Read the July 19 meeting.

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David Penaloza

It was these wavy doors.

That was it. Those chairs were.

David Penaloza

You could have done with the darker wood coming.

It should have matched. It should have matched.

Just behind the deck stand up.

Sonia R. Carvalho

Yeah, that looks weird.

It looks nice.

It looks like the cushions come off.

We all set, Madam Clerk?

Yes, Mayor. Recording in progress.

Great. Thank you. Let me go ahead and call this special closed session meeting to order of the Santa Ana City Council for July 19, 2022.

As you know, I'll start with some housekeeping comments and then turn it over to the Clerk for roll call. Meeting is taking place with in-person attendance and by teleconference via Zoom. the public can access the meeting via the San Diego YouTube channel or the city's website, and please bear with us as the technology may interrupt the flow of the meeting. Madam Clerk, if you'll please call the roll.

Thank you. Council Member Hernandez?

Present.

Council Member Lopez?

Here.

Council Member Mendoza? Present. Council Member Peñalosa?

David Penaloza

Present.

Council Member Fan? Mayor Potembecerra? Here. And Mayor Sarmiento?

Here. And if you see our eyes shifting and our heads swiveling, it's because we're looking at almost a brand new chamber, so it looks great. So thank you to everybody on the staff who made this a reality. I only think it's been since the early 1900s maybe or the 1950s that it was last redone, so we get to break it in. It's good. Let me ask the council if there's any member of the council that wishes to abstain or recuse themselves from any matters on the closed session calendar.

Seeing none, hearing none. Madam Clerk, do we have anybody that wishes to address us before we go into closed session?

No, Mayor, but I would like to announce that we did receive one written communication, a Santa Ana resident on closed session item number three, waste management. A complaint was submitted regarding trash service issues.

Great. Why don't we go ahead and recess into closed session. We'll reconvene once we come out. Thank you.

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We'll be right back.

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Letitia Thank you.

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Letitia

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and we're live. Welcome, everybody. We're back and reconvene from closed session for this regular open meeting of the Santa Ana City Council for July 19, 2022. Let me begin by just apologizing for coming out so late. We wanted you to enjoy the new surroundings here for a little bit, so I hope you'll enjoy it. I want to thank our staff for these beautiful new surroundings and chairs and amenities for us. I don't think these chambers have been changed in over maybe 40 or 50 years, so you are breaking in some new material for us. So welcome. It's been a couple of weeks since we've met. I believe we had a session that we

took off, so we are glad to be back with you all. Let me go ahead and just begin with some opening remarks and then I'll go ahead and turn it over to the clerk so she can conduct roll. So our meeting is taking place with in-person attendance and by teleconference via Zoom. The public can access this meeting by the Santa Ana YouTube channel or the city's website. And as usual, please bear with us as the technology may interrupt the flow of the meeting. And I'll go ahead and ask the clerk staff to go ahead and

conduct roll. Council Member Hernandez? Present. Council Member Lopez? Here. Council Member Mendoza? Present. Councilmember Peña Lusa?

David PenalozaItem 3

Present.

Councilmember Pham? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Becerra? Here. Mayor Sarmiento?

Here. And before we do the Pledge of Allegiance, I'm going to go ahead and ask the clerk staff to go ahead and make some comments for those members of the public that are joining us either virtually or on the phone.

To request to speak on agenda or non-agenda items within the city's jurisdiction, we With the exception of Public Hearing Items No. 37, please dial star 9 from your phone or click the button labeled Raise Hand from Zoom at this time. Please hold your comments until the mayor opens Public Hearing Items No. 37 only. Please announce your name and ward or neighborhood you reside within the city of Santa Ana for the record.

Great. Thank you for those comments. I'm going to call on Mayor Pro Tem Becerra to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. And if all of you will remain standing after that, we'll have some words of inspiration from Bob Barnett, our police chairman.

Phil BacerraItem 3

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. If you would please place your right hand over your heart and begin.

David PenalozaItem 3

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Mayor and city council, in just a moment, I'm going to say a very simple prayer, but I was reflecting down there that I've been a police chaplain in this wonderful city for 30 years. I've seen a lot of change. I came in and I looked tonight and I counted it a privilege to be here. And one thing I do when I pray is I figure in and of myself, I don't have as much inspiration to give, but when I pray, I ask that God will always inspire you, give you as servants of the city, the ability to make the decisions and wisdom and discernment. It causes our people to always smile at the future and always believe in brighter days.

So, Lord, I thank you for this night. Fill this place with your presence. Inspire our leaders, Lord, and our whole community to know exactly what decisions to make and how to make them. Bless our people, Lord God. And bless, Lord, those that serve our community. Those in law enforcement, those in the fire authority, those in the hospitals, our teachers, Lord. And God, we count it a privilege to be public servants. Bless our people. In the name of the Lord, amen.

Thank you, Chaplain.

So we'll begin with our ceremonial presentations. I just want to get a show of hands. How many people are here for item number 39?

Anybody?

Got it. I'll ask the senior volunteers from the Delhi Center to come and join me up on the stage. If I can have Jose Anaya, David Pazin, Catalina Castellon, Kathy Herrera, Manuel Herrera, Maria Perez, and Guadalupe Rosa, if you guys will join me up here. Thank you.

presentation of Estado Estado Estado Estado Estado Estado to the volunteers at the Delhi Center so for those of you who aren't familiar with the center but are familiar with the neighborhood it's one of our oldest most historic neighborhoods in the city and we have you know we're blessed to have families that have legacies there that have been there for generations but don't just reside there but really include themselves as part of the work part of the effort and having developed that neighborhood and really you know the volunteer efforts because we're blessed to have a community center there

that does so much work for everybody in the city not just those in the center but these are the people here behind me are very humble they've done so much and you know we're so proud of the work that they do that we wanted to come and recognize their efforts because we see this going on throughout the city but sometimes we don't take a pause and you know and think and reflect that we're so lucky to have people that care about their neighborhood, that care about their community. So let me just embarrass them for a little while and tell you about what they do and it'll be an under you know an understatement because we knew

and we know they do so much. So the Delhi Center has many amazing volunteers but I want to recognize these eight individuals who are not all here but who have distinguished themselves from others due to their altruism, dedication, hard work, initiative and most importantly their eagerness to help their community. They've consistently volunteered since our food distribution began in 2018. The pandemic did not stop these volunteers from providing their much-needed help. They always had a great attitude as they were dispensing food and dispensing love and care. These volunteers have

been indispensable towards the operation of the food distribution at the Delhi Center. They arrive early to help set up and stay later to help with the cleanup. Their passion for philanthropy is inspiring and motivating to everybody who witnesses their great performances every Monday without fail. So we want to collectively take a moment to thank them for their efforts and as you all know food pantries were kind of a rare thing in the city. We'd we always had them but never to the degree that we had them except during the pandemic right. Once the pandemic hit we started

seeing you all remember lines of cars lines of people standing because it was it was such a difficult time businesses were shut down people were out of work so the Delhi Center became a very important part of the southern part of our city to dispense food to dispense a lot of other resources so we want to you know just recognize them and we have somebody who's really eager to record to applaud them back there so we got a young voice back there that's probably been helped but I want to thank them and if you'll allow me I want to say just a few things in Spanish, if that's all right.

and I know that in these two years, these two years of the pandemic, it has been very difficult and very dangerous. But you have been brave, you have been loving with your time, and I as Attorney, from the Municipal Council and from all residents here, I want to thank you for all your heart. A round of applause.

So, no sé quién quiere ser la persona valiente para decir unas palabras de parte del grupo. Le cedo el micrófono. I'm asking, who wants to be the brave one to go ahead and speak on behalf of the group? So, pase.

Adelante, adelante.

Mi nombre es Katy Herra. He had the pleasure and honor to meet the Lord Sarmiento from many years ago. I also ask God to guide us and guide us in everything that He does. And I thank you very much for allowing us to be volunteers, to do everything we do with our heart, from the moment we come to the end, and we do it without any interest.

We do it because we are citizens, because we have to love ourselves to love others. and the other person who goes with their bag, for us is a blessing, and it is a blessing to have you all here, and mainly to the Lord Sarmiento, so that he will continue to help us, and he will do what he is doing, so magnificent work he does, and the center of the High, mainly.

to each member, each secretary, each officer who works there with the soul and heart. Thank you very much.

So if I try to translate that, I will never do it justice. So I just want to, you know, just the summary is that I think, you know, what was said is sometimes it's more valuable to give than to receive, right? I think that that's the sort of the, yeah, the whole moral of this is just to let you know they do it from, you know, their hearts and with love. So we are so grateful, we are so thankful that you do that because we know everybody that comes before you, you treat with dignity because it is a very difficult thing to ask for help.

And we know that sometimes all of us need that. So the fact that we treat people with dignity as we're helping, as we're supportive, just fills my heart. So before I get tearful, let's go ahead and pass out some certificates of recognition. Let me begin with a... Un aplauso, yes, please, please.

So these are very humble, simple gestures on behalf of a grateful city for all of you. And let me begin. These are certificates of recognition from the entire city council to recognize your work at the Delhi Center as volunteers and contributions to the community. Let me begin with somebody who I, you know, I admire everybody up here, but I've known Doña Catalina, Doña Cata, for a very long time. Doña Catalina, gracias, felicidades, ahí le va su certificado.

That's you? Okay, let's give David Bassin a big round of applause. He didn't want to be overlooked.

So we've got a typo here. Do you mind if we keep this and we correct it for you? Okay, we're going to correct it for you. Okay, we're going to get... Don Manuel. Don Manuel.

Oh, she... She just said they've been together and married for 60 years. Man, that deserves a round of applause.

So we're going to correct Don Manuel's as well. Jose Anaya. Felicidades, Don Jose.

Y Guadalupe Rosa. Not here. Maria Perez.

Anastacio Miranda. Not here? And we're missing one. Oh, you're together. You guys are going to share that? Okay. Okay. Well, listen. Thank you all. Muchas gracias de parte de todos. Que Dios los bendiga. Gracias. Oh, una foto.

Thank you.

Let me go ahead and invite Mayor Pro Tem Becerra, Council Member Peña Loza and Council Member Mendoza to the stage. They are going to be making a recognition, extending a recognition to the Santa and Police Department recognizing them for their 136th year of service. I'll go ahead and turn the floor over to them.

Phil BacerraItem 2

If I could have Chief Valentin and Deputy Chiefs Esparza, Enriquez and Sergeant Lopez come on up here.

Phil BacerraItem 2

Don't be shy, guys.

hey

Phil BacerraItem 2

well thank you uh for joining us up here uh we've got a nice large group of our officers here so today we are joined by all of them to celebrate san anna police department's 136 birthday so 17 years after the city was founded back in 1869 the city of san anna was formally incorporated that be in 1886. So after the council got together in their ordinances, which were all handwritten at the time, they adopted four other ordinances, which involved business licenses, setting up a meeting location, all that really fundamental basic stuff. And then on the fifth ordinance,

Phil BacerraItem 2

they adopted an ordinance that created our Santa Ana Police Department. So back in 1886, the Santa Ana PD consisted of a chief of police, Charles Peters, who was, excuse me, who held the title of town marshal and he had a whopping six part-time officers patrolling a city of 2,000 at that time. So at the age of three years old, as in the department's three-year-old birthday, Santa Ana PD was gifted with its first city jail by a local business owner named Joseph Hillbrunner who turned the basement of his jewelry store in downtown into the city's jail. This jail served not only Santa Ana, but the county for 27 years.

Phil BacerraItem 2

So at 35 years old, Santa Ana PD, as many 35 year olds, I guess would do, got its first motorcycle back in 1921. And with it, the city's first motor officer, Harold Deloitte. To continue, I'd like to bring up Council Member Mendoza. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Well, seven years after the motorcycle in 1928, the Santa Ana PD, as an industry leader, hired Edith Hay as its first female officer. All right, women.

When a new city hall on Main Street was built in 1935, the Santa Ana PD, at the age of 49, moved to city hall. In the 1970s, under the leadership of Chief Ray Davis, the Santa Ana PD introduced community-oriented policing, COP, a method of policing that is still in practice to this very day. Santa Ana PD continues to be recognized as a national leader in community-oriented policing and is one of 25 national community-oriented policing demonstration sites.

In 2009, then, our Chief Paul Walters was invited to the White House to accept the Department of Defense Freedom Award for the Santa Ana PD's support of employees who were called up for either the National Guard or reserve duty. All right, to our military and the police. And now, my colleague, David Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 2

Thank you, Councilmember Mendoza. And thank you, PD, for being here with us. And in 2018, our city manager appointed David Valentin as its 21st police chief. Can you say hello? There he is. Who was born and raised in the city of Santa Ana. And he also graduated from Saddleback High School. Go Roadrunners!

David PenalozaItem 2

By 2019, the Santa Ana Police Department has grown from the original six part-time officers to over 380 sworn officers, over 200 civilian employees, 10 canine units, which includes 7 apprehension canines, 1 narcotic detection dog, 1 bloodhound, and my favorite, Shadow, 1 therapy dog. Who's a little overweight now, but we're working to give her some walks daily so that she could, you know, get a little healthier. And a 10 officer equestrian unit. Today, SAPD continues its regional leadership in training and emergency preparedness in critical incidents.

David PenalozaItem 2

On July 12, 2022, our Santa Police Department celebrated its 136th birthday. Today, we would like the members of the Santa Police Department to know that their honorable and dedicated service to protecting the community has not gone unnoticed. And we thank you. That's it. Happy birthday.

Phil BacerraItem 2

Don't be shy.

David PenalozaItem 2

We'd invite you to say a few words if you want.

Sure, sure, sure. Council members, thank you very much for this recognition. The Santa Ana Police Department is made up of some incredible men and women. We have a deep, rich history in community engagement, community policing, and it's no mistake that we serve as a local and regional and national leader in this area. And I can't say enough about the opportunity to serve as chief here in the city that I grew up in and really leading the men and women of this department. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, everybody. You guys don't look a day over 135 years old.

Let me go ahead and .

That's right. Let me go ahead and ask Councilmember Hernandez and the volunteers from the East End Block Party please to join him up on stage so they can be recognized as well.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

All right. We got Charlie's tattoo coming up as well. let's make some noise for this amazing group of individuals from our city.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

All right I want to get everyone up here so thank you everyone so much for for being here today. Well first and foremost thank you everyone for being here and joining us at this council meeting. Today, July 19th, 2022, it is an honor and a joy to present a certificate of recognition for the outstanding contributions to the community. I am presenting this to the East End Block Party, the sponsors, and the volunteers. Santa Ana is a community about service where we do more for others than we do for ourselves.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

and these important sponsors that we're going to be acknowledging today I'll be saying their names in a minute and then secondly there's a special group of volunteers and it's these wonderful groups of people here and something that I want to share with you all is that the East End Block Party has been part of the city of Santa Ana for the better part of a decade now the East End Block Party recently was held on June 10th, 2022. This is a free community event that includes local artists, it includes local businesses, it includes local vendors, and it includes music,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

food, a car show, and much more. The majority of the folks that are involved as performers and organizers have grown up in the city of Santa Ana or call Santa Ana home. This action-packed event drew thousands of people who came out and had a great time. Sponsors and volunteers spend upwards of six months planning this event and they have been hosting this for the better part of ten years. This is an event that I'm extremely proud of and I know that they have big plans for next year. It is an honor and it is our joy as a city to acknowledge you and thank you for all

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

your efforts for hosting a successful community event. So let's please make some noise for them. So I want to start first and foremost by acknowledging this important company that I'm about to list. This company was founded by Santa Ana residents who live in Ward 5. This wonderful family not only is raising their kids in the community that they love most but they're raising their grandkids and as they raise their grandkids and they raise their family they raise a community and I am looking

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

forward to celebrating moving forward let this be the first of many Charlie's tattoos and supplies if you can please come up to the front here we'd like to formally thank you guys for your contributions to this wonderful event

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

Thank you. Make some noise for them.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

I'd like to acknowledge Gaitos as well. Gaitos, if you can come up here.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

Thank you so much for your contribution sir. Thank you. Gus's world famous fried chicken. Gus?

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

Thank you. Thank you. Is your name Gustavo? Alright, there you go. There you go brother. Thank you. And more importantly volunteers are the lifeline of this event. We'd like to first acknowledge Priscilla Alana. Thank you Priscilla.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

We would like to acknowledge Daniel Park. Thank you Daniel.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

Sarah Marshall.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

Not that we're forgetting Sarah Marshall, but Sarah Marshall. James Fulps. James Fulps is not here. I will give this to you, Tyson.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

Carlos Cerda, a.k.a. Droops.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

Wendy Youngs. No worries. Haidley Brito.

Thank you, Haidley. Thank you, brother.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

Jaime Barragan. Jaime Barragan. No worries, here, please take this. Thank you, make some noise for Jaime.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

Donna Borges.

Thank you, Donna. My sincere apologies. I think this may have gotten stuck.

Thank you so much, Donna. It was a pleasure and an honor.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

Eduardo Ponce, one of the best photographers out here. Thank you brother. Thank you. Ed Visions. Ed Visions not here. Thank you sir. Efrain Martinez. Gracias Señor. Thank you hermano. Thank you brother.

Allison Leon. Thank you Allison. Thank you so much. Andrea Santos. Andrea Santos. I will give this to you sir.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

Thank you. Let's make some noise for that. Ashley Din. Hi Ashley. Please make your way to the front. We don't want to not include you. When we say it takes a village, we really do mean that and we like to acknowledge everybody who makes up this village. Thank you Ashley. Thank you. Thank you so much. Ashley La Cambra. Ashley La Cambra. I will give this to you, sir gunther supply co please please give them a round of applause

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

and last but not least this brother is so humble you didn't even put a request for yourself

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

Tyson, I want to bring you up. Come over.

Thank you, Bobby. Thank you.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

As the council member that represents Ward 5, I want to personally thank you because I know that being a leader means you have to put yourself last every single day. And from the bottom of my heart, I honor your work, I honor your leadership, and I thank you for everything that you do for our community. Thank you. Can you say some words?

Can someone say some words? Can you say some words up here? Oh, right.

Now, just on behalf of the whole crew, the East End Block Party, you know, it's our great privilege to be able to produce this event for you guys. I know Tyson puts in a lot of hard work to make this happen for you guys, and we do a lot of concerts around the community, but that's our one event, to be able to give back to the community for supporting all our paid events. and we have a bunch of group of good guys up here and women so it's like we appreciate everybody in the city of Santa Ana and appreciate you and everybody here for presenting these awards. Thank you.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 3

Let's get a picture.

