1,153 merged speaker turns. Unidentified speech is hidden by default; timestamps open the public recording.
良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良 Thank you.
0:22Thank you.
0:54Thank you.
1:29Let's go.
1:54Thank you.
2:26guitar solo
3:04guitar solo
3:34Thank you.
3:54guitar solo
4:31Thank you.
4:54guitar solo
5:33Thank you.
5:54Thank you.
6:24Thank you.
6:55Thank you.
7:29Thank you.
7:58Thank you.
8:30Thank you.
9:01Thank you.
9:24Thank you.
9:54Thank you.
10:30Thank you.
11:00Thank you.
11:27Thank you.
12:00Thank you.
12:25Thank you.
12:54Thank you.
13:26Thank you.
13:54Thank you.
14:24Thank you.
14:55良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良
15:51Thank you.
15:55Thank you.
16:23The ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient
16:55Thank you.
17:28So
17:57So So So
18:02So
18:10I'm going to go.
18:21Let's go.
18:41Thank you.
19:13Thank you.
19:43Thank you.
20:18Thank you.
20:43Thank you.
21:11Thank you.
21:42Thank you.
22:13Thank you.
22:42Thank you.
23:13Thank you.
23:45The良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良 Thank you.
24:39Thank you.
25:11guitar solo
25:51Thank you.
26:12guitar solo
26:50Thank you.
27:13Thank you.
27:41Thank you.
28:16Thank you.
28:43Thank you.
29:13Thank you.
29:41Thank you.
30:13Thank you.
30:42Thank you.
31:12Thank you.
31:41Thank you.
32:12Thank you.
32:42Thank you.
33:18Thank you.
33:44Thank you.
34:12Thank you.
34:43Thank you.
35:16Thank you.
35:43Thank you.
36:17Thank you.
36:43Recording in progress.
37:37Thank you.
37:45Thank you.
38:15Thank you.
38:43
Mayor, you can proceed.
39:18
I hereby call the Santa Ana Council 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 Santa Ana YouTube channel or the city's website. Please bear with us as the technology may disrupt the flow of the meeting. Madam Clerk, please conduct roll call. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Becerra?
39:21Council Member Hernandez? Council Member Penaloza? Present. Council Member Fan? Here. Council Member Vasquez? Present. Mayor Pro Tem Lopez? Mayor Mesquo? Present. Record show four
39:46members are present. You do have a quorum. Thank you. Madam Clerk, are there any additions or deletions to the closed session agenda? There are none. Do any Council Members need to abstain on any items?
39:59Seeing none, do we have any speakers for closed session? We do not. Thank you. We'll now recess this portion of the meeting to consider the items listed on closed session. Thank you.
40:11Recording stopped.
40:30I'm going to go.
40:48So
41:11Thank you.
41:20Thank you.
41:45Thank you.
42:17Thank you.
42:48Thank you.
43:15Thank you.
43:49bet bet bet bet bet bet
44:14bet bet bet bet bet
44:25Thank you.
44:44guitar solo
45:23Thank you.
45:42You're welcome.
46:39Thank you.
46:44Thank you.
47:14Thank you.
47:42guitar solo
48:23Thank you.
48:42guitar solo
49:22Thank you.
49:45Thank you.
50:14Thank you.
50:43Thank you.
51:13Thank you.
51:44Thank you.
52:17To be continued...
52:53Thank you.
53:17Thank you.
53:47Thank you.
54:14Thank you.
54:44Thank you.
55:17Thank you.
55:46Let's go.
56:12Thank you.
56:45Thank you.
57:15Let's go.
57:43Thank you.
58:16良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良 Thank you.
59:08Thank you.
59:44Thank you.
1:00:12Thank you.
1:00:41Thank you.
1:01:15Thank you.
1:01:40Thank you.
1:02:10Thank you.
1:02:41I'm going to go.
1:03:15Thank you.
1:03:43Thank you.
1:04:12Let's go.
1:04:44Thank you.
1:05:13Thank you.
1:05:42Thank you.
1:06:13To be continued...
1:06:54Thank you.
1:07:11Thank you.
1:07:42Thank you.
1:08:10You
1:08:49Thank you.
1:09:10Thank you.
1:09:40Thank you.
1:10:09Thank you.
1:10:40guitar solo
1:11:18guitar solo
1:11:50Thank you.
1:12:11Thank you.
1:12:41Thank you.
1:13:10Thank you.
1:13:45Thank you.
1:14:11Thank you.
1:14:46Thank you.
1:15:10Thank you.
1:15:44Thank you.
1:16:14Thank you.
1:16:41Thank you.
1:17:13Thank you.
1:17:45Thank you.
1:18:11So Let's go.
1:18:45The bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet
1:19:21良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良
1:20:06Thank you.
1:20:10Let's go.
1:20:38Thank you.
1:21:10Thank you.
1:21:39Thank you.
1:22:16Thank you.
1:22:39Thank you.
1:23:09Thank you.
1:23:42The Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late
1:24:10Thank you.
1:24:36Thank you.
1:25:07I'm going to go.
1:25:42So Thank you.
1:26:15Thank you.
1:26:48Thank you.
1:27:24Thank you.
1:27:52So
1:28:20So
1:28:24Thank you.
1:28:31Let's go.
1:28:55Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
1:29:25guitar solo
1:29:56Thank you.
1:30:27Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
1:30:49Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Thank you.
1:31:13guitar solo
1:32:13Thank you.
1:32:34guitar solo
1:33:12Thank you.
1:33:34guitar solo
1:34:13Thank you.
1:34:36Thank you.
1:35:03Thank you.
1:35:34Thank you.
1:36:06Thank you.
1:36:38Thank you.
1:37:11Thank you.
1:37:34Thank you.
1:38:03Thank you.
1:38:34Thank you.
1:39:05Thank you.
1:39:35Thank you.
1:40:04Thank you.
1:40:35Let's go.
1:41:03Thank you.
1:41:39The良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良 Thank you.
1:42:31Thank you.
1:43:05Thank you.
1:43:34Thank you.
1:44:04Thank you.
1:44:38良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良 Thank you.
1:45:28Thank you.
1:46:06PIANO PLAYS
1:46:58Thank you.
1:47:03Thank you.
1:47:32Good良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良 Thank you.
1:48:27Thank you.
1:49:00So Let's go.
1:49:32Thank you.
1:50:06Thank you.
1:50:37Thank you.
1:51:10guitar solo
1:51:43Thank you.
1:52:05guitar solo
1:52:42Thank you.
1:53:04You're welcome.
1:54:00Thank you.
1:54:05guitar solo
1:54:43Thank you.
1:55:04guitar solo
1:55:41Thank you.
1:56:03guitar solo
1:56:34Thank you.
1:57:05guitar solo
1:57:42Thank you.
1:58:06Thank you.
1:58:34Thank you.
1:59:06Thank you.
1:59:40To be continued...
2:00:14Thank you.
2:00:38Thank you.
2:01:07Thank you.
2:01:36Thank you.
2:02:05Thank you.
2:02:35Thank you.
2:03:05Thank you.
2:03:33Thank you.
2:04:06Thank you.
2:04:36guitar solo
2:05:10Thank you.
2:05:37良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良 Thank you.
2:06:29Thank you.
2:07:03So Let's go.
2:07:37Thank you.
2:08:12Thank you.
2:08:40The ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient
2:09:11Thank you.
2:09:45betty betty betty betty betty betty betty betty betty betty betty betty betty betty betty betty betty betty betty betty betty betty
2:10:08Thank you.
2:10:39Thank you.
2:11:11Thank you.
2:11:42Thank you.
2:12:17Thank you.
2:12:40Thank you.
2:13:09Thank you.
2:13:38Thank you.
2:14:10guitar solo
2:14:42Thank you.
2:15:12Thank you.
2:15:43Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
2:16:09The良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良良 Thank you.
2:16:50Thank you.
2:17:24guitar solo
2:18:01Thank you.
2:18:22guitar solo
2:19:02guitar solo Thank you.
2:19:50Thank you.
2:20:22Thank you.
2:20:53Thank you.
2:21:23Thank you.
2:21:56Thank you.
2:22:22Thank you.
2:22:57Thank you.
2:23:22Thank you.
2:23:53Thank you.
2:24:24Thank you.
2:24:54Thank you.
2:25:26Thank you.
2:25:57Thank you.
2:26:23Thank you.
2:26:59Thank you.
2:27:24Thank you.
2:27:59Thank you.
2:28:27Thank you.
2:28:53Thank you.
2:29:23Thank you.
2:29:52Thank you.
2:30:21Thank you.
2:31:00Thank you.
2:31:24Thank you.
2:31:53Thank you.
2:32:26I bet you bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet bet
2:33:03So
2:33:23So
2:33:29Thank you.
2:33:37Thank you.
2:34:04Hmm.
2:34:59Thank you.
2:35:08Thank you.
2:35:31Thank you.
2:36:05Thank you.
2:36:31guitar solo
2:37:09Thank you.
2:37:32Thank you.
2:38:03Thank you.
2:38:35Let's go.
2:39:01Thank you.
2:39:31Thank you.
2:40:03guitar solo
2:40:40Thank you.
2:41:02guitar solo
2:41:40Thank you.
2:42:02Recording in progress.
2:42:45Thank you.
2:43:01Thank you.
2:43:34Thank you.
2:44:02Thank you.
2:44:38The ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient ancient
2:45:08Oh
2:45:11Thank you.
2:45:42Thank you.
2:46:18Thank you.
2:46:44Thank you.
2:47:11Thank you.
2:47:48Thank you. Good evening, everybody. I hereby reconvene the Santa Ana City Council meeting to order. This meeting is taking place in person, attendance, and by teleconference via Zoom. The public may access the meeting via the Santa Ana YouTube channel or the city's website. Please bear with us as the technology may disrupt the flow of the meeting. Madam Clerk, please conduct the roll call.
2:48:25Yes, thank you, Mayor. Council Member Becerra?
2:48:50
Here.
