councilmembers Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Peñalosa, Fian, Mayor Pro Tempecerra, and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes.

Thanks, everybody. Let's go to item number 32, and I believe that was Councilmember Lopez's item.

Jessie LopezItem 32

Yes, is it okay if we do 32 and 33 together just so that, okay, thank you. So I pulled both of these items because I wanted to know if we are tracking what I guess we would call the success rate of folks that come in and then leave the shelter into some sort of permanent supportive housing or into other type of housing.

Thank you, Councilmember. How are you tonight? Good. Yes, there is a tracking for that. As you know, we have a number of permanent supportive housing units in our city. So the transfer, we are part of that transfer as well. And as you know, we also have some coming up that were in development, and those first choices for those beds in the future will also be from our shelters. And the clients that we put in, like Yale, because we'll soon be putting people in Yale as well, we will get priority for them into these permanent supportive beds. So yes, we do track the success rate of our homeless population that goes into our shelters.

Jessie LopezItem 32

Okay. Thank you. And then I had another question for 433.

Jessie LopezItem 32

Can you let me know, I was trying to figure out how many vouchers we use to house the folks that were the families that we talked about, because I couldn't figure out the number.

The Families Forward provides us an avenue to which to put families in a hotel instead of families in a homeless shelter. Right now we are low on family beds. So this allows us to put a family, to stay as a family unit in a hotel. We also use this in the almost in a red crossway if there's a fire or a displacement. We also use the Families Forward contract for that too.

12 families and 46 individuals we've served thus far.

Jessie LopezItem 32

But what is the equivalent of the voucher number? I guess that's what I'm trying to figure out. The amount? Yeah, like is that the equivalent of 10 vouchers? Is that the equivalent of 15, 20? That's what I'm trying to figure out.

It would be 12 vouchers for 12 families

Jessie LopezItem 32

that consist of 46 individuals. Okay, thank you. And are we allowed to know what motels we're contracting with?

We usually don't disclose that because people are often homeless for reasons of their safety, and we never want to disclose that.

Jessie LopezItem 32

Okay. Thank you. And what happens for, you know, when we're talking about the vouchers, people being, I think I read that there's a two-month limit because of the funding. What happens when the two months is up?

Council member, give me one moment. Terri, would you mind coming up and helping me answer that question?

Can you clarify? So are you asking because we're extending, we're asking to extend it for a couple months, you're wondering what would happen after that time period?

Jessie LopezItem 32

Well, because it says, you know, supportive services like case management will be offered as long as families are staying at the motel. Keeping in mind the current funding amount, we anticipate each family will be able to stay in a motel up to two months. So I'm wondering what happens after two months. Transitioned into the .

The families are not exited from the motels. We were asking for additional funds so that they could remain. But the goal of the program is to service them and put them into permanent housing options as quickly as possible. So each family that goes in realizes that it's not an ongoing endeavor and that they're going to be working very quickly to get out.

Jessie LopezItem 32

Okay. And I'm assuming that we're also tracking the success rate for the voucher program as well?

Yes, Councilmember, we do. And many of these folks, if they are still housed in the hotels, would also have the option of moving into Carnegie.

Jessie LopezItem 32

Okay. And for the Salvation Army and for the I guess Illumination Foundation shelter I'm interested in knowing more and maybe this can be part of I guess the reports I will leave it up to staff what is the turnaround rate you know are we seeing people come in and then leave within a couple of days are we spending more money you know I'm just kind of I guess the concern is are we spending a lot of money not really seeing people go through the entire phase and being transitioned out of a

Jessie LopezItem 32

shelter into some sort of permanent supportive housing or are we seeing a really high transition rate?

Councilmember Lopez, you've had a lot of really great questions tonight and I'll be glad to meet with you in the next two weeks to answer most of those questions and I'll bring Terri in to answer these detailed questions about our successes and what happens to individual families in a more private But wait, if I could, with you.

Okay.

Council Member, do you want to move the items or do you, or if there's any more questions from anybody else?

Jessie LopezItem 32

I don't have any more questions, so I'll move 32 and 33. A whole second.

Great. Thank you. We have a motion and a second for item number 32 and 33. The only thing I would say is the questions I think the council member is asking are much more profound than what we are able or capable of answering tonight. Those are questions that are confronting the state, the county, but they are very, very relevant questions. Are we just putting a band-aid on a problem that we know is overwhelming? So we know the governor is struggling with this. Unfortunately, right now, his recommended budget doesn't have much money for the wraparound services,

and it's mostly for capital improvements, and we can build all the units we want. But if we don't have services to match those, then they really don't help address the issue as much as we'd like. So in any event, that's just my editorializing on that item. We have a motion and a second for item number 32 and 33. Council members, please vote.

Madam Clerk, my screen is frozen, I think.

Why don't we do a voice vote? Can we do a voice vote? Just to get there.

Go ahead.

There we go.

And by the way, I just want to say to the Council members, thank you all. You're respecting your times very well. We're moving things along. I appreciate that. Thank you. And I'm sure the public does as well.

Council members should be able to cast your votes now.

Yes.

Okay, thank you. Okay, motion passes up, sorry, with Council Members Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Peñalosa, Mayor Pro Tem Becerra, and Mayor Sermiento voting yes, and Council Member Fan, abstaining or recusing.

Great. Thank you, everybody. That moves us along to the business calendar section of the agenda tonight. Moving along to item number 35, which is a, I believe it's a continued item, which is an agreement with GPC for graffiti removal and I'll go ahead and hand it to staff for it I think we've had a presentation on this already we did it

was before you at the last council meeting and there were some questions concerning the parking structure operators and how they acquire graffiti removal services and couldn't there be some efficiencies and so staff did work hard at it and what they did is they've added to the contract that's before you tonight funding and the great rate that Nabil has negotiated with GPC to handle the any graffiti in the parking structure. We also are, as mentioned at the last time, we are still proceeding as well with a graffiti art program and we will include the interiors of the parking structures in that program as requested.

I love it. Councilmember Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

Fantastic work, Madam City Manager. Thank you so much.

That sounded like a motion.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

Yes, that is a motion. I'd like to move the item.

I'll second it. Wait, we have a motion in a second. Seeing no other questions or comments, council members please vote.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 35

You did such a good job, I forgot a motion.

Members of the council can cast your vote.

Mayor, I think we're the...

My screen... My screen's frozen, so I'm a yes.

Thank you, Mayor. Okay, motion passes 7-0 with Councilmembers Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Peñalosa, Fan, Mayor Protemba, Sarah, Mayor Samantha voting yes.

Great, thank you, everybody. We already took care of item number 36, so that brings us to item number 37. That is the Charter Review Ad Hoc Committee update.

So, Mayor, we do have, it's an informational item. We do have a presentation, if you would like the presentation.

A brief one?

Daniel will be brief.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. We have a brief presentation for you on an update to the activity conducted by the Charter Review Ad Hoc Committee.

A quick background. In December 2021, Mayor Sarmiento appointed Councilmembers Mendoza, Peñalosa, and Fan to the Charter Review Ad Hoc Committee to review amendments to prepare for the November 2022 general election.

The activity and work for the Ad Hoc Committee is split into three parts, the first of which you'll hear an update on tonight. The first is reviewing the 17 proposed charter amendments that were reviewed by the 2020 Ad Hoc Committee. The other two parts are a proposal to prohibit the use of all fireworks, which will be discussed at the April 19th City Council meeting. and the final item is any current City Council policy matters that will be considered and discussed at the May 3rd City Council meeting.

The initial recommendations for the initial 17 proposed charter amendments from the 2020 ad hoc committee are included and summarized in the staff report on pages 2 and 3, and the red line track changes as drafted in 2020 are attached as Exhibit 1. The Ad Hoc Committee is recommending to move forward with 16 of the 17 Charter Amendments.

Exhibit 2 is a detailed timeline on activities and action that the City Council must take in order to move any proposed ballot measures to amend the City Charter for the November 8, 2022 election, and those activities are summarized on your screen.

Tonight, the City Council can discuss the content of the informational report and either concur with the ad hoc committee to move forward with the 16 of 17 proposed charter amendments or review and discuss any revisions to those proposed amendments and direct the City Attorney and Clerk of the Council to prepare any necessary documents to place any of those proposed amendments on the ballot for the November 2022 election. Staff is available if you have any questions. Thank you.

Great. Thank you for that report, Daniel. Let me go ahead and, first of all, let me thank the ad hoc members that served on this charter review committee. And let me call on them first. And I don't know if you all have a chair, if you want to have somebody speak on behalf of the committee or all three of you. I have Councilmembers Mendoza, Peñalosa, and Fan. Why don't we just go in that order, if that's all right? unless you want to defer to one person.

I can go. It's fine.

Thai Viet PhanItem 37

We have a chair. It's Council Member Penalosa. But it was more of a, you should do it, because you've been around the longest. But these are just really...

You guys are being too shy. Yeah, I know.

Thai Viet PhanItem 37

They're not really... These are changes that are a bit more administrative. These are changes that the previous ad hoc had also recommended and so we felt like it Was really a lot of cleanup language and clarification. There are a couple items that are a little bit more Substantive, but if they're not major changes, it's really to help ensure that the function of the city is More consistent and more streamlined. So I think it's an easy peasy one to put on the ballot. It's nothing

controversial. Great. Thank you, Councilmember Fan. Any other members of the council wish to speak? Councilmember Peñalosa. Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento.

David PenalozaItem 37

And thank you to my colleagues for the opportunity to serve on this ad hoc. To my colleagues, Councilmember Fan and Mendoza, I initially served on the first, well, the most recent ad hoc made up of the City Council back in early 2020. And And for those that have looked into the staff report, there are just a number of, like my colleague said, administrative suggested changes that we might want to consider as we move into the 2022 election cycle. Obviously, that takes a consensus from the full majority of the City Council.

David PenalozaItem 37

So, they're all, a lot of them are pretty basic to everything from just gender-specific language to,

David PenalozaItem 37

it wasn't part of the conversation, but today, just having going through that ward or district conversation, that's also one that I would just like to throw out there that we might consider as part of the cleanup language that we look at that moving forward next time this comes before us. A couple that are not listed on the proposed charter amendments are the more extreme ones that we kind of discussed at the last ad hoc meeting back in 2020, kind of almost came to term limits.

David PenalozaItem 37

It would be imposing a lifetime ban on termed out council members and mayors. Right now, per our city charter, one could serve three consecutive terms and term out, but could sit out for eight years and then come back in eight years and run for office again. I don't think that's appropriate. I think it should be more like the, you know, when you think of the president of the United States, could serve two four-year terms and then is termed out for life, can't run for office again. and nobody needs to be here for more than 12 years. That is just my personal opinion,

David PenalozaItem 37

and a lot of the residents that I've spoken to feel the same. It's nice to see a changing leadership up here every now and then. So there were, excuse me, There were a couple others that were listed on there. Again, mostly administrative. That would be good to bring forward. One of the ones that I also thought about, you know, as we had these discussions and just thrown out

David PenalozaItem 37

in conversation amongst the ad hoc were looking Looking at the way we approve budget and approve appropriations, currently it takes four members of the City Council to approve a citywide budget of close to over $700 million when it comes to the entire thing put together, but it takes five votes to transfer $50,000 from one department to the other, which, you know, to me, it should be, you know, five across the board.

