Read the November 15 meeting.

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David Penaloza

Yes.

David Penaloza

Okay, good evening everybody. I hereby call the closed session meeting to order. This meeting is taking place with in-person attendance and by teleconference via Zoom. The public may access the meeting via the San Ana YouTube channel or the city's website. Please bear with us as the technology may disrupt the flow of the meeting. Madam Clerk, please conduct the roll call.

Councilmember Hernandez.

Councilmember Lopez. Here.

Councilmember Mendoza. Yes, I am here.

I'm here. Councilmember Mendoza is here. Councilmember Peñalosa. Present. Councilmember Fan. Mayor.

Mayor.

Mayor Sarmiento. And we have Cora.

David Penaloza

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Any member of the council would like to take this time to announce their absentations at this time?

Okay.

David Penaloza

Do we have any speakers for closed session?

We do not.

David Penaloza

Okay. We will be recessing this portion of the meeting to consider the items listed on the closed session agenda. Thank you.

Thai Viet Phan

Recording in progress.

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Good evening, everybody. Let me go ahead and call this meeting to order. This is December, sorry, December, November 15, 2022. I'm going to call the Santa Ana City Council meeting to order. This is a regular session. Let me go ahead and begin by making some opening remarks that this meeting is taking place with in-person attendance and by teleconference via Zoom. The public can access the meeting via the Santa Ana YouTube channel or the city's website and as usual Please bear with us as a technology may interrupt the flow of the meeting I want you to know that we have some council members that are going to be joining us

They are remote from the meeting, but they will be joining in and you will hear them audibly So with that, let me go ahead and turn it over to the clerk staff so they can call roll

Councilmember Hernandez

Councilmember Lopez?

Councilmember Mendoza?

Councilmember Peñalosa?

David Penaloza

Present.

Councilmember Fan?

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Becerra?

Phil Bacerra

Here.

Mayor Sarmiento?

Here. And so before I turn it over to Councilmember Peñalosa to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, I'm going to go ahead and give it back to you, Madam Clerk so you can go ahead and make some opening remarks from people that are joining us by telephone or remotely as well.

Within the city's jurisdiction, please dial star 9 from your phone or click the button labeled raise hand from Zoom at this time. Please announce your name and ward or neighborhood you reside in within the city of Santa Ana for the record.

Thank you. And if you'll all please remain standing after we do the Pledge of Allegiance, I'm going to have Pastor Danny DeLeon, Sr., who's joining us here tonight from Templo Calvario. We are honored to have you here, Pastor, to lead us in our meeting. And you offer words of inspiration. But before then, let me go ahead and turn it over to the council members so he can lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

David Penaloza

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

Thank you. You may be seated, I guess.

Thank you so much, Mayor, for having me here and council people, ladies and gentlemen, to be able to address you. It's a real privilege on my part to be able to address you as a senior pastor of Templo Calvario. It's a church that's been a tremendous blessing to this community for many years. It's been here for over 90 years. And sorry, I have not been pastor for 90 years. But some people think that. But at any rate, we've been there. It's a church that continues to be very involved in the community. We have a school. We feed people every Friday.

We've already, a cumulative figure tells us that we've already served at least a third of the community with food every Friday. So we're very glad to be able to do that. And then I've had you in our church, and it's wonderful to be here tonight. There's a scripture that is a dream of every dreamer. And it's the substance of an idea that has moved them to where they're at today as leaders, as people that want to serve the community, et cetera. And we find it in Hebrews 11, chapter 11, verse 1. It says, faith is a substance of things hoped for. It is the evidence not yet seen.

So a lot of guys, people that want to be in a position of authority and be able to serve the community have this kind of a dream. Maybe it's not the same words, but I believe that they have it. And let me repeat it again. And faith is a substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen. For example, this city is the result of a dream. Somebody dreamt up the idea and came up with the streets and all that kind of stuff. Every house is somebody's dream that became a reality. And it is what it is today.

So I believe that Santa Ana is ready to receive you guys, this new term. and they're ready to say, you know, you put your name out there, so we're ready to hear from you. What is it that you have in terms of an idea, a dream that'll be a benefit to our community? And of course, we're all concerned about the community. We all want to see better things in the future to come.

Substance, it's in their thinking. I mean, you know, faith is considered by many like, well, it's just an idea, so discard it, let it go. But no, for these guys, it already has some substance, something that they can get a hold of and they can live with.

In your mouth, you can almost taste it. You can almost taste it. You talk to everybody about it and you share the idea that you have or the dream that you have for the community. And for you, it's kind of a real thing. And the rest of us, we hear it from you and we say, well, I don't know. we better pray for this guy, you know, because he's way off or something. But, yeah, that's the kind of thing that I think every person, like in your position, you guys, you want to be able to say, you know, it's a substance thing. I feel it and I want it and I think it will be of benefit to our community. Of course, that's what we're looking for.

We're looking for dreams and ideas that come our way that are going to be beneficial to our community It's the evidence the scripture says I can see it now And people say what do you mean you can see it now? I don't see anything around you I don't see this idea coming to fruition What do you mean you can see it now? Well with his mind, with his soul if you will involved in this concept and this idea that he's dreamt of But he already sees it, already sees it. And he says, I'm going to do it. It's going to happen. And there's an old saying that a counselor,

a professional counselor that lived and mainly counseled people that were in authority, people that were leaders in the community, et cetera, and they used to come to him. And they said, you know what, I tried. I tried everything. I think it's a very great idea that I have. I think it will be beneficial to the community. He says, but it just didn't happen. I didn't get voted in just like a couple of weeks, last week, I guess. And he always said, you know, I've always given counsel to all these people, and it's always been the right counsel. The guy that asked him, he says, what do you mean? You know, you're that smart? Yeah.

He says, well, I always give the right counsel. Try it again. Try it again. So, yeah, we tried again. Some of the guys that ran didn't make it. Try it again. So because you think that your idea, your dream that you have is good for the community. So try it again. It's the evidence. I can see it now. I can see it now. Nobody else sees it, but I can see it now. And I just want to go into that August gallery and I want to hang around with these people. And eventually I will convince them, I'm sure, they just give me an opportunity to share my dream and my idea.

Because I can see it now and it's going to be for the good of the whole community. I can taste it. The Bible says, look how good it is. For brethren, together, together, we can taste it as being beneficial to all of us. So I am very happy to be able to give you this principle that I think it's good for everybody. And let's live by it. something like it, let's live by it and let's do it for the good of our community you guys are in charge you guys are the leaders, you guys are the ones that I hope really take us there where you feel that your dream wants to take us to

and again let me just repeat it faith is a substance of things hoped for I mean you can feel it it's the evidence not yet seen but it's going to be seen with the help of God But if you would allow me, I'd like to pray for you guys. I think we can all receive more prayer, especially these days. This world is kind of falling apart. This country of ours, beautiful country, is going through all kinds of trials and tribulations and having some rough times. I think that all of us, they, us, everybody that's in a position of authority needs to consult the Lord and ask him to help. Let me pray.

Father I thank you this evening for the opportunities that we have of being able to serve our people Lord when you put that thought into our mind and to our heart Maybe it didn't make a lot of sense to the people around us But now they're seeing that yeah we did have a good idea And Lord thank you for giving us the ability to make it happen And Lord we're looking to the future where with your help we'll be able to do many, many more things. So we're praying for wisdom. Yes, every decision needs wisdom behind it. We're praying for guidance from you,

especially when we are in a position that calls for our guidance and leading the people. We pray that you'll give us the guidance. Lord God, we pray also that you'll give us compassion and mercy, Lord God, for people. It isn't about buildings. it isn't about streets, it isn't about all these things, it's about people that we're serving. You want to make sure that you do the right thing. So we want to honor you, we want to thank you for everything, and be with the council, I pray, in your precious name. Amen and amen. Bless you.

Thank you so much, Pastor. You certainly inspired our meeting and got us off to a good start. So we We are now going to move into the ceremonial presentations. There is only one. I will be doing that presentation to the Guzman family, and if I could also have the Jamidas family from El Modena join us here up at the front of the stage, please.

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Thank you.

So as both families make their way up here, I want to give you a little bit of a prelude of what this presentation is all about. It says it's for outstanding contributions to advancing equity in the public education system in the United States. I think it's more than that, even though at its baseline, these two families represent something extremely important not just to our educational system but our society. For many of you who may not, you know, follow the law or our attorneys or practitioners, there is a seminal case in our national history called Brown versus the Board of Education. Brown versus the Board of Education was the

case that was the foundation for desegregating what was once segregated campuses throughout our country. And you know back when unfortunately this country had the view that there was separate but equal as a principle and they believed that it was in the best interest of society to segregate people of different races, colors, and nationalities in different campuses and unfortunately that is a very flawed, very difficult and painful part of our history but it is our history nonetheless but that was changed thanks

to people that are standing behind me because before there was Brown versus Board of Education there was Mendez versus Westminster Mendez well the Mendez family was what was the one of the other foundational cases for Brown versus Board of Education and that was a class action so even though it was the Mendes family that was mentioned, it was not the only plaintiff family. It was one of several families that formed a class and said, use our stories to explain to

people why desegregation or segregation is the wrong way to educate our youth. So it was a very courageous, very difficult thing to do to stand up because because at that time there were some people that fought with all the passion they had and believed that segregation was the right thing to do in our country. And so these families were valiant, were courageous, and became plaintiffs in that class. And as I said, Mendez was the named plaintiff, but the Guzman family here from Santana, and

and the Ramirez family from the city of Orange and specifically in Molina, one of the oldest neighborhoods in the entire county, similar to the neighborhoods that we have here in Delhi and in Logan, they said, no, we're not going to stand by and let this happen. And so I'm sure that their families went through incredible difficulties and challenges and questioning, should we put ourselves out there? So I wanted to, as one of my last recognitions, recognize these families and these valiant and courageous people for changing society for the better, for all of us.

And we have these families here in our county and specifically in our city. So for me, it's a proud moment because as a lawyer, one of the reasons I went to law school was because I heard of that case, Brown v. Board of Education. because that would have meant that 80% of our residents that are Latino would have been segregated and would have been kept apart from mainstream society. And so that is something that, to me, inspired me to become a lawyer, probably was the basis for many others to practice law. My sister's in the audience, who's also a lawyer, and she's a civil rights attorney.

And my wife is a lawyer as well, who's also in the audience. So I want to thank you, before I make any remarks, for being courageous and for helping improve the condition of not just people of color and students of color, but our entire society, because we are better for it. So if you'll please give them a round of applause for everything that they've done.

So tonight, specifically, I want to recognize the William and Virginia Guzman family of Santana, the first to file a suit challenging school segregation in Orange County in the 1940s. In the early 1940s, William and Virginia Guzman's son, Billy, was denied enrollment and to Franklin Elementary School, at that time considered the American school. William and Virginia were told to enroll Billy in the Mexican-only school. This resulted in Mr. Guzman hiring an attorney, Charles Martin, who accompanied him to a Santa Ana Unified School District School Board meeting

to argue for Billy's enrollment into Franklin Elementary. But the board didn't listen, nor did they do anything. This ultimately led to a lawsuit filed against the Santa Ana Unified School District. And although the Guzman's initial suit against Santa Ana Unified was unsuccessful, the family banded together with other families in Westminster, El Medina, and Garden Grove School Districts to file and win the historic class action lawsuit Mendez versus Westminster in 1946. Together all all the families courageously changed the course of history for the betterment of our country and our children.

While the Mendez story has been well documented, the contributions and stories of the other named plaintiffs, the Guzman, Ramirez, Palomino, and Estrada families have yet to be heard. The Guzman's family's commitment to fighting for our children's civil rights for educational equality paved the way to the landmark case that set the precedent for Brown v. Board of Education. So today, we pay tribute to William and Virginia Guzman for their outstanding contributions to advancing equity in public education in the United States. And while we have the Jamirez family here, I want to thank them as well,

even though they are not from Santa Ana, they were part of this class action that made this possible. and I want to give a special shout out to my counterpart, a council member from the City of Orange that told me about the Jamidas family in her neighborhood, council member Ana Gallegos, who couldn't be with us tonight, but Ana was a fearless advocate for making sure that the story was told. So I want to thank her for that, and I want to thank her for connecting me with the Guzman family and having them allow us to tell their story here before you.

So I am going to, you know, I'd like to have maybe somebody from each family come up here and give us a few words before I present this proclamation to you. So why don't we start with the Guzman family? The floor is yours.

First of all, I wanted to thank, first let me put mine, you know, when you get old you have to start wearing all kinds of different glasses. I want to thank everyone that made this possible today. Mayor Sarmiento. I never thought I would see this day. so many years have passed telling my parents' story of their involvement, but it took one lady, Anna Gutierrez, who raised her hand at the Orange County Library after I said, no one cared or would even listen to you. Know what she heard in my voice. She raised her hand and said, I'll help you. Thank you.

And I wanted to give thanks to our ex-president, Barack Obama, because he always said, it doesn't matter you know you can type to me text me I'm going to read every text that you sent and because of him listening to me I am so thankful so thankful to him I emailed him and he sends my frustration and my tears because of my mom and so he said be this nice letter letting us know that he was just so thankful for my mom's contribution and that to me was more to me than anything else.

I would just so the kids came to the door and they and they said grandma grandma there's a letter big giant box from you from Washington and go Washington yes it's from the White House and I opened it and it was just beautiful from Barack Obama and he always said that he read his emails believe me he read his email because I have proof here that he read it and my mom and my dad they would be so thankful today for everything that they did you know they didn't want money then they didn't want people say oh you know you

did such a good job you know because that's just not the way they were back then. They were there to help the people. They had strong faith in God and they knew that if they stood firm and they just kept trying their hardest that things would come to pass. Look at all you people here. It reminds me of my dad. He used to belong to Vegas Mortuary and they used to get together and they would have meetings. You know, what's going on in the community you know everybody come the leaders come and stay here you know that when well they'll know not know that we're in a mortuary

they won't figure it out you know that we're having these meetings you know after work so come on you know so they would talk about all the issues that were going on in the community just like we are here right now and so then they said hey you know the kids here you know they can't go to school here they're not letting them get enrolled because of the color of their skin oh that's going on here that's going on here and I said hey let's all get together and let's do something listen it's for the children it's for the future generations let's not let this pass let's do

something you know it's not fair our kids are just as smart as any other kids and look at you guys are all here today just pat yourself on the shoulder and say I'm smart I'm smart and don't forget it and I'm gonna do something with my future and I'm gonna help my children I'm gonna help my grandchildren and that's what my parents did so thank you so much for listening

Well, thank you very much.

My father, when he got involved and was told that his sons couldn't go to the same school he went to, by the way, my father went to that same school, in El Medina, the Lincoln School, which was integrated at the time. So when he took his kids back and was told that he could not, his kids could not go to the same school he went to,

he went to who he knew, who he could count on, and it was a Mexican consulate. My father was the only Mexican citizen in this lawsuit. He was not an American citizen, but his kids were. So that's the protection that he had, so that's where he went.

But since then, I've got together with Beverly, and we started a coalition. We actually started an et al. since the narration is given to one family. We wanted to be inclusive, so we started an et al. committee, and my number one goal was to get Beverly's parents back home and get their name to the city they belong to. So that for me is my goal and I just want to thank you for making this a first step.

But my father has his city, Mendez has their city, Estradas were also the second family from Westminster. They deserve what they get in Westminster. And so my committees, what we're doing is they're trying to get the Palominos also with the help of the Orange Library, Ida and Cuevas. And so we need to be inclusive. Et al. is Latin, which means others. And to me, it's others that are just as important.

So we have a website. It's called Mendez versus Westminster. Mendez et al versus Westminster and you can read our story and I want to invite any of the other families that were in the lawsuit to whatever you want to say put it on our website and let's get your stories out I've lost two of the two of the three brothers that were not allowed to go into the white school just this last three years. So my father passed away when I was 11, so I had to go to my older

brothers to get his stories, because like my father, like the other fathers, is very private with their knowledge. They were scared of the repercussions their children would have if they went out to the city. And as kids always do, we like to brag and talk, so our parents never told us. So it was really fine in my research for the last 15 years to find out that my father was in charge of the Bracero program. He also went with Ezequiel Padea up to San Francisco for the discrimination conferences.

So, yeah, but this is Beverly's night and her family. So, thank you very much. Happy to be proud to be part of this. Thank you.

So, this is your night.

Yes, it is.

Come on up.

It's been a journey. I think we've been at it like for 20 years now.

So you should know that this is not meant to be any detriment to the Mendez family. And the Mendez family has been very well recognized. We have a school named after the Mendez family here in our city and in our district. And we're proud to have it. But as many of you should know, when there's a class of plaintiffs, that means that there There are multiple families and multiple people that are subjected to depositions, interrogatories, probably a lot back in the 40s, a lot of scrutiny. So I can't imagine what your parents must have felt, the weight on their shoulders to

be able to carry this responsibility. I just want you to know how grateful we are to them. And I am sure that all of you, you know, here and listening are inspired by this story. And if you're not, you should be. This means a lot. This is significantly important. So on behalf of the city of Santa Ana, we want to recognize and proclaim the Guzman family for fighting to give all the children in Santana and across this country a chance at the American dream. Congratulations.

So we're going to take a quick photograph and then I'm going to hand it back over to the city manager so she can give us a presentation on that date. Mom and dad are gone, but this is for you guys.

Yay. . .

Thank you.

There you go. You're going to be there next. Oh, you guys.

I want to be careful. Thank you. Thank you guys so much. Yeah, yeah, good to see you.

Thank you.

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

So let's go ahead and move on to the update on the homelessness issue and I'll turn it over to the city manager.

Good evening, honorable mayor and members of the city council. This evening we will be updating you on Governor Newsom's recent announcement regarding the pause of the distribution of homeless housing assistance and prevention funding to local jurisdictions. So it's just a single topic included in the homeless presentation.

So specifically we want to share with you the details of what the pause of homeless housing assistance and prevention or HAP for short means. We'll also provide you an overview of how we have used our HAP funding and then I'll give you a summary of what funding we have received and what our disbursements have been.

Governor Newsom recently paused the distribution of HAP funding, a $15.3 billion multi-year state effort to turn the tide on homelessness. The Governor made this decision after reviewing homeless action plans submitted by jurisdictions from across the state. collectively the submitted plan set a goal to reduce street homelessness by only 2% statewide by 2024 the City of Santa Ana's homeless action plan submitted as part of the HAP 3 application stated that we would shoot for a 10% reduction in the number of unsheltered persons experiencing homelessness annually based

on the point in time counts beginning July 1st 2021 through June 30th 2024 our Our goal is significantly higher than the average statewide goal, and it's in part due to all of the permanent supportive housing that we have built in our city, over 400 to date with another 255 in the pipeline. According to the Orange County point-in-time count, the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness in Santa Ana between the winter of 2019 and the winter of 2022 decreased by 36%. So, we did exceed our goal that we included in our HAP allocation.

Governor Newsom stated in part that at this pace, meaning the state pace of only 2%, that it would be unacceptable and we would not be able to curb homelessness in California. The governor was calling upon the entire state of California to do better and will be working with local jurisdictions to coordinate an approach that will deliver more substantial results. The City used the lion's share of our HAP Round 1 and Round 2 funding for the construction and operation of the Carnegie Navigation Center. Other expenditures include street outreach and engagement. A requirement of each round of funding is a set-aside for homeless youth.

To accomplish this, the City recently released a competitive request for proposal for the development of affordable housing just for youth.

The city has received an initial disbursement of HAP III, Round III funding, of just over $2 million. The disbursement of the rest of these funds, which we were awarded $10.2 million, so it's a vast majority of it, is the amounts that the Governor has paused. The HAP Round IV draft application is on tonight's agenda. And while the application is due the end of this month, the state has not yet provided cities with award amounts. And notably, the city has just received the data from the county necessary to complete that application. We anticipate receiving the award amount from the state by November 29th.

And that concludes the presentation and staff is available if you have any questions.

Thank you for that, Madam City Manager. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the council to see if there's any questions or comments.

Hearing none. Anybody online have their hand raised?

So let me just say before we finish up, there is a, I shouldn't say too strongly worded a letter, but there is a response letter that the big city mayors, those are the mayors of the largest cities in the state, 13 of us that compose that group have, most of us have signed on to a letter disputing a lot of what the governor has said. We disagree. We stand with the governor on his efforts. The monies were certainly well received by us, but we believe that we are one of the cities that has used it well.

We want to see more improvement just like he does. We agree with him on that, but I know he's going to be convening a meeting with the mayors of the largest cities as well as county boards of supervisors up in Sacramento just to talk about how we can improve on our efforts. So I'm hoping we can tell a good story here in Santa Ana. We seem to be making strides. Other communities are struggling because they may have challenges that we don't have. But that is an update on where we are specifically. And so to the extent that we will continue to tell our story well, expend our money responsibly,

address the problem as effectively as we can, that is what our team has been doing. And I want to make sure that they get recognition for that. So thank you, Madam City Manager, for your efforts, your team's efforts. I know it's not an easy problem. We hope that it will improve with more collaboration with the governor's office and with the county as well. So with that, let me go ahead and ask the city attorney if there is anything that she wishes to report at a closed session.

Sonia R. Carvalho

Mayor, council members, and members of the public, we had several closed session items this evening, but we do not have any reportable action.

Great, thank you. That brings us to the public comment section of the meeting. And I'll begin by saying that this is the time and place for the meeting of the City Council to receive comments from members of the public on agendized and non-agendized items. Pursuant to the Brown Act, the City Council may not enter into any discussion at this time. We will hear from members of the public that are physically present. and then we will call on people that are waiting online or on the phone. You have three minutes to speak. If you could please state your name as you address the city council.

You can go shorter than three minutes if you have a more brief comment. If somebody said something that you wanted to say in advance, just say, I agree with that person. That'll make this go quicker. We have a number of speaker cards to go and a lot of people online that wish to address us tonight. so we want to make sure everybody has an opportunity to speak so if you can be concise that would be very appreciated. We don't want to know your address but if you do live in the city please let us know what ward you reside in. So with that, Madam Clerk, are there any members of the public that are online? I'm

going to start with those in person but I just want to see how many we have

online. Yes Mayor, we currently have 10 attendees online that would like to speak.

Excellent. Let me go ahead and begin with Blanca Arellanes followed by Maureen Sorkin followed by Bulmaro Vicente.

And if you could all please start lining up that way we can get through this a lot quicker. Thank you. Please, Ms. Arellanes.

Good evening, everyone. Mayor, good evening.

I'm Claudia Arellanes from Santana Business Council and I'm here today before you to urge you to save the bid and vote for number two.

Concerns raised by various members of the bid come down in large part to two important issues, communication and representation. The bid members are presently meeting and working on resolving these issues, and we truly believe that these issues can be resolved with time and effort. The two bid groups, Downtown Inc. and Santana Business Council, are also working on reorganizing our organizations to better serve our bid members. We believe that brighter days are ahead. It is wise for this council to allow the bid to go forward for now and allow the bid to work through these issues. They can be resolved. Please give us time.

On the other hand, eliminating the bid will have devastating consequences for the downtown. Years of work to build social media platforms, well-run and effective programming, meaningful partnerships and enduring relationships will be destroyed. Crime, vandalism, graffiti, more open prostitution and drug dealing will likely increase because of lack of programming advocacy and oversight of the bid I fear damage to the downtown will likely go far beyond anything we can anticipate for these reasons I urge

you to save the bid vote for number two thank you thank you Maureen Sorkin

followed by Bulmaro Vicente followed by Joaquin Martinez

Hello. My name is Maureen Sorkin. I'm a business owner in downtown Santa Ana. I'm actually a second floor business owner. I do accounting and I've been there over 25 years. My problem with the bid area, I am opposing it only because I hope you guys take into consideration. I understand that it helps for certain things, security, promotion and things like that. but for myself being on the second floor it helps nothing security wise I have transients coming in my office sometimes during my tax season so I don't know what kind of security it actually provides at this point my my plea to you

is to take in consideration the fact that it does help storefronts and it does help the downtown promotion but for business owners on our second floor and a lot of unlicensed businesses that are happening on 4th Street, I think it's a little unfair. So I would urge that you guys take that into consideration.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Bulmaro Vicente, Joaquin Martinez, Delilah Snell, and then Lexi Hernandez.

Hey everyone, my name is Bulmaro Boomer Vicente, I'm the policy director for CHISPA and I'm also a lifelong resident here in Santana. I want to take this opportunity to really thank the mayor and the council, the city staff, and most importantly the community for all the support, all the drive to get this moment of passing police oversight. I want to thank the Black Civil Rights Report, the Orange County Congress of Racial Equity for laying the groundwork for this campaign back in 1965 when they presented this demand to the density council. 57 years later this demand will finally become a reality,

But this is just the beginning. Police oversight is the first step towards creating a world beyond policing. A world where our communities don't have to fear police and a world without police violence. We aren't going anywhere. We hope to work with the incoming council to ensure this commission gets implemented and fulfills its roles and responsibilities. We hope to work together on charter amendments that the community wants to see in the next two years. I also want to say that I support the repealing of the anti-cruising ordinance and hope that Santana joins other cities who have done the same.

Earlier this year, San Jose actually overturned their 30-year racist ban on cruising. And I wish that Santana, you know, we must follow in the footsteps of other cities who are doing the same thing. Today is a proud day to be Santanero. The future is bright. The future is progressive. Our community is ready for change and accountability. Thank you.

