Read the May 12 meeting.

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Zoom ID Jennifer Rojas, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device and announce if you want to provide a public comment on today's special meeting.

Zoom ID Jennifer Rojas, if you would please select the microphone icon on your device to unmute your call and announce if you want to provide any comment on today's special budget workshop.

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Mayor Prattam, the meeting is now being recorded.

Phil Bacerra

Perfect. Good evening, everybody. I hereby call the special open meeting to order. It is a little about 5.08. This meeting is taking place with in-person attendance and by teleconference via Zoom. The public may access the meeting via the Santa Ana YouTube channel or the city's website. Please bear with us as the technology may disrupt the flow of the meeting. Madam Clerk, would you please call roll?

Councilmember Hernandez? Councilmember Lopez? Thank you. Councilmember Lopez? Here. Councilmember Mendoza?

Here.

Councilmember Peñalosa?

David Penaloza

Present.

Councilmember Fan? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Becerra? Here. And Mayor Sarmiento is absent.

Phil Bacerra

All right. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Councilmember Mendoza, would you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance?

Please stand. Place your hand over your heart. Those who were military or current military may salute. Ready? Begin.

Phil Bacerra

Thank you, Councilmember Mendoza. Tonight I want to switch up the order on the agenda. if my colleagues would allow this, I would like to go ahead and have staff conduct their presentation first, and then hear public comments. Would that be okay with everybody?

Yes.

Phil Bacerra

I see no violent opposition, so staff, would you please proceed?

All right. Good evening, Honorable Mayor Pro Tem and council members. We have a very robust presentation for you tonight.

So on the agenda, we're going to be providing high-level information, summary of our financial picture, provide details from the community budget meetings that have already been held, share the revenue forecasts for our key revenue streams, talk about the Measure X spending plan along with the recommendations from the Measure X oversight committee, update you on the Revived Spending Plan and discuss notable budget items and cover the proposed capital improvement plan.

So, overview of the city's financial status. The city over the past year has been very fortunate to receive federal dollars that it has enabled us to substantially increase services and projects in order to enable a robust recovery from COVID-19. Overall, our critical revenue streams are performing very well. We have maintained our general fund reserve, and we expect to have around $30 million in general fund dollars for one-time programming. Most importantly, we expect to propose a general fund that is balanced for your consideration next year. For the remainder of the presentation, we have our finance director, Catherine Down,

our budget manager, Waldo Barella, and Alex Trinidad, our assistant finance director. For the revived portion of the presentation, we have Daisy Perez, assistant to the city manager. And with that, I'll kick off the real meat of the presentation over to Waldo to cover the community budget meetings and feedback.

Thank you Christine. Good evening Mayor Pro Tem and City Council. My name is Waldo Barella. I'm the budget manager here at the city. I'd like to share with you some of the information that we have from the community budget meetings. We held nine meetings between March and May. Two of the meetings were held virtually and some of them were in-person community budget meetings. We had more than 64 participants at the meetings. Next slide. In an effort to reach the community and have them participate in the budget process, survey information was distributed at three outreach events.

So we had the community resource fair at the zoo, the excellent adventure, there was some information handout there, and at Dia de los Ninos we had information there as well. While in-person meetings and surveys provide us feedback, our new best tool was able to capture feedback and comments by allowing participants to engage with the budget, simulate tool and also the priority tool that would allow them to prioritize budgets and submit that information to city staff. Our online survey and BEST tool were offered in English, Spanish and Vietnamese and will continue to use the BEST tool to collect information throughout the year.

In addition to that outreach, the city's public information officer helped develop a public outreach plan to promote our survey the best the community budget meetings there were 25 social media posts that reached nearly 200 000 people 46 000 text messages 22 000 notifications by this mysanta an app as well as email and nixle notifications next slide

this slide reflects kind of the overarching themes we heard at the community budget meetings including homeless services, youth recreation, intervention programs, economic development, street and sidewalk improvements, affordable housing, and public safety. Next slide.

Using the BEST program, respondents increased community services by an average of $6 million. Resident ideas were included as well. Improving the economy, legal services, and property tax were some additional ideas. and 80% of the best responses were from Santa Ana IP addresses. Next slide.

This picture here illustrates the top five feedback categories we got. Homeless services, sidewalk improvements, youth services, affordable housing, and economic development. And as you can see, the highest participation was really in the community survey with 515 responses. Next slide.

The following slides are just examples from the community survey, so I'm sharing that with you. We asked participants to rank the city's strategic priorities from what was most important to least important. Community safety and financial stability were the top two priorities. Next slide.

Participants were asked to identify the highest two budget priorities, and they were reduced homelessness and reduced crime scored the highest. Next slide.

We asked participants how important do you think it is for Santa Ana to focus on the feeling of safety in the city the next two years. The responses show that 88% felt that it was very important or essential. Next slide. And lastly, I want to share with you a meeting that we had last night with the youth. We held a youth budget forum in coordination with the city manager's office. We had a great participation of 34 attendees. Using an interactive tool, we were able to ask the youth some questions to gather information about their needs and ideas. In

your handouts includes a summary of what we heard from the youth participants. But this slide, it's a word cloud. So as we asked the question, we asked them to submit their information and we asked them what type of recreational classes would you like the city to offer. And so they said culinary, and I said, I'm there, ready to eat. So culinary and the pottery were some of the more common responses, but you can see everything from dog park to chess classes to flower arrangements, just a variety of different ideas we were able to gather and collect.

I will now turn it over to Catherine Downs, our finance director for the presentation.

Good evening, Mayor Partem and council members. On March 15th, as part of early budget direction, we asked the council about miscellaneous fee increases. Last year, the city council decided not to increase fees, which are based on the city's cost to provide services benefiting individuals and not the public as a whole. This year, the CPI increase would have been 4.3%, but council directed us to return with something less than that. We proposed to increase fees by 3.5%, which is the most recent wage increase granted to the employees who provide most of these individual services and are members

of the largest non-sworn labor group. We have built the proposed budget with the 3.5 percent increase. So the question we posed before you tonight is, would the Council like us to proceed with that 3.5 percent or go with the CPI of 4.3 percent?

Female Speaker 2.: May I pretend, would you like us to go through the whole presentation and then engage the council discussion?

Phil Bacerra

Yes, please. Okay.

You may be aware of a desire in the business community for the city to overhaul its business license tax. In order to accomplish that, a ballot measure is necessary. We've outlined a proposed ballot measure that would be revenue neutral to the city, simplify calculations, be equitable for all business sizes, recognize the gig economy, remove the exemption for utilities, and provide a tax holiday to incentivize businesses to comply with the city's ordinance. The details of the proposed ballot measure are on your May 17th agenda. We have a three-step plan that starts with consolidating

language into one chapter in the Muni Code. This will make the ballot measure easier to write and understand. If the City Council moves forward with the ballot measure in July and the voters approve it in November, then we would follow up with an ordinance to reconcile procedural processes. As the proposed ballot measure would be revenue neutral, next year's revenue estimates do not include any impact of an approved ballot measure.

General fund revenue is expected to grow by 4% overall to reach $390 million. This is primarily due to property tax and sales tax, which comprise more than 60% of total general fund revenue. However, we do expect increases for several revenue sources that combined comprise less than 10% of the general fund. The business license growth you see on this slide is related to a CPI increase and proactive enforcement efforts.

With that, Alex Trinidad, our assistant director, is going to provide you with a Measure X update. Alex Trinidad, Director of the Council of the United States of America,

Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem and members of the Council. So I'll be presenting the Measure X Oversights Committee's recommendations as well as the draft for fiscal year 2022-2023.

So this is a summary of the Committee's recommendations for the Council. So I'm going to go through these really briefly. The Committee recommends one-time spending. So staff agrees with this. The proposed spending plan includes $22 million of one-time costs. This is around 24%. Our next recommendation is to consider a pilot program to use community-based professionals versus sworn officers to respond to nonviolent calls and also seed economic development. So staff agrees and will continue to recommend programs like this.

The city already contracts with CityNet for these type of responses. In addition, business assistance budget was added during the mid-year. And the city recently hired two economic development employees. Lastly, the proposed spending plan includes $1.5 million for the South May Quarter Improvement and Business Incubation Program. program. Next recommendation is to explore establishing a Measure X Sunset Civilization Fund. So staff supports this. We currently have a general fund reserve of 18 percent,

but council can direct staff to set aside additional money from the general fund. Next recommendation is to prepare a long-term plan for Measure X rate reduction. So staff agrees and currently uses a 10-year outlook. In addition, the city recently refinanced pension debt to reduce future expenditures, and it also is focusing on one-time cost. Lastly, the recommendation is to shift Measure X revenues to fixing the streets. Staff agrees with this, as this will also help us with meeting the city's maintenance of effort

for M2 funding. The proposed general fund budget includes around $8.3 million for right-of-way costs. Next slide.

So this is a summary of the measure X spending plan for next fiscal year. So this shows the breakdown between recurring and one-time cost. A majority of the recurring costs were identified in previous fiscal years. The major items added under recurring include increase in fixing the streets. So this includes street maintenance and medium landscaping, total of $1.5 million. Increase in maintenance of parks and also increase in armed security for parks for a total of $3 million. Under the one time, items include such as city budgets of $900,000.

The South Main Corridor Restaurant Incubation Program of 1.5. Downtown Business Assistance of $1.5 million. And lastly, the Future Pension Stabilization of $7.7 million.

Phil Bacerra

Next slide.

So this chart includes a breakdown of the proposed spending plan by category for next fiscal year. So as previously mentioned, most of the recurring charges were identified in prior years. The majority of the recent additions of the spending plan fall under the one-time cost. So the major changes include a net increase in fixing the streets of around $2.5 million, increase for maintaining parks of $4 million, and increase in unrestricted general revenue purpose of $8 million, but mostly this is due to the pension stabilization of $7.7 million.

And so the detailed Measure X spending plan for next fiscal year will be provided during the May 17th meeting. This concludes Measure X update. Next will be revived spending plan, and DAISY will be presenting that.

Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem and members of the City Council. Tonight I will be providing a brief overview of our Revive Santa Ana program.

Under your leadership, Council approved the Revive Santa Ana spending plan with five spending categories and I'll go through and provide a brief update on where we are with each of those five programs. Thank you. The first is the recovery from the pandemic. There were $7.5 million allocated. I did want to point out a couple of projects that have been completed thus far. So, so far we have completed a full sanitization of our bus shelters. Several times that contract has been exhausted, as well as our allocation for COVID-19 emergency response. That project has also been completed.

And we're currently working on developing the RFP for mental health recovery. And one of the aspects that we're looking for in that RFP based on community input is mental health recovery efforts also focus on our youth.

Thank you. The next program is direct assistance. There's been over $29 million allocated for this program. As you can see based on this slide, we're very excited that most of these programs are active and up and running. At the last council meeting, you approved over 19 contracts for $2 million worth of various youth programs. Staff is actively working to fully execute those agreements and launch them. And then we're working with our police department to put together some sexual assault intervention programs and reentry programs.

We have over $20 million allocated towards public health and safety. Several of these projects are large-scale and complex projects that are multi-year. One of those is the First Street Pedestrian Safety Project. This is a really exciting project that's going to transform the underpass near the grade separation of First and Grand. That will be coming forward very soon. I believe staff is finalizing that contract for your approval.

We also have critical infrastructure, $21 million invested there. Staff is actively working on conducting a study on our broadband. So you'll hopefully have an update on that one soon. And then there's going to be a large investment of over $15 million to transform our central library.

And then lastly, we have just $1.1 million allocated towards city fiscal health, and this is really to ensure compliance of all of these programs. So we have dedicated contract management support and compliance with our consultant. We also have dedicated staff in finance and HR to make sure that we're following all of the federal guidelines. With that, I'll turn it back over to Katherine Downs, our finance director. Thanks, Daisy.

Well, we expect the general fund will transfer approximately $14 million to the Cannabis Public Benefit Fund for the two-thirds set aside next fiscal year. And we have a proposed spending plan. The City Council is scheduled to discuss cannabis tax rates on June 21. If the City Council accepts staffs cannabis tax proposal, then our proposed spending plan will stand. If the City Council opts to reduce cannabis taxes further, then we will need to adjust the proposed spending plan. Proposed spending for youth is 7.2 million, including 2 million for the library and 5.2 million for parks and recreation.

The library proposal would complete the New Hope library renovation, provide tutoring, add more Chromebooks and hotspots, and book mobile programming. Parks and Recreation would add a Recreation Mobile, Nature Center, and Traveling Zoo, enhance youth programs, and fund splash pads, new zoo exhibits, and a new soccer field.