David PenalozaItem 37

It should require a supermajority of the City Council to approve the direction that this budget wants to take the city. My opinion, again, these are all just ideas that I've been throwing out there. I guess the only question that I want as we're having this discussion, and I want to hear from my colleagues to see what we would, what you guys want the ad hoc to see, or discuss, what you guys have an appetite for as we move forward, but also more for staff, the schedule, what kind of timeline are we looking at to get one of these, or maybe we don't, you know, it depends on what the majority is, to get it on the ballot for 2022.

David PenalozaItem 37

I know that there's a cutoff date of, if I'm not mistaken, August, so that takes, you know, that needs a lot of legal background and putting text together for ballot measures. So, Madam City Clerk, is that something that you've looked at? And obviously there's a cost to each one of these, so can you elaborate on that, what kind of timeline we'd look at?

Yeah, and that is correct. Council members do have until August 12th, but because we do have a July meeting that's canceled, it pushes kind of everything back for us. In addition, every question that we have on the ballot measure is essentially $100,000 a question that the city is invoiced for the county to hold that election for us.

So just so that I let the council know, I did recommend to bring it at the same time when I'm bringing in the council seats of calling of the election. So that's June 7th. And so I'm hoping that the council will decide to do that. The benefit of doing it earlier rather than later is that we can get all of the arguments, the rebuttals, everything printed onto the sample ballot booklet. There is a cutoff time. If we meet just the statutory date of August, we may not be able to have it printed on the sample ballot booklet.

It will be just a link for voters to have to go and read what the proposed charter amendment is. So that's just something for council to keep in mind. So again, I encourage council to come to the earliest date as June 7th.

David PenalozaItem 37

And June 7th, that would be the final date to make a decision. Let's say we want the cleanup language ballot on the, I mean measure on the ballot, June 7th is our cutoff date to green light it and okay.

Yeah, and that's staff's recommendation. And of course the council does have the option of pushing it back to the statutory date of August.

David PenalozaItem 37

Okay, and I know inflation's been through the roof. And back in 2020, I wrote, looking at my old notes, you had mentioned that the cost for one question was $65,000 give or take and right now you said it's a hundred thousand has it gone up that much since

2020 yes, so there's a lot of changes that happen with the county's process We used to have a one-day polling place location where now we have a 10-day vote center Then there's an additional number of vote-by-mail ballots A ballot boxes and all of that are now being imposed on all the jurisdictions to to pay for

David PenalozaItem 37

Okay.

Yeah.

David PenalozaItem 37

Thank you for that. So I'm open and supportive to seeing many of these come back. I know that with amongst the ad hoc we discussed consolidating a lot of these items, charter changes into one measure, so we don't have 19 questions on a ballot. No one would want to go through that. But consolidating as much as we can, the ones that we can do, which is mostly cleanup language. That is it, Mayor Sarmiento for me. I just wanted to hear my thoughts from the full council to see what we could take this.

Great. Thank you, everybody. And let's remember this is an informational item, so any suggestions, you know, we're not going to be taking any action tonight, but, you know, we can certainly give some direction. Let me go to Councilmember Mendoza and then Lopez.

Thank you. In addition to the administrative and cleanup languages, I was interested to see what my colleagues think about extending the term of mayor to coincide with a term of the council members to four years and doing, having a research or study to see how other cities who have a four-year mayor term, how that works, what are the benefits, what are the consequences, because it seems like once the mayor gets into the seat, then it's almost immediately it's campaigning and

time for election again. So it would be great to have a mayor for four years. I think it would be more productive and less expensive in that manner. And that was the other suggestion that I wanted our council members to consider.

Thank you, Councilmember Mendoza. Where were you two years ago? I'm just kidding.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 37

Mayor, if I may, I did do some of that research at the last time at the request of the ad hoc committee in terms of what other cities do. I remember I circulated that so I can circulate it again to the ad hoc committee if that's direction we received tonight.

Great suggestion. And if I could just, you know, input really quickly. Yeah, two-year terms makes no sense whatsoever. I think the, I know we looked at this years ago. I think the hangup was which cycle are you on? Are you on with the even numbered wards or with the odd numbered wards, right? And that does make a difference because those that are not on with the mayor's cycle have an advantage because you could run midterm. In any event, something like that. But that's certainly, I think, a point well, well received. So let me go to Councilmember Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 37

Thank you, Mayor.

Jessie LopezItem 37

I guess I just have a clarifying question because I don't know if I'm missing it. I keep reading the 17 amendments, and I see 16th. Is the 17th the firework prohibition?

Thank you, Councilmember Lopez. The 17th item was initially a proposal to amend section 609 of the charter regarding the budget appropriations, and it would have been to require a,

to require, or excuse me, to remove the two-thirds vote requirement for budget appropriations.

Jessie LopezItem 37

Okay, so to reduce it from five people to four people, correct?

Yes, that's correct.

Jessie LopezItem 37

Okay. Thank you. And so I know this is an informational report, but the Council can provide direction. So I do want to throw out that if we're going to move forward and give direction to staff tonight to come back with language, I want to see part of the recommendation be adding to our charter that you know the police oversight board that we've been discussing in our ad hoc and that we've discussed previously because I think it's important that it's enshrined in the charter as well and I don't I'm not

Jessie LopezItem 37

crazy about the 17th amend the 17th amendment of reducing it from five council members to four council members to be able to move money all kinds of ways and so the firework one I would like for that to be put to the voters once and for all so that they can really dictate if that's something that they want to see happen in the city of Sanana or not thank you thank you just go ahead

David PenalozaItem 37

Councilman just point of clarification the suggestion is to expand it to five

Thai Viet PhanItem 37

council members across the board for both no yeah not too so the 17th item was to actually remove the five seventh votes or the four fifths requirement how I read it down to four when we so the way it worked was Daniel sent around an Excel sheet with all of these administrative option changes and we would say yes or no whether we agreed with the changes I wrote no because I like the four fifths requirement for a budget amendment, which is why it's not one of the recommended amendments tonight. So the recommendation would be to have staff come back, get ready to draft whatever that

Thai Viet PhanItem 37

ballot measure would look like for these 16 changes, which are mostly administrative. So we know, yes, that is one ballot measure we want to put to the voters in November. And then the fireworks option is going to come back as a separate item itself for this council to decide whether we want to put that to the voters or adopt an ordinance. And then other changes, for example, lifetime ban, because right now it's actually three terms as a council member plus two terms as mayor, so you get 20 years to be on this dais and then you can wait eight and then come back. It's crazy. So that would be another substantive policy item. Right.

Thai Viet PhanItem 37

Conflict of interest, like financial lobbying, reporting. another one is council member compensation that is a big issue also so there are a number of more substantive policy areas that we haven't brought back yet just because we wanted to get the easy stuff out of the way okay thank

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you for that yeah I that's exactly how I read it which I thought was again not supportive but and that's why I asked about the 17th amendment because I kept reading that there were 17 but only 16 were listed and I it's good to hear that other amendments or ideas are going to come back to us. So I guess I will give

my suggestions then. Thank you. Great. Thank you for that. So we have council members, well Mayor Pro Tem and then Council Member Hernandez and then I'll

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go ahead and wrap it up. Thank you. I wanted to thank all the members of the ad hoc. I served on that a couple years ago with Council Member Penaloza and it's good to see that these potential changes have survived and are hopefully going to actually make it to the ballot this time. So I thank you guys for all the work that you're doing on this. A lot of cleanup, a lot of modernization that needs to happen in our Charter. One suggestion I wanted to throw out, we kind of talked about it last time when I served on the ad hoc, but just something to throw out to the current ad hoc committee members. For the mayoral term,

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possibly looking at a one term of six years. That way you don't have the mayor tethered to either the even boards or the odd boards. Just kind of gives it a one-shot deal and allows it to alternate as to when it ends up on the ballot. That's the only suggestion I have at this point. I'm excited about seeing what you guys come back with with the other items that you have coming up to discuss. So thank you.

Thanks.

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Councilmember Hernandez. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Councilmember Fan, for such a robust, I mean, breakdown of that. that gave me a lot of clarity and I just I fully concur with you councilmember Lopez I do also want to see the voters be able to decide on the topic of fireworks so I just wanted to make that clear thank you great thanks I think

we've heard from everybody give me one second if I could go ahead and make some comments as well so yeah thank you to all of the members of the ad hoc who commented tonight. I do want to make sure I think I echo one of the council members with respect to including the oversight, Police Oversight Commission, as a charter amendment that will be considered. You know, as mayor, I think going to a four-year term makes a whole lot of sense. I think, you know, one of the things that I think this council has struggled with since I've been on the City Council is just compensation. It's one of the few cities

that is as large as ours that isn't compensated. And I think it makes it really difficult. It prevents people from running because when, you know, you have very few resources to devote this much time, you know, to sitting on a council, it really discourages people who don't have the means to do that. And vice versa. Those who do have the means sometimes, you know, realize that, you know, it's an easy thing for them to do. And so it really does narrow the pool of potential candidates, and that's not a good thing. We want to make sure that we have as many people running for office and considering serving.

So those things I would, you know, I would, you know, support. And certainly, you know, I think, you know, a ban makes sense. I think, you know, nobody wants to, you know, stay here longer than they should. If you can't get things done, you know, in a short period of time, you shouldn't be here that long. The six years, that's an interesting thought. I just don't know if that works well because I think one of the things was, I know before when I was on the city council, the mayor didn't have term limits and the city council had two four-year term limits. So that was really out of balance.

So I think doing the three, four-year terms for council and then putting term limits for two-year terms on the mayor made it a little bit more balanced, but I think maybe we consider doing something that balances both, maybe eight years for the council, eight years for the mayor. And that makes it much, much easier because even council members here, I think two terms is plenty. So I think you can work on something like that. The other thing on the appropriations question, to me, I'd like to see both options, either a simple majority or a two-thirds majority for us to consider, and for there to be consistency either way.

So it shouldn't be the budget for a simple majority and then an appropriations change on a two-thirds. So it's either both on a two-thirds or both on a simple majority. So those are my comments. I think we've heard from everybody on this. Thank you, everybody, for commenting. These will be coming back to us. And let me move along to another report that is going to be provided by the Police Oversight Ad Hoc Committee. And I'll go ahead and call on those members of the council that served on that. And I believe that was Council Members Hernandez, Lopez, and Mayor Pro Tem. Council Member Hernandez.