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you, everybody. Let me go ahead and thank you. Thank you all. Let me call on Councilmember Jessie Lopez to present her certificate of recognition to the folks from Catalyst Cares. So those of you on behalf of Catalyst Cares, come on up. Make your way up to the stage and allow us to thank you and recognize you as well. And while you're walking up here and while the council member is coming down. I want you all to pay attention to this digital reader board to my right, your left. This is an amazing piece of equipment because it not only will allow you to follow the

the meeting and it transcribes everything but for the hearing impaired community this is extremely important and I'm so glad that staff anticipated this and did this for so many in our community that have challenges with hearing and now we'll be able to come to our meetings and follow what is being addressed and what is being said. So thank you staff. I couldn't be prouder of looking at this. Let's give that a big round of applause.

Jessie LopezItem 4

Go ahead, Councilmember. Thank you, Mayor. Hi, everyone. So we are here to recognize the Catalyst Cares team. They will be receiving a certificate of recognition for their outstanding contributions to our community. But before I do get into the team and allowing them to, or giving them the opportunity to introduce themselves and talk about the work that they do, I do want to thank Elliot Lewis, who is the founder and CEO of Catalyst, a cannabis company here in the city of Santa Ana, over by Pullman, if you ever want to, you know, if you're in the

Jessie LopezItem 4

area and want to check them out. But you know for the work that they do in the state of California and creating a very impactful footprint for this throughout our state and accompany the values community, their existence communities, labor, and the best prices which is I think driven by their ethos of weed for the people. So I do want to introduce the Catalyst Cares teams. You know we We recently did a park cleanup at Park Santiago and we had about 20 volunteers. We picked up about 15 bags of trash. I want to thank our public works department for stopping by and picking up the bags. We didn't want to just leave them at the park.

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And Catalyst Cares, they take their philosophy beyond the stores, trying to reach the communities that they work in. They do community service. They do policy advocacy and civic engagement. And I think that they take their lens in a very social justice and social equity lens, which I think is what drives their values and the mission that they do. And in addition, with the passage of time, they also have integrated outreach and aid to the community throughout various initiatives, such as the Last Prisoner Project. And it is a fundraiser that addresses the impacts on the war of drugs.

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and they help those people that have been incarcerated because of cannabis related crimes across the country. They support women-owned cannabis businesses in our local stores. They provide mentorship and career advancement support. They also, you know, support unionizing and paying their employees not only fair wages, but also they provide benefits. And last but not least, they have Catalyst Care, which is an ambassador program that does leadership development, community service and civic engagement. And as I said earlier on the 20th of May, the Catalyst team joined forces with our office

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and we put out a flyer to help to recruit folks to come out to the community and participate in our park cleanup. It's something that I hope that we continue to do throughout different parks in War III and eventually in the city of Santa Ana. And I just wanna give a huge thank you to the team for coming out on a Saturday morning. and you know the Catalyst Cares remains focused on not just operating in the communities they move into but really becoming a valuable community asset and I really appreciate that and took that to heart so I want to introduce Ale

Jessie LopezItem 4

Alejandra so please feel free to share a couple words and introduce the rest of the members

First of all, I want to thank Jesse Lopez for this opportunity and for giving us this recognition to Catalyst and Catalyst Cares, for this opportunity to be here and give us the thanks. This is just the beginning of many more. Here is my team Catalyst, Kelly, this Sabrina and Martin I guess and con nosotros y este es uno de muchos más

hello my name is Sabrina I'm an inventory manager at Catalyst in Santa Emma and I am just super grateful to be here never would I think that I would have the privilege of standing up here talking to all of you so with that being said, cannabis is definitely something to be taken more seriously now. I work for a unionized job. We are definitely out in the community trying to do our best to make sure that we are making changes for the people that are right there in front of us. We are looking to, you know, really reach out and be able to provide good jobs for low-income families and we're also looking to lower taxes for cannabis

too so just look out for us we are definitely making some moves to make everything better so all of us can get along and build a foundation for us all thank you thanks everyone let me grab your certificate okay so we present the

Jessie LopezItem 4

certificate to Catalyst Keras. Thank you everyone.

Thank you, thank you for that presentation. Let me go ahead and now call on Councilmember Mendoza, who's going to be recognizing a great group as well. America on track so I see Claire and the team once you guys come on up and I'll turn it over to councilmember Mendoza to go ahead and make this presentation

yes please come on up America on track they they were instrumental in getting that band passed that ordinance here in Santa Ana in case you haven't heard about that and so we're we're fortunate to have a such a great group of people of young people who are already interested in activism in protecting your health your communities and working really hard for the benefit of others and being totally unselfish with their time. So come on down, move on down, move on down some more.

And so I want to say that joining us today here are the volunteers of America on Track. And as a team, these volunteers worked together on a policy issue that was important to them. It was a ban on flavored tobacco. Together, these volunteers collected 812 signed endorsements. Imagine how long it took them to get that many endorsements. They collected these endorsements from the Santa Ana residents over the course of three months at various community events.

They participated in numerous coalition meetings and a press conference with the media. They even attended several city council meetings and made public comments. They had individual meetings with their council members as well as other key stakeholders to provide information on the importance and urgency protecting youth from a lifetime of nicotine addiction. The efforts did not go unnoticed. Back in March of this year, the city council adopted an ordinance banning the sale of flavored tobacco products in the great city of Santa Ana. Join me in thanking all the volunteers,

Daniela Hernandez, Ceci Rivera, Catalina Inestra, Veronica Garcia, Veronica Olmedo, Sonia Hernandez, Leticia Moreno, Rocio Guzman, Lourdes Juarez, Letizanaida Nolasco, Maria Ortiz, Cecilia Mora, Iter Lopez, Hugo Cota, Jennifer Noria, y claro que es también Claire. She was the instrumental adult, and she's the one that was behind these young people. And so we owe it to this group of volunteers and what they've done for the future of our youth and to make sure that vaping is eliminated.

And hopefully one day those things will never be brought to the city of Santa Ana so that we can keep our youth very healthy. So today I'd like to ask Claire to come up and say a few words, and then I'm going to ask a few other people to come up because they are really good at public speaking. They're not afraid, and they're going to say a few words as well. Claire.

You want to show Claire? Yeah. Thank you so much for this recognition of these amazing volunteers. I'm so proud to be part of the city of Santa Ana, to have our company headquartered here and just really appreciate the city always looking out for the health and wellness of its residents. So thank you so much. And I'm going to turn it over to my youth volunteers here.

I would like to say that Ceci Rivera, she's one of the middle college high school students where I'm a teacher. And she is amazing. You're going to see her here as a future city council or maybe as a city attorney because she's going to go to law school. And next week she's going to Harvard for a fabulous summer program. You see what these young ladies and young men can do? Amazing. So Ceci, would you like to say a few words?

Good. Here you go. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Ceci, and as Council Member Mendoza just said, a lot of you may not be aware of the movement that's happening here, but we worked really hard for a couple of weeks to bring about an ordinance that would ban flavored tobacco products. Now, why is this important? We need to give our kids the best chance that they can to succeed, and we need to get rid of every obstacle that is in their way to succeed. A lot of students face struggle with substance abuse and face so many hurdles, so we owe it to each other and to our kids to do everything that we can to get rid of those hurdles

and really support them in every way that we can. And for today, that was the way that we did it, so thank you so much. Thank you for your support, Councilman Mendoza. I am honored to be here and you know we're giving back to our community and everywhere that we can and we look forward to what's to come but thank you as well to America on Track huge supporters thank you

okay are you going to do a presentation

So on behalf of all the volunteers from America on Track, we do have a thank you card, and it reads, City Council members, thank you for protecting Santa Ana youth from a lifetime of nicotine addiction. Nicotine addiction is not sweet. So thank you for supporting us in this ordinance, and I hope you support us in the future too. Thank you.

Thank you.

So let me go ahead and ask if the Youth Water Poster Contest winners can join us up here on stage. I'm here with Councilmember Fan to do a presentation on that. We're very fortunate to be doing this presentation. So do we have any of the Water Poster Contest winners in the audience? I only see one. We've got more than that. I know that. So I'm just going to give some high-level comments, and I'm going to go ahead and turn the microphone over to Councilmember Phan. We are both very grateful to be doing this presentation because we know how important right now the issue of water is in all our lives. And we're all going

through a difficult moment right now because we know there is a drought. We live in an area that's very arid and we can't control, you know, how often it rains. You know, the hydrology in our, in our region is very, very difficult to gauge. So what we've tried to do is educate people and more than anything, educate young people and let them know how important water is. There's a saying, water is life. There's certain things you can't live without and this is one of them. So the youth that we're gonna be recognizing here tonight went out of their way to make some beautiful posters

and artwork and that is one way that they can go ahead and develop that concern, you know, that belief that we have to be more careful with these resources that are so, so sensitive. So I want to go ahead and turn it over to Councilmember Fan who represents us on the Metropolitan Water District where we import close to 25% of our water resources. But we're blessed because we live above what's called a groundwater basin, so we're fortunate that we can draw from that and that really helps us not only you know reuse and treat the water that we use but also it keeps the cost down because many

communities have to import a hundred percent of their water and we're blessed here that we don't have to do that much because of the groundwater basin that we have in the management of that system but today is a day for the kids that did some incredible art so I'm gonna go ahead and make sure we recognize them so councilmember family go ahead and have you come on up and do the presentation

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

Thank you. Hi, everyone. So I'm very excited about this. I do remember doing water poster contests as a kid. I never won. So I'm also very excited to have young children because I always get stuck behind the young children with a less fun presentation.

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

Many of you do not know, but the Metropolitan Water District provides 25% of the water we receive here in the city. Most of the water we get is pumped from underground and that's why Santa Ana residents actually pay less for water than most residents in the county. However it's really important to think about where our water comes from and who's paying for it, how much do we have left, and who's fighting over it. And so I would like to recognize some of the winners. I will call out everyone's names but we do have three people we want to specifically recognize and there's

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

several categories. So the first category are for ages 5 to 8. I can't imagine being a five-year-old actually being to draw anything that you can recognize but here we are. We have finalist David Cobian of Greenville Fundamental School. We have finalist Brian A. Cano, Martin Elementary School and the grand prize winner Yuc Muntuey Nguyen from Jim Thorpe Fundamental School.

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

Do you want to say anything?

Hi everyone, my name is Yuc Mung Dwey.

I would like to honor being here today. I'm very grateful.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Yay.

Give it up.

Okay. Good job.

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

That was awesome. Second category, ages 9 to 12, finalist Sofia Molina, Martin Elementary School.

Sofia.

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

Sophia, do you want to say something? Oh, she's ready to go.

Hi everybody, my name is Sophia Molina, and I want to appreciate my teacher that gave me this chance to do my art to get a certificate.

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

We have finalists Rolando Regalado, Jim Thorpe Fundamental School, and grand prize winner Sophia Jung, James Irvine Intermediate School.

My name is Sophia Chan and I'm very grateful to the city of Santa Ana for allowing me an opportunity to advocate for a cause that I truly believe in and that's for the environment and saving our water thank you

Thai Viet PhanItem 6

Jen Alpha is gonna save us all y'all our third category ages 13 to 14 we have finalists Kimberly Barajas a Lathrop intermediate school finalist Michelle Perez Lathrop intermediate school grand prize winner Juliana Gallardo La Trope Intermediate School. Wow they're really killing it. Fourth category ages 15 to 18 we have finalist Sofia Sevilla Samuel Lake Academy. Finalist Ashley Flores Chavez High School as well as grand prize winner Laisha Echegoyan Santa Ana High School. So please congratulate them with me.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you, everybody. Let's move on to the next section of the meeting, which are the presentations from staff, and I'll go ahead and turn it over to the city manager who's going to be giving us an update on the homelessness item.

Good evening, honorable mayor and members of the city council. Tonight for the presentation, I'm just going to focus on one topic item and that is California's CARE Court.

So what is it? CARE Court, which is an acronym that stands for Community Assistance Recovery and Empowerment, is a new statewide plan to provide support and care to individuals with untreated mental health and substance disorders care court includes services such as housing treatment care and monitoring decision making help and ways to address underlying needs as proposed an individual in need will be connected with the court ordered care plan and a supporter for up to 24 months the court order can be initiated by family social services health providers or first responders

if certain criteria are met. This includes a diagnosis of schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders, along with being at risk of harming themselves or others, or being unlikely to survive on their own. Participants would receive legal counsel and a range of mental health services, medication, and supportive housing. After a series of check-ins during a 12-month period, the participant could either graduate or be referred to an additional year of services.

Mental health and substance abuse disorders can also lead to other issues such as homelessness and incarceration. By addressing these disorders firsthand, the state hopes to prevent an increase in those issues. And we believe that this is an avenue that would provide great relief for those that are homeless.

Senate Bill 1338 is the bill that actually established Care Court. It has successfully progressed through the policy committees in the legislature and also received approval by the Senate in May. State officials expect that the care court will be approved by the August 31st deadline to be signed into law by the governor. And further, Governor Newsom anticipates that he will have $14 billion that he can dedicate towards a homeless budget. And included in this budget would be approximately $5 billion to assist in building the mental health treatment beds and the homeless housing that would facilitate the care court programs.

Of note, this year's budget does include $1.5 billion for interim treatment beds while permanent units come online. So we are excited about this potential program. We hope it kicks off and that the County of Orange embraces it because we do believe it's one more avenue of services that will be able to assist those that are living on our streets. I should mention though it's not a prerequisite to be a homeless person. This care court services can be offered to parents who have adult children who are suffering from these very same issues. And that concludes my presentation.

Great. Thank you, Madam City Manager. Let me bring it back to the City Council to see if there's any questions or comments on that update. Councilmember Fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 7

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Madam City Manager, for the update. When I first heard about this, I was a little bit concerned just because we do have issues related to conservatorship and things like that. We've had a history of institutionalizing individuals who have mental illness. It's truly a terrible mark on our history and the way we've treated, and they were primarily people of color in the state of California. It was primarily Latinos. But speaking to the governor's staff and looking into this issue, it definitely seems like what we have now isn't working, and so we have to try something.

Thai Viet PhanItem 7

And I do want to kind of reassure the public that this is supposed to address those who are severely mentally ill who really are a danger to themselves and or the public. This will help them get treatment, and it's time limited. One thing I do want to ask Madam City Manager is, do we or our lobbyists have any dialogue with the state or looking to have dialogue with the state? Because last I checked, there is a state-owned mental health facility that used to operate in the city of Costa Mesa.

Thai Viet PhanItem 7

And so it seems like that would be a quick and easy way to get something up and running here in the County of Orange.

So I believe, Councilmember, you're referring to Fairview. And for a number of years, many cities have engaged in dialogue with the state as potentially using that for this very nature. We can certainly revisit that idea now that we do know that with the county's implementation of Care Corps, they are going to be looking for definitely expanded beds. But we'll revisit it. But it's been something that's been requested for several years.

Thai Viet PhanItem 7

Okay, well maybe with this funded program we'll have something that, you know, can really tie it to that. Thank you.

Thank you for those comments. Any other questions or comments from the Council? I simply was going to say and echo the same thing that Councilmember Fan said. Yeah, this state and I think, you know, nationally we don't have a good track record of having worked with our residents and our fellow citizens who are mentally ill. And so I know that it makes me very nervous that we are going and trying to provide some care and find a conservatorship process where we can help. But I have also spoken with the governor's staff,

And one of the things that I think, to me, drew my attention to supporting this is that right now many of our severely ill that are on the street can't make informed consent. And so they are living without any resources. And the threat of public health to their lives is very dangerous as well. They get preyed upon. They are in a very precarious position. So to the extent that I think this administration is going to do its best efforts to make sure that people's rights and their autonomy and their independence is protected as they're providing care,

I feel confident that the advocacy groups that are questioning this are going to continue to work with the governor's team to make sure that this is done in a compassionate, thoughtful way. So we will continue to monitor and just so you know Santa Ana belongs to what's called the the big city mayors. It's the mayors of the 13th largest cities in the state and we have supported this. I've supported it with the caveat that we make sure that these protections are in place when they go and extend these these efforts to make sure that there aren't any violations of people's

autonomy and rights and civil liberties. So that being said, we're going to go ahead and move on

Jessie LopezItem 7

to the next item. I'm sorry, I do have a comment. Yes, go ahead, Councilmember Locas. Yeah, so I'm very supportive of CARE Corps. I've expressed that to our staff. I've expressed that to the governor's staff. But since we're on the homelessness issue, I did want to just relay quickly to War III residents that I have continued to pursue a working relationship with supervisor foley we have submitted a letter to her office asking that the the orange county board engages with the city works with um works with our our personnel here that is addressing the

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the mental health issues here in the count in the city of sanana and specifically i've asked that they allocate five full-time clinicians to the city of sanana because we only have one that works part time and so i'm very excited to just let war three residents know that there is a meeting that i will be having with supervisor foley i have also invited her to tour war three she has accepted and so that is going to be coming and hopefully folks from our office can join but you know on my end i'm continuing to explore all aspects not just i don't want to just wait for care court i think care court

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is going to be beneficial but what can the county do that hasn't that they haven't been doing how can they support our city and our residents and so i'm hoping that we can get some clinicians allocated to the city of santa ana thank you that's all great thank you for those comments

seeing no other let me go ahead and turn it back over to the city manager for their update on the feasibility of a public health agency or director thank you mr mayor and members of the council

Health Management Associates has been working with us since August of 2021 on our study. Daniel?

Not as Sherry.

They provided an update earlier this year, the council may remember, and tonight they're providing their second update and seeking final feedback on the final steps in the process. So tonight I reintroduce Christina Altmaier and Jonathan Friedman with HMA who will be giving you a brief update on their progress. Good evening.

Thank you all for having us back. We have an update in response to some of the questions that came up at our prior presentation in February.

All right?

Thanks for your patience. So as you can see here, this is where we're nearing the end of our project, and we came back in February. We presented an overview of the functions of public health departments and reviewed some of the feedback that we heard from both our community assessment and meeting with members of the City Council about your priorities. This evening, we're coming back with some of the more fiscal-oriented information about our comparative analysis of the cost, looking at other public health functions, and also providing some high-level cost estimates of what it would be for the city to create its

own public health agency. So just as a reminder, we talked about four domains of public health responsibilities, health assessment and epidemiology, health protection, which is environment and much of the inspection functions, the focus on communicable disease, and also health promotion. So we're not going to go through that, but just by way of kind of context, provide that as a reminder to you.