Proposed spending for enforcement is $6.9 million. This includes $539,000 for legal proceedings, $1.4 million for code enforcement, including the addition of four more code enforcement officers, $4.6 million for public safety, and $361,000 for my department to enforce and audit collections.

This is a snapshot of the beginning cannabis fund balance, plus the expected $14 million transfer of course allocated between youth and enforcement less the proposed spending plan for each leaving us with an estimated combined balance at June 2023 of 2.9 million I believe councilmember fan with well this is just a presentation councilmember fan do you wish to leave the dais for this portion of the presentation, or would you like me to? Yes. Okay.

Thai Viet Phan

Actually, I should have stated earlier on the record that Caribou Industries is a client of my employer, Rattan and Tucker. I think they are the, I know that they're a developer of Third and Broadway, and because of that, I will be exiting the room while the presentation is going on and any discussion that may be related to this particular issue.

Phil Bacerra

Thank you. Before you leave, are there any other portions of the budget that?

Just that.

Phil Bacerra

Just that single item? Okay, and well go ahead and do any of my colleagues have any conflicts in relation to any of the other Okay Seeing none, please continue. All right. Thank you

On March 15th as part of early budget direction the City Council directed staff to return with debt financing numbers for a 13 million dollar contribution to the third and Broadway development a A quick recap of the project here. The development includes a hotel, apartment units, commercial space, and a new parking structure. The city is obligated to contribute $13 million for site prep, and the developer is obligated to repay that $13 million. We can either loan the $13 million from the general fund, or obtain outside financing for the developer to repay.

So let's take a look at financing the $13 million.

We are now in a period of rising interest rates with the market changing weekly. I received estimated bond financing figures on April 27th and these figures in this slide are probably no longer accurate. At that time, the estimated cost of bond issuance was $268,000. The interest rate would have been approximately 4.9% for 30 years. Financing would require security in the form of a lien on a city-owned building. And the annual debt service was estimated at $830,000.

As an alternative to issuing bonds, which takes time, we could obtain financing through a private placement. These transactions can be done quickly with little to no cost of issuance. I have four private placement options on the next slide. Finally, if we loan the $13 million from the available general fund balance, we could restructure the payments for up to 30 years with a variable interest rate equal to the rate that we earn on our investment account with the State of California. This is a much more desirable option for the developer because the interest rate is significantly less.

However, as an example of rising interest rates, the investment rate has creeped up to .65% since this presentation was prepared.

If you decide to use General Fund to provide the $13 million, you will be taking one-time money and converting it to a 30-year recurring revenue source of payments to fund additional services. The proposed general fund budget does leave $13 million in excess of the general fund balance available for the financing.

We have four private placement options with rate locks good until June 6th. After June 6th, these rates will likely increase again. The first option includes a variable rate tied to the 10-year Treasury with a balloon payment after 10 years. Or the financing can be extended with a rate reset for another 10 years. Initial payments would be $860,000 annually. The second option is a 15-year fixed rate of 5.32% with level payments of nearly $1.3 million.

The third option is a 20-year fixed rate of 5.48% with level payments of nearly $1.1 million. Private placement investors are not willing to lock in rates for 30 years at this time. The fourth option carries a fixed rate of 5.68% for 20 years, but payments are structured to step up every five years. debt service would be more affordable for the developer in the early years of the project and more expensive in later years when the project is likely

generating more money so part of the input that we're looking for from the City Council tonight is is direction we're ready to move forward with drafting a financing agreement as soon as the developer is ready and we continue to recommend using the general fund. So if the City Council wants to provide us some guidance at this time that would be much appreciated.

If you guys are ready it might be best if you give us the direction on this since Council Member Fenn is already out of the room then we can have a robust discussion that excludes this item when she's back in the room.

Phil Bacerra

Well, we can do that.

Phil Bacerra

We'll just go around the horn. Councilmember Lopez, would you like to provide input?

Jessie Lopez

I actually prefer when folks are given the opportunity to just speak or provide comment if they're ready.

Phil Bacerra

I'm sorry, what was that?

Jessie Lopez

But I actually prefer the format if folks are ready to provide comment or give feedback or direction that they do so.

Phil Bacerra

Okay. Anybody want to jump out?

I have a question. Is this just on the financing for the Third and Broadway?

Correct. So it's our obligation under the agreement to provide. And we brought it to you before, and we're staying with our recommendation. We're recommending that we utilize general funds and convert one-time money into a reoccurring payment back without interest cost.

Okay, so which option would be more beneficial to the city, the interest rate that's mentioned here or waiting until perhaps lower interest rate in the future?

So the interest rate that we would charge if we loaned from the general fund is equivalent to the same rate that we would be earning on our investment with the state pool. So if that investment rate goes up, then the rate that we're charging the developer for this loan would also go up. And so if the city did nothing and left the $13 million in our investment account, we would earn that same rate of interest. So from that perspective, there's no real difference to the city financially. However, this is just simply taking a balance. You can either leave it there in the general fund balance,

or you could choose to use it for other one-time spending, or you could choose to use it for this $13 million loan to the developer. So you really have three choices for your $13 million dollars that's in the bank and again this is money that is above your

required general fund reserve I see and and so the collateral that is being used by Caribou Industries is the actual property itself yes it is if the just

being Frank if the developer were to default on this loan the city could take the property back.

Okay. Those are all my questions.

Phil Bacerra

All righty. Thank you. Councilmember Paloza, did you want to?

David Penaloza

Thank you, Mayor Patan Becerra. And thank you, Catherine, for the presentation. The one question I had in regards to the financing agreement or potential financing agreement with this is, let's say we do provide a $13 million loan, which is what is being requested, correct, for the demolition of this parking structure. Once the parking structure is demoed, obviously I'm not, I'm thinking, you know, not in real timeline, but tomorrow, a month from now, it's like, hey, I can't pay or I can't build.

David Penaloza

The city has the right to foreclose on the property, correct? But that gives us a dirt lot now with no parking structure or a hotel or commercial businesses? I mean, what does that scenario look like?

Well, that $13 million is not only the demolition of the building, but it's also site prep. So at that point in time, the site would be ready to go for another potential development project or another venture that the city could pursue.

David Penaloza

Okay. Okay. So at this point in time, you're asking for what would be the potential pleasure of the council and some of these options. And I know that you have, you list bonds as a potential and private placements in the options you listed. Which has the more benefit to the end game for the city? I mean, is it, I mean, which one does professional staff recommend?

Well, we recommend the general fund loan, and there's really a couple reasons why.

If a developer is afforded a loan that is something that is affordable and is easier to pay, then his project has our Caribou's project has a higher success rate if it's if we obtain financing at a high interest rate and require him to pay that back and it's more difficult for him to pay that back it'll be much more difficult for his project to succeed and the city has an interest in seeing the project succeed because a hotel would bring additional tax money in the form

of hotel visitors tax and apartment units would bring additional property tax additional housing and the commercial space could potentially be generating more sales tax as well you have additional residents that are you know living in santa anna generating additional tax revenue so overall it's in the city's best interest to see the project succeed okay thank you and

David Penaloza

And let's say hypothetically the council says we want to go with option three, which is a 20-year term. Does that give the developer 20 years to complete the project, or is that just solely to make payments and pay off the general fund alone?

That is solely just to make repayments. That's it.

David Penaloza

So if the developer were to say, I'm making payments for 20 years, but nothing gets built or moved forward, is there anything on that side where we could say, you know, we see no movement and these deliverables haven't been met? We could foreclose the land?

I believe that the agreement has some performance timelines that have to be reached with the project. I know that our Assistant City Manager, Steven Mendoza, might be able to answer some of those more detailed project questions, if you will.

David Penaloza

Okay, I guess right now that is not the appropriate avenue to discuss, you know, the development agreement. But I would like, just personally, I'm not comfortable to make a recommendation tonight because I would like to meet with staff and go over this entire agreement from front to end.

That's fine.

David Penaloza

So that is my comment. Thank you, Mayor Prattam.

Thank you. and just so you know I might add that there at one point in time we did believe that there was an immediate need for financing but it looks like the financing may be you know needed closer to this fall a few months out so we may actually have a little bit of time but you know any direction from the City Council certainly helps us prepare thank you all right councilmember

Phil Bacerra

Senator Hernandez, are you on the line? Do you have any questions at this time?

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

No questions at this time, Mayor Pro Temp. Thank you. I share very similar feelings to my colleague, Council Member Peña-Losa. I'd like more time to think about this. I just feel like I'm not ready to make a final decision at this moment, Mayor Pro Temp. Thank you.

Phil Bacerra

Thank you. Council Member Lopez, would you like to?

Jessie Lopez

Yeah, thank you, Mayor Pro Temp. Kat, thank you for the presentation. I thought it was really insightful. At this moment, I'm not ready to provide direction for staff.

Phil Bacerra

Thank you. I just have one question. So if we were to go to the general fund option, remind me again, what is the amount that we would be receiving as part of an ongoing revenue stream? Because you mentioned that in your presentation. What's that amount again?

If in my presentation I had calculated what it would be if the interest rate were 35 basis points, which is what the rate was back when I made this presentation, and that would be $459,000 a year in payments. But the investment rate has inched up, and it's now at 65 basis points. So that would go up a little bit, but we're still talking about a very low interest rate, so it wouldn't go up by much.

Phil Bacerra

Okay. Well, I share the sentiment of my colleagues. I'd like to have a little more time to think about this, and I feel like the majority of us would like some time at this point, but thank you for that. Would you like to continue?

Thank you. Yes, I will continue with the presentation.

Oh, great.

Wow, technology works. Cool. All right.

There we go. Okay. In addition to City Hall, the City owns other buildings and is obligated to keep them in good repair. These buildings are aging and our proposed budget includes one-time spending for rehab. We propose to reimburse the museum for $1 million in roofing, beams, and air conditioning repairs. We also propose to spend $3.1 million to rehab nine fire stations with $1.9 million coming from the Fire Facilities Fund and $1.2 million coming from the General Fund.

And we propose to spend $800,000 on the Grand Central Building for roofing, air conditioning repairs, and ADA compliance.

experience. You'll receive your draft budget for the May 17th meeting. But I wanted to give you a preview of some of the notable items we've added to the proposed general fund budget and the cannabis fund budget.

We propose a variety of facility improvements, some of which I just mentioned. Other improvements include rehab projects for both the Corbin Center and Salgado Center, a small allocation for restoration of murals, median landscaping, a Chinatown memorial, audio and visual in the room used for Comlink and other community meetings, and we're requesting another allocation to complete the New Hope Library renovation. Highlights of community services include an additional $1.5 million for downtown business

assistance, an increased level of park maintenance and security, a robust city events budget, additional money for youth employment, and expanded library services. As requested by City Council, the proposed budget includes another four code enforcement officers, two parking control officers offset with additional revenue, two zoo education positions and three library positions. We're proposing an additional release of the hiring freeze, leaving only nine full-time positions frozen.

The proposed budget includes allocations for a Streetlight Master Plan and various studies, as well as allocations for the November election and zoning code updates.

On January 18th, the Council approved a recommended allocation of $3 million for the South Main corridor in response to the need for immediate downtown business assistance 1.5 million of that allocation was redirected therefore we're proposing another allocation of 1.5 million to backfill the original funding approved for the South Main corridor also on May 17th you'll receive the detailed proposed capital improvement plan the document includes some enhancements this year, such as a project map visually depicting capital spending across the city.

On May 3rd, the City Council approved a plan for CDBG-funded projects in the coming year. We're working on adding those projects to the capital improvement plan so the figures you see here in this slide will grow for May 17th. The city primarily funds capital spending with restricted money. However, there are some key projects listed here that would come from the General Fund. Those include the Alley Improvement Program and City Parks and Facilities.

We've come to the end of our presentation. And in quick overview, I wanted to let you know that the baseline budget is growing due to contractual requirements and items that were approved in fiscal year 21-22 with partial year funding. On top of that growth, the proposed budget adds less than $15 million, or 4%, to recurring spending in line with revenue growth. The proposed budget includes $20 million of one-time spending and a contribution to the Pension Stabilization Fund, which leaves you with a $70 million general fund reserve and

a 13 million dollar excess to fund the development project if the city decides to go that way if not then it's still there and you'll have 83 million so to allow for changes resulting from tonight's discussion the City Council will receive the proposed budget in detail on Monday for your May 17th meeting your calendars do include a hold for a May 16th meeting if you would like another budget workshop once you receive those detailed materials on Monday. And that's the end of my presentation. So we're ready to answer questions or

Phil Bacerra

whatever the Council's pleasure. Thank You, Katherine. At this time I'd like to go ahead and open it up to public comment before we, as a Council, provide feedback. So Madam City Clerk.