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Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to thank my colleagues that served on this committee. We put a lot of thought and knowledge behind the proposal of oversight. And I want to start by stating this. To be an advocate for justice is not to be anti-law enforcement. There is a notion that to advocate for transparency and equity is to be anti-law enforcement. That statement is flawed and could not be further from the truth. Officers take an oath to protect and serve and to preserve life. What we are fighting for is the bare minimum of ensuring that

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there are checks and balances. And if you honor your badge, you should not feel attacked by the oversight that is coming to the city of Santa Ana. The only reason why it is not normal for politicians to talk about police misconduct is because the police unions are getting these elected officials into office. So let's start there. Now let's talk about how much Santa Ana police lawsuit settlements are costing taxpayers. Taxpayers have paid at least $24 million in lawsuit settlements over the last decade. Police have killed 1,139 people in the U.S. in 2021.

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There were only 15 days in which police did not kill people in the U.S. per mapping policeviolence.org. Police have killed 108 people in the U.S. so far in 2022. There have been 16 days throughout this year where police did not. One recent study found that from 2008 to 2017, taxpayers in Chicago limited to 2010 to 2017, Cleveland, Ohio, Lake County, Los Angeles, California, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin paid an estimated combined total of 1.73 billion in bonds and interest payments for police misconduct.

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There are 19,495 incorporated cities, towns, and villages in the United States. To date, there are only nearly 200 verified oversight commissions in the United States. That's the need for accountability and change, and that could not be more clear. Number one, I'd like to direct staff to prepare an ordinance to establish the Police Oversight Board Commission as directed through the committee that we held we wanted to see an ordinance brought first I would like to see us consider this ordinance before the end of 2021-2022 fiscal year

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several city surveys of Santa Ana residents have shown that police oversight has broad support and the effort to establish a strong oversight model must not be delayed any further if the council considers and approves an ordinance what's important to us is that establishing this board and this Commission before the end of this fiscal year. We can begin the implementation process that can take up to a year or potentially longer. In order for this Commission to have the powers that efficacy requires, the city charter must be amended. The ordinance that establishes the infrastructure of an

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effective police oversight body can be written and passed in parallel with the efforts to amend the charter. Number two, I would like to direct staff to prepare a charter amendment to be submitted to voters at the November 2022 election that authorizes that this board can impose discipline upon the San Ana Police Department for cause, San Ana Police Department chief, and anybody in that department. The charter and amendment should also enshrine a sustainable budget. We need a budget that is going to fully fund this board and this Commission so that public safety funds are derived from the cost savings

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measures from police department budgets. So I'd like to see that this commission is paid for through public safety dollars. The consideration of this ordinance and charter amendment must happen concurrently to ensure police oversight is promptly enacted and that residents of the city of Santa Ana are prepared and empowered to remediate and prevent any potential police violence. It's important to our constituents that they have elected officials that serve them don't serve special interests the same applies to public servants in every single trade and it's only fair and that's why I'm giving

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staff this direction so it Daniel if you can give me a response in the commission that would I mean the committee my recollection of what is being brought forth today is very different my recollection was that myself and and Councilmember and the colleagues on this dais that are part of this committee, we propose to see an ordinance brought back and then a charter amendment.

Thank you, Councilmember Hernandez. I recall that among the ad hoc committee members, the preference was both an ordinance and a charter amendment. I apologize, but I do not recall if there was a specific order as to whether an ordinance would precede a charter amendment, but I am certain that the preference was both a charter amendment and ordinance.

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Correct. Thank you, Daniel. So to clarify, we did want to see an ordinance brought forth, and then we want the voters to be able to decide on the charter amendment. So this is the direction that we gave, and I just wanted to have that on the record for the sake of transparency. And that concludes my comments, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you for those comments. You know, I may have leapfrogged staff because I'm not sure if I see a presentation in front of us. I think the council member kind of encapsulated it pretty well. But is there anything that maybe you want to, you know, mention Madam City Manager or Daniel on any context?

I think the staff report, if you've read the staff report, it does the presentation follows pretty much the staff report on it. So at this time, we are filing this informational report and then seeking greater direction from the council.

And maybe what I'll do is I'll go through, you know, the ad hoc committee members for them to comment just like we did on the charter ad hoc committee. And then we can bring it back to the rest of the council to, you know, provide some guidance as well. So let me go to Councilmember Lopez and then to Mayor Pro Tem.

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Mayor, point of clarification. I just, if there was a presentation just for the sake of transparency to the community, I think we should see the presentation before we continue any more discussion from the council members. Sure.

Daniel, go ahead and go through the, you know, maybe a sort of a nutshell version.

Thank you. Thank you.

Here's a quick presentation on the activities conducted by the Police Oversight Ad Hoc Committee and we'll start with a brief timeline. Most recently the topic of police oversight was brought forth by the City Council beginning in June 2020 as a Councilmember requested item. Staff conducted engagement through two community feedback surveys and worked with partners to hold a community forum and a moderated panel and during that time staff returned to the city council in september 2020 december 2020 and september 2021 with an informational report

on police oversight models mechanisms how the different police oversight models are implemented and drilling down on specific models of police oversight

in september 2021 excuse me mayor sedimento appointed mayor pro tembecerra councilmember hernandez and councilmember lopez to the police oversight ad hoc committee to discuss the details of what a police oversight border commission might look like in santa ana today the ad hoc committee has discussed variations in police oversight models the peace officer bill of rights and initial recommendations on a police oversight mechanism for Santa Ana.

Using an agency directory that was created by the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement and the Department of Justice to standardize the mechanisms for police oversight across the United States, the ad hoc committee responded to a form to outline what a police oversight mechanism might look like for Santa Ana. and the summary results will follow on the following slides.

The preferred model for police oversight is a hybrid of the investigation-focused and auditor-monitor-focused models. In addition to the core functions of those models, the ad hoc committee indicated a preference that the additional functions would include reviewing investigations, auditing investigations and or policy compliance, monitoring open investigations, independent investigations, pattern or trend analysis, oversight of the city jail, and publishing annual reports, special reports, complaint information or statistics, and analysis of department practices.

the local structure or the enabling legislation would would include a charter amendment and an ordinance of the city council the police oversight mechanism would report back to the city council

the police oversight mechanism would include a board or commission and the members of the border commission would be trained on police department policies and procedures the members would receive a stipend for serving on the Border Commission, and current and former law enforcement officers would not be permitted to serve on the Border Commission.

The ad hoc committee indicated a preference for having the following staff members to implement the Police Oversight Border Commission. a director, attorney, investigator, auditor, analyst, and administrative assistant.

Scope of authority for the police oversight mechanism would be as follows. The Border Commission would accept anonymous complaints. It would not be able to respond to the scene of critical incidents. The Border Commission can recommend and implement new or revised departmental policies and procedures, can recommend and implement discipline, can recommend investigative findings, and can recommend and implement training or retraining, and finally, require the police department to respond to their recommendations.

Regarding departmental records, the preference indicated by the ad hoc committee is that the Board or Commission would have access to the following types of records. Computer aided dispatch records, personnel records, body worn or in-car video, stop, search and arrest records, use of force reports, and all electronic databases including but not limited to these items listed above.

Regarding access to internal affairs records, the preference indicated by the ad hoc committee includes copies of open and closed internal affairs files front end and back end access to the internal affairs database

additionally the Border Commission would have subpoena authority again the ad hoc committee indicated a preference for having the Border Commission be established by both an amendment to the city charter and an ordinance to be considered and approved by the City Council for your information staff conducted a survey of how different police oversight boards or commissions are established in California and you see a summary on your screen with different categories there are three jurisdictions that establish their police oversight border Commission by charter only two that establish their

border Commission by charter and ordinance one city that established a board or commission by an ordinance approved by the voters eight jurisdictions establishing one by ordinance and three by resolution if the City Council decides to concur with the ad hoc committee's recommendations the City Council might consider which criteria might go into a proposed charter amendment versus what might go into a city ordinance and tonight the City Council's options are to concur with the ad hoc committee to direct staff to

return more information or take no action thank you great thank you for

that brief presentation that gives helps give us some background thank you Councilmember Pena Loza for requesting that the only let me let me call on the ad hoc committee members I believe we heard from Hernandez let me go ahead and

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go to Lopez and then mayor pro temp Thank You mayor serviento um yeah so as an ad hoc we've met a couple of times now and I just want to thank staff for staffing us and commander Rodriguez he sits in our meetings and the chief I believe has been to one of our meetings and we had a pull bar expert come to one of our meetings to really educate us on the process and what would be a good and fair process because we can't just you know have a police oversight without

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validating and acknowledging the current rules and state laws in place and so I want to thank staff for working with us a couple of months now and you know we actually compared a lot of different models like Anaheim, Riverside, Oakland, Berkeley I know staff hosted a forum where we had experts that sit on those boards now and so I think it's been a really informational and educational process for all of us to learn about what is what are the best mechanisms to have in such an ordinance and what is the best way to go about you know

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establishing not just a board but also establishing or enshrining it in our charter or giving Santa Ana residents the opportunity to vote on this and so you know as an ad hoc we we decided that really duplicating you know like what Anaheim does or Oakland or Berkeley does we didn't really fit the need for the city of Santa Ana which is why we as as a committee decided that we wanted to do a hybrid because we also wanted to take into consideration any financial

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aspects to really staffing the board and being able to hire staff and doing all the things that we wanted to see be implemented and so you know I I was really happy to ask you know that we provide the public of report because we have been meeting for a couple of months now and I would like us to essentially move in the direction of directing staff to prepare an ordinance so that this entire council can vote on it and have a public discussion with

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Sanana residents input as well I think another thing that we want to see is you know be part of a charter amendment so that it can be enshrined in our charter and be protected and I think ultimately the timeline for for the ad hoc that we discussed is also putting it up for a vote to the voters so that they can also say this is something that we want to see or not. But that is the sequence of the timeline that we discussed that we were agreed on and that I hope this

Council will also agree on. Great, thank you for those comments. Let me go to Mayor Pro Tem and then to Councilmember Pham. Thank you. So when I approached my

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colleagues back in 2020 about creating a Police Oversight Commission, I meant for it to provide our community the assurance and confidence in a transparent way that our police were truly serving the community. It was not meant to provide those within and outside of our city a way to punish police because of some sort of inherent bias or dislike of law enforcement. Also, to be clear, the ad hoc, at least this ad hoc, has not put forth a formal recommendation for the Council's consideration. We are still working on an ordinance and a charter

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amendment. And in fact, I remember the the conclusion of our last ad hoc committee meeting, Daniel, you can confirm, I think we gave you some more homework to come back to us with. I think there's more work to be done, but I agree we need to get this done this year. There's no reason to continue to push this out. I wish it hadn't been as long, but I do appreciate the fact that between staff and members of this council, there's been a desire to get it right. And there's no easy way to put this together. There's no one model, hence why you see that so far in the meetings that the ad hoc has had, we've looked at some sort

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of hybrid model. Because again, we want to right-size it and right-fit it for Santa Ana. So I wanted to thank you, Daniel, for all the work that you've done with us. And this, you know, just like what you did with the Charter Ad Hoc, I I love your masterful way of utilizing surveys to kind of herd the cats into the same box. So thank you for doing that. I think that's pretty much the reason why we have an informational item tonight, because we were able to just kind of start drilling down on some of those details. We're not 100% there yet, but we are getting there. So I look forward to working with my colleagues

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to get something before the full council and a charter amendment and an ordinance. And I think, just to be clear for myself, I will say that I believe that the Charter Amendment should be something in line or consistent with the Charter language for other commissions. And I think, because I think as we go along with this commission, we're going to be looking at getting it online. We're going to see what works and doesn't work. And so I think a lot of the nuts and bolts details would probably be better served in the form of an ordinance. But with that being said, we're not there yet. We're going to get there.