Thank you.

Joaquin Martinez followed by Delilah Snell followed by Lexi Hernandez followed by Joshua Pineda.

Good evening. My name is Joaquin Martinez and I'm the owner of Elite Fitness Downtown and I've been here for nine years now. And so I'm here to talk about the bid. I am for a bid. It's economically a great idea. I think it will help businesses. I think it's helping. However, I think having two businesses is not efficient. And in times when we're going into a recession, we need to think about efficiency. So essentially we're double paying, right, for having two marketing businesses that aren't really marketing companies. I, my vote is for consolidating them, but also opening up for real marketing companies

that aren't owned by two business owners. And I'm not saying that they're doing anything shady or anything wrong, but the perception is there, and the perception alone is what I'm talking about. So, if we can open it up and have a bid for marketing companies to come in and bid against themselves, like an interview, they'll be competitive and we'll get a champion and a great marketing company that will help us. Because essentially, they're just tools for us, right? The bid is a tool for business owners. We have a responsibility as business owners to know this stuff, but a lot of it isn't told to us, and we don't know it

until we get here to City Hall. I didn't know about the bid until I first opened my business. But now I do, and I just want to, you know, get my idea out there. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Delilah Snell, followed by Lexi Hernandez, followed by Joshua Pineda, followed by Nazario Bastida.

Good evening. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak today. My name is Delilah Snell. I own Altabaja Market on 4th and Bush. i've owned businesses ran events and have been an active community member who has always advocated for the city and especially this downtown since the construction started earlier this year i have organized five town halls to bring awareness create unity and provide information to our downtown a lot of you have been to these town halls and i appreciate your attendance and speaking at them at these town halls there have been 60 to 100 plus business owners why are there more community

members at a town hall than a board meeting for the associations and I'm organizing this as a solo business owner on my own energy and my own money because business owners such as myself are doing the work to communicate with our peers who want more information but don't know where to get it. We've done this on our own dime and our own dollars and or on a time in dollars which really should be the work of the associations. This past difficult year has taught us that we currently have in place for downtown is not working. It's not working to have two groups with two consultants.

It's repetitive, costly, and counterproductive. The lack of leadership in navigating a disastrous three years for downtown is not working. The lack of proper communication with the businesses that fund the area is not working. The current representation and marketing that benefits a few instead of the whole downtown is not working. It is simply not working. People are upset, they are frustrated and many didn't know whether that they were even contributing to something like this again it's poor communication and that's at the root of all of this we already pay the high

sales tax in the county in addition to a business license fee that literally makes business owners in neighbor city neighboring cities cringe how is there an additional fee where many see no real benefit how is this welcoming to more businesses to choose downtown over other areas we need to welcome them. We need to support them. We need solutions. And I do kind of agree with one solution that's out there about one board because we need to condense. But how is this possible when two-thirds of this new board comprises of the previous boards? If we are

to have change and to have something new, we must have new. That is not repeating the old. We need to start new. If we are to move forward with the single association, do the businesses have to fund it where the other merchant groups there are other merchant groups they're not funded by businesses why can't that be an option i have sent you an also an email comment with an idea of maybe putting a halt to the bid for the next year while we are out reevaluate because i really feel like this decision cannot just be made in a single meeting i really feel like we should have a strategic plan we need to come together as a

community we need to plan something that is beneficial for all of us because there's no stopping the growth of downtown but we need to be all on the same page and I just appreciate your time thank you thank you

Lexi Hernandez followed by Joshua Pineda followed by Nasario Bastida

followed by Victor Longoria hi good evening hello honorable mayor mayor and council members my name is Lexi Hernandez and I'm a climate equity organizer with climate action campaign who's a leading climate policy watchdog in the region. As you all know we need to do all that we can to reduce emissions and create climate resilient communities because climate change is here. The only way we can be able to do this and reduce our emissions and meet the scale of the climate crisis is by addressing all of our emissions and creating communities that are not dependent on fossil fuels. This is why I want to urge the council to

follow the city staff recommendation to approve agenda item 12 regarding the appropriate appropriation adjustment for the bike lane and pedestrian improvement projects having a walkable bikeable city allows community members to not need to rely on cars which do which does reduce our overall emissions and also allows for a more interconnected community additionally climate change has worsened and will continue to impact the housing the housing crisis across the country adding additional affordable housing and increasing housing vouchers is a crucial way to address these current impacts of climate change and make sure that the

community is climate ready affordable housing near jobs and transit also reduce emissions again making the city less fossil fuel dependent because of this I also want to share my support for the approval of agenda items 14 and 21 I just want to say a big thank you to city staff and especially to council members for all of your work and time to make sure that the community is walkable bikeable housing secure and climate ready so thank you all thank you Joshua

Pineda followed by Nazario Bastida followed by Victor Longoria followed by

Junior Longoria. Thank you Mayor Josue Pineda. So I'll be starting off with touching on agenda items 5 and 27. So upon looking over the presentation focus on around the anti-cruising ordinance, it focused primarily on street racing and takeovers without giving the reader too much context what the similarities between these two are. In fact, there are very few, and so maybe I can help distinguish that. Cruising by definition means a vehicle or person traveling or moving slowly around without a specific destination in mind, while street racing is defined as competing

with another or others to see who's the fastest at covering a set course or achieving an objective. So right off the bat, there's a clear difference. Cruising typically is attributed to low riders driving with the flow of traffic through the city streets, usually consisting of older generations of car clubs. These events usually take place on days that are mindful of traffic, where families can come out to watch a symphony of beautiful classic cars driving through the streets, and where street vendors can come out to help simulate a rich cultural economy that Santa Ana has come to know, love, and to protect.

Whereas takeovers are mainly comprised of a different generation of car enthusiasts, either racing or shutting down intersections in a disorderly manner. An ordinance is not needed to address this public safety concern due to a task force already existing that addresses takeovers that poses public safety risk which low riders and cruising do not. Have not seen many low riders doing burnouts and donuts in the intersections of Santa Ana. So at the time of the ordinance's origin in 1989, there was this public fear campaign of gangs and since then there has been the stigma that Chicano culture equals gang culture

which is far from the truth. for a city that has chosen not only to recognize but fully support our embracing of chicano heritage we cannot simultaneously criminalize chicano practices i hope that law enforcement doesn't continue to stigmatize a subculture for the actions of a generation that are not applicable to this one furthermore ordinance ordinances like this do not fully consider what the culture of the community embodies or demonstrate and demonstrates why the need for community input should not should to be non-negotiable, and why the need for a police oversight committee is long overdue in the city of Santa Ana. Thank you.

Thank you.

Nazario Bastida, Victor Longoria, Junior Longoria, and then Robert Ruiz.

Good afternoon. My name is Nazario Bastida, president of Unix Car Club. I grew up here in Santa Ana. I've been in the lowrider movement for over 30 years. I've seen, you know, from the worst to the best of the Santa Ana. In the 90s it was really bad, and I agree with everything he said. You know, we've been compared to the street racers. I tried to work with Mike McCoy and getting this situated back in the days, but it was very hard and very delicate. I believe now we deserve a chance to be able to cruise the streets without being harassed. I believe we've done a lot for the community. Myself, I've done a lot for the community.

Over 20 years serving the community, giving back to the community, helping the homeless, over 2,000 homeless every year, feeding them warm meals. You know, going down to the Jerome Park where we know that the needed families need us there and giving out toys, giving out whatever we can, giving a free event for all the community and all those low-income families to come and benefit of a low I mean of a free event on us without them having to pay nothing for the event I believe there's a way we can manage to

work this out for the cruising I mean it's sad that we have to go cruise to other counties when we have our own county we have our own streets I believe every single one of us you know has kids that have grown up into this all my kids have we do nothing wrong for the community if anything we do good for the community because a lot of the people have been involved in gangs we pull them out of the gangs and they get involved into into the car scenery or building bikes most of my members that have gotten into my car club they were ex-gang members that wanted something positive a new outlook and what we did is we give

them an opportunity we have rules and regulations in our club to where we you know we make them understand that we don't need no negativity or not nothing like that and nothing but positive outlook so we've seen some of our kids grown from lowrider bikes and to building lowrider cars like I said I traveled through different states and it's sad that I get royal treatment out out of states than getting it here. I'm recognized through all different states. Any state I go and people give me so much love, they make me feel at home. And it's sad that we can do that here in our

own county. Like I said, I believe that we deserve the right to be able to cruise, show our cars. We're not out to harm people. If we were out there to harm people, we wouldn't have our kids and we wouldn't be cruising with our families out there. And yes, it's sad that we have to be compared to the street racers we like to cruise and on a positive on a positive mode thank you thank you

victor longoria followed by junior longoria followed by robert robert ruiz and then armando

good evening my name is victor longoria and i'm here to show my support for the drop of the no cruising ordinance in santa ana i've been a resident of santa ana my whole life i've been into lowriding my whole life. Started as a kid, following the footsteps of my brothers, who follow in the footsteps of my dad. Everybody in my family has always had a lowrider, an Impala, a car. We've always enjoyed the cruising part of it. Cruising is not a crime. We go out there and we have a good time with our families. Our families are involved. Our kids are

involved. Our wives are involved. Our nephews are involved. I have a nephew right here that has a 64 Impala. It'll blow your mind. We've been cruising since they were kids. They learned from their dads. like Nassario said, we're not into the bad. We like to bring them from the street to do something for themselves. At the end of the day, you put a bunch of money into your car, you don't want to be street racing, and you don't want to condone somebody else street racing and trying to hurt what you've already spent your life trying to build.

So with that being said, I mean, why they look down on the cruising part, I don't understand that. We have nothing to do with the hot rods. We have nothing to do with the trucks. we have nothing to do with all the brand new cars that have the blown motors and they like to burn their tires we won't do that as a matter of fact there's been times we've had shows and we've had cruises where we actually told them to leave because of the fact because i'm not trying to get my stuff messed up and either or anybody here everybody i speak for every lowrider that's in the

house we don't want nobody burning out around our cars we don't want to drive fast we got our kids here everybody has to be safe we make it a family event so that they will be safe uh somewhere for them to come out and check it check out the cars you know the things that we put our pride into building that we teach our kids how to do that they'll teach their kids how to do keeps them out of trouble teach a kid how to build a car they don't have no money for nothing else I don't really have anything else to say but we should really drop that load that cruising ordinance

Junior Longoria followed by Robert Ruiz followed by Armando Aguilar followed by

Jorge Mendoza. How's it going? I'm Junior Longoria here to speak on item 27. Yeah, I think we should lift that ban on cruising. I've been cruising my whole life from my grandfather, my dad, my uncle Victor that just spoke up, you know, and to be honest, I have a lot of money invested in my 64 Impala that he just mentioned. And yeah, I would not want anybody to be speeding or burning out by my car because my car to me it's more than the value of the money of what the car's worth I grew up in it since I was a kid I didn't just start with the car

started with a bike like my uncle said my grandfather was a lowrider my dad's cousins were lowrider my dad's lowrider every pretty much everybody in my family's and we would all love to be able to cruise our cars through the city where we were born and raised in because we we love our city I got a patch on the see you on my jacket. I have my city tattooed on my arm because I'm taking my city to the grave. And, you know, I would love for my city to back me up and lift this band in cruising so that way everybody, all these kids that are here that are part of this culture, you know, and yeah,

I would just look to see it lifted. And that's pretty much what I have to say. Thank you.

Robert Ruiz, Armando Aguilar, followed by Jorge Mendoza, followed by Marcela Prado.

How's it going? I'm Robert Ruiz. I grew up in Santa Ana, in the Delhi section. I come from a three-generation lowriding. Grandpa did it, my dad did it, I did it, and pretty soon my son will be my fourth generation, taking with me cruising.

My nephew actually, he's here too. He's the third, the actual fourth generation actually, the first one. And it's a culture. We just, we love doing it. We have nothing to do with those street takeovers or anything like that. Like I said, we like to, we spend too much money on these vehicles so we could damage them like that or anything like that. It's, you know.

but let's lift that band from cruising and have it back in days and come together and keep it going. Thank you.

Thank you. Armando Aguilar, followed by Jorge Mendoza, followed by Marcela Prado, followed by Maria Perez.

Hi, I'm Armando Aguilar, and I agree to what Nazario said, Longoria said, that kid that just passed by, I met him, he was in the bike club, a kid, little kid. And now he's growing up, now he's got a 1948 bomb that he's fixing. And if we were up to no good, I don't think he would have money to fix the car, because parts are very expensive.

But I've been on it for 25 years, and I've been having fun, and it took me off of trouble. and I'm here teaching my kids and teaching other families. We got like 25 families in the club, and the kids are into it, but they can't go out no more. So I wish we could fix that up and have a good time for everybody. Thank you.

Thank you.

Jorge Mendoza followed by Marcela Prado followed by Maria Perez followed by

Sean McCart. Good evening I'm Jorge Mendoza I'm president of Six Side Car Club like all my friends right here I will not call a friend I will call family all the low-rider family community if it's an Anna ask for help or help everyone any school in the district any city so please I'm a favor I'm not bound the law right there community I'm not gonna do many words but hopefully I

touch your heart and help us thank you thank you

Thank you. and with pesar, I've been able to see the last years have been devastating for all the comerciants of the Call 4. After the pandemic, the worst was the construction of the streetcar,

which somehow helped us to meet our neighbors and to support each other, because, lamentablement, the two associations that we represent, they didn't even have the molest of notifying us that Octa has given us $400,000 to make propaganda a los negocios e igualmente tomaron ese dinero sin ver que era una miseria para la devastación que tuvimos es un ejemplo de los muchos y que nunca nos han tomado en cuenta los comerciantes todos nosotros tuvimos que salir y pelear por ayudas para las pérdidas que tuvimos por la construcción jamás vimos un apoyo por parte de ellos y según nos representan es tiempo de que se elimine

este impuesto llamado bid que para lo único que ha servido es para mala representación. Ni una sola vez he obtenido propaganda para mi negocio e igualmente la mayoría de negocios latinos. No queremos seguir pagando un impuesto que termine en manos de quienes lo administran selectivamente. La semana pasada estuvimos caminando en los alrededores de la calle 4 y es triste escuchar que la mayoría de los negocios ni siquiera saben de la existencia del BID ni cómo funciona. Es una pena que ustedes como autoridades permitan que the business, we can pay this tax tax without any benefit. No it's just that we can get

to pay it, because if no, it doesn't get the license to operate. We hope that you, as authorities, listen to the opinion of the commissioners, that they can finish the tax tax tax and, as authorities, listen to it now, because it never has been paid opinion. We have always been ignored, like when they gave the contract, no se pidieron las firmas de más de la mitad de los 600 negocios que componen el mapa del bid porque ahora se nos pide para poder cancelarlo los eventos que tuvimos en la calle 4 las semanas pasadas se nos ignoró al pedir no al cierre de las calles ya que necesitamos tiempo para poder

avisar a nuestros clientes y estamos tratando de recuperarnos de toda la devastación que hemos sufrido aún así los eventos se hicieron ignorando nuestra opinión y ante todo esto les pedimos

No more bid. Please stop destroying us. No more bid.

Good evening. My name is Marcela Prado and I'm a business owner in 4th Street. First of all, thank you for the opportunity to speak and for listening to us. I've been in downtown Santa Ana for about 30 years and it's been devastating what's happened in 4th Street and after the pandemic with the coming of the streetcar construction and the only thing that was good for us because we got out there and met our neighbors and we needed to support each other. But what about this association that supposedly represents

and did not even notify us that OCTA had given them $400,000 to promote our businesses. And they didn't even tell us that that money is not enough to avert the devastation that was happening to our businesses. And they do not listen to our voices. When we needed to fight because we were losing our businesses due to the construction, They do not support us. They say they represent us, but the bid is not representing us, not representing our businesses.

They do not promote our businesses. They only pay for selective service. They don't promote our businesses as they should. Even last week, we were walking around 4th Street asking people, and a lot of people didn't even know what the bid is or how the bid works. So we do not want to pay for something that we are not getting the benefit of. And the problem is that if we do not pay the bid, we do not get the renewal of our licenses. So we need to end the bid. They didn't even ask for our opinion when it was formed.

They did not contact many of the over 600 businesses that are in the bid map. but now you're asking us to sign to whether we want to end the bid. When they had events, they ignored us, and they didn't even tell us about the street closure, and we didn't want the street to be closed because we wanted to notify our businesses, and they didn't hear us. They ignored us anyway. So we need to eliminate the bid, stop destroying our businesses, no more bid.

Maria Perez followed by Sean McConaughey followed by Maribel Gomez followed by Walter Ayala.

Buenas noches, señor alcalde, señores concejales. Soy Maria Perez. Mi negocio es una juguería en la calle 4. En teoría el BID está bien para lo que fue creado, pero en la práctica solo es para un grupo selecto que se beneficia. Los negocios de la bucha a las cuatro siempre hemos estado marginados. Ya no queremos más bid. Gracias.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. My name is Maria Perez. I have a juice business on 4th Street. In theory, the bid is good, but in practice, it is only benefiting a select group of businesses. We, the businesses feel marginalized. We do not want the bid anymore. Thank you.

So Sean, you heard how short Maria went. She was very excited.

I wish I had more time.

Sean McConaughey followed by Maribel Gomez followed by Walter Ayala followed by Lorraine Quiñones.

Oh Sean. Good evening. First and foremost, I would love to thank the City Housing Commission for standing up and recognizing this wasteful tax and courageously voted to cancel it. In that meeting, Ms. Arianez, despite the fact that most of the pictures in their coloring book that they call it Report, is from the 4th Street, reminded us that the bid is not about the 4th Street only. And I am glad she said that, and I agree with her. So tonight, I am not going to talk about over 10 years of their disastrous policies that

was funded by the BID, our money, that turned the 4th Street, one of the most crowded street, to the ghost town and got rid of the Latino families. Instead I am going to ask what improvement BID has brought to the 1st Street. For example, Food for Less shopping center. Why those merchants who pay to their landlord for cleaning and security have to pay for the bid? And since we are there, let's ask why and how, if bid is so great, ex-Mayor Polito's broader business got magically excluded from the bid.

Let's ask what improvement you have brought to the Arquist station on the corner of Broadway and First, or those furniture stores and small businesses on Broadway? What about the artist village? What did you do for them? And why so many artists have gone out of business already? What improvement did you bring to the coin laundry shop on the corner of French and Civic Center? What about all the businesses on Main and Fifth Street? I am in awe that people who cannot run their own business think they can run my business.

I am in awe that the person can say I own this association and there is absolutely no consequences. I am in awe that for so long you guys have closed your eyes and looked the other way. And finally, I am in awe that after dissolving PB by grand jury verdict, why city of Santana thought it's okay to charge a group of merchants without their knowledge to pay for the lawsuit that the city was responsible to pay for it. It is time for you to to stand by people who voted for you and not a special interest and vote

to cancel this wasteful tax forever. Hopefully after the healing we can talk to find a solution without any money involvement. How to manage the for the street only in order to benefit merchants and customers. By the way, this suggestion that these two associations get together and merge as one is ridiculous, because they are taking two-thirds of the votes, and basically nobody has a vote. Thank you, Sean. Thank you so much.

Maribel Gomez, followed by Walter Ayala, followed by Lorraine Quiñones, followed by Vince Quiñones.

desaparece. No podemos continuar con esto. Estamos desbastados. Es todo por esta noche. Muchas gracias. Gracias.

Good evening. My name is Maribel Gomez and I'm a founder of Brisbane and their business on 4th Street and you're asking, I'm asking Mayor Sarmiento and the City Council members, you want us to be brief, I'll be brief, but I'm just here to ask you to get rid of the bid. I will be brief, and I just say that. We don't want to keep fighting. We'll just eliminate the bid, and that's all. Thank you.

Walter Ayala, followed by Lorraine Quiñones, followed by Vince Quiñones, followed by Victor Mendez.

Buenas noches, y gracias por la oportunidad. El bid antes del COVID y después del COVID. Antes del COVID, el BID aparentemente funcionaba de lo mejor, sin saber yo la razón, porque desconocía cuál era su finalidad. Por eso es que nunca nosotros tuvimos que acercarnos aquí al concilio a pedirles ayuda en ningún momento. Después del COVID nos hemos dado cuenta de que por la falta de liquidez, los negocios bastante bajos, casi sin ingresos, pidiendo ayuda a ustedes. and then I'll tell you how the COVID works.

Simply, we take the money away, or rather than we obligate, something that you really don't have to do. What is the goal of the associations?

We are staying at the margin. As I said earlier, they did their last presentation on the 4th, without even asking us a firm. They were ignored. Now, here they have the budget of the next year of 100,000 dollars. One of the associations. What does that mean? That the money goes only to the employees. Of 100,000 dollars to 85,000 dollars, it goes to that. And only to make propaganda and things like that, from $10,000 to $15,000. What is that?

I can't believe that a person would gain $52,000. You should know, because you are the ones who are the ones who ask you to ask a auditor, or how to manage money, $52,000. Another person, $28,000. And the most valuable of all this, here is a person who would gain $2,500 in the year. What is raro that someone could earn 2,500 dollars in a year. So, why the money is going to the associations, they spend the money as they want, but what is the help to us, the comerciants? None, they pass them by.

You are the authorities, you are the ones who have to solve the problem of that we are going to quit. We don't want more. The associations are, as they say, only for the goodwill of them. Eso es lo que quiero pedirles, por favor. Pónganse una mano en el pecho y digan, ¿estamos en el justo reclamo o no? No queremos más vidas. Se los pido, por favor. Gracias.

good evening thank you for the opportunity to be here before you and we i'm here to talk about the bid i i'm here to talk about the bid before covid and the bid after covid before covid i thought apparently everything worked fine and because we didn't have to deal with any anything we didn't have to come here and ask you for things. After COVID, when the businesses were going down and there was no liquidity, we had no income, then I found out how the bid works, where money is just taken from us, actually being forced, we're forced to pay for this. And the association is only,

as somebody else said before, marginalizing us, these businesses. The president of the 4th Street does not, they not even ask us for our signature. And here you see a budget for next year for $100,000. And then you see that most of the money is going for employees. Out of $100,000, $85,000 go to employees. So here, for promoting and business development, it's only $10,000 to $15,000. You have a person here, I did not believe it, I have a person here making $52,000 a year.

Another person is making $28,000 a year. And it's very strange that a third person here is only making $2,500 for the whole year. So the association is just doing what they want. They're not helping our businesses. So we're here to ask you as the officials of the city to help us resolve this issue. The association is only looking out for themselves. Thank you for listening to us and no more bid. Thank you.

Lorraine Quinones, followed by Vince Quinones, followed by Victor Mendez, followed by Robert Rodriguez.

Hi, everyone. I am Lorraine Quinones of the California Lowrider Alliance that represents over 18 cities standing in solidarity. I'm also a resident of East LA, and I'm also a public school educator, wife, mom of three, and an avid cruiser of legendary streets and areas like Whittier Boulevard. where we are also working hard to repeal the ordinance there. Cruising is our lifestyle, culture, freedom of expression, and mental health. It is our time for us to build family and community bonds and traditions. When we cruise and celebrate our cars, hard work, common struggles and healing,

and enjoy our lowrider tradition, Chicano history is a part of the American history. As noted by Martin Torres, director of the Great American Lowrider Tradition, which is a documentary that has won several awards globally recently. It is time to repeal the discriminatory ordinance that criminalizes our culture. Just like the Guzman family and the Mendez family and all those the Brown versus Board of Education represent and fought for justice, we too are asking to be treated as equals and repeal the ordinance that targets a certain group of people. As an educator, I'm so blessed to be here with others who have stood up and stand up

today against injustices, both big and quote-unquote small. Cruising may seem small, but everyone deserves to be treated equally. That was mentioned earlier today. There are plenty of laws to address the concerns that some may have. We need to be like the Guzman and Mendez family and fight for justice for all. The resolution ACR 176, written by Luce Rivas, celebrates and highlights cruising culture. That resolution has passed at the Senate level in Sacramento and is now chaptered. Let's continue the momentum and be an example of taking a stand against racist ordinances.

Be the first Southern California city, Santa Ana, to repeal the ordinance, set the example, and follow suit of areas like Sacramento and San Jose. This would be a blessing for people like us in East Los to continue the movement. Cruising is not a crime, nor is it represented fairly in the police report that's going to be shared later today. And it is a biased report, which I wrote all over it, my own report. This is some of the things that will be shared later. This is a real report from the real people that I wrote on top of. We are the people.

So that is a biased report and I stand in solidarity with United Lowrider Coalition of National City who was slandered in that report packet. If cities continue to deny our rights and discriminate, we may need Mayor Sarmiento's civil rights sister lawyer. Please call me. We need to vote to repeal that anti-cruising ordinance. This is a civil rights issue and I'm looking for a civil rights lawyer. So we need to stand together, be united, and have solidarity against racist ordinances, and give the people a fair chance. It's time, so do the right thing. Just like this magazine handed here today, Cultura.

It's not just only for magazines. This is the real cruisin and authenticity of culture. All of us standing here today. So honor true traditions and authentic culture. Thank you, speaker. Your time is up. Thank you.

Vince Quinonez followed by Victor Mendez followed by Robert Rodriguez followed by Saul Garcia.