2:48:52Council Member Hernandez? Present. Council Member Penaloza? Present. Council Member Fan? Here. Council Member Vasquez? Present. Mayor Pro Tem Lopez? Here. Mayor Mesquith? Present. Record show all members present.
2:48:53Madam Clerk, before we proceed to the Pledge of Allegiance, please make an announcement.
2:49:06Yes, thank you. For members of the public who are on Zoom or teleconference, to request to speak during public comments on agenda or non-agenda items within the city's jurisdiction, you must dial star 9 from your phone or click the button labeled raise hand from Zoom now in order to be in the speaker queue when comments commence. This does not apply to public hearing items number 17 and 18 though for which comments will be held during those specified public hearings. Please hold your comments on those two items until called upon during the public hearing. Thank you.
2:49:10Thank you.
2:49:40Thank you. The first item on the agenda is the Pledge of Allegiance. Andrew Linares, could you please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance?
2:49:41Right hand over your heart. Ready? Begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
2:49:55Thank you, sir, very much. At this time, I'd like to call up Pastor Tommy Coda from Hope Alive Church for the words of inspiration. Pastor Coda?
2:50:14hi thank you again for the invitation to be here to give words of inspiration you know and as i was coming here i was just thinking of how often uh in the bible it says that the foundation of wisdom is reverence for god and my prayer is that we would have that wisdom today god lord we thank you for the love and the mercy that you have extended to us lord Lord. And I pray, Lord, for our city council and our mayor, Lord, that you would give great wisdom, Lord, for all the decisions and for all the matters that are before them here tonight.
2:50:27God, I pray that you would be glorified in it all. Lord, we lift up our city, too. We think of this city. We're so grateful and thankful for the city of Santa Ana. Lord, we pray that you would continue to bless this wonderful city, this golden city of ours, Lord. I pray that you would give us all just a great passion and love more than what we had yesterday for the city of Santa Ana. And Lord, we also want to intercede and pray for all the challenges that the city has, Lord, whether it be gang violence, drug addiction, homelessness. Lord, these are matters that do affect us. And we pray,
2:51:06Lord, for wisdom to, Lord, to properly meet these places in these areas, God, that will bring glory to you, that will keep people's dignity for mercy in it all, and also for justice. Lord, we think of all of our city workers, Lord, our Santa Ana Police Department, Lord, our school district, all the churches and faith systems and religious churches and gatherings that are here in the city of Santa Ana Lord we pray for your blessing and we pray Lord that there would be great unity here in
2:51:46this city that this city of Santa Ana Lord would be an example to our surrounding cities of what a united city looks like and so God we thank you we praise you in the name of Jesus amen amen thank
2:52:23you Pastor Cota Madam Clerk are there any additions or deletions to the city council They're not. Thank you. We're going to do ceremony presentations. Councilmember Phan, you want to go first?
2:52:37Yep.
2:52:57
Hi, may please welcome Ben Chu, his family from Tasty Up.
2:53:15I know I look really beautiful. This is called an aoyai.
2:53:26Thank you.
2:53:31Welcome. Welcome.
2:53:33Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for being patient and waiting for us. So many of you know that I am the first Vietnamese American elected to represent the city of Santa Ana. And I am so proud to represent the Vietnamese American community, the Asian American community here in Santa Ana and Little Saigon. And one of the major holidays in the Vietnamese community is Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. In Vietnamese it's called Te Chung Thu. And so what is a Mid-Autumn Festival? Well, it's actually celebrated by many cultures, not just the Vietnamese culture. Chinese people celebrate it, Koreans, many others.
2:53:37And it's really to celebrate abundance and harvest, right? It's kind of our Thanksgiving. And what we celebrate is families coming together with a full harvest, with the full moon, celebrating togetherness, celebrating children, and really going out at night with our beautiful lanterns, lots of food, and we're actually going to have a celebration of that this Saturday at Centennial Park for Santa Ana's second ever Mid-Autumn Festival event. So I hope all of you come and bring your friends and family so that you not only learn about the culture, but enjoy the delicious food and do the wonderful
2:54:16family-friendly activities. But today we're here to proclaim September 29, 2023 as Mid-Autumn Festival, and I would like to present this presentation or this proclamation to Ben Chu and his family, and a little bit about Ben. Ben is a Santa Ana resident. He's lived here for I think two decades, right? And I met Ben when he reached out to me and said, I want to open a Tasty in Santa Ana, hence the wonderful shirts. And so he said, you know that Tutti Frutti, right? The Tutti Frutti on Harbor and McFadden. He's like, I want to
2:54:57make that a Tasty. And I know because I grew up down the street from there. And so since Ben and his family have been living here in Santa Ana, has opened this Tasty, they have really given back and invested in the Santa Ana community. I do a Tea with Ty event with a lot of high schoolers where we go in, we talk to students about civic engagement, city issues, what matters to them, and we bring boba from Tasty. And really, you know, you feed the kids, bring them some sugar, and they're really enjoying the program. But what a lot of people might not know is that Ben and Tasty Santa Ana also works with schools
2:55:34like Rosita Elementary to help raise funds for the students. Ben actually personally woke up early, opened his restaurant and handmade the boba and the tasty for us and delivered it to Godina's fundamental elementary high school so that we can have the boba in time for our event and Ben and his family and tasty Santa Ana is going to be participating in the second annual mid-autumn festival this Saturday so with that I'd like to present this proclamation to Ben Chu to tasty Santa Ana and to his family
2:56:13Well, first, I just want to apologize. It's her birthday, so she feels like she wants to cry.
2:56:55But Ty, I just want to say thank you. Before I opened my business, there was a lot of contact, going back and forth emails, and there's a lot of support with you and the local businesses. It was your encouragement to open your business here. I've been a resident of Santa Ana since 1981 and I was born in 1980 right so
2:57:01most of my life so we've only 20 years so we've gone to church here parents
2:57:24have gone to church here we school here so graduate Cal State Fullerton met my wife worked in medical device and decided you know what I spent enough years in medical device so I was like you know what it's time to do something for myself so i decided to open up a smoothie shop on the harbor mcfadden in san anna again thank you thanks to everyone here and thank you for uh everyone in san anna for your continued support as well for all the needs that we have first when we first started we had a lot of issues you know building issues things like that but you know reaching out to the city it helped resolve a lot
2:57:29of that so again i just want to say thank you so much for your help well council member fang we
2:58:02We have to sing happy birthday.
2:58:07I was just going to say I'd like to invite, oh, where's Councilor Pinalosa? He and I just did karaoke two weeks ago and we'd like to sing happy birthday and what's your daughter's name?
2:58:09Lynette.
2:58:19Lynette. Alright, so one, two, three.
2:58:21We're gonna sing. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you.
2:58:23
Happy birthday dear Lieutenant, happy birthday to you.
2:58:31Thank you.
2:59:18Thank you.
2:59:36If I could have Chief Sulzer come up. Chief.
3:00:02I don't think it's your birthday, right? We don't have to sing? We're good? Okay. I just want to make sure. Well, thank you guys for being here. So I have the honor of presenting this proclamation for Fire Prevention Week. Since 1922, there has been a public observance of Fire Prevention Week. In 1925, President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed Fire Prevention Week as a national observance, making it the longest-running public health observance in the United States. During Fire Prevention Week, children and adults learn how to prevent fires and what safeguards to take if a fire actually starts.
3:00:25Firefighters and community educators provide life-saving public education to prevent fires from starting and drastically decrease injuries and casualties caused by fires. So Fire Prevention Week is observed each year during the week of October 9th. And this is done in commemoration of the Great Chicago Fire, which began on October 8, 1871, and caused devastating loss of life and damage. So that fire, now this just sounds insane to say this, but that fire killed approximately 300 people, destroyed roughly three square miles of that city,
3:01:04including over 17,000 structures, and left more than 100,000 residents homeless. So this year, Fire Prevention Week will be observed October 8th through the 14th. This year's campaign is Cooking Safety Starts With You, Pay Attention to Fire Prevention. This works to educate everyone about simple but important actions they can take to keep themselves and those around them safe from cooking fires. So would Uber Eats qualify as one way to do it or no?
3:01:41Make it a lot easier.
3:02:11I bet, right? uh cooking is the leading cause of house fires and injuries in our nation causing nearly half of all of our home structure fires in san anna every year so today we present this proclamation to the orange county fire authority and join them in recognizing october 8th through 14th 2023 as fire prevention week and i would like to ask battalion chief solzer to say a few words and provide us with some safety tips on how we can stay safe from cooking fire so oops
3:02:12first I'd like to give this to you guys all right good evening everyone council member Becerra mayor council members first I want to thank everybody for allowing us to come up here and obviously provide this great educational piece to everybody so one of the things that we want to focus on especially when talking about unattended cooking fires is staying in the kitchen whenever you're frying grilling boiling food use a timer to remind yourself that you're cooking keeping the stovetops burners and
3:02:43oven clean from any debris or grease and never using your oven for storage i've been guilty of maybe storing some pizza boxes in my oven so we just want to make sure that you're aware that you know anytime that you're storing in your oven make sure that you pull those items out before you turn that up and on. Good tip. I just wanted to say on behalf of all the members of Orange County Fire Authority thank you very much for your support with Fire Prevention Week and remind everybody that during Fire Prevention Week we will be doing open house at Fire Station 75.
3:03:22That's going to be on October 14th and that'll be from 10 to 1 o'clock. So we invite all the members of the community to come out, check out the fire station, talk to the firefighters and And always as the information that was passed along, you can reference that at OCFA.org for any follow-up information. So thank you very much.
3:03:54Before you leave, now, since I've got you up here, so one more announcement. Could you talk a little bit about the Girls Empowerment Camp that we've got coming up on Saturday?
3:04:13Yes, sir. We are sponsoring our, I believe it's our third annual Girls Empowerment Camp. That's going to be located at our headquarters in Irvine, 1 Fire Authority Road. It encourages young females and young males to come out, participate in activities that they would experience as a fire department member so that we can engage with them, encourage them, and then follow them through their progress so that we can eventually get them into their career aspirations of being a firefighter.
3:04:20Right. So for anybody that's young that just heard that, come check it out. It's on Saturday morning at 8 a.m.?