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I'm excited about it, and I look forward to bringing something back to the full council. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Phan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 38

Thank you, Mayor. I have a lot of questions. Maybe it's not that many. But this is to the Madam City Attorney as well as Daniel. So I'll just start off with my list. Daniel, what is the estimated dollar amount for the committee as recommended by the ad hoc?

Daniel Fahdell, Thank you, Council Member Van. I have not costed out the operating costs for the preference for the ad hoc committee just yet.

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Okay. I did get some information, I believe it's from the ACLU or one of the advocates, and And they estimated anywhere between $1.5 and $1.8 million. You're looking at board member meetings, auto allowances, trainings, director for an office of accountability and transparency, investigative staff, as well as administrative staff. And of course, any of those numbers might change, but essentially it's another department in the city. So I do want to say off the bat that I am not comfortable moving forward with any options until we get something costed out.

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If you're looking for anything between, you know, $1 million is not a small chunk of change. And I think it's possible to look at it through our budget and move things around and see how we make it work. But I do want to see that fleshed out a little bit. And I think that's something that the ad hoc can look at. Another one is, has the ad hoc discussed, and again this might go to Madam City Manager, if the Police Oversight Commission is doing the investigation and the initial punishment, whatever, decision, who does it get appealed to under this model?

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Does it go to the City Council, the City Manager?

I wouldn't be able to answer that question. I think it would be in the manner that you develop it and in the ordinance. I'm a bit confused myself too on the order of the charter versus the ordinance.

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So that's my next question. Oh, okay. So I also would like to hear the ad hoc committee kind of decide if you have this commission, where does it go with the appeal? Because the decision maker as to the punishment, decision, et cetera, would be with the commission. And so you'd have to appeal somewhere unless they go straight to court, which I don't think is the most productive use of our time. Regarding the ordinance and the charter, so I had some concerns and this came out from the Uber case if you look into it

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in the propositions, but essentially I haven't spoken to our city attorney. I would be comfortable supporting an ordinance that establishes an oversight Commission. However, I would like to see a charter amendment come back with special crafting by our city attorney to ensure that it's an affirmation of placing it in our charter. It doesn't have to, but I would like to see some language to that effect. Regarding the subpoena powers, I think

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there's a lot of conversation so far about subpoena powers, whether that's available. We have subpoena powers. Our charter specifically says the City Council and the City Manager and any of their individuals or committees delegated with the authority has subpoena power and so I'd like staff to explore whether we need to add something to the Police Oversight Commission to determine that that authority can be delegated or if by virtue of our existing charter provisions, it's already a function of our government.

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Another one in drafting the ordinance is I know we have a lot of requests to update the police oversight commission, or to create this oversight commission with a lot of power, but we also have labor groups that labor rights and MOUs that would be affected. And so I would like to see whatever this ordinance is to be vetted by staff in our city attorney's office to make sure that we are not in violation of any existing MLUs or labor rights that our unions have.

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Finally, I am generally supportive of the recommendations provided by the ad hoc as to the, I guess, what they can do. I am interested in having a separate investigatory process. As I mentioned to many of you, my husband was a JAG. He, that was his job, he investigated violations of the USMJ.

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However, there are items that are more administrative violations that I don't think is necessary to go to an ad hoc, so I would, or to the Police Oversight Commission. So another area that I would like to see the ad hoc flesh out is what are the violations that are necessary to go to the ad hoc? I keep calling it ad hoc, sorry. To the commission, for example, someone's late, you know, multiple times. Is that a violation of the code or something like that? I don't think that has to go to the commission. It can go to the chief or some other more minor violation. So I would like to see that delineated by this ad hoc committee.

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On top of that, I am not in favor of prohibiting former law enforcement from serving on the Police Oversight Commission and Board. I've thought about this a lot. I know that a lot of folks have spoken to me as to why prohibiting current and former law enforcement officers is important. However, I'm a professional. I am an attorney. My sister's a doctor. If I were going to lose my bar license and I went in front of a board that decided whether I was a good or bad attorney and none of them have ever served or excuse me ever

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practiced as a lawyer, I would have no faith in that system. A police oversight Commission is not just about ensuring the public trusts this process, but also that our law enforcement officers trust this process. We up here have talked many times, I think, about justice. And part of that is, right, in our US Constitution, a jury of your peers. And part of that is because we want the defendant to have faith in the process. And for me, I would lose credibility and faith if I am going before a commission that decides my professional future if none of them have ever had the experience

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of serving in that capacity. I think that by allowing former law enforcement, maybe not current law enforcement, we have that experience, that capacity, but also continue to build that public trust. And this person could be from the FBI, can be from some other law enforcement agency that is not in the Santa Ana Police Department or something like that. That would be my biggest concern because I don't just want the public to have buy-in and to trust this process. I want our officers to have buy-in and trust this process and feel like they are also getting a fair shake. So those are my comments. I know there are a lot of updates.

No, those are excellent comments and certainly I would defer to the city attorney on how anything is legally designed. But you raised some very good issues. So right now in the MOUs, if there's a process outlined for appeal of a grievance or a discipline, it would have to be taken into consideration. The other issue that you raised made me think of, you have an existing personnel services board. And on that personnel board, they do hear appeals for major disciplinary actions. So that involves when someone is suspended, demoted, or terminated. And the majority of the cases that typically go to that personnel services boards

are law enforcement related. So there might need to be some consideration in do you need both? Does this replace that one? And what's the interplay between the two?

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Right. And I know at least you and I have discussed maybe as part of the charter ad hoc to get rid of the personnel board. But if the personnel board is just an appeal body for police oversight, I don't know. That's why I think the charter ad hoc has to continue to flush all of these questions out. And I would be happy to support an ordinance, but I have a lot of questions. Thank you.

Great. Thanks for those comments. Let me go to Councilmember Peñalosa, and then I think Hernandez spoke, but maybe I'll inject myself. I think everybody else has had a chance to speak except for Mendoza.

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Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I want to thank the members of the Ad Hoc for addressing this. I know it's been a long two years. I think it was back in June of 2020 when I and Councilmember Becerra, I believe Mayor Sermiento as well agendized this for full discussion amongst the City Council. So I'm very happy to finally bring it forward because I am supportive of some form of a police oversight commission. I have been all along and I'm happy to see this finally before us. I am not fully supportive of any of, I shouldn't say any, of most of what the ad hoc is recommending

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or the type of commission that they're recommending. I know, I believe I heard one of the suggestions was that the chief of police would be hired or terminated by this commission. I don't agree with that. I'm happy that Councilmember Fan did mention the ability for at least, you know, I don't know how many seats this would have, five, seven, ten seats, but one of those members should have a law enforcement background. Fully supportive of seeing that as part of this commission, whether we could restrict it to just one seat on that commission

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to have a law enforcement background or whatnot. But I think it's very important that we look at this commission, this body, whenever it comes into fruition and see the numerous backgrounds that we should require amongst many of these. I keep thinking of like I believe the personnel board requires one to have a kind of an HR background as well as measure if Could be mistaken, but measure X requires one to have an accounting background as it should you have these bodies and commissions are going to be overseeing Numerous departments and millions of dollars. We should have someone with a Background in that field whatever it is

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So, happy to see that. I do want, and just for the ad hocs, next time they meet, I would want to see, and I know staff is going to have to be more involved in this process, numerous types of an ad hoc commission and the costs associated to each one of them, what it will be. You know, just serving on the charter ad hoc. You know, we brought it up for discussion to see what is the pleasure of the majority of the council to see at a future meeting. And tonight some members mentioned that we were ready to bring forward an ordinance,

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but you know, with no, you know, costs associated to what this would look like, you know, that's troubling. We have to step away from putting the cart before the horses that every time these huge policy changes come forward, it's like let's bring these forward with a full picture of what this is going to cost the taxpayers of Santa Ana at the end of the day.

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That would give us a bigger picture, so I hope that happens soon. I don't want to wait another six months before this happens. I do think that it should happen in the next couple of months to see a full report come back what these different versions of police commissions look like and what the costs would be for each one of them. I would, like with things we have done in the past, I would rather it go to as a charter amendment.

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I keep thinking of what we did with cannabis, retail cannabis, you know, went to the voters, The voters approved it, and then it came back where the City Council had to put forward an ordinance, making, you know, bringing this forward. So I keep thinking of that way to do it. That way it's the communities involved throughout the entire process that this takes place, not just, you know, a handful of people. So that would be it, Mayor Sarmiento, for my comments. just for purposes of direction to staff, what I would like to see at a future,

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hopefully soon, meeting. Great, thank you for those comments.

I think everybody had a chance to speak with the exception of Council Member Mendoza. Are you good, Council Member?

Yes, my colleagues have said pretty much what is appropriate and relevant to this issue, so I'll just say ditto.

Thank you. I know Councilmember Hernandez wants to speak as well. If you don't mind, let me go ahead and just interject some comments as well. I don't think I've had a chance to speak on this, and I'll try to be as brief as possible. So, again, I want to thank the ad hoc committee members, but I do want to thank the public, because, I mean, you know, the community has helped navigate this. And this goes even before the time that I think, you know, Becerra and Peñalosa and I served on. or brought this before the council. This goes back years. And I know it was raised, I think, maybe five, six years ago because the concern was there.

And I think what sometimes gets lost in these discussions is that the way I always saw it is that there lacked balance here, where this is a department that we're very proud of. They do good work, and you can be supportive. But at the same time, like in any department, you want to have accountability. So I think those two things were out of balance, and I think we're trying to bring those in balance, because I think right now, one of the things that compelled me to look at this is that 60% of the general fund is, you know, dedicated to this. So we want to make sure that the

public has an opportunity to opine, and we have commissions on arts and culture. So if we have something like that for, you know, where we have members of the public, you know, participating for that than we certainly should when it comes to public safety, when it comes to police oversight. But I also have seen models, and I remember when we first started discussing these, there were almost a three-tier set of ways you can go through this where you had a model like Anaheim's, which was very advisory and very sort of thin, if you know, if you know, if maybe I could use that adjective.