We also gave an example about how public health requires the simultaneous execution of multiple related functions, epidemiology, using the example of if there was an outbreak at a daycare center. And you can see here, as shown in the graphic, that it requires a coordination and simultaneous response from multiple different functions in those examples, which really highlights some of the complexity of a public health function. In February, we talked about, as I said, what are the city's priorities for public health, and you had asked us to come back with the estimated cost and potential revenue

and the necessary steps for two different models, a city public health department as well as what we called a community health strategist model, which would be an alternative. So that's what we're returning to this evening with. Let me start with the cost analysis. So our approach was really to provide a fiscal evaluation of what it would be required for the city to have a public health agency. And we looked at the County of Orange and two other examples of public health services in Southern California that provide that full scope, the city of Long Beach and Pasadena.

I want to put some caveats or limitations on this is that it's difficult to compare public health functions because there isn't a standard of care that's required in all these functions. So when you think about public works, for example, oftentimes there's a maintenance of effort that's required, which creates some standards around costing. Those same principles aren't applicable within public health. So local health jurisdictions have discretion about providing a higher level of service or additional services around what's mandated. There aren't independent benchmarks that would say, per capita, you have to spend this amount.

So local health jurisdictions can organize the function in a variety of different ways, and we've taken some approaches to try and standardize that for comparative purposes. So you can see here we looked at the County of Orange, the City of Pasadena, and the City of Long Beach. We've done some comparative analysis to show that where the functions of public health are placed varies across these jurisdictions. So public health within the County of Orange is a department within the broader healthcare agency that also includes direct medical health services, correctional health services, and mental health services.

Within the city of Pasadena, you have the public health function within the Health and Human Services Department, which also includes homeless services. Within the city of Long Beach, you do have a dedicated public health department, but it also includes housing and homeless services. So trying to, our project was to try and develop some consistency and look for some common basis to do comparative analysis. And you can see here that the total per capita spending for public health functions really varies. So our job was to try and normalize that so that we could provide an effective comparative analysis.

So as you can see here, this is a little bit about our methodology where we tried to make adjustments in looking at these budgets to account for the non-public health functions or discretionary services to the degree that it could be identifiable. And we tried to organize their budgets in a consistent format so that we could do some comparative analysis. When you see this data, though, we certainly recognize that a full apples to apples comparison, so to speak, is complex. But in aggregate, I think we've been able to provide that, even though the detail, you'll see some anomalies when we look at the detail by the functions.

So as you can see here, we've tried to do this adjustments, and you can see that we've got these different categories of budget functions. but when we do a comparative analysis at a net per capita basis, you can see that the range becomes much more narrow. And the per capita costs are somewhere between $66 and $94, with the County of Orange being the lowest expenditures and the net per capita public health cost investments and Pasadena being the highest. And then when you exclude public health costs that are related to environmental health.

So those are your inspection costs for different facilities, things like restaurant inspection costs. And you net those out because in most cases, those are going to be revenue neutral that are going to be covered by fees for inspections. The band of expenditures becomes even more narrow, somewhere between $54 and $69.

I'm going to pass it on to my colleague who's going to talk a little bit more about this is the different methodologies that we employed as well as the revenue. Thank you, members of the council. We identified the types of revenue that can pay for public health. You're going to see on a subsequent chart how we've applied that revenue to different cost areas of a range of type of public health department for Santa Ana

of a low to a high estimate. But the revenue sources, just to get your understanding of this, is that there are fee-based revenues. You're familiar with that, like in your building permit portfolio of your city, similar types of revenues like that. There are state and federal revenues that support particular types of public health concerns like sexually transmitted diseases, tuberculosis control. There are sometimes discretionary grant revenues that flow in for public health. We looked at the revenue capture ability of the peer agencies and we applied those ratios here. And we make it an assumption

that if you created a public health department, you would be eligible for all those grants. That's an assumption. That's not an automatic, I would like to point out. However, there will be a shortfall. There will be a city obligation if you establish a city public health department. And the things that would pay for that obligation would be what is known as realignment money. Those are dollars that are allocated currently to the county. the county this gets those and allocates them into public health as well as other health related

functions santa ana could seek a proportionate share of those dollars from the county there's not an automatic process at the state level for a city to access those dollars county property tax your share of the county property tax that's collected as well as city general fund resources So those are broadly the revenue streams. So this is what our analysis looks like. Focus on the far left, those are the functional areas, epidemiology, environmental health, disease control, health promotion.

We then established essentially a low estimate, a staffing estimate based on those comparator departments and we also established a high estimate. And this has to do to give you a range of the level of effort in public health is discretionary to you. How much public health do you want in your community? So we've provided this as a range. Each one of those rows has a revenue potential in it. You can see there in the middle column, we applied a revenue potential to those estimated costs. And then we calculated the net local costs by those functions.

And that's on the last columns on the right there. We also applied a factor for city overhead costs that would be borne by the city to bring up a new functional capability that has to do with space and IT that we did not reflect up above there. And we came to a net gross cost estimate, excuse me, on the bottom where it says total projected budget of a 19.6 million dollar agency ranging up to a 31.5 million dollar agency to have

a public health department in your city and of that 8.5 million to 14 million dollars in our estimation would be born as a local obligation for that type of department and as a check back to that per capita cost that my colleague was presenting to you, we expressed what those departments would, that level of effort would look like on a per capita cost element, $63 per capita to $102 per capita. You can see the peer agencies we looked at range from $66 to $94.

Now we presented a lot to you there. there are a number of assumptions built into this about the revenue picture and how those revenues could get reallocated to the city how would you create something like this there's also another factor which we did present last time here which relates to the state's process to creating a public health agency and i just wanted to refresh you you're not going to go into detail to all of these components, but the state, in reaction to some cities looking at this, you're aware the city of West Covina has already initiated this, and the state is contemplating a process

by which it would define in which localities can create new public health departments. And this information is derived from the city of West Covina's presentations. This is the state's presentation there. But the state is proposing to issue regulatory authority, essentially a pathway to an application process where a locality would need to initiate an application, have to meet a number of minimum sets of requirements here. This is not published. This is what the state has represented to one of your sister cities in Los Angeles County.

There's a series of provisional approval after an application, a full approval process as well, and a series of requirements that need to be met in terms of base capabilities, a rationale for need, a feasibility study, a timeline, any MOU for anything that's contracted other than for things that are provided other than by the city, a community health assessment and a site visit, and a series of steps. So there is not necessarily an automatic path for you

from a legal and regulatory scheme of public health from the state's perspective. You'd have to go through a state process to establish this.

I'll turn it to my colleague.

So at the last session, we introduced this concept of maybe alternatives to public health, creation of a public health agency. And based on the feedback that we received in our interviews with city council members, many of you expressed the interest on focusing on health promotion and what the city could do in order to ensure that you were providing, that the county and the public health function was more responsive to the unique needs of the residents of Santa Ana. And one of the models that we introduced at that point was this idea of a chief health

strategist, which is receiving increased recognition on a national level of a newly envisioned role that's focusing on system level, a strategic player in local communities that responds to the changing needs that is leading work to build local partnerships and really focusing on building leadership, visibility, community partnerships, and a strong focus on data and elevating disparities that may exist within communities. So we present this as an alternative. This is, as you can see in this title here, the proposed role of a health strategist based on work

that's been done at the national level on creating a 21st century public health infrastructure on developing strategies, analyzing data, fostering collaborations, and partnering with community-based agencies who can really advance a more comprehensive and community-responsive focus on public health. And your recent HEAL grant provided an example of how this could potentially work. I'm sure you're all aware of this, the two-year, $4 million federal grant to address health disparities. Based on our engagement and interviews with your staff, it certainly provides an opportunity

and is fostering some collaborative strategic partnerships and provides a platform. Some of the lessons learned is that there has been challenges in terms of the staff capacity and having the necessary data infrastructure to facilitate that work. and that you have been able to develop some effective CBO partnerships, but those require some continued support to ensure their readiness and their ability to respond moving forward. So one of the things that we did is to estimate what would be the annual cost. This cost assumes that three positions, as you can see in this table,

the responsibilities to really actively pursue federal state grants as well as philanthropic grants to continue to monitor and the data analyst position working under the guidance of a chief strategist position would be really focused on how are we monitoring trends in Santa Ana and how are we also elevating disparities there would be you know an internal strategy development related to community services, potentially in land use, and strong advocacy with county public health to ensure that strategies are being tailored to the unique role and the unique needs within Santa Ana. So we've estimated the cost,

should you decide this as an alternative approach.

We're happy to answer any questions. Some of the things for the city to consider moving forward would be, as John indicated, monitoring the guidance that may be coming forth from the Department of Public Health, CDPH, California Department of Public Health. We anticipate that they will formally come out with guidance for cities that are considering creating a public health agency. One of the things that you would also need to look at would be what would be some options for local funding. And then, alternatively, we would encourage you to consider the public health model, as well as, would the county be open to the city,

assuming a greater leadership role in public health, what responsibilities would the county be open to given as an alternative approach to a full public health function? And we're happy to answer any questions.

Great, thank you both for that presentation. I know it's been a while since we had a chance to revisit this, so we certainly appreciate the data that you came back with and some more concrete numbers and some more guidance on this. So let me bring it back to the council to see if there's any questions or comments or remarks.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Phil BacerraItem 8

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento.

Phil BacerraItem 8

So as far as what you're describing with the realignment funding, so how likely is it that, you know, let's say like a West Covina or any other local city that's attempting to form their own health care agency, how likely is it that they would possibly be able to realign those funds from the county health agency to the city?

Yeah, you are experienced local government officials. You're well-versed in the state fiscal relationships here. A dynamic that goes on with the cities and the state also occurs between the county and the state over health and human services. So there are realignment dollars, sales tax and vehicle license fees that are formula-driven and distributed to counties for buckets of functions there. The counties can move those dollars to other governmental entities to do services by contract. That's clear.

Whether those funds are reallocable in the formulas, there are questions about that legally. whether that even is provided for in the current statutes. I've been working in this space for a long time. There are also views of this, that these dollars are also constitutionally protected. So it's a difficult road, I would say. It's not a turn of the switch to make the money flow differently.

Phil BacerraItem 8

No, I appreciate that.

It's a navigation.

Phil BacerraItem 8

Yeah. Well, and it sounds like it's not really battle-tested. this point. Correct. That is correct. And then as far, I guess this probably leads into my next question, which is we should probably wait at this point or possibly to see what the California Department of Public Health does with its guidelines, because it sounds like they haven't formulated anything yet. It sounds like the legislature hasn't adopted them yet or adopted

any sort of legislation yet. In the state's mind, the agency's mind, they have authority to issue regulations already and they don't need legislative okay uh because i may have shared you may recall it last time the state controls the space and who the the localities are following a state framework so the state health officer has what we call plenary power over the local health officers they can instruct interfact you all watch this happen in the pandemic the state issued orders and different than what the locals wanted. So in that same construct, the state believes it has authority

to set the pathway for new public health departments. How urgently they're doing that, I don't believe they're all that urgent there. But there's not a legislative mandate to do that. There are some cities that are, I know in particular in Los Angeles County, that are quite frustrated with this and have initiated legislative activity. But the state, regulatory-wise, their intent is to lay out a pathway for localities to become a department. It's different, and this is one of the challenges, council member,

is that regulatory process is somewhat fully, frankly, independent of the financial issue that I just outlined to you.

Phil BacerraItem 8

Right. Well, it just sounds like it's ambiguous at this point.

Correct.

Phil BacerraItem 8

Okay. And as far as this chief health strategist option, you know, just to use West Covina as an example, are they strongly considering that or are they going more robust?

They actually went a step further. They initiated their read of the law was that they have the authority and cities can activate it. They went ahead and started it. They've been in a discussion ever since with the state about this issue and also with the county, because in that chart that we showed you with the different functions that have to be simultaneously capable, the city is picking and choosing which functions. And the county is saying you need to either take it all or you can't just pick and choose.

there because there are, just imagine you've seen interagency work, you know, when agencies have to come together on an incident, how it fits together can be quite complicated. So the city, and they have meetings and it's on the city council agenda, and they've identified a health officer and so forth, but it is not fully activated.

Phil BacerraItem 8

Okay. Well, I appreciate your report to us tonight, and it really sounds like what you're encouraging us to do is really just to monitor what's happening i think the council's you know expressed our interest in trying to do something you know especially in light of what happened during the pandemic and what we saw from the county and the state but it just sounds like there's so many it's different moving parts really i mean truly different moving parts at different levels of government that uh it's something that hopefully we'll see more guidance from the cdph but we We aren't seeing that yet.

I would agree with you. It's not a clear path. You have a very strong interest, as demonstrated through our interviews and your comments here, around public health issues here. And you've initiated already here. And the concept of a strategist is to bring some additional value into your community here. It would be a burden, a financial burden, but it would be a purposeful burden for that as something, as a mid-course alternative while either you watch what happens in Sacramento or this might be the

Phil BacerraItem 8

strategy to pursue. Right. That's a good point. I would like to ask our staff just in addition to their work when it comes to the monitoring, I'd also like us to engage our state lobbyists to really also kind of have an extra set of eyes and ears and to express our collective opinion on this issue because I think it's something where more creating that echo chamber of a sense of urgency to try to do something here. It would be really wise, I think, in addition to their expertise, but to also have our lobbyists pushing as well.

We certainly can do that, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you.

Thank you for those comments. Any other comments or questions on this item?

Council Member Fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

Thank you so much for that thorough presentation. It was really helpful and eye-opening for me because I'm not a health care expert. I don't run any health care agencies. I'm just a city attorney. But it is really scary to look at, at least with a full, if we were to move in that direction, which we don't even know if we're allowed to or how that would work. You know, the $8.5 to $14 million is quite huge. and I of course am supportive of you know the focus on Santa Ana and bringing these health issues to the fore rather than waiting on the county to try to do something about it

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

but that is a huge lift and at least as of right now despite the regulatory rigmarole that we don't even know how that will work I don't think this I guess it's not even clear that this net local cost that you have in here includes the early infrastructure builds that you mentioned in later slides. We have to do early infrastructure investments prior to even going forward with some of these programs?

Yes. We gave the snapshot that we've given you on page 13 is what it might look like on your budget. Okay.

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

Okay. On an annual basis? Yes. Right. So there might be additional one-time investments.

Correct. That is not in our, we didn't, we didn't put into the analysis, the capitalization costs, the ramp up costs. Right. We might have to build another Ross Annex just to accommodate. Correct. We didn't add that to the analysis. So for me, I, I'm actually not

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

even particularly interested to have our lobbyists pursue looking at the CDPH program because at least at this time for me, this is extremely cost prohibitive. And to look at, to even follow, even if it were legal, right? I'm thinking this might be something five or 10 years out when we, if they get a program in place and if any other city is truly getting a program up and running and if they even seem successful, because often these types of things can revert back if it ends up being a massive failure. They're not meeting the state and federal regulations that they need to meet.

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

On top of that, I do like the idea of potential chief health strategist. We, of course, it's not exactly the same as our environmental planner or the new position that we just approved for Director Tai's department, but I think there's a little bit of an overlap given that in both cases we're talking about environmental justice issues, environmental concerns and those are very related to health and so at least for me at this time I'd love to look at a chief health strategist at least to public health education and bringing forth kind of

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

you know maybe not all of the roles that we have here but some of it things you know grants and programs that we can pursue that the city can get money for in order to actually educate our residents for example I tell people that yes an electric stove is very expensive to have at home but what a lot of people don't know is that Cal EPA and our air quality right is air quality and our state regulators they regulate outdoor air quality but every time you cook with a gas stove at home the air quality inside actually exceeds the legal amount of air pollution outside from a gas stove.

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

So that, when I learned about that, it was extremely disheartening because I grew up with asthma. So many people in my family have asthma, and so many low-income families deal with those types of issues. So, seeing how we can get a grant, working with our environmental justice planner, and actually collaborating to bring these types of public health education and services to residents i think may be a better step forward to address some of the concerns that we have as a result of the lack of coveted resources that the county gave us so that would be

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

my direction to staff thank you thank you for those comments any other council member lopez

Jessie LopezItem 8

yeah thank you for the presentation it's really well presented to us so i appreciate that i don't necessarily know that i have direction for staff i do want to sit with this a little bit longer because it's a lot of information and so I just want to have the opportunity to process it so nothing against the presenters. Thank you. Councilmember

David PenalozaItem 8

Pinalosa then Mendoza. Thank you mayor I want to take you know follow along the lines of Councilmember Fan I definitely see how cost prohibitive this could be for our city and don't think that today you know we it's something that we could and something that we could even, I think it just be duplicative of what, you know, the county is doing, the state. So my question would be is, I guess my desire would be to also look at that chief strategist

David PenalozaItem 8

position.

David PenalozaItem 8

Yeah. And, you know, Spanish, first language. So that would be my desire.

Thank you, council member. Councilmember Mendoza.

Thank you.

Great presentation. Very good.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

I heard that. Your question was about the infrastructure required for the staff of this model. We did not include in our analysis like a building, the build out, other types of things that would be required to have an agency.

Thank you. I also had a question as to the cost per capita. Is this something that would be out of pocket from the residents, or are we looking for them to get some maybe Medicare, Medi-Cal, some kind of stipend or government assistance?

Very good question.

The factor per capita is a reflection of the level of effort. It's not a bill that goes to your community there, although your community does pay local taxes there so it would contribute at some level to the to the to the cost obligation uh if you were to create such a department here your question about whether um payer programs like medi-cal medicare other types of payers we've accommodated that in our analysis it's not dollar for dollar

there are little bits of pieces of public health functions that can be paid for by other payers you need an administrative structure to go capture those revenues, they're not going to fully offset the cost of your programming. These are, as an example, when you do a disease control suppression with a rodent, there's nobody to send the bill to on something like that, as an example. So they can't pay the full ride.

Thank you. Council member, any additional questions? Seeing no other questions or comments, let me just wrap up by saying I think you've heard some good feedback from members of the council. We certainly appreciate the presentation and the deeper dive that you've done. Just for a little bit of historical context for members of the public who may not have maybe wondering why this is before us. So this came before us because this was part of an effort to try to understand how the city could navigate a public health crisis like we just went through and what we just lived through with the pandemic.

But we had public health issues prior to the pandemic here in the city that are well documented. We have a very unique city of the 34 cities in the county with different needs. And so the discussion was, how do we approach not just the next pandemic, but the next public health challenge that is going to be constant, right? So that is something that is not a variable. We know that that is going to continue. So we received some monies from the federal government through the rescue plan to use for this feasibility study and for this study and analysis that you gave us.

unlike the city of West Covina that just ventured out without doing any sort of this front-end work because they were compelled to do it because they realized their city didn't fit with the LA County model. That said, our unique challenge here in Santa Ana is that we had over a thousand people lose their lives that shouldn't have lost their lives had we had our own department like Long Beach or Pasadena or even our own advocate like a chief health strategist, right? So I guess we can quantify this and if we look at what the chief strategist position is calculated at,

it's right now forecasted at about 190,000 a year, but you know what's the price of losing a life, right? What's the price of having a good health care system and good delivery of that care in an equitable way. We know that when resources were received by the county from both the state and federal levels, they didn't make it to Santa Ana in an equitable way as they should have been done to the rest of the county. So I guess you know for me this whole question about CDPH not having you know a system for for cities to transition and have their own department their own

health departments or health agencies that will come. That's a problem that I I think is an issue that will resolve itself in time because you have a county like ours with 34 cities and, you know, 3 million plus residents and expect to have equitable delivery of health care is just very, very difficult to believe that that's going to be done well. So I think this is going to happen more and more. I do agree that maybe a chief, because this is kind of a binary choice, it's basically going with a full service agency or going with an advocate on behalf of the city for good public health delivery.