Hello, I'm Vincent Quinonez. I'd like to thank all the city council for having item 27 on the agenda and having it as consideration as you guys are going to be making history in your decision. Cruising is not a crime. As an American citizen, it's our right to drive our car and not be in fear, being harassed, and stereotyped. Having been raised in Santa Ana, some of my fondest memories are on Bristol, cruising on a Sunday night with friends. The culture lives and breathes within the city. You cannot deny our culture. You cannot deny our dreams of driving our dream cars.

The stigmatization of our communities are flat-out racist. And yes, whenever you have a lot of people gathered in urban areas suffering from society ills, you will have gangs. They exist as long as the police and racist oppression exist. Cars bring culture and people together from all walks of life. It's a mental health release from running the hamster wheel throughout the work week. Cruising is not a crime. Cruising is not a crime. The establishment will never stop me and mine. Repeal the ordinance and do the right thing.

We are the people fighting the struggle, living in the world. My family is a military family. They fought and sacrificed for the people not to have to experience racist and oppression in America. repeal the ordinance cruising is not a crime cruising is not a crime repeal the ordinance and stops the systemic racism within the city of Santa Ana and be our champions for our community thank you

thank you Victor Mendez followed by Robert Rodriguez followed by Saul

Garcia followed by Raul Yanez. Yeah tonight I recommend that the council move forward and approve the second reading of the ordinance and move forward with establishing a police commission. What follows are just really my closing comments in order of importance. You might want to take note. The word transparent does not appear at all in the ordinance. I believe the council must be clear in that that this oversight commission is not merely advisory but an oversight commission with investigative authority and as such must be respected as such in order to really

get to the highest degree of performance in public safety there has to be a some proactive effort involved the mere investigation of complaints or claims will not improve performance it's just going to be recipe for continued processes and continued action along nothing can really be gained by doing the same thing over and over again and sometimes to a fault the council and the commission both morally and legally must recognize that the police chief his lieutenants and captains and the sergeants are both are responsible as anybody and as such are subject to oversight we i would encourage you

to look at recent events in stockton and now kansas city which show show the need for oversight at the highest levels of policing.

Section 2667, despite the direction provided by the council, the section still is written to imply that there's no input by the commission to establish a budget, although I think it's kind of implied, but I think the direction was to be more specific about their involvement with respect to budget development. 2663 and training. I believe training at some point should include coursework in ethics and integrity and maybe electioneering, Brown Act and things of that nature, as well as diversity. 2665, I would just give careful attention to be given to how government code claims

are handled and processed since they kind of proceed towards and we have to be cognizant of the timing and other requirements associated with those types of claims against the city.

Under 2665, I believe this timing up to 90 days kind of impinges the right of the public to know. I think it's something that just has to be dealt with on a situational basis, but I encourage the council to think about that timing between complaints and the actual release of the information to the council. I think 90 days could create some issues, but hopefully the timing will be appropriate and responsive on both on for all parties that concludes my comments on the on the commission i would only ask the council to hold the city manager accountable for commitments made for the

use of revived funds for the senior citizens committee this was made on november 17th of last year it's on youtube the words are inexplicable there will be a commitment made to senior citizens i have not heard anything to date and i encourage this council to hold the city manager accountable that's your job not mine thank you thank you Victor Robert Rodriguez followed by

Saul Garcia followed by Raul Yanis followed by Tito Kuno

good evening I'm here to get the no cruising ordinance lifted I've been cruising for over 40 years plus and I mean I've loved it all my life to kept me out of trouble, kept me out of doing things that I never wanted to do and be a bad man. I come from a military family where I have three sons that are Navy courtsmen for the Navy, and I teach them a lot about my culture and what I've done. I've never teach them to do anything I did, but this is what I love because all my family, uncles, dad, everybody has come from low riding. And I love it so much that, you know, this is what I enjoy doing so much.

in 2015 I was elected a lowrider legend and I really appreciated that very much and I really love cruising a lot and it's kind of sad half the things that happen out there in the streets that's what's going on of being shut down being pulled over being treated the way we get treated and I think it's kind of sad me that I look up to lowriding a lot and I preach it a lot to my kids and you know I really do dig it so I will hope you guys see what we're where we're coming from and we lift it and I hope the best for all of us thank you very much thank

you

Saul Garcia followed by Raul Llanes followed by Tito Kuno followed by Mike

Hussein good evening my name is Saul Garcia I teach automotive for Valley High School here in the city of Santa Ana. I'm here tonight to speak on item 27. I'm here to support cruising in Santa Ana. Lowriding has and will continue to help our community as it's done fundraisers or support in the community need. The Lowrider community has shown its desire to build partnership with the community of Santa Ana and Santa Ana PD. Lowriding carries a culture significant for many residents of Santa Ana and it's the Lowrider community desires to build strong relationships with the city of Santa Ana.

As a automotive teacher, as a teacher teaching high school, we have, I come across students that have no desire to attend school, no desire to go to first period or ditch school or leave school. When my students work on that 64 Impala that everybody's talked about and we rebuilt the suspension before the hydraulics after the hydraulics we rebuilt the we did the electrical worked on the engine rebuilt the engine and when they see that on social media going to events

fundraisers and they come back to me the next day is hey when's that car coming back so we can continue to work on it i don't know when he has more money um just last week i was at Romero Cruz, formerly known as Spurgeon Intermediate, and I talked to a couple of the kids from Project Kinship, and these kids were literally like running around, being disrespectful.

And I was just there in my, you know, my automotive shirt, and I asked the principal, I'm like, can I speak to these kids? And they're like, yeah, what do you want to talk to them about? I just want to talk.

And they scheduled the library. They opened up the library for me. And it was about 14 kids. Some of them didn't have moms. Some of them don't have dads growing up.

And growing up in Santa Ana, I wasn't born in Santa Ana. I was growing up in Santa Ana. Growing up in a garage, living with my seven siblings, going to the food drives, going to church, getting the food, and then growing up and being a teacher, owning a 62 Impala now that I can relate to those students and tell them, hey, you can do this, the same thing that I'm doing, be educated. Same thing that a lot of us, a lot of people have a bachelor's degree, a doctor's degree, a master's degree hanging up in their office, in their walls, in their closet. Some of these cars are our bachelor's degrees. Some of them are our doctor's degrees.

That is our hard work. And all we want to just do is just cruise. It's not a crime. We just want to go cruise and just help out others.

I, as, and I'm going to speak in as the district. Thank you, sir. Your time is up. Oh, come on now.

We got you. We got you.

Raul Llanes followed by Tito Cuno followed by Mike Hussain followed followed by Jennifer Rojas, followed by Juliet Castro.

Good evening, members of the council. My name is Raul Yanez.

Business and property owner in the downtown and also president of Santana Business Council. My concern tonight is to keep the bid. We're in the process of merging into one association and include new BID members with new ideas, have better communication and representation.

Some BID members want to join our group,

Eliminating the bid, it would be devastating for the downtown.

Please, if you'll all let everybody speak, everybody should be respectful to everybody

who's speaking. Having no promotion, having no events in the downtown, it's going to be worse than the construction and COVID. So I urge you to both yes and the bid. Thank you.

Tito Cuno followed by Mike Hussain followed by Jennifer Rojas followed by Juliet Castro followed by George Reinhardt.

Good evening everybody, my name is Tito Cano, born and raised in Santana, president of Boulevard Nights. Let me start with my story.

eight years old, you know, going with my parents, Kmart, SOTY's, Fountain Valley, you know, just regular kid, you know, trying to stay out of trouble. And, you know, I went to Centennial Park before we went to the store, right, to take a walk. And there was a gathering, mini trucks, lowriders, you know, Chevys, you know, Oldsmobile, Buick, all the other cars. They were family cars, right, but people were customizing them, making them different, and it just caught my eye. So when we went to the store, it was supposed

to be a family trip to get, you know, stuff that we needed for me and my peers, and I ended up walking the aisle of the toys, and, you know, started grabbing model plastic cars and that's where I got the bug you know the lowrider bug and I started putting them together trying to learn how to paint I painted more my fingertips then I actually painted the cars you know the plastic and that's how I started so I got more into it I got into a bike I did my first bike and you know I didn't get no props from from anybody it was just my personal

preference to do it because I got it and I would start shopping for the parts until I got it to where I needed to get it, you know, and be able to pedal my bike in the neighborhood, go out to the boulevard and just, you know, stay at the corner and look at the cars. And then, as time, you know, I grew up and I was able to get into a car, you know, at 16, 15, 16, I was able to get into a car I don't know, license, you know, I had a job, I had school, and, you know, I got the car to the point that I could, you know, drive it, you know, representable in the streets. Like, you know, there's rules out there, you know.

You don't just, you know, do it. You know, if you hang out with the crowd, if you want to fit in, there's certain mods you got to do, you know. There's a lot of time, a lot of work in these cars, man. We're not out there with these, you know, don't socialize us with those, you know, car meets. that have nothing to do with us, those guys are driving mom's and dad's car or stolen or I don't know what, but I wouldn't put that type of money, 50 to $60,000 on a car to go hit a curb, go hit another car or run over a person. You know, that's the last thing I wanna do now. You know, and back then, of course.

So we don't wanna get mixed, you know, associated with those people, we're different. You know, cruising, I never heard somebody cruising at 60 miles an hour. You know, if cruising is, you know, the street limit, if it's 25, 35, maybe we might even go slower. You know, we get hunked at because we go too slow sometimes. So don't mix us up with that. You guys did it in the 90s. You know, when you said zero tolerance.

Thank you, sir. Your time is there.

It's all the same, and we're not the same. Thank you. Thank you.

Mike, before you go forward, is there another Victor Mendez here?

There is, okay, so the other Victor Mendez went in your place. You'll go right after Mike. We'll go ahead and bump you up. Go ahead, Mike.

I'm Mayor, members of the City Council, City Staff. My name is Mike Hussain. I have a business on 4th Street in downtown Santa Ana. I am urging you to vote to continue the bid, only because I believe that the bid has done a lot of good things for downtown Santa Ana. There were many programs. There was too many... Because we have two organizations, Downtown Inc. and Santa Ana Business Council, they work separately and sometimes together. They overlap, and I acknowledge there are duplication of services, but at the same time,

there were a lot of benefits that downtown Santa Ana benefited from. There were a lot of events planned, a lot of meetings, and inviting the public to downtown Santa Ana. I think there is just too much infrastructure that has been already invested in downtown San Ana through the bid process and I believe that by continuing that outweighs the burden of killing the bid because if you do kill the bid we're going to have to start all over again and too much was invested for you know for the last 10 years or so and I think if some of the

protesters are not happy with the way things are going now that's okay there's room for improvement We can try to reconcile that. We can try to set up a new organization and invite everybody.

Well, this is a democracy the last time I checked, and I think if you guys want to advocate for representation and inclusion, then you should have an open mind to have everybody participate in this process because that's the way we're set up to do things. And if you want to be an exclusivist, and I'm not talking about city council, I'm talking about the protesters, then they're basically acting and they're accusing the Santa Ana Business Council and downtown Santa Ana to be, to act in the same way that they're acting right now by being exclusivist. But that's an argument that is not going to work at all.

I think it's, I think we can make, there's room for improvement. We can try to make changes. We can be more inclusive. We can set up a new infrastructure with new memberships that's more widely represented of downtown Santa Ana. Instead of shutting the door and closing down this bid, the devastation is going to be overwhelming. And I think it's better for us to try to rework the bid with some modifications for improvements. And I'm open to any suggestions. Thank you very much.

therefore I urge you to strongly vote for to continue the bid thank you so I'm

gonna remind everybody again you're all entitled to your opinion we want to hear from you we don't want you speaking over somebody else that has the you know has has requested a chance to address the council because we don't want anybody to speak over you when it's your turn so please you know I don't want to admonish anybody again. This is this has been a you know this is a passionate issue. I just want to make sure that all of us allow each other the respect to be able to at least hear one another. You want the council to be able to absorb all the comments. So Victor Mendez Sr., right? Or Jr.? Okay so I

called on another Victor Mendez. So after Victor Mendez Jr., Jennifer Rojas followed by Juliet Castro followed by George Reinhart followed by Jeanette Sanchez. Good evening Mayor and

council people um ward six right here third generation vice president uh i'll cut it short but cruising is not a crime and talking about cruising a couple years ago we did it on fourth street which i know a lot of the people right there benefited from that and it's all about just having a good time showing the culture and just being positive I know you were at a couple last week at Victoria Barrio thing we were asked to be there there was another club back to be there we were asked to be at El

Salvador Park we like going to cruise to those places with respect knowing that we're not going to get pulled over and hassled but not but we have pride culture or whoo thanks thank you

Jennifer Rojas followed by Juliet Castro followed by George Reinhardt followed by Jeanette Sanchez and our last speaker is on a party good evening mayor and city

council members my name is Jennifer Rojas I am the policy advocate and organizer for the ACLU of Southern California based in Orange County I am speaking tonight in support of consent calendar item number five the ordinance to establish a police oversight commission I want to some sincerely commend the city council the city attorney's office and city staff for their work and support for police oversight the city's intentionality and willingness to hold public forums conduct surveys and accept meetings with members of the public to develop this police

oversight commission model that process is unique in my experience and incredibly important the part the participatory process that the city put into action the critical input from the community and the hard work of community-based organizations are what led to the robust Police Oversight Commission ordinance that is being voted on today. We ask for your unanimous support once again on this ordinance. If past this evening, the Santa Ana City Council will have the important task to appoint the inaugural set of commissioners after the ordinance goes into effect in 30 days.

I want to draw attention to the following language in section 2-661. The City Council shall strive to appoint members who are fair and impartial and who represent the diverse social, economic, and political interests. The City Council shall consider the career and life experiences of Commission applicants and appoint those who are representative of the diversity of Santa Ana community and whose knowledge and experiences will most benefit the commission's ability to carry out its duties and responsibilities and build trust with the community. The City Council will strive to appoint applicants

with knowledge and or experience in the fields of human resources practices, management, policy development, auditing, law, investigations, social services, civil rights, and civil liberties. Again, the City Council is voting on a robust police oversight ordinance because of the overwhelming engagement and support by Santa Ana residents. The ultimate success of the Police Oversight Commission will also depend on the level of engagement from the public. If passed, I urge members of the public, especially those here tonight and who have been engaged throughout the process to apply for the commission

and to share information about police oversight with your family and friends in the city. Thank you again to the City Council for your work. Police oversight is an important step forward, but our shared work is not over until everyone, all communities can live free of state violence. Finally, I want to support agenda item 28 to consider a historical marker to honor, remember, and memorialize the story of Francisco Torres. Thank you.

Thank you.

Juliet Castro, followed by George Reinhart, Jeanette Sanchez, and then Ana Padilla.

Hello, how are you doing? My name is Juliet. I'm a new business owner in downtown Santa Ana, and I'm here to say to cancel the beat. I've been hearing a lot from my friends. The beat is not helping, and I see it myself. Last two years, the organization made an event for bridal and quinceaneras. They say they're supposed to support beauty salons, bringing money, and I wasn't invited. I didn't even receive the money they promised. I'm still waiting for it. They don't help us on the COVID. We've been paying taxes.

I've been paying those extra taxes for the past four years. I don't see any help from the bid. I want you to listen to my voice. I'm a new business owner and I don't see any results with the bid. I want the bid to be cancelled. They bring people from other cities to work here and their events. I don't think that's fair. We here in Santa Ana, we pay our taxes. You should give us the opportunity to bring jobs not from other people from outside

from LA and I don't see my business and their and their um publicity they do I don't see it I don't see it and I don't think it's fair we're paying extra taxes for the hell we don't even have a security date to help us I don't know how they're helping but I don't I want to be to be cancelled thank you thank

Thank you.

George Reinhart followed by Jeanette Sanchez followed by Ana Padilla.

Good evening. My name is George Reinhart. I represent Group OC. I would just like to say I'm living proof of somebody growing up in the streets, rough life and building a car helped me change my life and i would like you guys to consider lifting the band of cruising it's our lifestyle thank you thank you

jeanette sanchez followed by anna padilla

Good evening, Mayor, Councilmembers. My name is Jeanette Sanchez. I've been a business owner here in the downtown for 14 years. I speak on behalf of myself and many other businesses here in downtown and outside of Ford Street. I'm asking to please listen to our cry for help on canceling the bid. I drove down 4th Street this morning and it gave me chills up my spine on how dead it is. You drive down 4th Street, 5th Street, 3rd Street, the crossing streets, and there's no people walking. It's dead. It's heartbreaking it took this construction fight for assistance for us to get together

and people to realize they're paying into the bid. The associations failed us and the city failed us on neglecting to inform merchants that they are paying for this extra tax. People didn't know what the hell a bid is, let alone they're paying for it. These associations failed us and they did not do their job effectively on notifying merchants on their meetings, social media, last minute posts, not everyone is on social media. Why didn't they make the effort in reaching out to invite merchants to their meetings? we should have a vote on how we wanted our money to be spent.

The events they claim they do for merchants do not benefit us at all. What happened to the Latino events? Why have they pushed Latino events to Flower Street? Fiestas Patria Cinco de Mayo? I don't want to just focus on Latino businesses. What about art galleries that are less and less? I walked down the other day with Marcela on 5th Street, a new Mediterranean restaurant next to Mil Jugo's. They've been there for like six, eight months. The owner doesn't even know how he's going to make it. The subway on Main and Civic Center, out of business. Beauty salons on 3rd Street, dead. There's no customers.

What happened to 4th Street when it was full of people and noise? What happened to all the Latino families that filled the street? Business improvement district. Where are the improvements? Business is worse and worse each year, less and less sales. Downtown has become a ghost town. You guys are a witness to that. I'm not making this up. They proposed a new idea of five members of each association to merge into one. It's the same people, same concept with a different name. The principle is that we don't want it at all. Last commission meeting, Madeline Spencer said she makes $48,000 a year, and it's not enough to survive.

Ryan Smoller, $70,000. Why should we pay for their salary? For what service? I can save that thousand dollars I pay into the bid, invest on my own advertisement a year. Please, council members, I am asking for your help. We have been through enough, the pandemic, OCTA construction, the injustice with these associations. We are sick and we are tired. Please vote on canceling the bid to stop this corrupt tax and corruption. Thank you.

Ana Padilla is our last speaker and then we will go to speakers that are on the line or virtually

joining us. Good evening Mayor and council members and city staff. My name is Ana Padilla and I have two businesses in 4th Street. I don't want to be reparative of everything that my fellow neighbors shared with you today. I'm actually very proud of everything that they have said and I agree with mostly all of them. I agree that we need to dissolve this bid. We already on the higher tax in Orange County. Why are we paying for more tax? When other comments which I respect and I don't want to be disrespectful but

they the only thing that they can say is that the bid is going to do better. Better in what aspect. The bid does not pay for security, so getting rid of the bid is not going to bring us more vandalism of the things that we already have in the downtown. That's something that is being paid by the parking revenue. I'm honestly here today just speak out of my heart. We are tired, and you have heard that today. We are really tired of injustices. We are really tired of things that we're just finding out. I have never been in council meeting before OCTA, and now I feel like I know you all because I'm here all the time and the

reason is because I cannot I do a stand for injustices and this tax tax is just an injustice we are not getting any anything else anything that we deserve for this I do my own advertisement I'm I am the perfect sample that this tax is not working on one hand I have Perla Mexican cuisine which is a restaurant I I get a lot of advertisement for DTSA, Santa Ana page. I do. I participate in Saver Santa Ana. I participate in every single event, which I don't make any money out of, but I'm hopeful to one day make it. But on the other hand, I'm an accountant, and I have a professional business, and that has never been advertised, not once.

I have never even been before known about this bid until the construction happened. So why we have had, Delilah just said it, several town halls with more than a hundred attendees by her dropping off flyers because like business by business and inviting them to these town hosts and give them information and letting them know we all closed the street once because we were so desperate that our businesses were going to trash and that didn't require any money we have had several meetings all the businesses in here we have had several meetings to come to console to ask for

help that did not require any any money so I don't I don't understand the reasons why we should have this I sent any comment I don't know if you guys got it but I would love for you to see this documentary on Hugh Hauser there was a documentary that he posed on 2001 and he came to the city of Santa Ana and he says heading to the island he discovered a vibrant Latino community in Santa Ana at his strolls on 4th Street visiting markets, clothes, and stores. This community has been visited by politicians. Thank you, Speaker. Your time is up. Just no bid. Please.

Thank you.

So I'm now going to go ahead and turn it over to the clerk staff so they can call on members of the public that are joining us by phone or virtually.

Before I'm meeting callers, I would like to begin by reporting the following summary of emails provided as of today. We got a comment for item number five. Comment is to hold off on passing the oversight ordinance until the new council is sworn in. Comments on item 26, the bid. We have two residency not disclosed in support, eight Santa Ana residents in support, and one non-Santa Ana resident in support. We have opposition, three residents do not disclose, two Santa Ana residents and one non-Santa Ana resident.

We have a comment that suggests have OCTA pay for half of the bid. And on item 27, we have three supporting to repeal the anti-cruising ordinance. to the audience.

Zoom ID Victor Bayan, please select the microphone icon to unmute from your device and proceed with your comment. You have three minutes to speak. Thank you. Can you all hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Okay, hold on. I'm gonna mute this other one of mine. Some other phones too. Sorry about that. You got that? Okay.

I'm reaching out to you for item 26 to strongly accept the recommendation of the Community Development Commission to dissolve the downtown Santa Ana Business Improvement District. The commission raised an important question as to why 80% of the budget submitted was for salaries. What's left for promoting businesses? The bid as run by Downtown Inc. is a sham and a scam. And there have been years of complaints. The list is long. It's nothing new. We're hearing today the same complaints we heard 10 years ago, 8 years ago, 6 years ago. seeing the same problems as outlined in the grand jury report that preceded it.

We hear Ryan Smolar and Madeline Spencer talk about how great everything is going and how much money they should be making, as was also referenced today. Their lack of empathy for the merchants borders on cruelty. In fact, you can see that Ryan and Madeline have used the merchants' own money to mobilize against them. They treat the bid assessment like their personal ATMs to spend without accountability as to whether their pet projects benefit the merchants who pay into the bid. They do not. They benefit a few who make out like bandits on the backs of the many hardworking businesses who are the backbone of downtown Santa Ana.

And downtown Inc. and the SABC are currently breaking that back. You will find some businesses who benefit tremendously, and they are willfully oblivious to the suffering of their fellow merchants. And this only furthers the injustice perpetrated by downtown Inc. and the SABC. The commission's recommendation is the right thing to do. Give the merchants a break, give them a voice at the table in building something new.

The current situation only benefits new gentrified businesses, out-of-town people on the backs of the assessments of the businesses who have been here for years who have said they're not being served and have demonstrated that they're not being served. And they're paying for a service they're not receiving. And you can see tonight that the injustice and disparity is clearly experienced more by Spanish-speaking merchants. Say no to the unrepentant abuse of Downtown Inc. Downtown Inc. and SABC operatives attack city staff. They lie about support. They censor critics.

and they appropriate the intellectual property of Santa Ana business people in residence. They're perpetrating injustice. There needs to be an audit and investigation of Downtown Inc. and the SABC. The P bid was unfair. The bid is unfair. It's time for something new. Stop the suffering of downtown merchants. Accept the recommendation of the commission. Dissolve the bid and build back something better. There are other models, better models, that are equitable and just, like a maintenance assessment district. We need a new model that serves the merchants. Reorganizing the bid now is too little too late.

They had 10 years to make it work, and we're here today because they have failed. And SABC businesses are failing too. The people who are running the program, they can't even keep their own businesses afloat. And we've heard that it was thriving before. You heard Raul Yanez say that they are merging into one organization, which is the worst thing that will happen. It will violate the bid contracts. It's probably illegal and will take us back to the days of the PBIT. It demonstrates that they have no real ideas. Don't believe the shameless fear-mongering about crime and drugs and prostitution.

downtown inc downtown santa ana was a major economic player before the bid before the pbid it will be again as as the previous speaker spoke about that that presentation by hugh hauser it was vibrant we remember that it's a ghost town do the right thing thank you speaker your time is up it's time to

zoom id marissa rosales please select the microphone icon to unmute from your device and proceed with your comment you have three minutes to speak hello can you hear me yes we We can hear you. Good evening. I'm here to speak on item number 27, the anti-cruising ordinance. My name is Marisa Rosales. I am the vice president of the United Lowrider Coalition. I want to make a plea to this city council to really scrutinize the report by your police department, specifically in the section where national city is referenced, as it is filled with inaccuracies, to say the least.

The pilot program was for six months, and regarding business impact, the Economic Development Director for National City informed the ULC that he visited all the businesses on Highland Avenue conducting a survey on the May 6 cruise. He reported receiving all positive results with one person referencing Cholos and that he is upset that his colleagues did not reach out to him for input and that he has not been allowed to report his findings at city council. And regarding activity on the boulevard, the ULC requested the incident reports for the cruise night.

In that report, there are no calls for assault, vandalism, or weapons violations as listed in the police report on the boulevard during the cruise night. Being the organizers of the cruise, the ULC stayed clean in the boulevard of all trash, assuring that the boulevard was in better condition than how we found it. ULC members were out cleaning up until close to midnight. During the cruise, traffic on the boulevard was impacted as the cruise was more attended than expected. But by 10 p.m., most of

the traffic had cleared. And by 11 p.m., the boulevard was just about empty. The low riders out still were mostly belonging to ULC members who were out cleaning the boulevard. The ULC did meet with the mayor, chief, and one sergeant after the May 6 cruise. They all stated the cruise was a success with no major incidents taking place despite it being highly attended, but that it was too successful. The ULC was given a plan by National City PD chief that would impose fees that added up to $18,000 per cruise, which is unattainable for us to afford.