Then you had sort of a middle tier, which was the Riverside model, which was, you know, a blend. And then you had Berkeley, Oakland, which was probably the most involved and, you know, the most costly. So I just thought, you know, let's, I do agree we should, you know, look at the costs on all of those. But again, for us to go through an exercise and stand up a commission that is going to do nothing and is going to be meaningless and is going to be purely advisory, then that doesn't make any sense either. Then why go through this exercise? There are plenty of other investigatory authorities that already are in place.

You have internal affairs. You have the district attorney. You have those investigative bodies that already do that. So I feel like if we're going to do something, then it has to be substantive and meaningful. If not, then this is a pointless exercise. What I do agree with is I do see that, and this is a conversation I've had with the city attorney for years now, The Personnel Board, I think, really is an interesting board. I don't know exactly what they do. They're part of the Charter, you know, and they do have certain powers and authorities, but, you know, it's still very vague.

to the extent that that maybe goes away in place of something like this would be my preference. And I, you know, I do think that, you know, the way the sequence of events should work is, you know, this should come back to us irrespective of the charter, you know, discussion. I think that if we want to stand up a commission, then we could stand that up irrespective of, you know, of it being placed as a consideration for an amendment to the Charter. We have commissions that are not part of our Charter already, and so we certainly have the discretion to do that.

And if we choose to, in addition, place this as an amendment to the Charter for the voters to consider, we can do that as well. So I think we can do both. You know, finally, I think, you know, on the whole discussion of whether or not we have law enforcement or not, law enforcement is already involved in the review of very sensitive items. Again, I just, you know, said the district attorney reviews any homicides, any officer-involved shootings. The internal affairs go through their internal investigations as well. So you have law enforcement very involved at every stage.

This is simply inserting the public, and that's the difference. So, you know, that's, I think, the whole purpose of going through this discussion. And if, you know, again, if it's going to be something that is just sort of superficial and it's not going to do much, then look, we're throwing good money, you know, at something that's not going to bring us any results that we want to see, which is, again, to make sure that we have a department that, you know, has, you know, 100% compliance with, you know, with good practices. And I think that's what

everybody wants to see in any discipline, whether it's, you know, doctors who have to be overseeing by their regulatory agency, lawyers, you know, by their members of the state bar. You know, we all have those oversight bodies. So this is something that I think just falls in line with that. Those are my comments. Hopefully those are, you know, clear directions to the staff to come back. I would say, you know, we've gone through this discussion over and over. This shouldn't take months. I think, you know, this should come back much sooner than later. The ad hoc is a very talented group of council members,

and we've got a talented group of staff and this isn't rocket science, we could bring it back and we could discuss it and, you know, and go through it. And maybe we dedicate a special meeting to it. We did that for the WHO. I think this warrants this as well. We can have members of the public come and talk to us. We could have a much more robust discussion, but I'm certainly willing to do that just because it warrants that type of discussion. In any event, let me go ahead and bring it back for one last comment to Councilmember Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 38

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to reference the Montana Innocence Project in light of Councilmember Fan's comments about allowing officers to serve on this commission using the example of a lawyer that and somebody who's never practiced law the difference between a bad lawyer and an officer who breaks the law is that the issue of bad lawyers often time you don't have to work with a bad lawyer there's a firm people can get fired, they can switch firms, but you don't have a choice as a consumer to have to pick a bad lawyer. You can vet, there's different processes

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 38

you can go through. The issue of police officers not willing to break the blue wall of silence is real. We saw that as evidenced in the Derek Chauvin case and it challenged police culture in a way that is still reverberating throughout this community. And the issue of misconduct is systemic versus the issue of having a lawyer lose their license. So the issue that we're looking at is systemic. It's a very different example. And part of why I'm bringing this up is because we don't have criminals investigating criminals. And when

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 38

somebody breaks the law, we need to treat it that way. And we need to treat it with the utmost integrity and ethics to make sure that we are doing our due diligence to protect taxpayers, to protect community members from officers that are repeat offenders of misconduct.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 38

Unfortunately, there is a project that had to document this, the Montana Innocence Project. And they go into depth about the blue wall of silence is inspired and maintained by the strong subculture in policing. Former police lieutenant with the Boston Police Department, Tom Nolan, argues that the subculture promotes a cult and a culture that enforces deliberate misrepresentation. In his essay, Behind the Blue Wall of Silence, he discusses how he was tasked with teaching officers creative report writing that told a rendition of the truth that was designed to hide an officer's wrongdoing.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 38

He also discusses how the worst thing an officer can do was not brutality or corruption, but rather talking to the media. Nolan argues that the secrecy is promoted and rewarded time and time again and beyond that. Nolan says that mastering secrecy is seen as a representation of brotherhood concerning the value of placing on concealing the truth of the subculture of policing. It makes sense that officers are reluctant to call each other out. FBI agent Philip Hayden wrote in an opinion column on USA Today, Cops Don't Rat on Cops. The same culture that we have in the barrios where people say, you know, snitches get stitches,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 38

is this culture also exists in policing, and it's well known.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 38

And to follow up his comments, Philip Hayden, a former FBI agent, says that the blue wall is one of the many factors that further pushes the widening divide between the world as seen by law enforcement and the world experienced by citizens whom officers are sworn to protect. So the issue of not having officers on this board is a matter of integrity and ethics and values and those values are that we are going to center our community members and we're going to center those good officers that are honoring their badge because unfortunately we cannot afford to have a board that is going to

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 38

undo the good work that people of Santa Ana have fought for take for instance the personnel board where there was an officer that broke the law lost his job and then the personnel board brought him back that's not justice in any field you could never ever go back to that work to that to that field of work I mean take for instance people that break the law in our field they could never ever serve on a council or or a or board in the in the county of Orange so so it's important for us to remember why we're we're tasked with having to create oversight and in order to do that we need to make sure that we are doing everything that

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 38

we can to make sure that this Commission is is as strong as it needs to be and And lastly, I would like to see the Personnel Board disbanded. If we're going to have an oversight commission, there would be no need for us to have the Personnel Board. I just think it's duplicative and it's a waste of taxpayers' resources and staff. So in the event that we do get this done, I wouldn't want to see the Personnel Board stay. I just don't think there would be a need for it.

Great. Thank you for those comments. Thank you. Mayor Pro Temp.

Phil BacerraItem 38

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just, I didn't want to comment, but I just can't hold back on this. You know, I don't appreciate saying that criminals are investigating criminals. I mean, to say that our cops are inherently criminals, I think is just a very, it's just, it's a misguided judgment. Are there bad cops? Sure. There are bad, all kinds of different professions. But just to say that, I think really that's just not fair to our police. I'm obviously here advocating for a Police Oversight Commission. I think it's important to have transparency.

Phil BacerraItem 38

But I think let's not go so far as to say that we have criminals, police, and criminals. And to the point about the Personnel Commission, the Personnel Commission is who allowed the officer to come back. They are not cops. Those were folks that could very easily be appointed to the Police Oversight Commission. So I just, I I understand that there's concerns about making sure that the Commission isn't biased. And yes, the thin blue line is something where, yes, there's a camaraderie and they want to protect their own, but I don't think it's fair to just outright label it as criminals policing criminals.

Phil BacerraItem 38

I think there are some concerns. I mean, I'll say personally out loud right now, I don't think any current or former Santa Ana police officers should serve on the Police Oversight Commission, But I think we would be limiting our ability to have a very experienced Commission if we limited ourselves from having anybody with law enforcement experience on the Commission. But I do concur with some of the concerns, but I just think let's not just generalize and mislabel a lot of good folks that work for our city and do a lot of good work. Thank you.

Thanks. Council Member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 38

Yeah, thank you. I just want to bring this back to next steps and I do want to thank the council members for their advice you know we decided to put this report out there because we wanted to be transparent about where we are in the process and so I think I heard that there is consensus to you know have staff bring back language for the Charter amendment and I think you know that is

Jessie LopezItem 38

because there is a timeline of when we need to submit language and clerk feel free to correct me if I'm not you know by when you need that I think that's why that is time sensitive and I would like for staff to let me know if you've heard enough direction or if you're clear on that specific action step for for y'all on your end and I'm not opposed to having you know some sort of special meeting to really address this as a full body because you know we you know we've said we were recommending some sort of hybrid model but I think it the

Jessie LopezItem 38

conversation might just be more useful if all of the commerce if all of the council members are part of it because we've seen different models and you know I heard a request to compare some more so I don't want to you know if it's not a Brown Act violation if we can send the models that the ad hoc saw to the full council or if we can just you know compare them you know in a special session I think that would be most useful and the best way to use our time

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 38

at this point I may just make one quick comment I would just that I can just to try to bring this full circle full circle and bring it back one of the things I think you need to keep in mind is that we have models out in California that have been tried and tested and what I heard this evening is we don't want the cookie cutter model we want to design something that's special to Santa Ana and that fits Santa Ana I think one of the challenges that we will face because I want to be upfront with the full council is that we're going to be taking direction from the ad hoc committee or the full council trying to

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 38

put together a new ordinance that balances all these things are already in your charter you're a city manager form of government you cannot forget that the city manager is in charge of all personnel in this city with the exception of the three people that the city council hires. That's a reality. And that's something that we'll have to draft for as we look into this. We are a city that has a civil service process. So these employees are entitled to certain rights under the civil service process. The personnel board is an important component of that civil service process. If you want us to examine ways to look at

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 38

the police review commission as an alternative to that board, that can be done, but that's going to take some some really deep thinking and some work we also have to be mindful of POBAR you mentioned that the ad hoc committee was given by an expert an update on that and I would encourage other council members if they'd like to receive that same training or update to contact me so that we make sure you all have equal information when you're reviewing these items and then finally we have to be mindful of the labor relations issue so I think what cities struggle with when

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 38

they're looking at police review commissions is this are you creating the police review commission to bring transparency to your department and to build trust with your community and to address some of the social concerns that have been raised tonight that's one issue are you using the police review commission to be the body that provides a due process to your employees and I've heard a little bit of both tonight so I think that it's gonna be very important for all of you to understand deeply what your charter says and what these laws say because you're gonna have an idea of what you want and you're gonna be asking

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 38

me or my team to draft something that's not cookie cutter and I may have to go research this issue I may have to go chase something down I can pull out of the drawer what the city of Oakland did or what the city of Riverside did or the city of Anaheim and say yes those legal issues have been vetted but to the extent that you're gonna be proposing concepts and ideas you have to understand that I'm gonna have to look at all these laws and make sure that they all fit. So just keep that in mind when you're looking at your timeline. Keep in mind that we might have to start with a smaller model than you anticipated and that

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 38

maybe that's something you build upon. But I just want to manage your expectations because this is not something that we can get wrong. Yeah, I agree. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. I think because I'm giving a little bit more leeway to the ad hoc members because they've taken a deeper dive on this and that's the whole purpose of having an ad hoc. Last comment by Councilmember Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 38

Thank you. And thank you, Mayor Pro Tem Becerra. I just wanted to clarify, I didn't say criminals investigating criminals. I said criminals don't investigate criminals. Point of clarification, but I fully concur with your comment, sir. Thank you.