3:04:498 a.m at our headquarters and it'll run saturday and sunday yeah and it is amazing so if you're
3:04:57out there and you ever see you know the grown adult cadets of what they do imagine now you've got the kids out there doing pretty similar stuff correct absolutely getting their hands on the
3:05:02equipment learning what it takes to be a firefighter and then hopefully encouraging them to pursue it
3:05:10so so prevent fires if you're interested in your career come out saturday morning at 8 a.m right yes sir all right can you take a picture real quick
3:05:15Thank you very much.
3:05:45appreciate it thank you next presentation by mayor pro-time lopez
3:05:46
is sophia here perfect
3:06:08Mom, do you want to come up? This is your doing. Okay.
3:06:19Hi, Sophia.
3:06:27Welcome.
3:06:28Well, hi, everyone. We are here to recognize the exceptional athletic accomplishments of Sophia, one of our local residents. And Sophia, like many of us, is a lifelong resident of the city of Santa Ana. She is also an artistic roller skater at the Holiday Skate Club of Orange, and she recently qualified to skate at the Figures World Cup in Germany from October 20th through the 22nd in 2023. So if anybody wants to go support Sofia in Germany, you're more than welcome to go. And as only a freshman in high school, she is one of the youngest to ever qualify to
3:06:30to represent the U.S. at a world figure skating event. Yes, impressive. Throughout her skating career, Sophia has won more than 12 national titles in roller skating and one international title, the coveted America's Cup. At the U.S. Roller Sports 2023 National Championship in Lincoln, Nebraska, she came home with four medals and became a member of Team USA.
3:07:11Roller skating is recognized by the United States Olympic Committee as a competitive international roller sport along with the rink hockey, roller derby, which is my favorite, speed skating, and skateboarding. Figure skating, considered the basis of all skating, teaches balance, control, and discipline. Skaters at the national level devote many focused and demanding hours of practice each week skating in order to attain their success. Sophia, I am very proud of you for all of your accomplishments, for pursuing your athletic passions, and we want to congratulate you on qualifying to represent us at the Figures World Cup.
3:07:44And before you share a couple words with us, I really just want to give your mom a shout out who reached out to our office. And I know that your mom loves you aloud and is really, really proud of you. So congratulations. This is for you.
3:08:23Thank you for this award and for my mom and everything and my parents both supporting me through everything of my whole career and thank you to Shelby for always being there for me for such a long time and I love you all so much thank you
3:08:47Thank you. The next one is Abound Food Care, please.
3:09:32All right, Mike, you're going to come on up here.
3:09:56How are you? Good to see you. Thank you.
3:10:00Mike and I know each other. All right, let's talk about an outstanding contribution to the community. Abound Food Care has selected Santa Ana as one of the five cities to implement a county-funded emergency meal program. This program includes a fully sustainable 40-foot solar-powered freezer unit with 10,000 frozen, ready-to-thaw and eat meals. These meals prepared with excess edible food are a valuable resource in the event of a disaster. Yes, they are. Thank you. And are regularly rotated to local nonprofit organizations serving our food in secure neighborhoods, neighbors.
3:10:06In conjunction with the Orange County Hunger Alliance Partners, Abound Food Care has been able to provide food for nonprofit organizations serving the city of Santa Ana during the COVID pandemic through this past August. They have also assisted food service businesses in complying with the edible food recovery components of SB 1383. Abound Food Care assisted in developing a food repurposing kitchen in the City of Santa Ana that provides at-risk individuals with culinary vocational training. I call them at Promise. With culinary vocational training and the ability to repurpose excess edible food
3:10:44that would otherwise end up in landfills. Abound Food Care has worked with Santa Ana Unified to implement a food donation program that services families throughout Santa Ana. And so Mike, for all of the great work that you do here in the community of Santa Ana, thank you so much. Thank you. And let's hope that we never have an event where we will need to use all of that food. But if we do, we know that you'll be ready to serve us. Yes, and it's there. So with that, I'd like to present to you this recognition for your outstanding contributions
3:11:24to the community. It's signed by myself and the entire council. So thank you for everything that
3:11:56you do. Would you like to say a few words? Mayor, thank you very much. Council, thank you very much. We're really honored to call Santa Ana our home now because we're able to support all those non-profit agencies that are the boots on the ground that feed people, that serve people every day. But we're also proud because as we work up and down the state of California, around the country and now even abroad, we're proud to be able to show that Santa Ana is our home and it's our base. It's the cultural center of Orange County. It's the geographic center of Orange County. And it's immense pride that we get to call Santa Ana our home.
3:12:01So thank you very much to all of you. Thank you very much.
3:12:35And thank you to you and your staff. And so if the council would like to join me, I don't know who's here.
3:12:39Wow. Councilman Vasquez and Councilman Penalosa, you want to come up? It's not my birthday, so don't worry.
3:12:45We're not going to sing to you.
3:12:51I'm going to go ahead.
3:13:01
Yeah, yeah.
3:13:04I got a quorum. Quorum.
3:13:10Yeah.
3:13:13All right. Let's go on now. We have one staff presentation this evening. Madam City Manager, may we please
3:13:51hear the presentation, please? Certainly. Honorable Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem and Council Members, we're back to the homeless update for you, and Ken Gaminski will be providing the presentation, and he does have a brief PowerPoint for you. Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council.
3:13:58Tonight's homelessness update will share information about the outcomes that the City of Santa Ana has made on homelessness. Where to get help if you're experiencing homelessness and news from our Homeless Navigation Center.
3:14:16Living on the streets negatively affects the lives of individuals as well as the surrounding neighborhoods and communities.
3:14:35for this reason outreach teams work daily to exit individuals from the streets and into some form of shelter from january through september of this year 908 people have moved from the streets of santa ana to alternate living situations some of these exits are of course duplicates this may occur when an individual returns back to the streets after being housed and the cycle of a referral to shelter starts all over again. However, we don't quit as long as they're willing to keep trying. If you look at the screen you'll see
3:14:44that we can show where people are going from January through September of 23. Of Of the 908 individuals who exited the streets, 819 of these individuals were placed in some form of shelter. 673 into our own Homeless Navigation Center on Carnegie, 120 into the county shelter on Yale, and the remainder into either recuperative care, home key locations, or a variety of other sites.
3:15:24The remaining 89 were housed with family, by rentals through clients, in a hospital, into permanent housing, or staying with friends, or by being admitted to substance abuse treatment facilities, detox centers, or mental health facilities.
3:15:57If you or someone you know is experiencing homelessness or you're a resident or business adversely affected by homelessness, there's a way to seek further assistance.
3:16:20This trifold brochure, available digitally on our website and in print elsewhere, along with other helpful information on our website, provides a variety of information for businesses and residents utilizing the mysanaana app is recommended method to report an encampment or to request homeless outreach for individuals currently experiencing homelessness the sanana pd non-emergency number should be called when there is narcotics activity or the presence of drugs or paraphernalia loitering outside of establishments or when individuals are impeding access to business
3:16:32In essence, if there's criminal activity that's occurring, Santa Ana PD should be called. 911 should always be called in case of any emergency.
3:17:12There are several pathways for individuals seeking assistance. We'd like to also remind people that 211 provides countywide information and CityNet's hotline or email can be used for anyone seeking help.
3:17:27September was a busy month at the Navigation Center.
3:17:46I'm sure you all had an opportunity to see that last week, the city was honored to be visited by Governor Gavin Newsom's senior advisor on homelessness and to showcase the city's navigation center. Together with our partner, Illumination Foundation, the Mayor, Councilmember Becerra, and staff, we shared the many ways Santa Ana is leading Orange County in addressing homelessness and had an opportunity to advocate for the resources we need to continue this effort.
3:17:51We are counting on an ongoing relationship we have with Governor Gavin Newsom's new senior advisor, Hafsa Keika, who was a former employee here at the city before she moved on.
3:18:28Additionally, as part of UCI's Alumni Day of Service, volunteers from the Alumni Association provided a fun and relaxing afternoon of painting at the Navigation Center in September. The clients enjoyed painting and stated that it is one way to help them cope with their stress and anxiety. The Santa Ana Work Center staff are now visiting the Navigation Center to provide employment services to clients. Parenting classes are continuing, and among other activities, staff are transporting the 31 children to a variety of Santa Ana Unified schools.
3:18:45Lastly, this was a big one, the Boot Barn donated a pair of boots to each person at the Navigation Center. To build upon that excitement, IAF organized a fun evening dinner and concert, including multiple bands and a DJ. The men and women and children were able to let the rest of the world disappear for a bit as they enjoyed the music and danced the night away.
3:19:24As always, I understand that you are all incredibly busy. I will be available this evening or tomorrow to answer any questions you may have.
3:19:49Thank you, sir, very much. Are there any questions? Councilman Vasquez.
3:19:59
Thank you so much. Thank you for the presentation. I was going to ask you, I wanted a comparative from city to city and see how to compare the numbers of San Ana, of how many folks we are intaking in Santa Ana, and also the exit numbers. And instead of having it up to a year, can I have it month by month? I would like to see how many folks we're serving every month and see if it's going up or down. Would be great information for me.
3:20:05Okay, sir. I understand the last thing you said. What was the thing you said before that? I couldn't understand.
3:20:34Oh, I would like to see comparables by different cities. so how was Santa Ana doing compared to other folks so we're doing great great we're amazing and I think we're doing great and but also the month to month of the numbers that we have would be yes sir understand for later time but thank
3:20:40you yes sir understand are those numbers on our site as far as month by month are
3:21:00they available online we have different portions of data that are available actually put up every two weeks. But I think some of the information he's looking for as a comparison, I can break down and make it month to month.
3:21:07That's good, so we can see that we are doing really well.
3:21:22Yes, ma'am.
3:21:24Thank you. Are there any other questions or comments?
3:21:25I just want to... Go ahead, Catherine.