The ULC did have a press conference as we felt the need to be transparent with the community as to why the cruises would not continue, because it is a cultural practice that the community has been telling National City is something that they want reestablished. If you truly want an unbiased report as to how cruising impacts the community, I recommend you speak with Councilman Perales of San Jose, who stated in a recent interview with the Voice of San Diego, nothing has really changed. It's not as if roads are filled with lowriders every day. It's internal change.

The sense of acceptance and righting a wrong for the last 36 years that we had. Thank you, Speaker. Your time is up. Zoom ID, Jovita Arellano, please select the microphone icon to unmute from your device and proceed with your comment. You have three minutes to speak.

Jovita Arellano.

Zoom ID, Betty Santos, please select the microphone icon to unmute from your device and proceed with your comment. You have three minutes to speak. Okay, thank you. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Okay, yes. Hi, my name is Betty Santos. I'm from Modesto, California, which is up in Northern California. I'm also, I belong to the Modesto Cruisers Council, along with the Sacramento Lowrider Alliance, including the California Coalition as well. I'm here to support my community here down south. for the lifting the ban of the cruising ordinance. Again, I'd like to thank the president

of the Unique Car Club, Junior, Victor, Lorraine, Vince, and Steve. And I have to take off my hat to the positive stories that the one educator from high school that he just shared. And that's what we need to hear, a positive impact that all of us are making. Second, third, you know, fourth generations. I too, I am a hot rodder, but I do support all cruising, especially the low rider community. I've learned so much these last few minutes of how they've been targeted in the past. There's a lot of bias going on and it really opened my eyes. So I'm here to stand in solidarity to support of lifting the ban down in Santa Ana.

And again, I'm the type of person that will travel to different car shows. And I've seen the differences in the car shows and the people that I meet. And again, please support this ordinance. Thank you very much.

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

Hello? Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Okay, great. Thank you. I am with the Los Angeles Surrider Council in Southern California. I am here in solidarity with the California Ordinance Commission and all the other councils that are speaking tonight regarding lifting the cruising ban ordinance in Santa Ana. Being in Southern California as well, sister or neighbor to Orange County, Santa Ana, we are all striving to address this issue and bring a positive change to any city or municipality that has a cruising ban ordinance. We'd like them removed.

We want to work with the local cities and municipalities to make this better, to make it better for everybody. It's a discriminatory ordinance. It limits the ability for people to practice their culture and to practice something that's positive in the community. and we would really encourage Santa Ana to lift the cruising ban ordinance and continue working with the community to make this more of a positive activity amongst everybody thank you zoom id Francine Mata please select the microphone icon to unmute from your device

and proceed with your comment you have three minutes to speak good evening city council my My name is Francine Mata. I'm the chair president of the Sacramento Lowrider Commission and also a proud supporter and member of the California Lowrider Alliance. I'm here to speak on item 27. I wanted to quote a Santa Ana article where it said, generally police said they cannot tell lowriders and gang members apart by physical appearance. According to a city ordinance, cruising is defined as the driving of a motor vehicle multiple times around the street,

but are you pulling over suburban or parents circling a school these are certain things that um came up i also looked at the city of santa ana who mission statement says committed to achieving a shared vision for the organization and its community guiding principles collaboration efficiency equity excellence fiscal responsibility innovation and transparency that police report didn't show that um the police report kind of was a violation of the brown act it should have upheld the neutral opinion of both sides and it was a violation of code of ethics i strongly

suggest that there be training cruising is a form of inclusion all nationalities social economics status whether it's in a hot rod classic antique lowrider whatever you may call it our community contributes to the economic growth of the city. Cruising is a form of a mental health. It's educational, therapeutic, it's family and community engagement with inclusion. A form of art, of moving art, that tells a story. You see us in parades, celebrations, movies, commercials, museums. We give back by holding backpack, water clothes, food drives, money, over probably 50 to 100 plus events

a year in the community eight to ten hours each event which engages community takes youth to develop a positive interest of all social economic backgrounds i ask for this to be repealed to be able to drive the streets and highways freely as tax-paying citizens as there already are driving in street laws you can enforce item 27 to repeal the bias civil rights violation racist outdated no cruising ordinance in its entirety. Talk to the people that are out there that gave public comment. They all have a story. I'm proud of all of you guys for telling your story. It's therapeutic.

It's time for law enforcement to develop partnerships with our low riding community. Thank you.

Zoom ID, Flavio Huizar. Please select the microphone icon to unmute from your device and proceed with your comment. You have three minutes to speak. Okay, you can hear me, correct? Just wanted to make sure? Yes, we can hear you. Okay, my name is Flavio Wiesart. I'm a member of the Sacramento Lowrider Commission and the chair of the California Lowrider Alliance. I come before you, City Council, asking for you to look at this ordinance the way the lowriding community sees this ordinance. These ordinances were created to racially profile brown and black communities. You need to understand that in the 90s and into

the late 80s and into the 90s, when these ordinances came in, they came in to be able to deal with an issue that was on the streets. And these ordinances were created to be able to deal with the problems on the streets like gang activity. Now, the issue with this is that when we talk about gang activity and we understand what it did and to create an ordinance that would now net a community. You created these ordinances to be able to deal with the gangs, but here's the issue. The low-riding community has been around since the 40s and the 50s and the 60s and the 70s. And to cast the net over an entire community that has done nothing

but cruise and do family things and represent something different, to throw a net over a community to say everybody in these cars, everybody on one of these canvases on four wheels is a gang member. That is discrimination. That is what that is. When we look at the South, the things that happened in the South that said white and black only, when we think about those things, those things were wrong. And what they did was they removed those signs. But how many of us know the stigma is still there? And so when we see these signs, what we see is that we are not able,

that we are not worthy. What we see is hate. And understand that that's what those ordinances are. They're hate. Understand that what you've done is you've profiled a community, a brown and black community that has done nothing to you. I ask you to remove this ordinance because it is wrong. When I see the report that came out that the police did, what you've done is you've created a report once again how can you not understand the difference between sideshows and low riders what you're trying to do is group a whole entire community once again just like you did in the

80s when you created these ordinances and say you're not able to do this you're not able to do that what i'm sharing with you today is that if you want to build faith and community it's just like the pastor that spoke earlier, hope, right? Hebrews 11.1, the substance of the things not seen and the things hoped for. If you want to create community inclusion, then remove this ordinance. Remove the stain that you have caused to the brown and black communities. I ask you to remove this ordinance because it's a racist, civil issue that needs to be removed from your charter. Sacramento, San Jose has removed those

because they saw for what it was, a racist created-Thank you, speaker, your time is up. Zoom ID, Jerry Thompson, please select the microphone icon to unmute from your device and proceed with your comment. You have three minutes to speak.

Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Okay, I'm Jerry Thompson with Modesto Cruisers Council, Vice President. I have three things I wanna address. spirit of the law, letter of the law, and profiling. Spirit of the law is usually police officer pulls a person over that has a brake light that's out. And when he pulls them over, he usually will give them a warning or just let them know it's out, not write them a citation. Letter of the law is that police officer will pull you over with a broken, with the brake light out, and he'll write you a

citation. Profiling, unfortunately, it can be used hand in hand with letter of the law, because by profiling, you can use it under the cover of like what you have, no cruising ordinance. So that way that officer could pull that person over under the guise of that sign in your law to pull somebody over but not use the, I'm losing my train of thought

now, to profile that person so they don't have to do spirit of the law. So by lifting this ban, it eliminates one of the three subjects, profiling. And by doing that, you're taking away the oppression of a group of people that's been lumped together with a small group of bad apples that are out there. And unfortunately, they're everywhere in every group. But the good people shouldn't be lumped into that group because the cruisers and the lowriders are family oriented. They don't want their kids in harm's way. They look out for the safety of others and they also show respect for others.

So by lifting this ban, you eliminate the profiling part, but on the same time, you're eliminating the issues that people have encountered by being profiled. Thank you. Zoom ID, David Polanco, please select the microphone icon to unmute from your device and proceed with your comment. You have three minutes to speak.

Hello, my name is David Polanco. I'm president of the United Lowrider Council of San Jose. I'm also a member of the California Lowrider Alliance. I'm calling in today to speak on item 27, repealing the cruising ordinance. I have listed all the speakers in favor of removing the and I support all of their thoughts and their points. I'm in favor of removing this ordinance. And I just wanted to be clear, just like was stated earlier, but I think it's real important considering what the police came out with their report. There's a big difference between street racing

and sideshowers and low riding. One is active in the community and active participating members of the community in a positive way. and one is not um there are laws in place for all these things that happen you know whether it's you know speeding drinking and driving fighting whatever it may be you know um you know one quick you know thing that i wanted to point out was most nfl football games have fights in the in the game

drunk disorderly fights they don't stop having nfl football games because the actions of few you go to a country concert same thing you could go to a rock concert same thing so my point being is you know we can't go on punishing the the masses because the actions of a few

I hear not being from there, I'm from San Jose, but hearing the concerns of the merchants,

it sounds like maybe there's a potential opportunity here to work with the downtown businesses to incorporate the cruising, to bring some money back into that, businesses that need help. maybe there's some way to rather embrace the low riding culture rather than fighting it and bring it together with the community and the businesses and revive downtown. That's just an outsider looking in. But I appreciate the opportunity to speak and thank you very much. Zoom ID, Benjamin Vasquez, please select the microphone icon to unmute from your device and proceed with your comment. You have three minutes to speak.

Hello, Sanana. I'm Benjamín Vasquez from Ward 2, Henninger Park. I'm here in the support of the Police Oversight Commission. I'm happy to have it getting passed, and I'm looking forward to having an amendment to the charter to make it even stronger later. I also want to support the merchants that have been talking about the CBID, the PBID, and making sure that we don't have those two organizations, especially Downtown Inc., as part of a new group going forward. They have done nothing to represent the merchants. You don't want to add on to something that hasn't been working.

The two staff members, Smoller and Spencer, have not done a good job in bringing in people and supporting most of the businesses in Downtown Santa Ana. So if you do anything going forward, let's get rid of those two associations and start all over. I am here to support all the families, all the car clubs to get rid of the cruising band that we have in Santa Ana. I am supportive. I have a Valley High School teacher with Saul Garcia. That's my peer there, the other teacher from Valley. We're coming here to represent Santa Ana. We have to celebrate the beauty of our city and culture. With this band, we have banned our own people,

our own culture. Let's celebrate cruising and Santa Ana once again. Let's make sure that we make this ban go away. Thank you. Thank you. Final speaker, Zoom ID, Dan Escamilla. Please select the microphone icon to unmute from your device and proceed with your comment. You have three minutes to speak. Good evening, Mayor Sariento and the members of the Santa Ana City Council. My name is Dan Escamilla. I'm a graduate of Chapman School of Law and the Orange County Sheriff's Academy. I'm also a plaintiff against the city in a federal lawsuit alleging police misconduct.

The five-year anniversary of the incident giving rise to this lawsuit is coming up in two months, and the city continues to linger without making any serious settlement offers to me. and eventually this case will end up in a jury trial with members of the press exposing the misconduct and the criminal acts of former members of the Santa Ana Police Department, former and current members. And which brings me to item number five of the agenda. Recital C says historically the city of Santa Ana has settled several lawsuits involving the police department involving incidents prior to 2017.

My incident was in 2018. Why is it what happened in 2017 that caused the city to stop settling lawsuits? The city attorney obviously has a vested interest in keeping these lawsuits going simply because she is paid to litigate these lawsuits. And I think that if the city is turning over a new leaf and establishing a police oversight commission, which by the way, would have done nothing to help me in my case because of the lack of teeth to this commission. I think that, you know, the transparency is not there.

And I think that the city of Santa Ana should think about hiring the sheriff's department to take over policing. The big problem with Santa Ana is they've lost trust in the public because of dishonest officers. That's the problem in my case, dishonest officers. So that's all I have to say. but I really hope that the city comes to the negotiating table so I don't have to make this a major story with the press and put Santa Ana in a very bad light about the criminal acts of its police officers. Thank you. That was the final speaker. Great. Thank you for that. Let me go

ahead and bring it back to the council. We're now at the consent calendar portion of the meeting and staff, I understand is requesting to continue item number 14 and that'll be continued to the 6th of December. So let me go ahead and continue with the balance of the consent calendar and see if there's any members of the council that wish to pull an item off or recuse themselves for a conflict on any of those items. So I'll

Phil BacerraItem 5

call on members of the council now. Mayor, I'd like to go ahead and pull items 6, 8, and 19.

Council Member Lopez. Thank you. I'd like to pull 8, 17, and 12.

Thai Viet PhanItem 5

I'd like to pull number nine, I'm just kidding. There's so many pulled already. I'd like to state my recusal from item number 17 out of an abundance of caution, because although the agreement is with Ankara Consulting Group, they are going to be a part of the are going to be auditing bills relating to the development and construction of the Carnegie homeless center by Dyer 18 LLC, which is a client of my employer, Rattan and Tucker. Thank you.

Thank you. Council member Mendoza, are you good?

Yes, sounds fine. I don't have anything to pull. Thank you.

Great. Seeing no other items to be pulled off the consent calendar or any recusals from the council, I'll go ahead and entertain a motion for the balance. I'll second. We've got a motion by Mayor Pro Tem, a second by Council Member Peñalosa. Council Members, please vote.

My vote is yes on that Madam City Council Clerk.

Councilmember Penn, can you voice your vote?

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

It went through as yes.

Motion passes by unanimous consent.

Great. Thank you. Let me go ahead and call on Councilmember Mayor Pro Tem Becerra. I believe he pulled item number six.

Phil BacerraItem 3

Yes. Thank you. So I'm aware of this item. This is a final map, a final parcel map. And I'm aware that it's a receiving file. but I had a couple of questions. So if Director Saba, if you can come up real quick. So while you're coming up, the staff report indicates that the zoning administrator approved the tentative parcel map back in January of 2019. And the city engineer is in the process of reviewing the final parcel map for final approval. So I know that this item is before us because of the way that the code reads where these maps come to us when you receive them and you're about to hopefully approve them.

Phil BacerraItem 3

What I'm curious about is because the tentative map was approved back in 2019 and we're just getting this notification today or this meeting regarding the imminent approval of the final map, I'm just curious what has taken so long to get us to this point? Because it really, I hate to say this, I'm hopeful it's the applicant's fault because if it's on our end, that's not a good sign that it would take this many years to get a final approved.

Yeah, Council, Mayor Pro Tem, I am not sure why it took so long to present the final map, but it is a process. I can ask Tate Higgins to maybe come and help us with that question. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, members of the council. The final map was submitted earlier this year, like in May of this year.

Phil BacerraItem 3

Okay.

For the first time.

Phil BacerraItem 3

So for the first time. So they got their tentative, then there was a delay, and then they finally submitted their first draft of the final in May.

Yes. Okay.

Phil BacerraItem 3

I JUST WANTED TO MAKE SURE BECAUSE TO ME THE DATE SEEMS SO FAR APART THAT IT WAS AN ALARMING THOUGHT THAT MIGHT TAKE THAT LONG FROM STAFF'S IN. SO THANK YOU FOR THAT CLARIFICATION. WITH THAT, I'LL GO AHEAD AND MOVE THE, WELL, ACTUALLY IT'S A RECEIVING FILE SO THERE'S NO ACTION AT THIS POINT. THANK YOU, GUYS.

GOT IT. THANKS. MOVING ALONG TO ITEM NUMBER 8, AND THAT WAS CALLED BY BOTH MAYOR PRO TEM AND COUNCILMEMBER LOPEZ. WHICH ONE OF YOU WANTS TO LEAD OFF ON THAT? GO AHEAD. GO AHEAD, COUNCILMEMBER.

So quick question for staff.

Do we have any on the schedule, are there any plans to host any workshops in the city of Santa Ana to provide Santa Ana residents with more information about the down payment assistance loan program?

Thank you, council member for that question. I will defer to Judson, our housing manager. And Judson, you might want to stay up there in case there's further questions.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Lopez.

On October 1st, staff participated at NeighborWorks Orange County Homebuyer Fair. But workshops with NeighborWorks OC for the year are complete. The last workshops was held on November 8th and workshops will start again in February. But we did provide a presentation for an upcoming community workshop that Councilmember Phan and Viet L.A. are hosting in Vietnamese at the Salgado Community Center this Saturday, November 19th. And staff provided a training and resources to the presenter on the presentation and program guidelines.

Okay, perfect. Thank you. I wanted to move on to the tenant section of the report. I often get a lot of questions about what should a tenant do if they're facing an eviction. I see those questions being posed online as well, and so I wanted to ask staff to prepare infographics, detailing as much as you can in an infographic, the process, because I think it can be very confusing for folks, and also just an overwhelming process for people that don't necessarily understand the legal aspect of an eviction. I also wanted to ask staff or for the city actually to partner up with the

Public Law Center or Legal Aid both located in the city of Santa Ana to host maybe tenants rights workshops because I think that when I keep receiving these messages or emails that I've always forward to staff it lets me know that they're unaware of the ordinance regarding rent control or the just cost evictions I know we've spent a lot of money and done a lot about reach but there's always limits to those outreach in terms of who the information is reaching. And so I wanted to see those efforts be spearheaded by staff and be brought to the city of Santa Anna. Let me know if you need a motion for that.

Thank you very much, Councilman. Mayor Pro Tem.

Phil BacerraItem 3

Thank you. Well, Judson, don't run off just yet. Well, first of all, I just wanted to compliment you guys. I see that you guys had three applications approved for the down payment assistance program. That's wonderful news. Three out of five, I mean, that's pretty impressive. So thank you for that. Five applications received and three approved. I just have one question. So in the report, there's a section on page six, the in-lieu fees generated section. You indicate that the total amount of in-lieu fees generated by the WHO, right? so you give the overall total from inception of the WHO going forward. But since this is a quarterly

Phil BacerraItem 3

report, I didn't see the actual in lieu fees generated from the WHO in this particular quarter. Could you indicate how many or how much was generated this time around? Yes, thank you very

much, Mayor Bertem. During this past quarter, we did not generate any in lieu fees for under our

Phil BacerraItem 3

inclusionary housing ordinance. Okay, so from July 1st to September 30th, we didn't see any come in?

That is correct.

Phil BacerraItem 3

Okay. That's all I have. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments on this?

Council Member Phan would like to speak.

Go ahead, Council Member Phan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

Thank you, Mayor. First, thank you so much for this detailed report. It was really helpful to get a sense of all the different programs that we have to assist both our renters, our low-income renters, as well as our home buyers. So I think that's really great. I wanted to echo Councilmember Lopez's request to ensure that we create infographics to let residents know more about not just these programs, but what we have been doing, right? There's a lot of amazing stuff that the city's been accomplishing, working to help residents, and I think that we

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

need to continue to elevate that information so people know that we're doing everything we can to assist with solving the housing crisis. One thing I did want to also reiterate is that there is a Vietnamese language workshop this Saturday at Salgado starting from 10 to 12 p.m. in conjunction with Viet Law. And the reason why it is in Vietnamese is because initially in the partnership with NeighborWorks, it was only online and only in English and Spanish.

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

I would love to work with staff and I imagine many of our council colleagues would also would love to work with staff and other nonprofits in the city to bring in-person workshops in both Spanish, English and Vietnamese. I think it's really helpful for folks to be able to ask questions in that way. and I look forward to continuing with this program and help build wealth for our residents. Thank you.

Thank you for those comments. Any other questions or comments from the council? Seeing none, this is a receive and file, so let's go ahead and move along to item number 12, and I believe that's Councilmember Lopez.

Yes, thank you. I'm pulling this because reading through the staff report and speaking with Nabil, I didn't think the staff report detailed all of the information that you gave to me, which is great information, Nabil. and so I just wanted to include some some of that information for the public the project is going to include slurry seal Santa Clara from Hathaway to Pasadena and we'll add shared and unshared bike lanes the bike lanes some of them are not going to be protected due to the width of Santa Clara and and and and the needed to maintain turning lanes and parking at various segments

specifically closer to Lincoln and so some of the intersections are going to be modified to include bulb outs and ADA ramps and the bulb outs are going to help with you know speeding helping to reduce reduce really speeding and folks that are doing that doing that in the neighborhood and the project will also add sidewalks in front of the tree the three cemeteries and enhancement of the traffic signal on Tustin and Santa Clara which we often hear so much about so I just wanted to thank public the Public Works Department for this extra details

I wish the attachment would have been different because I prefer the one that you provided to me in email I think it's a little bit more clear and I also wanted to request two things for the unprotected bike lanes or for the bike lanes the buffer lanes can we not have strips of just cement can we add you know trees some sort of bush to the to the buffer I really hate seeing the cement ones they're playing and I you know I visited other cities that have really beautiful buffers and that's what we would like to see in our area and

lastly your department did a fantastic job reaching out to West Floral Park residents when we were doing you know some sort of street repair there and so I would want to see the same type of notification to the area because this is going to be a lot of construction and I want them to be notified and plan ahead of time for other detours so so no real questions just to request thank you

for your work. Thank you. Thank you for that. Councilmember

David PenalozaItem 3

Benyarosa. Thank you, Mayor. Executive Director Saba, I just wanted to echo Councilwoman Lopez's request on the landscaping done along the protected bike lanes. I know that we've had this conversation over when the Bristol ones were being built. The concrete ones do look ugly and continue to add to further add to that concrete jungle and we want to make sure that there's landscaping because it's going to help the environment and just make it look nicer overall. So double down on that request and I'm sure I heard my colleagues in the past make that same request so I know that you'll do it right. Thank you.

Thank you. Any comments from the council members that are virtual? Seeing no other questions or comments, I'll entertain a motion on this item.

I'm watching to move.

I'll second. We have a motion from Lopez, a second from Councilmember Hernandez. Councilmembers, please vote.

Councilmember Mendoza, can you voice your vote, please?

My vote is yes.

Motion passes by unanimous consent.

Thank you. Moving on to item number 17, and I believe that's Councilmember Lopez as well.

Yes, thank you. And I apologize to the members of the public. I normally don't pull this many staff reports. On item 17, it is a very short staff report. So thank you for that. And so we are contracting services with Ankura because we are concerned about over billing. Is that correct?

Thai Viet PhanItem 3

I apologize. Before you continue, this is Council Member Fan. I just want to state that I am recusing this item. And so out of the room. I don't know how else to do that.

All right, for the record, council members were accused from this item.

So, Council Member Lopez, your question was we are hiring this firm to audit. That was your question?

Yeah, the auditing is for over-billing, is that correct?

It's for everything. It's against best practices, industry standards, and billing. And they've already started the audit. So we had engaged them. The City Attorney's Office had engaged them. and they began it and this is an amendment to it so they have enough ceiling to finish the engagement.

And who are we auditing?

We're auditing the billing submitted for the Carnegie Homeless Shelter.

Who submitted the billing?

Pardon?

Who submitted the billing?

It was Dyer 18 who we have the agreement with for Carnegie. Okay.

How long do you think this staff or this council is going to hear back from the firm that we're contracting? I'll defer that to the city attorney's office.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 3

Councilmember Lopez, we have engaged the consultant and I'm going to have our Chief Assistant City Attorney Mr. Funk explain to you where we are in that process. He's been working closely with them. We anticipate a final report soon, but I'll let him give you the details.

Yes, Councilmember. As City Manager Ridge indicated, the City engaged this consultant to evaluate the billings and invoice practices related to the construction of the carnegie site the carnegie navigation site our new homeless shelter on carnegie avenue there were some disputes that arose in late 2021 and early 2022 of which the city didn't have any prior notice and the basis for some of those disputes was not quite clear so this is an attempt for us to bring some clarity to those matters and to close out the matter it's not uncommon in an engagement or construction project

of this size for the city to to close out a matter in this fashion the report is nearing its final draft and we expect it to be able to deliver it to city staff within the next seven or ten days oh that's soon thank you is the report

going to be made public

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 12

So in addition to doing the things that Mr. Funke explained, as the council may be aware, we do have litigation pending with respect to this project. Carnegie, both at the state and federal level, because that hasn't been resolved yet. There were some discussions about resolution at the federal level. Depending on the findings in the report, it's possible that the report may be used to support our claims and and I would not want to release that until we can verify information but if if we it's not needed for that purpose then we will we will make that available to both the council and the public okay thank you and this

is not the first time that we discuss this item publicly but I do just want to say or reiterate to staff that I hope it is you know the last time that we're in this sort of situation it's very unacceptable to me and so I again I just hope it's the last time that we have this lack of oversight when we are contracting with in this case Dyer 18 LLC and we're just approving invoices and other other things and you know we're now finding out that there's an an issue with some of the invoices that were billed and paid by the city.

So thank you.

Any other questions or comments from the council on this item?

Let me just say, you know, I've been before Judge Carter on this litigation item, or on this matter that involves litigation. Are we going to go back as far as the construction by Illumination Foundation, or is it just going forward once Dyer 18 LLC took over?