Great. Excellent. I think we've heard from everybody in detail. This is obviously going to be coming back to us, and you've heard a lot of direction. So we do have some other items that we do need to get to. I think Sonia and Christine, you both summarized this well. Go ahead, Councilmember Pham.

Thai Viet PhanItem 38

Does staff have clear direction? I just, I'm asking so that none of us are confused about what staff heard.

So I am a little bit, thank you for, I'm a little bit confused because I have heard, let's move the charter item since we are facing a deadline, which I believe according to the city clerk schedule it's a June 7th so that would be something I think probably does need to be timely but I'm also hearing that several of you don't care of the preference of the order that we could move forward with an ordinance which as you just heard from the city attorney is going to take some time to craft so I am synthesizing it to be you want us to kind of move down both paths and if you're amenable to it I can work with

the city attorney and we can create that ordinance that maybe is the starting point that tries to address the concerns that we've heard you and the goals that you're trying to achieve but isn't going from zero to a $2 million model, but something that we think can work as we sift through all of the potential conflicts that could arise from creating this for the very first time. If that's okay with all of you, we certainly can go down those two paths. Does that work for everyone?

Yeah, I think, you know, we probably want to see, I've heard both, so maybe, you know, I guess those are the things that we were hoping we could explain tonight is that, you know, there are iterations of what, you know, the ad hoc, you know, was mentioning, charter before ordinance, ordinance before charter, or both on parallel paths. But I think if that can be brought back to us. Again, I think to limit it to just an informational item right now is really difficult. I think this is an item that needs to be brought back on a special. I mean, it really doesn't, I mean, you can't really get as deep as we'd like to do on this.

And I think because we need to give a little bit more specific information, we could try to do it tonight, but we're not going to do a good job.

So then I'm very clear on scheduling a special meeting where we can do this in more in depth, and then we'll have some of those questions answered for you by the special meeting.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 38

Mayor, if I can just make a quick comment. I just want someone, one of the council members that asked me to remind the council of this, I forgot. You currently have a charter provision. It's section 1100 in your charter. And it says the city council, the city manager, or any person or committee authorized by either of them shall have the power to inquire into the conduct of any office, any department, any agency, or officer of the city, and to make investigation as to city affairs for that purpose, and may subpoena witnesses, administer oaths, and compel the productions of books and papers.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 38

In my opinion, this charter provision already empowers us to do many things that you could put into your ordinance, right? And then we could work on those details, and then you could then either affirm that ordinance through the charter, or you could affirm the ordinance itself. It has the same effect. If you affirm the ordinance, you don't need the Charter Amendment because the ordinance could only be amended by a vote of people. So that's just something to keep in mind. We can iron that out at a special meeting.

Good point. So I think if anything, you know, also, you know, what I would say staff after all the direction or what you've heard, comments and remarks you've heard from the Council, work with the ad hoc committee. You already have a group of Council members that can go ahead and do scheduling and bring back, you know, versions of what the Council would like to see back. In any event, thank you for all your comments. Council, let me go ahead and move along to the next item, item number 39. This is the public hearing on the resolution for the relocation of the Fairview Bridge replacement.

And before we go to that item, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to the clerk to see if she has any members of the public that would wish to address us on this item.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the Council. We did not receive any written communications, and I do see only, and we did not receive any in-person speaker cards. However, I do see one person who has their hand raised.

Zoom ID Manny Escamilla, if you would please. Thank you. Did you wanna provide a comment on item number 39, which is the public hearing? Thank you. You may proceed. Okay. Thank you so much, Mayor and Council. Yeah, appreciate the time and consideration. I just wanted to provide a little observations on this particular project. so definitely worth supporting the funds that are deserved to the folks that are going to be moved out. So anything that they can get is good. I did want to point though that, at least as a point of clarification, I think page 121 of the 2020 mitigated negative declaration on this project

seemed to have indicated that it was only going to be a side yard loss for the widening, for a visual corridor. And if you look at the diagrams on page 23 and 51, it seems to agree with the observation in the written report that it was only to be a side yard loss, not an actual impact to the structure. Though Jason would obviously have more detailed diagrams there and it would defer to him. However, at least the public documents on this item seem to have indicated that it was only a side yard loss, not a loss of the actual structure. And that what was required was really anything

two and a half feet and lower. So even a two and a half foot pony wall kind of surrounding the property would still meet the requirements for visual corridor necessary for traffic safety purposes. In that the property itself is also though owner occupied is also renter occupied. So there are a total of nine people with four households as a seven renters in a duplex dwelling that primarily speaks Spanish. So I know that that's might be already a little detail too late for the approval of the agreement, but I did want to provide you that information

prior to the ending of this meeting tonight. And I do look forward to working with all of you there in whatever capacity I can and appreciate your time and hope you have the great rest of the evening.

Thank you, Mayor. I think that was the last caller that I have.

Great, thank you. Let me go ahead and formally open the public hearing on this item and see if staff has a presentation.

Yes, Mayor, we do have a brief presentation. Executive Director of Public Works, Nabil. Bill?

Can you turn on the microphone, Nabil, please?

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of the City Council. I have a short presentation for you on the resolution approving relocation plan for the Fairview bridge replacement and street improvement.

Next.

A residential, why a relocation plan is needed. The residential property at the northeast corner of Fairview and 9th Street is acquired for site distant clearances. The portion of the building is blocking the site distance for vehicles entering Fairview Street from 9th Street. Relocation plan evaluates the present circumstances and replaces housing requirement of project tenants.

As you can see, if traffic is exiting 9th Street going onto Fairview Street, the side distance is obstructed by an existing structure right now, and it's higher than just a garden wall. It is a house or a building that is obstructing that view. And for traffic safety issues, that structure needs to be removed. Next, please.

Fairview Relocation Plan has been prepared in conformance with the applicable provisions of the California Government Code, Title 25. Each potential displaced occupant was given a written notification regarding the plan, availability, and an opportunity to submit questions and comments. No comments were received by the end of the relocation plan public notification period on March 15 of 2022. Next.

The next steps in the project is to finalize one full and one partial acquisition, relocate the impacted owners and tenants, coordinate with Caltrans for right-of-way certification by August 2022, coordinate with Caltrans headquarters for construction funding allocation by early 2023. The next would be to advertise the project for construction in spring of 2023, and then start construction in early summer of 2023.

The recommended action is to adopt a relocation plan in order for the city to meet federal relocation assistance and real property acquisition policies prior to the relocating impacted owners and tenants. That concludes my presentation. and I'm open for any questions you may have.

Great, thank you, Nabil, Director Saba. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the Council if there's any questions or comments on this item. Mayor Pro Tem.

Phil BacerraItem 39

Thank you. Director Saba, so we had somebody call in and say that it was going to be a side yard loss, and looking at the graphic, it looks more like the site of a building loss. Is it probably more accurate to say that it would be site of a building loss versus a side yard loss?

Oh, it's a site.

Phil BacerraItem 39

No, no, no, but I'm saying that red line went through the building.

Yes.

Phil BacerraItem 39

So in other words, it wasn't just creeping up on the easement or the side of the yard. In other words, it's going through the building.

It's going through the building. Right now, you don't see incoming traffic when you're making that turn or you're going into.

Phil BacerraItem 39

But I just wanted to get clarification because we heard somebody say something different, but from what I saw in your exhibit, it looks like that building's in the way, not just the side yard.

It's in the way.

Phil BacerraItem 39

Okay, great. Thank you. That's all I had.

Any other questions or comments? Councilmember Phan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

Nabeel, will you clarify? So I'm looking at the ISM&D. I believe that is the final ISM&D. And on page 18, it does show that APN 405-213-14 would be the full acquisition in orange. And APN 405-213-02 would be the partial acquisition. And that is consistent with the presentation tonight and the items that have been presented to us?

That's correct. Okay. It will be a full acquisition of one and a partial of the other. In fact, the next one may be like an easement more than a partial acquisition.

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

Great. And it looks like this was approved in June 2020. And according to the list, we had several hearings, I believe. I believe it was Artesia Pilar had a general meeting at George Washington Carver Elementary on May 22, 2018. We had another public hearing via presentation video April 22, 2020. Artesia Pilar neighborhood community virtual meeting via Zoom June 23, 2021. In person community meeting at El Salvador Community Center July 24, 2021. Riverview neighborhood community virtual meeting via Zoom August 12, 2021, and then tonight. I believe those are all of the meetings that we've had regarding this item, correct?

I believe so, yes.

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

Great. Thank you. So I just want to clarify, this is not something that just came up a few months ago.

It's been in the works for years now.

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

Great. And those property owners who are potentially subject to this item, they've been aware of this issue?

Yes, property owners and the tenants.

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

Great. And usually when we have these types of items, we also notify, I think it's within 100 feet, 500 feet?

In this particular, I am not sure about that. This was an acquisition, so it didn't require.

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

But like the CEQA document would have had notification quite broadly. Absolutely. Great, thank you.

Great, any other questions or comments? Seeing none, so I'm not sure if there's a motion on them. Go ahead, Director Sama.

Mayor, there was a comment about Spanish-speaking resident of the property. The staff report and the acquisition or the relocation plan acknowledges that, and we've met with them, and they were interviewed, and that language barrier is not there because there was communication in Spanish with the residents. Great.

No, I appreciate it. Thank you, Director Saba. So you know, if there is, you know, if somebody wants to go ahead and move the item.

Thai Viet PhanItem 39

I'll move the item.

So I'll go ahead and second with comment. So I think looking at a photograph with a dotted line is not the same thing as it being consistent with a mitigated negative deck. So that's what the question was. Yeah, you could look at a photograph, but that's not technical information. So we just want to make sure that there's consistency in our documents. So that's where I think the question lies, not looking at something that has a dotted line going through it. So that being said, there's a motion and a second on the floor. Council members, please meet.

Actually, let me close the public hearing before we vote, and now we can go ahead and vote.

Council Member Lopez, would you mind voting?

Okay, motion passes 6-1 with Councilmembers Hernandez, Mendoza, Peñalosa, Van, Mayor Plotembe-Serra, Mayor Samantha Vodinés, and Councilmember Lopez dissenting.

Great. Thank you, everybody. Let me go ahead and move along to the next public hearing, which is item number 40. This is on the Housing Opportunity Ordinance. Let me go ahead and turn it over to the clerk to go ahead and make her remarks.

Thank you. Okay, for any member of the public that join us by way of Zoom, if you would like to provide any comments, please dial star 6 on your phone or select the raise hand feature. And we did have in-person speakers.

Did you say we had people online as well?

We do not have anyone with their hands raised at this time.

Excellent. So we have four speaker cards. Let me begin with Adam Wood, followed by John Hanna, Victor Mendez, and then Francisco Gomez.

Do you want a public hearing officially, Mayor?

What's that?