So I think that maybe what we could look at this as is a transitional. and maybe having a position, again, and I like the idea of it being combined, maybe with our environmental justice director, because they both involve public health, because there's a nexus between what we're trying to do with both those positions, and maybe that's a way that we could fund that. Public health also involves mental health, and I know there are a lot of mental illness dollars out there that the federal government has made available to public agencies, And if we have a health strategist, maybe we could advocate more aggressively for those dollars.

But the idea is we need to do something because what we have, which is no seat at the table really right now. So we have very little on behalf of, you know, Santa Ana when it comes to advocating for good, you know, quality health care for our residents. and we know that our residents here are even more deserving and needier because they have higher rates of underlying conditions, right? They're lower income. So these are folks that are at much higher risk. So to the extent that there is no system to help them,

it is a responsibility of ours to take a look at that. So I'm in agreement with those that spoke about looking at the chief health strategist. I was a little confused because I know the position is forecasted at $190,000, but we have a total cost with, I don't know what OH is. What's the OH?

The overhead that's associated with it. We also assume some additional positions that you may want to consider to support that.

I mean, we're a big enough organization that I think those positions of grant writing and analyst, that could be absorbed by existing internal staff. So I see this as a much smaller number than the $580,000 a year. I see this as something that we can augment or reduce by looking at some of the federal mental health dollars that we might be eligible for and the state as well. So I would say, Madam City Manager, it sounds like you've heard from many that we research that. To me, as a transitional point, because I think by the time we get somebody on board with that role, CDPH will start moving its wheels.

This isn't a question that's unique to Santa Ana. This is going to be asked by many other cities that I've heard want to move in this direction. So thank you both for that presentation. Thank you to staff. I think you've received a lot of good feedback from the council, and we appreciate you. We'll be checking back. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

All right. So let me go ahead and move along and ask the city attorney if she has anything to report at a closed session.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 8

Thank you, Mayor, members of the council, and also members of our public. We had five closed session items this evening, and we do have reportable action on two items. I'd also just like to report out that on the Monsanto case, listed as item number one, the city has accepted a settlement in the amount of $2.9 million. In item number three, in the matter of the item of potential litigation, the city council has directed staff to gather evidence of waste management's non-performance in terms of leaving trash uncollected on the city streets preceding the transition of the

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 8

Waste Management Services contract to determine the city's legal recourse on behalf of its residents and business owners. Staff was also directed to prepare a report and to provide an update on the status of trash pickup services in the city, and that will be forthcoming. Finally, with respect to item number five in the matter of the public employee matter, The City Council has dismissed the clerk of the council in accordance with the employment agreement. Items number three and five were taken on a unanimous vote of all seven council members. And that's all the reportable action we have this evening.

Great. Thank you for that. Let me go ahead and move us along to the public comment section of our meeting. And this is a time and place for members of the public to go ahead and address the council. We will be hearing you both in person and virtually. You will be given three minutes to speak. Please state your name and you don't need to tell us your address but let us know if you know which ward you reside in. Go ahead and do that. Pursuant to the Brown Act, the City Council can engage in any comments with you. We will simply just be receiving your comments on

matters on the agenda and matters that are not included on the agenda. So, Madam Clerk, do we have anybody? Actually what we're going to do first, I'll call on people that are physically here that filled out a green card to go ahead and request to speak and then I'll turn it over to the clerk so they can call on people that are online or waiting virtually to address us so let me begin with Delilah Snell followed by John Hannah followed by Melina Ramirez

good evening my name is Delilah Snell I own Alta Baja Market I've been here a few times over the past couple of months I'm sure you have all seen Maine and 4th and Maine and Santa Ana Boulevard are under construction right now for those these TA Streetcar it's a disaster it is even more catastrophic for downtown businesses than before and there's very little that's been opened up as a result of these intersections being closed down. My fellow business owners are texting me telling me that they get one sale a day and that's if they're lucky that is insane. I can't even

believe somebody's creating a living out of this. I'm watching these workers operate and they're going home at two or at four, this whole weekend they weren't there. This is a major intersection of this downtown, an artery. They should be working twice, two shifts, three shifts, literally all the time. And they should be working the weekends. This shouldn't take eight weeks to get done. I don't even know how a business can survive this. And the holidays are coming. How do you expect people to make money to pay for the holidays? This is, you're cutting people off at their knees. Why is Santa Ana Boulevard still closed?

At a recent public meeting with OCTA asked him this, and they actually said that the city needed to create a bike lane. Is this true? Because if it is, get it done, or don't do it. We don't need it. What we need is access for our customers to come to our businesses, because these intersections are just killing us having them closed.

Speaking of customers, they're having such a negative experience this entire year due to the streetcar construction and I really fear for the holidays because they probably don't want to come to downtown to spend their money. They can go to so many other places that have easy access and free parking and why would they want to come to downtown after a whole year of construction where they don't know where to go? I really think it's important. I'm planning my holiday season already. My holiday starts in early October and I really feel like this

entire downtown and all of this leadership and staff should come together and try and come up with a big plan for the holiday season because we need something. We need to come together. We need something more than just, you know, Christmas lights. We need something that will bring us together and that will help people, the public and customers to see that this downtown is important, that you need to come and spend money here because this whole year has been disastrous for everybody. The other thing is I've sent an invite for a recent town hall that we're having on Friday at 4th Street Market at 9 a.m.

We're going to be talking about all these things. I've invited all of you and I hope that you can all make it. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. John Hanna followed by Melina Ramirez followed by Leonel Flores.

Mr. Mayor, Council, John Hanna with the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters, a resident of Orange, former resident of Santa Ana. I'll be kind of quick tonight. I'm here on two consent items just to tell you that on item 33 we support the renewal of the MOU with the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. Santa Anna College is one of the partners and we want to thank the city for all their collaborative work with Santa Anna College over the years. The second item is item 31. This is a first extension of the site plan review on Central Point

mixed-use project at 1801 east 4th street by the 5 freeway we would support that application and hope that this is approved on the consent calendar this is a project where we believe that the applicant has gone beyond the requirements of environmental impact by doing a workforce not just with us, but I believe with the labor's union that will provide local hire for residents of Santa Ana and nearby cities. I've already given my comments in the past

on the general plan, so I won't stick around for the public hearing, but I will say that I wanna thank the council for their work. And I know it's a lot of work that you have on that housing element and just you know keep in mind workforce housing all

right thank you thank you John Melina Ramirez followed by Leonel Flores followed by Ray Diaz if you guys can maybe start approaching as the speaker

in front of you is winding up thank you hi my name is Melina Ramirez I am also known as La Sencilla Lopez. I'm an international oldie singer born and raised in the city of Santana and now representing my city, my beautiful city of Santana internationally. The reason why I'm here today is because I am here to support item 38, which is removing the banning of the cruising. As you know, I am an oldie singer, so I am, you know, surrounded by car shows lowriders and also this has been part of my growing up right I grew up

looking and I'm pretty sure a lot of you guys either own a lowrider wish the Ohio lowrider or know somebody that has a lowrider right so for me personally lowriders have been in my life all my entire life just as well as oldies I know that you've seen me singing and a lot of events where I have you know where We both have been together. So I also work for NAMI, which is National Alliance on Mental Illness. I'm a peer mentor there. So I just want to say that for me, I remember all the time cruising with the low riders

and all that, how beautiful it was. And even now, how it is beautiful it is for the kids, even my own children. I want to own a low rider. I want to. So it's really nice to be able to keep our cultura alive, and even for our own children, right? And so I have a few friends here that are from car clubs, and I'm here to support them too, because I know that they work very hard for these lowriders, and it's nice to be able to take it out and take a cruise with nobody telling you nothing. So I think that we can all work together

and make it happen where we can you know support each other and be able to not only allow them to cruise but also we're working on trying to get a all low writers parade happening for for us in the city of Santana so I think that you know music low writers and all of this is very important because it is part of who we are it is our culture so I just want to say thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak and I'll be seeing you guys in other events. Thank you Melina.

I thought you were about to say and those who like the song low-ray so I was gonna say yes. Leonel Flores followed by Ray Diaz followed by Nelly Legaspi, TurtleHot Legaspi. Hi everyone my

My name is Leonel Flores, I'm a resident of Ward 6 and I'm here in support of item 38, 39 and 40. For item 38, I think it's time that, you know, that ban on cruising is removed. I'm also here in support of those car clubs and organizations that I know. You know, a part of it being part of our art and culture here in the city, they give back a lot to our community. They do events like toy drives, fundraisers, things like that. So they're a very positive contribution to our community.

So I think it's time to spark that conversation, revisit the topic, and make it something that's positive for the city and that everyone can enjoy. For item 39, I think it's important that our street vendors are protected because they're some of the most vulnerable people in our community, and they're just trying to make it by. They're not here bothering anybody. They're just trying to make a living. So I think it's important that we protect them as much as we can. And then for item number 40, I actually wasn't aware about this, but I'm glad this was brought up. I've been talking about in my neighborhood

that it would be a good idea to have a library or some kind of community center down there. So I know there's a library in downtown. There's, I think, the New Hope Library on the west side, but I think it would be good to have a library on the east side of Santa Ana as well.

so thank you thank you Lona Ray Diaz followed by Nelly Turtle Heart the Gatsby

good evening honorable mayor and city council members my name is Ray Diaz I am a resident of Ward 5 in Santana I am a student at UC Santa Cruz and a member of Chispa and I come tonight and strong support of items 38 39 and 41. so as many of you already know the california state assembly overwhelmingly showed out support for assembly concurrent resolution 176 which is encouraging cities to overturn cruising bans it's simply no reason for us to further criminalize our gente for engaging in cultural in the cultural pastime of cruising especially cruising down

bristol you know so uh cruising is a part of santana history and i encourage you all not to be on the wrong side of history tonight by trying to essentially outlaw what is ours in terms of item 39 in the wake of numerous attacks against street vendors i implored the council to essentially protect those of our community who are our neighbors who are friends who have really contributed in and are essentially pillars of our community. So when we grow up with the elotero or the tamalero in the morning on Sundays or with the paletero on a hot summer day,

just the contributions that they're able to give to our community when they feed our children, when they bring smiles to people of all ages, that's essentially about protecting those people, those people that we all serve, those people that you serve. And so making sure that once we come together here to this city and we come and pledge allegiance to a flag that claims to be uh liberty and justice for all i would urge this council to put some action behind those words and protect those street vendors that are on the streets doing the work so with that being said

last item item 41 uh campaign campaign finance reform ordinance i the corruption coming out of this county uh makes only has been making further loss of trust and faith within our public institutions so i am disappointed to say the least of the news that came from our neighboring city of anaheim but i would hope that our city leaders here in the city of santa anna have the spine political courage to root out special interest out of our city politics you are accountable to the people in this beautiful city and or at least i would hope so and so i would just remind everyone

here in this council that elections have consequences and i just urge you to remember

remember that so thank you very much for your time thank you ray nelly turtleheart legaspi Nassano followed by Felipe Lucero.

We almost smacked right into it. Hello everybody. I'm Nellie Legaspe, Turtle Heart. I live in Ward 5, excuse me, I live in Ward 3, but I'm appointed by Ward 5 Councilmember Hernandez as the Personnel Commissioner and the new Chairperson. I'm speaking tonight about Item 39 and 38. First off, I gotta say that coming from growing up at Rosemead, San Gabriel Valley, cruising was something that we all did and it wasn't just low riders, it was VW bugs and the buses and the sports cars. That was the whole culture and that's something that our communities are missing. It's not all bad stuff.

If you're on the outside you might perceive it as that but it's not, a lot of it is very good stuff going on. And I think it's important for us to embrace something from the past that is wholesome and can bring revenue to the city if you bring vendors in and let them get permits and sell items. Also about the street vendors, I got to say that growing up in Rosemead, we had the ice cream man pushing the little cart. That was a long time ago, okay? We had the bread man. We had the ice cream truck. We had all those street vendors, and they were protected by the community because we all looked to them as resources.

And so that's something that I think that we need to protect street vendors, because primarily the street vendors come from one culture, primarily. And the sad thing is, is they get victimized. And I think it's wrong. And I think as a city, since we are the heart of Orange County, Santa Ana, I think we need to protect them. And we need to take that forefront of being the protectors, so that groups like the American Indian Movement don't have to come out and do it. So the police officers don't have to be fighting harder than they are, ready to protect our

community. Let's do something that makes it a hate crime and protect them. I also want to send out an invitation to y'all. BAKA, Bikers Against Child Abuse, are going to be having an event here in Santa Ana at the Boys and Girls Club on the 27th, and they've asked me to convey an invitation to y'all. If you don't know about them, look them up. It's Bikers Against Child Abuse, BAKA, and they have a chapter here in Orange County that American Indian Movement of Orange County has partnered up with and they really do go out and help kids when they're going through child abuse,

going to the courts. They actually walk into the courthouses with them if they have to go in by themselves. So it's very, very empowering. They will be participating in the next event I want to talk about. Save the date, October 8th, Indigenous Peoples Day here in Santa Ana. It's going to be amazing. Jonathan Hernandez made sure that I'm in charge. It's going to be amazing. It's all inclusive and you're not going to regret being a part of it. I hope that all of you come out and send your commissioners out too to be a part of it. I would love to see them. And again, remember BACA because they will be there at Indigenous Peoples Day.

Thank you. Good evening.

Thank you, Nellie. Nassano followed by Felipe Lucero followed by Saul Garcia followed by Tony Longoria.

good afternoon my name is Nazario Bastida I've been a resident of the city of Santana for over 30 years I've done many events throughout the city I'm in 100 full support item 38 with a cruising about 15 to 18 years ago with Mike McCoy, we became into a better relationship against the cruisers and the Santa Ana police. It was a very difficult situation. I know it

was because of the 90s, what had left behind of all the gangs and all that. So with Mike McCoy, we became into a better relationship of knowing how to treat each other and respect each other of the cruising and the classic cars. So we had a meeting with Mike McCoy and over 40 police officers and watch commanders and all that. And it was a little bit of a difficult situation, but we came into better understanding that, you know, we needed some room, some breathing room, because, you know, we all have kids. I believe cruising is not, you know, it's not a crime.

I mean, it's a style that we have. And, you know, my kids have grown from little kids into this. I've gotten several gang members out of the gangs and got them involved into the bikes, car clubs. And moving forward, I've done, I mean, I've given back to the community for over 25 years. We have a toy drive. We donate. We have an event that's totally free for the community, and we help over 1,000 to 2,000 kids. Phil Becerra was there two years ago. He was one of the witnesses.

Before that, we had David Benavides, Luke Correa. We had several people who supported us, acknowledging what we do for the city, that we give back to our own community, and that we're there 100% to support them I believe that cruising could be something that could be possible and it could be done. With Mike McCoy, we're already working on something similar like that, to where even if we have to pay like a fast track, we get a pass from certain hours you can cruise and have that fast track as your bypass to cruise. We're not out to harm nobody. We're not out to do nothing bad.

We have several witnesses from the city here that have gotten to some of our events. where just like anybody else, I believe it's time and we deserve the opportunity to show you different. You have 15 seconds, sir. Ten seconds to wrap up. Ten seconds. So with that in mind, I believe there's been several city officers from here that have gone to some of our events. Your time's up, sir. Sorry. And hopefully this can go through.

Thank you for your comments, sir.

Thank you.

Let me have Felipe Lucero followed by Saul Garcia followed by Tony Longoria.

Hello, my name is Felipe Lucero. I'm a member of the Unique Scar Club, and I'm here to support my club. I don't know, I'm 38 and 39. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Felipe. Saul Garcia followed by Tony Longoria followed by Dave Helbig.

Good evening, everybody. My name is Saul Garcia. I'm a resident from Orange, former resident from Santa Ana. I'm currently automotive instructor for Santa Ana Unified School District at Valley High School and Santa Ana High School as well. What the lowrider community has done for our students has been above and beyond. When you have students coming to the program not knowing anything about cars, not knowing anything, they have a single family member, no parents, live in a foster home, homeless kids, and they come to my program and we have a 64 Impala, we have a 62 Impala, we're rebuilding the motor,

we're doing a cooling change, we're doing a brake service, we're doing something on that low rider. And when they're done, the club members come in, they say thank you, they take off. They're seen down the street, going down Bristol, went down 17th Street and they're like, wow, I worked on that car. That empowerment that that gives that student, that kid, hey, how do I get that car? How much does that cost? And the number will say, it cost $100,000, cost $80,000. Wow, that's a lot of money. The impact, I need to be educated. I need to go to class. I need to go to school. I need to get impacted, okay?

What I would like to do is I would like to do a mentor program within the city, within the school, within the PD department, and influence the youth of how to be successful. Just like everybody in here has mentors, have mentors for our youth. Let's make history here in Santa Ana. There's word that this thing's going down the state, how they want to active cruising let's make it here where cruise night we have a workshop for our parents for our community member maybe there's a parent that that needs help with an

Excel worksheet or PowerPoints let's do a workshop for that parent or for that that college kid or maybe that college kid needs a help with their math or science class or something let's do a workshop within our community but at the same time help them and they can see that lowrider they can see the people going down the street, a vendor, and all that stuff. Thank you very much.

Thank you for those comments. Tony Longoria, followed by Dale Helbig, followed by Guadalupe Baragán.

How's it going? I'm Tony Longoria. Yeah, and I actually, I've worked with Sal. I've took my car to the school so the students could work on my car. I got a 64 Impala. and I'm here to support the 38, the band on the cruising, because, you know, I got my car. I love to cruise it. I love to, you know, the kids driving down the street, driving down Bristol, I get kids pulling up next to me. You know, can I see the car go up and down? And I'll move the car up and down. You know, I'll let the kids see it, you know. And to me, to see a kid smile, it's worth all the trouble that I got into the money,

you know, the blood, the sweat, the tears, because, to be honest, these cars, they're not cheap anymore. They're not cheap anymore, so I would like to be able to cruise Bristol, cruise my city that I grew up in, that I lived in my whole life, in my car and show it off to the community. And I've done a lot of work with Jonathan. I've done fundraisers. I've done toy drives in my club, Orange County Car Club. We've worked a lot with them, and I like to keep doing that. I like to keep doing that, and I like to see this band lifted. I think it would be good for us, for the city of Santa Ana. That's all I've got to say. Thank you.