No, it's focused on Dyer 18. They took over because Illumination Foundation approached the city and said they couldn't do the tenant improvements for the original estimate. So this is all relative to the billing from Dyer 18. And I will add that we did have earlier disputes, as the council has mentioned, and we did payments under protest regarding it to reserve our right to question the billing.

Look, there's a lot more to this, and I'm glad we're going to be auditing, but we were, I think, close to a year over the deadline when this was supposed to be completed. We were way over budget, so it is a problem. So to the extent that I think any disclosures on the findings of that report are made public, I think, is important. But it certainly wasn't the best look for any of us, and I know we were admonished several times by the judge. So in any event, this is an item that we need to take action on. It's not a receive and file. So I'll go ahead and entertain a motion.

A motion to move.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 12

I'll second.

A motion by Council Member Lopez, a second by Council Member Hernandez. Council Members, please vote.

Council Member Mendoza, can you please voice your vote?

Yes. Yes. That is my vote. Is it affirmative? Yes.

Motion passes 6-0 with Councilmember Phan recusing herself.

Thank you. Moving along to item number 19, and I believe that's Mayor Pro Tems.

Phil BacerraItem 12

Thank you, Mayor. So this item before us is regarding amending an agreement with Bright Life, designs for for downtown holiday decor. So the recommended action is to authorize an amendment with this company to increase the contract by $370,000 for a total not to exceed $420,000. Thank you, Mr. Garcia, for coming up. So the original agreement that was signed in September was for $50,000 to do the stream lights that we see along 4th Street. And now the item before us is to ask for an increase of $370,000.

Phil BacerraItem 12

I will say just right up front, I was very frustrated with the staff report because it was very hard to follow the numbers. You had bids in there that didn't really reflect the amounts that were in there. And then there was another portion where we talk about, and I'll get to it right now, where there was a line item for a cost that was subject to a future proposal. and yet one item on here was for a two-year time period and everything else was a singular year. So again, this is just a very confusing, very, in my opinion, disorganized proposal that was brought to us.

Phil BacerraItem 12

So we got a $50,000 approval, I'm assuming, under the authority of the city manager's power there to do that. But so $370,000, and talking with you and your staff earlier, So what it boils down to is there's some additional items for beyond downtown. There's some items in downtown, some by the Civic Center, but then it talks about citywide holiday decorations. And who doesn't want that, right? Who doesn't want holiday decorations citywide? But in the proposal, the only thing outside of downtown and the Civic Center is first in Bristol. It's literally those three trees at the intersection, correct?

That's correct.

Phil BacerraItem 12

So, the retreat, so that's pretty much the view is outside of downtown, the rest of the city is first in Bristol, which for those of us on the very south end of town, which I know you're down there with me, Mr. Garcia, there's more to it than first in Bristol. So, but then we're talking about giving authority, signing authority to public works, not even your agency, Mr. Garcia, but public works, 200 and, was it $250,000?

$250,000.

Phil BacerraItem 12

And we have no scope. Just blanket authority. you are asking us to agree to $250,000. This isn't for a sewer pump. This isn't for a water pump. This is just for holiday decorations to the tune of $250,000, and we don't know where it's going.

So the contract will go through September of 2025. So it's not all to be spent in one fiscal year. And I imagine Public Works would be open to talking about other locations.

Phil BacerraItem 12

I'M SORRY TO PUT YOU ON THE SPOT LIKE THIS, BUT I DON'T WANT TO IMAGINE. I WANT TO READ IT IN BLACK AND WHITE. I WANT TO SEE IT SO I CAN GO. THAT'S WHERE THE MONEY IS GOING. SO WHEN SOMEONE SAYS, WHY DID YOU APPROVE $250,000 FOR HOLIDAY DECORATIONS, I CAN SAY, OH, MY GOSH, OPEN YOUR EYES. LOOK AT ALL THE BEAUTIFUL STRETCHES OF OUR TOWN THAT ARE JUST COVERED IN HOLIDAY DECORATIONS. BUT I CAN'T BECAUSE THERE'S NOTHING HERE. IT'S JUST A BLANKET AUTHORITY. CORRECT?

THANK YOU, MAYOR PROTEM. The request from Public Works is to augment the contracts so we will be able to come up with ideas for future decoration of Bristol Street, First Street and possibly Fourth Street. Because Fourth right now has the string lights that you like. Those lights will have to be removed because they are so low once the streetcar becomes active. So we want the opportunity to engage this installer to relocate those lights. So that's one cost. So it is not spending that much money right now.

We are asking you to give us the contract authority to be able to beautify the city for a future project. And as you can see, the project itself, it says that if we find the money, we don't have the money right now. Once you allocate the money to beautify the city, then we have the capacity in this contract to do what you like us to do. That's the purpose of the on-call.

Phil BacerraItem 12

And I appreciate that. And I appreciate staff's desire to have flexibility. And nine out of ten times I would have complete faith that you guys would do something with it. But for me, I'll just say to my colleagues tonight, I won't be supporting that 250,000 authority until you return to us with some descriptions because everything else in this proposal, there's some sort of description, whether it's the string lights, whether it's giant lit teddy bears, whether it's ornaments, whatever it is. But when we get to this particular port, 250,000, that's more than the rest of this combined, and it's just an open-ended thing.

Phil BacerraItem 12

So I just, I appreciate what you're saying, Director Saba, but to my colleagues, I'm going to ask that we move this item minus the 250,000 authority for public works.

Any other questions or comments from members of the council?

Go ahead, Council Member Pernice.

David PenalozaItem 12

Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. I guess not sure who would want to answer this, Mike, or I mean, I'm sorry, Director Garcia or Director Saba. The question I have is in the quotes that are included as part of the staff report, in particular I believe it was the city of Santa Ana, Bristol, and First Tree Lighting quote. The quote was dated October 28, 2022. At the very bottom it says that the quote is

David PenalozaItem 12

only, let me find it, so this quote is valid for five days is what it says. And I believe the other one was drafted, was quoted on November 3rd, and it says that the quote is only valid for 10 days. So just going through that, I mean, that would have, this quote would have expired on the 13th. So I guess my question is, are these quotes active quotes? Is that why we're asking for 250,000 blanket to, are they going to increase these quotes after we give authority for that 250,000?

David PenalozaItem 12

I mean, because these quotes are technically not valid anymore per the language that's included in the last page of each one.

The answer is no. Sorry. The answer is no. I believe that these quotes will, and a bright light will honor these quotes until we issue the PO or the item is approved.

David PenalozaItem 12

I mean, I'm asking because this would be a legal agreement that we are now, tonight, if we take this vote, we authorize you to sign. But the agreement says that these quotes aren't valid, so can that legally, and I guess we could probably deflect to the city attorney, But can the contractor or company legally say, you know what, these quotes were only valid for five days, where they're now double or 20% higher, but we already signed the agreement, can they ask for more money legally after we give authorization to sign these contracts?

Council member Penaloza, maybe if I can assist clarifying and correct me if I'm wrong, directors, But we already have an agreement in place that was a result of a request for a proposal. The item before you is just amending that agreement. So the prices are secured in that agreement.

David PenalozaItem 12

So the prices quoted is what we're going to get charged?

This is what the binding cost for the first and Bristol is that price. and it's secured and we won't pay more than this. This is how much actually we paid last year for it.

David PenalozaItem 12

It's how much we paid last year? Yeah. Because it also says that the quote excludes an annual 4% annual CPI increase. So is that, I mean, if anything, this year alone, we've seen the biggest CPI increase in the last decade.

This is a one-time and it's installation and teardown. It's only for the holiday period, like we've done last year.

David PenalozaItem 12

Okay. The other discrepancy, I guess, that I saw was that in the contract, it says that the installation date for most of these Christmas decorations would be the first week of November 2022.

David PenalozaItem 12

2022, which again puts us past that date. Have any of these decorations been installed or have they started installing any of these decorations? No.

No, there have not.

David PenalozaItem 12

Okay. I think the issue I have with, it's not the Christmas decorations, but it's, because I I know back three years ago, that was one of the first requests I made to our newly hired city manager was, let's get downtown and parts of our city decorated again like they used to. But I see that this often happens. We get these contracts and these agreements that are now time sensitive, and they're on us. And it's like, hey, you know, tomorrow, we need this by yesterday. When we know Christmas happens every year, we know holidays happen every year, we know when they're happening.

David PenalozaItem 12

I mean, why are we now in mid-November, second meeting of the month, or last meeting in the month, asking for approval for something that should have been done in September, October, when we know that these things are coming? So I don't like the now we're pressured into making these final decisions when we could have had this come before us in August, September, when we know the holidays are coming. and that way it gives us time to really digest and go through and work with the contractor and what different areas of the city we could apply these Christmas decorations to.

David PenalozaItem 12

I just, I still have the same frustrations, not so much at the cost, but at the timing of it. How now there's no time, really, because what are we going to do, you know, push it to December 4th when, you know, we're essentially now halfway through the holidays.

David PenalozaItem 12

so yeah that's just frustrating you know when these things come up I hope that in the future we plan ahead and we know that these things are coming and they should they should be before us sooner than later that's it mayor thank you

thank you for that any other questions or comments anybody go ahead council

I just want to say I like the lights on first in Bristol I'm not a big fan of palm trees but I really enjoy seeing them and you know not trying to be combat it but it's not for me it's not a difficult choice it's either yes or no it's very basic and it's an agreement that we already have as a city manager explained and we're amending it and I would rather have holiday decor than

not so thank you great thank you for those comments give me one quick let me let me see if there's anybody online that wants to address this no hands raised councilmember are you good Hernandez go ahead

Phil BacerraItem 12

I just want to say it's not really just that simple. What I'm bringing up is the fact that there's a portion of what's being brought before us that is open-ended, that there's no description. If you look through the proposals, you'll see some pretty detailed proposals. Then it gets to a part where it's just a $250,000 blank check. And if staff had provided us with a proposal from the contractor with the details, I probably wouldn't have any issue with it. but it's this open-endedness, you know. You've seen or heard from Council Member Peñalosa the timing, which I concur with, but mine is more of the lack of detail.

Phil BacerraItem 12

So really it's not just simply yes or no, because we're kind of putting a blindfold on and agreeing or disagreeing with something. I don't prefer that we do that, especially because we have put out an RFP, we got back proposals, we obviously entered into a contract for something that had details, because the $50,000, the initial $50,000, is actually attached to the staff report. So we know what that says. But then we get to the part where after having to do the calculation, you go, hmm, what's this $250,000 for for citywide holiday decorations? And there's no description beyond First and Bristol,

Phil BacerraItem 12

which by the way, at least that's called out in here, and that's already accounted for. So the $250,000, the full 250 is not accounted for. So just to respond to that.

Mayor Pro Tem, if I can help. we certainly can do better in the future and making a more clarifying staff report but we do present not to exceed contracts to this council quite frequently and we don't have the total scope of work so it this is not out of normal practice thank you for those comments seeing no other comments council member fan has their hand up mayor council member pan go ahead

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

council member thank you um just clarification because i may be reading the exhibits incorrectly um madam city manager my understanding is the initial 55 500 or so uh in the pro quote proposal in exhibit a-1 is referenced uh that's the 60 000 for services or not to exceed for 22 and 23 and then the 250 not to exceed covers costs and b-1 and c-1 and it seems like

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

b-1 does i guess mention the public library with six palm trees to be wrapped um with 16 14 to 16 light strands outlets power rent overhead each palm city hall plaza olive trees overhead light with olive trees one large lighted ornament walk through photo op element in the japanese garden area which is i think right there by our city hall with an estimate of fifty thousand five hundred dollars and so that b dash one is referring to um that two hundred and fifty thousand dollars am i

right or am I reading the B-1 is related to the original $50,000 contract so okay

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

so and that so because the way the staff report is written prices compensation and amount not to exceed 250,000 shall cover costs related to B-1 C-1 and any on-call services so I guess that's my understanding and then c-1 is the um more shortened version that just talks about other palm trees so i guess just the way it's written is quite confusing and i agree with uh mayor pro tem that it's not exactly clear when reading the agreement and the exhibits exactly what it goes for um but i

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

am generally in support of this i do think that you know i was just in downtown recently for dinner and the lighting looks really beautiful and i am okay with that i do trust our staff to you know have residents best interests in mind these proposals look great every year and i do agree though with my colleagues that we really need to bring these forward much sooner thank you

that's all i have thank you excuse me one second so um i think everybody's had a chance to speak let me go ahead and comment myself i also agree with um with council member fan i think you know generally i am supportive of this and i think that you know i don't know why we're shocked about the not to exceed provision uh how many of those do we see per meeting um many uh so you know and the second thing was i've seen ornaments throughout the downtown did those just appear are they part OF THIS EFFORT. SO I SEE THEM ON LIGHT POSTS AND I SEE THE BELLS AND I SEE THE WREETHS. SO WHERE DOES COME FROM?

ARE THOSE PART OF THIS PACKAGE OR ARE THEY JUST SOMETHING THAT WE DO?

I'M LOOKING AT JULIE, OUR DOWNTOWN LIAISON. IS THAT PART OF THE SAME DECORATION? THOSE ARE ONES WE OWN. THOSE ARE THE ONES WE OWN.

GOT IT. SEPARATE AND APART FROM WHAT WE'RE DOING HERE. THE ONLY THING I WOULD MENTION IS AGAIN, I AGREE WITH THE TIMING. I THINK WE COULD MAYBE BRING THOSE BEFORE US, I THINK, YOU KNOW, PLENTY OF TIME IN THE summer to look at that but look we all want the city I mean I've heard this council say over and over again we want to look like this city we want to look like this other city why do the other cities do this why don't we do this and now that we do it we're kind of you know saying well you know what 250 is just an odd number especially if we're you know if we're going three years in advance

right just in making sure that we have funding so we could do this on a more periodic basis the other thing is if somebody can remind me how much are we paying for a one season winter village here in the Civic Center? Just an approximate. I don't need a specific number.

It was about $900,000.

So $900,000 for one season. That's going to be a finite period of time for an ice rink. Great thing.

Last year's.

Last year's. But if we go forward, it'll probably be the same as well. So that estimate is probably...

This year is less.

Okay. This year's less. Look, I'm not saying I don't dislike it, but it's funny how people get sticker shock with, you know, $250,000 and we didn't get sticker shock with this. So the only thing I would say finally is, you know, we took money from the South Main area to fund business interruption funds for the downtown. So to the extent that we can help them beautify their area, that corridor is very important. South Main is one of the most historic areas in the entire city and we did take money away from them so we could help the merchants who are experiencing the

construction during the during the streetcar that money should be repaid to them they should get that back that's something that they didn't ask for it wasn't their fault that there was construction we took money from funding that should have been addressed there so to the extent that we can maybe redirect some attention to them that's really you know in years going forward So if it's not Bristol and first, maybe we can look at some of the areas in South Main. So with that, I am going to be supportive of this item as well. I think we've talked about it. We understand some of us aren't pleased with it. The timing could be better.

The report could have been drafted differently. That's fine. We've got other items to address. Seeing no other, you know, I don't want to beat this dead horse more than it is. But if there's no other questions or comments, is there, and I understand, Is there a motion to approve or not approve on the floor?

David PenalozaItem 12

I'll make a motion, but can I comment?

Please, go ahead.

David PenalozaItem 12

The only, and I agree with the mayor in decorating Main Street. I thought about that, but I stopped myself because I'd like us to finish Main Street first before we start throwing Christmas garlands on even streets.

Main Street will have permanent overhead lights at the two focus areas.

David PenalozaItem 12

Okay. Well, let's finish it first before we decorate it. Yeah, that's it. Was that a motion?

I'll second.

Okay, we have a motion by Councilmember Peñalosa, a second by Lopez. Seeing nothing further, please, Councilmembers, please vote.

Councilmember Mendoza, can you please voice your vote?

Councilmember Mendoza, are you there?

Thank you.

Motion passes 5-1 with Mayor Patem Becerra dissenting and Councilmember Mendoza absent.

Great. Thank you. That brings us to the business calendar portion of the meeting and item number 26. I'll turn it over to staff. This involves a business improvement district.

HONORABLE MAYOR AND COUNCIL MEMBERS, WE DO HAVE A BRIEF PRESENTATION FOR YOU ON THIS ITEM AND I WILL INVITE UP EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR MIKE GARCIA. MAYOR, CITY COUNCIL, THANK YOU. THE ITEM BEFORE YOU TONIGHT INVOLVES THE BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT. I KNOW WE ALL KNOW ABOUT THIS ITEM AT THIS POINT BUT I DO HAVE A PRESENTATION TO DIRECT. LET'S GO AHEAD TO THE first item mr. Soto is pulling that up there we go this item comes before the City Council annually it is first presented to the Community Development

Commission for their recommendation to the City Council and then the City Council may approve it involves the approval of the assessment report and the budget for the business improvement district and we prepare it in consult in in pursuant to the california streets and highways code it was presented to the community development commission on october 26th and they recommended to the city council that a dissolution process begin city council may also consider the resolution of intention to levy the business improvement

District, move it forward December 6th, and allow the businesses to vote for Oregon's 2023 bid renewal. It contains the assessment report and contains the basic method for levying the assessment and the estimated budget and activities. It is an action that must be approved annually for the bid to continue and to give you an idea about this the the public hearing vote would be weighted based on the percentage of businesses within the area and no

single business can have more than 7% of the vote and in I exhibit two there's a much more detailed packet for this that gives the weighted value per business protest forms have been available I presented some that were given to me today so this would be protest forms against the bid for if this were to move forward on December 6th for consideration by the businesses bids just for business improvement districts or special assessments we have a tenant

based business improvement district revenues are geared towards the general promotion of the area that the downtown san anna business improvement district uh it covers and it is renewed via the business license process there are different ways that businesses pay into that and the formula before you shows the how the fees are calculated in the business license

the map has changed over the years it currently covers a large portion of the downtown and a very small portion of the civic center there are about 600 businesses within the downtown san and a business improvement district and about two hundred thousand dollars is collected annually and and it distributed to the two organizations, Downtown Inc. and Santa Ana Business Council. The city does invest separately in clean and safe and invest in security guards, and a lot of that revenue comes from parking revenue.

We have also funded via the city council approval. Because of parking revenue being down the last few years, we have been funding that as a city to keep security up and to keep clean and safe going so here are the options before the city council tonight to consider the community development commission which is a recommendation to dissolve the bid and set a public hearing we are thinking december 20th would be a good time to begin that dissolution process there would be some noticing required and some other actions or to move forward with the typical annual

resolution of intention to levy and it normally comes with a public hearing on December 6th at which time businesses that are part of the downtown business improvement district can vote for or against and we are ready for any

additional questions thank you for that presentation let me bring it back to the Council for any questions or comments. Anybody want to start off on this? Councilmember Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 12

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First and foremost, I just want to say thank you to all the businesses who came out today and spoke. Whether you were in favor or whether you were opposed to it, I just want to thank you because I know it's not easy taking time out of your day to come out here and advocate for a change. I have not been a supporter of the bid publicly. I have demonstrated that here at this dais. But I am a supporter of transparency and building community with my neighbors. And over the last couple of months, well, actually the last year,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 12

I have worked very closely with businesses in downtown. Many of these businesses that I have had the pleasure of working with were not aware that the additional taxes that they were paying were going to this bid. Many businesses reached out to me and shared that the bid has worked for them, but there is an overwhelming majority of businesses that have reached out and have shared that many of them have never made contact with either of the merchants that represent them. And there are a couple of business owners who came out today, and it's just a small fraction of how people really feel in downtown Santa Ana.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 12

And that's that these are groups of business owners who have been disenfranchised and marginalized and pushed to the side. There is the argument that the Downtown Inc. and Santa Ana Business Council has a clean and safe program, which maintains downtown Santa Ana. However, the city of Santa Ana is investing their own dollars in downtown. And we are subsidizing the services, which are not paid by the bid assessment revenue. The city of Santa Ana is paying $500,000 of taxpayer money to Clean and Safe.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 12

We are paying for security guards 24-7 around the clock in downtown Santa Ana, which cost taxpayers $500,000. There are four police officers and meter staff, and then there is parking structure and some meter equipment. I am going to support the community's demands and the recommendation by the Community Development Commission to dissolve the bid.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 12

And my decision is not a reflection of the consultants. It's not a reflection of the business owners that are fighting for this. However, at the end of the day, $200,000, there is not much representation for all of the businesses that are at the table. Over 600 businesses present. How are we going to make magic with that little amount of money? I would much rather be in favor of meeting with all of the businesses, working and formulating a plan, and the city of Santa Ana investing their own dollars to promote businesses in our own city.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 12

And that the city of Santa Ana creates a fund that businesses can apply to, to promote their own events, or to hire their own social media managers, or to renovate their own storefronts. Just the same that we created $3 million in funding to help protect you guys from being displaced during the Orange County Transit Authority streetcar, I can envision that the change that you are all fighting for, we can continue to invest dollars the same way that we did to help with rent to make sure that businesses are promoted and it's economic development. And more importantly, we make sure special interest doesn't control this money.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 12

So because of that, I envision that this city council, by getting rid of this bid, will create a fund that is much more robust, equitable, and transparent, and that businesses will have a seat at the table. So I'll make a motion to dissolve the bid.

Thank you, council member. Let me see if there's any second or any others that wish to comment or have any questions.

anybody online

Phil BacerraItem 12

mayor pro tem are you ready sure go ahead well thank you uh first of all thank you everybody for coming out it just shows the the energy that comes from being the capital of orange county we are the capital of the county with over three million people and all this energy that comes in here just so adamant about the health and vitality of downtown. You know, the thing in talking to different merchants and the different groups that are part of the downtown fabric, you know, there was a point in time where it was seen as a necessity to have these multiple groups.

Phil BacerraItem 12

And I would say that at the very least, if we're going to proceed with the bid, that needs to come down to one group. As I look at some of the stuff that's going on, you know, or the different marketing, we'll just call that loosely marketing. So you've got just a very simple litmus test that I did. I went and just Googled downtown Santa Ana. And the first site that came up was the Downtown Inc. webpage. The second one was the city of Santa Ana's downtown page. And the other business group didn't come up until like the third or fourth page into Google. Now, that's not to say that the Downtown Inc. version was a great page.

Phil BacerraItem 12

Frankly, I was frustrated because I felt like I was in this deja vu of the arguments of the past. Because the restaurants, the bars, oh my gosh, you want to find something? Do you want Mexican food? Do you want sushi? You can find it on there. What about your, I don't know, accountant? What about buying some jeans?

Hair salon.

Phil BacerraItem 12

Or a hair salon.

Phil BacerraItem 12

So it was not something that was readily available on the one page that was the first to come up. So if I'm traveling and I'm looking to go to another city, I want to go to one site. I want something that tells me where I can go eat, where I can go shop, all those things. And so when I look at where the money is going right now, I have a concern about $200,000 being able to adequately market for everybody. Because people are in here saying that they never heard of the bid, that they don't feel that they're getting any benefit from the bid.

Phil BacerraItem 12

The one thing I would caution everybody that just automatically says the bid does nothing for them, my first thought is, well, what if you don't have a child? Should you continue to pay taxes for schools? you don't receive a direct benefit from it. The thing is, I think there is a direct, there is an overall benefit from marketing, but that's not to say that the current marketing is the right way to go. So I will say right now for me, for me to move forward with this, I would support doing it for one more year. But my caveat would be that if we are going to do it for one more year, if we're going to, that by this time next year,

Phil BacerraItem 12

if we have not seen the streamlining down to one organization with, by the way, not just representation among different industries, but also geographic, because there was a point in time where people on the east end would say that the west end wasn't represented and vice versa. I think it needs to be both across the different industries and I think it needs to be geographic as well. The other thing to keep in mind with this, we talk about, well I think we should just create to fund and just start funding it. Great. I hope we can find another pot of money for South Bristol because South Bristol is second only to the auto mall

Phil BacerraItem 12

when it comes to actually generating revenue for the city. I hate to say it. Downtown Santa Ana, as much as I love downtown, as much as my heart's in downtown, it is not generating the revenue that other parts of the city do. And yet we hear constantly, we need more money, we need more money, we need more money. The one thing I will say to the credit of downtown is when they turned and said, well, we need more services. We need marketing, we need clean and safe. So what did they do? They said, we need to assess ourselves more. Because there's a baseline of services that we provide through the city,

Phil BacerraItem 12

and downtown turned around and said, we're going to self-assess, and we're going to provide those additional services. Now, the other little kind of additional caveat for downtown, and I think this was brought up earlier, is the fact that you do have parking structures and the revenue from those structures and the meters go towards the clean and safe programs, which as was already described by staff, very woefully low thanks to the pandemic and streetcar construction. So that's something where I think when we talk about should the city try to help out, that might make sense when it

Phil BacerraItem 12

comes to clean and safe on a temporary basis. Because at some point, here's a very harsh reality. We're going to be running out of Measure X sales tax soon. It's going to sunset. And all this ARPA money that we keep dipping into and throwing out to everybody, it's going to go away. It is not here forever. And so I think we need to be on more stable financial ground when we talk about what we're going to fund in our downtown. I'd love to see us do more for downtown. But the reality is, as you saw, right in the middle of the construction for OCTA, we were able to scrounge together a million and a half.

