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Recording in progress.

Good afternoon, everybody. Let me go ahead and call this meeting to order. This is the adjourned regular City Council meeting for June 15, 2022. And as you recall, this item that we're going to be covering today is the budget, and we adjourn that matter to today's date. So let me go ahead and just make a couple of opening remarks and turn it over to the clerk to call roll. And so today the meeting is taking place with in-person attendance and by teleconference via Zoom. The public can address the meeting via the Santa Ana YouTube channel or the city's website.

And as always, please bear with us as the technology may interrupt the flow of the meeting. And I'm going to turn it over to an alternate clerk because our actual clerk is having a little bit of laryngitis. laryngitis and i know what that feels like that's how i was about a month and a half ago so um we have somebody filling in so please go ahead and call roll councilmember hernandez

councilmember lopez here councilmember mendoza

Councilmember Penalosa present councilmember fan here mayor pro tem Becerra here mayor

Sarmento here thank you for that let me go ahead and just have you make some opening remarks before I go ahead and call on mayor pro tem to go ahead and lead us in the pledge got it the public is

advised that today's City Council adjourned meeting is a continuation of Tuesday June 7th regular City Council meeting. As such, public comments for Public Hearing Item 16 were heard on June 7th and only members of the public who have not previously addressed the City Council on this item will be able to provide public comments. Thank you. Let

me go ahead and now call on Mayor Pro Tem to lead us in the Pledge of

Phil Bacerra

Allegiance. If you'd all please stand.

Phil Bacerra

Ready? Begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for

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

So I'm going to call on the clerk once again before we hear the item number 16 and for her to make some additional remarks before this public hearing. It is the only item before us, but it is a special item, so we want to go ahead and make sure that she instructs people that may not be with us in person to go ahead and understand and know how to connect with us.

Members of the public joining us by way of Zoom or conference call and would like to make a comment for only item 16, please dial star nine from your phone or select raise hand from Zoom now. When unmuted, please announce your name, ward, or neighborhood that you reside in within the city of Santa Ana.

Great, thank you for those comments. And let me go ahead and now bring us to item number 16, which is the ordinance to adopt the fiscal year 2022-23 budget. And as you recall, we've already had staff presentation and presentations from all the department heads on this matter. So I'll go ahead and reopen the public hearing on this and commence. And as was said by the clerk, we've heard members of the public that wish to address us on this. If there's anybody who wasn't here last Tuesday to address us on this, please fill out a green card, submit it to the clerk.

We'll make sure we hear you in person, and that applies for anybody that's with us virtually or joining us by phone or on the website. But before we begin with those public comments, let me just start with a couple of remarks, because this may clear up some issues that you may be here for. We may already be addressing them in the proposed budget, so this may help for those of you who are waiting to address the council and may not need to after my remarks are made. So during the city's extensive public outreach during this budget process, the community shared many ideas and priorities for this year's budget.

The council heard you, and we're really, really proud that the proposed budget includes many of the programs, services, and initiatives that were requested by our residents and businesses. And as you know, we did some extensive outreach. We visited many neighborhood meetings and other organization meetings. So you'll see that there's been more than a $26 million increase, a $5.5 million increase for youth services, including teen after-school program, youth employment and internships, youth sports and tutoring. Over $24 million for affordable housing and supportive housing for folks experiencing homelessness.

Over $15 million, a $6 million increase for street, pavement, sidewalk, and traffic calming improvements is also included in the budget. New parks and increased park maintenance and security. Another million and a half economic assistance for downtown businesses affected by the Orange County streetcar construction, bringing the total assistance to that effort to $4.2 million, including the county's contribution. A million dollars for the proposed police oversight commission, creation of an environmental justice section

with the planning and building agency to work with various stakeholders and neighborhoods to implement the goals and policies of the general plan. And from what I understand, there is a dedicated staff for that program, so I know a lot of you that sent in emails for that. Thank you for addressing that. I know we discussed that during the amendments to the general plan. And there's also $300,000 for the legal defense fund for those immigrants that are facing deportation. This is all in addition to the federally funded Revive Santa Ana Pandemic Recovery Initiative,

which has funding for mental health, youth violence prevention, acquiring new open space, transformation of the main library, community center reservations, renovations, neighborhood safety, street lights, and much much more. That'll come to us I think sometime in the next month or two where we're going to be looking at the second bundle of funding that came to us from the federal government. So this is different, this is more the regular budget cycle. We will be talking about those federal monies that we call revived monies as it comes to us later.

And I believe it's already landed in our accounts, but we will be talking about the allocation of the second amount. So I wanted to say that to preface this so many of you will understand that a lot of what was requested both by speakers in the public, from the public last time around, and those of you who contacted us in writing, are proposed in the budget and are included there. So with that, let me go ahead and see if there's any members of the public that are present here with us and start with them first and then we can go to folks who are online. Is there anybody here in person that wishes to address this?

There is no one in person to speak but there are virtual speakers ready to provide their comments for Public Hearing Item 16. Before unmuting calls in the order received, I will report out the following summary of emails provided. There were six Santa Ana residents and or organizations that comment to allocate funding for police oversight legislation, grants for community-based organizations, additional staff at work center for youth services, for youth services programs through City Hall and not the police department. There were three non-Santa Ana residents, residency not disclosed,

comment to allocate funding for police oversight legislation, grants for community-based organizations, additional staff at work center for youth services, for youth service programs through City Hall and not Police Department. Six, Santa Ana residents and or organizations comment to allocate funding for environmental justice staffer. 26, non-Santa Ana Residency Not Disclosed commented to allocate funding for environmental justice staffer. For Downtown Santa Ana business, comment to request $1.5 million in funding for downtown

business assistance due to streetcar construction. One Santa Ana resident commented on requesting for various street improvements on North Flower. And one Santa Ana resident commented on information on creating a Measure X Sunset Stabilitation Fund.

Great. Thank you. So I've got two speaker cards here before me, so I'll go ahead and go through those, and I'll turn it back over to the clerk so she can call on anybody who's waiting online. Let me start with Lexi Hernandez, and then we have Carl Denninger after that. Welcome.

Hi. Good evening council members and staff. My name is Lexi Hernandez and I'm an Orange County climate equity organizer and advocate with Climate Action Campaign Who's a clean a leading climate policy watchdog in OC, and we've also been doing a lot of work in Santa Ana So I we're really here to offer comment on public hearing item 16, which is the budget And also to thank the city of Santa Ana for committing to bold and really necessary goals through the general plan including more than 50 environmental justice focused equity policies through the community, mobility, economic development, public service, and conservation elements.

As you know, these policies were placed in the general plan thanks to the tireless advocacy of community leaders, residents, and organizations, such as OC Environmental Justice and MPNA and so many others who have petitioned this council many times over the last two years. This commitment to environmental justice is especially important since among all cities in the US Santa Ana is the city according to a recent study that is the most at risk of climate impacts and also yet one of the ones that are the least prepared

One of the primary implementation strategies noted in the general plan to actually able to carry out all of this environmental justice policies Is to hire a full-time staffer in the city manager's office to do environmental justice policy and a lot of community outreach however Even though in the general plan the timeline for adding that staffer is in 2022 that staff position specifically wasn't funded in the budget Even though environmental justice programs may be funded adding that staff position isn't included in the budget Which is again very worrisome to be able to keep sort of all the ej policies in the general plan on track

And really to sort of ignore the over 50 environmental justice policies that the council committed to in the general plan is really just silencing the work of so many community members and their experiences of injustice and really sort of sentencing them to continue to bear the burden of pollution until we do very specifically fund that staff position. So to be able to make sure that we're getting this environmental justice work done, there's two recommendations. One is to directly fund that environmental justice staff position in the budget and hire

someone as soon as possible, or to also make applying for environmental justice grants a main priority of the administrative secretary who is being added to the city manager office and making sure that that is sort of a primary function of their job. So thank you again for your environmental justice commitments and all that you've done throughout the general plan and in general. and I really hope that you guys use this opportunity to add this really crucial position into the budget. Thank you.

Thanks for your comments. Carl Benninger.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I always forget to say this, but I'm with Ward 4 and Metro Classica Neighborhood is where I'm from. One of the advantages and few advantages of being old is you've seen a lot of things come down the road before and you've seen a lot of signs that you ignored before. And you hope the second time around that you'll pay attention to them. And we have some signs out there of some very rough road ahead on it. Interest rates went up three-quarters of a point today, and it's one of many increases we're going to see this coming year. So as we talk about budgets, please make sure that the reserves are high.

Even add to it, councils in the future will thank you for it, because I've been through 2008 when we almost declared bankruptcy. I was actually here in the 80s when they bought for funding. The hardest thing is to make cuts of programs that you want to keep so drastically, but yet you don't have the funds. And this council hasn't seen those days yet. In fact, it's a very good time to see it. So my input would be make sure the reserves are in good shape and even add some reserves to it.

Thank you. Excellent comments. Thank you, Carl. Let me go ahead and turn it over to the clerk so she can call on people that are online.

person with zoom ID Tomas Castro please select the microphone icon or unmute from your device and proceed with your comment you have three minutes oh sorry hello Mr. Mayor and City Council members my name is Tomas Castro and I am a young resident of Orange County I am part of OC's burgeoning environmentalist movement because I am deeply concerned about the future of our region as temperatures rise and climate change worsens the injustices that already exist all over OC.

Today I want to encourage you to allocate funds in the 22 to 23 budget so the city can hire an environmental justice staffer as stipulated in the general plan. Today more than half of Santana the residents are among the most polluted in all of California. The Delhi census tract, for instance, is the 59th percentile for asthma, the 41st for cardiovascular disease, and 82nd for low birth weight. For two years, again and again, residents have called in and showed up at council meetings to ask the city to pursue environmental justice through the general plan.

Please honor their efforts by including sufficient funds to hire an environmental mental justice staff. Thank you.

Person with Zoom ID, Alejandro, please select the microphone icon or unmute. You have three minutes.

Hi, hello council. My name is Alejandro Zubreira. I am a hub coordinator for Sunrise Movement Orange County. And my mom's also worked for two years at Latino Health Access here in Santana. So the community is really important to me. And I did want to call it also to stress the importance of funding an environmental justice staffer in order for us to really fight the environmental injustices that are happening in Santana. We really do need to have a staffer there who is handling it, doing the proper research, making sure that the problem is getting handled. And so I know that we passed that resolution

or we said that we were going to work on these environmental justice issues. So I think by not having a budget for a staffer, this also becomes an issue of integrity. If we say we're gonna do something or if we tell the community that we're going to help them, then we should back it up. And as we're talking about the budget right now, we should back it up with these finances. Thank you.

I'm a resident of the city and speaking on behalf of Chief Spot tonight. I would like to start by thanking you all for incorporating community budget priorities in the city budget, such as funding for a police oversight board, 150,000 for community-based organizations, funding for youth programs and funding for additional youth employment opportunities. While we are happy with the progress made on these priorities, we have additional recommendations. We believe that the grants for community-based organizations should be recurring allocation funded with the budget's general fund. Community-based organizations

is reaching a large population of underserved youth and supporting their work is critical. We also want to see a commitment to funding at least one additional staff person at the Santa Ana Work Center. It is important that the work center is appropriately staffed to not only expand youth internships and job opportunities, but to also build new partnerships to provide youth with trade and construction jobs for city projects. Thank you all for your time.

Person with Zoom ID, Avinash Ramaswamy.

Please select the microphone icon or unmute and proceed with your comments.

Hello everyone. My name is Avinash Ramaswamy. I am a resident of Orange County and I served as the student government president for Santa Ana College on the 2021-2022 academic year. So I had the pleasure of meeting the Mayor Pro Tem, Phil Becerra, as well as City Council Member David Penalosa at various Santa Ana College events, including our Sustainable Palooza event, where we got to talk about various environmental justice issues and how the City of Santa Ana is working to combat environmental injustices.

So it was a very disheartening to learn that the promised position that was stated in the general plan for a staffer in the city manager's office to tackle environmental justice issues and the 50 priorities that were, you know, highlighted in that plan is not being funded in this budget. being a representative of um the over 40 000 students of santa anna college as the student president is something that i took very seriously because i wanted to make sure that all the voices

of the students were heard and here i'm standing today to essentially be the voice of students who are the next generation who are going to be inheriting this planet and inheriting the the disastrous effects of climate change and environmental injustices. And the thing about environmental injustice and the plans that are implemented in order to combat it is that plans are good and priorities are great, but we need people who can work to implement them. And that is exactly what the position of environmental justice staffer can do. So I strongly encourage you to keep with your word and keep with what was intended in the general plan

and include funding for the environmental justice staffer in the city manager's office. Thank you very much.

Person with the Zoom ID on, please select the microphone icon or unmute from your device and proceed with your comment. You have three minutes.

Good evening, council members and staff. My name is Ayn Cration and I am with Climate Action Campaign, a nonprofit climate policy watchdog in the region. We appreciate Mayor Sarmiento's comments. We were concerned when there appeared to be no funding for environmental justice staff for the city in the 2022-2023 budget. If indeed the position is funded, this would be good news. It would send the message to the community that Santa Ana is serious about environmental justice. The absence of a staff position would be troubling because our organization and others have recently shared available grant opportunities

with city staff only to have staff respond that they do not have time or capacity to pursue the grant funding. So this is a rubber meets the road moment. And that is why we have recommended that the council add funding for the environmental justice position from the general fund to this budget and make applying for environmental justice grants a main responsibility of the new administrative secretary role being added to the city manager's office. By doing these things, you can show the community that you are serious about environmental justice and health and climate action. Thank you.

Caller whose phone number ends with the numbers 595, please dial star six from your phone to speak. You have three minutes.

yes hello mayor report 10 council members and city managers thank you for this opportunity my name is stew pallet and i have lived in warren four at stickerstrom in bristol for over 40 years and i'm a senior citizen and i shop in south coast metro i intended an entirely different presentation today but after watching the police procession escorting the two officers who were ambushed and killed in el monte last night my heart is heavy and so this is going to be an emotional plea to you getting to the point we need to reach out our goal of eight more police

officers that are already funded and not hired and more funds to defeat criminal activity we have approximately half the officers now that we had in the 1980s when there were horrible drive-by shootings and we have twice the population since those days adding eight more officers will not even come close to the previous levels of the 1980s proportionately everybody's at risk because because of this. South Coast Metro employees, residents and youth who live in all parts of Santa Ana and our children had to walk by and encounter horrible situations during this past school year. We have only four patrol officers trying to cover the area

from Sunflower to First and Flower Harbor. Residents are beginning to understand that the police shortage and are shocked to be learning this. Also, there are only 12 patrol officers at one time to cover all of Santa Ana and at times as few as nine. merchants and patrons patrons now under understanding the situation have become more supportive of our police and are learning how to report issues differently and become more proactive with security measures but these changes are just not enough south coast metro is the main revenue producing sector of santa anna and it is in decline in south coast metro the following has

happened and this is not a complete list just last week there were three ods one death in and near bristol plaza you need to check with the fire authority on the staff yesterday a big bus seizing a big cache of guns an armed robbery a few days ago dangerous terrorizing retaliations against store managers causing physical injury prolific meth heroin and fentanyl drug activity overnight drug-infested encampments erratic threatening behavior in grocery stores prompting 911 calls erratic severely mentally ill and extremely drugged and alcoholic resident transients roaming

parking lot to scare our children and patrons away from south coast metro hand handling for money to buy drugs at one point there were seven boarded up smashed windows in bristol plaza on purpose reckless terrorizing drivers on bristol and mccarthur at gunpoint a transient demanded from another transient his bike and as far as i'm aware two bank robberies the south coast metro employees employees and managers have quit their transfer and some stores have not renewed their leases I have written numerous emails over the last two years on all of these issues. I've spoken with everyone from corporate officers,

to police, to security, to city officials. Through all of these communications, all roads led to the bus stop city council. We do not have enough police or funds to defeat criminal activity in the city stands to lose revenue. I hope this enlightens you to the severity of the issue. Please help keep our city safe and South Coast Metro safe again. Thank you very much for your attention and have a safe evening.