Thank you for those comments. Dale Helwig, followed by Guadalupe Barragan, followed by Salica Diaz.

Good evening, Mayor, Councilmembers. Dale Helwig, Ward 3.

A lot of good people were recognized tonight, so it was good. and staff presentations were good as well. I think it's about time we start looking at COVID again. Back in the beginning of April, we had 55 cases for the week. I don't know if you looked last week, we had over 978, I think it was. That's a 1,700% increase in the last three months. And we know that a lot of these cases aren't being reported, and so that number is really much higher. So before it gets out of control again, maybe you want to consider looking at that again.

About a week ago, Orange County Register came out with an article for lead contamination. And that got me to thinking, and I started going down the bunny trail looking at numbers and everything else, and they had a map that showed a large portion of Santa Ana with lead contamination. And I went back and looked at the general plan. We looked at environmental justice areas and everything else. And the map that I'm handing out to you guys, which is this one right here, shows that the area east of the 5 freeway all the way north has a lot of lead contamination.

But this particular map from the city PowerPoint presentation that they had for environmental justice showed that the area south of 17th Street, all the way essentially your area, Mayberry, is listed as either an environmental justice area or a disadvantaged community. But yet, when we approve the general plan, that's not listed as an environmental justice area.

And I looked at the EPA website and it says environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. It doesn't look at the income factor. And I think the city has mixed environmental justice and disadvantaged communities, and that's how they came up with the environmental justice boundaries.

So I think it needs to be re-looked at as far as what is an environmental justice issue. Lead contamination is well above the five freeway into Mayberry Park, into all the homes that border the freeways. So let's look at that. Last thing is housing element. It's kind of sad that I think I'm the only one as of 11 o'clock today that has provided any input to the housing element. I think that says a lot. We need to get more community involvement.

Thank you, Dale. Guadalupe Barragán followed by Salika Diaz and our last speaker is Victor Mendez.

Santana, la amo, ustedes ya saben, he estado, hemos sufrido, hemos batallado, pero seguimos adelante. Voy a seguir adelante porque amo mucho a Santana, soy santanera y toda mi familia somos santaneros y no vamos a dar un paso atrás, sino vamos a seguir adelante con la ayuda de ustedes. Muchísimas gracias. No sé cómo agradecerles todo el trabajo, el esfuerzo que juntos podemos seguir haciendo para poder seguir manteniendo la bonita ciudad de Santana adelante. Gracias.

Gracias.

Good evening. Again, my name is Guadalupe Barragán. Once again, I'm here to thank you, to give you lots and lots of thanks to Mr. Vicente Sarmiento and Jonathan Hernandez for all the help that you have given us. I'm here in Santa Ana. This is my city and I love it. And you know, there's a lot of stuff going on and suffering going on, but we will go on. We will continue. I love Santa Ana. I'm a Santanera. My whole family are Santaneros and we are, we're not going back. We're going forward and we're going forward with your help. So I'm here to thank you for all the work so that

we continue working together to make this beautiful city of Santa Ana even

better. Salika go ahead and our last speaker will be Victor Mendez. I'm gonna

read an email that I sent to you guys earlier today. Sorry I'm gonna repeat myself again but I really want whatever happened to me I don't want the same thing to happen to anybody else in the city. I really want other neighborhood leaders to feel encouraged and not feel afraid to come out and do neighborhood events okay um as you know my name is celica diaz i am the pacific park neighborhood leader and on june 25 2022 i planned and coordinated the first annual concert at the pacific and resource fair despite all the obstacles and challenges i encountered with cedar city staff during the

approval process my event was a great success it was informational entertaining and it brought neighbors together for a night of fun some of you even attended and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for being there and showing support I have put neighborhood neighborhood events together in the past it's this is not my first one but this is the first time I felt singled out and hopeless I understand there's a process and there are requirements the city has in order to approve events but never have i experienced anything like this like what i experienced

on this event i am asking the city to please review its process for approving a special events and ensure that it is a fair process i believe the approval process should be followed by all and city staff departments should follow the same process for every applicant based on my experience this year it appears staff in different city departments have different requirements to obtain final approval which makes the process difficult some city staff will not respond to my emails and not answer my phone calls when I wanted to call to get clarification of what was needed for the approval my

concern is some applicants or events are not required to obtain the same approvals from city staff like I was for my free community event I was told by city staff that one of my nonprofits attending my event require a business license to participate even though the same nonprofit attended the city event a week before a Centennial but at Centennial Park excuse me I believe every applicant should be held to the same standards and provide all the necessary paperwork to be approved I hope I'm not mistaken and my community event was not singled out I am asking the city to review its approval process

for special events to make it a smooth process that all applicants must follow all applicants we must all be treated equal thank you thank you for those comments uh our last in-person speaker

will be victor mendez and then we'll go to any members of the public that may be online or joining us virtually. Go ahead, Victor.

Okay. So tonight I want to talk about community wellness, which seems kind of appropriate on public safety. As I mentioned earlier in another comment, Santa is the 25th most violent city in California. We just recently had a murder right in front of a 7-Eleven. We have a resolution to try to prevent hate crimes against our vendors, our street vendors. And today I was at the Firestone, and my service advisor informed me that a customer punched him in the face. We are not a well city. We are ill. Please face that fact. We have some problems here. And frankly, I don't think as much as I admire Mr. Hernandez and his effort here,

I don't think that resolution is going to solve our problem. I don't think a health strategist will solve that problem. I think you as a council have to help solve the problem. I know some of you really have antipathy toward mental health and have a strong issue with it, but I'm hoping the majority of this council can see the way and realize that we can do something. We can put psychologists in our parks to talk to our kids. We can have different places to diffuse issues, But I'm seeing a community that is boiling and has some serious issues, at least at a mental health level.

And having said that, mental health eventually leads to physical problems and other health issues. So please recognize we have a problem. That's the first step in trying to get a solution. That said, on item 10, I generally support this bonus for the officers. and I think using overtime money to fund this initiative is very appropriate and very supportive. My only issue is that we always seem to be in Santa Ana using money to solve our problems sometimes. We have one of the best police academies in the state right down the street in Santa Ana Community College.

I don't know why there isn't some energy between staff, HR staff, and the academy to bring more people into Santa Ana. and why do we have to spend $10,000, which I agree, you know, it's probably going to pay it off, but I sure would like to see somebody try something first in an effort that doesn't cost any money and maybe can save some money and also get some better results. On police overtime, I did look into this special revenue fund, and what I found was really a lot of overtime for undercover officers who are protecting a multi-billion dollar corporation, Live Nation, doing business at the observatory.

I don't know about you. I don't have billions of dollars to pay for private security. You have 15 seconds to... Yes. We have drugs. We have guns. We have prostitution. But our undercover agency resources seem to be spending time trying to do overtime, time and they're not perhaps spending the time and trying to do what they're supposed to be doing initially. I get a little confused with that, please. So please, this is something that I think needs to be really looked at. Why are overtime officers spending their time and energy protecting a multi-billion dollar

corporation and we have such big needs?

Thank you. Thank you, Victor. Let me go ahead and turn it over to the clerk so she can give direction or instructions to anybody that may be online. And I'll ask the clerk staff, do we have anybody that is wanting to address the council virtually?

Yes, sir, we do. Speakers on the queue may provide their comments on agenda or non-agenda items within the city's jurisdiction, with the exception of public hearing items. When unmuted, please announce your name, ward, or neighborhood that you reside in within the city of Santa Ana for the record. To request to speak, dial star 9 from your phone or select raise hand from Zoom now. Before unmuting callers, I would like to begin by reporting the following summary of emails provided to us as of today.

closed session item number three possible litigation waste management we have one email from a Santa Ana resident complaint regarding trash service issues non agenda items Santa Ana resident complaint regarding fireworks one Santa Ana resident comment regarding lead contamination in Santa Ana item number 17 Amazon contract we have one Santa Ana resident provided comment for options to allocate funds to for staff to purchase from local vendors item number 38 repeal anti cruising ordinance and established

cruising policy we received 10 emails from non Santa Ana residents as well as as undisclosed organizations. Item number 39, implement law that would classify attacks on street vendors as a hate crime. We have one Santa Ana organization send us an email and two residents not disclosed sent us emails. Okay. With that, we would like to start with a caller whose phone number ends or Zoom ID, Lorraine. please select a microphone icon on your device and proceed with your comment you have three minutes

hi good evening y'all can hear me okay yes yes okay awesome okay good evening I'm Lorraine Quinonez I am a mom of three married for 20 years teacher with Los Angeles Unified School District I reside in Los Angeles, but my childhood roots are in Orange County, City of Orange and Santa Ana. I'm an avid cruiser and we have three classic cars. Our pride and joy is our 57 Bel Air that we often cruise on Sundays. I am thrilled that the council members Mendoza and Hernandez

have requested the anti-cruising ordinance to be on the agenda item number 38. I am in 100% in favor of Santa Ana and all cities repealing this discriminatory ordinance that targets people like me and those who have spoken before me on item number 38. I commend Santa Ana for the first, I believe, SoCal City to have this on the agenda. And for ACR 176, that's authored by assembly woman, Luz Rivas, I commend them for taking this racist ordinance to the state level. Cruising is a healthy pastime and bonding experience for family, friends, and communities.

For me, cruising is a stress relief and positive mental health exercise. I cruise with my husband, our kids, family, and friends too. Cruising is part of our culture, lifestyle, and the anti-cruising ordinance infringes upon that right to carry on the tradition of custom cars, our culture of of riding low and slow and the passion that goes into these beautiful works of art that are a testament of hard work, dedication, talent, and identity. I call for all cities and our state to repeal the anti-cruising ordinance and provide the support and necessary resources and or collaboration in order to ensure safe

and successful cruising on our public streets. This will preserve and honor the culture of low riding, cruising, and the opportunity to take a stand against all discriminatory and or racist ordinances. Thank you for beginning that process today and setting the standard for other cities as well. I live in East LA and I'm so proud that Santa Ana has this on the agenda today and I hope to get this in LA as well. You guys are setting the example and leading the way. So repeal the anti-cruising ordinance in Santa Ana and everywhere. I stand in solidarity with organizations like Sacramento Lowrider Commission, United Lowrider Coalition,

Albuquerque who has repealed the ordinance, Modesto San Jose all those who spoke before me I stand in solidarity with them and remember cruising is not a crime I stand in solidarity with the council members Mendoza and Hernandez you have 15 seconds ma'am thank you Brown issues organization just to name a few who are organizing efforts and have done so much to repeal the five seconds to wrap up big ups to Assemblywoman Luz Rivas. Thank you very much. Peace and love. Cruising is not a crime.

We have Zoom ID Flavio Huizar. Please unmute your microphone on your device. All right, you can hear me, correct? Yes, sir. My name is Flavio Huizar. I am actually the outreach community liaison for the Sacramento Lowrider Commission. I actually represent the Lowrider Commission in Sacramento. We were actually the first city in California to repeal this ordinance. When we look at the ordinance, what we see is in the early 80s, the problems with the gangs. And an ordinance that started in Sacramento literally rippled out across California.

Most ordinances can look back to the Ordinance of 88 that happened in Northern California, Sacramento. And when these ordinances came in, what they did was they wanted to reach, they wanted to be able to affect the gangs, affect those that were on the streets. The problem with that is when they created these ordinances, what they did was they netted a community, a brown community, an African community that had already been lowriding since the 50s, since the 40s, all through the 60s and through the 70s and through the 80s. And so this is a civil rights issue. Let's understand what it is.

It's a civil rights issue when you label a community and you say you are different, you are less than, you are not equal. And so I want you to understand that because this is a civil rights issue and our city removed that ordinance because they understood that. They said, you're absolutely correct. This is a civil rights issue. The signs in our city were in the brown communities. If you have signs in your community, I guarantee you they're probably in the brown communities. But it was removed. We thank God for that, me personally. But I wanted to share

with you that currently in California right now, the low riding community has been here for a very long time. They've been working hard to be able to have toy drives, to be able to do things in the community. The families understand low riding is a culture. It is something that brings families. It is a mental health issue. Here, somebody a few minutes ago was just talking about mental health. When people go and low ride and they take their families and they take these 30 and 40 and 100 000 cars out on the streets and go and have down time this is a time for them to

be able to be with their families to be able to have mental health time of a down time of a time of just being around others because if this was baseball none of us would complain if this was a soccer team nobody would say nothing they would say that's the thing that they do have 15 seconds So we stand and ask you to repeal this no cruising ordinance in your city, be the first city in Southern California. Five seconds to wrap up, sir. We stand with council member Hernandez and we ask you to repeal this and we stand behind the city of Santa Ana. Gracias.

Zoom caller Idalia Rios, please unmute your microphone.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Zidalia Rios. I am resident of Ward 6 and I am speaking tonight to provide a charter amendment recommendation. I asked each of you to please listen closely and truly consider it. And this is on agenda item 36. As an immigrant, I have lived in many cities. the city of Santana was the first city where I felt at home. I became involved when I took the opportunity to advocate for my children's well-being in their schools. Since my advocacy has expanded, I have served on many SAUSE parent and community committees

and as a community leader with Vela in the Lazy neighborhood. I advocate for the future generations and the city's most vulnerable residents, my friends and neighbors. Along my journey, I have met amazing people that have shown me that change is possible, but enacting through change has been challenging without the right to vote. The inability to vote has been a real barrier to myself and many of my neighbors. Santa Ana is a home to many immigrants that are not yet U.S. citizens. Our neighborhoods are filled with mixed status households.

All Santana residents, regardless of their immigration status, pay taxes in this city. We deserve to have a say in who will represent us. We need a vote in local elections to promote the well-being of our neighborhoods. The city of Santana has been a leader when it comes to immigrant rights. Just last year, Council Member Lopez introduced an ordinance that allows undocumented residents to serve on any city commission. This is an opportunity to lead and further democracy by providing undocumented residents the opportunity to participate in local elections, such as for the city council and school board.

I did some research and I learned that other cities are doing this. Maryland has 10 cities that have done this. San Francisco did it in 2016, two cities in Vermont did it in 2021, and New York just did it a few months ago in January. Now is the time for the city of Santana to expand democracy, include all community leaders and become the first city in Southern California to expand voting rights to undocumented residents.

You have 15 seconds. Thank you for your time.

Just a Santa Ana welcome me. Santa Ana can make the change to open the arms to its residents in Santa Ana. Thank you.

Zoom caller, Francine Mata, please unmute your microphone.

Good evening, council members. My name is Francine Mata, president of the Sacramento Lowrider Commission. I'm calling in support of the Santa Ana Lowrider family on item 38. And again, thank you council for letting me speak. I wanna ask that you repeal the no cruising ordinance ban. There's already traffic laws that exist and this is an outdated discriminatory tactic. Also impose no fees, no permits as there are already taxes paid for us to drive the streets safely. A little bit about low riding that I want to bring you into. When I think of low riding, I think it's a form of moving art

which tells a story. Great pride. You'll see low riders at the Super Bowl, movies, parades, business openings. Even during COVID, there were parades of lowriders driving by houses to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries. When you look at our lowrider culture, it's culture, unity, family, economic growth. It's multicultural, different nationalities, men, women of all ages, of all economic statuses, lawyers, students, teachers, politicians. We do committee events numerous eight to 10 hours a day when we do events and that keeps the community engaged.

They do water drives, feed the hungry, backpack drives, library literacy, toy drives. It builds economy, it keeps businesses thriving, creating new businesses, educational programs when you see us low riders. Once it's repealed, it shows a hand of trust from you, the city, law enforcement, which engages relationship building, collaboration, which promotes positive unity and also voting. I foresee that it would increase voting because you're extending a hand of trust. I thank you for the time and I want to wish all of you solidarity and love. Thank you.

Zoom caller, David Polanco, please unmute your microphone.

Hello, my name is David Polanco. I'm from the United Lowrider Council of San Jose. I'm calling in support of repealing the No Cruising Ordinance. Here in San Jose, we had our ordinance repealed June 28th, right after Sacramento. Since then, we've have, Sacramento has began to organize, you know, other lowrider councils and communities. and throughout California, and we're working together to help with this. Through this, I've confirmed that we all have the same struggles,

we all have the same values, and we all love our culture, yet all our cities have different

dynamics within them that make us all unique.

We struggle against the stereotypes portrayed by the big screen in the media, the end of the past, the struggles of our youth, and the need for positive role models. Like it or not, we are those role models to most of our Chicano and youth in those neighborhoods that tend to beat into low riding. But that being said, I think it's very important to show a positive relationship between the local police, city officials, and the lowrider community.

This could only just help bring a more positive to the community. So I wanna just leave you with this thought that although the lowrider culture had those no cruising ordinances in place, the culture still thrived regardless of the signs. Imagine how it would be if the culture was supported by the city and law enforcement to take it to the next level. Thank you for your time.

Zoom caller Roberto, please unmute your microphone.

Hi, this is Roberto, Ward one resident. and I'm calling on item 19 and just trying to, you know, I had communicated with council member Tybiet Phan around the handball courts and the expansion of the parking lot, as well as creating greater access for the mobile home residents. And, you know, she was very thorough in her response in regards to the process, you know, of the updates and renovations to Santanita park. So yeah, I think it just being able to see the process or like understand the process and, you know, trying to balance access, park access.

And I can see how increasing the parking space, you know, would increase access at the park. But you know, that's coming at the cost of the handball court there at San Juanita Park. So, you know, I just wanted to voice my support for saving the handball court but i understand in terms of process i believe it's you know a done deal at this point um but yeah and and i think you know uh in terms of increasing the parking space access you know at least if in terms of you know reaching to a point where

we can increase parking what you know while still maintaining the the handball court and you know we can supplement that access from the parking spots. Because I think, you know, the, well, I know the mobile home residents that live to south, south of the park too. And so, you know, there's a high density there and the mobile home residents have to walk around to get to the park when they literally live next door. And so I know there were some questions in regards to whether the city owns that or the mobile home, you know, the mobile homeowners are like, you know, own that wall.

But I think the city, you know, should support and taking on some of those costs to support in that access. You know, in the future, I know that that park itself will need to expand in the future. But yeah, you know, we are where we are, but for sure, I just wanted to, you know, think about ways when we think about like park expansion, you know, the various factors that go into increasing access. And so, you know, I've learned a lot from this experience and, you know, thank you all for, and thank you Tanya, you know, one of the mobile home residents who I was able

to speak to and, you know, she was able to share her perspective with me and wanting to increase park access but thank you so much city and have a good night.