Perfect.

Phil Bacerra

All right. Let's see, we'll have Hector Bustos followed by Mia Verdeen.

Hello, my name is Hector Bustos and I'm a resident in Ward 4. I'm also the Communications Director at CHISPA. I'm here to once again outline our organization's priorities for this budget cycle. It's imperative that we invest funds and champion programs that will benefit working-class families here in Santana. Firstly, our first priority is around police oversight. So we are asking that you all include a $1 million allocation within the 2022-23 fiscal year budget to properly fund a robust and effective police oversight board the personnel Commission can be dismantled

and blended into the oversight Commission to help the city recover funds secondly we're asking for funding for community-based organizations we're asking that you all prioritize organizations with an annual budget of less than 1 million dollars annually we are also asking for a pilot program that will build capacity among smaller organizations and reach youth who are difficult to reach or systems impacted who often trust these organizations more than some larger service providers and the city also needs to fund more community-based organizations to meet the community's unmet needs such as

mental health services for trans and queer and LGBTQ youth reentry programs and services for system impacted youth and providing counseling support and preventative services for youth thirdly we're asking for an investment in youth jobs within the city. We're asking that you all increase funding for youth job opportunities with the city departments such as a library. In hand, also asking for paid city youth internships within the city departments, especially with opportunities that can help develop STEM skills. Providing youth with trade and construction jobs for city projects in partnerships with entities that can

provide training and support. And lastly, our fourth priority is around youth service programs. So increasing funding for youth service programs within areas in City Hall that are not within the police department that can provide young people with access to skill development, recreation, and housing. And in partnership with the Santana Work Center offers certification and training programs to train youth providing opportunities to learn coding, receive job skills training, and have access to leadership development. Within youth service programs, we should also see a cost-free sports programs and fitness

centers, housing assistance for trans and queer youth, and expanding hotspots for Wi-Fi for young people and having more access to computers here in the city.

Phil Bacerra

Thank you. Thank you. Next we have Mia Verdeen followed by Carl Benninger.

Phil Bacerra

Thank you. You're good? Okay, thank you. Carl, can we have you come up?

Thank you, Mayor Pro Ten, and good evening to the council and city folk. Good evening. Since we're talking about budget, there are a couple of things I'd like to talk about. One of them is don't forget the reserves as we're talking during a time in which we are flushed with money. The day will come, as it always does, in which that money will not be there. We sat in this council and listening to us looking to cut one arm or the other, but that day will come. With that budgeting project right now, there will be people talking about defunding the police.

All those organizations that defunded during the time of the George Floyd's incidents are all looking to bring their money back and their crimes have all gone up. So do avoid that temptation of wanting to cut from the police department because our safety of the citizens in this city is very important. With that in mind, I'd really like to see us add a line item to cover equipment for CERT. Comlink, as you know, I'm President of Comlink. We're committed ourselves to get a person representative, one in each neighborhood association, so we can develop our CERT program and make it a live program as what's out in other cities.

In fact, we have an ad hoc committee right now looking at what that's going to require. And we know we need radios, we need emergency packs, we need a repeater system that works. We want to prepare for when the emergency happens. Along that line, you've heard me ask in the past about the showmobile. And I understand the problems with the showmobile and the cost of getting it out to locations, but that was a very useful tool in our neighborhoods. So in place in that, I really would like to see a $25,000 one-line, one-time expenditure to allow neighborhood initiatives under their control to buy the water-filled K-Rails,

the sound systems, the projector, screen, so that we can have neighborhood movie nights in the neighborhoods as well as functions in the neighborhood. The social part of a neighborhood association is what really brings it together. And as we try in the coming months to bring our neighborhoods back, that's going to be a very important issue to us. So I would like to see that one-time spending of $25,000 to buy the items that we need. Thank you.

Phil Bacerra

Thank you. Thank you, Carl. And with that, I'd like to go ahead and bring it back to Council.

Phil Bacerra

Oh, I apologize. Yes, let's go ahead and hear those online.

Thank you, Mayor Prattam. For those that have joined us by way of Zoom, if you'd like to make a comment, please dial star 9 to raise your hand from your phone or select raise hand from Zoom. and I will, if you, once I unmute you, please dial star six to unmute yourself or select the microphone icon. Before I start unmuting callers, I did want to announce that we did receive written communication. Three Santa Ana residents commented to prioritize services for the most vulnerable residents,

and one Santa Ana resident spoke on various comments regarding Measure X annual report. And with that, Zoom ID, Jennifer Rojas, if you would please select the microphone icon. Thank you. You may proceed with your comment.

Good evening, City Council. My name is Jennifer Rojas and I'm a policy advocate and organizer with ACLU SoCal working in Orange County. I'm speaking today to urge the council to approve the budget proposals put forth by community-based organizations. and also to urge the council to allocate a fixed and protected budget for an investigative auditor slash monitor model of police oversight. First, several community-based organizations, including CHISPA and Santa Ana Youth Ballot, have put forth budget proposals for meaningful community investment.

We are in strong support of the proposals to allocate funding for grants to nonprofit organizations that provide mental health, re-entry programs, counseling, and preventative services for youth. Investments in housing, health care, jobs programs, education after school programs, environmental design and violence interruption programs have all been proven to quantifiably reduce violence. For example, one study found that every additional community focused nonprofit

in a medium sized city leads to a 12% reduction in homicide rate, a 10% reduction in violent crime and a 7% reduction in property crime. Investing in community-based programs and youth jobs is more likely than increased policing to lead to public safety. This means that every dollar we divert to law enforcement, we take away from providing community-focused services. Every dollar we remove from the system of policing helps fund the services we need for meaningful community-centered public safety. Over the last several weeks,

multiple scandals involving Santa Ana Police Department officers further reifies the need for effective police oversight in the city. Officers obstructing the public's First Amendment right to record and allegations of law enforcement gang misconduct are only the latest reasons why Santa Ana must properly fund and independent police oversight this year. The police oversight model tasked with conducting independent investigations must be properly staffed to handle the number and breadth of investigations into civilian complaints, allegations of serious misconduct,

and uses of deadly force. The following staff positions we believe must be created and protected to ensure an effective model. First, a director to operate the new investigative agency to conduct the civilian-led investigations and audits. Also, we believe at least one licensed attorney per 50 sworn officers. Thank you. One licensed attorney per 50 sworn officers should also be hired to conduct those investigations. In all, we believe that civilian oversight must be fully funded this year.

and compared to the police department budget it is a drop in the bucket thank you your time is up thank you zoom id daisy cruz if you would please select the microphone icon on your device to unmute your call

thank you can you hear me yes we can hear you may proceed with your comment

thank you um good afternoon city council my name is daisy and i'm with the kennedy commission We would like to highlight priorities that have been stated prior including funding for a robust and effective police oversight committee, paid city jobs for youth within city council, funding for community based organizations. We ask you also provide mental health services for trans, queer, and LGBTQ plus youth.

The safest communities have the most resources. So we just want to highlight that. And we're encouraging you and asking you to please listen to the budgets and recommendations that these organizations have put forth. Thank you.

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

Good afternoon. My name's Lionel Flores, a lifelong resident of Madison Park neighborhood. Just calling in today to ask that money is set aside for the implementation of the environmental justice this office and staff that was, that is being included in the general plan update. I think it's really important that funding is set aside for that

because without it, you know, it doesn't make sense to have it in the general plan but not fund it. So we really, you know, hope this is something that city council can agree upon and use it as a positive step moving forward for environmental justice in the community. Also, I wanted to ask for funding to be able to request an AQMD air monitor to be placed in the city of Santa Ana. Right now, the closest AQMD monitor that we have is in the city of Anaheim. So how can the air quality be accurately monitored if our closest monitor is over 10 miles away?

So hopefully money can be allocated for both those environmental justice policies. Thank you.

Thank you.

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

Hi, good afternoon. My name is Laura Hernandez, and I represent the Orange County Rapid Response Network, which is a grassroots organization here in Santana. And I just wanted to echo and support what the previous folks have shared as far as allocating money in the budget for organizations in the community that are helping some of the demographics that are not recognized. We, the Orange County Rapid Response Network is a community defense project.

We have seen a lot of, we deal with a lot of immigration and criminal justice issues within our, with our community members. And we have seen recent trends where there's a huge gap in funding for support for folks that aren't trying to navigate the immigration system. and there's lack of funding for the 9th Circuit representation. Immigrant defenders has been a really useful tool that has helped numbers of families stay connected and not be separated. And just want to note the importance that the community is impacted by immigration and criminal justice systems

and that they're a unique demographic in the city of Santa Ana that hasn't been served yet. And in terms of post-release and other legal resources like the Ninth Circuit, we're also seeing a huge lack of funding. I currently am sitting in a parking lot after having driven for miles to try to help a community member that had an ice hole that was released from the county jail a few days ago because he's been sleeping in his car for lack of housing. and we were able to pull together mutual aid funds to be able to get him a hotel room for the next

three days. However, that's not a long-term solution. So we do see a huge need for post-conviction release as well as post-conviction services. And, you know, we just want to highlight that urgency and appeal to the city council to please make those funds available to organizations that are trying to help folks on the ground thank you thank you okay mayor pretend that was the very last um

Phil Bacerra

public comment thank you madam state clerk um bringing it back to council um doing my colleagues want to start us off here with their comments and direction

Thai Viet Phan

yes councilmember fan i had left the room regarding the third and broadway if there's still ongoing discussion i can leave and maybe you can finish that and i'll come back

Phil Bacerra

that's all we're going to talk about the rest of the meeting that's fine too no um i guess we're just gonna have to see what everybody's comments are we i think we pretty much were done with that item so um i can't promise anything for my colleagues of course but um would you like to start us off councilmember fan hi y'all thank you so much for the

Thai Viet Phan

presentation, a small gripe. Your chart doesn't align with the amounts that are listed regarding the circle graph, that's all. So I just had a few questions, and I know that we have the more detailed budget that's coming up, and I'd like to go line by line and find out what exactly is being funded, but one question I do have, or a few questions, is that when we listed kind of notable additions to the budget, I just want to reiterate some of the priorities that I've mentioned last time, and maybe they just didn't make it to this nice graphic.

Thai Viet Phan

I do like this one. I do see the Chinatown Memorial. That is very exciting. I really very much look forward to that. that community room audiovisual at PD for the Comlink meetings, is that what it's for? At the, I'm looking at slides, okay.

Yeah, the community room there that Comlink uses and it's used for other community events or meetings, yes.

Thai Viet Phan

Okay, great, because the audiovisual there is terrible. And we always have such a hard time at Comlink trying to Zoom the meetings, so I am very much looking forward to that. that we do get a lot of, you know, folks watching at home nowadays. So my question is just to, so one, I had mentioned the Little Saigon sign. It might just not have made this little presentation because it's not a huge budget request. But I wanted to make sure to reiterate that. That is something that the Santa Ana City Council had committed to, I believe, back in 2012. And it still hasn't been rebuilt.

Thai Viet Phan

And so I would like to make sure as much as possible and ask that my colleagues support that and that we do have that in the budget.

Thai Viet Phan

The second item is regarding the workforce, or most of my comments are going to be regarding the workforce. I do see that we're adding code enforcement officers. Are we looking at adding any planning staff?

Thai Viet Phan

Because at least the way I understand it is obviously we have code enforcement. You're not meeting the code. But in order to meet the code after being cited, you have to go through planning. And so we want to close the loop on that and make sure that anyone who is cited is able to work with staff.

The finance director is pulling up one of her spreadsheets that she can answer the question as to what we're proposing in the term of staff additions. I recall we are adding to that.

Thai Viet Phan

That's great. And just for the public, most of my comments will be related to staff. You know, after the recession, we really did shrink a lot. And the city is here to provide services. In order to provide services, you have to have those who are able to serve. And so when you call, you want to be able to get someone on the phone. Well, someone has to be there. And so that's why I'm very focused on making sure that we provide the workforce necessary to serve the public. You know, I've heard about folks getting citations, trying to figure out who to call, what to do to get the issue resolved.