3:21:30I just want to say, great job with the presentation and to the staff that works on this. I was just in Seattle three weeks ago, and it is a different world. That's not to say we're perfect, that's not to say we don't have challenges, but I do have to say that it was a different Seattle than what I experienced when I was there in 2008. And so I just wanna thank you, your team, for helping to address this. And that I hope we can continue to work with Supervisor Saramanto's office. I had a meeting with him. He committed to me that he wants to work with their city.
3:21:32and so you know we'll work on that relationship so we can get those county funds for our residents thank you yes thank you and I've met with him too I
3:22:09think it's great I see we have 120 beds at Yale we need those five more to each 125 um can we go to slide seven and maybe I missed it I apologize the my Santa Ana app we always wanted did I miss that we want to make sure people are using the mysana app was that in your presentation ken i'm so sorry i brought it up that's the
3:22:19preferred recommended method to report encampments or request homeless outreach for an individual
3:22:42okay thank you and then the union pacific railroad i mean it's a little challenging what do they have how many people that are available to us on any given day so based on
3:22:48my understanding, the Union Pacific Railroad Police has nine law enforcement officers for all of Southern California. We do, in fact, work fairly closely with UP based on our past legal entanglements with that entity. However, they are extremely taxed with resources. So So we try as often as we can to coordinate responses along our railroad tracks to assist UP when they show up to do their cleanings of their private property.
3:23:02Thank you for sharing that. I think it's important that the community knows that, that our officers and our coal team and our staff do work with UP. And we go above and beyond. So thank you.
3:23:41Just as a side note, what we had found in the past was if UP was to exit people off of the railroad tracks, that those people would just move off of the tracks, stay on the sidewalk, and then move right back. We've made adjustments to the way that we do and work with UP. So now if UP does cleanings, we will send Colt down there as well as CityNet to engage with these people when they leave the tracks, encourage them not to stay, and encourage them not to go back to the tracks as quickly as they would have in the past.
3:23:52That's wonderful. Thank you. No more questions or comments. Let's move on. And thank you for your presentation. Thank you, ma'am. I really appreciate it. Madam City Attorney, yes thank you. Madam City Attorney do you have anything to
3:24:27report out of closed session? Mayor, council members, members of the public, we had four closed session items this evening. We have reportable action with respect to item C which is a conference of legal counsel regarding existing litigation in the case of Jimenez versus City of Santa Ana. The City Council by unanimous vote approved a settlement of $150,000 and that's all the reportable
3:24:40action that I have. Thank you. This time we're going to public comments. This is the time of the meeting for City Council to receive comments from the public on agenda and non-agenda items but not the public hearings at this time. Pursuant to the Brown Act, the City Council may not enter into discussion at this time. Speakers will have approximately three minutes for their comments. Pursuant to resolution number 2023-4047, speakers are requested to refrain from profane language or enliobless or slanderous statements that disturb the decorum of the meeting.
3:25:01We will now hear from the members of the public that are on the conference call or Zoom, and I believe we don't have any. Is that correct? That's correct. So therefore, we will go to the speakers that are here in person. If you're here to speak in item 17 and item 18, we will call you in a moment when we get there. So at this time, if I can have Arsenio Lopez, please, followed by Dr. Gabriela Maffi.
3:25:35Good afternoon. My name is Arsenio Lopez, and I'm here to speak on behalf of my business, my family business. During the last couple of weeks, my family's business has negatively been impacted by several actions that have taken place at Arsenio's Mexican Food on Harbor and McFadden. Nearly three weeks ago on Wednesday, September 13th, a video surfaced of a security guard chasing a woman out of our establishment. Shortly after the video surfaced, it began to go viral and all hell started raining down on us. The video caused social media to go into a frenzy and although most people only saw a
3:26:07snippet of what actually happened, they were quick to assume and judge us harshly on the security's actions. To clarify, the security guard is a shopping center security in which the restaurant is located and in its protocol to call security and not San Ana Police Department for any minor issue we may have. Furthermore, we do not condone violence nor agree with the actions taken by the security guard. Almost immediately, we began receiving phone calls threatening not only our place of business but our staff, customers, and our entire family as well.
3:26:43The threats have raided in on us from all angles, from phone calls, social media accounts, posts, Google, Yelp, and our third-party delivery services, and every which way imaginable. The Arsenio's location, which this all originated from, is not the only one in severe backlash. To receive severe backlash from angry individuals, but other Arsenio's locations have also negatively been affected. The following day on September 14th, the Thursday, after the initial incident, a social media influencer, Alex Enamorado, came to Arsenio's in a threatening manner, throwing accusations and intimidating my staff.
3:27:15As a so-called activist, instead of helping share some light on the truth and give perspective and context to the video, he only made matters worse. To keep it short, he was arrested by Santa Ana Police and resulting in his social media followers to protest, Santa Ana Police Department. Upon his release, he and his followers made their way back to Arsenio's Mexican food and protested there until they forced us to close for the day. Just as we thought we had gone past Eye of the Storm, he and his followers came back to protest this past Friday and forced us to shut down again.
3:27:50We have never had any kind of issue in the 30 years plus that my family and I have been operating in Santa Ana. I grew up here and now I'm fortunate enough to proudly serve our community through my family's business. This was all until these events dragged us into the harsh and cruel place the world can be. I truly wish I could put this all behind me like a bad dream, but the reality is there is more. I try to treat it like the nightmare it has been and however there are constant reminders and threats that drag me to face a brutal reality.
3:28:25The last time I did nothing and my family's business was dragged and defamed. This time around I plan to do things different and I have come to ask for your support and guidance.
3:29:01Mr. Lopez, your time is up.
3:29:10Thank you.
3:29:12Thank you sir very much. Dr. Gabriela Amalfi.
3:29:12Good evening, esteemed city council members, staff, and community.
3:29:23I'm Gabriela Maffi. I'm serving, very proudly serving my 11th year as superintendent in Garden Grove Unified School District and I'm joined tonight by our assistant superintendent of business services, Tawny Fan. I'm here this evening to urge you to vote yes on agenda item 12, which would approve a three-year agreement with GGUSD providing approval for Santa Ana Police Department to staff one full-time school resource officer SRO for our school district. GGUSD is the third largest school district in Orange County with 67 schools serving approximately 38,000 students. Our district covers
3:29:2728 square miles. While the majority of our schools are in Garden Grove, we also have schools in four additional cities including six schools in Santa Ana including Rosita which 20 years ago I was the principal of and I think that young man I might have had him when I was a principal since he serves that community unlike Santa Ana Unified School District however our district does not have its own police department however we've developed a top-notch SRO program with our cooperating cities and police departments currently we have six SROs from the Garden Grove Police Department
3:30:01three who have support dogs one from Westminster Police Department and we're hoping to secure one from the City of Santa Ana and one with the City of Fountain Valley is also pending. With nearly 20% of our GGUSD students and their families residing in Santa Ana, it's especially important to us that our Santa Ana schools are receiving the same high level of support for our schools as our schools are in Garden Grove, including having a full-time SRO dedicated to the six Santa Ana schools. In GGUSD, safety and wellness are our highest priorities. Our SRO program is highly valued by a Board of Education, District,
3:30:33School Administrators, staff, families, and students. Based on the expertise of our local police departments, GGUSD SROs do a phenomenal job not only ensuring the safety of our schools, implementing safety protocols, but also providing training and resources to school administrators and serving as role models and trusted adults to our students. On a regular basis they investigate, safeguard schools from nearby police activity, recover stolen property, assist families with crisis scenarios, provide expertise to emergency situations, visit classrooms, and provide wellness support, and serve as mentors on
3:31:10our campuses. We're very proud to be part of Santa Ana community and our schools regularly showcase that sense of community pride. Most recently we're in the Fiestas Patriots parade with our bus, you might have seen us. So having a school resource officer from santa ana police department who knows the city and its families and who cares about our children and keeping our children and community safe will be invaluable to our district thank you so much for your consideration and i'm happy to answer any questions you might have have a good evening thank you beth thomas
3:31:46Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, Mayor, City Council. Thank you for the opportunity. Hi. So, I am a resident of Washington Square of over 20 years. I'm representing our park committee. We have a phenomenal opportunity for a neighborhood park, a walkable park in our neighborhood. We have about one and a half acres on the north part of the neighborhood, which is between Olive and Lowell Street north of 15th. Our neighborhood is in an environmental justice area. We're very proud and happy that our neighborhood next to us has received or is getting a park as well at 10th and Flower. We're looking for the same opportunity.
3:32:23We are a very diverse neighborhood. we have diverse families and children who would really love and appreciate having a walkable park because we have to go outside of the neighborhood actually pretty far to play and to get together as a neighborhood. So a great opportunity that we have is that the seller of the property is motivated. He has tried to sell the property several times. What we are trying to do as a neighborhood which is historic and a beautiful neighborhood we're trying to prevent it from becoming sold to a developer and having housing or high-density housing in particular being built in our neighborhood
3:33:02which would be a detriment to everybody in our neighborhood so what we are trying to do is is basically we understand the funds are limited however we have such a great opportunity to purchase that's what we're asking for is can we please purchase the land it could take years to build the park and we completely understand that but as you can understand the urgency for us to prevent developers from come from coming in I would like to say that as a neighborhood we are a hundred percent supportive we have a phenomenal and long-standing neighborhood association that is a
3:33:41hundred percent behind the park and I am on the committee as well as we have several neighbors that are also on the committee here today we have been on the street and we're continuing to get signatures from the neighborhood just to let you know where we are right now in favor of the park we have 702 homes in the neighborhood we have obtained 621 signatures so far uh 379 households um have signed with more signatures still coming in so we do have full support a majority support of the neighborhood so please we ask the council to please consider
3:34:15Washington Square we understand how important parks are in our park poor city and we really appreciate the support thank you
3:34:54thank you Irma Haraguin good evening everybody congratulations and Santiago Park Wow what a beautiful park I came because for this time I tried to speak last the last meeting and somehow it didn't go through but I was extremely concerned on item 28 one of the items but in this case too so you don't spend time my concern was the other side of that coin to be very thoughtful and to have absolutely certainty from the Department of
3:35:05Immigration that in doing this you are not hurting the legal residents that are applying for citizenship, the illegals that are doing fabulously and walking the straight line and possibly one day have the opportunity of residency that by voting innocently, but it was not thought of, and they would be heard permanently. As wonderful as your work is, it's temporary. It goes. We all eventually go. But when you damage somebody, I did some work for my family during the amnesty times, and I've never seen that law, and I still have family getting residency and citizenship. That question is still there. Have you ever voted?