Zoom caller Aida Castaneda please unmute your microphone.

Good evening members my name is Aida Castaneda I'm calling in in solidarity I'm from the United Lowrider Coalition here in National City California we're a small municipality out in in San Diego County, and we're too working on repealing our anti-cruising ordinance here within the city. I just have to say that I commend the leadership within Santa Ana for taking this initiative on. This is really a statewide movement that has been empowering our communities to engage in a way that they haven't quite before. When we talk about policy changes, when we talk about systemic racism, we're at the nucleus of it with a no cruising ordinance.

And I want to remind

how we got to this point. And I think it's important to recognize that Prop 187, Prop 229, Prop 209, the use, no longer use of affirmative action in the state of California, were very much targeted to disenfranchise Chicanos within our communities. So to target our communities further by municipalities taking on these ordinances, it just goes to show how much animus there was towards Chicanos in the 1990s and will continue to persist to this day. So I really encourage the local community in this area to continue to get active, to advocate for themselves and for our larger community.

I hope that you can continue to support this effort and have an honest policy conversation about what this means for our community at large. We're really looking up to you all to pass this ordinance and to repeal the ordinance so we can continue the movement and rectify the ills of our past. Muchisimas gracias, best of luck to you all and the United Lowrider Coalition from National City sends you our best. Thank you.

Zoom caller Jovita Arellano, please unmute your microphone.

Good evening council members and mayor.

I am Jovita Arellano and I am one of the co-chairs of the United Lowrider Coalition here in National City, part of San Diego County. I really wanna thank council member Hernandez for bringing this issue to the agenda. This shows that not only other cities throughout the state of California are doing this, but they're following suit. And I support the repeal of the no cruising ordinance for the city of Santa Ana. We are trying to get that done here in San Diego.

but with you passing this ordinance to repeal it is something that shows that all other cities throughout the state of California can do. And we stand in solidarity with you, with all of the cities in the state of California. We all are pushing for the same thing. We all are going through the same problems, the same issues that are being, you know, discriminate against the brown and black communities. And in National City, we have those signs up and they are in the brown communities. We're low riders.

We're family members. We're business owners. We're home owners. We all have jobs. Our cars are worth thousands and thousands of dollars. The low riders bring revenue to the city. They bring good things to the city. They do all of these events. You know, nobody hears about the good things that the lowriders community, the lowrider community is doing in the cities. Every once in a while you hear that, but we hear the negative. We hear that stigma against the lowriders. That's not the case. That was, you know, they're using stigma

from way back in the early 50s, 60s. but today the low rider community, we're family, we're united. That's why we named our coalition, the United Coalition, because we are all united and we stand together throughout the state of California. And I'm asking you tonight to please repeal the no cruising ordinance in the city of Santa Ana. do this for the unity of the community, the low rider community, and we stand behind you.

We want that respect. We respect the elected officials. We respect the law enforcement. We have 15 seconds. We want that respect back. So I'm urging you to please repeal this ordinance. Thank you.

We have our last caller, Carl Benninger. Please unmute your microphone.

Carl Benninger.

Please unmute your microphone. Thank you and good evening to Council and to the mayor. I'd like to talk about two issues quickly. One on the agenda tonight is-Carol Beninger. Yes, do you hear me? Yes, sir, we can hear you. Hello?

Hello? We can hear you, sir. Go ahead.

Thank you. Your microphone.

Okay.

Are you listening to the YouTube, sir? That's why there's a delay.

And clerk, staff, if we can reset his time, because it really wasn't his fault. Thank you.

Okay, can you hear me? Yes, sir. Okay, very good. I'd just like to speak about two issues.

It looks like I'm having trouble here.

Yeah, yes.

Go ahead, Mr. Benninger. We can hear you. Thank you.

Let's start here we go.

Sorry guys. Carl Benninger Ward number four. Two issues I'd like to speak about. One is about the naming ceremony

labeling of the streets. I'm very much in favor of that. And number two is I think people forget why the cruising was banned. And it wasn't because of discrimination. It was because of the noise and the excitement that took place long after midnight. So I would support cruising as long as we have limited times on it. And I think it's good that we do have that. I'd love to see shows of it. So thank you.

That is it, sir. No more comments from the public.

Great. Thank you for that, staff. And let me go ahead and now bring it back to the council and bring it to the consent calendar section of our meeting, and I'll ask any members of the council that wish to abstain or recuse from any of the items or if they wish to go ahead and pull any of the items off the consent calendar for individual consideration. Hello, Mr. Mayor. Yes, Council Member.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

I would respectfully like to ask if we could accelerate the council member requested items. As evidence, there was a lot of callers today. I would hate for them to stay on until potentially midnight. Great. And what item was that? I would say item 38, item 39, 40, and 41. It looks like these were items that people called. Priority for me would be item 38 and 39.

I think those two. I don't think the others as much. Okay. Maybe 38 and 39. If there is no objection, we can go ahead and bring those before. Why don't we go ahead and see if we can pull off some items off the consent calendar and we'll start with 38, 39 and then we'll go through the consent calendar items that are pulled off or any recusals that any council members may have. Mayor Pro Tem.

Phil BacerraItem 8

Thank you, Mayor. I will pull item 20.

Thank you.

Councilmember Mendoza.

Item number 10.

Thank you. Councilmember Phan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to announce my recusal from three agenda items. The first is item 31. I've recused on this item before as Park Center Santa Ana Associates LP is, I believe, a subsidiary of Enel Developments and they are a client of my employer, Rittana Tucker. Item 33, Rancho Santiago Community College District.

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

Again, they are a client of my employer. Item number 22, Arthur J. Gallagher. This is out of an abundance of caution. I believe he might be a client, but it wasn't careful, so I just want to make sure that there's no conflict there. Thank you.

Let me just get those correct. Was that item number 22, 31, and 33?

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

That is correct. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Any other items that council members wish to abstain abstain or recuse themselves from or pull off the consent calendar? Council Member Lopez?

Jessie LopezItem 8

No, but I do have a comment on the agenda itself, so let me know if this is the appropriate time to provide that comment.

Go ahead.

Jessie LopezItem 8

So I noticed some of the agenda items are detailing the vendor and the location for specific items, but it's not consistent throughout the entire agenda, and we normally see it in our staff reports. So my personal preference is that we keep them in the staff reports, as opposed to adding them to the agenda because, again, it's not consistent throughout all of the items. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Seeing nothing further, the only item I'm going to go ahead and say I'm going to be a no on 13, and I'll go ahead and entertain a motion on the balance of the consent calendar.

David PenalozaItem 8

I'll second.

We have a motion and a second, and I wanted to ask the clerk staff if we can vote electronically, or do we need a voice vote?

We need you to vote electronically. Can you just repeat who made a motion? I'm sorry. Sure.

I believe that was Councilmember Mendoza making the motion and Councilmember Peñalosa with his second.

My apologies. I'll make sure I recite who's the maker of the motion and who's the second. Councilmembers please vote.

Thank you. The motion has passed with six voting yes and one abstention with Councilmember Lopez abstaining. I selected yes. oh I have yes oh I'm sorry councilmember Hernandez councilmember Mendoza councilmember me Pena Losa councilmember fan mayor pro tem Becerra mayor Sarmiento all voting yes and councilmember Lopez abstain

So I think for the record, we have a unanimous vote for the balance of the consent calendar items. Yes, sir.

I just corrected that. Everyone unanimously voted.

Thank you for that. Thank you. Appreciate that. Let me go on to the items that were pulled off the consent calendar. That was item, or actually, let's go to the items that we said we were going to tackle on the council-led items. I believe it was item number 38 and then item number 39. and I'll turn it over to Councilmember Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to start by first thanking all the community members from Santa Ana to East LA to Sacramento, everybody who called in. I want to thank them for their advocacy and their efforts to repeal this ordinance. And more importantly, I want to thank my colleague, Councilmember Mendoza. Last year, she and I worked together collaboratively to make the city of Santa Ana the first city in the country to declare August Chicano Heritage Month.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

And we know Congressman Lou Correa is going to be recognizing August's Chicano Heritage Month across the state. And it's empowering to know that that history started here with Councilmember Mendoza and myself and that children moving forward will learn about this history. Part of learning about history is also acknowledging where we went wrong. And cruising, which started in the 1940s and 50s, and to be specific to Santana, where I'm from and where we live, cruising originated off of 4th Street.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

That is where many families, multicultural families, whether they were Anglo-Americans, whether they were African-Americans, whether they were, you know, Mexican-Americans or Mexicans who came over through the Bracero movement, you would see multicultural communities cruising down 4th Street. You would see them cruising down Main Street, all of which is very well documented. The challenge that we have with anti-cruising ordinances is that it is an issue of discrimination, that we're not able to cruise here, but in Newport there is no challenge with people

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

driving 1960s Porsches or a Lamborghini.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

There is no ordinance there, but there's an ordinance here. When we look at the issue of discrimination, we have to acknowledge the cultural implications that cruising has had in Santana, the cultural implications that it's had in bringing families together. There is the component of understanding that cruising has helped so many people navigate challenges in our community by providing an avenue for people to have ease when it comes to their mental health. It provides an avenue for people to express themselves positively.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

Cruising for me as a child was an opportunity to honor and celebrate the classics that were passed down from my grandfather, Enrique Prieto, who came here from Jalisco to acknowledge my uncle, Salvador Prieto, who was one of the founders of Old Style Car Club, and his 1958 Impala. and for many of us it is homage to our grandparents and our families cruising is something that we learn from them and it creates a sense of belonging and a sense of pride in our community and that's why council member Mendoza and I work together is we want to repeal this ordinance

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

and we believe that the role of government is we need to meet people where they're at and the community is asking for change and what's most important about how they're asking for change is that they're saying they want to be part of it. So here's what I would love to see us do today. I would love to see us work with our community members in removing the anti-cruising ordinance and so that we can create the infrastructure to not only positively empower these community members that enjoy it, but there is economic opportunity for our city

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

so that we can create a cost that is associated with a permit. We can create a day and a time and have cruising for a cause. An example would be we have Chicano Heritage Month in the month of August. I would associate that costs related to cruising would have a permit and that 100% of those funds from these permits would go towards gang prevention efforts and that would fund community nonprofits. So as you came to the table as somebody who loves classic car culture and cruising,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

you know that every single dollar you spent is going towards addressing the very issues that have plagued our culture and our community. I would want to work closely with our police department so that we can implement traffic control, so that there's a start where before you can start cruising, we have those check-ins, where we can build a community where we can work closely with one another. The opportunity of cruising for a cause to acknowledge farm workers, to acknowledge Cesar Chavez, to acknowledge Martin Luther King, to acknowledge people that have brought diverse groups of people together.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

I would propose that cruising is designated on specific streets so that we can have a safe cruising culture in Santana where we can empower our neighbors, I would propose to use the intersections of Bristol, Main Street, 4th Street, Ettinger, and 17th, and Fairview. The economic development opportunities that we have is that families would wait on all of these intersections. They would sit on the sidewalks. They would have their lawn chairs out. We can have street vendors there. We can have flower vendors there, people would line up across our city to enjoy these cruises.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

And more importantly, we can implement exactly what people asked for in saying, we want a parade. What a better opportunity than to have an ordinance that allows us to actually empower our community. We need to change the way that we view low riding. And if you're not educated on the art, we're committed to re-educating community about how cruising is about bringing families together. Everyone across the globe has taken part of the culture. Cruising is now multicultural. It's not just a Latino issue anymore. There are muscle cars, there are Volkswagens, there are classic cars.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

And one of the best examples I can provide to you as to how cruising is a form of community and culture is take for instance Suavecito. Suavecito does an annual toy giveaway through the very community that they grew up on Gunther Street where they take classic cars and they go in the neighborhood and they hand out toys and children walk up to these classic cars and they're able to receive gifts from people who look like them that grew up in their very communities. Classic cars and cruising is about change, hope, and solidarity.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

And I thank my Councilmember colleague Mendoza for understanding that our community deserves a better opportunity than what we've given them. And I think that this is the right time to make history and have Santa Ana be the first city in Southern California to remove the anti-cruising ordinance. That concludes my comments, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Councilmember. Let me go ahead and call on Councilmember Mendoza and then I'll call on Councilmember Peñalosa.

Thank you. It is true that cruising has been stigmatized as something that is adverse and negative and noisy. However, that's not the kind of cruising that we are proposing. We're proposing what it used to be initially what Councilmember Hernandez was mentioning.

This is a family event. It was a time for socializing and coming together and celebration of the pride that the young people felt in fixing up their cars and showing off how high they could jump and the beautiful colors, the incredible murals that are painted on the cars, the shiny rims in the interior.

Every little detail about these cars is a measure of love for their car and for showing off these beautiful vehicles. And so from this grew the car clubs that connects more groups together. and so now you have a sense of well-being and belonging. And so this kind of activity would bring the people together

and allowed for some time to express their culture. And so it helped to alleviate some of the, for them not to go out and be delinquents or being out in the community and causing havoc. But these young people were rather fixing up their cars and getting ready for that cruising. And so I remember here in downtown 4th Street as a child, and we were not old enough to drive,

And my father certainly couldn't afford to fix up our 1966 Impala station wagon. But we did go and just to view the beautiful cars and to experience a little bit of home, buying the food from the vendors, having the fruit from the food carts and the paletas from the cart vendors. And so it was a way of life and a form of entertainment because, you know, there wasn't very much for us to do in those days that was inexpensive for us.

Because, you know, raising 10 children is, and let's say you want to go to Disneyland, that's an incredible, like a treasure chest that we just didn't have. And so it's less expensive for a family such as ours to come to downtown and to enjoy the time with our family and to relax after a hard week of work and household chores and school.

We looked forward to having these times in our downtown Santa Ana. And so I am very supportive of removing this ordinance and getting back to a cruising that is organized and subjective to some kind of fee so that would pay for if we have to have extra parking

someplace and it's going to be a place that is clean, no drinking, none of that. It's going to be a very family-oriented event, such as it was when I was growing up. And so I ask for support from our colleagues in bringing a little bit of history back to our downtown Santa Ana. And thank you to all the people who called in from across California. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmembers. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the Council and start with Councilmember Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 8

Thank you, Mayor. And I want to thank my colleagues, Councilmember Mendoza and Councilmember Hernandez, for bringing this item forward. I know that, as I believe, I don't know exactly where any of my colleagues, well, some of them actually live, but I know that I'm the one that lives directly on Bristol Street. And nothing is more infuriating to me than Easter Sunday, when I'm either trapped in my neighborhood or I'm trapped outside of my neighborhood because I can't get in because of the extensive road closures

David PenalozaItem 8

surrounding Bristol, Edinger, Maine, Warner, to avoid the cruising that we've traditionally seen in our city. So I'm happy to have this before us, this repealing this ordinance. I do also share similar concerns when it comes to the timing that we would allow as a city moving forward. I know one of the callers mentioned, Mr. Benninger, because I am the one council member that lives directly along Bristol Street. And, you know, I hear it.

David PenalozaItem 8

Anytime that there is cruising or Mexico wins, which, you know, I'm proud to cheer for, or the Lakers win, or the Dodgers, you know, you name it. I'm proud of these things. But, you know, I do hear how loud it can get to, you know, it's great if we see it, if we hear it at 7, 8, 9 p.m., but when it starts getting into midnight, 1 a.m., 2 in the morning, which we have heard along the past, that's when it becomes concerning. Just because of safety and safety to the participants that participate in cruising and the car clubs.

David PenalozaItem 8

One of my first cars was a 2007 Dodge Challenger. And I was never a big person for car clubs or knew about them really. And I remember I'd park my car, I'd go to the grocery store or the movies or whatever, and I'd come out and I'd find business cards on my windshield and it was, join the Dodge Challenger car club. I was like, oh, this is interesting. You know, I'd never had seen that before. So I remember calling once and I was like, hey, I found your business card on my windshield. You know, what is this about? And it was a pretty cool, I never joined,

David PenalozaItem 8

But it was a cool car club and they did cool things and met up and showed off their cars. Mine wasn't really nice to show off, so I don't know why they left that car on my windshield, but it was a thing that I frequently saw.

David PenalozaItem 8

So I'm happy to see this before us. I do want to, I know that over the last couple of years, I've discussed this briefly with some Memorial Park residents and some residents in Wilshire Square about how we could help these different car clubs and help build on this culture. I know Council Member Hernandez talked about it briefly, how, you know, we have, we all know about the illegal street takeovers that exist in our city. That is problematic and obviously that's separate from cruising, but I'm using that as an example of how can we as a city on, let's say, on Easter Sunday,

David PenalozaItem 8

instead of closing the street completely so that no cars could use the street, I can't even get into my neighborhood, why don't we work and see where in areas where we could safely provide a space for cruising, provide a space for if the young kids want to come off and and show off their Supras and their pimped out Honda Civics that are annoying to listen to because you hear them. And they want to, you know, show them off and do some donuts in a controlled environment. There is ways where we could, and areas in the city,

David PenalozaItem 8

where we could help make that possible so that it could potentially avoid the illegal street takeovers on random nights. on nights and getting into legal street takeovers and donuts and stuff. But same thing with the cruising. If we allowed for this to happen in a controlled environment where it's safe, where it's family oriented, where we have, we allow, we make it a family event throughout the day, that would be really nice to see. I definitely want to hear the history of why the ordinance was before us.

David PenalozaItem 8

So I want to make sure that when this comes back to us at a later date, you know, that is clearly laid out on what the history is. I know many of the callers, and I appreciate hearing from everybody, which was really nice to hear from across the state,

David PenalozaItem 8

mention that it was discriminatory and targeting. I mean, but I don't want, I want to give the benefit of the doubt that that wasn't the only reason. So when this comes before us or back by staff, I want to make sure that we hear of the reasons why and what pros and cons are. But overall, I'm supportive of seeing this. I think there's an opportunity here to help build on that culture, which is our culture, and help make this a family event and make it a citywide, multiple days, I mean, thing where we could celebrate the car clubs and the car culture, and I think it'd be great to see.

David PenalozaItem 8

So thank you to both my colleagues for bringing this forward.

Thank you for those comments. Let me see if there's any other remarks. Councilmember Lopez?

Jessie LopezItem 8

Yeah, succinctly, yes. I'm happy to support your items. Thank you.

Any other comments from Mayor Proton?

Phil BacerraItem 8

Thank you, Mayor. I want to express my support for it. I think that this ban that was in place was a knee-jerk reaction from a time long, long ago. I think that was something that we saw back then where it was something that, you know, we couldn't understand. We would just ban it. And I think as we've seen over time that bans don't always necessarily work. With that being said, I support the repeal of the ban, but I would really appreciate seeing what we can do to make sure that cruising is done in a way that has little to no impact to the adjacent residents. I like the suggestion of designated streets.