Phil BacerraItem 12

and and trust me I was so excited that we were able to even do that but once you spread it out among the many businesses in downtown as you all know that are here today that wasn't much that really wasn't much but what the city needs to take responsibility for is we need to make sure that we provide you with excellent services and for those services that you want above and beyond what we're able to provide yes you do need to self-assess but I think that all the energy all the folks that came out here today it shows that you guys are not going to turn a blind eye to where those funds go to.

Phil BacerraItem 12

And that's why it's important that you're all here. And there are different opinions on whether or whether or not there should be a bid. But if a bid does go forward, I hope that each and every one of you will be at the table scrutinizing the budgets and making sure that that money goes towards things that benefit each and every one of your businesses because you're paying out of pocket in such a tough financial times. So I really do hope that you maintain that energy, maintain that focus, and continue to watch but for right now i don't believe in just a hard absolute stop i think at the very least we

Phil BacerraItem 12

should continue this one more year and this time next year if it doesn't work if you would mind let me finish i would say and this is my own opinion that we should go one more year and this time next year if we don't see progress in how the bid works and how it's streamlined if that doesn't happen then i'll be taking a different vote next year but as of right now i'll be supporting one your continuation. Thank you.

Thank you. Let me bring it back to any other members of the council that have any questions or comments. Anybody online that has a hand raised?

Hearing none, seeing none. There is a motion to I guess go is it option, do we have an option A or B? But I guess it would be A to dissolve the.

You do one and two and we're just looking for the direction on it.

Great.

Mayor, I have a comment. Sorry.

Go ahead. Go ahead, Councilmember.

So, first, I want to thank all of the business owners that have come here and have reached out via email. I know this is not the first time that we've heard about your concerns. this is not the first time that you know staff hears about your concerns the the talk about the concerns with the bid has been ongoing for a very long time now I think this is actually the first time where I see the business owners uniting and what they want to see you know I spend a lot of my time in downtown I love Mission Bar I think they have the best micheladas I love going to worst

house, bird and barrel, you know Charlie's tattoos, I really do support the area as much as I can. And one of the issues to me that is very very clear is a lack of oversight. There's a lot of calls and concerns and questions about how the money is being spent, where the money is going you know there there are two entities right you have the the downtown Inc and then you have the Sanana Business Council each entity receives a hundred thousand dollars from the city for a sum of two hundred

thousand dollars but that is self-imposed the city is really the pass-through agency from the self-assessment that you have you know that you have made upon yourselves. And so I think it can be a very confusing topic for a lot of folks that don't understand or work with a bit on a day to day. So I was hoping that there would be some sort of breakdown so that people understand or grasp what exactly we're discussing here.

And part of the issue, I believe, if I understand it correctly, is, you know, this entity, you know, A receives $100,000, entity B receives another $100,000, and more than half of that money is being spent on consulting services. And so you're not, from what I understand, is that you're not seeing a return in terms of what you are giving to this bid. And so there's a real lack of, I think, respect at this point. there's just a lot of fighting that is going on there's claims about inappropriate relationships

blacklisting a lack of representation for some of the smaller businesses i i actually just learned that not every business carries the same boat the weight of the boat and so i can see how that is an issue the barriers for equity the co-opting of work the no transparency for the budget where the money is going how it's being spent and you know the claims are just endless and we're getting those those emails right and we're having to sit down with business owners and and explain to them I mean I I know I sat down with Delilah and Jeff and and said this is the information that you should have access

to and if you need support from the council to receive that let us know but I think it is a very dysfunctional system that we have in place I don't think that it's working I think that it's only causing more friction between the two groups and really the business owners that have said you know in private I'm only part of it because if I'm not then it's like I don't have a voice at the table it's like my business doesn't count and so I do appreciate all of the work that has been done I know this is not something new that has been established it's been in the city for for many years many advocates have talked

about this and so I think that we don't need two people duplicating the service and tonight I will be supporting the the recommendation that we received from the Community Development Commission I want to thank the commissioners I understand that that was a very you know heated meeting a very scandalous one and so I think I'm ready to move forward and accepting the recommendation from our commissioners it's part of the reason that we appoint people and you know I really do hope that the business owners and everybody that has been involved can

come to some sort of resolution and work together in good faith and respectfully you're all neighbors in the downtown and we all want to continue to support the downtown and we all want to know that things are good and doing really well there and we don't I don't enjoy seeing all the fighting to be honest so thank you

so councilmember Lopez was that a second to councilmember Hernandez's

sure I'll make the second mayor councilmember fan has great so we have a

motion in a second just to make sure the record is clear on councilmember Hernandez's motion and let's call on councilmember fan

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

Thank you, Mayor. So, Madam City Manager, or somebody who may have some clarification, some clarification questions. So, I know that there's a lot of controversy that came out of the Grand Jury Report back in the day. And that's part of why we have two organizations and not just one. Is that correct?

Yes, two. Okay.

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

And my question is, you know, there were some comments asking or, you know, proposing the idea of the two organizations combining as one with additional seats for those who are not currently on either boards. How would that work? how would i guess how would we go forward with something like that there are operating agreements

that would need to be terminated with the two entities and and an amendment to bylaws those operating agreements end at the end of december of this year so to move forward in a different fashion city council would have to direct a process to amend those bylaws and the operating

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

agreements is it possible to if we chose to continue the bid assessment process but not renew these two particular operating agreements and require a new one be established

yes and you could put a timeline on when um when you want to begin the process of making things move forward it would operate similar to when an entity adopts a budget let's say a city council adopts a budget after the fiscal year has already begun so let's say something it happens from time to time into July that a city council is adopting a budget things continue operating there is money that is within the funds for downtown Inc and Santa Ana business council that could be utilized to continue some of the events that are currently in process for planning

and and so they could continue even though the operating agreement may end december 31st

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

of this year thank you and the other question i had i haven't been able to find the answer to is do you know why our map for the downtown is quite so large i do understand i can tell you from my perspective when i think of downtown right it's fourth street third street and then parts um of the artist village or that was extended to the artist village but you know we it goes quite far um into the downtown can you kind of just help clarify why that's the case

you know i know it followed followed similar boundaries from when the property uh business improvement district was created back in 1984 and it it has morphed over the years uh it does try to incorporate some areas you know over near first and bush and some areas that uh first and uh french that you're not normally thinking of as the downtown um but from a staff perspective we think of downtown as the bigger area not just you know uh third fourth fifth

Phil BacerraItem 12

street uh santa anna director garcia i i don't know if you were around or if you remember at the time it was I believe 2011 when the original bid boundaries were shifted because there was actually Mayor Sarmento you might have a little more perspective on this. So it was 2011 the boundaries were modified for the bid to where the current boundaries are today and I know that was because of I want to say protests from some folks to be excluded from the bid and then I think that's how we arrived at the current boundaries that we have now.

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

Thank you. That's super helpful. Because, you know, when we're looking at the weighted bid votes, I actually think that is the most equitable way to look at it. Because the amount an individual, an individual business pays into the bid is dependent on the tax, you know, the revenue that they make each year. Bigger businesses pay more, or a business that makes more revenue per year pays more into the bid than a smaller business. And so they pay more into the bid, therefore their vote is weighted higher.

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

The main issue I have with something like that is, you know, the boundary, the bid was originally created before four members of this council were even born, right, 1984. And there are the boundaries of the bid also include some quite, you know, large businesses that don't seem as interested in being directly involved, at least from my perspective, you know, the Food for Less or the Marshalls. they're not, you know, paying into the bid is an operating cost. It's a rounding error for businesses that large, I think, compared to a small business like, you know, Muse Coffee,

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

for example, or Coffee Muse. And so I think that it matters who we incorporate and where the, I guess, the map goes, because also downtown's changed a lot. There are a lot of areas that that may not be considered themselves downtown or residents may not consider it downtown anymore.

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

I guess my question then is if we choose to move forward with the bid, are we able to change the map or the boundaries or would we have to redo a bid?

You would need to modify the boundaries and those are incorporated in the operating agreements.

okay so if you want to shrink the shrink the boundaries or increase the boundaries so

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

got it my other you know from what i've heard in the town halls and meetings as well as those who have come to speak is i think not so much that a bid is a bad thing in itself but that this bid as it is being implemented is not working for everyone paying into the bid. And I know that, you know, there are some comments about consultants, but I guess the way I see it is things don't happen without someone doing the work. Someone has to make the website. Someone has to plan the events.

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

Someone has to run the meeting. Someone has to print the flyers, design the flyers, et cetera. And that is time, right? That's what we pay these individual consultants to do. And I have, you know, learned of a number of items that folks have done. There was a bridal fashion show that some businesses received a free website that was made participations in storefront mastery for storefront designs. others who participated in other events in downtown, obviously depending on the business,

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

some get more attention, others get less. And I think that's part of the issue.

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

My inclination is to continue with the bid, but restructure the organization that is implementing the bid. so that those who currently do not have a voice or those who feel like they are not being represented are and not under the proposal that you take five from downtown inc five from sabc and five who are not currently involved but create something new where you know those in downtown can all come together now that is re-energized and aware of this process so i guess that would just require

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

us to continue but not not approve the operating agreements is that correct and then what can put

a deadline on when to create a new association um council member fan i believe that you could amend the operating agreements at any time because right now they are not before you for consideration

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

got it so it would be something that i could ask to bring back Or just not renew for the new year.

Correct. So with the option two, which is the normal process of letting the merchants decide by a vote whether they want to continue, it is only an annual item. So we are required to recertify every single year. So if you did option two, it would only be for a year time.

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

Thank you. The issue I have with, well, I guess that makes sense. The issue with option two is that, you know, some of the big businesses I heard like Marshalls and Food for Less, they're just not interested in participating in this process at all, whether for or against. And so by virtue of them not being interested, their vote is a no, right, to get rid of the bid. But if I vote to support the bid, when it comes back, I don't have to vote to support the operating agreements.

So those businesses would need to vote against it at the December 6th public hearing. If they do not come and vote or provide the votes as I received some ballots today against the bid, it would be a yes. their vote would be a yes unless they you know submit something in writing or call or

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

sorry maybe I'm not being clear I'm saying if I support a bid but I don't support the

organizations implementing the bid how do I do that so the best idea councilmember fan would be to keep the bid alive and then have city staff work with modifying the operating agreements And then you could consider amendments to those after you move forward with the resolution. The point that Executive Director Garcia was trying to make is by law the public hearing is a protest-based one. So you don't register a yes vote. It's looking for if there's 51% basically of objections to the reestablishing of the annual certification of it.

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

Thank you. And if I choose not to amend the operating agreements, but to not approve them whatsoever, but to direct city staff to work with our downtown merchants to establish a new association, would that be possible?

You could provide that direction to staff. However, we're not in control of the two separate legal entities. It would require them to come to the table and reach an agreement.

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

No, I'm saying if we don't choose to re-approve their operating agreements.

If you don't re-approve the operating agreements and you still have a bid in place, that would create an issue with who is the entity that's the recipient of the assessment funds. So it would be difficult to have a bid in place without having an operating agreement in place. But I do believe, and I'll defer to the city attorney, but you could move forward with recertifying the bid and later modify the operating agreements if there was one entity that was formed and that's who they approached us and said this is who we want to manage the assessment.

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

Got it. Thank you. That's all the questions I have. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. I'm going to go to Council Member Pinalosa. I think Mayor Potem, you have a quick comment.

Phil BacerraItem 12

Just a quick question. Kind of piggybacking off Council Member Fan. So just to help me understand, help us all understand, walk through. So we are voting on whether to allow a hearing to proceed for the assessment, period.

That's correct.

Phil BacerraItem 12

Nothing else. Assessment. That's it. When we talk about once that assessment, assuming it is approved, so we will start receiving money. That money, as was already described, we already passed through. So we do not hold it. It's like a hot potato. We're going to give it to somebody. So when we first had the bid, when the city first adopted the bid, we basically said, yes, we're going to give it to downtown. This is before the two entities. But at some point, there was something that happened. There was an instrument adopted, an action taken that went and said, okay, we've got

Phil BacerraItem 12

a bid, we've started assessment, and now we have the authority, the permission to give it to this entity. So what was that action or instrument?

The MOUs contain the ability, the agreements, they contain the ability for the city to transfer, to provide the money to these entities. And these are two 501c6 entities. They're two separate entities. The agreements help provide the money generated from the business improvement district.

Phil BacerraItem 12

So to what you're describing then, it's the MOU that is approved by the council. So whatever year that was, the MOU was given to the council that said, we're going to pass the money through to Downtown Inc., and then later that was modified to have two separate MOUs, one to Downtown Inc., one to the Santa Ana Business Council.

A little more complex than that with the history, and forgive me, I don't know all the details, I was not here, but initially it was one entity, and then as a result of a settlement agreement, a second entity was added. That settlement agreement has now expired, so you can modify that if those entities would agree to that.

Phil BacerraItem 12

I mean, to Councilmember Phan's point though, settlement agreement is over. And we can choose, we as a council can choose whether to enter into an MOU with one entity, another or a completely different one.

You can't choose that. The entities would have to choose that. So right now you're obligated to pass through the assessments to two entities. If those two entities approached the city and said, we're going to merge, just an example We're going to merge and become one entity and we'd like to modify our operating agreement with you to be the recipient, the single recipient. They would have to initiate it.

Phil BacerraItem 12

So the city council does not initiate, the city does not initiate, they do.

You could direct staff to attempt to work with them on something like that, but we aren't the decision maker. They're the decision makers.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 12

So when you created the assessment, when you create the assessment, when way back, you decide at that time how the funds are going to be distributed and who they're going to be distributed to, your assessment identified these two entities. So it isn't like we can then choose and say, well, we're going to approve the assessment, but now we want different entities. Your assessment said, the one that everybody voted on, the engineers looked at, looked at the map, they said these are the two entities that are going to get the money. So if those two entities don't come back to you and want to modify it, you would have

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 12

to actually just completely recreate your assessment district in order to deal with new entities.

Mayor Pro Tem, let me get to some of the other council members.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 12

Yes, that's fine. Thank you.

Councilmember Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem 12

Thank you, Mayor. And first, I want to thank all the businesses that came in to speak regarding this today. The questions that I have are very similar to what my colleagues have expressed, all of them, actually. I, as it stands right now and as both these entities stand, I think that the best decision is to dissolve the bid entirely.

David PenalozaItem 12

But one thing that I do want to question is because I do not think that these boards or members of these boards are a true representation of what the downtown businesses are. I've been an elected council member for four years now, and in four years I haven't seen much change on the makeup and members of these boards. So I want to, and I want to see who can walk me through this. I don't know if it's the city manager or you, Director Garcia, over the membership of these entities. Can I just go through down the list? Sure.

David PenalozaItem 12

So I'm looking at the Santa Ana Business Council, their latest or their most recent agenda, and the names that I see on here that make up this board that represent all the businesses downtown, I don't think truly represent what the downtown businesses. For example, I mean, and I know who a lot of these are, but I'm going to ask you, so who's Alfredo Amesqua?

He is an attorney in the city and a former elected.

David PenalozaItem 12

And is there, does he have a business inside this business district?

No, not that I'm aware of. So why is he on the board? That bid, the Santa Ana Business Council board can be made up of pretty much any membership it doesn't have to I'd have to look at the

David PenalozaItem 12

operating agreement yeah and see and that just does not make sense to me so

who's who's Arturo Arellanes so if if I can councilman Penelope that's not our board it's a separate legal entity's board we don't assign board members to

David PenalozaItem 12

it and we have no control I understand that but if they're here asking us to give them to pass this bid assessment a self-tax to further fund their board we should know and we should make sure that this board is a true representation of the downtown businesses. So, which is, that's why I'm asking these questions. So, are Arturo Arellanes and Claudia Arellanes, are they related? I do not know.

David PenalozaItem 12

Husband and wife.

What business do they own today? I believe they used to own a furniture store in the downtown. And now?

David PenalozaItem 12

It's closed now, I believe. It's closed? How long has it been closed for? Pardon? How long has it been closed for? I do not know that. But I believe you know. So, see, and for a husband and wife to have seats on a board, two of them, because they used to own a business, that just doesn't make sense to me. And it's nothing personal with them or Alfredo Amesqua. He's a great man. I've met him. But it just doesn't make sense why, how this board can sit here and say, we represent the downtown businesses because I don't see it. I don't see it in the makeup of the board. I have all my respect to Sam Romero and I see him

David PenalozaItem 12

on here as well. I don't think he owns a business in the downtown. So there's there's definitely it's I do not think that the current makeup of any of these boards are working. I don't I don't think it's a true representation and my similar questions to what Mayor Pro Tem Becerra and Councilmember Fann are saying how can we in order for us to change the operations of these entities a new assessment has to be created correct is that what I'm hearing from

legal though simply put the city is a you have you only have one role in a legislative act so the businesses decided to self-assess they went through all of the state law requirements to garner the support. They brought it to you years ago and said, look, we have the necessary support under state law. We want you to take a legislative act and create this business improvement district. That's your role. And then from forward, every year you have to annually recertify it. You have to do a financial report. You have to hold a public hearing. The merchants, if they protest, 51% protest, it's automatically dissolved and there is

no assessment made. When there is no assessment made, it's basically gone. If the merchants wanted to start it again, they would have to start back from square one and recreate the entire process and garner all of the support and come back to the city to request the city recognizes it. Does that help?

David PenalozaItem 12

Yes. So that would allow us as a city to come up with a new operational, operation agreement.

Based on who they are requesting you to provide the funds to to manage the funds. You're not the sole decision maker on that. It is the members of the bid themselves like they did several years ago.

David PenalozaItem 12

But is it so what it.

Let me just remind members of the public if they could please withhold their comments. You had an opportunity to speak. Please allow the council to ask questions of staff and we can, you know, hopefully resolve this sooner. Please withhold your remarks.

David PenalozaItem 12

So I guess just final question. So the decision makers, would it be all the business owners or just the current members of these boards?

To create a new, a brand new bid?

David PenalozaItem 12

Yes.

Well, to create a.

David PenalozaItem 12

Or operation agreement. Would it be, yeah. How would that come about?

Well, right now, if you recertified and held the hearing and there wasn't enough protest and it continued on, you would have to honor the operating agreement you have in place for passing those assessments.

David PenalozaItem 12

If we just continue with the current.

If you just continue, correct.

David PenalozaItem 12

So in order for that to change, we have to dissolve it completely and create a new assessment?

Well, what Council Member Fan was recommending, if we maintained it, could we then, staff tried to work with the two legal entities to change up the operating agreements. I don't believe, and I will defer to the city attorney, that you would have the unilateral ability to just say we're not going to provide the money per the operating agreement.

David PenalozaItem 12

Okay, so we can't say, we can't kick it back and say work on the operation agreement first and then come back to us with, for the request to continue the bid. Because I do believe that there should be a bid to help improve and help promote the downtown. But I just know that speaking with many businesses, the current model is not working. So that's where, like some of my colleagues between a rock and a hard place, where it's like we see the benefit of it, but we also see the same frustration inside of the business owners that aren't seeing any benefit from having it.

I understand and I think the complexity is you don't have a lot of the decisions that you want to make at your discretion. So you're really presented with two options. The one option is it dissolves, it's over, it's done, or move forward with recertifying it for another year, provided that there isn't a 51% protest. What Council Member Phan was asking is, well, if we recertified it for another year, would Would it be possible that maybe those entities would modify the management of the assessments and approach the city and you could modify it later?

David PenalozaItem 12

But there's no guarantee that that will happen, right?

Well, because I can't speak on behalf of two separate entities.

David PenalozaItem 12

Okay. So that answers a lot of the questions I had. Thank you, City Manager. Thank you, Director Garcia.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments?

Council Member Fannock, Mayor.

Council Member Fannock. LET'S GO THROUGH ALL THE COUNCIL MEMBERS THAT HAVEN'T SPOKEN FIRST AND THEN WE'LL COME BACK FOR A SECOND ROUND IF SOMEBODY WANTS TO SPEAK AGAIN. COUNCIL MEMBER MENDOZA, ARE YOU STILL WITH US?

IS SHE ON?

ALL RIGHT. HAS EVERYBODY SPOKEN UP HERE IN ADDITION TO COUNCIL MEMBER FAN? SO LET ME GO AHEAD AND CALL UPON MYSELF BECAUSE I THINK I'M THE ONLY ONE WHO HASN'T SPOKEN. So I think I'm the only one who was here when this bid was formed. And I actually was here, man, I am really going to date myself. Some of you will remember DeSaba, the Downtown San Antonio Business Association. That was years ago, and that was the predecessor to a lot of what happened. And it's never been easy to create this, you know, A, first was a P bid, you know, and then it was a bid. and the reason why I think it's always been difficult is because it's a very

diverse downtown. You have people that are providing services during the day, you have others that are providing goods, then you have others that provide services. And so when you try to do that under one umbrella or under one organization, the mission is very difficult to make sure everybody gets an equitable amount of support. And so somebody who's providing let's say a legal service, whether it's an attorney or somebody providing accounting or whether it's an architect, somebody who has an office downtown versus a merchant that's selling bridal dresses or whether

it's a restaurant or a lounge. So those things are very disparate. And we're talking about a very small amount of money. And what to me, I think, was always challenging when we were dealing with this before is that what's left over after the administrative cost is very nominal for it to reach everybody so it's been challenging I want to give a shout out to Julie Castro because she has been somebody who I can remember her predecessor a few people back which is which was a guy named Roger Cooey and if you guys go and you see a plaque of Roger in the downtown it's because he

used to do this and I don't know how he did it because he was an older gentleman but he knew everybody and he would move around and he would try to help as much as possible and he did it in a way that was unconventional but it worked back then as now businesses have you know changed it's um it's it's gotten very difficult because you have new businesses entering and we have this whole idea of the downtown transforming and sometimes that's not a good thing because there's just displacement and there's you know businesses that have been there for generations legacy businesses that are now being displaced by others.

So that's a challenge because that changes the identity and that changes the culture of a downtown and any business center. So that's always been another challenge. So for me, I think what's troubling is, and not troubling, but I guess we just have a binary choice. We don't have the ability to transform these things because there is very little discretion we have as a council to say this is what we'd like to see. I think we see a better conceptual end to this where if businesses, a majority of businesses want to assess themselves to agree on something that they feel is going to be beneficial and

have the most, you know, benefit to everybody, then that's something that they could do. And they did that years ago. They said we want to come here and we're going to go ahead and pay into this. and they felt that they wanted to enhance the services that they were already receiving from the city. The city was already doing clean and safe, but they weren't, in the opinion of the merchants, they wanted to do more for the downtown, market it, brand it, create a different environment. So that's what was approved, not the fact that we wanted to assess the businesses themselves. The businesses came and said, we want to assess ourselves.

We want to do this because we want the downtown to evolve like other downtowns. So at this point, I think because we're limited to making sure that if we approved this for another year, like we do annually, it has to go to those two organizations right now. We can't obligate them, nor is there anything before us. And we'd be speculating to say, yeah, they're going to figure it out, and they're going to go ahead and blend into one. We can't assume that. So if we approve extending it for a year and approving the levy, then it automatically goes to the two. And that is troubling to me.

It's always been troubling to have two organizations that represent the downtown. And that was a result of a lawsuit. That wasn't a result of a choice. So, and I think, you know, I heard comments that were, you know, I think Council Member Lopez broke it down really well. I, you know, I think conceptually it's just not benefiting. It's not working for what the original mission was. And I think the fact that you do have board members on there that no longer reflect. And I've known San Romero for a long time. He used to have, I think, a Catholic shop downtown. But that's been closed for years.

And so it does not reflect, you know, what the current makeup of the downtown is. So I, you know, one of the thoughts I had is just not enforcing the levy and just having this go forward without any assessment. And if in a year the businesses want to continue this, let them go ahead and bring something forward to us, whether they blend into one organization, whether they want to just dissolve it all together.

But I believe under the conditions, the economic conditions that we've just gone through, two years of a pandemic, an entire year almost of construction, I think there has been sufficient burden on these businesses in downtown that we can't.

that I can't approve, you know, or can't support the continuation of this for a year. The only thing I was thinking about is that in this interim, maybe there's a way that if you remove the consulting or the administrative cost of this $200,000, you're left with about $100,000. Maybe that's something that could be, you know, provided in the interim for this year to go ahead and let the businesses kind of talk amongst themselves because I don't like to make decisions on behalf of the businesses because I believe the businesses should govern themselves, especially when it comes to self-assessing.

And if they choose not to and they don't want to, then we shouldn't approve and support that. But if they do, then we should try to provide the mechanism to do that. So I know a lot of the funding for the downtown was a result or comes from parking fees. And I know we've, you know, because of the construction, which I know I just received a message from OCTA, the construction on the remaining two blocks will be over by Thanksgiving. It'll be complete. So the downtown will be open. And all two-way traffic on 4th Street from French to Ross will be open. So we will no longer have that problem.

So that is a good thing. That was painful for all of us. And I know it was painful for you all. You were here way too many times this year. And, you know, I want to thank the council for providing that $3 million, you know, in addition to the $1.2 million that Supervisor Foley provided. And we're still working on more through the senator's office. So we are hoping that will come forward. But at this point, the only choices I want to make is either we dissolve or we approve without a levy. And we wait for a year. and to see if we can find $100,000 through parking fees

that should be reinstated at some point because we will now have the downtown corridor, 4th Street, open. So that would be sort of my, I guess, additional comment and direction to you because this is where I'm confused. I'm not sure what you want the council or what you need the council to do because this looks like it's to provide direction or is it to actually make a decision on following the commission's recommendation or approving the levy? I can tell you that I am not supportive of approving the levy because right now, as it works,

it goes to two organizations that just don't seem to work.