3:35:46If you have, you do not qualify because they don't have the right. So unless you get it in writing from the Department of Immigration that these people will not be hurt, that's not talking about the lawsuits that could happen, then you must take funding away from the programs that you cherish, the children's, the housing, because lawsuits will come if they're hurt. So please reconsider that. To make it short, I do have to leave. Please, yes, on 15, no on 17. Thank you.
3:36:25Thank you. At this time, consent calendar item number six. That concludes speakers.
3:36:56Mayor, if I may real quickly announce for the record the e-comments that were received. I'm sorry, go ahead. Yes, so we did receive seven non-agenda related e-comments, two comments related to item number 12, the school resource officer services, and then six comments related to number 816 the rent stabilization and just cause eviction ordinance they were all distributed to City Council and posted
3:37:02to the website thank you very much consent calendar items 6 through 14 are before us council members please announce any items that you'll be abstaining from due to conflict if there are any requests to pull an item from the consent calendar for further discussion any items that want to be pulled Councilman Hernandez?
3:37:21
Yes. Item 7, please.
3:37:397. Thank you, sir. Councilman Becerra?
3:37:42Same.
3:37:44Councilmember Fang? No abstentions? I'm sorry. Councilmember Vasquez?
3:37:46Mayor Pro Temp Lopez? Councilmember Becerra? Panel Losa? Thank you. I have none. All right. Wow. I'm proud of all of us. Right? It's going to be great. All right. Do I have a motion and a second to approve the remainder of the consent calendar? So moved. I'll second. Let's prepare to vote.
3:37:56The vote is seven ayes, no nays. motion carries to approve consent calendar items with the exception of item seven thank you so we
3:38:32have a presentation on item seven so if we can go through the presentation before comments if that works for the two council members that pulled the item perfect thank you okay certainly so
3:38:39chief valentine will provide the presentation
3:38:49thank you mayor city council for the opportunity to discuss this item i would invite assistant chief robert rodriguez to deliver the content thank you
3:39:00good evening mayor mayor portemain council excuse my voice it's a little hoarse do you need some water sir yes please
3:39:20Thank you.
3:39:39So good evening, everybody. Today I will be presenting on this public intoxication initiative. It's a brief presentation. Go ahead, next slide, please. So in August 15, 2023, SAPD starts public intoxication initiative. Our goal was to focus on enforcement of existing laws pertaining to public intoxication, directive to patrol division personnel for an encumbered time and calls for service, basically to address these issues of public intoxication, and to provide educational material and resources to those that are detained or arrested to include whether they need resources regarding unhoused folks
3:39:44or drugs and alcohol abuse and mental health. Next slide. These are some of the pamphlets that we provide to the people that we contact out in the streets or even in the jail. They include CityNet, COVID-19 information, OC links, and if there's the opportunity where we can reunify someone with family members, we also provide that information.
3:40:25Some things to consider when we're contacting these folks, that public intoxication may be a byproduct of other mental health issues. It can also be a lesser and included offense of greater crime. So the reason we include this in there is because in our numbers, in our data, if we detain someone for public intoxication, but we find out that they committed a robbery or committed another crime, they obviously get arrested for the higher crime. so sometimes the data for public intoxication is not captured because we only arrest for the robbery
3:40:52and as you can see in the slide i did a comparison between 2022 and and 2023 between august 15 and september 15th and basically took a period in time in 2022 we contacted approximately 41 people in 2022 for public intoxication during that 30-day period. This year we contacted 410 people. Out of those 410 people, 216 were arrested compared to 39 in 2022. In custody, that means that they were taken into custody. 84, 71 were out of custody, and then infraction 61. Only four required
3:41:28medical clearance and two went to a shelter that's a breakdown of some of the various intoxication or citations that we gave BMP 25 620 is open container SAMC 10-33 is drinking in public 647F is drunk in public 10-403 is basically storm personal property property in a public space and then 11 364 is a possession of drug paraphernalia so as you can see the numbers we have had a significant increase in in contacts now these numbers here only represent numbers from the ops division
3:42:10which includes directed patrol it includes cold it includes uh downtown and so it's anyone outside of the patrol division the numbers for the patrol division are not in this report because it's very difficult to extrapolate that data or to get that data but i did get it this late this evening so the numbers for patrol they actually made 486 arrests patrol so add 486 in addition to the 216.
3:42:50and that concludes my brief presentation if you have any questions i'll be happy to answer
3:43:25Councilman Vasquez.
3:43:32The arrest, you bring them into the main jail or Santa Ana jail? And where are they released to?
3:43:37When they're arrested at the Santa Ana jail, they're released right in front of the jail unless they get reunited with someone or whatnot, or a shelter.
3:43:44So that neighborhood gets an influx of homeless. That neighborhood now will have an influx of homeless people. That's where they get, yes. And part of this program was to have buses for folks to go back home, go back to their families. Is that part of this program now?
3:43:55That's part of the program. If someone has family, yeah, we will give them a bus ticket. But so far, the people that we've contacted haven't requested for us to send them someone. We can't just put them on a bus.
3:44:14Right.
3:44:26Thank you. Councilman Hernandez.
3:44:26Thank you, Madam Mayor. Assistant Chief Rodriguez, thank you for the presentation first and foremost. It was very informative. I was opposing this item when it was brought forward to us because I had a number of concerns that although in good faith this is an item that is focused on addressing public intoxication, there are some repercussions that I do believe we're starting to see an increase of. My focus on the question I have for you today, sir, is on the contacts that we've had for people that have been intoxicated.
3:44:29What is the percentage of people that have received assistance with perhaps finding a shelter or being placed?
3:45:05Out of these folks, out of this presentation, only two people were placed in the shelter.
3:45:14So this item was focused on addressing public intoxication and also the issue of people loitering outside of public properties. I'm looking at the staff report that you guys sent, and it was on August 15th. It really highlights the dialogue that we had here, and so it states from August 15th, 2023, to September 15th,
3:45:20Staff reports the following, 56 shifts have been filled on overtime for the public intoxication initiative, 374 hours of overtime, 303 contacts, 206 arrests, 64 arrestees booked at the Santa Ana Jail, 84 arrestees cited and released in the field on misdemeanor charges, 58 arrestees cited and released in the field on infractions, Four subjects transported to a medical treatment center, and two subjects accepted a referral to a shelter. During this 30-day period, staff estimates that the enforcement costs were $38,000.
3:45:44So part of why I oppose this item for my colleagues is because this is a very expensive item for us to just simply hand out educational information. The report synthesized that what we've been doing is handing people educational materials. They're not voluntarily utilizing those materials by becoming part of a program where there's case management or where they're having a continuity of care. So it's very costly. One of the arguments that I also presented was public intoxication is in fact a byproduct of mental health. You have that on your bullet point here today. So thank you for reaffirming that.
3:46:24It was a point that was contentious among some of my colleagues. Very happy that our PD is reinforcing that because it's important we take a look at maybe some of the effects that we've had. I received an email from the Flower Park neighborhood, which has requested that we pause the enforcement due to the increase of homelessness that we've seen at Flower Park, Angels Park, and in some cases getting closer to Articia Pilar, Washington Square neighborhood. So I do want us to address those concerns. I want us to have a plan in place to ensure that these neighborhoods aren't adversely affected.
3:47:05So Madam City Manager, I would like for us to work with our quality of life team and just be mindful that as we're releasing people, that they're not going into neighborhoods that are adjacent to the jail.
3:47:42And we'll come back, Councilman Hernandez, if you want another three minutes. Please remind Council, it's three minutes, three rounds. Councilman Becerra?
3:47:52Thank you, Madam Mayor. And thank you, Assistant Chief, for the report. just real quick in response to some of the comments I've heard up here. I appreciate what I've heard. So this policy, as you understand it, it applies across all 27 square miles, right? Like we didn't tell you to only enforce it in, you know, 63 out of the 64 neighborhoods, correct? Correct. So if someone leaves the jail and they wander into an adjacent neighborhood, you guys wouldn't ignore it. You guys would arrest them if they were publicly intoxicated, correct correct okay perfect thank you um so between august 15th and september 15th uh the
3:47:59report indicates that 303 contacts were made and 206 arrests took place so what happened to the 97 other contacts and the reason i ask that is because the program is to arrest folks so that we can get them to jail and then that we can then offer them services but i'll get to the part about services but i just want to understand what happened to the 97 other contacts so in some
3:48:34cases officers will make contact with individuals and they may not establish the uh you know the evidence that they're probably uh publicly intoxicated or that they have violated the law it could be a consensual encounter they can have some dialogue build a rapport and if there's no violation of law then they just uh you know they provide whatever uh services or pamphlets they
3:48:56have okay perfect thank you and then so uh we're talking about so those 206 142 of those were cited and released in the field. So when I see that stat, it makes me think that our direction's not being followed, because if there is a reason to cite them, the idea was to transport them to jail so that they could receive those services. And which brings me to another concern that I have, which is, according to this report, it states, quote, upon release from jail, the arrestees are given materials from CityNet and OC Health. And I appreciate my two colleagues who are bringing up
3:49:17that concern about the services because has that been successful anywhere even before this policy has it been successful to give somebody a pamphlet do they normally say wow thanks for the pamphlet
3:49:50i'm going to go to shelter now there is some dialogue from our coal team in regards to trying to influence them to take that action step forward to be uh whether they're looking to uh for a shelter or to reach out to these services or they'll even call call the services for them
3:50:01But I guess where I'm trying to get at is, citing and releasing doesn't accomplish what this policy was set out to do. It's to take them to jail. It's to then offer them services. Offer to them, not a pamphlet, but maybe have somebody from CityNet, have somebody there to offer them those services. So if we just do cite and release and hand them a pamphlet, that is not, let me be clear, not what this council has asked you to do.