Phil BacerraItem 8

I think we also have to look at times out of respect for our residents who, you know, many who have to get up early in the morning to work and kids that need to go to school. But I think it's something to celebrate that, you know, Southern California has a very elaborate car culture, and Santa Ana especially. I mean, some of the beautiful cars. When I was a busboy at Pop's Cafe, I would see some of the car clubs come in and eat on Saturday mornings, and it was just amazing to see the rides that they would bring in. And, yeah, it was just great. And those were all local car clubs. Those were all local folks.

Phil BacerraItem 8

And so I think it's something that, you know, in this day and age, we need to rather than try to restrict things that I think we had a kind of myopic view of many, many moons ago. I think what we need to look at today is how we celebrate this but do it in a responsible way. And I think that there is a good way to do it. So I'm looking forward to hearing what staff, our PD have to say about that, how we can do it in a safe, responsible way. I'm looking forward to bringing it back and I want to thank my colleagues, Councilmember Hernandez and Mendoza for bringing this forward. It's probably long overdue. Thank you.

Thank you for those comments. Councilmember Fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you to my colleagues for bringing this forward. I have a lot of questions. I love classic cars. I have a general understanding of cruising. I've seen it happen. A couple items. So I looked up the anti-cruising ordinance on our municipal code and it's quite short and it's a very specific definition. So I know Councilman Hernandez you brought up the idea of well someone has a classic car in Newport Beach they're not going to get pulled over. Well driving a classic car down the street is not cruising.

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

Cruising is defined as driving a motor vehicle, any type, three or more times within a four-hour period in a particular direction pass a traffic control point established at or near a place where traffic is congested. So it's a very specific type of action that is considered cruising, no matter what car you're in, even if you're in a janky 2012 Civic like I have. So I think it's important that we really look at exactly what we mean by cruising. I think it's important to look at what exactly we mean by allowing cruising,

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

because some of the definitions sound a little bit like a parade or a special event that we would have in the city, right? If you're blocking off streets to allow people to drive their classic cars, if you're blocking off streets so that food vendors, show vendors, and people can block off sidewalks in their lawn chairs, that's an event because you could not have someone pull up a bunch of lawn chairs onto the sidewalk, walking the sidewalk to watch cars cruising by. that is not only a public safety hazard, it is also an ADA violation. So there are a number of these types of issues that I think is important for us as policy

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

makers to direct staff to do, rather than to tell staff, come up with an ordinance that we like and then come back to us. So my recommendation is actually to have the public safety subcommittee, I believe, take a look at this really deliberate on what parts of cruising we like don't like how we would do it how we would allow for cruising when we would allow it what is a traffic control point how does public safety or how does public works decide what that means because if they're you know on Bristol and MacArthur at 5 p.m.

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

on a Friday afternoon that's horrible because you have a lot of people trying to get to the 405 freeway and trying to get home from work. So that would be my recommendation. I am supportive of removing any type of laws or ordinance that targets any type of culture, any activity that is cultural, because I think that is important and I do believe that a lot of these ordinances were passed in the 80s, as what we saw with the rise in, you know, the, you know, war against crime and the war against drugs and anti-latino sentiment in the state of California.

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

But I also think that it is important to consider where we would allow this specific type of activity and how we would allow it. So that, I guess, would be my request of my colleagues so that people can, or my colleagues can really get into the policy details and bring back an ordinance that we can all discuss and vote on. Thank you. Great. Thank you for those comments.

So I think you've heard from everybody, Madam City Manager, you have what appears to be at least some direction. I'll keep my comments brief. And by the way, thank you, staff, for putting the timer on, and please make sure you put it on me or else I'll go way, way overboard. But I just want to voice my support for the council-led items, both by Hernandez and Mendoza. Thank you both for putting that before us. You know, it's funny. I was at the Christmas parade last year in Wilshire Square, and they had a lot of lowriders that were part of that parade, and so I think it turned out great.

I think it's a generational change, I think, that we've come to. I mean, our family arrived here in St. Anne in 1965, and they used to cruise down 4th Street. That was a thing. but I think there are elements of profiling a community because I think that it did have a negative connotation back then the demographics were very different in the city there was hostility towards many things that we now welcome and we now embrace so I do think that the time has come for us to revisit this item and so my hope is that we look at this through a different lens many things

that we see in Santa Ana that are unique, that other communities don't have, that's an asset. Those aren't detriments. Those are things that we should celebrate, not deny, or call them out and make them negative things. I think we can turn them into very positive things. And yeah, I've seen cruising. It's funny, I have gone to other cities where you see VW bugs. I used to have a VW bug and everybody would drop theirs and they're cruising around and and they're mostly people that have vintage vans or bugs. There's nothing illegal about that. I mean, I think they're celebrating art. Some of them turn those vehicles into artwork.

I've seen some low riders that have incredible paintings on those, and it's part of that car culture, I think, that we were talking about. But to me, they are works of art when you see somebody that devotes so much time to it. And different than what we see where we hear people doing donuts, and those are more individual. street takeovers, it looks like this would be something that's much more regulated, much more controlled, and it gives a space and an opportunity for people that want to celebrate that. And we have a lot of low rider custom car shows throughout the city already. They're just static. This would

certainly, this would just be a mobile show. And so long as it's done well, I think there shouldn't be any problem with that. So that said, I think everybody's had a chance to speak on this item. Okay, one more comment from Council Member Hernandez. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

Just in reference to everything, I want to thank my colleagues for their comments today. Something that was really important to Councilmember Mendoza and myself is when we, as a council, declared August Chicano Heritage Month, we figured this was the perfect opportunity for us to have this dialogue. To keep it simple, Madam City Manager, what I would propose is if we can have this brought back to us within the month of August, with staff recommendations, I would like for us to work closely with our PD so that we can have traffic control.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

I would respectfully ask if we can associate a cost with this permit and that the cost related to this permit goes towards creating the infrastructure for us to fund gang prevention, intervention and prevention programs. I think working with PD on traffic control, I would envision that the traffic control would have a start and a finishing point and traffic control throughout the corridors. I think the main corridors that we should use to control traffic would be Bristol, Main Street,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

4th Street, Ettinger, Fairview, and 17th. And I think the way that we can keep these events safe is to designate on those respective main streets a cruising lane similar to what Sacramento did, where they used their larger intersections and they designated lanes and they were very intentional as to how they could allow, you know, safer, you know, community-oriented cruising. And so for us, I think that's important and that concludes my comments and I thank my colleagues here

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

and specifically Councilmember Mendoza for taking the lead and working with our community on this. I'm proud to serve alongside all of you. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Councilmember Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 8

Thank you, Mayor. I want to quickly highlight what Councilmember Hernandez just mentioned when it comes to to cost and any PD costs that would come with, you know, controlling the environment. I know that there's already a, just specifically speaking to Easter Sunday, there is a heavy cost through public works and PD of closing major corridors and the traffic control officers that are out there already. So I think shifting that and using that cost that goes on that day to help control specific areas when we want these events to happen would

David PenalozaItem 8

be a great way to kind of be able to absorb that cost of that particular day. That's it, Mayor. Thank you.

Great. Thank you for those comments. We can go ahead and move along to item number 39 unless there's any lack of clarity. Madam City Mayor?

No, definitely there is support for the item to move forward. I will do my absolute best for a turnaround within just a couple of weeks, as opposed to probably having a complete ordinance ready for you. It will probably be the history, the research, and some different ideas for you to give us more information on our direction. That probably would be the best path.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

If we can have something that presents, maybe even if it's a skeleton of it, that would be wonderful, Madam City Manager.

Okay.

Thank you. I'll clear. Thank you for that. Last item, we're going to take out of orders. item number 39 and that is also Councilmember Hernandez's item.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

Thank you Mr. Mayor. Over the last several years we have seen an increase in street vendor attacks and these attacks started off as robberies. They started off as people asking if they had permits. They slowly evolved over the last year. We saw in 2020 street vendors were shot and killed in Long Beach, in the city of Los Angeles. Street vendors are being spit at. They're being terrorized in the community. And we're seeing it all over social media. This is a public safety issue. I believe that this is an issue of discrimination.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

and one of the challenges that we have as a minority, as Latinos, is we have faced many different levels of oppression, but we struggle to acknowledge exactly what to call it. Let's call it what it is. It's racism. The majority of the attacks that are taking place on street vendors, they're not happening on Sunset Boulevard, where people are selling CDs or where they're dressed up as characters. They're not happening at Venice Beach, where people are selling beaded necklaces and blankets. They're happening in communities like Santa Ana, off of First Street and Raid.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

I met a street vendor who has provided services to our city for 27 years, and he shared that over the last year, he does not go past First and Raid Street anymore, because two Middle Eastern men pulled over and robbed him for $250. This man is in his late 70s, and he has no choice but to go out and work in the sun. And what I'm looking for today is I would like for us to classify attacks on street vendors as a hate crime. The challenges that we face is that many of these street vendors are undocumented.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

Many of them are immigrants, many of whom are monolingual. Many of them are from El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, and they don't feel safe in our community. And I think the step in the right direction towards transparency and really to stick to the values of keeping our community safe, I think the right thing we should do as a city is classify these attacks as hate crimes. That concludes my comments, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you for that. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the council for any comments or questions.

Council Member Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 8

I'm happy to support item, Council Member. I think it's important.

Thank you, Council Member Lopez. Thank you. Any other questions? Council Member Fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Hernandez, for bringing this forward. I do, well first of all, you know, we do know that there is a huge, I guess, culture of street vending in Santa Ana, actually in Little Saigon in general, in Garden Grove, in Westminster. So it is a big issue. I am concerned, however, as to what we're asking for as a definition of hate crime, because the penal code does have a definition for hate crime. I believe it is California Penal Code 422-55, which defines a hate crime as a criminal act

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

committed in whole or in part because of one or more of the following actual or perceived characteristics of the victim, disability, gender, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or association with a person or group with one or more of these actual perceived characteristics. If we are saying that, you know, the majority, if not almost all, the street vendors in the city of Santa Ana are Latino and are therefore being attacked, I think that that might fall under already the definition of hate crime. I don't know and, you know, I guess I would like to see if this is legal for us to move

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

forward because I do believe that it is an extremely dangerous position for individuals to be out there day in and day out, to be selling on the street, to be alone often, and many of them are women and women of color. But I am also concerned that we might be adopting a law that doesn't have any legal teeth because it is already subsumed under the definition, under the penal code. And so none of these kind of allude to a job description or an occupation as a valid hate crime or a valid characteristic under hate crimes.

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

And so that's what I guess I would ask the city council or city staff to do, is to look at whether other cities have done something like this, whether it is legal, whether it is even preempted under state or federal law, which both have hate crime definitions and that are prosecuted by the district attorney's office or, you know, our federal prosecutors. Again, I will condemn and support, you know, I will condemn any attacks on anybody, especially if it's perceived that they are Latino or immigrants or whatever else it may be. But I also want to make sure that whatever we do end up adopting or passing passes constitutional

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

and legal muster. So that would be my request. Thank you. Thank you.

I know there's probably some other comments, you know, and I feel compelled to agree. with the council member, but if you look at the way the requested item is drafted, it's specifically to do exactly that, right, which is to give direction to staff to research on whether or not you can classify attacks on street vendors as hate crimes. So I think the council member's intention was specifically to do this to make sure, you know, they are, I mean, yeah, empirically you can say most street vendors are people of color that already have protections.

So maybe we find that these crimes against these street vendors could be considered enhancements, right? When you attack or assault or batter somebody, you can create enhancement situations that will have protections for these folks who are out there. Many of them have no defense. They're out there by themselves. And they are singled out for whatever reason. So, you know, that's something I believe that, you know, I would include. I'm not sure if we have included here, but I would include on this item that we have the city attorney's office also work with the city manager's office just to look at,

you know, I know that there are, you know, and we know this heightened level of protections and then there's mid-tier protections and then there's lower level protections. But I think that here we can, I think the premise and the whole spirit of what this item seems to be is to provide protections where there appear to be few. and we unfortunately are seeing an increase in crimes against these vendors. In any event, let me go back to the council. I apologize for meandering on that. I believe there it was Councilmember Peñalosa, then Hernandez, then Mayor Pro Tem.

Well, let me go Mayor Pro Tem and then Councilmember.

David PenalozaItem 8

Go ahead. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to, for the record, you know, appreciate the goal here and intent of Councilmember Hernandez, but also just had similar questions to Councilmember Fan and just looking at the penal code of state law and realizing that street vendors, maleteros, eloteros are not considered a protected class by definition when it comes to hate crimes. So I did have those similar questions and concerns, but I do appreciate the fact that it's written in a way where it's to direct staff if a law like this could be implemented.

David PenalozaItem 8

I also want to definitely condemn any attacks on anyone, including our street vendors, but was just concerned that this would be allowable under state law to be considered a hate crime. Those are the only questions and concerns I had, but overall I'm supportive of seeing what staff brings back. Thank you, Mayor.

Great. Thank you for those comments. Mayor Pro Tem Becerra and then Council Member Hernandez.

Phil BacerraItem 8

Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate this item coming forward, but I really want to express my appreciation for Council Member Phan's comments because I don't think they're redundant or, you know, as far as focusing on what it does say, which is to research the ability for us to actually impose this. What I'm really comforted by with my colleagues comments are the fact that we are looking at crime, we're looking at the negative impact it has on victims in our community, and we are eager to serve justice. We're eager, in fact, if you're going to qualify these as hate crimes, that means sentencing enhancements.

Phil BacerraItem 8

That means putting the bad guys away. But what I would also caution everybody to realize is that unfortunately in Santa Ana we have a lot of hard-working people that are victims daily. We just had somebody shot in front of a 7-Eleven, and I hope that the person who did it, I hope they rot in hell. I hope they do. I hope that they throw the book at him. I hope that he serves in prison forever. I mean, for the pain that he caused his family. And to see anything like that that happens to hardworking folks in this city, whether they're at a 7-Eleven or whether they're a street vendor.

Phil BacerraItem 8

So I am completely opposed to seeing any of our hardworking residents attacked or in any way harmed. And so I really do appreciate that this council is talking about this sort of, you know, strong justice when it comes to, you know, really providing justice for the families of victims. Because I think that, you know, far too long we've seen this debate go on on what we should be doing. but there are some folks out there that are committing heinous crimes and they should not be out in the rest of society and so i appreciate the dialogue that we're having thank you great

councilmember hernandez

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

thank you mr mayor um i just wanted to share in response to my colleagues and this comment specifically for councilmember fan councilmember fan in 2020 when asians were getting brutalized and beat up. People called those attacks until our country created the anti-Asian hate bill. Street vendors are wearing bulletproof vests. If until we call this hate, it's going to continue, council member. So I found influence in your community and how they mobilized and how they

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

said this is anti-Asian hate. But if I sat here and I called that hate a robbery or an attack or somebody just trying to come up, I would be doing a disservice to you and your people. And so I want to remind my colleagues, the reason why this is important is because if we don't acknowledge that hate exists, it's going to continue. So as a leader, we have to do our due diligence in making very bold decisions. And like Mayor Pro Tem Becerra said, this is a step in the right direction to have true public safety initiatives. One of the biggest challenges we have is that crime is happening all over this city.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

Think about how many robberies are occurring on a daily basis. Robberies can consist of stealing, you know, a purse, stealing a car, you know, stealing something from a store. But what's happening to street vendors is not just robbery. These people are being targeted because they know there's no safety net for an undocumented immigrant to want to interact with law enforcement when they don't even have their documentation. There is fear that is real, and it's instilled in our community, and we have to protect them. And so I wanted to share that because as a policymaker, my job is also to have these very difficult conversations.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

I wish we didn't have to talk about the fact that they're being brutalized, but I found influence, and I was very inspired by what the Asian community did. And I look forward to working with you all and declaring attacks on street vendors hate crimes so that this conversation can be something of the past and we can stop having to create hashtags for street vendors who are getting shot. Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Fan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

Thank you, Council Member Hernandez. It is. While I do appreciate the concern that we have for our street vendors, that I also have concern for street vendors, I actually sold books door to door. And so I know exactly what it's like to walk door to door by myself in public to sell goods to make money. But I want to say that I find it incredibly disappointing and very offensive that you compared the color of my skin and the nationality and ethnicity that I cannot change to a job.

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

And while I do appreciate that many of our street vendors are undocumented, residents or otherwise do not have documentation or other protections or low income, that is not the same as the color of my skin and being shot at, attacked, or otherwise brutalized because I cannot change that characteristic about myself. And that is what originally hate crime laws were meant to do. They were meant to protect and enhance crimes against those characteristics that are not immutable are generally not changeable or considered a core of who we are.

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

And while, again, I very much want us to look into the issue of whether street vending can be some type of sentence enhancement or a hate crime in itself, let's not pretend that being a street vendor is an immutable part of who we are as individuals. Tomorrow I can get a permit and become a street vendor. That does not make me anyone else other than a street vendor. And I also want to say if someone is being attacked because they are believed to be undocumented, that is a valid hate crime. because they are being perceived for their nationality or their ethnicity or something else.

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

Finally, I also want to say that on this dais, we have talked a lot about justice, and I think that's really important. But I also want to remind my colleagues that the same likelihood of the same individuals committing a lot of these attacks are often also low-income or other committee members in our community. They're not always non-POC on POC or whatever the case might be. So I think that as we look to sentence enhancement and other punitive provisions against those attackers, which I support, I also think that it's important that we recognize that we are asking for additional sentences

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

and other types of things that are often used against many people of color in our community in the criminal legal system. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 8

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I just wanted to wholeheartedly support and echo what Councilmember Fan just said. Councilmember Hernandez, you said some disgusting stuff over the last couple of years, but that was probably the most offensive comment I've ever heard come out of your mouth. Councilmember Fan, last year when she brought forward the Stop Asian Hate, people were attacking Asian people for being Asian, not for the job that they had. And I found it very offensive that you would even try to compare the two. As a Latino, I can wake up tomorrow and be a street vendor. Nobody has ever attacked me for being a brown man.

David PenalozaItem 8

I can tell you that right now. And if tomorrow I decide to wake up and say, you know what, I'm going to go sell elotes, and somebody attacks me for selling elotes, then we have a problem. But to try to compare the two is completely offensive, and I just wanted to make sure that that is known. Thank you.

Great. So we've gone around the entire council. Go ahead, Councilmember Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

They would attack you for being a brown man selling elotes walking in your neighborhood, homeboy. That's why they would do that.