Thai Viet Phan

And so that is a really important priority for me. But on top of that, I bring up code enforcement and planning because in many ways they pay for themselves and then some as they're ensuring that our commercial businesses and other enterprises meet our code, they do get cited and they do have fines. And hopefully no one needs to get cited, but when they do, that does pay for, you know, those costs, and that is an important quality of life issue.

Female Speaker 1 We have two full-time planning technicians and an associate planner.

Thai Viet Phan

Female Speaker 1 Okay. And so for the planning technicians, are those front desk staff?

Female Speaker 1 I believe so. but is Min here?

You want that question answered by planning staff?

Thai Viet Phan

Oh, it doesn't matter. I was just making sure because one of the other issues that I've heard is, you know, folks trying to make appointments or trying to reach somebody and they might be having a hard time. It could be just an access issue and maybe not a staffing issue, but if you have clarification.

Good evening, honorable Mayor and council members. The Council Member found to address your question, we are converting two part-time planning technicians to full-time planning technicians. They are primarily counter-staffed, so they deal with the public on a daily basis.

Thai Viet Phan

Thank you. And while you're there, my other question is regarding language capabilities. What I've seen since my short time here is that there have been many folks, both in the code enforcement as well as planning who don't necessarily have full breadth, you know, English capabilities and they do need language assistance. Do we have requirements for language assistance? How do we provide those services when someone comes in and doesn't speak English very well?

So we do have many bilingual speaking staff. In addition, we also requested translating services as part of our supplement budget request in in case we need to reach out to a consultant to provide the translating services, because it's our goal to make sure our customers understand the material provided to them.

Thai Viet Phan

Thank you. Thank you. My other requests have been here we do talk about, well, we don't have it in here. So CDA and CDA staff, including the Housing Authority. As many of you know in the public, our Section 8 waiting list is open, so the pre-application is open. If you qualify, please apply. The window to apply closes May 31st. But one of the things that I have noticed is that we have been stretching our Community Development Agency staff very thin. The City provides a whole host of programs, services, and support for housing, affordable

Thai Viet Phan

housing, housing support, rental support, down payment assistance, now Section 8, as well as rent stabilization, just cause eviction, I can go on. And all of these require staff to provide assistance to the public. And the other side of that is also we get a lot of grant funding. And so there is staff that has to ensure that we comply with federal and state grant funding requirements. And so I don't see that on here. I'd like to, I guess, check with you to see if there is a request for CDA staff.

As Finance Director Downs is looking at it, I can tell you that we just recently, and I believe we emailed the announcement to you, we just brought in two economic development specialists. So a lot of those are the individuals that are working with some of the grants to the businesses and everything. So we have increased staffing in that area. And she is checking to see if there were any additional bodies requested as a part of the proposed budget.

Thai Viet Phan

And just for example, you know, we have folks in the housing agency who are full-time trying to help people get Section 8 approval, go through these projects, following up with folks, and it's very language-intensive also. It's in fact probably one of the most language-intensive departments in our city, because I know when my family had Section 8 growing up, it was speaking to someone who spoke Vietnamese. And so I just want to make sure that we do fund this department. Housing is, in my opinion, a human right, and we should be supportive of, I think, that movement. And in order to do that, we have to have staff. So did you find it?

I found that we are adding one workforce specialist in CDA.

And I would like to point out, too, the director position is vacant. and we are going to be filling that. So as you probably are aware, my assistant city manager has been dual filling the community development executive director role in addition to his role as the assistant city manager. So that will help bring leadership directly to that department as well.

Thai Viet Phan

Steven, did you have something to add regarding staff?

Steven S. Yes, if I may. You had mentioned the rent stabilization ordinance. If you remember, council gave us directions to keep that on the contract level. But that contractor responsible for getting us a report that will come to us in August, recommending the full-time staffing for that.

Thai Viet Phan

Thank you. So that is also what I recalled. But regarding, you know, CDA staff, I don't know if one person is enough. I will let you kind of figure that out. The other thing that is really important for the public to understand is that, as we all know, it is a difficult time for employers to find work right now. People have a lot of options. And at the same time, people are burning out. And while I do think that our Assistant City Manager, Stephen Mendoza, has done an incredible job filling two giant titles, it is crazy to me that we have one person be a director

Thai Viet Phan

of a huge department that is crucial to our services and the Assistant City Manager. So I'm very much looking forward to that new director. The other issues I had was regarding language assistance. I know that there are, we hired two management assistants, the Vietnamese community liaison, Spanish language community liaison, that's what I'm going to call them. But I do know that there's still consistent need for language access. There's, what I found at least in my experience is that more and more people are reaching out because now they have someone to call.

Thai Viet Phan

I would like to see that our language and translation services become more robust. And, you know, for a city the size of ours, there should be a dedicated communications team. There has to be someone and a group of people who are able to quickly and nimbly respond to the news, breaking information, whatever information that's out there, and do it in language. So that is something that I would like to see because I know that we are contracting out. It's not always perfect. I think our contractor for Spanish has

Thai Viet Phan

been great. I don't speak Spanish fluently so I'll leave it to my colleagues to comment, but the Vietnamese translator at the city meetings have been quite terrible and that's just not acceptable. It's not acceptable at all. In a city size of ours, we should really have some folks in-house that are able to provide all those services.

Thai Viet Phan

The other question I had was regarding street maintenance now. I do see that we have some additions in the CIP regarding street improvements, local street preventative maintenance, but those are all grant funding, right? It's not general fund. One of the requests I had last time is that, much like what Council Member Becerra had for sidewalks is that we have a recurring fund in the general fund for street maintenance.

As of right now, that would be the alley program.

Thai Viet Phan

The alley program? Okay. The alley improvement program.

That's right.

Thai Viet Phan

But that's part of the proposed CIP budget?

Yes.

Thai Viet Phan

So we don't have anything recurring in the general fund as a line item?

That is general fund funded in the CIP.

Thai Viet Phan

Got it. Okay.

Thai Viet Phan

How much is it? It doesn't have a breakdown right here.

1.5 million.

Thai Viet Phan

Okay, great. Love to hear it because Euclid needs an update. No bail. Actually, it was folks that I know who mentioned it to me. Although I was just in Chicago and I'd have to say that their streets are really terrible, so I do appreciate our public service staff. And then the last thing I wanted to mention is regarding neighborhood associations. Sorry, two more things. Neighborhood associations, thank you so much, Carl, for bringing this issue up about access funding for neighborhood

Thai Viet Phan

associations. For example, K-Rails, projectors, and things like that. I think that would be a wonderful thing to fund. I would love to see our neighborhood associations become more robust now that we are trying to get out of the pandemic and have access to be able to hold events. I do know Public Parks and Rec Community Services has these wonderful movies in the park and I'm so supportive they're so fun they're so super cool but I would like to see our neighborhood associations be able to hold events you know every quarter every couple months for their neighborhood I think that creates a lot

Thai Viet Phan

of camaraderie and a lot of trust and so I'd like to see us be able to fund something like that I don't know whether it has to be 25,000 or what the number might be, but to provide adequate, you know, materials that they might need. I know that prior to COVID, we were going to do a block party. I remember I was at the Riverview West Neighborhood Association, and Daisy Perez was there, and we were going to have, you know, booths and events at Rosita, and obviously with COVID, we weren't able to do that, but I'd love to bring stuff like that back. And then finally, and this is regarding the Oversight Commission.

Thai Viet Phan

We obviously heard some public comments about that. I know that we haven't decided yet as to whether we will have one or what it might look like. Have you looked into how this might be addressed or what would happen if, say, we decide to approve one in August or November?

In planning the budget, we did set aside money thinking that this would be an expenditure that we would need to have programmed in the budget. But we really are waiting at the City Attorney's Office is in the process of drafting an ordinance to create such an oversight body And when we get the details from that it'll give us a better idea of what the monetary Expense will be so that when we present the proposed budget for you, we will certainly have had that delineated and included

Thai Viet Phan

Thank you and Not sure if the ACLU folks have sent it to staff, but I do know I received an email For a budget estimate for a police oversight based on their model that that what they would like to see so I can send it over If that's helpful, but otherwise I'll wait for our ad hoc committee members to come back with their recommendation That's it for now. Thank you

Phil Bacerra

Thank you councilmember Anybody else want to provide comment or direction to staff?

Phil Bacerra

I'll jump at once.

Thai Viet Phan

I mean, you can just do all the things that I asked for, and it's fine.

All right, meeting adjourned. Just kidding. I will go next, Mayor Pro Tem.

Phil Bacerra

Please do.

I would like to see much more open spaces, green spaces. So I'd still like for us to look into purchasing Willowick or other pieces of properties where we can extend them into pocket parks. We do have some, but it's just not enough. And continue on expanding in our youth services, in particular the paid internships. and along those lines, there is that yes program,

and I'm not sure how it works with the students who are undocumented. Are they required to provide some sort of verification of right to work? Is there something that we can do to give them exemption so that they can also participate. And so these are the students that I've been here a long time, brought here as babies. So I'd like to see having an even playing field for them as well,

so that they can get the same opportunities that the other students get. And I see that our zoo doesn't get much use from the youth. I mean, it's very popular with families with small children. But some events that would maybe target the teenagers, maybe some Friday night activities that will interest them and free membership to the students or maybe the families.

And I know we have our one day per month that is free for Santa Ana residents, but it would be nice to have something that we can target the youth so that they would come out to the zoo more often and take advantage of the educational programs. And in addition, along the lines of more parks, more activities at the parks, after school programs,

the daycare system that we had in place at one time in collaboration with the school district worked really well.

And my list is a little longer, but I would like to ask one of my colleagues to go ahead, and I will put some more thoughts, and I will take another turn in a little bit. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem.

Phil Bacerra

Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Hernandez, would you like to provide your comments?

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

Yes, absolutely, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you for the opportunity to share.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

I wanna start by thanking staff for the wonderful presentation. And I'm so happy to see a number of line items that I am extremely supportive of. Really happy to see that we have the Winter Village coming back. Happy to see the critical infrastructure, storm drain, channel fencing, broadband access, lots of great things. So just wanted to share my support there. As it pertains to what I would like to see in this upcoming budget, I am very supportive of the mural restoration efforts.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

I think there are a number of murals that we need to support, supportive of the fire stations. Extremely happy to see the Chinatown Memorial although I would like to ask my colleagues for their support in seeing that Chinatown Memorial increase from 25,000 to 50,000 so that we can ensure that this is a memorial that we can all be proud of. And I just think if there was more support there financially, I think there's more opportunity for us to create something that is truly reflective of the Chinese community and the inspiration that they've instilled into our community.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

I also am supportive of seeing the Little Saigon sign, some funding for that. I would like to see that be brought back. I would like to see us get our library budget to a minimum of 12 million. That is what neighboring cities our size, similar demographics and population cities like Anaheim that have similar demographics to our families and children. Their budgets are upwards of about 12 to 15 million or at 6 million. So I would like to see an increase there. And more importantly, our library director

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

is doing really fantastic things through that department. So I think it's a responsible thing for us to do is to fund education at the right level. I would also like to see staff include more funding for early childhood education and early learning initiatives. As we're coming out of a pandemic, I know a lot of families will potentially be going back into the workforce in person and not working remotely from home. I wanna make sure that they're well-equipped for success and having access to childcare is going to be imperative. Something else I'm going to be supportive of

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

is seeing more community-based organizations getting support from the city of Santa Ana. And I would like us to focus on organizations that don't have funding over a million dollars. I know there's a number of great organizations that provide re-entry services, mental health services, trauma-informed care, harm reduction services. And I would like to see those organizations properly funded so that we can now as a city have a response before we get to the point where people are losing their lives.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

I think one of the most tragic things I have seen this year is that we have responses after people, you know, go through the tragedy of losing a life, but we don't have adequate responses before we get to that point. And I believe properly funding the community-based organizations that we do have, it's going to give us as a city and as a community a better response. And in turn, it's going to create much safer communities. I would like to see us have funding, go to the downtown Santa Ana businesses. I'm happy to see it was included.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

the additional 1.5 million. There are also a number of events happening in the downtown Santa Ana. I would like to see some of those events funded as well. I know the East End Block Party is an event that has happened for the better part of close to 10 years now. Would love to see a community event like that get support. I also would like to support Council Member Fann's idea to see neighborhood associations receive funding. As many of you know, I live in the Artisa Pilar neighborhood. Thanks to Ruby Wu, she's kept her neighborhood very busy

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

and kept us active, but of course, there are always fiscal challenges. So I would like to see neighborhoods get that support. I also am in favor of seeing more mental health services and specifically mental health services and support for LGBTQ children and for children that have been justice impacted. I want to stress the importance of it is that as we look at crime prevention and public safety, we also have to understand that those children whose parents are involved in the criminal justice system,

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

in particular, they face a host of challenges and physiological, psychological strain, a lot of antisocial behavior. Oftentimes these children end up suspended or expelled from school. Many of the families face economic hardship. So I want us, if we're going to have a strong emphasis on public safety, we also need to have a strong emphasis on developing healthy responses to families that are impacted due to the justice system. So I think having a balance on re-entry services, mental health, and family wraparound programs

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

is going to be instrumental in decreasing the amount of violent crimes that we have in the city of Santa Ana. And at this moment, Mayor Pro Tem, that concludes my comments.