Person with a Zoom ID, Maya. Please select the microphone icon or unmute from your device. You have three minutes. Hello everyone. My name is Maya Chief. I'm here to address the lack of inclusion of funding for environmental justice staff, which was originally promised in the Santa Ana general plan update. The environmental justice staffer role is set to be formed by the end of 2022, but no funding was allocated for the staff position in the budget. slow violence this is a term coined by rob nixon which discusses how violence isn't always obvious

but rather that it can be subtle integrated systemically to cause harm over time environmental justice issues fall into the category of slow violence i started working for orange county environmental justice a non-profit focused on uplifting the voices of low-income people of color disproportionately harmed by environmental hazards we work on issues like poor water quality soil lead and defending sacred indigenous sites. I'm currently contracted as their grant writer, but in late June or early July, I will become one of their organizers focused on the soil

lead pollution problem in Santa Ana. Our soil lead campaign documents evidence of soil lead pollution in the city. We found that more than half of residential samples we collected exceeded the California state guideline of safe soil lead levels. Let's say you're an elementary school student who lives in Santa Ana in an area that has unsafe soil lead levels. You go to play outside, just having fun being a kid and all of a sudden you're having a splitting headache, an upset stomach and rashes appearing all over your body. Those are some of the health effects

of lead exposure. What's worse is this lead poisoning can cause long-term effects like learning disabilities, memory loss, behavioral issues and seizures. A 10 year old is supposed to be focused on their math homework or making mud pies, not whether or not they're going to have a seizure while taking a walk in their own backyard. They might not be able to get good grades because of the learning disabilities they get as a result of this form of environmental injustice. Maybe they won't get into college or any other form of higher education and be forced to work

minimum wage jobs living paycheck to paycheck. This inability to meet basic needs because of systemic environmental injustice like soil lead prevents kids from being able to focus on their education continuously perpetuating the poverty cycle. It might not be as obvious as a shotgun wound to the chest, but this slow deterioration of health, this environmental justice is violence. Slow violence like environmental injustice trickles down through the generations of community members, eating away at residents and making it so they do not have the same opportunities that everyone else has. We need to push for systemic policy change

that advocates for environmental equity for all. We must include funding for the environmental justice staffer position as part of the budget. Environmental justice is a massive problem in Santa Ana and we need to start taking the steps to solve it in order to give each and every member of the Santa Ana community a fair chance at life. Thank you.

Person with the Zoom ID, Tim Johnson, please select the microphone icon or unmute from your device and proceed with your comment. You have three minutes.

Good evening, everyone. Tim Johnson, resident of Ward 3 in Santa Ana. I'm on the Major X Citizen Oversight Committee also, although these are my thoughts alone. At the May 12th budget workshop when Major X Oversight Committee first brought up the idea of the establishment of a Major X stabilization fund to plan for the sunset of Major X sales tax that we currently have. This council before me did seem to have a consent, a majority consensus that this was something that you wanted to further explore within this budget. Similar to the policy that the council put forth

on the pension obligation stabilization fund. So I ask that you highly consider incorporating this into your budget process right now. And some may say that we have a, since we have a general fund reserve policy, that that's enough. But I would argue that that policy, which remains unchanged at 18% of general fund revenue is simply not enough to prepare for the decrease in revenue when major X starts to sunset, yet alone when it fully goes away in the future.

By planning now, correct, I'm gonna correct that wording, by funding a specific stabilization fund, now we will lessen the impact on the city services that residents, business owners, and visitors to our great city expect and need when the city revenue decreases and hard choices have to be made. Further illustrating this point, one only has to look at Director Downs' general fund summary on slide 20 of her presentation from last week. We're utilizing approximately $19 million of general fund balance during the upcoming fiscal year budget that's before you.

This is at a time that many would be saying that we should be striving to increase that general fund balance. We may be fiscally sound right now today, but that is solely because, well maybe not solely, but primarily due to, as Director Downs has said before you, that Measure X is the primary reason for that fiscal solvency right now in fiscal health. We have to plan now or feel severe pain in the future. I would just urge you to incorporate this into your budget process and come up with a policy as opposed to being what some of our neighboring cities

are gonna be grappling with when they have sunsets. Thank you very much. I know you guys worked very hard on this and thank you for Director Downs and City Manager's Office also for all the time they've put in. Thank you much, bye-bye.

person with zoom id leonel flores please select the microphone icon or unmute from your device and proceed with your comment you have three minutes good afternoon everyone my name is leonel flores lifelong resident of the madison park neighborhood uh and environmental justice is programs manager for green MPNA just here to be a support to request funding for the environmental justice office staffer at with the city. Like a lot of people have previously mentioned, you know,

this was something that was promoted, highlighted championed by a lot of council members, you know, that are on the dais, yet there appears to be no funding for it. So how can you be proud of something and then not fund it? So hopefully this is something that can be accomplished today because it is very necessary. It's not something that's just gonna go away. More residents are becoming aware of the issues we have. We just presented to four classrooms of elementary students today.

in a science academy and multiple students were interested in finding out how they can participate in the process, you know, to improve our air quality, our soil quality. A lot of them were alarmed at the things that they're seeing going on in our city when it comes to environmental pollution. So this is something that's very essential to eliminate a lot of the disadvantages our community face. So just once again, I want to reiterate but we need funding for that environmental justice office and that city staffer to operate that. So thank you.

Person with Zoom ID, Danny, please select the microphone icon or unmute from your device and proceed with your comment. You have three minutes to speak.

Hello, can you hear me? Yes.

Hi, my name is Danny Vega, resident of Ward 3. I don't know if I missed this when the mayor spoke. I mean, I hope I missed it, but I didn't hear any mention of money being appropriated to hire more police officers and more code enforcement officers. It's no secret to anyone, but wait times are too long when you call Sanana PD. I again quote the chief that when it comes to police per capita, that means the amount of police that we have for our population. We, Santa Ana, are below average for a city our size.

This is about public safety. I know how we feel about adding to the police budget, but we're asking for more officers, not a race or quote-unquote military weapons. We just need more boots on the ground. This is what families in Santa Ana want. They want to feel safe in their city. I ask you, please, as a father to three girls, please prioritize that. Thank you.

Mayor and members of the council, that was the last speaker.

Great. Thank you, Melanie. And I appreciate you filling in for our clerk. We'll call you clerk for tonight. In any event, I apologize to everybody because I must have done a bad job in my opening comments that preface this meeting because I specifically stated that we do have the creation of an environmental justice section within planning and building and there is a high-level staffer that will be dedicated to that. So sometimes I guess I always say less is more. The more you say about something that's already proposed and included, it can only get worse. So just, you know, hopefully noted for the record, but it was there.

So I would request that those that spoke delve into the budget a little bit more in detail and see when things are added. And that way, you know, or call staff or call any of us. And I'm sure that, you know, we'll certainly try to highlight that. I also wanted to ask the clerk, and do we know if Council Member Mendoza is joining us virtually? Because I want to make sure I don't miss her. So that way, you know, if she has any questions or if we, you know, kind of do a round robin, we'll make sure we get to her as well.

She is on the app.

Excellent. So now let me bring it back to the council unless there's anything that staff would want to add to last week's presentation. If there isn't anything, we'll just go. I'm sure you'll be available and the department heads will be available to field any questions. So I'll go ahead and bring it back to the council to see if there's any questions or comments.

Everybody's happy with that budget proposal. I love it.

All right. I'll entertain a motion. Go ahead, councilman.

David PenalozaItem 16

Okay. Thank you. I was trying to pull up the specific area of the proposed budget that I wanted to ask about. First off, Catherine, thank you so much for all the work. Staff, all of our department heads have been working tirelessly over the last couple of weeks to put this budget together. It's balanced, which is exciting to see, and it's exciting to see all the requests that this council has made is also included in this budget. I know one of my favorites is that second bookmobile that I'm very excited to see. Just this past weekend at some of the park sites where it was brought out for the first

David PenalozaItem 16

time, I mean, the amount of families that came out immediately to check out books and engage with the robot. I text our director, our library director immediately, just giving them the thanks for making that vision come true. I'm happy to see that there's a second one coming with this budget. I'd love to ask for two. I know that there's many great ideas coming out of this council that we would like to see funded, so I know that's not currently possible. But I'm happy to see that and happy to see the increase to our code enforcement department as well. Much needed.

David PenalozaItem 16

Alvaro has been running a skeleton crew over there and doing a lot with what they have. So thank you. I'm happy to see that. And one question that I have, and maybe you want to clarify for the executive director Downs. When we sat for our one-on-one a couple weeks ago and we went over the detailed budget, there was one area within the police department that I questioned because I saw it dip from previous years, which was troubling to me.

David PenalozaItem 16

I don't like to see any amount within the police department reduced. And the one that was noticeably reduced by a lot was field operations, which is our patrols and our street units out patrolling our streets and responding to calls. It was about $4 million that we saw a reduction in. Do we know why, and can you state so that the public could hear, why that was detailed in the police budget as seeing a $4 million decrease from the previous year?

Sure. Budgetary compliance here at the city is by department and fund. So within the general fund, the police department has a budget, and within that budget there are different, I'll call them programs, our accountants will call them accounting units, but there are different programs, such as field operations and such as the MET division. And the chief to staying within budgetary compliance has the ability to shift budget between

his programs if you will so he can redirect resources from field operations or he can reorganize his budget and create a new subdivision if he'd like you know that that maybe he splits out field operations into different things And that's exactly what happened. So what looks like in the budget document, an apparent decrease of $3 million in field operations, there was actually a reorganization of the budget.

And so there was some money that was moved into the MET division. and then there was some money that was moved, reallocated to the service enhancement program, which is the program directly funded by Measure X. And so he was able to just reorganize his budget, and that's all that happened. So instead of looking at a single line item, you need to look at the total department budget to get a good idea of what happened.

David PenalozaItem 16

Okay. I just want to make sure that we're not going to be seeing a decrease in field operations when it comes to PD, because, you know, I would like to see that increase if we're, you know, going to be discussing what we'd like to see reflected in this budget,

David PenalozaItem 16

because the field operations is a day-to-day engagement that are out, our offices that are out patrolling our streets. So, I would like to see that amount increase. So, seeing it decrease by $4 million, and then I guess it's the PD and service enhancement where that is now included? So, can you, I guess it would be more the question for the Chief, but I just want to make sure that there will not be any decrease in police officers patrolling our streets or any less police officers responding to 911 calls. Is that, that's not what's happening, correct?

Correct. In fact, the number of budgeted sworn positions is still at 376, which is the same as last year. So there is no decrease in sworn positions serving the community.

David PenalozaItem 16

Okay. All right. So I just wanted to clarify that seeing that 57 million now, 0.6, 57.6 compared to the 60.6, doesn't really mean there will be less officers patrolling our streets. just means that it's been reorganized in different areas of the police department?

That's correct.

David PenalozaItem 16

Okay. That's it for now. I think Executive Director Downs, I'll have more questions later, but for now that's it. Thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Phil BacerraItem 16

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. Well, first of all, thank you guys for bringing us a balanced budget for us to consider. You guys have done a lot of work, and the fact that when the mayor asked if there were any questions, and we all kind of paused. It's obviously to your good work. We, you know, that's to your credit. But there is one area I do want to focus on. I don't want to go through and say all the things that I love in the budget because there are so many. I mean, there's just way too many. You guys have done an amazing job in listening to the council and funding our priorities.

Phil BacerraItem 16

But what I want to zero in on is the police department budget. So in the last council meeting, when each department head came up and gave their brief presentation, the chief talked about allocating a police liaison for each council board. And while I think that's a good first step, I think that what we really need in our city is community-oriented policing. Multiple officers that are in a community that are not just driving from one end of town to the other, but actually, God forbid, walking, bicycling through the communities, being accessible to the residents.

Phil BacerraItem 16

I know this is even a crazier idea, but I'd actually like to have it where residents and businesses know officers by name, not just, I don't know, it's a guy with a badge and a black and white card who just came up to answer my call, but rather knowing who these folks are. At one point in time in our city, we had multiple directed patrol teams, and today we now have one to service the entire city. You know, I've been asking for assistance from PD to address the crime that's escalating down on the South Bristol corridor, which I'll remind everybody is the highest sales tax generating area in the entire city of Santa Ana.

Phil BacerraItem 16

And I'm told that there's one directed patrol team and they have to split their time between South Bristol and another part of town. So in order to address all these competing needs with our understaffed department, we end up paying for it in overtime. That's time and a half for an officer to do something that's amazing. We tell ourselves that we can get by with 376 funded officers, and yet we end up seeing close to $6 million being spent on overtime, which is close to $700,000 more than we budgeted, and there's still 15 days left in the current fiscal year.

Phil BacerraItem 16

So in the meantime, our residents have to face folks committing crimes and have to rely on a police department that's understaffed, our city currently funds 376 officers even though, and correct me if I'm wrong, PD has been authorized to hire up to 384 officers, right? So that's a deficit. So we have the ability to hire them if we fund them. So we have shortchanged them by eight funded positions. So back in 2000, our city had 394 sworn officers. We are hovering in the 360s right now. We had close to 400 officers back in 2000.

Phil BacerraItem 16

So I look at this as we're short of eight officers that could easily be one directed patrol team. That would be, again, 100% improvement over what we have today. You know, in our recent adopted general plan update, part of that general plan had a policy that stated we would increase staffing levels for sworn officers as resources became available. And here we are talking about that we have resources. I appreciate that staff being mindful of the trajectory of overtime spending. You guys plugged in a number that you felt would work for this upcoming fiscal year.

Phil BacerraItem 16

But whether we're talking about building inspectors or police officers, the simple, easy way to reduce the cost of overtime is to hire more staff instead of paying time and a half in expensive overtime. So I don't see Chief Valentin here tonight, but Assistant Chief, if you wouldn't mind coming up. So one thing I really want to tackle or discuss here is that, so we have this chunk of overtime, and, you know, what I would like to have us consider is how much of that could we possibly shift to funding bodies,

Phil BacerraItem 16

funding officers, rather than paying for officers at time and a half. It would be the more fiscally responsible thing to do. But before I throw out a number, I've already said that, you know, we're authorized to have 384, but we currently fund 376. So there's a shortfall of eight. But with the overtime that's project, I'm sorry, that's being proposed in the budget today, how much of that overtime could we reasonably shift over to actually bringing on more officers?

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. Thank you for the question, Mayor Pro Temp Becerra. That's something that we would definitely look at. The idea is, you're correct, the more officers we hire, the idea is to reduce overtime. I can't commit a hard number, but I definitely can go back and look with our fiscal manager and see what adjustments we can make in order to work something out.

Phil BacerraItem 16

Okay, I appreciate that. Thank you. That's all I have for that. So, you know, as we're talking about what that hard number is, you know, I know that this is, if we adopt the budget tonight, this is our first read and if there's minor changes, we can bring them back in the second read. So with the input from PD given tonight, I would like actually like to propose two things. First, that this fiscal year, in 2022-23, that we move 1.2 million from overtime towards funding eight non-overtime full-time police officers to fulfill the current

Phil BacerraItem 16

authorized amount. So again, we're currently authorized at 384, we're funding 376. I would like to ask us not to add to the police budget but to shift overtime over to it. I recognize that we still need overtime. I'm not trying to take away all the overtime. We know that situations and circumstances arise that we're gonna at times need to have additional officers and that's going to require overtime, but there's no reason why we need as much if we bring on more full-time officers paid at their normal scale. And the second thing I'd like to ask my colleagues to consider is that we increase the authorized amount of officers to 400.