In any event, let me go ahead and take back the council. And I think Madam City Manager and City Attorney, both of you, have your research before you. And again, I felt that this was a fairly straightforward request just to do research and hopefully come back with something that would create some sort of deterrent on the attacks and whether it can be classified as a hate crime or whether it becomes a hate crime with enhancements or enhancements. That's the research I think that, you know, we want to do. You know, I just want to say, you know, look, let's, I think the goal here is to protect a group of people

that have been attacked, and that's what we've tried to do with many groups of people, unfortunately, that have been the target of hate, and that's something that we should try to do. However the law allows us to, I would hate to adopt something that would be repealed and would be challenged, and that's really my only goal, and if it can be classified as a hate crime, then let's do the research and let's put a strong ordinance together that can have those protections in them. But in any event, I think we've spoken about this, and there's been some clear, if not stronger language. Go ahead, Madam.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 8

Mayor, I just want to point out one thing to the council, and I hope maybe as we look at these items in the future, we'll keep this in mind. The item that we advanced on the agenda, our council member requested items. The power to place these items on the agenda does come from your city charter, but they really are intended to be really quick hits. These are items where the sponsors of the item ask the fellow colleagues, do you want us to come back and assign this to staff to research? These are not staff city manager, staff generated items. So I just wanted to remind you that I know we had a real robust conversation this evening.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 8

I hated to interrupt, but I really must remind you that when these types of items come up and you have an agenda where people have public hearings that have been noticed, we do need to be mindful of that. I know these are important to you, and that's why I gave a little leeway today. But remember, these are not staff-generated, and we probably shouldn't spend, under the Brown Act, half hour, 45 minutes on each of these items.

Yeah, I think that's well said. There are other city councils that don't even allow these items to be brought by individual council members, so we are definitely very liberal. I would just also, based upon our code of conduct, we say things up here that are not intended to be offensive. but what's permissible, what's disgusting, what's not is very subjective. And so I would just ask us all to look to our right. We have something that describes what our decorum for speaking is. And please remind ourselves that let's not be too critical of one another because we've all said things that, depending on who the listener is,

could be classified as disgusting. So let's go back to the consent calendar items, item number 10. That was pulled by Council Member Mendoza.

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento.

This is regarding the appointment of Manny Escamilla to the Environmental and Transportation Commission, advisory commission, ETAC. And so it concerns me because the timing is just a little odd. So Manny Escamilla was the mayor's aide for a time period, and the contract descended on June 30th. And he also announced his intention to run for city council. And so the appointment seems to me merely to get the title

of commissioner for his candidate's statement. And therefore it seems to me that the appointment may not be appropriate at this time. And so I will not be supporting this item.

Thank you for your comments. Let me go to Councilmember Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 8

Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to, you know, for decades, decades, there's been a cloud of corruption over City Hall. And there's been a mistrust in Santa Ana City Hall. And us as elected officials and previous city councils. I know that less than three weeks ago, this person was a contractor to the city of Santa Ana. And I know that for city employees, we have policy where for a year after they leave their position, they can't be city officials or run for office or whatnot. And it's just the optics of this, I don't like how it looks.

David PenalozaItem 8

Less than three weeks ago, a contractor to the city, and now the mayor wants to make him a city official who coincidentally is also a candidate for public office. Just doesn't smell right. I know that these are the types of things that have always led to the Santa Ana City Hall being labeled corrupt and definitely cannot support the item for those reasons.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Councilmember Frivan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

Thank you, Mayor. So I was very surprised to see this item on the agenda, but that's okay. I had a conversation with the person seeking the appointment, and I thought about this issue quite a lot. Whenever I vote on a particular issue, I think about what are the requirements, what are the legal barriers, and whether any appointee meets those requirements. And in this case, I do believe that they do. they are a Santa Ana resident, they are not currently a Santa Ana employee, and that in

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

any other way for what an ETAC committee member does, they seem to meet that requirement. And so I will be supporting this item. However, and I did have a conversation with our city attorney, as I am very familiar with this process, which is something that some of my colleagues have brought up, which is this idea of a candidate. Look, there are lots of people who run for office in this city, whether they're a commissioner, a board member. And frankly, if you quit being an employee, you can also run for office. However, one issue that I am concerned about is the idea as we are going through the candidate

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

nomination process is the use of ETAC commissioner or environmental and transportation advisory commissioner as a ballot designation. It is my professional and personal opinion that this individual would not meet the requirements under the elections code to use ETAC commissioner or Santa Ana ETAC commissioner as a ballot designation. The law requires that the individual has an occupation, vocation or profession that meets certain requirements, which includes either their primary source of income, which would not be the case, I assume, because this individual would, I think, only be getting $50 per meeting,

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

and there's only one meeting before the filing period ends. And two, whether this takes up a significant amount of time or the majority of time. And in that case, I don't think that would also either meet the requirement here. ETAC is an important advisory body. However, it only meets once a month, and often they meet for less than an hour and a half. Moreover there are not as many, if any, community meetings or other types of things that they would have to attend or prepare for. It's not like the Planning Commission in which, for example, you might have six or eight hour meetings on any major planning item.

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

So I am in support of this item. I think that this person meets the requirements to be an ETAC Commissioner, but I just want to caution and state for the record that I do not believe that this person would meet the requirements to use Environmental Transportation Advisory Commissioner as a ballot designation if they so choose. Thank you.

Great.

Thank you for those comments. Any other comments? Seeing and hearing none? Councilmember Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

Yes. I just wanted to say I'm supportive of the appointment.

Well, I'll get a chance to vote on that. But I guess since I am the appointing member of the council, I just wanted, you know, I wasn't going to do this but let me let me go ahead and recite the qualifications that the the appointee has the appointee graduated from the University of California at Berkeley has two master's degrees from UCLA both in urban planning and in library information has is working presently as a planner for the city of Oakland and has extensive work here in the city and as somebody raised

in Santana and who lives in Santana. So for me, based upon those qualifications, look, I don't know if they're going to use this designation or not, and there are plenty members of this council that have been city commissioners. And so to say, hey, it's not a good idea now, but it was fine when they were running for office, it just seems like you can't have it both ways. So right now, I think again, looking at this, I think the question that Councilmember Fan states is a good one. That'll be for the registrar's office to decide whether or not this can be used as a designation.

But again, it's interesting that appointing somebody to a commission and calling that corruption, boy, that's a stretch. That stretches logic in anybody's mind. But look, I think all of us have our opinion on this. We've stated them. Why don't we go ahead and bring it to a vote because we have some other items we need to tackle. So, council members, please, actually, I'll move the item. Is there a second?

Jessie LopezItem 8

I'll second.

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

I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor, we're having technical issues right now.

Sure. Why don't you go ahead and do a voice vote.

Okay. Can you give me the motion? You made a motion, Mr. Ramirez?

Yes, I believe I was the maker of the motion. I believe Lopez was the second.

Okay. Council Member Hernandez?

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

I voted yes.

Yes. Councilmember Lopez? Yes. Councilmember Mendoza?

No.

Councilmember Fan?

Yes.

Councilmember Peña Losa?

David PenalozaItem 8

No.

Mayor Pro Tem Becerra? No. Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes.

We have a motion carries 4-3. with Councilmembers Mendoza, Peñalosa, and Mayor Pro Tem voting no.

Great. Thank you. Moving along to item number 20, I believe that was Mayor Pro Tem's item.

Phil BacerraItem 8

Thank you, Mayor. So this is the item regarding CityNet approving an amendment to the agreement CITY NET TO PROVIDE STREET OUTREACH AND ENGAGEMENT SERVICES. I JUST WANT TO BEGIN BY SAYING I DO SUPPORT DIRECTING CALLS FOR SERVICE TO THOSE THAT ARE HIGHLY TRAINED IN HELPING THE HOMELESS WITH SERVICES, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO MENTAL HEALTH AND ADDICTION TREATMENT. I THINK THERE ARE FOLKS OUT THERE THAT ARE NOT POLICE OFFICERS THAT ARE BETTER EQUIPPED TO HANDLE THIS. Per page one of the exhibit that's attached to the staff report, in 2019, the city of

Phil BacerraItem 8

Santa Ana developed a four-point strategic plan regarding the homeless. Point number two was be persistent in our contact with anyone experiencing homelessness. So the goal of this program should be to have truly persistent and proactive contact with the homeless by trained professionals that can help the homeless exit off the streets of Santa Ana. But judging by the stated goals of this effort, they seem to be weighted more towards minimizing the amount of time that our PD has to spend dealing with the homeless. And for the SMART pilot program's goals, it states that in the staff report that the goals

Phil BacerraItem 8

are to exit homeless individuals from the streets of Santa Ana and divert approximately 500 calls a month for non-emergency, non-violent homeless-related services to facilitate a quick connection between individuals experiencing homelessness and appropriate services. But what I notice in that is that there is no specific quantifiable city goal when it came to exiting the homeless. But we do have a clear numeric goal when it comes to how many calls we want to divert away from PD. In CityNet's scope of work, their stated goal is that they're going to have 70 street exits per month and 850 per year.

Phil BacerraItem 8

So if you look at the point in time count from this last May, it says that Santa Ana has a total of 990 homeless people on our streets. So the great thing is CityNet's goal is to have the equivalent of 86% of the homeless in our city exit off our street in one year, which I think is an amazing goal. But as I've said before, I support the concept of this program. I have my reservations as far as its effectiveness, and I know there's been a slew of data presented to us, but to fund a program just to have the staff present, I won't support that. In fact, what I would ask my colleagues to support, for staff to come back to us with

Phil BacerraItem 8

an agreement that's incentive-based, so that we actually focus on homeless exiting off the streets and not just contacts. And yes, I know that when it comes to the CityNet making contact with the homeless, I know it takes many times to get them off the streets. but just to pay them to have contacts. I mean, ultimately, we need to focus on what the goal is, and the goal is exits off the street. It may take time. It absolutely may take time, but I think what we need to do is instead of just funding the existence of these personnel to help our police, I think what we need to do is focus on incentivizing the ultimate goal,

Phil BacerraItem 8

which is the exits off the street. So that's my comments on the issue. I hope my colleagues would support. support staff doing something along those lines. But as the agreement presented to us is today, I won't be supporting.

Let me bring it back to the rest of the Council. Any other questions on this item? Comments? Madam City Manager.

Honorable Mayor and Council Members, this contract is expiring in July. So if you're requesting staff to rework the form of a compensation in the manner in which their contracted services are paid for. I would certainly advise you to not have a lapse of the service in our city, and we would take some time to renegotiate a contract. And with it expiring, it's not something I could get done before the expiration.

Great. That said, I'll go ahead and move the item, because I think that the service can be adapted to see how best we can use it. obviously we're going to have an expansion of our shelter, we're going to have more beds, we're going to have more facilities, and I think this is an ongoing effort. I don't think that, you know, you can always get it right the first time around, and we're going to probably be morphing a little bit more into the services that we need. But I do agree that contacts are important because you establish relationships with these folks on the street,

but we eventually want to move to placements, right, and that's really the goal, and not just placements, but hopefully permanent placements. So in any event, I'll go ahead and move the item. I'll second your motion, Mayor, with comment. Great. Go ahead, Councilman.

David PenalozaItem 8

I just want to say that I do agree with what Mayor Pro Tem mentioned and his reasoning behind it. I think that because this is an extension through next June of 2023, I think it's important that we start preparing and looking at ways that we could change any future, because we're not going to end our relationship with CityNet any time in the next couple of months. So I think it's something that we could work at and maybe work with them and try to see how we could make this a contact-based approach.

David PenalozaItem 8

I accidentally coincidentally was driving around Standard and Edinger area in Ward 6, and I never, for as big of a problem that we have in this stretch of the city, I've never really seen CityNet, and I saw them today. So I saw two young girls, you know, walking up and down, and their van was parked, and I could tell they were looking for somebody, so I pulled over and introduced myself, and they mentioned that they were looking for, and the person they described, I had seen numerous times throughout that area.

David PenalozaItem 8

homeless and it was the drug and alcohol counselor that was trying to make contact with him kind of pointed him in some direction of where I had last seen him so hopefully they were able to find them but I know that that I did ask them because I hadn't reached out to CityNet for that particular person but I did ask them how they found that or how they knew about this one person and they said that somebody submitted him through the City app, which was nice to hear that that is at least working on that end. So I know that there's a lot of work that we could do to improve the way CityNet does things in our city

David PenalozaItem 8

with contact and engagement with this community, and I hope that we could work towards Mayor Pro Tem's comment. Thank you.

Phil BacerraItem 8

I'd like to offer up a sub-motion that maybe we extend this contract for six months with the direction that staff will renegotiate it to orient the actual scope of service to be more oriented towards exits versus just contacts.

I'll second that. I think the motion and the sub-motion almost say the same thing. But I mean, does staff have any?

The contract before you is for a year term, a 12-month agreement. So the first motion was approving the year. and the substitute motion is shortening it to six months. I second that.

Great. So we have a motion and a second for the substitute motion.

I have a question.

I do as well. But before, I guess, so the original motion is for a year versus the six months on the substitute motion. Wouldn't you, didn't we also say that you'd have direction from the council to work and adapt that contract because you said you needed some time to look at maybe, you know.

I'm going to have to defer to our ACM. I know we have CityNet here as well. Do we have a termination provision that if the 12-month was adopted, could we initiate a termination to change the compensation?

We certainly can, or we can renegotiate. What council is approving is a maximum, a fixed amount right now. And we can work within that fixed amount to create some separate goals. I certainly think we can do that within the parameters that we have that would hopefully satisfy the City Council.

Pursuant to the original motion?

Yeah, pursuant to the original motion. We can work with CityNet and do that.

We could accomplish what Mayor Pro Tem has mentioned.

Yeah, because what we've heard tonight is that we want to see some achievements, some measurable goals in another category.

So let me go back to, I think, a couple of others that haven't spoken. So Council Member Lopez and Council Member Fan, I believe, had some questions.

Jessie LopezItem 8

What is the other category you're referring to, Stephen?

Oh, well, the category that Mayor Pro Tem had stated he wanted it about placements. How many people are being placed? Yeah. He wants to find a way to measure their success and their achievement and the contract based on placements. And I'm sorry, street exits. Yeah.

Jessie LopezItem 8

And what was the second part of that? What was the second part?

That was it.

Jessie LopezItem 8

No, I didn't hear the last part that you said.

Oh, placements and exits.

Jessie LopezItem 8

This is similar to the conversation we had earlier this year about our shelters and who was exiting and what kind of data we were tracking. Yes. Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Phan.

So we have a substitute motion to just shorten the time of that contract from a year to six months.

We have a motion and a second. So I guess we can vote on that. Staff, do we have the ability to vote electronically or do you want us to vote as a voice vote?

We're going to try to vote electronically one more time.

All right.

Council members, please vote.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

Is this to decrease it from one year to six months?

Jessie LopezItem 8

From a year to six months.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

Say it again?

Jessie LopezItem 8

From a year to six months.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 8

Okay. What was the reasoning for that?

Phil BacerraItem 8

The reason was so we can go ahead and change the parameters. So rather than compensate them based off of contacts, it's compensating them based off of actual exits from the street.

Which I think everybody was supportive of. we just had a choice of following staff's recommendation, which was for a year, and still trying to accomplish that as this contract goes through, or shortening it for six months. Okay. Thank you.

Jessie LopezItem 8

Mayor Samantha, sorry, I do have one last question. I do want to gauge staff on this and get their professional opinion. Stephen, Christine, you know, there's a six-month, essentially, like, delta here, or difference. And I just want to hear your professional thoughts on that.

Certainly. So what staff is recommending is approval of a one-year agreement with a maximum amount. And what's being requested, I don't believe it's to not compensate them for the work that they perform, but it's maybe to potentially change the method of compensation to more incentivize street exits. We would certainly, I don't think we could find anybody that we could engage with that would do contacts and outreach if we weren't paying them for it. So staff's recommendation is for a one-year contract. The six-month that came up to provide staff opportunity to completely change the agreement

within those six months to come back to you with a revised compensation program with the agreement. So that's the two different. So the substitute motion that's before you right now is Mayor Pro Tem Becerra's, which is to enter into the agreement but only for a six-month time period. Did that answer it?

Jessie LopezItem 8

AND ENTER INTO A NEW AGREEMENT WITH CITY NET SIX MONTHS AFTER THAT?

IF WE'RE ABLE TO NEGOTIATE ANYONE BASED ON THOSE PARAMETERS.

Phil BacerraItem 8

BASICALLY WITH DIFFERENT INCENTIVES. RIGHT NOW WE'RE ENTERING INTO THE AGREEMENT AS PROVIDED WHICH WOULD BE FOR CONTACTS. BUT MY ASK IS THAT WE DO THAT FOR SIX MONTHS AND THE EXPIRATION OF SIX MONTHS OR HOPEFULLY BEFORE THAT, STAFF WOULD COME BACK TO US WITH AN AGREEMENT NEGOTIATED WITH CITY NET THAT WOULD BE BASED ON INCENTIVIZING THEM FOR ACTUAL EXITS.

Jessie LopezItem 8

And if the council decides to support a one year, can you come back before us, before the one year and do exactly what's being asked?

We certainly could amend the agreement within the 12 month. If you approve the 12 month, as ACM Mendoza mentioned, we could, it's to a not to exceed mat, so we could renegotiate some of the terms and then come back and approve an amendment. That sounds good to me.

Great.

Council Member Mendoza.

Yes, I just wanted to say that my reasoning for shortening it to six months is because we've had a lot of complaints about CityNet. And so I want to give them the opportunity to be able to really sharpen the skills and the services that they provide, and so that we get some more reactive and prompt services to the people in need. And so it's a lot of money, and it's over $2 million for one year, so I want to be sure that we're providing the best possible services.

Great. Thank you, Madam City Attorney.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 8

I just want to make one slight comment. I would make this recommendation based on the conversation in the current amendment that's before you in the agenda packet. And the term section, it actually says, if necessary, the term of the agreement may also be extended upon a writing executed by the city manager and city attorney without a specific extension time. I'd recommend that based on your conversation you delete that section. It sounds like they're going to come back within 12 months anyway, but just to take that out. Otherwise the council would not only be authorizing a year, but under that sentence would be authorizing

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 8

me and the city manager to extend. Not that we would intend to do that based on your conversation, but I'd just take it out to be safe.

Phil BacerraItem 8

So I'll go ahead and add that amendment. Council Member Mendoza, would you support that?

And as will I with the original, as an original maker of the motion, I'll go ahead and have that language stricken in the second would that with the second be agreeable

Jessie LopezItem 8

with that that's Lopez oh yes it would be yeah thank you all right let's vote

Thai Viet PhanItem 8

on the substitute motion wasn't it seconded by council member Mendoza that