Phil Bacerra

Thank you, Council Member Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

Thank you.

Phil Bacerra

I think we've got Council Member Pena Loza and Council Member Lopez left. Which one would like to go first?

Jessie Lopez

I can go first. Thank you. Thank you, Sa, for the opportunity and for the detailed budget.

Jessie Lopez

I read the report from the Measure X Oversight Committee and I thought it was good. So I'm supporting some of the recommendations specifically around the seed economic development for cooperative business models here in the city I think that's really important for us to fund and specifically because a lot of them are Sunana base and I think it's important that they receive the support from the city as they are legitimate businesses I also will be supporting the measure X sunset stabilization fund and you know the long-term plan to prepared for when

Jessie Lopez

measure X sunsets I think it's important you know we are in a very great financial situation now but I think it's smart for us to plan ahead because we don't want to find ourselves whether we're sitting up here or not you know and in a predicament financially I'm also very supportive of the fire stations that have been included here I guess I just had one one question around that is that if if the public could receive information as to what the improvements are going to be for the fire stations that would be appreciated

we certainly can we could incorporate that in our upcoming budget presentation

Jessie Lopez

okay perfect thank you Christine other things I have a question for staff because I remember you know we're having a conversation about street improvements and whatnot and I remember when I was reviewing the budget last year correct correct me if I'm wrong, but do we use some of the restrictive funds to fund some of the streets that we see here in Sanana that need repairs?

We use a combination of funds to do street improvement work. So there is a large amount of, correct me if I'm wrong, measure X money that goes to fixing the streets as well. And then we have our M2 dollars that we do receive formula-based, but we also seek grants related to that that we use for our streets. And most of those grant programs always come with a match requirement for the city. So when we do utilize those types of monies, we do have to use general fund dollars to meet our match requirement.

We also use a portion of our gas tax, too. That's a separate allocation.

Jessie Lopez

Yeah, so there was, what, $1 million in it last year?

$1 million of gas tax.

Jessie Lopez

In the gas tax fund, yeah.

Female Speaker 1- There's an allocation of gas tax called the Road Maintenance and Rehab Account, RMRA, as I believe it's at least $5 million a year. Female Speaker 1- Five million. Female Speaker 1- Right around there.

Jessie Lopez

Female Speaker 1- So that leads me to my next set of questions, because we have money that we can use. It's a lot of money, $5 million. I'm not saying we should use it all in one year, but I want to know from our Public Works team what is it that they need to be able to use you know a million two million a year to help address this issue because if we have the money I'm wondering why not use that money that's there now as opposed to maybe general fund money at least for this year there's a couple things going on and I

I know that Nabil will want to, you know, add on to this. But one, to get the M2 funding from OCTA, which is roughly around $5 million a year as well for streets, in order to get that, we have a maintenance of effort requirement in the general fund, meaning that we have to spend so much general fund money in order to get that $5 million. The general fund requirement that we have is something like $9 million for right-of-ways. And so we consider that roadway improvements. And so that could be, it could be streetlights, it could be sidewalks, it could be curbs,

it could be ADA access ramps, it could be striping, you know, anything that's in the right-of-way, the roadway. And so some of our general fund money is really for those roadway expenditures. Now, when you're talking about just pavement, the pavement, we only have the 1.5 million of the general fund for alley improvements. But the pavement, we rely on our restricted funding sources. So that's like the 5 million of M2, the 5 million of this RMRA, the road maintenance and rehab.

So that's 10 million right there for pavement projects. And then on top of that, we get competitive funding for pavement projects, some from OCTA and some from state and then also federal as well. So in fact, I think for our street improvement projects and the proposed CIP, we're looking at 18 million, yeah, 18.7 million. And that's a mix of all of those sources.

Jessie Lopez

Okay, so I guess I just want to leave this conversation knowing that it's not a capacity issue on our end. That is correct. Okay, thank you for that.

Jessie Lopez

So back to the some of the items that I'll be supporting are, you know, really looking at the traffic calming measures that War III needs right now. Streetlights is one of the big requests coming from different neighborhoods. so I would like to see a robust fund be allocated for War III when it comes to streetlights, you know, public works. They know the amount of requests that we receive on a monthly basis to address this issue, and that is a public safety issue as well. And so we also need, circling back to traffic calming issues, you know, with Floral Park

Jessie Lopez

and Fisher Park, I believe that they have probably, you know, touched base with staff already regarding some of the issues that the neighborhood there needs because you know North Flower it kind of widens when it goes towards memory lane and so you know folks are not driving properly or abiding by all of the traffic safety rules that they should be and so there are two main projects that we really need to push for and hopefully receive the support of the rest of the council members here to see those projects be funded. Also, you know, there's a comment around the EJ implementation.

Jessie Lopez

I would like to see that be researched and brought back to staff for this council to consider publicly. Also the AQMD monitor, that's something that I also would like for staff to review and bring back to this council. Very supportive of, you know, childhood development projects. and also let's see youth funding programs specifically around the skill development that was mentioned in terms of certification and making sure that we're connecting them with trade and union jobs here in the city I think you've heard from everybody about how important that is and I think that also

Jessie Lopez

leads folks that necessarily don't decide to go to college or you know to study a higher education it really provides a pathway to the middle class and so I would like to see the city be involved in that I also am going to be very supportive of reentry services for for folks that are just as impacted but also for their families and the fitness centers I think are a really great opportunity for folks to you know to kind of live by those pillars of our

Jessie Lopez

general plan and and yeah I think for now that's gonna be it okay thank you

Phil Bacerra

thank you councilmember Lopez councilmember Peloza

David Penaloza

thank you mayor pro tem Becerra and thank you to all of the staff hard working staff for putting this budget workshop together. Thank you to all the community members that participated in numerous budget workshops that we had over the last couple of months. One thing that I always try to keep in mind

David Penaloza

as I, you know, do this role to the best of my ability is that we are a municipal government in the business to provide service to our residents. And all the things that we could come up with are fantastic and great, but we mustn't lose sight of our core functions of a municipal government, which I hear it every day from residents. You know, all these things are great. We could have all the memorials and plaques in the world and try to solve every social problem out there. But if we have streets that we can't drive on, dirty parks that we can't take our families to,

David Penaloza

we don't have adequate libraries to take our families to if we don't we call 9-1-1 God forbid and a paramedic doesn't show up on time or a police officer or a firefighter we're not doing our job so I'm happy with everything that I've heard up here and because it's all great things that we must focus on but we must also not lose track of our core function as a city and as to have the great streets to drive on, a nice park to go to, and the library to go on the weekends to check out the latest book. I mean, that is essentially what we're, you know, vested to do, is providing

David Penaloza

these services. So I want to, I'm happy with a lot of things I've seen, and especially happy with the community feedback presentation that I saw, because not only in communicating with many neighborhoods and residents across the city share the same sentiments that I do, but it's reflected on the graphs that the budget workshops put together. In one of the top five community feedback topics, 32.5% wanted to see an emphasis on street and sidewalk improvements, repair work on city streets

David Penaloza

and replacements of existing damaged concrete sidewalks. The second were, or the first was homeless services, includes homeless shelters and clean up services. And the third one was youth services and economic development along with affordable housing. All these things are great, and I'm happy that street and sidewalk improvements are front and center. but it's also a sad reality of how neglected our city has been for years. It's a very old city, 150 plus years old, so understandably our sidewalks and streets

David Penaloza

and underground infrastructure are going to be crumbling. And we've been investing a lot into our streets and sidewalks, which I'm happy to see. Not happy because of the delays and the anxiety it causes out there with all the traffic street closures, but I'm happy to see those investments being made.

David Penaloza

I do want to see focus across the board on just the basic responsibilities of our local government. I want to see investment in our parks, in our open space. I know Council Member Mendoza mentioned Willowick Golf Course, but I know that one that we have more control of, Riverview Golf Course. I know that our Oracle Congressman sent us a letter last month, you know, putting us up to the challenge that Riverview Golf Course, their lease is up in a couple of years, four years.

David Penaloza

That gives us enough time to really expand our open space, which we should be doing. And I know that we are bringing lots of parks up and running into our park system. I know we have Ray and Myrtle, we have Standard McFadden, we have, we've had Pacific Electric in the last 10 years, and I know we have a dog park coming soon. I'd like to also see, instead of waiting for and any possible grant out there to fund these, it's great if we could, if we have access to those grants and we could get them, but I'd like to see focus

David Penaloza

into these parks to make sure that parks like McFadden and standard, we're not sitting around waiting for a grant, oh, we didn't get it this year, let's try again next year. I mean, these are things that should be prioritized because they are open space, and our community is asking for them. So, if we have the funding, the surplus, let's fund the McFadden and Standard Park outright. Let's fund the dog park outright. I mean, I would love to see that.

David Penaloza

And I am very happy with the Measure X recommendations about exploring, establishing, why can't I speak, a Measure X sunset stabilization fund. Because this is something, this is a reality that's going to come very soon. Four years ago, it was 10 years away. Well, now it's quick. It's coming up in less than six years. where we're going to have the first sunset of this Measure X. And for the residents listening, Santa Ana does have the highest self-tax in the county.

David Penaloza

I hear a lot of chatter out there about Santa Ana having a $40-plus million surplus. We do not. I mean, we do, but take into consideration that we are the highest tax city in the county and that the federal government has given us close to $200 million in the last year and a half, two years. I mean, if someone gave me $200 million, I would have a surplus too, personally. So, we have to remember that these one-time funds are why we have this budget surplus that everyone talks about.

David Penaloza

But I don't, you know, is this, Catherine, maybe you could answer some of this, is the federal government going to give us this money, you know, when's the second tranche coming? I guess is the question.

So, it, at first it was only going to be distributed when you exhausted your complete first tranche, but now they have recently changed that. And I believe we have a date, I don't see dates out there, that we will actually be getting it sooner than what we had initially thought. I can give you the exact date.

David Penaloza

And that would be able to use to replenish, is it, I don't think we're replenishing any general fund dollars lost anymore?

No. So initially with the ARPA dollars, we were allocated about $128 million, so we did receive the first 60-some million and the second tranche would be $60 million. In the initial Department of Treasury regulations, you could do use a pre-described formula to determine what your revenue loss was to your general fund and then move the ARPA dollars over to your general fund, and then they would become unrestricted to use. However, when we followed that formula, it didn't result in a loss for us to qualify to do that. We, with some other cities that were in the same boat, really pushed hard against that regulation.

They had since modified it, and now they're giving a safe harbor, so you can move a maximum, I believe, of $10 million into your general fund. So we would love to do that with the second tranche.

David Penaloza

Okay, so we would potentially see an additional surplus, again, that was created by these federal dollars given to us. Correct?

That would help add to your general fund. But the current surplus, I'll have the finance director.

The current surplus is really due to Measure X. The fact that we have it and the fact that it's doing very well, our sales tax is doing very, very well. If we did not have Measure X, we would not have a surplus.

David Penaloza

Okay, and that's, again, so that's sunsetting in about half of that. It's half the percent that's sunsetting in six years? That's correct. Okay, so I want us to, as we move forward, to focus on making sure that we're not relying too heavily on Measure X. I want us to focus on the core functions of a municipal government. And then if there's extra, then let's invest in all these great things. The great things that I would like to see prioritized, I know that to purchase and build a new third library,

David Penaloza

which I would love to see, would require a lot of money and resources and time.