Phil BacerraItem 16

We were at 394 20 years ago. 20 years ago we weren't even at 400. We have, as a council, going back from 2000 to today, I can't even begin to imagine how many new housing units, affordable market rate, otherwise, we are adding to our population, and we, for some reason, think that we shouldn't add more officers. That's insane. So I would like to increase that amount and direct staff to fund the eight additional officers for each of the next two fiscal years. So that would be in 23-24 and 24-25 for a total of 16 additional officers. Because if we were to authorize a total of 400 officers,

Phil BacerraItem 16

the additional officers could go towards providing those directed patrol teams in all four policing quadrants. So instead of just increasing it to have two teams, we could actually have four teams handling each of the policing quadrants. We keep talking about public safety in terms of only prevention, and it would be like only having fire inspectors and no firefighters, right? Don't worry, Chief Henry, I'm not proposing that, okay? But when a building is on fire, you know, talking about prevention is not going to put out the fire. And we need to fight the fire and, key word, and prevent future fires.

Phil BacerraItem 16

The same way we need to fight crime and prevent future crime. I think the budget before us this evening does that in the sense of it addresses trying to help our youth, keep them away from crime. But at the same time, we can't ignore that we do have crime today, and we need police officers to help us address that. There's a lot in this proposed budget that goes toward that prevention. We need to stop neglecting the crime-fighting aspect. So let's put out the fire in the buildings that are on fire and also, also have the smoke detectors in the buildings that are not currently on fire.

Phil BacerraItem 16

So I'll close with this. You know, as I'm asking for resources down on South Bristol, there are other folks up here that have been advocating for police in their wards so my ask of my colleagues tonight is if we're going to advocate for resources to be spent or used in your boards please come forward tonight and support putting resources into PD or at least allocating them to the right column so that we can have more officers on our street and we can tackle the multiple hotspots of crime in our city those are my comments for now thank you mr. mayor

Great, thanks. Let me go ahead and go to other members of the council.

Council member Mendoza would like to speak.

Council member Mendoza, if you can hear us, go ahead. Floor is yours.

Thank you, mayor Sargento. I will second the motion and make a comment that in addition to all the reasons why Santa Ana needs more officers, I would ask that my colleagues consider the rampant mass shootings that is going on across our nation. And the only way we can continue to keep our community safe is that we increase our police officers to an amount that is going to make a difference. And we do need police presence.

We've all experienced that they're not able to get out there to our situations quickly enough. And so in order to respond to an emergency such as a mass shooting, one of the most important reasons is to get that out there quickly. So I believe that it is essential that Santa Ana have more police officers present. So I will second the motion.

Well, thank you, council member. I'm not sure if I heard a motion, but nonetheless you're supportive of that comment so thank you for that let me go ahead and bring it back to members of the council that are here um councilmember hernandez thank you mr mayor uh

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

thank you to my colleagues for the dialogue today i i'm really happy to see that we're having these conversations as a council um so i i want to thank staff um for the the report there's a lot of of amazing things that I know the community advocated for here, so thank you. I want to focus on public works in the area specific to Ward 5. I would like to see if we can allocate some funding for speed bumps. I recently met with residents of Santanita, and they shared some concerns with speeding. So if we can allocate some funding to look at the feasibility of having speed bumps

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

or whether it be speed humps, I would like to see us have allocated funding for Santa Anita neighborhood.

I'm not sure if you want me to comment, sir. Council member, we have added original budget, proposed budget, had $1 million for traffic calming measures, and we increased it by another $3 million. So there is $4 million available for street calming measures. If you want to know the specifics, I know Public Works does have some projects already identified, and then they also have a wish list of others. If you'd like Jason from Public Works to come up and speak, I can call him up to the podium.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

That would be fantastic. Thank you.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

Hello, Jason.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Councilmembers. Yes, we have, as the city manager mentioned, another $3 million that's being proposed to fund traffic calming throughout the city. we do have a number of requests that are being funded with the million dollars that was previously allocated from Measure X, and we're studying some additional areas to offer rectangular rapid flashing beacons at crossings, raised crosswalks, speed humps, as you mentioned, and traffic circles, traffic signals, and the like. So definitely that would be something that we can analyze and take

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

to look at please do thank you Jason that that's extremely helpful I know that's important to residents in Santa Anita and the last area is street lights I know there was a couple of street lights work residents shared with me most notably off of fifth and Jackson their street lights were flickering so if we can also look into that I know that that's been an area where it can get dark so increased lighting I think will help with the perception of safety the next area of the budget I just wanted to echo my support again for for the additional 1.5 in funding for the San Ana Business Interruption Fund.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

Thank you, Jason, that would complete my comment there. I am fully supportive of that. Madam City Manager, I just wanted to provide my direction that I would like to see us increase the independent contractor amount from 1,000 to 1,300 because unfortunately what we learned with the recent streetcar was that a lot of our independent contractors that work whether it be in a salon or a tattoo shop didn't already have their business license and with the challenges that we've had with the construction financially a lot of the independent contractors are not in a position where

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

they are able to spend that 300 so I think if we increase that not only are they able to pay their business licenses but essentially they're getting their with their money back and hopefully we're able to keep them I know a lot of independent contractors have left tattoo shops barber shops and salons so that's my direction there I I think it's important to to lift the voices of residents that are around the downtown neighborhood one of the requests that I've received from constituents is that they would like to see us activate Birch Park to be more inclusive of families and of course seniors so what I would

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

propose is to create something similar with our parks and recreation funding to what we have in Central Park in New York where we have chess spots where you can sit at a bench there's a table essentially and you can play chess and I think it would be a great way for families and children to interact with the senior center that we have there and and they would then get the chess pieces and be able to play on the board and I'm sure for seniors it would probably lighten up their faces to see more families and children walk to that center so I'd like to see some funding be allocated there another area where

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

families have requested additional support in in the downtown is seeing a playground potentially come to the Birch Park neighborhood whether it be a playground or splash pads or both I would like for for Parks and Rec staff to identify if this is something that we can do at Birch Park. And perhaps maybe splash pads are a, something similar to like an urban play space where maybe we utilize an area in downtown and activate that space. So those are my recommendations for downtown Santa Ana. On the topic of mental health, I want to thank my colleagues for talking about the challenges we have of public safety.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

You're absolutely right. if there's a need to to keep our community safe if that's in the presence of you know public safety officers if that's the presence of you know having more well at streets we want to do that but we also have to remember the after-effects of of the the victims and the families that are impacted by by whether it be shootings you know incarceration or just general trauma I know one of the one of the things that that isn't a stranger to our community is hardship and trauma. So I would like to see a minimum of $1 million go toward mental health and trauma-informed services and case management.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

I believe a good location for case management would be to utilize Parks and Rec community centers as safe places where children and families can have access to mental health resources. And I think it builds trust. For far too long, we have, of course, and we need to have very strong responses that when crime does occur, but we also need to have responses after the fact. And I think investing in mental health is one of the most proactive and responsive things that we can do as a city. I would also like to see an increase in the recurring fund for the arts. Currently we have 100,000.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

In the topic related to mental health, I think it's beneficial for us to increase that amount. I'm open to suggestions from staff on increasing that. I think that the ongoing conversation of mental health is something that intersects art, and perhaps that arts and culture commissioners can help us identify what that looks like. Not too sure what it would look like, but I think the conversation of mental health, suicide prevention, and arts, there's a lot of healing that comes through that process. So maybe our arts and culture commission can bring us back some ideas, but I would like to see an increase for arts funding.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

I recently had the pleasure of meeting with staff at our city and our arts director for the commission, Tram Lee, and I found that the GAP program, which is a pilot program, is funded at 50,000. I would like to see an increase to a minimum of at least 150,000 so that we can see a robust pilot program that we then can model in different parts of our community.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

Were you guys able to hear any of what I just shared?

Certainly, I've taken notes on it, and if it's the will of the majority of the body to make those changes, we certainly can address it. Some of them we already have covered for you, so I think you'll be pleased with that. I did speak to our economic development unit about the issue with the business license cost, and to the extent we can increase for independent contractors, we will certainly do that, subject to the overall budget that we have. We also, as part of the request that we added in the Provost budget, is we gave $200,000 for sports and recreation equipment.

So I think the idea of chess sets at Birch Park, we certainly could accommodate. The other items, you know, a million for mental health and increase in arts funding, what we did do is we, it is 100K, so you were absolutely correct, and we put it as reoccurring. So it's something that will be a part of the general fund budget on a go-forward basis. and the so it's really the million dollars for mental health that is something we would need to identify where to get to and I would need the

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

majority of the council yeah absolutely and and so on the topic of the arts I would ask for an increase there and I'm open to staff recommendation as to what that increase would look like I just don't feel like a hundred thousand for a city as large as ours and for as much money as we invest in removing graffiti it would make a lot of sense for us to have an investment in arts that is also reflective of to what we've spent on removing graffiti so next up is on the infrastructure of the city of Santa Ana I would like to see Madam City Manager a fully staffed executive office on the eighth floor

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

so I would like to see us add in a position for an executive assistant I looked at your organizational chart, I did not see that. I'd like to echo that that is important. I think that the challenges that we have for a city as large as us, we have a very active body of elected officials, and I've seen a challenge when it comes to scheduling, and I think I attribute that to the fact that we're not fully staffed, so I'd like to see funding for that. I would also like to ask my colleagues to support an additional $100,000 in funding for training in equity, diversity, and inclusion for staff at the City of Santa Ana.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

On the topic of cannabis funding, I want to see us restore more monies from the tax revenue to youth. I know that our current proposal places a large emphasis on police and code enforcement, And I'm just concerned that we're taking extremely valuable funding away from children at a time where they really need it most, especially as we're having the amount of homicides that we've had in this community, some of the mental health challenges, and increased need for prevention. So I would like to see those monies stay within youth.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

I want to support our court enforcement for their needs. I also want to support, you know, the ask that PD has. I just feel like maybe if we can have something that is more reasonable, I couldn't support the difference that we have. Currently, the enforcement from fiscal year 22 to fiscal year 23, there's an 87% increase. But for services related to the cannabis tax revenue, we have a decrease from fiscal year 2022 to fiscal year 2023 of 11%, and I can't support that.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

So I know one of the line items in the budget for PD was an expenditure for $160,000 for one body cam. So that's part of my reasoning as to why I couldn't support that. I just, I'm not supportive of spending that much money on one body camera when we have had officers have their camera off on camera. So there's that. On the topic of overtime, I wanted to eliminate the PAL overtime revenue. PAL currently does not have a budget for overtime,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

and the PAL program prides itself on volunteership. And $75 an hour is very expensive to the community. So I think if we're going to promote a program based off of volunteership, it should reflect that.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

Lastly, is I wanna advocate for, as I mentioned last, increased funding for library services, especially as we are entering, hopefully, the exit of this pandemic. I project that a lot of children and families will lean on the library to be a safe place throughout the summer and throughout the fall and all of the next year and moving forward. So I'd like to see funding. I know one of the things I asked for was, I'd like to see funding for us to have an entirely brand new library brought to the city of Santa Ana and the absolute last area is going to be the police department budget

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I'd like to see us allocate funding from our police department budget to create a pilot program and The pilot program would be geared on building trust and building relationships with our law enforcement

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What I would want to propose is to create a CIW program, a community intervention worker program that has a model similar to the gang reduction youth development department in the city of LA where we have a triangle partnership that consists of Santa Ana PD, that consists of community intervention workers that work in conjunction with law enforcement and program coordinators that ensure that they act as they as the moderators and the mediators to a lot of the difficult community relations

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that unfortunately we've only had PD as a response but I think if we have a different prong of public safety that focuses on building that trust in that foundation I think that that investment would be tenfold and not only having more trust with law enforcement but it would result in having safer for communities. So that is the last ask that I have for this budget. I'd like to make a sub motion to move with my proposals forward. And I'll open it to my colleagues if they have any questions or if there's a second. Thank you, I don't think there's a motion yet.

Then I'd like to make a motion in this case. So we have a motion on the floor for that. Let me go ahead and go around to the rest of the council, Council Member Fan, and then we'll go to Council Member Lopez.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

Thank you. Before I start my comments, I was wondering if maybe we can take each individual new idea or thought or proposal at a time to see if it's something we want to add, like a straw poll, before we put it onto a motion, right? Because I think all of us here have ideas and thoughts, and if we do a straw poll and you see that only two people are supportive of it, then we don't have to add it to whatever motion we're going to make. I think that might help.

And if I can make a clarification to what would be helpful for staff, if you're proposing a significant increase in one of your areas of priority, you do need to identify for staff where the amount would be coming from.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

That was my second comment, which is, you know, as we ask for increases or decreases, I think we really do need to pinpoint where. This 800-page budget does have line items that I've gone over many times with the two of you and some of our other department heads. And so with that I would like to start off by responding to some comments that we've received via email. I think that there have been a lot and we actually heard a lot today and I think it really will be surprising to some residents and folks who have called in

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asking for particular issues and items to be funded. First of all are all the email comments we've gotten about the neighborhood initiatives environmental justice services section staffing and as the mayor mentioned at the end of his comments this is already funded and proposed in the budget it is the planning and building agency has proposed another principal community planner it is in the draft budget that was here and it's really unfortunate that we had dozens and dozens of emails, many by professional community advocates, professional individuals

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working with agencies and organizations to advocate for this, who have relationships with our department head staff as well as our council, failed to actually reach out independently to just ask, are we already doing this? Because I know that Director Min Tai specifically responded to an email and CC'd me to ensure that, hey, this is in the budget. So I do think that that's really important as we have these transparent conversations about what is being funded What is being asked and what we will follow through with? I do want to thank staff specifically for that because I know that the environmental justice

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Section environmental justice a conversation was something that we delayed the general plan for a year specifically to address Another area that I want to specifically address our emails regarding investment in community care and health again this was a number dozens and dozens of emails I think it was one of those where you can sign up online to send an email for so one was talking about police oversight legislation and setting aside money for that it's already being done that was actually something I specifically called out last time it was five million dollars which included conversations

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about police oversight as well as employee needs during the discussions. Another question is about services to LGBT trans queer youth and other reentry programs. Again, we already fund many of these programs, and we are rolling out some more with Revive Dollars. This was actually done under Revive Dollars as well, I believe, CDBG funds. So there are a combination of those. there the current budget has $150,000 proposed to help with local nonprofits we haven't yet created the exact parameters but I know for example that I met with individuals from chiefs bug who specifically asked for this because I

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know we all know anyone who's ever worked in the nonprofit industrial complex understands that it's hard to be a nonprofit and get grants because you need money to get money but the city and staff have worked really hard to try to find a way to fund that so that small nonprofits specifically serving Santa Ana residents are going to get an opportunity to do those services another request was for again $150,000 for LGBT and reentry issues same thing with mental health we were under revived our opera dollars we specifically spent a

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lot of money to support reentry and mental health excuse me I believe we also did this under CDBG I think in total it's a couple hundred thousand dollars if not more than that so that already exists the other issue is about job opportunities in the city of Santa Ana or in Santa Ana library I know that just this summer we actually on Tuesday we had a hiring fair for parks and rec for paid internships for youth if you go to the city of Santa Ana work website looking for jobs they also exist paid internships in a variety of departments

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that are targeting youth so that does exist you know when we're talking about

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you know who can we provide who can we hire can it be under aged employment for construction jobs you know the city doesn't do the construction it's third party contractors and there are programs that do that you can look up the Carpenters, you can look up the building trades. They have programs that help youth. Some of them work with Santa Ana College or SAUSD. You know, we're asking for, for example, cost-free sports programs and fitness centers. I'm pretty sure these outdoor fitness centers are going up in many of our parks. We've already funded splash pads that Parks and Rec is working on.

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We talked about creating, again, youth sports programs that are already in existence. So I guess my point is a lot of these requests are already being funded. It's something that staff has specifically addressed and looked at to make sure that we are being responsive to resident asks and requests. Another thing we talked about was, you know, we need to have more hotspots or Wi-Fis for young people and to have more access to computers. Well, we have hundreds of hotspots in our libraries, and we have 85 more stream learning modules for young children,

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so it has parental controls, and we have additional laptops. And guess what? Not all of those are checked out. They exist. You can get them for free if you sign up for a Santa Ana library card. So, you know, I want to, again, specifically address the fact that staff is listening. This council is paying attention, and we are directing staff to address those specific concerns. And if you have individual questions, I really do hope that you can ask us as staff so that you don't have dozens and dozens of people sending in an email for something that's already happening.