So, Mayor, we probably would need a vote on it because it is setting a public hearing. But the one question I would have, and I don't know if the city attorney has answers, I don't have it. I would like the benefit of being able to research more. I'm not sure if you don't do an intent to levy, whether the bid automatically is dissolved. So I don't know if you can buy time.

Can't we toll it or, you know, just?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 12

Well, I think the deadline that we're really working against is one of reporting the assessments to the assessor so they can get on the property tax bills. No? No, business license. Just business license. So you probably have your own internal deadlines for that. So that's probably what you're working against. One of the things that you could do, and it depends on what direction you're going in, if you wanted to buy yourself more time, you could say, let's move forward with the potential of the intention to levy, give staff an opportunity to go talk with these organizations when you have the public hearing.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 12

Well, actually, that's not going to work because the ballots will go out. I see where you're going.

I guess the question would be, is there enough time to do either or on December 20th? Because that would give us a meeting in between. Exactly. So, Executive Director, if they chose to proceed with the intent to levy, is there anything stopping them from having that hearing date beyond the 20th as well? No. No, that would be enough time. Okay. That would.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 12

Yeah, that's what I was thinking is that at least it keeps your options open, but still gives you the opportunity to say no if we can't get the reorganization that some of you were hoping could be worked out.

Look, I almost feel like I made it a little too clumsy just because it makes it really difficult, and I know there's a lot of, again, speculation. There's a lot of conditions. right now I just think it isn't in a state to be able to kind of resuscitate. So I am going to follow the commission's recommendation. I just do think it's...

We have commissions for a reason, and I do think that in the future that doesn't mean that this downtown can't continue or introduce you know a new you know bid that reflects everything and you know again reflective of who who are the stakeholders there and I think that should be something that we should look at is who represents the downtown and I think it has to be stakeholders and it has to be people who have skin in the game so that is those are my comments I'm not sure if there's any others was there let me go to councilman I don't send them fan I think thank you mayor I

David PenalozaItem 12

I just have a point of clarification with, or I guess a question really, with the assessment, the bid, the self-assessment, can we change it or how would we go about allowing businesses to potentially opt out if they don't want to participate? Is that even a possibility?

That would be probably a substantial change which would probably warrant just the creation of a new bid.

David PenalozaItem 12

Okay. So that's not like an easy just we could say, you know, part of, you know, if it's 20 or

The amount of work that the businesses would have to go through to achieve that is the same as

David PenalozaItem 12

basically forming. As creating a new assessment. Correct. Correct. Okay. All right. Thank you.

Councilmember Phan.

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you so much for this really detailed discussion. I hope whatever side of all of that, I don't like to say that there are sides, but however you feel about the bid, I hope that you do understand that we're trying to balance a lot of concerns, issues, thoughts, ideas. And I guess for me, it goes back to the fact that the bid was established almost 40 years ago when downtown was just so different, right? We mentioned a number or Councilman Penalosa mentioned a number of business owners who no

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

longer own businesses in downtown who are on some of the boards. And that there are different areas of downtown that I guess maybe someone like me or others may not really feel is a part of downtown anymore. Or maybe you know 4th Street wants to create their own bid that's only focused on the fourth street merchants because they'll also in the future be the only merchants affected by the streetcar whatever that looks like for better or for worse and so i guess because we're so limited in what we can actually do right i can't delay a levy because business licenses need to be

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

issued annually we can't direct these two organizations to do something different And even if we did, I'm not sure that many merchants feel like they could change it or it could be amended in a way that they would feel that their voices were truly being heard. We can't direct them to get new board members. and just because of all of these different you know kind of ways that our hands are tied

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

I believe I kind of I think I'm moving in the direction of approving the commission's recommendation if in the future if in the future merchants in downtown want to get together to establish a bid they can do that right maybe the um the restaurants can create their own bid i don't think there's anything wrong with that right because i think in other places i think in Irvine Anaheim and Garden Grove they have like a hotel bid i and maybe the bridal shops or

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

retailers want to create their own bid i i think that there are many options there because of the way downtown's changed. Can someone just confirm with me that what I just said is not, it is correct that if say a specific type of business wants to be involved in a bid that they can?

Yeah, you can create a new business improvement district entity. There are some in Garden Grove, Newport Beach, other areas of-

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

If the restaurants, it's only the restaurants. The restaurants are the only ones. Absolutely.

And that can be run through the business license process.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 12

well santa anna has our own tourism marketing district created that in 2020 by our hotelers

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

to do that so the answer is yes so and i know that we also have uh approved and and have you know up and running travel santa anna i was just on their website they promote events in downtown as well as throughout the city i've actually randomly run into articles written by them to promote Santa Ana and so maybe you know our merchants can also work further with travel Santa Ana and discuss among themselves whether they would like to have more specific bids in the future thank you

Mayor Potem.

Phil BacerraItem 12

Thank you.

Phil BacerraItem 12

So maybe it's Director Garcia. So let's just kind of walk through. So if the bid, if we decide tonight not to move forward with the public hearing on December 6th for the levy, right, we say tonight we're not going to do it. So what happens next? So we've got these two entities out there with Santa Business Council, Downtown Inc. We have some sort of operating agreements with them now. Are those operating agreements renewed annually? And if we don't continue forward with this process tonight, then do those just expire at the end of the calendar year?

They do. They expire at the end of the calendar year.

Phil BacerraItem 12

Okay.

We would recommend what was before you was a recommendation to go through a dissolution process. There is noticing, and that's why we're pushing it out to December 20th. I believe there could be an alternate. You just don't do the levy, and there's no money going to a bid.

Phil BacerraItem 12

Is that possible? Because I appreciate what the mayor was trying to do, kind of find a third way. Can we actually, I guess, have a levy on the books but not actually collect it? or at least because when you were describing that we had a deadline to get this on the books for the business licenses, right, for the calendar year, but then we're going to now tell our business license department, put this levy on, but don't actually put it on.

So there was a proposal that was presented to me about taking a one-year break on the levy, on the assessment, that the bid would continue, but there wouldn't be a levy, and I don't know the mechanics of how that works.

Phil BacerraItem 12

Well, what's the point of a bid continuing if there's no levy? I mean, that's the whole point of the bid.

Kind of like any Chamber of Commerce, any association of businesses, you know, you could think of it that way.

Phil BacerraItem 12

But the thing is, is that we, the city, are that pass-through. That's right. So really the Chamber, like in your analogy, I like your analogy, but the Chamber of Commerce, in your analogy, would be the two organizations.

They are membership fee driven.

Phil BacerraItem 12

Right.

I would, so I'm not an expert in this area, so I don't know the correct legal answer. If there is no levy assessed, does the bid die or is it lingering there? I would think you could go through the process and assess a zero assessment and still keep the bid alive. But I would defer to an attorney for this area.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 12

I know that we can do that with respect to taxes. We've done it before.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 12

That is under Prop 218 something that we can do. But I would need a little more time to look at the bid laws.

And then maybe grants or other, you know, I'm trying to think of.

Phil BacerraItem 12

So my last question on this then is, so let's say we proceed down that path. We vote to continue with the bid, but we levy, let's say, zero for the next calendar year. Because that's, you know, the council's direction is to see something change with the organization to which this money goes to. So I guess at that point there's no, I mean, the bids would actually, or the organizations, I mean, they're living off of this money. So if we cut it off tonight, they're going to live off what they have for the rest of the calendar year, and then at that point, it's probably not sink or swim, it's sink.

I would think so.

Phil BacerraItem 12

So is there any advantage of keeping the bid alive without the levy? What do you see as the advantage versus, because it sounded like earlier, that the only option available to the council is just full-blown dissolving it. And now you're saying that there might actually be a way to keep it on some sort of footing, but just without any nourishment.

Yeah, and there is some money remaining that could keep them going, you know, for a little bit.

Phil BacerraItem 12

From our standpoint, the mechanics of what we can and can't do, because I think you sense the frustration up here of we don't have the ability to tell these two private entities how to govern themselves. But we are the pass through for this assessment that's going to these two entities that we can't tell how to organize and function. So I feel like a lot of my colleagues are going down the path of, well, if we can't see that reform happen, then we're just going to dissolve it. So that's why I'm trying to understand that. How is what this other proposal of just keeping the bid alive without the assessment, how is that different?

Phil BacerraItem 12

Like what, I'm trying to understand which is the better option. Because they seem very similar. Can I offer something? Go ahead.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 12

I just want to offer something. Because what I heard tonight is that we have business interests in the city that are concerned that their interests are not being represented on these boards. I think a key question for you is, is it possible that these board, the membership of these boards are reconstituted to make those businesses who came here tonight happy? In other words, is that the only problem they're having with your bid? Because if that's the problem they're having, which is we don't feel like we're being represented and our money is spent well, we'd be happy to pay, but only if we're represented and

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 12

our money is spent well, then it might be worth trying to keep this thing alive, right, and trying to fix the representation issue. But if the issues are broader than that, if they're more, if they're just a whole other issue, then I don't know that you're going to be able to fix this bid, this particular one, if the issues are bigger than that. And you might be better off letting it dissolve.

It's almost structurally unsound.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 12

Exactly. So you might be better off letting it go, putting your time and energy and money into meeting with your businesses and figuring out what they want.

Thank you.

All right. I think we've exhausted that conversation. I believe there's a motion and a second. Was it Hernandez and then a second by Lopez? Lopez, yes. Hearing none and seeing no other comments, Council Members, we're going to give you direction on the motion, that gives you clear direction, right?

Because of it, the City Attorney would feel better if you did actually do a vote on it, so it's for option number one that you'd be voting on.

Got it.

Council Members, please vote.

Council member Mendoza are you available can you please voice your vote

Council member Mendoza oh yes that's yes for me

did you get that um yes we got it okay thank you

Motion passes 6-1 with Mayor Plotem Becerra dissenti.

Thank you everybody. That concludes item number 26. We are now on item number 27. This is an informational report relating to City's anti-cruising ordinance.

Honorable Mayor and City Council, we do have a presentation from our Chief of Police for the item that's before you. And it is an informational report item and we are looking for future direction on this item.

Okay, Mayor, City Council, City Manager, and thank you for the opportunity to provide you a presentation on the anti-cruising ordinance repeal and really its impact. In fact, before I go to the slides and go through the presentation, I want to clearly express to you, to those present, to those listening at home, that I have heard the public comment.

I am not tone deaf to what has been shared with you at public comment. And so having said that, I do have a responsibility and obligation to provide you my best professional recommendation on this topic. And so with that, we'll go ahead and get started. The ordinance has been in place since 1989. It essentially authorizes, provides the authority to establish one or more traffic control points and post signs to control cruising.

That's the portion of the anti-cruising that enables officers to address this issue. Within the ordinance, you'll see it talks about driving a motor vehicle three or more times in a particular period within a four hour period causing congestion at that control point and so this this type of ordinance was adopted by various jurisdictions across the state some of which still have the ordinance on the books there has been some jurisdictions that have tried to remove repeal what is

being considered by the council to do and have actually put a pause on that national city most recently and i know again there's been public comment not just from here santa but on a regional scale on this topic so the the effects of the cruising ordinance is santa anna is one of the most popular locations for cruising. This has this activity has been going on for decades and when we think about regions I can speak to this not only from you know the 32 years of experience in the police department but even beyond that

you know being part of the community for my entire life and so observing from a distance and also on the ground and so whether it's you know folks knowing that this activity can occur in different cities they you know obviously concentrate and flock to those areas so i will tell you that it is it is my professional opinion that many people are are looking to see what happens with this ordinance uh by this council um and and so we we want to proceed with caution um cruising attracts you know motorists from outside the area

It impacts traffic flow, causes gridlocks, causes traffic congestion, noise, fighting, vandalism, vice crimes, quality of life, and criminal incidents as well. Assaults, there's been shootings, and those types of activities. And so, again, I want to keep referencing what this board has heard and what the public has heard. This, we, you know, some groups want this to be a family-friendly activity, and that's great. the problem becomes when it's not a specific location. For example, a car show, a lowrider car show, where people that have worked very hard on their vehicles

show up to location, display their vehicles, set them up, and are able to partake in conversations with family, friends, and that about the investment and the pride they have in their vehicles. It's very different than opening up our streets across the city and allowing for this activity to occur. I can recall, and some of the folks that have engaged in cruising here in our city that have been here for decades can recall, where we've had to shut down Bristol Street, six-lane major thoroughfare through the heart of our city,

on both the north at the 22 freeway and on the south at the 405 freeway. Now, we can't close the freeway. We don't have the authority to do that. We have to request assistance from the CHP. They're able to restrict access to on-ramps and off-ramps, really. That's essentially it. And why does this happen? Because everybody from Los Angeles County, Kern County, San Diego, Imperial County, they know that this is a hotbed for this activity. Here's the impact, is we have known events that occur, for example, Easter.

And I hear the chatter behind me, but the reality is you have to acknowledge facts and experience in our city. Not in San Jose, not in other jurisdictions. In Santa Ana. So we can deploy resources to address this, and we have when we know about these incidents. In 1989, what didn't we have? social media to the extent that it is a real dynamic today. This gets repealed tonight, hypothetically. You know, this information gets onto social media this weekend. As soon as this weekend, we could have a real issue on our hands here in our city in terms of safety and security.

So when we're talking about a gridlock situation on major thoroughfares, whether it's Bristol, Main Street, etc., And we have to devote so many resources to maintain control and make sure people aren't, you know, hurting each other or damaging property. And we have a call for service, you know, of a child not breathing on the far west side of town. And not only the resources that we dedicated to the event, but now we have to pull from frontline patrol, emergency 911 response. So that kid that's waiting for a response is delayed.

And our fire chief is no longer here this evening, but the reality is it's police officers that arrive to these critical 911 calls first. The fire department follows. And so they're able to assist at that higher level of medical care, for example. And so that's not able to happen if they can't get through a gridlock area, right? Big red rig, not able to move and traverse as quickly as a car or a motorcycle, for example. So those are just some of the practical examples that we're talking about here. The police department responds generally on the weekends is when this occurs, but this can also be an issue during the week, right?

If you have a large soccer event and there's a street takeover, we'll get into that about street takeovers and the difference. And unfortunately for the low rider community, there is an impact by the street takeovers. And so there's this crossover that occurs. From a policing standpoint, we're concerned with safety and security, whatever that looks like, whatever's in front of us.

Let's see here. So takeovers, as I mentioned, they're referred to in various ways. And this may start off as, you know, cruisers, and then these takeovers that are engaged in street racing and, you know, damaging the street, doing donuts, et cetera. they get infiltrated in some of these events. And again, for the focus groups that want to have cruising be a family-friendly, centered experience, I don't doubt that that's the intent.

The problem is when we have others that infiltrate these groups, and they do, and then they morph into other activities that can occur. So we get calls from business owners at Edinger in Bristol. You've got various businesses there. This is a spur-of-the-moment type event that can occur as well. And they'll take over the entire parking lot and gridlock the parking lot and then spill over out into the street. Well, there's businesses there that are trying to conduct business. When everything is cleared, what is left? Beer bottles, trash, you name it. And business owners have to pay to get this cleaned up.

and for no good reason other than they have a parking lot or the streets adjacent to them and there's access.

So again, I mentioned communication through social media. That's an issue that really exacerbates our current environment. And the other theme that I heard and everyone heard is that this ordinance was put in place and is a tool to adversely impact you know communities of color simply because of their color it's it's not true it's it's not true you can hear you know disagreement with that and and that's someone's perspective it's a tool to address a public safety concern that's what it is that's what it is now you

know how often do we actually enforce actually enforce the anti-cruising ordinance I don't have that data we can research it but we don't we don't actually enforce it but to remove it off the books is a tool that sends the wrong message to our community to Santa Ana residents and business owners and also it sends a message to the region that this is acceptable behavior here and so So what starts off as a very prideful event and piece in showcasing my vehicle that I've spent a lot of time and effort and focus on can morph into, as you're driving down the

street, an assault, right? Or any other host of criminal activity. That's what we're trying to prevent here. No one is enforcing this provision based on disparate impact on color. people of color that that's not the case if that is the case if someone believes anyone like any other alleged misconduct involving a police employee if they believe that they were disparately impacted based on the color of their skin please I implore that person to bring that information forward so that we can investigate it earlier you talked about police oversight and I've I'm on

record as being very much supportive of holding police employees accountable so So that's the difference, is this is not an environment where we get defensive and we don't want to look into whatever the allegation is. So that's important here. Larger agencies such as the Los Angeles Police Department, they've had to form task forces to address this. And so they have big multi-agency task forces to respond to these incidents. And again, they kind of mesh, cruising, street takeovers, and everything else that happens. We've seen assaults. we've seen actually deaths occur as a result of this activity.

Here in Santa Ana, we were one of the lead agencies to establish the Strategic Enforcement Against Racing and Reckless Driving Program. That started here in Santa Ana, and now we partner with agencies from across Orange County really to address this activity focused on enforcement, education, and what else can we do with our streets in terms of engineering.

Again, the cruising ordinance is a, you know, to repeal it is a message that is problematic. It would send a message that this behavior is acceptable here. And from a policing standpoint, I have to professionally recommend that that would not be ideal at all. so we look at options and i know you're the elected officials to to identify what those options are possibility would be a static fixed post an event where we could where you all could sanction it through the permit process for example that would be an easier response in terms of

staffing safety and security at a location rather than a carte blanche across our streets and our city highways in the staff report there's also articles uh citing different incidents that have occurred i'm open for questions i do want to point out that this past saturday night the city of san jose in a regional effort cited 700 people uh for street racing and a variety of different violations related to street takeover and they also had uh you know a cruising problem as well That's my presentation. I can answer any questions that you have. Again, certainly acknowledging,

in fact, I met with one of the advisors to the low rider groups before the council meeting started. Wanted to hear that person out. And we talked about this possible option again for your decision. But there are some serious safety concerns here. Quality of life, property, crime, and crimes against people that can occur.

Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Thank you for that presentation. Let me go ahead and bring it back to the Council for any questions or comments.

Councilmember Hernandez?

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 12

Would anybody else like to comment before I go? All right. Awesome. All right. Well, first and foremost, Chief Valentin, thank you for your presentation. And thank you for your staff for being present today. I want to also thank the residents who came out here and have been at our city council meeting since five o'clock. Thank you guys for coming out here and advocating for change. Before I was an elected official, I never saw people who looked like me in these council chambers. And when I ran for office, I wanted to make sure that those people that politicians were typically afraid of involving and being part of a solution.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 12

When I got elected, I made a pledge that I was gonna make sure your guys' voices were here at the table and that people who look like us are reflected at this dais. And more importantly, the values that our parents and our grandparents fought for. We had a lot of historic families here today that fought so that each of us can have access to equal opportunities as students when we navigated the educational system. So I want to thank you guys because I feel very empowered to see people with a story that is very similar to mine here at these council chambers.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 12

Now, the reason why it is incredibly important for cities like Santa Ana to remove the anti-cruising ordinance is I have to start with my Santa Ana story, where it starts for me, and the impact of why I'm so passionate about removing the anti-cruising ordinance. I would not be here today if it wasn't for my grandparents migrating from Jalisco, Mexico to the city of Santa Ana. On my dad's side of the family we have only known Santana. We have been in this in this city so long we can't trace our lineage back to Mexico. So all I've known is Santana on my dad's side of the

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 12

family. Both sides of my family call Articia Pilar home, and the reason why I share that is because growing up as a young boy, my great-grandfather Jose Lopez collected cars, and often times when his children were old enough, they were passed down those cars. Now my cousins that I grew up with are now owners of those vehicles, and there are three generations of classic cars in my family. My uncle Salvador Prieto, may he rest in peace, was a member of Old Style Car Club and was a longtime resident of the city of Santana. My uncle's on both sides of my family.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 12

My cousin Alfred Dominguez's father is executively producing the great American lowrider tradition documentary. He grew up in the city of Santa Ana. And so I shared this because Because lowriding is a part of our story, and it's a reflection of the Mexican-American post-war experience. These hot rods that families were taking eventually became lowriders through this wave of mass adoption after the Mexican-American post-war experience. As Chicanos began to collectively reimagine their identities throughout the 60s as we

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 12

fought for civil rights along the African American community as we had the Mendez versus Board of Education historic case versus West Westminster pardon me we had Mexican American families fighting to reclaim their identity lowriders became a conduit to express both cultural and political values car clubs forming at the time began offering community services in the 60s and the 70s the original cruising spot in Santana was 4th Street and as they began offering community services car clubs in the 60s and 70s they began

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to fundraise for the United Farm Workers Labor Union as Cesar Chavez was fighting for for the respect of the farm workers they began hosting health initiatives in the Bay Area cars were instrumental in building community and helped create community spaces for meaningful dialogues. As time progressed, the car aspect took a backseat, and the social community impact became the heartbeat of Santa Ana car clubs. For many Latino and Chicano families, lowrider community has helped bring men and families and children and women

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together it has helped fathers raise their sons and daughters it has helped parents build relationships where customizing a car becomes part of your family affair it becomes a chance for you to bond it becomes an opportunity for fathers to pass knowledge and skill sets that their sons can pass to their grandchildren and what we're seeing is that these aren't just cars This has become a part of our culture and it is so adamant how important this is to our culture that it's become intergenerational.

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We're on our fourth and fifth generation of some people having classic cars. Now, cruising is not something that is exclusive to the Latino or the Chicano community. Cruising is prominent in African-American communities and oftentimes car clubs are multiracial. The vast majority of classic car owners are typically older demographics, given it reminds them of their youth and it is a way to keep these traditions alive. The street takeover and racing culture that law enforcement is likening to, cruising to, are on completely different sides of the spectrum.

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And takeovers and street racing, as of late, is known for newer model cars and imports and drifters. Now, to back up my statement that street takeovers is something that we see with newer model cars, it's not something you see with lowriders, let me back it up with the data. Santa Ana PD presented on today's presentation 10 attachments.

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Exhibit 2 through Exhibit 9 are articles. Now each of these articles are about why cruising is going to increase the potential dangers to our community. Now let me break down each exhibit. Exhibit number two does not mention any classic cars, does not mention any low riding. Exhibit number three features a BMW that was racing. Exhibit number four features a modern-day Chevrolet SUV that was participating in a street takeover. Exhibit number five does not mention a lowrider, and it is, again, a street takeover.

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No car clubs involved. Exhibit number seven has no mention or correlation between cruising and how it increases traffic crimes or how it puts pedestrians at risk. and exhibit number eight is more of the same. Now the reason why this is so important is we have to acknowledge what transpires at these takeovers. They don't transpire in cruising culture. There is a level of maturity that comes with cruising. The art and the financial investment that somebody makes in owning a lowrider is a long-term investment. We're talking about $100,000 cars

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and oftentimes when you're driving them, as soon as you get them home, you're vacuuming them. Before you drive them, you're detailing them. Before someone sits in your car, you're looking at their shoes. Before they get out of the car, you're telling them, turn your body to the right so your feet exit first. There's a lot of different rules and behaviors that we adapt to protect these cars. The behaviors that were depicted today and put forth by law enforcement are not tolerated. They're not supported. they haven't been and they will not be supported within the cruising community

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we don't endorse we don't endorse street takeovers and I'm very proud that the city of Santa Ana Police Department has a task force that specializes and focuses on addressing street takeovers so the good thing about all the data they brought for us today is that we're already doing the work Our department is proactive and we have made sure that the street takeovers, that we have specialists that can help us stop that. Now again, for many Santa Ana residents and beyond, in today's world, this is more than a car project. It is a way of life.

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To preserve one's culture, history, and stories, at this point, cruising is generational art for us. This is how Chicano families tell their stories in their own backyards. You cruise in the very neighborhoods where your parents and your grandparents settled and called Santa Ana their home. And you play the music, the oldies, the funk that you grew up listening to as a young boy. In our culture as Chicanos and Latinos, Dea the Dead, Dea los Muertos is so important to us because as long as you talk about those that you love, they are never without you.

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Cruising helps keep those loved ones alive, which is why oftentimes, if you were at the Chicano Heritage Festival, you saw cars that were there with pictures of the people that were deceased that those cars originally belonged to. My uncle Salvador Big Salprieto was one of them and I share this because at the essence we're just proud of being family oriented. We're proud of our families and our stories and there is a notion that we cannot come together in peace and in unity and that could not be further from the truth. At the Chicano Heritage Festival, we had thousands of Chicanos that came

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out from across our city that lived on different sides of these invisible lines that have gotten people killed for generations. And that day brought hundreds of people who love our culture more than they loved the damage and the violence that we each inflicted on each other. And that was a day that brought culture and it put it at the heartbeat of what Santa Ana is about. There were over there were over 60 different cars who participated and that festival went on from 12 o'clock to 8 o'clock p.m. at El Salvador Park in Articia Pilar and it was one of the most empowering days of my entire life as a

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Santa Ana resident and so at the forefront building community is what lifting this ban is about and madam city attorney are you gonna need a motion from me

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yeah there is a staff there is the my understanding is this was going to be the direction to come back

correct council member hernandez it's an informational report and then we are looking for direction we listed on the agenda a couple of options for you obviously you can direct us outside of those options that we listed but it's for direction absolutely so i would like to

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move forward with repealing this ordinance and and that is my direction and to respond to the challenges and the unique circumstances that our city is in when it comes to these holidays like Easter I will be coming back during our budget cycle and I will be asking the city of Santa Ana to organize and fund its own cruise for and I will call it cruising for a cause where we can celebrate Easter, we can celebrate Martin Luther King, we can celebrate 4th of July, we can celebrate all these holidays that police are worried about and we'll be at the forefront and at the center of those conversations. So I look forward to

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making sure that not only do we repeal this ban but that we come back at a later date and that we're proactive about keeping our community safe and that we organize and and get car clubs involved and that the City of Santa Ana takes a lead on having it be one of the first cities in the in the state of California to organize its own cruises so that is my direction

Thank You councilmember let me go to the rest of the council to see if there's any questions or comments anybody on the line hand raised

Council Member Lopez.