David Penaloza

Something that we could quickly do, especially now that we're in this very digital era and this gig economy where we expect everything to be brought to our doorstep. I would like to, just knowing that it took a year and a half for this knowledge mobile to come to our city yard after we ordered it, I would like to see us start looking into bringing in a second, third knowledge mobile because of how large and dense our city is. I would definitely love to see a third library branch tomorrow, but I know that that's not going to happen because nothing in

David Penaloza

government happens from one day to the next. So I think it'd be very beneficial for our city to be able to immediately bring on additional two bookmobiles. And I know that requires staff that are going to drive that bookmobile around to these neighborhoods where we need it. And that also brings me back to the fact that 50% of our residents don't have access to a car. So, if we bring these resources to their doorstep, I think that it's going to be more beneficial to our residents. The year-round aquatics program,

David Penaloza

Catherine and maybe Lisa might want to answer, we currently only have it running at a Memorial Park, and is it Salgado, the pool? Jerome, so it's those two parks that have the year-round aquatics program?

Yes, Councilmember Penaloza, we're having some issues with our pools, and we're having to take them down, and we're having to rotate the year-round aquatics. So, a lot of them are past their useful life and so in the future and as you hear our presentation about the parks master plan it talks about investing in our our facilities and amenities and so we have to switch that around a lot a lot of the times we'll have some maybe some pump problems we can't find a park and so on and so forth so we have to move that around a lot and it's funded by cannabis funding yeah thank you

David Penaloza

for that. And I had heard some of that from residents and just some of the aquatic, I think it was Blu-ray management company, they mentioned it to me about these issues that we're running into our pools. And our pools are old. Our pools are in need of a full gutting and building from the ground up. And that's something that keeps, you know, in the back of my mind. It's, I, about a year ago I mentioned to staff there's a memorial a little memorial at Memorial Park it's a little plaque in in memory of our of our you know veterans and I had brought it up to a couple of the members

David PenalozaItem 1

of the city manager's office we need to to find funding to create a new memorial but then I take a step back and look around that memorial park and look at all the the millions of dollars that we need to invest into that new children's playground, to invest into that new community center, the pool. So I can't with a straight face say we're gonna you know put a plaque a new plaque and give ourselves a pat on the back when the whole park's falling apart. So I would like us to focus on those those critical infrastructure improvements like that pool, like that community center, like

David PenalozaItem 1

the the children's playground. Not just a memorial park but at where where they're needed. If we have these 40-plus million dollars of one-time funds to use, let's invest it into these amenities that are in dire need and there would be one-time costs. I'm pretty sure the price tag to reconstruct an entire pool the size of Memorial is not cheap. So, you know, let's start focusing on, and I know we are with the parks master plan, which I'm happy we did a a couple years ago, but that'd be something that I want to put a priority in and focus on as well.

David PenalozaItem 1

So that's it for me, Madam, I mean, Lisa.

David PenalozaItem 1

And in regards to the community organizations that are underfunded in the city and want general fund dollars from the city, I mean, I think that we should, and this brings me back to a lot of the times when I ask the conversation why, when we're awarding a contract, we don't see, whether it's just buying a car, we don't see many Santa Ana vendors on there. I always try to also take a step back and wonder, are the Santa Ana vendors properly notified and educated on how to put in a bid when they see an RFP put out by the city?

David PenalozaItem 1

And I would like us to come up with, instead of telling all these community organizations, yeah, we're going to fund you annually, which is not possible because these budgets are approved on an annual basis by different council members that come and go, that needs to, we need to come up with a program that educates community members on how to put in a bid when we put out an RFQ and take it through a request for RFP, I'm sorry, not an RFQ. and educate these community organizations because there are millions of dollars available, whether it's state, federal, or local, that you just have to apply.

David PenalozaItem 1

And if we educate and give them the proper tools to do it, they don't have to rely on an annual allocation from the city

David PenalozaItem 1

because we can't create another city department, whether it's a mental health department inside the police department that's going to now contract out, they still need to put in a bid for it. It can't, it's, there's going to be a process always, so why not educate these organizations of how to do it? So maybe that's more into the CDA shop, of helping educate our community on how to do this on an annual basis would be great. I'm happy with the staff requests. I'm happy to see four more code enforcement officers come online, because we know that our code enforcement department has been running on a skeleton crew for a while,

David PenalozaItem 1

but I know that, and then Council Member Fan alluded to this, I know that with that, we're gonna now have a request for city attorneys, and on the backend of that are needed to now process everything that code enforcement is out there doing. Let's say it's a nuisance abatement warrant that we now wanna do. We're gonna need more legal staff, more so. So, all of these things have this, it's going to trickle throughout the organization of what else do we need to make sure that it's there. So, that is, those are my comments. There will be a lot more on Monday night and on Tuesday, I'm sure.

David PenalozaItem 1

But I just want to make sure that we focus on those things. And every recommendation that is being made, we're also keeping in mind of what that is a consequence of, or what consequences are going to come because of these decisions. They're good things, but I just want to make sure that we put a focus on. And obviously, our public records requests just system, and I know that's more in the city clerk's department. I want to make sure that we also invest in that, maybe put focus on how we could properly structure that. So that's it, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Thank you. Council Member Mendoza, did you want to wrap up your comments?

Yes, I do. Thank you.

Along the lines of the aquatic program, I'm very supportive of that, Council Member Pinaloza. I learned to swim at Santa Anita Park, and it was just a quarter for two hours of swimming, and I learned some life-saving skills there. So I understand the importance of our aquatics program, and we need to revamp those swimming pools and allow our children to gain those skills and someday save some lives. I would like to see the fire station rehabilitated and use it as a PAL center.

Cyprus, the fire station, right, the Cyprus fire station. We have classes that are put on at our different community centers. However, they're not free. Those are always cost money, and I understand it's because it's outside people teaching them. But how about if we have staff teaching free classes like the kids are asking, the youth want culinary classes and not charge. We should allow a stipend to the neighborhood association president. We

need to give them some kind of incentive because, you know, it is a lot of work. like Councilmember Hernandez mentioned, Ruby Woo has done a lot, but it does take a lot from the person's time, efforts, and probably their own finances. So we need to allow for a budget for the neighborhood associations for supplies, activities, and events. And in addition, give someone incentive incentive to be president for six months or a year and then rotate.

Because in my neighborhood, it is really tough trying to get somebody to be president of the New Horizons.

We need to continue the program in recognizing our veterans and just prioritize such a plaque and statues because I know that there are other priorities such as the aquatics, but we do need to recognize our veterans in some way. I know we had started that a couple years ago, but we need to pick that up again and ensure that Santa Ana is a city that is known to appreciate and recognize its veterans.

Perhaps we can also collaborate and coordinate with the electric vehicle companies to install charging stations where appropriate in our cities. Maybe that will help us to reduce the emission fumes here in the city of Santa Ana. If we had more electric vehicle charging stations, maybe more residents will be likely to purchase one and when the prices come down a little bit. We also need another PAL

Center in the south side of our city. We have one over in in the west end and but we don't have anything in the south side and as a matter of fact we also should look at extending another substation, a police substation in the south side of Santa Ana so that we can have more efficient policing in that area. I am in favor of more summer concerts on a yearly basis.

And as we heard at our previous meeting, many of our nonprofits are suffering. They need the money. during these summer concerts, how about if we invite our nonprofits to come out and put up a booth, and that's just another way for them to get some profits in addition to what they're doing already for the 4th of July. It is something that will be well attended because music just seems to bring people together and we should maybe just select one of the parks.

That way the public knows that there's going to be summer concerts, let's say at Centennial, where it's the biggest park here in Santa Ana, that we're going to have summer parks there from June through August, every Tuesday night or every Thursday night. And we get vendors out there and create more of a community.

So since we're getting back from, we're recovering from COVID, we do need to allocate as much money as we can into more outdoor activities and I'm in favor of having some kind of teen excursions that are available to our residents that are provided by our city staff. Excursions such as baseball games, hiking, or even just Disneyland. Something that is no fee or a very low fee. As you know many of

our residents are low income and so we need to get our youth involved in some kind of excursion programs get them out and away from their their games they've already spent two years indoors let's bring them out and get some fresh air and sunshine. Do we have an entryway into the city that is similar to what we have at the south end?

I perhaps beautify our entryways from the north, from the west, and from the east because I really don't I have not noticed any of that but I do notice when I come in from on South Main Street I see that beautiful welcome to Santa Ana and it would be great if we could have some kind of welcoming very appealing and beautiful signage to let our future tourists and other visitors know that they are entering the beautiful city of Santa Ana thank you mayor pro tem that is it

Phil BacerraItem 1

Thank you, Council Member Mendoza. Council Member Hernandez, did you wanna add a couple more comments?

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Yes, sir. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I thank my colleagues for just having such an in-depth discussion about what we are collectively passionate about as a council. I support many of the items that my colleagues have brought forth. Specifically, I support seeing a budget for police oversight. I do think that that is something that should come from our police department budget. I think as it pertains to public safety, one of the things that we need to take into account when it comes to public safety is restrooms.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

El Salvador Park restrooms tend to not make families feel as welcomed as they should. So I'd like to see funding for restrooms at El Salvador Park. restrooms at Birch Park. Many of our seniors go there and I know restrooms are important to families and seniors there. I would like to and I'm hoping this isn't pie in the sky but the Santa Anita neighborhood deserves a community center at Campesino Park. Right now that neighborhood is in dire constraints in the middle of a pandemic and in the middle of a lot of violence.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

The Santa Anita Community Center isn't as accessible right now due to construction as it should be, which leaves residents in the Santa Anita neighborhood without a place to take their children and family. So we do need to revamp the Santa Anita Park Community Center. And I would also like to see Campesino Park have a community center as well. I want to give credit to our parks and rec director and city manager for the fitness courts. I think that was a fantastic new addition to our city's amenities.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

I would like to see more diversity as it pertains to fitness courts and features. Most notably, I would recommend changing some of the amenities to diversify the fitness court features that we have. I would like to see included battle ropes, pull-up bars, dip bars, box jumps. And I would love for staff to see if it's a possibility to create a full-on high-intensity training fitness court where we perhaps have a water bag, which is a punching bag,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

so people can go and work on their cardiovascular training and have access to boxing equipment, which is something we don't traditionally see in many community spaces. But boxing is a big sport here for the city of Santa Ana. We have a wealth of talent, and I think it's a responsive thing for us to cultivate it. I would like to see us as a city create more youth sports programming and properly funding existing programs like the TKO Boxing Program. I know the Pastor Nathie's nonprofit

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

recently expanded to include boxing services. I would like to see them get support if there's an opportunity for them to get that support so that we can have more boxing facilities throughout our city. But most notably, I would love to see Parks and Recreation receive funding so that we can expand boxing and perhaps wrestling services at our recreational centers. The only things that we would need is the space where you have mats, where you have punching bags. And I'm sure there's a number of wrestling clubs and mixed martial arts clubs

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

and organizations that would come to the city and would be willing to offer services. Athletes like Gilbert Melendez, who won 12 world championship title fights in the sport of mixed martial arts, would be happy to offer services here. I would also like to see Parks and Rec receive much more funding than they've ever received in the past. I think if there's ever a time where we need to start thinking out of the box and really having more comprehensive dialogue as it pertains to public safety. The message is simple. Our residents and their families and their children

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

deserve to have the best parks and recreation department in the County of Orange or the center of the county. I want to see Parks and Rec properly funded so that we can create innovative programming through institutions like the Santa Ana Zoo. If Parks and Recreation was properly funded, I can only imagine the type of youth programming that we can provide in-house through Santa Ana Zoo. That gives youth the ability to work with animals that most children throughout Orange County don't have access to. And I think that's something beautiful. And it's something that we should capitalize on. So I would love to see Parks and Rec

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

look at some options as to what type of programming can we potentially provide at Santa Ana Zoo recreationally to children. I would also support seeing funding for aquatics programs, perhaps looking at transitioning our parks that do have aquatic programs from outdoor to indoor. I think that that gives us the ability to create programming for not only youth and children, I mean youth, children, and families, but it creates programming opportunities for seniors. We need to invest more resources into our seniors and our elderly community.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

And aquatics is a great way for the elderly to stay healthy. And we can accommodate and create programming from 9 a.m. to 10.30 a.m., 1 o'clock p.m. to 2 o'clock p.m., which are hours that seniors are available for. And I'm sure these are programs they would enjoy. We do desperately need to invest more money and more attention into our senior community. I support the expansion of the Summer Night Lights program for neighborhoods like Santa Anita. Pastor Nati Alvarado and Neutral Ground have done a phenomenal job decreasing police calls,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

decreasing graffiti during the Summer Night Lights program that he's had at El Salvador Park. I think we are getting to the point where we need to see an expansion of Pastor Nati's Summer Night Lights program. And I think the perfect fits are neighborhoods like Santa Anita. I also am supportive of seeing youth employment opportunities, youth hiring components be part of our city strategy. I think that when it comes to access to the trades and union jobs, we're setting up our children for success.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