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The other areas that I want to address are

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the police overtime. I know Mayor Potombe-Sara had brought it up. I think several members of the public have also brought up about hiring more officers and police overtime. And I think Chief, this might be for you. Oh, Assistant Chief. So I went through the overtime budget with both Director Downs and I spoke to Chief Valentin. I think at least on Monday I was the only council member to have done that, to specifically go over that with him. And from what I understand is that a lot of the overtime dollars are a result of one, increased activity, for example, events that we've had in the city. Is that correct?

That's correct.

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And then the other issue is that we have currently unfilled funded positions to hire officers, correct?

Yes.

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And so it seems to me, and I guess I want to know from you, is that we have overtime because we are not yet able to fill those funded positions. So we have to have staffing, hence the overtime.

That's correct. And we do have approximately 16 vacancies right now that are currently funded. And that takes time to fill from recruitment to the academy through training to put a police officer on the street. That's a long process, and that's something that's very difficult to maintain with ongoing retirements.

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Okay. So if some residents said, well, let's take away the overtime and put it into more officers, is that actually going to fix the issue of having enough officers on the street?

I don't think that actually fixes the issue. I think it's an ongoing challenge that we're always going to have with retirements and then people relocating out of state. That's something that is happening. So it's not a one fix for everything.

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Right. And so that was my concern, too, because when we are looking at allocating money for overtime, it's actually quite low compared to what ends up being the actual dollars. And part of that is our department is able to move some of the funding from the funded vacancies into overtime because those officers are not yet hired. And you still have to fulfill those hours that are required. And I think at this point, at least it seems to me, the issue is how do we work on hiring more officers and to fill the funded positions we already have rather than to, I don't know, take away from overtime?

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because I guess that would mean that we wouldn't have as many officers at any given time.

Yes, I think that's a challenge that not just here in California, but nationwide, a lot of agencies are facing right now, and that's recruitment and retention. We've done a pretty good job of maintaining people and hiring people, though we still have a few vacancies. But compared to other agencies, I believe they're struggling a little bit more than we are.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

So I think a couple areas that this might be helpful for me, and I don't know about my colleagues, but to prepare a presentation or information about what issues you need, or how to address the hiring issue and how do we compare to some other departments of our size. Because let's say we have, you know, 8, 10 people that we haven't hired, we haven't filled. But you're looking at some other, you know, Riverside, and they have 30. I think that's important for us to understand how we compare to other departments in this hiring issue. Because I know everyone out there who's trying to hire

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understands that there are difficulties at this time. And so I think that's something that this council, or at least I would like to know, because I don't want to just throw money at the problem if that's not the actual issue. And it might be, let me know.

Correct.

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The other, that's it for now, thank you. Okay.

Council member, if I can add, the assistant chief is coming up with a plan to help increase the hiring efforts, and it will probably be before you in July?

In July the second? Well, the only meeting in July. Second meeting in July. Yes.

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You should have just told me you're already on it. We'd love to hear that. Well, it's still in the works. Thank you so much. The other area that I wanted to address is also we had some residents asking about not paying the CalPERS estimates prior to well not paying the CalPERS estimates early on because we should wait for the actual adjusted costs but in speaking to director Downs on this issue the city is paying the actual cost we are not paying any estimates it's just the way that CalPERS publishes their actuarial so it looks like we're not paying the actual cost but that is what I've been told by

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our expert, right? So we're not overpaying for anything. It's not an issue in the budget. Did you want to make a comment on that?

Sure. The actuarials that dictate how much we need to pay on the pension are published approximately 18 months before we make those payments. And in the recent history, the council is very well aware that we did a pension refinancing so with the pension refinancing calpers internally gave us revised numbers to pay for next year although they are not yet reflected in the actuarial reports that are published online that are typically about 18 months old so we do have actual numbers that we are going to be required to pay and we're going to pay every

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dollar that we owe. Thank you. Because I know I got a lot of emails about not paying, overpaying an estimate. And then a couple of other items that I brought up previously and I want to specifically thank staff for is hiring two additional housing specialists for the housing agency. I know that I went super hard for the Housing Choice Voucher Section 8 program. And going to those workshops, staffing those workshops with staff and volunteers, I want to thank individuals from Viet Rise as well as Tenants United who provided in-language access to our residents. And we had over 20,000

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applicants as far as I understand, about 9,000 specifically from Santa Ana are receiving the Santa Ana preference. And I think that that success is because we had staff who went above and beyond on weekends and evenings to provide that service. So I'm really glad that we're increasing staff in that. I know that we add we're adding one workforce specialist so I'm very excited about that too because a lot of folks are asking about that. I want to also comment that I am satisfied with the current amount for maintenance for streets after many conversations with our several department heads. I do

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understand that we have a lot of funding for public works in different places more than we've had in many years and staff is working hard to fulfill those work orders and to actually get out there and get the construction done there are there's only one additional item that I'd like to ask for that probably got lost in the fray and this is something I brought up in February but is being brought up again which is and thank you to Jennifer Wang at AACSC who submitted a letter with others asking for an event that specifically celebrates or is celebrated

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by the Asian American community. This is something that we don't have in the city and as far as I can remember have never had in the city. And I think that it's important that I think for the first time many residents have reached out to me, organizations have reached out to me because they felt comfortable and they felt heard and they felt recognized.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

So I'm asking for a $30,000 allocation to a mid-autumn festival event. Actually during our first year, I think Council Member Lopez and I did a proclamation at the Dr. Jun-Kyo and Guan-Kyo's home in Floral Park and that was really wonderful. Mid-autumn festival is one of the most important holidays in the lunar calendar and it is something that I know we can co-sponsor and work with the community on funding. $30,000, I think, is significantly lower than pretty much any other item, line item that is on this budget, and I think that it would mean a lot to our community.

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I also already have individuals in the private sector reaching out to work with us to help sponsor events. And so I think that that would really help to adjust any costs. and it might actually also be really great to do it with an unveiling of a little Saigon sign so I would like to ask for that one thing I do want to address with councilmember Hernandez's comments is I personally do believe that we have funded many many programs at hundreds of thousands of dollars relating to mental health and I'm not comfortable at this time to allocate additional

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dollars specifically for that. Mental health services require specialties, requires highly specialized, motivated staff, and that would essentially be creating an additional department in our city to provide this service. And this is funding that already exists with the county health care agency, that they get money from the state to do this. And I think it would behoove us to work more closely with them in order to get them to provide those services here in Santa Ana. And with that, thank you so much for indulging me, everyone. I will be quiet now.

Thank you. Let me go to Councilmember Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 16

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento.

Jessie LopezItem 16

So I think for context for the Councilmembers and the public and staff,

Jessie LopezItem 16

there was a grant a lead remediation grant that I had asked staff to look into and to apply and that a decision was made that we were not going to apply for the grant because we didn't have capacity we didn't have enough staff to do it to take it on and so I think that's important for everyone to know because I that is the core reason why people are asking and for you know some sort of dedicated staffer to oversee the environmental section areas that we have approved and discussed for many months now and I think everyone by now understands that that's a top priority for this council

Jessie LopezItem 16

and so I just want to ask staff because I see the workforce changes or additions to the CMO office and also to the planning department. And I wanted to hear who would be better equipped to not just apply for grants, but really to manage the grants and help implement them, which is really the heaviest workload that that individual is gonna have.

So council member, currently all of the departments have individuals that are seeking grants. So your large operating agencies do that on their own. They'll pursue those that are related to their operations. Within the city manager's office, we are adding a management analyst, and that individual is going to be dedicated as well to seeking grants, not just environmental justice related grants, but all grants. And then I would invite Min Tai, Executive Director of Planning, to come up and talk about what he's implemented within his department on specifically EJ items. Okay, thank you.

Thank you, City Manager Rich, and thank you, Mayor and members of the Council. So in response to the question and the focus on environmental justice, I've worked with our City Manager to reorganize the planning section where we currently have now two sections, which is advanced and current planning. We're including additional focus on environmental justice and neighborhood by creating a neighborhood initiative and environmental services section that will be led or will be lead by the principal planner position who is a management level type with policy making abilities and recommendation

to help focus on the implementation of the environmental justice issues. Does that create the additional capacity for us to look for grants? Absolutely. This position will be overseeing the implementation but also the policy making and working in coordinating with community stakeholders and organizations. Oftentimes, grants does not just mean that it's the city. We can partner up with Orange County Environmental Justice. We can partner up with community stakeholders, neighborhoods. So there are many partnerships that, as the grant come above, we can also have the capacity. And while we may not have the capacity to do all grants,

but we'll focus on the ones that are most important to us.

Jessie LopezItem 16

OK, got it. So if I understand this correctly, the principal planner is going to have the responsibility of also with the workforce addition to your office to apply to grants, not just specific to EJ, but that is going to be

a core focus for both staffers. For our office, the person will be in charge of the environmental justice program implementing the goals of the general plan policy of which it would include application for grants that would be one component okay and likewise for the city

manager's office it would be a kind of a universal person that could work on

Jessie LopezItem 16

pursuing all types of grants okay thank you and do you feel do both of you feel that with those additional changes to the workforce those individuals those those two people that we're talking about they're going to be able to pursue grant, write grants, apply for grants, and manage the grants?

I wouldn't say all of those elements, because, for example, the City Manager's Office, Management Analyst, sought a grant for a public works item. It would be managed by the public works agency. So at all times, your operating agencies are pursuing grants, and we actually have a pretty excellent track record on the amount of grants that we do receive for the Parks and Rec Division, for the public works division, even within the planning division. So we're all constantly working on pursuing grants.

Jessie LopezItem 16

And this is not a knock on the ability of staff to pursue a nor track record. I just want to make sure that while I have the time to ensure that staff has the appropriate staffing levels to pursue the policies that we've given direction about, that I do ask those questions. So I hope that's...

Understood. Okay, thank you. If we believe we need more, we'll certainly come back to you and ask for additional resources.

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Okay, thank you.

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Thank you, Min. That's going to be it. So I do want to make a recommendation. I guess we can take a straw poll at this point, and then I'll move on to the third point. In terms of the CBOs, I am very thankful that staff heard the community's request, the council member's request, and it is a one-time expense, I see it. I would like to move that over to the general fund. I don't know if anybody has any opposition to that.

You know, maybe what we could do with those items that are being added or deleted, maybe we can, if staff can make notes of all of them, we can take a straw poll at the end rather than taking them all, because there's been several that were mentioned, and maybe they can just take them all at the end.

Jessie LopezItem 16

Okay. Then I'll move along to the Sunana Workforce Center. So I see the allocation for the new workforce change. Thank you for that.

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I want to know if this is specifically to help build relationships and pursue, you know, jobs, paid jobs, internships, fellowships with their local union partners. I want to know if there's some sort of collaboration that the city has in mind with Taller San Jose, which I think does an excellent job of creating, of helping to educate folks in those blue-collar jobs. And the other issue that I wanted to talk about was the parking at the Santa Ana Workforce Center. when I toured the center, I was a little taken back by the fact that people have to pay to visit the workforce center.

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And you know, it's permitted, like you have to get permission to enter the parking lot. So I want to know if there are any long-term plans from the city to find a new place for the workforce center.

I will ask Judson to come up. We Steven Mendoza is traveling and I believe Judson has all the answers for you

Thank you councilmember Lopez. So in regards to the specific responsibilities for that position We'd have to return with that information for you But the two other topics that you brought up regarding tire San Jose we are the city council approved $72,000 for CDBG funds for Tierra San Jose in this year's budget. So that is moving forward. And then in regards to the parking issue at the work center, it is actively an issue that we are addressing as part of our lease negotiations for the next five to ten year term.

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Okay. I remember the CDBG allocations. I'm just trying to figure out if there's more of a partnership with that specific organization. not just you know having them apply for money more of an active role that the city is taking with them because of the work that they do yeah well we'll have to return with that information for you okay yeah so under so my next question is going to be for the clerk one of the upcoming items that this council is going to revisit is going to be the lobbyist registration and I want to and know if the budget is fully inclusive of the workload of the lobbyist registration,

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and then that including staff.

The software and implementation is included in the current fiscal budget. A primary fiscal impact analysis of a lobbyist registration implementation policy and disclosure e-filing module procurement from an existing vendor net file was conducted. The subscription-based software costs approximately $10,000 annually to produce. To implement such a policy, the Clerk of the Council recommends that additional full-time office specialists be hired to fulfill the functions required of the policy, which will be requested during the 2022-2023 mid-year budget update. Staff estimates that the annual cost is around $40,000.

Jessie LopezItem 16

When is the mid-year budget review?

typically February so we'd be looking at February 2023 well if the lobbyist

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ordinance passes this year we would have to wait till February of next year

yes

it'll take some time to implement but yes

how much time

It's the first time that it's being implemented in the city, so not really sure at this moment.

We have to hire a consultant.

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Did the previous consultant that we hired give us a timeframe of how long it would take to implement?

We did not get that information at the moment.

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Okay.

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So, I would actually like to see that being taken into account for the upcoming fiscal year. I don't think there's any need for this council to wait an entire year to fully fund and staff the implementation of a lobbyist registry, especially because I think we've heard from enough, the majority of this council, that this is something that they want to see. under parks and rec under the summer camp i would like to see the return of camp catalina and i had a question for our city manager christine is animal neutering something that

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the city has taken a role or responsibility and taking charge of we have we have an opportunity

and it was listed in the initiatives at the last presentation. Since we do the dog licensing component and your dog licensing is a two-based fee, it's less for those animals that are spayed or neutered so that we can, as the initiative, help educate individuals where they can obtain low-cost spaying and neutering. It wouldn't be free? Well, they have to go to a veterinarian's office to have it done. I know there are some vets that do pro bono, so we're going to get the information together and provide that at the time that we're doing the dog licensing. Do you know if the county has any services of this kind?

I'm sorry, I don't know.

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I was trying to figure out if it was a core function of government.

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So I wanted to also clarify that we don't have a finalized summary budget, and the public doesn't either, so maybe that's why there's a little bit of confusion but last year we hired three code enforcement officers this year we're budgeting for five code enforcement officers and there's also a budget of hiring four more next year and again you know kind of to councilmember fans point if folks from the public have questions or concerns or are unsure about hearsay out there you have an open line of communication with our staff and the council members because we are

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hiring code enforcement officers and we'll continue to do that it's actually a request from the staff when we've actually had meetings with them and ask our departments what is it that you need so I hope that clears up any confusion or answers that the public had regarding how many code enforcement officers we've hired and we are going to be hiring this year and next year.

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I also just want, I had a question for Chief, Commander Rodriguez, sorry, maybe soon or in the future to be Chief. But I just wanted to know if you could guarantee this council, if we hired eight police officers, that we wouldn't continue to see the astronomical cost of overtime?

Theoretically, if we hire more police officers, they will reduce overtime. And just to clarify on those police officers, I think it was said earlier, $8 for $1.2 million. And that was actually the cost on overtime for police officers. So technically, it's $6 for $1.2 million. So ideally, over time, in theory, yes, it is supposed to reduce overtime. It'll probably happen incrementally, so I can say that it will reduce, and I believe we have shown that it has reduced overtime in the past slowly from previous budget cycles.

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Okay, got it. And then can you also let us know what the plan of the department is to help reduce crime?

Yes. We recently implemented the Community Engagement Division, and we're also doing a lot more collaborative partnerships with a lot of local businesses in the community, not just to address it from the enforcement side, but more from crime prevention through environmental design and establishing more of a partnership where there's expectations from the public from what we do, but there's also expectations from the other side of the partnership as far as businesses and homeowners or communities on how they can prepare themselves or harden their targets and not be

victims of crime. So we have that going on. We also, as I was mentioned earlier, is trying to bring some kind of a community engagement, or not a community engagement, but officers, like not necessarily a directed patrol, but officers that are assigned to specific districts to be more community policing and more responsive to the council needs and the community groups and whatever their specific needs, because every community has their own specific needs.

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Got it. And how long have these vacancies been in place?