Did you want to open the public hearing officially?

Yes. Let me go ahead. Normally what we do is I hear the public comments and I go ahead and open it. But in any event, go ahead, Adam.

Mayor, Council, staff, Adam Wood with the Building Industry Association. Thank you for the opportunity to comment tonight. We've been through this a number of times over the last couple of months. So you probably know our position pretty well by now. But the point I wanted to make is the fact that it has been over the last couple of months. We've had plenty of time to study this policy. But honestly, we really haven't. Before we get to a vote tonight, I think it's absolutely essential we look at two key questions. What's the per door cost of mandatory skilled and trained labor?

And what is the nexus of why we're linking the housing opportunity ordinance to require skilled and trained? Now, if you want to go down that road and that's great, let's talk about skilled and trained. Let's figure out how we can make that work. But I don't understand why we're linking it to a policy that we know doesn't work. At $15 a square foot, zero new projects entered the pipeline. This is an absolute anchor that you're tying these two things together, and there's no natural link for why these two things have to be brought under the same banner. So let's look for different things that we can do.

You know, I know there was a proposal in the language that says, okay, well, it's going to be $15 a square foot, but if you use the skilled and trained, maybe $10, maybe $5. That's not real mitigation. The costs are nowhere near to offsetting by bringing those numbers down in that fashion. So let's come up with something that does work. But why are we doing it this way? It doesn't make any sense. And when you do it this way, it all but guarantees what we're doing here is you're going to reduce housing opportunity. When you reduce the housing opportunity, you're removing the very jobs that they'd be competing to try and get.

So I don't see this being productive on any front to continue down this road in a way that reduces housing. It's going to increase cost citywide when you have fewer housing opportunities. And you're taking away job opportunities. I don't it doesn't make sense and I hope that we can get some clarity on on why we're approaching it in this way and What we can do to ensure that Santa Ana remains a place that is Welcoming and we have policies that make housing affordable for everyone in this town the way we're going about it We're going to stop all that the who is only financed

Through the in-lue fees when you're actually doing construction This is a policy that stops construction. Let's come up with something better. Thanks

John Hanna followed by Victor Mendez followed by Francisco Gomez.

Mr. Mayor, Council members, staff, John Hanna with the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters representing 65,000 carpenters throughout the Southwest and many in Santa Ana. I want to say that this hasn't been a couple of months. This has been a couple of years we've talked about this issue. There's been plenty of time to vet this, and what we heard is part of the problem, which is the industry doesn't really want to incentivize affordable housing construction, nor care about the workforce that's building them.

So fortunately, we have a council who wants to deal with that. I think, you know, there's been a lot of compromises built into this. The affordable housing advocates have stressed that that's a real priority, but they're willing to ensure that they're not going to leave the workforce behind. The reality is that we haven't had the affordable housing. The market rate is where they're going, and we need more affordable housing. And that includes workforce housing, the moderate income housing.

You've got a lot of hospital workers, teachers, union construction workers who are going to the Inland Empire. They're leaving Santa Ana because they can't get good quality at the right price. This housing opportunity ordinance will incentivize that. But the other thing, that there is a nexus. This is the, we're dealing with housing, and the construction of housing has a direct nexus to the affordability and the ability of the workforce to have something here locally. The other thing that escapes the critics is that, you know, where's the current solution for trying to reduce the environmental impact of construction in this city?

This program will do it. When you have a local hire component with this kind of policy, it will reduce vehicle miles traveled. That's not me talking. That's the South Coast Air Quality Management District talking. So you have improved environment. You're going to have more affordable units produced, and you're not going to leave your workforce behind. You're going to ensure that local Santa Ana youth who want to go into construction are going to have opportunities to work here at home.

The reality is that you have advocated this Housing Opportunity Ordinance because, number one, affordable housing was not being built here in the city to the extent it's needed. And second, you don't want to leave the workforce behind like the status quo is. I urge your adoption of this, and we've got years to come to try and, if there are improvements that are needed, we'll work with them. We'll sit down. We just need a partner, Adam, to sit down with this city. Thank you very much.

Thank you for those comments, John. Victor Mendez followed by Francisco Gomez.

Thank you, John. And I just want to echo what John said. And I really see this situation as something of kind of similar to what the rent ordinance was. You're giving up so little and you're going to get so much in return. And what's being asked is not a lot. As John said, there's a lot of flexibility. And the opportunities to turn around affordable housing, to create jobs, to create a sustainable workforce are there. And like I said, for just so little, and all they're really asking is just a little piece of what the BIA has to kind of expand some great things and opportunities for all the citizens. It seems pretty simple to me.

I don't think we have to beat it up. And like John said, they're willing to work five years out to figure it out. I mean, it's kind of a no-lose proposition if you go forward. but if you don't go forward, you stand to lose a lot. That's for sure. The other thing, I do live in affordable housing, a senior citizen complex, but I'm surprised about the amount of people that still work. They're at least 63. And every one of them says how grateful they are. I keep wearing a pound.

How grateful they are to be living in a place they can afford. They're fairly local. So there's no doubt this has a lot of great multiplier effects. And again, it's just about creating a respectable fair opportunity for everyone. Thank you.

Thank you, Victor. Our last speaker is Francisco Gomez.

Good evening. Long night. I'm an example of your local hire. Right now, I'm unemployed, but I'm waiting on your Santa Ana City College. It's kicking off. That'll be great for me because that'll keep me close to home. You know, traveling long hours on the freeway to and from work, it's just enough after you go eight hours of hanging drywall, framing the entire part of what we do on a daily basis. So the one thing I do want to implement, especially skilled and trained, which I'm a part of,

but local hire, something like that, because I'm taking advantage of it, hopefully I'll be working at Santa Ana City College. That will be very important for somebody like me that if this does happen, local hire will be probably one of the biggest things that's going to help me and my family out. So thank you very much, and I appreciate your time.

Thank you. That was our last in-person speaker. Madam Clerk, you said nobody is on the line, correct?

Correct, Mayor, but I did want to announce that we did receive written communication. We had seven Santa Ana organizations in support, two county organizations in support of the item, and then one county organization commented over the labor requirement. That's all we had.

Great. Thank you. So I'm going to go ahead and ask staff if there's a presentation that they wish to provide?

We do. Executive Director Mintai will do the presentation.

Thank you, City Manager Ridge. Good evening, Mayor and member of the Council. We do have a brief presentation. This item is regarding the Affordable Housing Opportunity and Creation Ordinance. The proposed action and recommendation from staff is the reintroduction of the zoning ordinance amendment number 21 2021-3 repealing and reenacting article 40 18.1 of chapter 41 of the Santa Municipal Code regarding the housing opportunity ordinance the recommendation for the City Council is to approve the first reading of the ordinance and adopt

the brief background on this is that the City Council previously conducted the first reading of this ordinance on November 16th of 2021 by a vote of 4 2 and 1 the second reading of the ordinance on February 15th did not receive the necessary majority vote from the member of the council with a vote of 3 to 2 and the reason for that vote is that with the first reading councilmember Fann was able to participate in the vote however she had to abstain from the second reading due to a complaint that was filed in December of 2021,

alleging that she violated the conflict of interest provision of the Political Reform Act with the FPPC.

On March 16th, the Councilmember received a notification from the enforcement of the FPPC that they will not pursue the matter.

Oh.

I'm going to go ahead and do a second. Thank you.

There we go. We thought Director Tai was giving a monologue or something. I just, you know.

I was doing so well. Thank you. Let me see where was I. So the, based on the new information, the mayor directs the staff to place the ordinance on the agenda, re-inducing the ordinance for first adoption reading. So the final ordinance that is being presented to UNITE is the exact same ordinance that was presented on February 15th, where the second reading of the vote was to occur. And that version, in exact form, is attached at Exhibit 1 to the staff report.

The summary of the key enhancement and changes of the ordinance include the applicability threshold and in-lieue fee options, incentivizing project to incorporate skilled and trained workforce as well as local hire. Another key is to prioritize the production of housing for large families, address regulatory for applicable investing, and then also extend the period of the in lieu payment fee.

During the second reading of—I'm sorry, during the first reading, the Council provided direction for the second reading in terms of refinements that included some of these additional refinements to the original ordinance, including reducing the inclusionary for the for sale units to 5 percent, also requiring affirmative votes by five members of the Council in order to modify the in-lieu fee structure, as well as incorporating the 1.5 multiplier for local density bonus, among some other refinements that's listed on this page.

To go over some of the key components of this ordinance in terms of the applicability threshold, So the threshold applies to projects with five or more units requiring a zone change, a general planment, or a density increase within the zone. It also includes city-initiated zone change and general plan amendments since November of 2011.

As for the inclusion requirements, in terms of for-sale units, as previously mentioned, it's only requiring 5% at the moderate level to be produced. For rental units, there are a number of different requirements that can be individually satisfied or as a blended rate. 15% for low or 10% for very low and 5% for extremely low. However, if a project developer is to produce a blended rate project, meaning that they have all three components, that drafts down to 5% low, 3% for very low, and 2% for extremely low equaling to the 10 percent.

In terms of the in-lieu fee schedule, there's a sliding scale between five and nine units. It's $6 per habitable square foot should a developer choose to opt for the in-lieu fee schedule instead of building on-site. And it goes all the way up to 20 units or more at $15 per square foot of habitable area. The skill and training labor workforce and local hire was a new requirement of this proposed ordinance and it applies to projects of 20 or more units. And the council provides instruction for this particular component to be phase in in two

different phases. So, the first phase would be ending on December 31st of 2025.

If a developer opt to pay $15, there would be no requirements for incorporation of skill and train. And then at $10, it would be 30 percent plus two trades plus 20 percent local hire and so forth and so on down to $5. After the December 31st, 2025 date, starting January 1st, 2026, it increases and also becomes basically mandatory for all three fee levels.

So tonight, the proposed action before the City Council is to reintroduce the ordinance and approve the ordinance, conduct a first reading of the ordinance.

Great. Thank you for that presentation, Director Tai. Let me go ahead and close the public hearing, bring it back to the City Council for its consideration. And let me start with the ad hoc members. Let me thank staff, first of all, for all the work that they've done. And thank you for the summary of all the work that we did in advance, right? I mean, where we were, I think before November, there was quite a bit of work done. So we're revisiting, you know, a lot of that now. But to the extent that you all have engaged the public and, you know, members who came here to speak to us tonight,

we dedicated, I think, an entire meeting to just receiving input from, you know, both the industry, labor, and the affordable housing, you know, residents themselves. So I think all that has been discussed thoroughly.

All I would say is that to the extent that we have dug in pretty deep on this one, and it has been something that we've talked ad nauseum about, one of the things that compelled me, I think, was something John Hanna just said. I went out to visit the Carpenters Training Headquarters over in Buena Park, and I saw a lot of people that were residents of ours that were working and learning and being apprentices there and, you know, listening to Francisco right now gave me sort of an ancillary benefit to what this is, you know, what is happening here tonight.