3:50:19Can I add on, on the purpose of cite and release, for us to be able to transport someone from one location to another to the jail we have to be able to do it in a lawful manner and the only way we can do that is if the officer believes that the behavior by that individual is going to continue if that person has a valid id and the officer doesn't believe that that conduct is going to continue he or she cannot transport him to the jail sir if you find a person passed out at a
3:50:42bus stop as long as i give you an id and say i pinky swear i won't do it anymore it's okay
3:51:10Well, not a passed out. That's a very different scenario. I don't know exactly which ones were cited and released. It doesn't say that they were passed out on a bus stop. So it means that if they stop someone with an open container, that's a cited and release.
3:51:14No, no, but when we're talking about publicly intoxicated, I'm not talking about they're in possession of an open beer can. I'm saying they are clearly publicly intoxicated. Are we?
3:51:28Well, we transport those, definitely whether it's medical or whether it's to the jail.
3:51:36Okay, and maybe in your report that could be more clear next time, because I'd like to see the month-to-month comparison. And then as far as, I think, I forget which one of my colleagues asked about the transportation back home. Are we proactively offering that?
3:51:40If they have family members where they want to be, yes, we are offering. If they want to go somewhere to reunify with family members, we are offering that.
3:51:55But are we proactively offering it to them? If we see their ID and it doesn't say California, are we offering it to them?
3:52:03I believe we're offering it to everyone, but I can confirm.
3:52:10Okay. Just to close out on my comments, you know, I just want to say that my constituents are seeing the improvements, so thank you for that. But as I'm seeing every day on South Bristol, there are new folks coming in all the time, new addicts that are coming in, passing out. And I won't go into how they're arriving. It's just clear that they are. But if this policy, when it's properly carried out, it makes it clear that Santa Ana is not going to continue to tolerate. So thank you for what you're doing. I know this is going to be a constantly improving process, but again, thank you for the report.
3:52:13Thank you.
3:52:41You can come back and do another three if you need to. Okay, I have a couple questions.
3:52:42So thank you for the report. We just had a neighborhood association meeting. I meet with them every month. And the numbers that we received on that evening were very different than what you're showing tonight. So you don't need to explain them tonight, but I will send an email out because I'd like clarification on the numbers. because what I'm seeing here, if you talk about the arrests that patrol made and then the arrests, the 842, if you add them all up, that direct patrol and Colt, and what was the other group you said?
3:52:48Direct patrol Colt and the downtown.
3:53:18And the downtown. So that's 842. Is that including the 486 or is that additional?
3:53:21No, that's what they pulled from our stats, from our CAT system. So some numbers could be duplicated, yes.
3:53:28And that was going to be my next question. These numbers can be duplicated, correct? Yes. We just don't know yet.
3:53:35No. Gathering that data is tedious work because they have to go through every single report to find out who made the arrest, who made the citation or whatnot.
3:53:41Well, you could have a non-SWARD staff member do that that's not the same cost as a police officer, correct?
3:53:51Yes, that's who's doing it.
3:53:57And you have staff that handles all of your data?
3:53:58Yes.
3:54:01Okay. So it is possible? Yes. Okay. I think that's what I know I'd like to see because I don't want to see the duplicates, right? So is it possible that you can arrest somebody for an open container and also for possession of drugs?
3:54:01If they have a felony or a possession of drugs, we won't document the open container.
3:54:17But is it possible?
3:54:22Yes.
3:54:24Okay. So my next question is, Councilman Becerra brought this up about releasing or making contact with a program. That warm handoff that we had talked about when this item was before us, can you shed light on what few organizations or what organizations are you working with to do that warm handoff to or to give them information to? And you don't need to list all of them, but I'd like to know if there's a few. For example, the Sheriff's Department, when you walk out of the jail, they have Project Kinship and a couple of other organizations right there. When they walk out, they make contact with them.
3:54:24They either take them to the shelter, they take them to a program where they actually take them into their program. I know the Sheriff's giving bus passes. So, and I'm not trying to compare, I'm just trying to understand. I know the ordinance, the way I kind of understood it, was how we were going to do this. So can you shed light a little bit, sir, about what organizations, a few, or an example, that your officers are making contact with and saying, if you don't want to go to shelter, let me introduce you to so-and-so from so-and-so organization upon release.
3:55:03We do provide the same services from the sheriffs in regards to, I believe it's the Lights On program, and that's where those groups are. So when they get released from the jail, they're right in front of our parking structure and along with the other various organizations from CityNet and from OC Health. So what I hear you
3:55:36saying then is that when they get released from Santa Ana jail there's that warm handoff to say here's an organization that can help you please make contact with this person or you're handing them a pamphlet and saying thank
3:55:58you have a nice evening. No we hand them a pamphlet but we also let them know about the Lights On program.
3:56:11Okay. So, Councilman Hernandez brought up the overtime, and I also have it circled here. So you're using overtime, because you're using downtown officers, direct patrol, and cold, correct?
3:56:20Yes.
3:56:36So, and then also you have regular patrol who's not on overtime making the arrests, so they made 486 arrests.
3:56:37They're also on overtime at times if they sign up for the overtime.
3:56:45If they sign up for it. Yes. So in order to enforce this public intoxication and substance abuse enforcement, you have to use overtime or the officers that are working, Colt is always on every single day.
3:56:48Right.
3:57:04Direct patrol, what is their shift, sir?
3:57:05They work a 410 schedule. It varies depending on the needs of whatever operations they're working.
3:57:07So they'd be called in for overtime if they're on their day off of the 410?
3:57:13Yes.
3:57:18And downtown, what is their schedule?
3:57:19Same schedule.
3:57:21410?
3:57:22410.
3:57:23Okay. So the reason I ask that is because even though it's not a lot of money yet for the overtime, I mean, it is substantial, but I just want to make sure that we're mindful of you have officers in different units that you can, divisions that you could probably be using, because if patrol's able to make contact or arrest 486 people, then I would think that if you're on duty in Colt, if you're on duty during your 410s with direct patrol in downtown, they would also be able to make arrests. Is that correct?
3:57:24Yes.
3:57:54Okay. So thank you for this report, and I look forward to it. I think we all look forward to the monthly reports that we're going to be getting because, as Council Member Becerra said, that he has seen some improvement. I have seen some, I would say, the first two weeks, and then I do have some concerns that, you know, and I get emails, as probably you do, every day from people and businesses and,
3:57:55you know, just the people I'll sleep on the park benches, in the parks, on the buses, and I know we're not going to solve this overnight. It's going to take time. So I appreciate that. We had, just so you know, we had an elderly woman, someone's mother, that was at a bus stop, and she was sitting there with her husband, who's also elderly, waiting to catch the bus, and a homeless person walked up to her, to the mom, and just smacked her right in the face. and I don't know about you, but if that was my grandmother, I would lose my mind.
3:58:23So sometimes it's very dangerous, and so I would hope that when your officers see them on the side of the grass, because that's where I always see them, that they're going to stop and make contact with them. If they're not on the way to a call, right, if they're just driving around doing their job, that they would make contact with that person asleep on the grass or that person setting up a home on the grass or that, and to offer assistance. The Neighborhood Association meeting, a woman named Stephanie, shared how she was homeless, and Anaheim PD made contact with her and offered her assistance and took her to a shelter.
3:59:04And now she is taking, she waited, she was waiting this last week for an LSAT score to come in, and she has multiple degrees now, and she's doing really well. So it really is about how committed we are to providing assistance to those who want it. So thank you for the report, and I really appreciate it. If there are no other comments, Councilman Hernandez will move on after Councilman Hernandez's comments.
3:59:43Thank you, Madam Mayor. And again, Assistant Chief Rodriguez, I want to thank you for your patience and answering all of our questions my last couple of comments were just just touching base on some of the concerns of neighborhoods because they've expressed and I and I've seen a growing increase of emails and calls related to encampments related to people loitering out in front of their properties or their parks since we have implemented the policy most notably leadership from the Flower Park neighborhood did email me. They shared that their concerns were with the policy ordinance talking about
4:00:09it would have a focus on transporting people. What is the statistics that you guys can provide us on the number of people that you guys have transported or that have accepted services?
4:00:49Since we started this program, we haven't transported anyone yet.
4:01:00Okay. What is the percentage of people you've given bus passes to? none so far zero have you offered everybody who is out of our county at
4:01:04least from my knowledge not we haven't offered any bus passes but I know cold and does offer bus passes whether in the field or not I would have to get those
4:01:13numbers from cold just to make sure okay my final comments are madam city manager I would like to see us strengthen our relationships with local community organizations like Project Kinship that do work in this capacity where they help people as they're released. I think perhaps bringing them to the table to see how we can work with our police department would be beneficial to the neighborhoods that have been impacted since this policy is in place. I also would like to see us be more proactive in offering transportation to not only people who aren't from this community, but perhaps people who
4:01:22are identifying families or people experiencing homelessness that may be products of the foster system or, you know, maybe they just got out of prison or juvenile hall, jail. There's a lot of different resources that we can leverage. So I would love to see how we can partner with different agencies to do that. That's my final comment. Thank you.
4:01:59Thank you.
4:02:20Councilman Becerra. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just want to be clear that this policy is myopic by design. This is not about solving homelessness. This is purely about enforcing existing public intoxication laws. And I just, as you develop the format of these reports, I really want to focus on that. Now, for the folks that you're arresting, if there are folks that happen to be experiencing homelessness, happen to be from outside of Santa Ana, Orange County, and we are able to reunite them with families, that's always a wonderful thing to hear.
4:02:20But for our community, the purpose of bringing that item forward and having it directed to our PD was because we are facing folks intoxicated. It has nothing to do with whether they're houseless or not. It's when they're passed out, when there's a group of them all conducting illegal narcotic activity, impacting the quality of life for our residents and our businesses. So I just want to be clear, this is, again, there are some that are publicly intoxicated, that are violating existing state laws that just might be houseless or homeless, but that's not the focus here.
4:02:53The focus is for these folks not to impact our residents and our businesses' quality of life. So that's all. Thank you again for all you guys are doing. Thank you.