They, I think in 2019 is when we made a big, we had a lot more vacancies, and in 2019 we hired 50 police officers, which reduced our amount of vacancies. I think in the last couple years we're starting to see a lot more retirements. The 3% at 50 are starting to go a lot more. So we're going to continue to see retirements. Exactly the numbers we've always maintained approximately about anywhere between 10 plus vacancies every year.

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Every year. And I guess for the hiring freeze, the ones that are allocated to the department but are unfunded what year about were those approved

uh director downs are you aware council member are you you asking um when did we put a hiring freeze or didn't fund the ones is that the question yeah okay we have authorized of 384 and we have funded 376 she's inquiring as to when did we not fund eight I believe it would used to be a lot more unfunded and we've actually been adding funding I'm not sure I can answer at what year they

is correct when when I began at the city in October of 2018 there were 368 funded so or no actually 364 and it's it's been increased since then and I know that that 384 has been the authorized number for a long time so I know it predates me so we're talking at least probably I think I would start to say

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that it predates me as well for the record so another question I wanted to know if the PD and thank you for you know sharing the plan to reduce crime here in the city but specifically are there any active plans to help with the preemptive efforts and aftercare for families of crime here because I see it the big emphasis of enforcement and I want to make sure that we're not forgetting about the families as well and so I want to know what PD has thought about or is thinking about rolling out I think it's important you

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know for for the department to have a partnership with community leaders and organizations just so that we can all learn how to be most useful in supporting families of crime de-escalating tensions in those specific neighborhoods that we're seeing crime and reducing the likelihood of retaliation especially when crime is gang related. You know I'll share a quick story there was a young Sanana Unified School District boy that was stabbed in my ward a couple of weeks ago and I was getting calls you know to help be at the

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site where all of his little friends were mourning and they had candles and And people wanted to be respectful of the time because they understood that they had just lost their friend. But there was no other recourse. There was nothing else in place for them, the young boys, and for the families to follow. And so I had to call somebody from the community and say, hey, can you talk to these boys? They're in your school. And we kind of went that way. And that seemed to be effective, right? Like you can't be out in a neighborhood playing music at 2 a.m.

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You have to be respectful, even though I understand that you are mourning the loss of your friend, of your neighbor, of your brother. And so I just want to see and hear what are the suggestions or thoughts or the plans of the department to do some more of that work, like on the ground work.

Some thoughts in that area in regards to more like wraparound service coming out of our Investigations Bureau for victims of crime, usually through our Family Crimes Unit, for example, victims of domestic violence or family crimes. Being able to provide more wraparound service that after they've gone through the prosecution, the judicial process, that we follow up to ensure that the victims and families still have the right resources, and at the same time that they have places to go if they need shelter or they need any other services. We're

also exploring some, through ARPA funding, maybe some collaboration with Project Kinship on reintegration for even people who have fallen through the, into the judicial system.

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Okay, thank you. That's going to conclude my comments questions.

Thank you.

Thank you, everybody. So I think everybody had a chance to speak. I'll go ahead and, you know, just make a couple of comments here as we wrap up. So I want to thank everybody who spoke last week, spoke today, and, you know, contacted us, communicated with us through e-mails, through other forms of communication, getting their points across. And I do think that this proposed budget is reflective of a lot of what's been discussed, not just recently, but over time. I am very, very grateful that we are dedicating the million and a half to the downtown. So that is something that's important to me.

I should note that there is a million, too, that was also provided to that effort by the County Board of Supervisors at Supervisor Katrina Foley's direction. So that was very helpful, and we're working on more. I know that I've been contacted by Senator Umberg's office, and we're looking at maybe having the legislature help us with that, and we're still working with the Transit Authority to see if there's a way that they can augment this as well. So that said, I do want to thank staff for addressing the environmental justice question. I don't think there's anything that we say up here that we intend to do that we haven't done.

You know, so when we spoke about, you know, a specific provision in the amendments to the general plan dedicating a staff person to address issues of environmental justice, that was something that we took seriously. I know staff heard us loud and clear, and we adopted it with that provision. So I don't have any doubt that that item will be addressed. I also want to, you know, go to some of these issues that I think I heard and that are important. So let me just, you know, say on police, I think it's important, and I'm not sure where the chief

is tonight, but in any event, I did want to say I know it's a very fluid moving number on the funded vacant positions that we have. So I know it's sometimes at 12, sometimes it's at 13, I guess it's 16 right now where we sit. And so we do have folks who leave the department who are retiring, and then we have, you know, people who come in. So, you know, it's very competitive right now. It's difficult to keep, you know, staff, our police department staffed up. But I guess I'm trying to understand, you know, we can say let's hire more police, but we can't

even fill the positions, as was said, I think, by Councilmember Fan. We can't even fill the positions that we have already funded, right? And that number is at about 16. And I know that at least that's what Deputy Chief said. So maybe if it's not 16, maybe it's 12. Whatever the case is, we haven't filled those funded vacancies at this point. Is that correct, Deputy Chief? Sorry to have to have you come back up. We should just sit closer, man. Yes. What was the question again, Mayor? Yeah. So what is the number of funded vacancies that we have at this moment? We know

it's a fluid, you know, changing number. I think you mentioned 16. I might have misheard.

16. Got it. So and that number will change based upon people, again, who are aging out or retiring out deciding to leave and new recruits that you're getting on board. So again, I do understand, you know, the public saying and others, you know, saying let's hire more, but that really doesn't answer or solve the question. We can't even recruit or hire folks for positions that we

already have funded. Is that correct? We have plenty of recruits that do come in. It's just the retirements is what always offsets it. So we do have a recruitment plan in place. And as mentioned, we've done it back in 2019. But I think we're always going to have certain vacancies due to retirements. And just because it takes a long period of time to hire police, to put them through training and to put them out on the street to be able to replace that vacancy.

So let me put it another way, and maybe the city manager can help. If I said I want to hire 50 more officers, that doesn't mean we're going to have 50 officers tomorrow.

That's correct, sir. So we are doing continual recruitment, but as Assistant Chief mentioned, I mean, it's an evolving number. He can go into the office and find out three more officers are going to retire, and he just did, you know, a hiring of three, and now he needs to go get three more. We have open and continually recruitment, but what he mentioned about the new officers, there is a pipeline and a lead time before they'd be fully uniformed and out on the streets. We also are doing lateral recruitments as well, which makes it shorter to get them out to the street.

But it's getting tougher in the current environment to attract laterals.

Got it. So let me get back to just where we are. So I think you're good. Thank you, Deputy Chief. So I think, you know, we're, and it's not like we're a department that is, you know, not at the top of or anywhere, you know, far away from the market, right? So where we are in the market is probably top 20, top 25 percent relative to other cities our size when it comes to police officer salary and compensation. So you know, I think that it's an attractive city to work in because we're not at the bottom tier. We have certainly a lot of premium pay options for our officers to come here.

So I think what we're going to continue to do is just be competitive with other departments because we know it's just competitive everywhere generally. The only thing I would say when it comes to laterals, and this is more procedural and maybe not with respect to budgeting, is, and this was tough for me. I know a lot of friends in El Monte who just experienced this really horrible shooting, and I think I'm the only one up here who's lived through a loss of somebody who had family as a law enforcement officer. My brother-in-law, who's a deputy L.A. County sheriff, was shot and killed when he was 33.

So it is devastating not just for the immediate family, but it's devastating for the community. And so, you know, I think our former city manager became city manager in El Monte, and I think our planning director might have worked in El Monte. So we have a lot of ties to that community, and it saddens me that I'm having to contact the mayor there and send another letter of sympathy, you know, in addition to the ones that we sent to Evalde and Buffalo and Laguna Woods. So we're just experiencing these problems as a result of, you know, the rampant just, you know, gun violence out there, and it's really tragic.

But what I guess I would say to what we're doing with respect to recruiting, especially lateral recruitments, Deputy Chief, if you can share this with the Chief, when you do look at people coming into our department, and I don't know if we can do this or not, given POBAR rights and everything else and privacy issues, But I would rather not recruit or go after officers that have bad misconduct or misconduct records, you know, and maybe previous 1983, you know, violations, possible, you know, records of abuse of authority and excessive force.

So to the extent we can, you know, as we recruit, make sure that we recruit people who are responsible, solid, you know, respectful officers. That's something that, you know, I can certainly get behind. But let me talk to you about how a practical way is to maybe solve this problem. It's very difficult to hire officers, but it's not that difficult to hire clerical staff. So I think if we can maybe look at our administrative staff within the police department that does the writing of the reports, that does traffic collision reports, maybe civilians can do that, and it frees up officers to be able to do core police functions.

And to me, having officers, rather than being in the department writing reports and them being out in the field is a much more valuable use of their time. That would be one. The other one is, look, I'm not sure how many officers we have here, and I like seeing them here because they're very nice people, but I'm not sure if we need four or six, and sometimes I see a lot of them, but maybe we just have two, and the other two can be out in the field, reducing our response time to when people call. But I certainly think that that's something

that we should consider. I would be supportive of reducing that. I know that we have long meetings and if that's the case, maybe we do have to have some additional staff. But I don't know if we need that for meetings like this, short meetings, regular meetings, but it's just two less officers that can be out in the field patrolling our streets. And to me, that is a much better use of their time than being here. So that is one. When When it comes to, you know, and I do want to thank this increase in youth services.

It looks like from 2021 to 2022 to this year, we've increased the spending close to about $6 million, right? Because I think it was $20.8 million last year, and now we're going to $26.3 million. I just want to remind everybody that $4.5 million of that is youth internship money that was received from the state. And that's something I advocated for from the governor's office with the other big 13 mayors. So, you know, that is, you know, one-time money. That's not something that is going to be recurring. So let's, you know, just be mindful of that. But, you know, I do want to see that implemented well.

So I'm glad that Councilmember Lopez mentioned the workforce staffer because I know hopefully they'll be working on making sure that our youth get those internships and we connect them correctly. So I am supportive of that additional staff person being included, given that we have some additional monies as well. You know, I do like the idea of, you know, we're already spending towards mental health. I do appreciate that. I think what we need in addition to that and something that's mentioned, I forget what page it is, I think it's page 10 of the presentation.

So the third bullet from the bottom, it's exploring potential locations for a third brick-and-mortar library. For a city of 300, and I don't think it's 330,000, I think there's an undercount, we're probably 350,000 people. To have two libraries, one main library and one very small library on New Hope, is just not sufficient. And that's a big failure on behalf of the county because the county should have looked at that as well and said, you know, where do we need more libraries? and they should have looked at our city first. We are not only park poor, but we're library poor. So I hope that we can find a space,

and I know we've spoken about this, Madam City Manager, because it's one-time money to build out a library. We can certainly find ways to go ahead and fund it, whether it's through cannabis revenue or some other source of revenue, to go use that operationally going forward. but to the extent that we can use either revive monies or maybe some surplus monies towards a build-out of a third brick-and-mortar. Because I don't think it's just about books. I think it's about creating a space, right? And I think that goes to mental health, that goes to safety, that goes to ensuring that students have a place to study

and a safe place to learn and just do their work. be creative, whatever they need to do. But I think that if we look at where the main library is, you know, right in the center part of town, you look at where New Hope is, it's sort of on the west end of town, we don't have anything in the south. So maybe that's something to look at. Maybe it's the Delhi Center. Maybe it's, you know, an existing community center that we have that we can build out. Maybe it's the train station. I don't know, but those are our properties, right? You know, some of these community centers. And it wouldn't be a tough build-out.

I'm thinking maybe two or three million to go ahead and set it up for a library. We're going to need a temporary space for library staff as we go through and, you know, revitalize and rehab the main library. So maybe as we look for temporary sites, that could be the site for a third brick and mortar. But I am really excited about that. I like bookmobiles and they're great, but it doesn't create a long-lasting space for kids to be able to go in and do work on a terminal or do work, you know, and just study inside. And I think that's what we're looking for as well.

And on the, I think somebody mentioned community policing, and I really am supportive of that effort. And I think there's an intersection between community policing and somebody else that said trust building. I think community policing is trust building, but there has to be a little bit more on that. So that should come, you know, hopefully, Deputy Chief, as you see us talking about, how do we improve the relationship between the public and PD staff? I think community policing is one way of doing that, but there's other ways, right?

There's other ways of doing that, and we were talking about, you know, what they do up in Boyle Heights, out in, you know, and I think the PD staffs or supports a boxing program. program, and I know that we have a great program here at TKO, and that's something that maybe PD can work with and help. There's a great model up there that they have out in Boyle Heights. So that's one thing. The other one was I know we were looking for reentry programs and things that PD could help with there, and I know that Project Kinship is always mentioned, but they didn't even apply for any grant funding. So I'm a little concerned about that.

But I bumped into somebody from Santa Ana College over the weekend, and they have a program called Project Rise, which the dean of one of the schools supports. And working with Santa Ana College would be a great way to address this issue because they do it from an academic point of view, and they have formerly incarcerated students that attend Santa Ana College, and the program is really, really impressive. So to the extent that there's another option for you there, that would be great. I, you know, I'll just finally say, look, I think the budget was very difficult because not, you know, and it's difficult in a different way.

I've seen budgets, and I've seen many budgets, and this is my, you know, 15th or 16th budget that I've seen, where we haven't had money, where we've had to cut staff, where we've had to cut programs, where we've had to, you know, put a freeze on hiring. I've seen very ugly budgets like that, unfortunately, because we've gone through a recession here. We've gone through difficult moments. We've gone through mismanagement. And this is not one of those times. The problem we're having here is how do we spend money intelligently, thoughtfully, address the concerns that we have as a community. That is a good problem.

That is an enviable problem to have, given what some of our other neighboring cities are dealing with right now. So I am very proud of this budget. I'm very proud of the staff that's worked on it, but I'm extremely proud of the public that's helped guide us to get to this moment because they're the ones who dictated what they wanted to see inside this budget. So I am going to be supportive of that. I'm not supportive of increasing anything, but I'm also not supportive of decreasing anything. You know, I don't want to see any of the PD budget decreased. I want it to stay as it is, as proposed and as fixed.

But that said, you know, I'm very consistent with the mayor of New York. We've, you know, our staff, you know, I've talked to his staff. And there's one thing that I think we can do with PD is you can be supportive of law enforcement, but be extremely, extremely demanding of accountability. And that's where I'm coming from. So I want to support our good officers. I want to make sure that we have sufficient officers. And I want us to be really, you know, assertive and aggressive on how we recruit. And I know the Chief knows that about me, is that we want to be competitive. We want to recruit good, solid people. But at the same

time, I want there to be a very robust accountability. So I am extremely glad that we have a million dollars here in the budget for the oversight commission and I think that those two things are not mutually exclusive. I think those two things go hand-in-hand. I will be very supportive of this budget given that knowing that we have a have a way to monitor good behavior and good actors and support them but but that said I know we were going to go through sort of a straw poll on some of the things that you have so maybe if there's some if there's a list that you took down?

So, Mayor, while we were taking notes, we also prepared a slide that has the list of the items. So what you'll see on here, and please correct me if I missed anything, these are the items that would require a monetary change in the budget only. So some of the other directions and desires and assets you have that did not have a monetary change, they're not included on this list. Some of them, staff would need further direction should there be a majority of you interested in them. And I will leave it up to you, Mayor, as to how you want to run and how quickly you want to do your straw poll.

Sure. Maybe what we could do is we'll go one by one, but if there's any additional questions or additional adjustments to that. Go ahead.

Phil BacerraItem 16

I have some questions. Now that Chief Valentin's here, would you mind coming up?

Phil BacerraItem 16

Oh, no. No, no, no. So in your absence, what's been discussed is this idea that, well, first of all, would you rather have more officers or more clerical staff? I know that sounds like a crazy question, but indulge me. Would you rather have more clerical or would you rather have more police officers? Both. Okay. But would you rather have more of one or the other?

Officers at this point.