I want to be supportive of the Cypress Fire Station receiving a potential community nonprofit that focuses on decreasing crime and preventing it. the area where the Cyprus fire station is right in the middle of a hotspot for crime in our community, where there are in any different direction, northeast, southwest, there could be upwards of two to three different rival gang territories. So having organizations that focus on decreasing crime and preventing it are going to be pivotal.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

I think an organization like KidWorks, who has done great with small spaces, is a great fit for the firehouse. Community programming that helps us address and decrease gang violence is essential. We need to focus on youth violence prevention. We have had too many young people lose their life in our city. I think programming is like community gardening. I think programming is like the graffiti arts program. program programming that gives kids mentorship and more importantly we need nonprofits to focus

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

on case management case management will help us work with those kids that are on the verge of falling through the cracks so i think having the community the allocation of funding for community organizations is going to give us the best response at preventing crime and decreasing gang violence And lastly, the last three items are funding for the arts, visual arts, music, poetry, dance, videography, and photography, I think are essential and go hand in hand in increasing public safety and decreasing gang violence and youth violence.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

as it pertains to visual art videography photography there's a number of fantastic organizations in santa anna we have the octac organization we have the crear studio which is in downtown santa anna which has helped us highlight the black history parade the chicano park in san diego and i said it earlier but i want to say it again we need to properly fund our Parks and Recreation Department. We need to add more funding to Public Works Department. Director Nabil Saba has done a fantastic job at making sure that our streets are well lit,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

but there's more that needs to be done. There's more lights that need to be lit. There's more parking. There's more traffic direction, traffic diversion. And I think Public Works plays an essential role in increasing the perception of safety. And lastly, how do we make up for the loss or not the loss, but the lack of open space that we should have as a city. I think we need to get more innovative in looking at streets that we could potentially close off or maybe streets that have cul-de-sacs and looking at having set days throughout the week.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Maybe it's throughout the month or throughout the quarter, but where Parks and Rec can look and work in conjunction with Public Works and find these hotspots where children are playing in the street where there are cul-de-sacs where we can then allocate a specific day where we focus on sports in the streets like street hockey street soccer we can focus on on having a playful learning landscape approach similar to philadelphia where we have a full day of activities where we utilize urban space as a playground and we would need traffic direction and traffic diversion which is where public works comes into play.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

So that completes my direction, Mayor Pro Tem, and I thank you for opening up the floor for this discussion.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Great, thank you, council member Hernandez. So my turn. So I want to thank staff, especially the part about presenting us a balanced budget. That's always a good thing. You know, one theme that was brought up up here on the dais, I believe, by council member Paloza, and that is that we are flush with a lot of federal stimulus funds. And so, not just city government, but our population. And so, I agree with you, Catherine. Measure X is a big part of our fiscal picture, but Measure X is funded out of the pockets of our taxpayers, who are flush with cash as well from stimulus funds.

Phil BacerraItem 1

So I just caution us to be very aware of that. I love seeing the 3.1 million for fire station improvements. Chief Henry's given me a tour of those stations and there's definitely a need for some of those improvements, so I'm glad to see that going. 1.5 million for downtown business assistance. I want to thank the Board of Supervisors for their contribution. I'm glad that they were able to match what this council has already provided to our folks.

Phil BacerraItem 1

And I also really appreciate the four code enforcement officers that we're going to be seeing in the budget and the zoning code update. We talk about, you know, what we went through for seven years to get a general plan adopted, but as we've said over and over, now the real work begins. And this is one of those implementation tools that I'm looking forward to. It's going to be long. There's going to be a lot of work put into it, but I'm excited about that. You know, the community priorities that were expressed, it's not a shocker that addressing homelessness and public safety were at the top.

Phil BacerraItem 1

And with that, I would say that some of my priorities that I would like to see, you know, the Chief Valentin has proposed this idea of having officers dedicated, well, single officers dedicated to each ward. And what I would like to see, and this is something that was historically done with our PD, and that is right now we have a citywide directed patrol unit. It's a group of officers that kind of go out and put out the fire, so to speak. I would like to see that expanded because, you know, one thing that I see with some of the folks in my ward is that they're supportive of public safety, but they don't know the names of officers.

Phil BacerraItem 1

And there was a point in time in the city where you would know the names of officers because they were assigned to your area. They patrolled your area. You had that relationship. So there was a more proactive community-based policing that would take place. And I think that having that assigned, I don't know how that will be organized within PD. I'd like to see what that looks like, but I do think that just one officer per ward is not sufficient. I think we do need more. It was brought up about a substation. You know, one thing to think about with the city of Santa Ana is that our police headquarters is in downtown.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Downtown is not geographically the center of the city. And so if you're trying to service the south end of town, it takes you 15 to 20 minutes at a good time to get up to the headquarters to do whatever you need to do to process somebody. I believe that we need to have a substation on the south side of town that would probably cut that, at least just the transportation time, by at least 60 percent, just by having something on the south side. I would see it as something similar to what we have on the west end, the west end substation over off of Harbor and McFadden.

Phil BacerraItem 1

A storefront, not ground up construction, a possibility to maybe team up with one of our other departments where we can use one of their facilities, whether it's public works and, you know, one of our, part of our water system, you know, we have these properties where we have wells and we have other infrastructure, but we have a lot of dead space, and maybe that's something where we can partner up with our folks in public works to more efficiently utilize that land. So that's one. As far as homeless services, I've said it before, and I won't keep beleaguering this, but I will say that, you know, right now,

Phil BacerraItem 1

the complaints that I'm receiving, you know, we want to be compassionate, we want to offer services, but for the folks that are contributing to Measure X, that are paying the taxes, that, you know, hardworking families that don't, you know, they're trying to live their best lives, and they're encountering instances where, you know, it just feels like we're throwing money at a situation and not seeing results. I know there are numbers that say otherwise, but I know that folks that I'm interacting with, I know from my own experiences, going to the shopping centers on South Bristol, we're not seeing it.

Phil BacerraItem 1

I mean, I'm not seeing the needle move. And I know that just recently the point in time count says that there are less homeless in Santa Ana. But, you know, for folks on my end of town, they don't see that. So, I don't know if maybe they're coming to our end, but it's just seeing us spend so much money on homeless services and the minimal, I guess, impact that we're seeing as far as folks taking or accepting shelter, accepting these services, it just feels like we're kind of throwing money out there that isn't being effectively used. So, I'm just very concerned about that. Parking enforcement officers.

Phil BacerraItem 1

It's just insane for folks to have to go through the process that they go through to get a parking district incorporated or approved and then not to have the enforcement services or support to enforce it. So right now, according to some stats from PD, we don't have parking enforcement on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. To me, that would be the time to have it. But I understand that PD is spread thin when it comes to parking enforcement. We need to fill that gap. That's times where folks are having house parties and folks are driving into the neighborhoods,

Phil BacerraItem 1

and over time they start to get the idea that, hey, who's going to enforce this? So I believe that really needs a change, especially given how much effort people put into incorporating these parking enforcement districts.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Specifically, I would love to see lights over at Thornton Park's basketball courts. Every month I go and have my monthly community office hours and every month I get asked, so when are the lights coming? So I'm hoping to be able to answer this year. So that would be nice. Community center on the south side. I don't know that that would be something we can incorporate into this budget, but I want to put that on your radar because while we are blessed on the south side to have a litany of parks, we have no physical facilities. And that would be wonderful for our neighborhood associations to have a city facility that they can

Phil BacerraItem 1

meet in just the way that our neighborhood associations on the central and northern part of town have access to city facilities. So I would love to see us have one of those on our end of town. I want to thank the Measure X Oversight Committee for their recommendations because I agree with some of those recommendations favoring the one-time spending, Sunset Stabilization Fund, shifting Measure X funds to street improvements. Those are all great. And $10 million for addressing homeless. Again, if we're going to address homeless, let's make sure it's an effective way to do it. I don't know if we need more of CityNet,

Phil BacerraItem 1

do we need maybe less of CityNet and something else? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. And to go back to my residents, and my constituents and say, oh yeah, we spent another $20 million. Isn't that great? They're looking at me like I'm crazy because it's not great when they're still encountering what they're encountering in their community. I want to express support from some of the comments I heard in the community about money for the Showmobile and other neighborhood association events support. I'm not in favor of stipends, and I'll tell you why,

Phil BacerraItem 1

because I believe like many of our nonprofits and many of our other organizations, we want them to have that autonomy. We don't, I look at what Santa Anna has done with neighborhood associations and I always compare it to Los Angeles and neighborhood councils up in Los Angeles have purse strings attached and so it limits what they can and can't do. I love the flexibility that our neighborhood associations have and I don't want to impede their ability to, you know, be able to inform us and do what they do best. So I really would shy away from that.

Phil BacerraItem 1

But as far as equipment that all of our neighborhood associations can use, I know there's always the demand for the showmobile, which can be a pain as far as transporting, but let's try to figure out what that, if it's not the showmobile, what is the alternative, but something that we can help to assist when it comes to neighborhood events. There was the recommendation for money for the environmental justice staff. Absolutely agree with that. I think it's important that we have staff online, as I said when we adopted our general plan update, that we have staff that's able to monitor what these other agencies, both state and federal,

Phil BacerraItem 1

are doing here in Santa Ana, because they are approving permits when it comes to certain activities that involve pollution? And do we really know the full grasp of what has been approved by federal and state authorities? I can't say I do. And so hopefully staff does, but if not, to have someone dedicated to that monitoring role would be very, very important. I also agree with the AQMD air monitor. I'd like to at least understand that better and the feasibility of having that here in San Ana, especially given some of the impacted communities and the industrial uses that are very close

Phil BacerraItem 1

to residential and other sensitive uses. My colleagues had some amazing suggestions. Of course, money for sidewalks. I'm going to always say that. I mean, we are blessed to have such a walkable city. To not have mint-conditioned sidewalks is a sin. The comment about libraries. Libraries are wonderful, but I tend to agree where Councilmember Penaloza was talking about, you know, with the pandemic, our behavior shifted in so many ways. But one of those things was to, you know, kind of have things catered to us, delivered to us. And so, you know, it's kind of like a gym, right? The further the gym is away from the house,

Phil BacerraItem 1

the less likely you're going to use it. So I love that we've, you know, Brian and library staff have invested in these knowledge mobile, or the knowledge mobile, and I hope that in the future we are able to say knowledge mobiles, plural. So, a second, if possibly a third, that would be wonderful. And then the comments about pools. As somebody that played water polo and swam growing up, I love the idea that Santa Ana invests in aquatics programs, and yes, we do need to invest in our pools, but I would like to suggest to Lisa to contact Santa Ana College.

Phil BacerraItem 1

I was fortunate enough to have an amazing tour with Mary Hegarty and their staff, and I actually talked to them about their pool facility and what possible opportunities there would be to collaborate with them to utilize that pool. Unfortunately, Santa Ana does not have an abundant amount of public pools, and so I think one more pool, especially a quality pool like San Diego Colleges, maybe there's a way to collaborate with them. That is my, that wraps up my comments. So at this point, I don't know, maybe we gave you a little bit of direction?

My hand's tired.

We do need direction on one item tonight just because of the time that we require to program it in and figure out fee resolutions and all of that. And that has to do with if you want to raise our fees. I know you had concerns about using CPI, so what Catherine had presented was an alternative of 3.5. If there's any way we can get a consensus on that, I mean, no formal vote or anything, we would then be able to start the lengthy process of calculating everything.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Before we jump into that, you just remind me of one other item, and that is I want to make sure that in our fee schedule that comes before us.

That's what you're going to say, and it will be in there.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Good, good. I want to make sure of that. We charge for certificate of occupancies on items that do not require, or at least every other city would not require it. You enter a building that's already safe to occupy, but yet we charge for these certificates of occupancy. I appreciate that staff is being diligent in trying to make sure that what people say is being conducted in those spaces is being conducted according to our code, but it's not really trying to determine whether it's safe to occupy, and the fees that are attached to a certificate of occupancy today reflect that more onerous review of the space.

Phil BacerraItem 1

So I would like to see if we're going to have something like that, that there would be a much, a very significant reduction in the fee pertaining to that sort of review, and that it wouldn't be considered a review of occupancy. But as far as direction on the item, so it was, if you could restate that for us.