4:03:26Thank you, sir. All right, we're going to move on to the business calendar.
4:03:34Mayor, if we could please have a motion and a second to receive and file the report.
4:03:38I'll make a motion. Second. Let's all vote, please.
4:03:43The vote is six ayes, no nays, with a noted absence by Council Member Hernandez. Motion carries, received and filed. Thank you.
4:03:58Madam City Clerk, you may want to fix the names on the voting. It says Jose Solorio, Juan Villegas. Oh my goodness. Okay, I apologize
4:04:11for that. We will look into that. Not that we don't want their names there. The names that showed on my screen were your names. Sorry. We will fix that and do roll call votes
4:04:19for the rest of the night if necessary. Thank you. Don't worry, Mr. Vasquez, we won't call you any other name but Mr. Vasquez. All right, sorry. Let's go to, sorry. Item number 15 is the first reading of an ordinance. Madam City Manager, may we have a staff report please?
4:04:33Yes, we do have a presentation. Would you like that, Mayor?
4:04:52Thank you very much.
4:04:57So Chief Valentin.
4:04:58Another warm handoff here.
4:05:08Good evening again, Mayor, Council. I'd like to bring up Assistant Chief Robert Rodriguez.
4:05:10Are you going to stay close, Chief, so you can stay up? Oh, absolutely.
4:05:17Absolutely. You know I will. And then Commander Joe Marty from our Traffic Bureau is also here. Go ahead.
4:05:19We'll wait till they all get up here.
4:05:30Good evening, Mayor, Mayor of Potem, Council. Tonight I'll be presenting the Spectator Ordinance of Prohibiting Spectators at Street Races or Reckless Driving Exhibitors.
4:05:44So STEERD, Strategic Traffic Enforcement Against Racing and Reckless Driving. It's a three-pronged approach to address racing and reckless driving. It includes enforcement, engineering, and education.
4:06:02STEERD conducted 360 operations resulting in 7,297 total citations, 462 impounds, 276 racing or reckless driving arrests, and 151 miscellaneous arrests.
4:06:16The ordinance, currently law enforcement officers do not have the ability to hold spectators accountable for engaging in or aiding and abetting street racist or reckless driving exhibitions. Spectators assist in preparations for the street races, record and post videos to social media, encourage street races, and line public streets.
4:06:37They also impede the free use of public streets by actions, words, or physical barriers.
4:07:05You can hold on, sir, while you get your water. Okay.
4:07:10Next time you come up, we're going to give you the whole jug.
4:07:18All right, so as I was saying, these are some of the actions that spectators do, and I was finishing off with they impede the free use of public streets by actions, words, or physical barriers. This creates a nuisance and, more importantly, public safety concern.
4:07:24The ordinance allows officers to issue misdemeanor citations to any person who is knownly present as a spectator of a street race or a reckless driving exhibition on a public street highway or off-street parking facility. It defines present as a person who is within 200 feet of the location of a motor vehicle, speed contest or reckless driving exhibition or within 200 feet of the site of the preparations for either of these activities.
4:07:43Spectators Defined means any individual who is present at a street race or reckless driving exhibition at a location where preparations are being made for such activities for the purpose of viewing, observing, watching, recording, or witnessing the event as it progresses or a spectator. Includes any individual at the location of the event without regard to whether the individual arrived at the event by driving a vehicle, riding as a passenger in a vehicle, walking, or arriving by some other means. A violation of this section may be punishable
4:08:19as an infraction or a misdemeanor subject to a maximum of six months in jail or a fine of $1,000. Alternatively, violations may be addressed through the use of admin sites. Officers have the discretion to use admin sites, misdemeanor citation, or an infraction citation.
4:08:58And I'm going to share a couple videos. And this video actually shows where a spectator actually gets hurt by one of the street takeovers.
4:09:16Where's Daniel when we need Daniel?
4:09:49Okay, apparently the videos did not attach. what I was going to show, one of them was a video of a spectator getting hurt. The other one, which is just a screenshot also, that's an actual street takeover in our city at 17th and King? 17th and King. And that's a picture from the police helicopter.
4:09:54When's the date?
4:10:16We can ask questions when one second. I'm finishing that one.
4:10:1917 August.
4:10:23That concludes the presentation and we're ready to answer any of your questions.
4:10:30All right, thank you. If you want to speak, please push your button and in three minutes, three rounds.
4:10:34May I make one comment? Yes, sure. Just as a closing comment here. I do want to let you know that when this item was directed for preparation, we had a specific request from Council Member Penelosa and the Council directed our office to prepare the ordinance exactly as it appeared in the may 2021 ordinance and i did i do must disclose that i did take the liberty of adding some additional enforcement items here if you want to only consider the ordinance as it was directed by the city council i do have for you a red line version prepared for tonight and what that would do is remove the alternatives for enforcement
4:10:39And can you point out the items that you added to this?
4:11:15It would be on page 3 in Section 36707. We would delete a language that refers to an infraction or alternatively violations through administrative citation. That same change would be made in Section 36708 by deleting references to infraction or alternative violations addressed through administrative citations as in Section B as well. So it would be Sections 707 and 708, and I have those available and copies for all of the council.
4:11:19Thank you. Appreciate that. Okay. Do you want questions? Anybody?
4:11:51Councilman Hernandez?
4:11:57Yes. Thank you, Madam Mayor. And thank you, staff and our police department for the presentation today. this is an item that is important to the community because it's something that has impacted us here in Santa Ana street takeovers none of us in this room and condone them endorse them or support them I'm gonna say it again if you're somebody who engages in street takeovers you're not welcome here you're not wanted here and you don't have a seat at the table in our city street takeovers are illegal and we support enforcing the law so I want to I want to stand there
4:11:59with you guys and say thank you. I do think us focusing on spectators rather than the people who are breaking the law, sitting behind these vehicles and putting people's lives in danger, I think we're focusing on the wrong person. St. Ann is a city where, I mean, we have a group, Neighbors of St. Ann. It's a lot of people who talk about issues that happen all over our city. There are group chats that talk about issues all the time. If something happens in front of your how Santa Ana is a community where people will come out and watch. Part of where my concerns come from, and I want to share it with my colleagues, is a
4:12:32misdemeanor is an infraction that can change your life, can change how you gain access to employment. This document here in the staff report talks about spectators being young people. We know that in cities like Santa Ana, black and brown teens were funneled into juvenile halls and the revolving door of recidivism from juvenile hall becomes jail and jail becomes prison, and next thing you know, that young boy who was at a meetup making a bad decision is now funneled into prison. And we just created a much larger issue. So because of my experiences living in a neighborhood where I seen these things firsthand, I was
4:13:06raised by people who made very bad decisions and I make plenty of good ones. It wasn't because of the fact that I was living in a household where I saw things that I shouldn't have seen. It was because I made better decisions, but it took really big-hearted people to walk with me and help unlearn some of those things that children are subjected to, just like kids in the ghettos who see street takeovers. That's why they're not doing them in Irvine. They come to the hoods where people are sleeping. They're trying to get by. Having lived in a neighborhood
4:13:45my whole life, I can't support it. What I do support is our Santa Ana Police Department working closely with Public Works Agency. I like the fact that Public Works Agency has actively been involved in the Rest in Red program. Where, what is that? Public Works has strategically rephased specific streetlights to Rest in Red along major arterial roadways throughout the city. The rephasing deters street races by presenting a traffic signal, resting in red rather than green. I would support enforcing and strengthening those efforts.
4:14:15I would support Santa Ana PD emphasizing educational components like you've listed in your staff report, where you guys use your social media to alert the public that we don't condone street racing and street takeovers, and that we will enforce the law. That will conclude my first round of comments. Thank you.
4:14:52Thank you. Mayor Portem-Lopez, please.
4:15:09Yes, thank you. This is directed to you, city attorney. I appreciate your guidance on writing this ordinance and your input. However, I don't want to be notified of the red lines on the dais. So just a suggestion for future reference. If you do this again, just let us know via an email. Thank you.
4:15:11Thank you. Council Member Fan. Thank you, Mayor.
4:15:34Thank you for the report. I was very interested in the information regarding who the spectators are. I very much respect my colleagues up here, and I think the personal experiences that we all have is part of why we were elected to represent our communities. And I don't want... One of the things that I had brought up about young people is I do not want a dumb mistake to derail someone's entire life. I know that. I've experienced that. I live with someone who is a former prosecutor. And that's really important to me. But I'd like to say also that, Madam City Attorney,
4:15:41I do appreciate that you added the additional language because I did see that regarding the infractions, regarding giving our police officers who are trained in this to make the distinction. And I hope that as we increase our training, that as we continue to enforce this, that we make good decisions about who really is blocking our police activity from enforcing. right and and that also falls under I think penal code 148 impeding a police
4:16:22officer's ability to I might have the section wrong but to impede your ability to enforce the law right that that is also there if they are blocking you from arresting a street racer or impounding a car I think that's really important However, if we do this, I do challenge you and I expect you to use that judgment so that we focus on that education and we deter our young people from being involved in this activity. I also like to say that this did happen in the city of Irvine, right?
4:16:59The collaboration, I believe, was the city of Irvine, Anaheim, Santa Ana, and I think Orange? I might be wrong.
4:17:39It's a multi-
4:17:48Agency collaborative effort. And it's because Irvine has really large wide streets. And so, and I know that that has decreased over time, and I'd like to see that decreasing, because the last thing I want is for another resident or another individual to die because of this activity. So with that, again, I want to make it very clear that, at least speaking for myself, that putting our trust in you to use that professional judgment and training to say, who is someone who is truly impeding, who is blocking you, who is doing something that truly warrants this,
4:17:49or someone who warrants an infraction, which does not go on a record, you're not going to court, you're paying, it's like a parking ticket.
4:18:30So that would complete my comments. Thank you so much.
4:18:40Council Member Becerra, please.