Phil BacerraItem 16

Thank you. And so what we've been discussing is this idea that, so right now we're currently funding 376. That number has stayed static for how many years now? At least three, four, maybe more? At least. Okay, so we've stayed at 376. We have not increased. What was discussed was that we are currently at about 360, 366 currently on staff. So in the past, and I'll let you tell us, so you were tasked at one point to bring on 50 additional officers, correct? How long did that take you?

It was actually 67 police officer vacancies. And then by the time you had attrition, it was really a task of over 100 officers over two to three years. Two to three years.

Phil BacerraItem 16

So that's remarkable. So what I was asking before you arrived was that we look at funding eight officers. You were able to get, you said, 67 officers in two to three years.

Over a three-year period. The 50 came in one year after a robust strategic plan, which took about 18 months to bring together.

Phil BacerraItem 16

So if we were to fund eight additional officers in addition to the vacancies that are funded that you have now, do you think you can fill them?

Yes, yes. You're sure? Yes, we will do everything we can. Recruitment is becoming more of a challenge these days, and different agencies are offering incentives, signing bonuses, et cetera. Yes. um but we're not those other agencies we have a lot of a lot of good to offer here so we're up to

Phil BacerraItem 16

the challenge okay um and just one other comment i want to make it's not so much a question but you know when it comes to talking about staffing our police uh you know we we and i appreciate that you do coffee or donuts with a cop and you do these um pr um events and i i think that you really could do less of those if we had more officers assigned to specific communities in my opinion I'm not saying we wouldn't do those other events but I just believe that by having more officers that the community knows you don't really have to introduce the officers because the community would

Phil BacerraItem 16

already know them I just one other thing I want to bring up is the idea of accountability versus staffing I was the one who brought forward the motion I'm sorry, I was about to say 85A, the council member requested item regarding the police oversight. And I'm very happy that we are, I believe, probably overfunding what we anticipate the oversight commission to look like. But I'm glad that we're being cautious and putting that in there just in case. But, you know, to talk about accountability versus staffing, I feel like that we absolutely want the best officers. In fact, a question that I have is when we, when you,

Phil BacerraItem 16

and your staff looks at hiring officers, is there any way that an officer laterally in would come in with, I'm going to use my term, blemishes on their record? For instance, maybe they've had discipline from other departments. Do we take on other departments' headaches?

Nope.

Phil BacerraItem 16

Not at all?

Not at all.

Phil BacerraItem 16

So you don't need direction from us to do that, correct?

No.

Phil BacerraItem 16

Because you already do that. Correct. Perfect. Those are my comments and questions. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. Why don't you stay there, Chief, for a little bit. What's easier to recruit? Yes. Let me ask you. What's easier to recruit, a police officer or a clerical staff?

Well, it takes much longer to recruit and process and hire a police officer.

So if we had somebody that was available to do some clerical work and free up an officer to be in the field. Isn't that what we want?

As I said before, Mayor, we need and want both, really, because one part of the police department can't do its job as effectively and efficiently without the other. We need civilian staff to support frontline police officers and vice versa.

Right. So I don't want what I said to be misinterpreted. We're not saying clerical staff is more valuable than a police officer. The point is, if you can't recruit officers quickly enough and because of attrition, we may be below what our target is. To the extent we have to work with what we have, the more ability that we have to have officers not inside doing clerical work and outside doing field work, that'd probably be the optimal? Correct. Okay. Thank you. And so I think, yeah, things get misinterpreted and distorted, and we try to pander sometimes and say we want more of this and more of that.

The idea is, look, we just have a challenge like anybody else, not because of our city being less supportive of law enforcement, but I think all communities right now are trying to recruit good officers, right? I think it's extremely competitive out there. We know that there is a demand for good quality officers and reminding you to make sure that when you do lateral recruitments that you go through a really extensive background check to make sure discipline won't be an issue or we're not inheriting somebody else's problem. That's something I think as a

reminder we should be reminding not only you and the public that we do that. So I I don't think it's a surplus to say that, or it's excessive. Those are things that are important because you don't want somebody in your department that's going to endanger the public or your other officers. So in any event, I think what we said is fairly clear. Again, distortions matter. We want to make sure there's clarity. I think, again, I am very supportive of what you're doing. I think you and your department are doing what we think is important, is addressing

the issues and trying to make sure that we have people out in the field. And I know that you're going to a model where you're going to be having different grids, I think, and having, you know, somebody that's responsible for each of those and having a point of contact, and that's going to be helpful as well. So in any event, thank you for that, Chief. Maybe what we could do is we can put

that item up again, the list, and we can go through this. Certainly, Mayor and Councilmembers. I really like your suggestion because I think it will move quickly. So we have, it's a numbered list that we'll put up on the screen so then if you could go around and if you could just say which ones you're supportive of I'll do the tally as each as you provide each council member the opportunity to weigh in got it go ahead council

jerk go ahead let me go let me go with councilmember fan and

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

Sorry, Chief. I just wanted some clarification. Because there's been a lot of conversation about overtime and staffing and hiring and the numbers of officers. And I just want, you know, we did hear that coming in July, we're going to have a more robust plan presented to the City Council to discuss how to pursue, you know, hiring. right to work on that city manager Ridge you mentioned but one area that I have seen some residents comment about is well let's take the allocation from field operations over time and reallocate that to for example more funded positions

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

officer positions my initial thought is that well we're already not able to fill our current vacancies and so I don't think that would solve the problem of having officers in the community per hour right you have to staff officers per hour in this area at any given time so I guess I want to leave it to you tell me do you think moving that kind of money from overtime to fund more positions is is useful to you right now or um or would help address this issue this concern

thank you for the question and i apologize for not being here for the entire session and not getting the full context but um so hiring and seeing the impact of hiring police officers takes time and so just five short years ago when i took over as chief that was the reference point of 67 vacancies plus attrition it well exceeded 100 police officers that had to be hired so fast forward today we're running about 15 vacancies if we're talking about putting on uh the authority to fill up to the 384 which is the additional aid officers that i certainly welcome that there

certainly is a need for that city-wide city-wide with what we do um how we get there and how much time it takes us is the question. And so to say we will, you know, reallocate overtime funding to hire the additional eight police officers, I would need some time to go back and look at the numbers and then come back to you and say, okay, this is the proposed offset. And it would be an estimate because, again, it takes time. We're talking about recruiting and retaining quality officers. Another thing that I did personally was engage in direct interviews with lateral officers

and recruits. So no one comes into the Santa Police Department that has prior history, especially lateral officers, if they have an open internal affairs case, they're not getting a job offer, period. No matter how major or minor it is, it has to be cleared, right? Going back to your question. So to give you a hard number, and then in lieu of, I will tell you that the overtime, you know, monies that are allocated and the spreadsheet that you and I discussed and all of all of you have been provided, the reason we have the overtime is we're not at full staffing,

we're not at full strength. And that full strength is already a very decreased number for the volume that we handle, some nearly 150,000 calls for service a year. That just, you know, There's neighboring agencies that don't come close to that. So that's an attorney-it-all-depends response, if you'll indulge me on that one.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

That trick is terrible when it's being used on you. But no, I think that you're kind of confirming my gut check and when we're looking at this policy, right? I hate overtime. I don't agree with the philosophy of overtime. I wish we never had to have overtime because I do believe that people who work too much are more tired, they're worn out. I've worked many, many, many hours of overtime and that my preference is that every worker gets a set schedule and they don't have to worry about that. But I also understand the staffing issues that we and many departments all across the country have,

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

not just PD, but literally every department out there. So I guess I wanted to thank the residents and I believe it was Mayor Patan Bacera who brought up this issue to specifically address this concern of having enough officers who are responsive to our residents. I think in lieu of that, I would like to see maybe in the future talking about officers who are responsive to individual areas of the community. I think that that was one of the concerns we had brought up in the budget before and a policy issue because when I was living in LA, we had an LAPD officer who would check

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

in on my landlady because he had responded to a domestic disturbance event before and we he knew her name we knew his name and it was something that we knew who to call if something ever happened and I think that that is something that residents do deserve here and something that we can look into implementing with our existing force if possible so that was helpful for me one other comment I did want to ask and it might be at director Downs this is regarding the PAL program. I'm looking at the budget and I think that there was some discrepancy as to the funding. So maybe this is for Director Downs. So in

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

the, at least in the spreadsheet with over time, it does seem to show that the PAL program is funded through a specific fund. Or maybe it's not the, let me see. Like it's a restricted fund and not the general fund. Can you confirm that? because I think those are kind of different issues.

Yeah, there was a summary in the budget document that showed fund number 24 as being for PAL. Fund 24 is a restricted fund. It's for police activities and programs. If you look at the detailed portion of the budget document, the budget, the overtime budget, and the corresponding overtime reimbursement revenue that appears for Fund 24 is basically overtime for events that we get reimbursed for or different activities that we get reimbursed for. So it has nothing to do with the PAL program.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

Okay. Got it. Got it. So PAL is funded in the general fund. That is correct. Okay. Okay. That's helpful for me to understand. I did want to state that Chief, I actually am very supportive of the PAL program. Last year I freaked out a little bit when I talked to City Manager Ridge because I thought it was like a flag football program for our police officers or something. You know, gym memberships to Equinox. And because I had never experienced the PAL program growing up in West Santa Ana. We didn't have it when I was growing up and there are a lot of programs here in the city

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

that are not available to a lot of residents on the west side. And so once I found out what it was, I actually got to experience its impacts when I was actually delivering $300 Visa gift cards with some of our officers into the Villa del Sol community. And they were talking about the PAL program and how their siblings and children and nephews, whatever, were participating in that. And I am very supportive of this program. I think that in order to build trust and create a relationship between our officers and our community, we have to see each other as people. We have to know each other more than just the enforcer and the enforcer.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

And I think that this type of program is exactly what we need to help build that relationship. So I am supportive of that program, and I hope to see that it is expanded. Thank you.

Great. Thanks. I think we have Council Member Mendoza who wants to address this as well. Go ahead, council member.

Thank you. I'm supportive of adding more officers for this fiscal budget and also for ongoing, because it's not the same as we could add more clericals, but they will not be able to go out into our community and carry guns and protect the crowds from a massive, massive shooting. So I would suggest that adding the officers as indicated would reduce the overtime and we wouldn't have officer fatigue.

We'd have fresh officers on duty who are going to do exactly what we promised them is in keeping our public safe. And so while I advocate for more clerical, it is essential that we add more officers and we need the personnel who are trained in using guns and protecting the public. So, and I understand that it may take a while in getting recruitment and getting these positions filled

but we've got to start somewhere. And once we open up those positions, we will get a lot of interest and we will have new hirees and new police officers. So I encourage my colleagues to think about this. What dollar would you put on a life? And we can't think about that the police budget is

off balance because it's not,

we need to keep our city safe. And if we're gonna start talking about dollars and not bring these officers on, we could be responsible for someone losing their life. So we need to keep these officers. We need to bring new officers on. Don't think about the dollars. Think about the lives of the public. Think about the lives of your own family members because it could be us next time involved in a mass shooting.

Secondly, I had neglected to mention my support for the PAL program and Council Member Tyshaw Guy reminded me about the benefits of having such a great program in the west end of our city. And I would like to ensure that we have the same kind of services in a second PAL program in the east side of our city. And I want to ask whether we have, whether we're proceeding on a budget to get that the old fire station, the historical fire station restructured

and refurbished and so that we can house the appell program there or if not maybe we could start looking for another facility but definitely that would be the ideal place and so city manager do we have a line item for the for the old fire station to get refurbished so council member mendoza you

You did allocate dollars so that we can do a rehab of it for a multipurpose room. We have received many suggestions for the use of that, one being a PAL center, one being something associated with the library, and another one with being a nonprofit. So we'll be returning to council to get direction on which one of those you want us to pursue, whether it's an RFP for a nonprofit or whether you do want to make it a PAL program or whether you want something else at it. But right now, I don't have a majority direction as to what ultimately will be programmed in that building.

Thank you. Those were all my comments.

Great. Thanks. Council Member Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 16

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I just want to thank my colleagues for some of these that have been said. Specifically, Councilmember Hernandez mentioned Birch Park and the potential activating of that area with the playground or whatnot. Just very supportive of seeing some child-friendly amenities go into that park. Very needed. And in regards to the PAL program as well, very supportive of it, 100% supportive. I do want to thank Councilmember Pham because I was out there with her that day when we did that neighborhood surrounding the PAL program.

David PenalozaItem 16

And we were there with a couple officers and staff from the PAL program and knocking on these doors, handing out these gift cards. The kids' faces lighting up to see, you know, the staff from PAL, their officer that they deal with. I mean, hadn't seen each other in months because of the pandemic. They were only virtual. So being able to see themselves in person, we were just lighting up the entire family's eyes. So that was really nice to see that there's that community building and bond between our staff at PAL and the community surrounding the PAL Center, which are very high on the census track and much needed of the services.

David PenalozaItem 16

I do want to ask, Chief, in regards to that second PAL program, I know last year we allocated half a million dollars for a second PAL program. I know that the location is something that we've kind of been going around in circles with of where it could potentially be. Is there any movement on getting that off the ground anytime soon? So I think...

Either one of you? Well, I think the city manager has commented that there isn't direct consensus on location.

I know the chief would love to have a PAL center at the Cypress Fire Station. He has also had staff explore other potential locations to lease, and he does have a couple ideas in that regard as well.

David PenalozaItem 16

Okay, and that's please keep us updated if we can help in any way to move that along to get some spacely stuff for that purpose. I would be very supportive of it. I also want to thank the mayor for his support of an additional brick and mortar library, which I brought up at our initial budget discussions, and it's reflected in our community requested initiatives. definitely exploring the feasibility of having that third brick and mortar up. I know speaking with library staff over the weekend, and maybe Director Sternberg could clarify, our main library is going through a renovation. How long is that closure going to be?

Good afternoon, Mayor, members of the City Council. So thank you for that question, Council Member. We anticipate probably somewhere between 12 to 18 months for the closure. So that's why we're definitely looking at a temporary location option, and perhaps something that could even become a more permanent location. So we're starting to explore that currently.

David PenalozaItem 16

Yeah, I think that's something that's when it was first mentioned to me by the bookmobile staff at Memorial Park over the weekend, that the closure would be upwards to a year. I mean, that was sent, you know, chills down my spine because that is, you know, 50% of our library system completely closed to the public. So if there's a way where we could, and I saw how popular the bookmobile was and how we're able to send that service out to the community. So if there's a way that we could, I know we have plans to do pop-ups around our park system in our neighborhoods.

David PenalozaItem 16

The bookmobile is obviously one area where we could expand on that, but if there's a way where we could borrow, rent, lease, I mean, get some kind of vehicle quicker so that we could, in that meantime, when that library is closed and we could provide additional library services, and even looking into our community centers throughout the city while that closure is, because that's coming soon, right?

Yeah, well, we're still in the design phase, so we still got some time, probably about, you know, 12 months before we're probably ready to start closing. So we got a little bit of time. And also during that time, we do plan on launching our Teen Time program, which has been discussed. And that will go out to community centers throughout Santa Ana.

We may either rotate around to a couple community centers and have our librarians embedded in those community centers doing programs focused, especially for teens, LGBTQ plus focused programs to make sure that demographic really feels invited to use our library services. And then a focus on tech as well. Things like robotics, STEM technologies and that. So that's going to kick off too.

David PenalozaItem 16

That's good. Thank you so much. And it's important for me because in speaking with some of the families that on Saturday with the bookmobile, they said that they visited our main library in the past, but that they refused to go back because they encountered a lot of transients around and in and around the library. And I want to, you know, say that that was probably due to the illegal private homeless encampment that was just a stone's throw away from it that we took care of. But that was something that these families, I mean, brought up to me. They said, hey, we don't like going to that library because of what we see surrounding it.