Certainly. So we have passed on raising our fees. Normally we always present CPI adjustments. And so for this one, when we brought it up in March, CPI is over 4 percent. So a request was made, could you come back with an alternative that is a little bit lower than that? And so what the finance director is proposing is utilizing a link to what our non-public safety union increase was because a lot of the cost driven for processing things are related to, since we're in the service industry, related to personnel. So it was 3 1⁄2 was her proposed recommendation.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Okay. So if we could just real quick lightning round, based on this alternative being presented by staff, we can just go around the horn and just register your, either your support or opposition to it. If I can start with Council Member Pham.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

I support the 3 1⁄2, but I do have follow-up questions slash comments for clarification regarding the budget.

Phil BacerraItem 1

So the budget, not the three and a half.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Correct. But three and a half is what I prefer. Thank you.

Phil BacerraItem 1

All right. We'll get back to that. Councilmember Pelleza?

David PenalozaItem 1

Yeah, I'm supportive of that increase, 3.5.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Thank you. Councilmember Mendoza?

Jessie LopezItem 1

Same.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Councilmember Lopez?

Jessie LopezItem 1

What can you let us know what fees you're talking about? Oh, certainly.

These are fees to provide services to individuals, not for public benefits. So this would be permit fees,

recreation participation fees, facility rentals. Those, again, services that only benefit individuals and not the public at large.

Jessie LopezItem 1

Do you have a comparison of the net loss or not net loss but not the net gain if we go with the 3.5 versus the CPI?

I don't have that at my fingertips but I could probably calculate it pretty quickly.

Jessie LopezItem 1

That's okay. I'm not tied to either or. I would support the CPI or the staff recommendation.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Thank you.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

and Councilmember Hernandez. Thank you Mayor Pro Tem. I'm supportive of the staff recommendation.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Great thank you and I too am supportive as well. So now that we got that clarification I think we

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

got another comment from Councilmember Pham. Well all y'all like went after me and had so many new ideas. I just wanted to iterate a couple things and had a couple clarification asks. So whether you send it to me directly or to the council. Regarding neighborhood associations, I am not supportive of individual stipends. My support for the $25,000 or some type of neighborhood initiative kind of share, reflecting Mayor Patel Becerra's comments, you know, some neighborhood associations are extremely active and others are not. And so I would be very concerned about doing individual stipends.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

The other questions I have were I'd love to get more information regarding the Alley Improvement Program. As you saw, the public is very interested in making sure our roads and streets are safe and well-maintained because, guess what, those affect our cars. We have a lot of people who come into the city because we are the seat of government. We are where the courthouses are located, and that creates a lot of burden on our streets, more than a typical city of our size. And because of our density, that means that the same number of people or more people per square mile are traveling on the same streets. And so we are

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

investing a lot of money in our streets, but that is grant funding or other type of matching funding, I really do think that we should do more. So I'd love to get information regarding the Alley Improvement Program, as well as maybe from Director Saba, maybe some information from you as to a comparison to what other cities invest or what we should be investing given our size, population, and density. Obviously, you know, for example, this is probably a bad example, but a city like San Francisco has low population at night but very high population during the day, and that creates a certain amount of burden on streets.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

And I imagine Santa Ana is similar in some ways as in parts of the city. So that is one area. I'd also like to get additional information regarding, I know someone had mentioned IMDEP and other organizations providing services to our undocumented residents. I do want to follow up regarding IMDEP because last year when I supported the increase, one of the concerns that I had was to ensure that they expanded their services to not only our Latino community members but also our API community members. So I'd love to get an updated report on, you know, what kind of services they're providing, how that is going.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

The other thing I did want to mention is that I do agree that, you know, there are core municipal services. However, there's a reason why we are a charter city and not a general law city. That gives us more authority and more power to deal with issues that general law cities cannot. and I think that's why we've had a lot of leeway to have a lot of programs that our community requests but with that I do want to just reiterate the sport for the Chinatown Memorial in Little Saigon sign you know our residents also talked about economic development and those two in my opinion are easy ways to bring

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

economic development to our city I will say that again Little Saigon is internationally known. People come for the culture, food, and history, and Santa Ana is an integral part of that, but we are basically erasing that part of our history and culture and opportunities for economic development and sending it over to Westminster. And we shouldn't do that. We can really benefit from that. And regarding the Chinatown Memorial, there is a reason why, you know, Downtown Inc. and Santa Ana Business Council are supportive of a Chinatown Memorial, because it It will bring business into the downtown area.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

It's a place for people to go and learn about the history of Chinatown, pay our respects, but also it's a tourist attraction. I think that is something that Santa Ana is well known for, our history and culture. The other one I want to bring up, and maybe this is too soon, maybe it's not needed, and I'm not tied to this, so please no one get mad at me on Facebook, but this is regarding Measure X funding and the tax that's going to sunset. It's something that I've mentioned to Director Downs before. It's just something I've thrown around in my head, which is how do we address the decrease, you know, the half a percent decrease.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

And is it possible to have something like a Measure X light? One of the things that we've seen with Measure X is that the increases, much of it is due to online sales. Much of it is due to folks buying stuff from Amazon and stress shopping so it comes directly to your house but the issue with that is that folks are not going out to our brick and mortar as much as they used to and that is something that we would like to at least I would like to invest in because it ensures that we have you know businesses in the city jobs for our

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

community members and whatnot so maybe it's a some allocation of funding maybe maybe not this year, maybe in the future, to look at not just the, I guess, investment fund that we're talking about, but also what maybe a Measure X Lite or some type of measure that maybe keeps the sales tax at its current level for online sales, but not for brick and mortar sales. I don't know if it's possible. I am not a finance director. I am not a tax expert. but that I think may still allow us to fund these types of programs and improvements that we want via online sales because at least knowing me I

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

don't buy things when there's a shipment cost but I like the convenience of things being sent to my home and that's what we're paying for right with online but decreasing the brick-and-mortar sales tax I think may alleviate some of the concerns that I've heard from residents who say well I'm going to X city to buy because it's still close by, but it's cheaper for taxes. So I don't know if we need to do like a study or look into that. Maybe it's down the road, but as we're here talking about how do we address this kind of looming tax issue or budget issue, I don't want us to be like Westminster.

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

I don't want to be six months from bankruptcy before we even have the discussion. And so I'd love to see if we can just start looking into these other creative solutions. Thank you.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Thank you, Councilmember Phan. So just out of fairness to everybody that has already had two turns, Councilmember Penaloza or Councilmember Lopez, do you guys have any additional comments at this time?

Jessie LopezItem 1

Thank you for that. I appreciate it. I guess some of the things that I've heard and that I agree with a lot immediately that come to mind are obviously the allocation for the police oversight, which, you know, the ad hoc will essentially come back and provide guidance on that to this full body.

Jessie LopezItem 1

I also really liked the idea of supporting, you know, some of the community organizations that don't necessarily always qualify for the thousands of dollars from grants for whatever reason due to capacity or due to grant writing issues, but that do a lot of work here in the city. and I believe and I guess I just want to say thank you to staff this is why you know Councilmember Fannie and I wanted to have these workshops so that we wouldn't have these discussions during our regular long council meetings and so I appreciate everybody being here I recognize that you've all had a long day

Jessie LopezItem 1

and it is close to 8 p.m. now but I know that we're having another one and I'm happy to share more thoughts then thank you thank you for that actually

Councilmember Lopez, you just reminded me of a very important thing. We do have a hold on your calendars for another workshop. Is it something you want to continue with or are you fine with this one and not doing the second one? We'd need to know that direction.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Before you guys answer, I'm just going to ask. So if we do not do the Monday session, what's our next steps?

The next step at your next council meeting, we have the budget before you further defining things And actually at that point we'll probably have the proposed budget based on all of the feedback taken to date.

Right. We actually have the detailed budget for Tuesday, not Monday, which is May 17th, your normal council meeting. So it'll have all the details in it, but it is a regular council meeting.

Phil BacerraItem 1

So you're going to take our input from tonight. And I guess so what's out there available right now, the draft budget, that obviously doesn't reflect what we've discussed.

So we're going to have to go back and compare the request tonight. We've already started incorporating the community feedback and make those adjustments, and then we'll have it ready for you on Tuesday the 17th. So, I mean, it's your choice if you want to do a workshop on the 16th. We probably won't be able to incorporate much from the 16th on the presentation on the 17th, but.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Okay. Well, I'll just ask my colleagues if we can just lightning round go around. Do you guys want to do a Monday session, Council Member Pham?

Thai Viet PhanItem 1

Yes, no, I'm just kidding. No, I do not, but I would like for us to schedule some additional dates, potentially, throughout the month of May and June, because we only have those two meetings. This is just a really early conversation, and so I'd like for us to have those on the calendar, special meetings to deal with this, because putting it on the 17th, look, if you're putting up the line, the detailed budget or something like that for the 17th, I'm going to go through it. But I think that we're going to need a lot more time to go line by line. And so I'd like to see meetings in between where we're only doing the budget.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Okay, thank you. Councilmember Penn-Millisle.

David PenalozaItem 1

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. And just so I fully understand, Madam City Manager, are you guys saying that it's not the first reading that's before us on Monday, correct?

No, no.

David PenalozaItem 1

I mean on Tuesday?

No, it's not.

David PenalozaItem 1

So it's just like just more detailed?

It's getting into more detail.

David PenalozaItem 1

So the first meeting is expected to come before us on June 7th? And then with the second, hopefully, at the second meeting in June?

Correct.

David PenalozaItem 1

Okay. So, yeah, I would probably not be supportive of having something on Monday because it's Thursday tonight, and I don't think that many of us will change anything from here until Monday unless we see the budget and go through it like we will on Tuesday night. So I would, I agree with Council Member Fan, we probably should see additional more workshops or meetings between May 17th and June 7th, maybe scheduled throughout there, because that's about three weeks where we have opportunity to meet with staff and discuss this in greater detail.

David PenalozaItem 1

The only suggestion I would ask is that But if we have another workshop like we did today, tonight, that we, and I mentioned this to the city clerk, that we probably started at 5.45 p.m. the same time that all our council meetings start, or 5.30, just because there are residents that do want to participate and starting at 5 p.m. right when people get out of work and then being used to our council meetings starting around 6 p.m. is probably not the best approach. So, if they start closer to our regular City Council times, I would appreciate that. That's, those are my comments.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Robert Hopkinson, Great suggestion. Councilmember Mendoza.

Councilmember Mendoza, Yes, I agree. We do have, we require some more time. Monday is a bit close. If, I would recommend that we extend it out a little bit and bring it back as well. And I would like to have more of a one-on-one workshop or maybe on a Zoom or so that our, and invite the public so that we can have a closer look at some of the items that are the more significant items.

But generally, I don't think I would have any changes. just a little more explanation on some of the line items.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Thank you for that. Council member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 1

I'm happy to support council member Fann's direction.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Great. And council member Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Thank you, mayor pro tem. I was looking forward to Monday, but now knowing that the feedback wouldn't be presented ready by Tuesday, I'm also in line with council member Fann's direction.

Phil BacerraItem 1

Great. And I too as well. I like, you know, staff has done an amazing job when it comes to some of these heavier items to take the time out of their schedule to meet with us one-on-one and try to flush through all the questions that we have. So I'm confident that between now and the first reading of the budget, you know, accommodating our schedules and your schedules, I think we can get to a point where we're comfortable with the detailed budget, you have plenty of input tonight to incorporate. So, yeah, I don't know that a Monday workshop would be productive at this point. So, I'm supportive of moving forward with the item on

Phil BacerraItem 1

Tuesday and then proceeding with the prescribed schedule from there. So, unless there's anything else, I'd like to go ahead and

David PenalozaItem 1

Mayor Pro Tem. Oh, man. Quick comment. But with, it would just be my suggestion that for Tuesday night, if we can, maybe, and I'm not sure if, are you guys open tomorrow? Friday? No. Okay. So that would leave Monday. But if we can, maybe take the discussion that was made tonight and try to shove that into a separate presentation that could be attached and added on Tuesday morning or Monday night that kind of just summarizes what we just, because I would hate to have this discussion, I mean the same discussion again on Tuesday night, that way we could elaborate

David PenalozaItem 1

and from that summary of discussion.

Yes, we'll do our best to do that, sir. And I mean we will have, with the workshop sandwiched after the 70th, that will help out greatly because then we can do a lot of the refinements prior to it being presented to you.

David PenalozaItem 1

Right, awesome, thank you.

Phil BacerraItem 1

All right, and with that, We are adjourned to Tuesday, May 17th. Thank you.

Thank you.