It's not just trying to create more affordable housing while we're still creating a lot of market rate housing. You know, this is not to the detriment of the market rate industry. I think it's, you know, they go hand in hand. But what I saw is that as we're doing this, we're also creating jobs for folks who are reentering, folks who are developing a skill, folks who need this opportunity to be able to stay and live here in Southern California. I mean, it is very challenging these days. But the plan that a lot of those apprenticeship programs have is something that, to me, really inspired me. It was something that I hadn't seen.

And sometimes when you see it firsthand and you speak to people who go through the program, it really does change your thoughts about things. And so I want to thank him and thank the apprentices that were there that are going through the program that choose this construction field. And to thank members of the ad hoc, thank you, Councilmember Fan, who I think it was her amendment that included this. you know, what I would say is this is, you know, when I was looking at other ordinances, very few have language like this in it. So this is a big win, I think, for skilled and trained

workers and labor. You know, this is something that hopefully other communities will emulate. And I remember when we were the first city to do the community workforce agreement. Nobody had done it then. Now it's more common. You start seeing other cities, you know, saying, hey, we can do this. And so, you know, people, I remember said the sky is going to fall back then when we did it, and you know, what a terrible idea it was. And we were courageous enough to do it, and now we see that that's not the case. In fact, it provides a lot of opportunities for members of our community.

And I love the fact that, you know, we're talking about the multiplier effect. When we put money in the hands of workers and residents, that money stays here. That money circulates here. That money is spent here at restaurants and shops and in small businesses. So that's the real other ancillary benefit we receive from this. So in any event, let me go ahead and turn it over to my colleagues on the ad hoc, and then we'll open it up to the full Council. Let me start with Councilmember Fan and then Councilmember Lopez.

Thai Viet PhanItem 40

Thank you, Mayor. I'm so excited to have this opportunity to address this item.

Thai Viet PhanItem 40

I know that I say that tongue in cheek, but it's been extremely frustrating to know that the FPPC complaint was politically motivated. It created a lot of heartburn. It was really difficult for me to feel like I did something wrong when I clearly did not.

Thai Viet PhanItem 40

As a public official, we face these types of issues and policy concerns all the time, but it really is extremely disheartening when someone uses a process for something that is legitimate, conflicts of interest, and use it to politicize an issue and to attack rather than to work with us on a particular matter. With the extension of time, the so first off, the first round of inquiry, right, we did have a lot of meetings. We did notify a lot of builders, labor, etc. The second time around when I found out about this, I spoke to a few folks, but you know what? All of these builders and labor groups, they got notification about it.

Thai Viet PhanItem 40

In fact, I found out this was agendized from a housing advocate. No one reached out to me to say, hey, let's work on this. Let's fix the language. Let's do something about it. They have the time. And so, you know, to address a couple of the comments that were brought up, first is, you know, what is the per door cost of skilled and trained? I would question, well, show me that you couldn't do it. Nobody plans to show us a pro forma. Nobody's interested in disclosing what is so difficult and what's so expensive about building here in Santa Ana when we know Santa Ana is cheaper to build in than in many other cities in Orange County.

Thai Viet PhanItem 40

Regarding the natural link, I truly believe there is a natural link in ensuring the people who build homes can afford the homes that they build, to ensuring that our residents who live and work here are able to continue to do so. And for me, there's no reason why we couldn't fight for housing availability of all types and job availability of all types. You know, we support the minimum wage, even though many businesses say, well, it's going to run us out of business. We support a lot of other initiatives because we know it is the right thing to do.

Thai Viet PhanItem 40

And I still challenge all of our developer friends to bring projects forward that are creative, that are interesting, that take advantage of the new state mandates. Many of us know that the general plan update will be coming forward soon and I look forward to addressing that and joining the public hearing on that. But there are a lot of permit streamlining benefits that are on the way and that means that developers are not going to need to come to this council every single time to get a general plan amendment to get a zone change or whatever. They're going to be able to take advantage of those shortened timelines and save money. And

Thai Viet PhanItem 40

And what we do know is that developers are already using skilled and trained workforce. We know that it's been happening. In fact, the two projects that were about to pull permits at $15 a square foot had that in their pro forma. And the previous council changed the ordinance to help them with COVID, but the world's changing again. And I think that we really need to make sure that as we promote housing in this city at at all different levels, we also promote equitable work and valued work. And so with that, I would move to approve this ordinance for first reading, thank you.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 40

I will second your motion.

Great, we have a motion and a second. Let me go ahead and turn it over to the third member of the ad hoc committee, Councilmember Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 40

Thank you, Mayor. You know, we've, as you said, and as Councilmember Phan said, we've discussed this in length, And I think, you know, Councilmember Phan, I'm happy to hear that you were cleared from the FPPC. And I think we're all ready to vote on this now that we know none of us here have any conflicts. And so I don't have actually a lot to add. I think, you know, we've all talked about this in length, as I said. And so I'm ready to just vote tonight.

Great. Thank you. Any other members of the council wish to address this item? Councilmember Pham.

Thai Viet PhanItem 40

Sorry, I did also forget to mention, if the $15 an hour in the skilled and trained workforce is too expensive for you, build affordable housing units. That is what inclusionary zoning is about. It's about building those affordable units. So if you don't want to pay, you don't want to hire skilled and trained, build those units. Thank you.

Great. Thank you for that. Seeing no other questions or comments. Go ahead, Mayor Pro Tem.

Phil BacerraItem 40

Thank you. I'm, let me just say, you know, back in October of 2015, the WHO and LOO fees were at $15 a foot. That's what they were set at. No developers pulled building permits from October of 2015 through September of 2020, when we reduced the WHO and LOO fees down to $5 per square foot, along with other items. And since the implementation of the $5 square foot rate, Director Tai, if you could answer how much has the city received in WHO in lieu fees since September of 2020?

Approximately $9.1 million.

Phil BacerraItem 40

$9.1 million. Last time we were talking about this, we were at $3.8 million. So that was five months after the WHO had its fees reduced down to $5. We were already at $3.8 million. And now we're at $9.1 million. And yet five whole years of $15 a foot, We're at zero. And that's zero dollars going towards down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers. That's zero dollars going towards rehabbing existing affordable units here in Santa Ana. You know, the 2020 revisions to the WHO accomplished exactly what was intended.

Phil BacerraItem 40

A kickstart building in a city that was hit hard by the pandemic and a severely impacted economy. So, you know, tonight I saw more earlier this evening, but I wanted to see, you know, I'm glad that I see members of the Carpenters Local 714 here tonight. You know, it's special for me because my grandfather was a carpenter. He was the first Filipino carpenter, master carpenter, excuse me, that helped build a lot of the landmarks at Disneyland. So I definitely sympathize with the carpenters. In fact, that's why I was proud back in 2020 when we had passed those revisions, it put carpenters to work.

Phil BacerraItem 40

The revisions tonight are not going to put you to work. I'm sorry. They're just not. And I don't want to be the one to tell you that, but at the same time, I can't sit here and say, oh, yeah, everything's going to be fine. You heard me. $15 a foot, got nothing going on. And $5 a foot did, and the revisions tonight are going to reverse that. So just keep that in mind. So just because we mentioned union labor in the ordinance doesn't make it so, and that's unfortunate. Local hire, all those provisions, just saying it doesn't make it happen, especially when you're going back to a policy that has already demonstrated failure.

Phil BacerraItem 40

It already has. This isn't hypothetical. This isn't let's look at a study and one day we'll implement it. It has already failed, and we are doing exactly what is the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. So as I've said numerous times, at numerous hearings on this item, it keeps coming back. This is not a YIMBY ordinance. It's a NIMBY ordinance. And that's detrimental to the folks here in the room tonight that want to build housing. And with that, I'd like to make a sub-motion that we go ahead and deny the first reading of this ordinance tonight.

David PenalozaItem 40

I'll second that.

Great. We have a motion and a second as a substitute motion to deny Any questions or comments on that substitute motion? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, why don't we go ahead and vote on the substitute motion before we vote on the underlying motion.

Council members, please vote on the substitute motion to deny.

Okay, motion fails with Council members Hernandez, Is Lopez-Fan and Mayor Sarmiento voting no? Councilmembers Mendoza-Pinalosa and Mayor Pro Tem voting yes.

Mayor Redekopoulos- Great. Thank you. Going back to the original motion to move the recommended item, seeing no other questions or comments.

Councilmembers, please vote on the underlying motion.

Councilmember Mendoza, if you would please cast your vote.

Okay, motion passes with 5-2 with Councilmembers Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Fan, and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes, and Councilmembers Pinalosa and Mayor Potembecerra dissenting. Mayor Patel Becerra Dissenting.

Great. Thank you, everybody. Look, we can finally put that one to bed for the first reading. There's still a second reading to come, so don't pop those champagne bottles yet. But thank you. At least we got over this hurdle. Let's move things along.

Let me go ahead and recess the City Council and convene the Housing Authority meeting and call the Housing Authority meeting to order. And let me go ahead and call on the Clerk to go ahead and conduct roll.

Thank you. Authority member Hernandez?

Present.

Authority member Lopez? Here. Authority member Mendoza?

Here.

Authority member Pinaloza? Present. Authority member Fan? Here. Vice Chair Becerra? Here. And Chair Sarmiento?

Here. Thank you. Madam Clerk, do we have any speakers that wish to address us on this item?

No, we do not. And we also did not receive any written communication or in-person speaker cards.

Great. I'll go ahead and entertain a motion.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 40

I'll second. I'll move the item. My apologies.

We don't need the consent calendar since there was only the excused absence. It's just one item, and everybody was present, so we didn't need that.

Oh, on item number two. So I'm sure that Councilmember Hernandez was intending to move item number two.

Thai Viet PhanItem 40

I actually, Mayor, I do have to recuse myself from this item. the City of Anaheim is a client of my employer Rattan and Tucker I think it's they also sit on the Anaheim Housing Authority so I will accuse myself from that and since it's not a consent I think I actually have to leave with IS

so I will do that thank you councilmember van is there a second I'll second well actually you made the motion also yeah long night seeing seeing no So, seeing nothing further, no questions or comments, I'll go ahead and ask Councilmembers to vote on that.

Okay, motion passes 6-1 with Councilmembers Hernandez, Lopez, Mendoza, Peñalosa, Mayor Potembecerra, and Mayor Sarmiento voting yes, and Councilmember Fan recusing.

Great. Thanks, everybody. Let me go ahead and move along to the public hearing item, item number 3, and let me turn it over to the clerk for her to make her opening remarks.

Thank you. If there's any member of the public by way of Zoom or in the chamber and would like to provide a public comment, please raise your hand virtually by selecting raise hand on Zoom or select star 6 on your phone. We did not receive any and we didn't receive

any written communication. Great. Thank you everybody. This is to consider approval of the Housing Authority Annual Plan. I'll go ahead and open up the public hearing. Is there a presentation