David PenalozaItem 16

So also happy that you've also, I know you've done a lot of things to help mitigate that, and I thank you for that. So thank you. I mean, just know that you have my support of, you know, expanding our library system anywhere we can. and I definitely want to see that take place. And that's it for the library system, Director Sternberg. Thank you. Thank you so much. And the one just final comment in regards to PD, and I have one more for one of the other stuff that was mentioned. For the, I know we received a letter from Congressman Lou Correa about the gun buyback program, and that is something that definitely want to see,

David PenalozaItem 16

but I want to make sure that that buyback amount or whatever monies that we're going to use to buy back all those guns that anybody wants to bring forward, no questions asked, that is already, I can't imagine it would be an outrageous amount, but that is already something that's budgeted within the police department, correct?

I will have to defer to the chief. I know that there's grant opportunities to also fund gun buyback programs, so I don't know if he's anticipating pursuing a grant or if he has available in the proposed budget.

Yes, so we don't delay in taking action before we receive grant funding. We're going to move forward with a gun back program. And the congressman did obviously send a letter to the mayor and to the council, which I am in receipt of, and we're prepared to move forward with it.

David PenalozaItem 16

And prepared to go after any grant available and even, you know, I don't want to sit here and say we applied for a grant, but we won't see if we got granted or whatnot or awarded for another six months to a year. I mean, I know it's something that we all discussed and kind of want to see in the next couple of months.

David PenalozaItem 16

So, making sure that we have some funding available within, you know, whether it's community engagement, bucket, or whatnot, that would be something that I'd be supportive in seeing. And thank you, Chief Ellington. And one last thing with the, yeah, he's back and forth. No, not you. In regards to increasing of mental health services, I want to agree with Council Member, I believe it was Fan. We already have a county health agency that is supposed to be vested in addressing this issue in our city and county, which is huge. But we all know that they've been doing a failure in doing so.

David PenalozaItem 16

So I would hope that we don't try to replicate or duplicate any mental health services that the county should be doing. So I'm not supportive of seeing any funding increased by any amount to anything, especially because we are currently in the middle of a lawsuit against the Mental Health Association, MHA, over on Warner and Main Street, which is in my area and I think Councilor Bacera's, because we were having issues with that entire neighborhood, whether it was Dale High, Madison, or Memorial Park, and Industrial, just seeing the remnants and the impact

David PenalozaItem 16

that having a nonprofit that's not qualified attempting to provide mental health services at this thrift store. So I would hate to see us invite nonprofits into our community centers or our park system to try to provide mental health services when they're not suited or qualified for it. So what I would hope to see, Madam City Manager, instead of reinventing the wheel with something the county should be doing, is that we maybe provide some kind of hotline, a mental health hotline, or look into many of the hotlines across the country

David PenalozaItem 16

and partner with them that could provide that kind of service. and we just let our residents know that these hotlines exist and advertise them and put them out there so that in the need that there are mental health requests or people seeking some kind of aid, they could call these hotlines and get the help they need. But I would hate to see that because of the potential impacts that it could cause to our community centers and neighborhoods. And just I would hate to see that happen and then be back here in a year and thinking, you know, how did this happen?

David PenalozaItem 16

Even though we went through that lawsuit of the MHA because of the impacts it was having. So those are my comments, Madam City Manager, and thank you, Mayor.

Thank you for those comments.

Any—Council Member Hernandez?

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to touch on the item of mental health. So it's already costing our neighborhoods and it's already costing our community. It's been costing us for several decades. And the reason why it's affecting every single one of us is because we have not created a response to mental health needs and trauma. And unfortunately, the county, as we know, has not been helpful in the city of Santa Ana when it comes to addressing the need for mental health services. So the conversation of public safety cannot be had without addressing the underlying conditions

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

as to why crime keeps on occurring in our community. People are hungry in our city. People are unhoused. People are experiencing systemic injustices, police violence, mass shootings. There's a growing need to tend to these people who are struggling with mental health that don't know where to begin. So I want to take this opportunity to talk about the facts related to mental health and crime because they clearly demonstrate that people with mental illness are three times more likely than the general population to interact with police and are more likely to be arrested.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

According to a report in Health and Justice, they are more likely to also have a co-occurring substance abuse disorder. Police and other members of the criminal justice system have become the only front-line responders to growing mental health crisis, also placing police in danger and community members in danger by not having a response for treatment. This is especially true in low-income communities and for people of color. About 44% of people in jail and 37% of people in state or federal prison have been diagnosed of a mental illness. Nearly 25% of police shootings involve an encounter with a person who

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

has a mental illness, according to the data compiled by the Washington Post. So So clearly, part of why we're feeling the impacts of homelessness, crime, graffiti, violence, and now increased suicide rates in the city of Santa Ana is because we're not investing in mental health. Mental health investment will only help our police officers, it'll only help the city, and it's a fiscally responsible way for us to use our dollars. The honest truth is that our streets are not safe. They're not as safe as they should be. and when incidents occur and police arrive and they tend to victims, even after they leave,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

these communities aren't safe and they're certainly not healed. And their trauma goes unresolved. And it only continues and it's passed down to siblings. Crime continues to happen across our community. And unfortunately, crime and incarceration has become a revolving door for residents. So each time we send someone to jail, they return back to our community less of themselves so mental health I feel goes beyond the responsibility of this county as evidenced our community is suffering a young boy was stabbed in councilmember Lopez's ward where children had to gather on a sidewalk and light candles the

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

county's clearly not invested enough in our impacted communities and childhood and adult trauma is high amongst our residents in Santa Ana in addition to the criminality connection of childhood trauma, it is also associated with risk for emotional disorders beyond diagnosis. Emotional disorders that most of our residents that haven't had access to mental health are unaware that they're struggling with depression or anxiety. And oftentimes, what we see as a result is people self-coping, utilizing alcohol, drug abuse, antisocial behaviors in adulthood. So if we continue to not think that mental

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

health and public safety are the same conversation, then these policymakers here are not only making a bad decision fiscally, but they are choosing to look the other way when children are getting killed in our streets. And I can't support not investing in mental health infrastructure because public safety and mental health are one in the same.

Thank you for those comments. Any additional comments from members of the council? I think almost everybody had a chance to speak twice.

Anybody else? Except for me. I think I spoke once. But just a couple of things, you know, before we go back to the list and we'll go ahead and tackle that. So I didn't realize that the library closure for the main library was going to take quite that long. So that was important information. Thank you, Brian, for letting us know that it's going to be a year to a year and a half for the renovations there. So I think what I'm hearing and maybe what I see there is that we have a real opportunity and really not just sort of an obligation almost to find another space

because it's not really half of our library system, but that main library is massive. So compared to, you know, New Hope Library, it is, you know, it dwarfs that sort of a satellite library. So to the extent we can maybe move on that a little quicker, that would be really helpful and a space that not only accommodates staff, but obviously gives us a good space for our students. And on the gun buyback program, so I think what I heard, Chief, and you don't need to get up here, is that you're going to go forward with it irrespective.

But there is, I want to say it's a huge, huge set aside that the governor made for these gun buyback programs from communities. And we always compete well when we apply for these grants. And I know we've done it before. I think there's communities have been already applying for it. So I would say, you know, we want to get on it. I think I heard last I heard was like maybe $50 million left, you know, in that fund. But probably quickly, you know, being drawn down. So the sooner we can apply for that, the better. And just on the PAL program, so yeah, one thing I do want to mention about the PAL program

over on the McFadden site, there's a storage area. Well, actually, it used to be like a little conference area, and it was where communities held meetings. And I know during COVID, when things shut down, that was used more as a storage space. So I know we were asked by, and I think it was Council Member Hernandez and I, we did a walk through of the site, members of the neighborhood association there at Sullivan said, if that maybe could be restored back to a classroom or a community room so they could use for their neighborhood association meetings because they don't have a site to do it at. So maybe that's not a big thing to ask.

Maybe we can, you know, the stuff that's being stored there can maybe put in a storage supply area on the outside, and then we can kind of come back and use that space for more of a community room, a classroom, and in the evenings maybe allow that neighborhood association be able to use that for a space to meet. And finally, on police oversight, yeah, I think it was raised recently by this council, but you're probably around as long as I've been chief. This was raised years ago, and I was one of the initial advocates for this so this was this goes back maybe you know five

years I'm really glad that this council is going to tackle it and I think we'll tackle it responsibly and I think I had mentioned to the to this to the city manager it's been in the ad hoc that I created for a little while so maybe what we do is we just bring it back to the council sounds like the ad hocs had it for a while but maybe for a study session just bring it back and I would say a standalone study session so that we can kind of get into the weeds on that on that kind of like what we're doing here with the budget what we did with the housing opportunity ordinance and some of the others.

So in any event, those are my comments. You know, again, good job on, you know, every department head to, you know, who had a role in making sure they presented a balanced budget, but a responsible budget. I think it, you know, it makes sense. And I think some of the adjustments that I heard from some of us up here tonight, I think, you know, I'm supportive of some of them, but, you know, maybe we can go by item by item. So if you can put that list back up on the screen and we can kind of go through them.

And if there's something that isn't here and a council member feels strongly about mentioning it, they can do that as well. But go ahead, council member.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

Madam City Manager, just a clarification question. You mentioned that some items needed adjustment and some didn't. Will you just clarify what you mean by that?

So you provided a lot of direction on priorities that don't require a change to the budget. So we did listen to that information. That's not reflected on the screen. The items that are on here are those that would have a monetary adjustment needed. So these will have dollars to them. And as you had pointed out earlier too, if some of these do have majority support, staff may have additional questions as to where the funding would come from. But I didn't think we needed to get into that at this point until we figure out by a straw poll which ones you are interested in.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

Yes, Council Member Hernandez. Yes, thank you. So I would say in the increasing arts grant, I would increase it from 100 to 200,000. So I would make the proposal to increase it by the same exact amount, just doubling it. I would then also add, I know Council Member Mendoza I mentioned it the last time we had a budget review that she wanted to see the Chicano Heritage Month funded as well. I would also like to echo my support to see Chicano Heritage Month funded.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

I would say 50,000.

And, you know, let me go ahead and I'm going to call on Mayor Pro Tem, but just a quick question for you, Chief, and this is something that as we're asking for things, we also have to identify things that we might be able to reduce. So on the Cannabis Fund Enforcement Services, there's two line items that I wasn't really clear on. One of them was a body-worn camera program. Is that a new program or is that just funding an existing program for body-worn cameras?

Funding an existing program.

Okay. So that $988,000 is just to go ahead and use revenue from the cannabis sales to fund this ongoing program that we already have with BodyWarm Cannabis. Correct. Got it. And the other one was the replacement of mobile data computers. So is that for vehicles? What exactly is that for?

That is for vehicles. That's the mobile data computer system that sits in the center console of all marked units.

That's replacing those that are being aged out and just getting new ones. and that's at a million dollars, right? Correct.

Gotcha. Okay. Any other questions? Mayor Pro Tem? And then.

Phil BacerraItem 16

I just.

Phil BacerraItem 16

Adam, City Manager.

Phil BacerraItem 16

I had a question for you. So when we talk about increasing the sworn officer's authorization to 400, so just so that everybody understands that we're all on the same page, increasing it to 400, I'm sorry?

It makes a change in the budget, but it doesn't impact monetaries. Is that where you were?

Phil BacerraItem 16

That's what I want to make sure we understand. So whether we do it up to 380, 390, 400, at the end of the day, we're not right now by doing item number two on this list. we're not reallocating funds, we're not increasing, we're really living up to what we as a council adopted in the general plan, which is as funds, as resources become available, we would look to fund

additional officers in the future. You're correct, sir. Thank you for the clarification. It does make a change in the budget, but not in the monetary element of the budget. We do have for every single department the authorized full-time account, so it will be, if approved by the council, It will be a change made to the budget document, but only in the FTEs.

Phil BacerraItem 16

And just for clarification on what I'd recommended for item number two, I wanted to do an incremental increase in the authorized amount. So to do an additional eight this year, and then another additional eight in 24-25.

Is that related to the first item on there?

Phil BacerraItem 16

So, no. Item one is shift up to $2 million from PDOT. So that's an actual monetary action. What I'm saying is for the authorization, rather than just say, I mean, my colleagues are willing to indulge it. I'm open to it. I'm not going to oppose it. But if they're not, maybe the appetite would be to do an incremental increase up to 400. So for instance, to do eight in the upcoming fiscal year, and then eight in the following fiscal year, so you'd have it in 2324 and 2425, so we would arrive at the 400 authorized. Female Speaker 1.: Okay.

All subject to finding funding in the future. Male Speaker 1.: Correct. Thank you.

Male Speaker 1.: So just to be clear, is that sort of aspirational? Is that what we're doing?

Female Speaker 1.: It's a goal for sure, but it is an element, account element that is captured in your formal budget document.

Male Speaker 1.: Got it.

In any event, so let me go to Councilmember Peña-Los and then to Councilmember Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 16

I'm good Mayor thank you thank you Councilmember Lopez thank you do you do you need the library item to be up there because I would imagine that that's a monetary change if we're adding actively looking for a new library space we

presented it in the presentation at the last meeting as one of the initiatives that we don't know the amount that would be needed we have already taken into consideration the funding that's going to be needed for a location while the central library is undergoing its transformation. Our hopes would be that that location could become a permanent location as opposed to a transitional location. So right now I don't have a figure that I am seeking. Okay perfect.

Jessie LopezItem 16

That was my only question. Great so we can go through this a number of ways

maybe we can go councilmember by councilmember and then they can look at this list and say they're supportive of items on this list and then you can take notes of that as opposed to maybe going item by item and all of us voting on each one of those

All we would need is what numbers they are in support of. That's all.

Got it. Why don't I go by our order.

I'll start with Councilmember Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm supportive of seeing the shift from PD overtime to the additional officers. I'm supportive of that. I am also supportive of the $1 million for mental health, supportive of the increasing the arts grant funding from $100,000 to $2,000. I'm supportive of the executive assistant, supportive of the equity diversion and inclusionary training. I'm supportive of item seven. I am supportive of item 8. Just for clarification, CWE, I believe that may have been a typo. Would you explain to me what CWE stands for, Madam City Manager?

Sure, and it may be a typo. Council Member, I thought you called the program that you were looking for CWE, like a community.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

Oh, CIW, Community Intervention Worker. So it would be in collaboration with our PD.

C.I.W.?

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

C.I.W., Community Intervention Workers.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

And supportive of Item 9, 10, 11, and 12.

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

Okay, I'll start from the bottom. I'm going to support 12, 11, 10, 9.

I'll support 8.

I'll support 7.

What is 6-4 exactly?

That was suggested by Council Member Hernandez to provide 100,000 to do training for city staff.

Jessie LopezItem 16

I'll support six and I'll support, actually I have a question on number five because I I remember during the last budget session, we provided direction to hire an executive assistant. What happened with that funding?

So you initially did, and then we added contracted aides. So I can go back to the correspondence that was sent to each of you. That said in light of adding $60,000 for each of you to have a contracted aide, I would not be moving forward with filling the executive assistant.

I'm supportive of four.

I'm supportive of three. I fully support mental health.

And I support one and two.

And I think that's the whole list, right? So.

I mean you went through the whole list not that you approved the whole list I think maybe we should ask what aren't we supportive of that might be quicker so in any event let me go to Councilmember Mendoza and I'm not sure if she has this does she have this slide in front of her

yes I have it go ahead I am supportive of one two four

7,

11, and 12.

Great, thank you. Let me go now to Councilmember Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 16

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I am supportive of number 1, number 2, number 4,

David PenalozaItem 16

and number 10, and number 11.

David PenalozaItem 16

The question I had, Madam City Manager, just clarification of the Chicano Heritage Month. I'm supportive of us celebrating our Chicano heritage, but is this what we added on? I guess I'm confused as to when exactly Chicano Heritage Month is. We're not talking about Fiestas Patrias in September, correct? This is in March.

Sir, I have the same question for that one because you're celebrating and you have provided funding for in the proposed budget for Hispanic Heritage Month, which includes Fiestas Patriots, a part of that. So my question would be, is this a completely separate requested event? And if so,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

like what month would that be? Yes. So this would be completely separate. This would be for the month of August. I don't identify as a Hispanic. A large part of our community identifies as Chicano, which is Mexican descent, born in America. And so the month of August would be Chicano Heritage Month. That is the month where the Chicano moratorium took place. It is also the month where a lot of historical figures from our community, most notably Ruben Salazar, the first Mexican-American journalist in our country, lived in Santa Ana. So there's a lot of historical context as to the month of August.