Yeah. Thank you, Mayor Sarmiento. Thank you, staff, for the presentation. I first want to thank the department for their efforts to curb racing and reckless driving. The inception of the team, you know, it was in 2020. 2020, and since then, as we all read, it has culminated in over 6,000 citations, close to 3,000 by SAPD, nearly 300 vehicles being impounded, you know, lots of reckless driving

and racing-related arrests. Some of those arrests include DUI arrests. And this data is not exclusive to intersection takeovers. And I applaud the department for the work that you're doing. You know very well that I support your efforts to impound and find drivers who are engaging in street racing. I've said that many, I've said that before in this dais. But I do think that perhaps we are, you know, conflating several issues when we are discussing cruising.

I just you know I have never seen cruising on a highway never I just haven't and you know we have a team in place we have code in place to address you know some of the issues or concerns that are being raised like street racing and again go after those people behind the wheel go after DUI drivers you have my 100 support for that, my full support for that. But I was reading about this topic because the legislature actually you know passed a resolution with no, there was no opposition to the resolution that they passed and it was

more than I believe more than 70 lawmakers here in California and they their resolution stated that they you know encouraged cities to repeal this ban because of all of the history that so many cities now understand or have a better understanding of like the root cause of the ban and I was also reading you know the National Museum of African American History and Culture and I learned that lowriders are cars that express identities like social cultural aesthetic the cars have been a vehicle of choice for cruising a popular pastime

in many American communities since the mid 20th century and historically low riders are you know we're mostly Latinos from Texas the Southwest and Southern California and since the 1950s car clubs and families have converted older cars for cruising shows for competition at events and they still do all of those things today and my understanding is that these cars are are prized possessions for the people that invest money that invest their time that events their care and not just taking care of the cars but really the artwork that

goes on onto the display of the car and so cruising and the love of Karen invested into these lowriders is an art form and other places have been able to host family-friendly gatherings that have been safe you know not too long ago earlier in the Sierra Morrison Park had a gathering of classic cars as we call them as we call them and I know that there's a lot of older folks that that collect these types of cars that want to see these types of events here in the city of Santa Ana and the ordinance that we are talking about that we are test and discussing tonight that is on our agenda is an ordinance that was

established in 1989 and I do believe that it creates an unfair stereotype we are associating lowriders with violence and there's a misconception that low riders are the same people who are participating you know in these side shows where spectators gather often by the dozens or the hundreds and and in around these vehicles but you know as I said earlier we have code you know we have code in the city for that we have an entire team that dedicates making sure that those events don't happen here in the city that they don't happen in our

blocks and our streets and so we can't use cruising as a scapegoat for that issue and so finally you know I just want to I know that this is an issue that a lot of lawmakers policymakers throughout the entire state are working on from Councilmember Kitty Valenzuela in Sacramento to Marcus Bush from National City Councilmember Hernandez here bringing it forth there are a lot of folks working on repealing the ban that exists in different cities I've been happy to talk to them about about this process I didn't want to make a decision that I had no knowledge about how it has worked in other cities

or how the pilots have gone in other cities or what the feedback has been from the community and so I was very happy to engage with these council members and as I stated the California Assembly voted overwhelmingly for a resolution that encouraged cities to overturn their bans and embrace the lowrider culture which is part of the Latino culture and it passed with zero opposition and so I think that cruising and the lowrider community are important parts of our city of our history of our culture of our future and I just want to thank the car clubs for coming to this chamber the folks that make up the car clubs for

coming to the chamber it is good to see you here I don't don't know that you've ever actually been here but I also want to thank PD for the efforts that they're doing and I think that you know these things can live in our community together and we can work towards making sure that people that want to participate that are coming here and saying you know this is my hobby this is what I like to do have an opportunity to express that and I don't think we need to be so punitive and banning outright cruising and so those are gonna be my comments for now

Mayor. Thank you. Thank you for that. Any other comments from Council members here or anybody online?

Oh, I think I heard somebody. Council member Mendoza and then Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mayor Sharmin Hill. Well, my experience with the cruising has always been peaceful and I understand where our law enforcement has been having issues in the past and I would like to see an opportunity for the ordinance to show to be repealed so that the families could show a presentation of what history and the culture has been in this activity.

And I can assure everyone that the cruising has been a safe activity in the past. And the cruising, these are not the people who are burning rubber in our streets or causing havoc as far as street racing and making our streets unsafe.

I think cruising is a slow activity that is meant to display the workmanship of vehicle ownership. And these are vehicles that are historical and they're very expensive.

There's a lot of time, effort, and money that goes into making these vehicles into incredible work of art as far as the paint display, the artists' murals on the vehicles. vehicles and the people behind the wheel who are proud to show their culture in one way or another.

And so as an activity, if we allowed this to come back, I believe we can show that it's going to be a very controlled and beneficial activity for our city as well. Because we could maybe in allowing the activities at certain times throughout the year, it'll be a controlled event. It'll be an event that will bring in revenue for our city.

So my recommendation is for us to see what it would look like if this were to be, if there was permitting in process and some kind of allow it throughout certain periods. and to ensure that it's strictly followed as far as not gathering or having illegal substances where it may cause havoc in our cities.

So I'm in favor of having something that would be safe and fun and for families to get together. And that is my recommendation that we should look into this activity to see how we can make it and bring it back to continue to be a part of our culture. But at the same time, also be cognizant of the issues that it may bring and not to make any more work or contradict or be confronted with our law enforcement.

I want to work hand in hand with our police officers to maintain a safe and very low risk, if any risk at all. and so that we can have an activity that would bring families together again and be out in the open and invite the car clubs, but certainly keep it in a friendly and fun environment. So that's what I would like to see. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Let me go to Mayor Pro Tem.

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You know, given what Councilmember Mendoza said, I appreciate what I think she was trying to accomplish with that. But I'm going to begin with, you know, with the staff report that was before us tonight, there definitely was a lot of talk about street racing. And when I think of cruising, I can clearly see the difference between cruising and the dangerous... Hold on, guys. Hold on, guys. the cruising and the street racing and the street takeovers. You know, the frustrating thing was, you know, when we had a chance to, I guess, strengthen the laws when it came to street racing up here,

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to talk about some of the folks that enable that activity, the council didn't take action to, I think, go far enough to punish those that enable such a dangerous activity. But what I see here with this before us tonight, I could see an ordinance coming back to us. And again, this is where I was alluding to Council Member Mendoza. When she was talking about the idea of certain regulations being in place, I don't know that I would completely support a total lift of the ban. But the thing that we have here that's really kind of a challenge that I don't really believe

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our staff took full advantage of, or hopefully maybe they will when they come back to us, Some of the activities that are of concern to our PD regarding cruising are things that are already illegal. I mean, it's not like you say, well, drug use is not okay except for cruising or vice versa. I mean, the fact of the matter is if you have people consuming alcohol outdoors, whether they shouldn't be. It doesn't matter whether they're cruising, whether they're in a street racing vehicle, whatever it is. The fact is there are certain activities that are just outright banned, illegal.

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And so when I look at cruising, we talk about, okay, you're coming down the street, there's the potential for impacts of congestion, right? So what do we do about that? Right now in our ordinance, we just ban cruising. We have the simple definition, we say that's not allowed. I think that we've evolved as a city, as a culture, to have a more nuanced approach to it. So with all due respect, I won't be supporting just the outright lifting of the ban. I think we're better than that. I think we, as the city of Santa Ana, can craft a model ordinance that other cities could emulate. And I think that's what we need to be looking towards.

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Because I think that to lift it outright, I get the frustration of having the ban and wanting to get rid of it. But I think what we want to do is we don't want to get to a point where folks that are opposed to cruising can come back and say, SEE, WE TOLD YOU SO. SEE, YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE DONE THAT. I THINK WE NEED TO TAKE A MEASURED APPROACH. I HOPE THAT WHEN STAFF COMES BACK TO US WITH SOMETHING TO ACT ON THIS, I HOPE IT'S NOT JUST LIFTING OF THE BAN, BUT I HOPE IT'S AN ACTUAL ORDINANCE THAT LAYS OUT WAYS THAT THIS ACTIVITY CAN BE SAFE. AND LIKE WITH ANY ORDINANCE, IF WE FALL SHORT, THEN WE COME BACK WITH RECOMMENDATIONS TO AMEND IT.

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BUT I THINK JUST TO SAY YES, NO, I DON'T THINK THAT'S THE WAY TO APPROACH THIS TONIGHT. I think what we really need to do is look at a way to regulate this in a way that, again, we can be the model, not just for Southern California, not just for California, but for everywhere to say, hey, San Ana has done it right. That's the way to do it. It's not a yes or no. It's how we can do this. We do this with many things. We have whether it's a conditional use or whether it's a use allowed but with certain conditions attached via our code. So I would put the challenge to our staff, and I hope my colleagues will support this

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tonight rather than just a simple ban but rather for staff to come back to us at a future council meeting that has regulations in place that allows this activity that you know when i was bussing tables at my uncle's restaurant at pop's cafe there there used to be car clubs that would come in every saturday and it was amazing i mean these were guys that would come in they're old veteranos but you know what they came in and they had amazing cars and i never once said oh my god What are these guys doing here? You know what they're going to do? They're going to go do something bad.

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I looked at them and said, wow, they've got these amazing vehicles. They obviously are responsible. They took the time to put these things together, and they went out and cruised. And I never thought when they left the restaurant that something bad was going to happen. Now, that's not to say that there aren't folks out there that do bad things, but what I'm saying is I don't like the idea of a blanket, you know, stance on this. They're all bad or they're all good. But I think what we need to do is have regulations that ensure that those that are out there

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cruising responsibly, those that are out there enjoying their cars, enjoying the camaraderie, are able to feel comfortable in Santa Ana that they'll be safe. And also too, also too, the concern, and I appreciate our PD's concern about residents and businesses who want to make sure that they also feel safe. This should be something that there isn't apprehension from one side or the other. Oh no, here comes some cruising. No, this should be something where they have the comfort and confidence that there are rules in place that allow for this activity to occur safely and enjoyably.

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So that would be my stance at this point, is to have staff return back with something. But I won't be supporting an outright removal of the ban. Thank you.

Councilmember Peñalosa.

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Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to say for the record that I have to agree with Mayor Pro Temba-Sera. I am not comfortable at the moment just moving forward with the right removal of the ordinance or repealing of the ordinance, the anti-cruising ordinance. I do feel that we can potentially be a model for other cities in this state and across this country to replicate. I've said this before, you know, I think I'm still one of the only ones that lives right up against Bristol. and I've been trapped in cruising which I hate and I've been trapped by our own

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police department when they closed the entire street down and I can't get in and right of my house and I hate that too and I know that many of the residents also share that frustration throughout the Memorial Park neighborhood and mid city when this has happened before but I also do see the the cultural importance of it and being able to highlight this because there are a lot of responsible car clubs that do participate responsibly and want to encourage these family events, family geared events. And there are, like in everything, there are all those irresponsible ones that act recklessly.

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And I can see both sides. However, right now, I think that we can create, when I first got on I remember bringing up that conversation of not being comfortable with the closure of Bristol Street and Main Street and Edinger during Easter Sunday weekend. Because I remember mentioning it to our police chief at the time, back then in 2019 I think it was, that we could create an area where we could control it. and it could be a controlled area where we allow the cruising, we allow the burnouts,

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we allow the displaying of cars on our public streets, and it'd be a controlled environment.

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I don't want to just remove the ordinance. I'm not comfortable doing that today, especially because it does come with, you know, the next thing we know is this thing goes viral, that we've done this, and we don't want outside cities and people from all across the state coming into Santa Ana because that is going to cause traffic nightmares for our residents. And I know that I'm going to get those calls. Back in January of 2021, there was a, what I thought, a responsible car meetup at Tattleback High School, illegally done.

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It was on a Sunday, and I remember getting at the time when we had the previous district map, all those residents that lived directly north of Saddleback High School, there was six that sent me different videos of this lowrider car club meetup at the Saddleback High School parking lot that was meeting there without any authorization. The gates were left open. I got so many cars and videos that I drove by myself, And I was like, to me, it looks just really nice low riders and people showing them off, which is great. And I didn't think much of it. The next day, I got reports that the school had

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to bring in additional custodial staff because there was trash, there was alcohol bottles, there was glass, there was urine, there was vomit all throughout the parking lot after it was cleared out. And that's where these problems also come, you know, arise. and those are valid concerns that I don't want my residents dealing with. So, I am comfortable directing staff to bring back additional information to see how these repealing of ordinances have played out in other cities, how we could potentially control this in designated areas of the city, that we could help promote this, but that it's in a controlled

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ENVIRONMENT. THAT WOULD BE MY REQUEST, CITY MANAGER, NOT A FULL REPEAL OF THE ANTI-CRUISING ORDINANCE, BUT HAVING STAFF GET CREATIVE AND SEEING HOW WE CAN BRING THIS BACK WITH ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND A WAY TO CONTROL IT. THOSE ARE MY COMMENTS. THANK YOU, MAYOR. THANK YOU, COUNCILMEMBER.

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GO AHEAD, COUNCILMEMBER FAN. THANK YOU SO MUCH. FIRST, THANK YOU TO everyone who spoke tonight it was really great hearing your stories um as well as our police department and staff for providing the staff report um i met with uh chief valentine specifically to ask about some of the historical issues that he and his department has experienced uh with cruising directly right not not street takeovers from racing i understand that maybe it was specifically regarding cruising. I guess I'm just a little bit concerned or unclear. So maybe Chief, you can

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clarify or maybe Madam City Attorney. You know, our cruising ordinance is Article 12 of I think Chapter 36. So cruising is defined as the driving of a motor vehicle three or more times within a four hour period in a particular direction past a traffic control point established at or near a place where traffic is congested um so if somebody is driving their honda civic three times within a four hour period in a particular direction past the traffic control

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point is that cruising can anybody explain to me i just want to understand because our ordinance i I don't think differentiates between these beautiful cars and any other car doing whatever it is it wants to do.

Council Member Phan, thank you for the question. So it is not just a matter of that Honda Civic going up and down the street three times in a far period.

It's also pursuant to the traffic control point and at least two times within a four-hour period, maybe given a written notice. So I'm talking about Section 36503. Yes, so this, you know, there's a warning that's given as well. This isn't, you know, I counted one, two, three, four, I got you. This is a tool. It's a resource so that when we have to shut down major thoroughfares, we have this additional provision on the books.

And so that's really what we're looking at here. Having heard all the comments, once again, I'm consistent with my concern about safety. and and really you know as I hear everyone speak my concern is also rooted for the people that are engaged in highlighting and demonstrating their vehicles the actual people that are engaged in what would be cruising which is why it's a much safer approach to have this at a fixed post I think it was mentioned that neighborhood association some hot rods or classic vehicles were

shown that's great i doubt that they were uh uh traversing up and down the street and congesting um traffic flow for either vehicles or pedestrians i don't think that that was probably the case

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right so um i hope i answered your question yeah well i think you did right because i guess i'm curious about a car, you know, Councilman Pabena Losa brought up Bristol. One of my, you know, cruising doesn't just mean if it's one car or two cars, it could be 50 cars or 100 cars, I guess in your example with National City, they were expecting 50 cars and it ended up being over 100 cars. What happens so, you know, would 100 cars be driving down slowly

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on Bristol on a Friday night?

That could be the case. It was mentioned, you know, if this goes viral on social media, which it will, we could have people from, you know, that 100 cars, which may be manageable, Depending on what else is occurring on that street, if we get into the multiple hundreds or thousands of cars, that's a very different problem.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

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No, no. I mean, that's helpful for me to understand because if it's a couple cars cruising, I don't think that's really the concern here, at least not for me. The concern is large gatherings, right, that are not controlled, that no one's responsible for. You know, when we have large gatherings of people, even at a park, right, over 50 people, you have to have a permit to gather at a park for an event, for example. And the reason for that is we're asking for insurance.

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We're asking for who's responsible, liability, things like that. If there are too many people, we ask for ensuring, you know, security, policing. On top of that, any type of restroom services, et cetera. And so to me, I guess it goes together, right? It's not so much one or two cars cruising. I'm just not worried about that being an issue. In fact, if you drive around some people, it feels like they're doing that because they're driving too slowly.

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But is there any way we can, if we got rid of this ordinance and there are 100 cars cruising down Bristol or Harbor or 4th Street on a Friday night, you know, if there are problems, what would happen? and say it's, you know, they're gathering crowds, things like that, people walking in the streets, what would happen?

Robert Baird, Great, great question. So, I'm very concerned about 100 cars on 4th Street of any type doing anything all at once.

That alone would cause a gridlock. And you bring up people just observing. And so, you know, many of the folks that commented tonight, it's very obvious. You know, they're family folks. They want to engage in this activity for good purpose. Here's my concern, is that someone is engaged in this activity that, for whatever reason, sees this coordinated effort, and someone wants to target these folks, or they want to take advantage. It's the minority that really impacts the majority in a lot of things in life. That would be the case here. That would be the concern here.

And this is an anecdotal. This is what I've experienced. There's officers here from the Traffic Bureau. They do this, you know, night after night. You know, there is a distinction between street racing, very much so. And many of you have pointed it out. I'm glad you did because that is very different. That is about, you know, demonstrating how fast you can go. And you're correct. It's all generally newer cars. so with with the cruising my concern is that they themselves become victims and also get meshed into this other behavior that crosses over right that's the

concern and and I think the conversation will be very different if someone God forbid is is is critically injured or worse right as a result of this and so you know I know we can't make policy based on what-ifs but we're also dealing with reality of what has occurred in our city historically um and so that that's that's my continued concern of course we will do what the majority of the council directs thank you and i

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assume that because these tend to be classic cars they're not electric right they're they're gas cars

yeah correct yeah they're all gas that i'm aware of uh and they do drive very slow uh they're not they're not you know going from zero to 60 how quickly they can that's not the purpose it's right

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right no i'm asking because the city council has very specifically and vocally spoken up against pollution and spoken in support of climate change policies to clean up our streets in fact i think uh the majority of this council or all of us supported you know extending the one year for environmental justice and our community spoken up about the poor air quality throughout the city and what we do know what the data is that 40 of california's pollution is from vehicles it's from transportation right and so i imagine i don't have the information on this but if you have

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50 cars or 100 cars circling a neighborhood for half an hour or an hour five hours I imagine you would see a spike in carbon emissions among other, you know, I guess, materials in the air during that time. So I just wanted to make sure I understood that aspect. My other question is, if someone is hurt, who's responsible?

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you know with the drinking like for example council member benielosa mentioned that you know saddleback high school had to hire more custodians and whatnot to clean that up was that just the school district that paid for it or would the city be paying for any additional trash cleanup

or anything like that well if someone is hurt um you know we would look at any violations of law of course the example at the high school that was unpermitted and it was a cost that was burdened by the school district so uh you know as an option as i mentioned before if there's consideration for a fixed location low rider car show exhibition with vendors whatever you all decide a that's a lot easier to staff and secure nothing is guaranteed but much easier to

staff is secure rather than taking over streets and gridlocking major thoroughfares and then spilling over into neighborhoods. And so, of course, with the permit process, you know, there's provisions of safety, security, you know, cleanliness, et cetera. So I hope that

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

answered that question. Yeah. And if, say, there's cruising in a neighborhood and a bunch of folks decide to come out, post up in chairs, you know, tables, whatever, sit on the sidewalk, right, with all their chairs. I imagine and I don't know, is that allowed? Or is that because to me, that might be a violation of ADA laws or something, you know, obstructing, you know, accessibility. But I don't know, is that allowed? Because I think Councilman Mendoza had mentioned that this is common for communities to do and families to do.

So it's not allowed because you would be impeding traffic, both vehicular and or pedestrian flow on a sidewalk, for example. It's the same concern recently discussed about vendors taking over the access road of a sidewalk. Same analogy. So there has to be a free flow of access both on the roadway and on sidewalks. So when you reference cruising, actually vehicles moving. that's what that's the difference here vehicles moving whether it's slow or fast um in a neighborhood

um that's a consideration for all of you obviously as policy makers i i don't know that there be um there may be some neighborhoods that would not be very pleased with that for your consideration

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

thank you and so you know i have a lot of questions still and even though we met for an hour and me asking all these questions and my colleagues bring up a lot of really good points. I really would feel more comfortable if we can ask the public safety subcommittee to flesh out some of these questions as well as how do we craft something that would protect the residents in whatever neighborhoods, ensure that everything is done in a way that is not only safe but clean

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

and efficient because I do have concerns if, you know, one thing you had mentioned is if police have to, you know, go into a particular area to deal with the cruising just as, for example, you know, it would take away resources from other parts of the city if necessary.

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

And I'm not saying that it is, but I guess that would be my request, which is to send it to the subcommittee so they can flesh out some of these or maybe even craft an ordinance that would allow cruising, allow our residents to participate in this activity, but in a way that is responsible and that we don't have unintentional side effects. this includes you know the assembly I think it's really great I had seen that resolution also in urging cities to remove their cruising ordinance except the state doesn't pay for

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

policing right the state doesn't care what happens if we have to put more traffic officers on the street to deal with any issues or whatever the case might be and there might not be any issues and i think maybe that's what i'm asking for some type of temporary ordinance that has to say let's start with some type of controlled events see how they go see how we can improve on it and move from there so that would be my request or maybe that's a sub motion uh council member

there there isn't any motion at all on the floor we are just this is simply just giving direction

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

that's your opinion yeah oh so that would be my motion then thank you uh we're not going to take

take motions up today is just simply to go ahead and give direction.

Thai Viet PhanItem 12

Direction. Well, I would ask to direct staff to work with the public safety subcommittee to establish some type of program or ordinance that would allow, you know, some type of pilot, I guess, for for cruising in a controlled environment.

Got it. I think they got it. Thank you. I think everybody's SPOKEN. COUNCILMEMBER, YOU HAVE ONE MORE COMMENT.

David PenalozaItem 12

THANK YOU, MAYOR. I JUST WANTED TO DOUBLE DOWN ON THAT DIRECTION FROM COUNCILMEMBER FAN. I GUESS THE CONCERN HERE IS THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES THAT I KNOW WILL COME. AT THE END OF THE DAY, I'M ELECTED TO REPRESENT RESIDENTS OF A CERTAIN DISTRICT, NOT PEOPLE FROM EAST L.A. OR SACRAMENTO OR SAN JOSE THAT ARE CALLING IN TO ADVOCATE FOR THIS. And my concern, I know, is that the unintended consequences, and it just brought up about two weeks ago on Sunday, which is proof that our police department is not enforcing the anti-cruising ordinance. I was at the In-N-Out on Civic Center and First,

David PenalozaItem 12

and when I pulled out to go home, you know, you have to turn right. I had to, might have done an illegal U-turn to go back north south on Bristol. And, but I got, it took me close to 35 minutes to get from Civic Center and First to, I mean not Civic Center and First, Civic Center and Bristol to Ettinger and Bristol. And I am the worst at realizing my surroundings. And so I'm driving and halfway through, I'm like what the heck's going on? It's 10 p.m.

David PenalozaItem 12

Yes, I was having an out of 10 p.m. I was like, why are there so many cars on Bristol and it took me forever to get home and I realized that there were lowriders. I mean beautiful cars and I finally noticed and I was like, oh, you know people are cruising but it just took me so long to get home and I know that I think that the unintended consequences that we will have residents that simply just want to get home, get to work or wherever they're going and now they're stuck in a traffic nightmare that will come every weekend once this goes viral that this has been repealed outright.

David PenalozaItem 12

So that is just wanted to add that comment and say that I'm supportive of Council Member Fan's direction of seeing how we could kind of gradually look into this and look at having controlled environment and not just blanket repeal of the ordinance. That's it, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you. So I think

everybody's had a chance to comment on this and I think staff has fairly good direction from you know sort of both sides of the aisle on how this thing could be approached. Let me let me just begin by saying you know I want to thank those that came and spoke. I heard a lot of people from this city that came and spoke and again I'm going to date myself again. You know we've been here so long in town that yeah we remember when it was cruising down 4th Street and my mom will remember that because you know my oldest sister used to go cruising when it was still a thing. On 4th Street it was you know very common

and you know when I look you look at this I certainly you know appreciate the chief's and his staff's report references, you know, your responsibility, Chief, is to make sure we have guardrails on, you know, public policy when it affects, you know, public safety. So, you know, we certainly appreciate you wanting to err on the side of caution, and that's, you know, that's your role. And that's an important one that we take seriously. I certainly do. But I was looking at the origin of when this ordinance was adopted. It was adopted in 1989.