David PenalozaItem 16

Okay, so I guess because we already have this Hispanic Heritage Month that we celebrate, maybe there's a way that we could change the name so that it's encompassing of every aspect of what being a Latino is. I would like to see though the Asian cultural event increase from 30,000 and maybe take that Chicano Heritage Month because we don't have any Asian cultural events in the city and the fact that we have Hispanic Heritage Month in September and now trying to see if we could add a Chicano Heritage Month in August, which is August two months

David PenalozaItem 16

side by side each other and we only have $30,000 for Asian cultural event. I think it's a slap to the face of our Asian residents in the city and because of how large and the different aspects of Asian culture is, I would be not supportive of 12, but supportive of seeing that amount plugged into number 11. And I know that was Council Member Phan's request, so I'm not sure if you were even open to that, to see that increase of that amount. That would be what I would recommend.

Great, thank you for that. Let me go now to Council Member Phan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

Thank you. So I'm also a little bit confused because I know that in this list, right, we also request that anybody who had a request on the list also point to where you want to adjust the money or where you want to get the money from. So regarding number one, I am supportive of that. It is very important to me that we do get the funded vacancies filled. and I am supportive of hiring more officers in order to alleviate overtime needs. I made it very clear I am not a big fan of overtime but I do understand

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

that we need that staffing whenever that happens. So I will be checking at the mid-year budget update to see where we're at, what we're doing to get out there and to hire folks, so I will ask about that. I am supportive of item two. Well first with item one that doesn't add any money but it's clearly shifting from OT to unfunded vacancies, and what you do in your departmental budget is what is, you know, your discretion based on what we approve here. For item two, I am also supportive of that. That again doesn't technically add any dollars to the numbers. Essentially they're unfunded vacancies, but they are authorizations.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

I am not, let me see, let me just go down the list.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

I am supportive of item 10, lobbyist registry funding $40,000 prior to mid-year. I believe that that is a ramp-up that we can fund because essentially when the registration does happen, that funds the program itself is how I understand what we're looking at. Essentially, you pay a filing fee, right? And that pays for the program. So I guess it might be considered $40,000 startup costs. Is that correct, Madam City Clerk?

Yes, that's correct.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

Okay.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

I will come back to that. I do need to look in the line item budget to see where we can get that money. Of course, I am supportive of an Asian cultural event. I am specifically looking at whether it's Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month or Mid-Autumn Festival. Again, that is the second most important holiday in the lunar calendar for many Asian American communities. And I do believe that it's a part of Santa Ana history that we've forgotten and we've failed to appreciate. And I'm very excited and appreciate my colleagues, Councilmember Peñalosa, for supporting this.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

I mean, I do know that there's an ask out there. And for Chicano Heritage Month, I was also very confused about what that was because I knew we had Hispanic Heritage Month. And I guess I want to know what, I guess, what exactly we would be doing differently. And that's just because I don't know. And so I would prefer to see that amount of money go into an Asian American or an Asian cultural event. Regarding the $30,000 or $80,000 that we would be putting into that, I would like to see that taken from the crossing guard program

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

for additional sites on the budget as listed for $250,000. And I know that last year, one of the major issues that we had was looking at which crossing crosswalks that have crossing guards currently already have infrastructure updates that would provide more protection for our students I work with another city right now where they are actually splitting the cost with the school district and as we have discussed madam city manager the school district can apply for federal grants that would pay for crossing guards but they have gone on the record and refused to do so even though Santa Ana City staff has said we

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

will do the work for you you we just need you to submit it so I really urge our residents to ask for that because that's free money why would this school district leave it on the table so that's where I would take the money from and I would like to see us follow up on the crossing guard program and see where we can remove additional staffing that we don't need thank you great thanks for

Phil BacerraItem 16

that mayor Pro Tem thank you mayor you know many of these items you know I'd really love to see where the funding is going to come from and so I have some real serious concerns with some of these items, but I want to voice my support for item one, item two, item four, and then on, let's see, on item six, equity, diversity, and inclusionary training. Not to give everybody too much of a sneak peek of what the ad hoc for police oversight has been talking about, but that's something that I think is going to be very important for that particular commission. And so I don't know if we need to have a separate item for it,

Phil BacerraItem 16

because I think with the million that we're allocating towards the police oversight commission effort, perhaps that could be in there. And then by the time that we actually go out to bed, get the training provider established, that might be something we want to look at in the mid-year budget, because I'm very optimistic that by the time we get to that point, it will hopefully have some sort of resemblance of what a police oversight commission will be. And so I think that'll probably help guide us better at that point in time. So I won't be supporting six now, only because I believe it will be something that will be included later.

Phil BacerraItem 16

And item 10, I'm a little confused. So Council Member Phan talked about it would partially self-fund itself, but, and I don't know if staff knows off the top of your head, but would that be something that we would, oh, I'm sorry, Madam City Clerk, would that be something that, I mean, immediate, because this $40,000 isn't going to be something that we're going to recoup our costs. This is starting costs, correct?

That's correct.

Phil BacerraItem 16

Okay. So, and right now we have it funded, we don't have it funded at all for this fiscal year?

Phil BacerraItem 16

Not the $40,000. So what is the $40,000 specifically needed for?

Disinteraction.

It's for staff to actually process all the lobbyist registrations.

Quarterly reports is what they're recommending. It's what they're recommending.

Quarterly tests.

Quarterly tests. Staff has to process quarterly reports, and it's what is recommended.

Phil BacerraItem 16

I support the lobbyist registry, absolutely, but I think for me I won't be supporting this particular item because I feel like if we've got an allocation for funding now, we can use what's allocated to do the startup costs and depending on the progress made by the clerk come mid-year, I think that's another item that we should revisit. So I won't be supporting number 10. And I'm supportive of number 11. I have the same similar concerns about item 12 that's already been expressed up here. So for me, I'll be at 1, 2, 4, let's see, and 11. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. You know, because 1 and 2 are cost neutral and they're more aspirational, I'll be supportive of that. I mean, we could change that 400 to 450 and it's still going to be the same outcome. So no harm, no foul there. On the lobbyist registry, as I see that as well, that's something that is going to be sort of a cost reimbursement. So I'm supportive of that and supportive of those three because they're cost neutral. What I would say on item number three is that, you know, what I've heard is maybe there is some, the role of providing mental health services really is the role of the county,

and they haven't done a very good job at that. maybe that 1 million could be used towards a library, right? Because to me, mental health is providing spaces that are safe and being able to provide services that will address mental health. And I think, you know, Brian was talking about creating these spaces within the library that are going to be very inclusive of LGBTQ youth. So maybe that's something that could be rolled into that already existing fund of monies that we're going to be using to transfer the library staff towards that. So that would be my recommendation. Supportive of item number

four, supportive of item number six, I think that I especially think it's important for that training to occur with MPD. I know we've talked about de-escalation. I think we've talked about ways that they can deal with people who are going through a mental crisis, mental health crisis. So I'm certainly supportive of that. Supportive of item number seven and number nine as well. to make sure that it becomes a recurring item. And that's going to be basically, that's already embedded in the proposed budget as it is tonight, that $150. But I would like to see it come back again.

I think on 11 and 12, on 11 I'm supportive at the amount that it's at. We haven't done one yet, so let's figure out and see what that costs. I think we're kind of just pulling that number out of the air. It really is arbitrary, so let's keep it at that number. And I would say for Chicano Heritage Month, very different from Fiestas Patrias, nothing to do. One's, you know, Mexican Independence Day, the other one is celebrating an entire month of people who actually have their ancestry here. And so I would say, you know, to the extent that it maybe isn't 50,000, maybe it's 30,000. Again, these numbers are

very, very arbitrary. I don't know how we arrive at them. But I think maybe just saying we're going to celebrate it and set aside some funding, it may not be 50,000. It may maybe 15,000. But whatever it is, I think we should see that as a way to address this city that is 80% Latino and many of those Chicano. So we should have something that is reflective of a predominantly large segment of our population. So those are my thoughts. I think you hopefully somebody's been able to go ahead and tally those. But I think if that's clear. Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. Councilmember Mendoza has her hand raised. Go ahead councilmember.

Thank you. Mayor Sarmiento did an excellent job of explaining the differences on item number 12 the Chicano and the and the fiestas patrias and I was going to do that but he did an excellent and jot but in in addition i would like to mention that this this is a very successful event that council member hernandez and i have begun and so we'd like to make it an annual chicano heritage month because august is um has been declared as the chicano heritage month and in addition

at the event last year oh by the way it's already scheduled for august 14th all of you are invited please save the date august 14th from five um oh you know what i don't remember the hours but we'll get that to you uh what's of significance and very important to note is that uh congressman Korea was present and he is in the process of getting us a proclamation that Santa Ana is the first city in Orange County to declare August as its Chicano Heritage Month so this program

I'm sorry this event is very important that we continue it on a daily uh sorry not daily yearly basis so that we could recognize those citizens here in Santa Ana who are of Chicano descent and culturally very very different tremendously different and i would like for you to make sure you come this year so that you can see the differences between the events and of the fiestas patrias the declaration of independence in mexico as opposed to the the chicano history here in the united states so i would encourage my colleagues to please support it

and $50,000 maybe a little high. So I'm in agreement to go with 30,000 for now. And we can use this money also for other events, not just for the Chicanos. If we have some leftover, I would be great to share it among other cultural events. So if I would, I'm asking for a retally or recount on item number 12, and I ask you for your support, please. because it does take some money. We rented out the Delhi Center and we do require, we paid for entertainment and food and prizes and guest speakers.

So it took some money and it took Council Member Hernandez and I to do a lot of juggling and a lot of begging. And that's why I'm asking that the city help us for this year. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. And maybe we should all call Congressman Correa, not just to send a proclamation but some money as well. So that will be well received. So in any event, let's go back to staff. I think you've had a chance to tally everything and maybe you can give us the results and then we can go ahead and vote on that.

So, honorable mayor and council members, item number one did have majority support and that is shifting OT to fund additional officers. Item two did have majority support and that is making a notation in the budget document that the new authorized count for Santa Ana PD will be 400, with Phil's commentary that his goal ultimately would be 8 and 8. And item 4, increasing arts grant funding from 100 to 200,000. It's majority supported. And item 7, increasing the gap program from 50 to 100,000 was supported.

And item 10, the lobbyist registry. and I certainly can work with the city clerk on that because if it does take up off and running, we would also need to add to the budget proposed revenue that would be anticipated, which could offset that cost. And item 11 is supported, and I'm assuming it's kept at the $30,000, and item 12 is supported, and I am suggesting it is at $30,000 as well, and partly because both of these events are just right around the corner, and it's going to be difficult for staff to do the programming of it.

So we'll do our absolute best, and then in the future years we could increase those amounts.

Got it. Thank you for that. Let me go ahead and go to Mayor Pro Tem and then Council Member Pinalos and then Lopez.

Phil BacerraItem 16

Thank you, Mayor. Staff, thank you for telling all that. I'm going to just jump right in and make a motion that we approve the introduction and first reading of the ordinance to adopt the budget for 22-23 with the adjustments of items 1, 2, 4, 7, 10, 11, and 12, and then adopt the subsequent resolutions, the CIP, and deposit the $9 million into the Section 115 Pension Trust Fund.

Great. We have a motion. I second that motion. We have a motion and a second. Let me go ahead and go to Council Member Peñalosa, then Lopez.

David PenalozaItem 16

Thank you, Mayor. I just have the question that I wanted to ask in regards to, I don't even remember what number it was, but the lobbyist registry, which I'm supportive of, we could always, if the amount is increased, we could always just come back and staff come back and ask for an appropriation at that time where it would be best available, correct? Just because I don't foresee it, I foresee it being more than $40,000. I want to make sure that we account for that.

Certainly we could do, if you don't want to include the 40 in the proposed budget and you want us to return it mid-year with better figures, we could do that as well.

David PenalozaItem 16

No, I'm comfortable with the 40, but I'm just saying that if it's, because I know it'll be more, I just don't see it being 40, we could come back at that time and ask for an appropriation, correct?

We could, but also as I noted before that if it's up and running before the end of the next fiscal year, there will be revenue associated with it as well. So when we make that adjustment to the budget, I would recommend I do that as part of this process, is do the proposed revenue.

David PenalozaItem 16

Perfect. Thank you, Madam City Manager.

Jessie LopezItem 16

I just wanted to see a list of the things that were not approved today up there on the screen.

I want to see the list, thanks.

So you're working on it, right, Kent?

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

Can you highlight the ones that we did? You said there was a majority approved. Maybe that way it's easier to differentiate?

Thank you.

If anybody's interested in the total of those items, it's $250,000.

That was my next question. Anything further?

Jessie LopezItem 16

No, I just wanted to see the items that were and weren't approved.

Councilmember Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 16

And I just wanted to drop a fun fact. Santa Ana is the first city in the U.S. to declare August Chicano Heritage Month. There we go.

For the record. Let's take the vote first, and then we'll do that. All right, so we've got a motion and a second, seeing no other comments or questions. Go ahead.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

I still would like to know where the money is coming from. I think that is important for me as well as the public as we are allocating this and it's fine wherever we say we're taking it from for specifically number 11 right I want to take it from the $250,000 we're adding adding to the crossing guard program so I think that's appropriate number 10 was actually not really $40,000 just yet because we are going to have a budget appropriate appropriation slash, you know, rebalance, depending on what we bring in. But for the other, you know, $200,000 or so, I'd like for us to be able to point to where we would be adjusting that from.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

And I think that's appropriate.

Thank you. So, without it being specifically identified, with the exception of your item, I would recommend that it's taken out of the unused 6.2 that we were setting aside.

Yeah, I think you had before we even began the budget discussions, you said we had some flexibility with that amount. Obviously, we didn't want to exhaust that, but we knew we were going to adjust this. 200 is actually not bad. That is very much within those parameters. So I think, you know, we could have done we could have asked for more and that 6.2 would have been dwindled down. But I know we would have your hair would have been set on fire. So Councilmember Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 16

Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to double down on Councilmember Phan's comment about the crossing guards. I know that there is additional requests for additional crossing guard locations, quarter of a million dollars. I just want to also point out that at last night's school board meeting, the Santa Unified School District attempted to gloss over 250 million dollars surplus. I mean, we had a 40-some million dollar surplus. The school district has a quarter of a billion dollar surplus that could definitely fund these crossing guards so i hope we get a report

David PenalozaItem 16

back from the school ad hoc committee soon or joint committee and i hope that that is a topic of discussion because that is something that the school district should be uh if there's additional spots needed school district pony up because it's much needed so just wanted to point that out for the record so thank you councilmember fan thank you for that i'm seeing no other questions

or comments and I don't think Council Member Mendoza I don't hear her but why don't we go ahead and bring it to a vote can we take all these and one we don't have to segregate any of these additional so we have a motion and a second we'll take all these matters in one vote so council Council members please vote.

Madam City Clerk, my vote is yes.

You know, actually before we come back to that, let me close the public hearing, which I should have done earlier, but let me close it now right before the vote is actually tallied and finalized.

Councilmember Hernandez.

Looks unanimous from here.

Jesse Lopez, yes. Nelida Mendoza, yes. David Benalosa, yes. Ty Viet Phan, yes. Phil Becerra, yes. Vicente Sarmiento, yes.

Great. Thank you, everybody. Looks like we got through the first reading. We'll bring this back for second reading along with the other items on June 21st, and we are adjourned. Thank you.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

Wait, sorry. I'm so sorry. The vote on PrimeGov only shows three items, not five.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

So I just want to confirm for the record that we also adopted the seven-year CIP as well as the $9.5 million.

Phil BacerraItem 16

That was in the motion.

Thai Viet PhanItem 16

Yes. OK. I just didn't see. I just want to make sure whatever we have captured is right. Thank you.

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you.

Recording stopped.