4:18:45Thank you, Madam Mayor. Assistant Chief, thank you. I'm going to read a part of the staff report because I think this is very important. The spectators are not folks that you would see get a baseball game with a hot dog and a Coke in their hands. That's not what it is. In fact, to even call them spectators is kind of almost a misnomer because they're either aiding in very dangerous activities or they're preventing our officers from being able to actually enforce the law. So you wrote in your staff report, law enforcement has experienced hundreds of spectators who attend these unlawful activities
4:18:48and who typically block an entire intersection resulting in significant traffic flow issues, including preventing emergency personnel from responding to critical calls for service. Spectators, and I like this, this is probably better, spectators also act as blockers. They are blockers. They block by protecting the drivers, whom everybody up here seems to think we need to focus on, but just like any crime, if somebody is aiding a crime, you go after the person that's aiding the crime. These folks are not bystanders, And I think that's what it almost feels like we're painting them as.
4:19:24They are actively aiding the folks that are committing these very, very dangerous crimes. So you put, the spectators also often act in a violent manner towards officers at the scene to allow the drivers to escape. So I want to echo Mayor Pro Temp Lopez's comments. Madam City Attorney, in the future, please don't take liberty. Please don't. If the council gives direction, please follow through with it. If there's some lawful reason where we need to pivot, I would agree. Please let us know in advance. So we talk about misdemeanors changing lives. You know what also changes lives?
4:19:57Losing it, just like Eugene Harbrecht's family had to learn when they lost a loved one to street racing. So we're all worried about misdemeanors. How about the loss of life? That's a little more important. You know, and they wonder why this activity comes to Santa Ana. Well, because when we introduced this in 2021 and we were soft on it, if I was a street racer, I'd come to Santa Ana too. I'd be like, gosh, those guys don't care. They almost welcome us because they didn't want to put the clamp down when they could. So of course they're coming here. That's not shocking. So as far as education goes, I agree we should educate.
4:20:37So hopefully tonight when we adopt this ordinance, you can educate all these folks that we're not going to take it anymore. and we're going to actually take it seriously and we're going to punish those that break the law in our city so yes please educate them on that note and with that madam mayor i'm going to go ahead and move the item but i'm going to move it um without the additions from the city attorney and i want to move the original ordinance from may of 2021 that's my motion okay i'll second that
4:21:12Mayor with comments. Go ahead. Thank you AC for the presentation and Chief Valentin and the entire department for the work that you've been doing over the last couple of years to try to bring this so you guys could have that tool under your belt to be able to help solve this issue. No one here is not focusing on the actual drivers. We've been focusing on that but the problem is here is that you have an obstacle in front of you to enforce the actual people doing these street takeovers and it's the spectator issue that the people chasing clout I
4:21:42would rather that a person chasing clout be charged with a misdemeanor than a poor family down the street calling 911 because they're having a family emergency and an ambulance not being able to get through because there's clout chasing people blocking an intersection not only endangering their lives but not putting the nearby neighborhood in jeopardy ambulance approaches this intersection approaches the intersection of 17th and King and guess what they can't get through because there's hundreds of people
4:22:21circling on Instagram live on tick-tock trying to go viral with these with these incidents. So we're not focusing on the drivers. We've been focusing on them. But there's an obstacle in front of you to be able to do this. And two years ago when you came to us and said, hey, this is the way where we could also solve the problem is multiple prong approach, right? It's going after every aspect of it. The driver, the people blocking the traffic, aiding and abating these drivers and blocking you from doing the job. So thank you for this.
4:22:57I was a little confused at why this ordinance was brought forward the way it was when there was a specific direction from the City Council to bring an ordinance back as it was first presented in May of 2021. So I would second Council Member Serra's motion. of going with that ordinance and and the right i mean madam city attorney can you just for my colleagues are clear can you explain just uh what really you're removing from the ordinance that you
4:23:40had for us just thank you for the opportunity to explain that because i did see your clear direction we have in the past been looking at ordinances and have been adding these additional enforcement mechanisms for several reasons. First and primary reason is just to have more tools, not to get involved with your political legislative decision making, but that we have more tools. We have found that we see hundreds of citations that come through the city attorney's office. We can get through the infractions a lot quicker than we do misdemeanors.
4:24:12They're very time intensive, very staff intensive, and sometimes we end up with the same results because they're fined. We actually get money in from the infraction fines. And sometimes the administrative citations, for example, we use that in the area of fireworks. So what happened is the last couple of ordinances that we presented to you, there was like a noise ordinance and there was the aggressive panhandling, we had these enforcement provisions. So we just did it as a consistency issue. And when the question came up, I said, please add that in there. So it was consistent with some of our more recent ordinances. That was
4:24:47the only intent. It was looking at just providing the people that are in the field, doing the enforcement with more tools, and being able to use their discretion. And my apologies for not being more sensitive to why the ordinance wasn't passed the last time, and that I probably should have put in the staff report as an alternative, rather than just drafting and submitting it that
4:25:20way. Thank you for that. Thank you. I'm going to take my one of my three shots here. I know you're up next. I haven't spoken yet. So thank you for being up here. So I just want to clarify a few things. When a minor is arrested for a misdemeanor offense, they have no obligation to report that, or they receive an infraction or citation. They have no obligation to report that once they reach over the age of 18. Let's say I apply for a job. I'm arrested at 15 for whatever it may be.
4:25:38And now I'm, you know, 21 and I'm applying for a job at the store. Let's say I go to Nordstrom's. Am I obligated to report that, sir?
4:26:14Not that I believe so, no.
4:26:26That's correct. The juvenile record, because minors are adjudicated if, in fact, they are found. They end up in juvenile court and they go through the process. They're adjudicated. They're not felons. They're not considered criminals. They are adjudicated minors. Is that correct?
4:26:27That's correct.
4:26:43And in your experience, both of you have been in law enforcement a very long time. In your experience, when a young man or young lady is arrested for a misdemeanor or they're cited and they're referred to the probation department, do they not receive like community service hours or a small fine?
4:26:43Yes, usually community service hours, yes.
4:27:00And diversion, is that correct?
4:27:02Yes. Yes.
4:27:04And so the probation department, their arrest and their incarceration numbers have decreased incredibly, haven't they? Significantly. Okay. Matter of fact, they've closed a couple units in juvenile hall. Yes. Okay. So I just wanted, I brought that up because I think when we talk about how it's going to affect their life and spending 30 years in that world and not spending all 30 in juveniles, but I do recall always saying to young people, and some of them were arrested for possession of a firearm, and I would say, you're an adjudicated minor. Is that correct? Correct.
4:27:05And therefore, when you turn 18, you have the ability to seal your record, and therefore you can also expunge it. Is that correct?
4:27:41Yes.
4:27:48Okay. So if I'm arrested as a spectator on a misdemeanor events or I'm cited, is that going to follow me the rest of my life?
4:27:49No.
4:27:58Now, if I apply to be a police officer, I can share that information, and I probably should. Is that correct?
4:27:59That's correct.
4:28:06But that doesn't mean that you're not going to hire that person.
4:28:06That is correct.
4:28:10Okay. I just want to clear that up because sometimes when we talk about how this is going to affect
4:28:11young people, because you see on the news all of the street racing, and by my neighborhood on Memory Lane and Flower, I live in Morrison Park, as you know I always share with you, right there, they spin out and they spin out. And on this corner is a family with grandchildren, on this corner is an elderly couple, on this corner is a family, and on this corner is a family. If one of those cars lose control, they're going to fly into somebody's house. And what is going to happen, sir? What could possibly happen?
4:28:19Someone get hurt.
4:28:47That's correct. Yes. A child, somebody in their bed, 2, 3 o'clock in the morning. And I thank you because you did put a camera out there for a short period of time, and then we had to remove it. I believe it broke down. And I also want to thank you because you gave a list of areas where there's been a lot of reckless driving. Flower Street in memory, Flower Street in Santa Clara, Flower 19th, Mayberry and Fruit, Fairhaven and Linwood. And you gave in other areas. So I'm going to stop because that's my three minutes and I'm going to come back. Councilman Vasquez.
4:28:48Thank you. I myself, I do not condone street racing or street takeovers. and I'm a high school teacher I have a lot of great kids beautiful children who have a big future ahead of them many of them are 18 many 15 to 18 and great kids do dumb things every day I see them do dumb things in front of me and and and participate even in things like this and for a family to take on in this and in our area in my neighborhood I'm award to a six months in jail thousand dollar
4:29:19fine it's devastating that that could lead to a failure to appear for many people who can't afford it or who don't want just don't understand the law to go before a judge and figure it out and see what you can do we have a lot of kids in trouble who may be at the end you know and and and your parents are barely making a buy and they don't want to ask they can't ask for a thousand dollars there's no way they can ask for a thousand and in a in a in a place like a street takeover they probably have a lot of sense and they're probably honor kids and they're beautiful and they're play sports but in in a mob kind of mentality
4:29:58they're gonna do what the mob does as well it's just shameful that that's what it is but that's what it is and I'm really I'm just sad over this if we could figure out a different way of handling street takeovers then this kind of criminalization of our youth who don't have the money or the know-how to get into the legal system I'm just I'm just saddened by the situation we're gonna put a lot of our families in and they don't have to be minors they're 18 19 when they leave and I have a student right now who got in trouble
4:30:38with the law. The girl was in 10th grade and she was alone. She graduated high school.
4:31:13She went out to get her own department, of course, and she graduated Fullerton. She had a scuffle at a picnic with this other woman and the other woman caught the police. And now that's following her the woman is taking her to court she doesn't have any she's alone she's trying to pay a car print pay insurance paying college and all this other woman is criminalizing her for something that happened in a picnic this girl earned a scholarship to Indiana U for you know to get her master's and possibly her doctorate now because of some little thing like this
4:31:26she's being criminalized and this is what there's criminalization happenings in here as well the kids could be 18 19 or they could be 15 and 16 a failure to peers and be kind of rough and that's what's going to happen to our many of our students that's we need to find a different solution this is not the only solution this is not the only solution this is not the only solution
4:32:07thank you mayor appreciate you mayor pro tem lopez yes thank you so I'll be supporting the ordinance as is. I appreciate the suggestions of the additional tools. You know, I don't have that background or that knowledge. So I think that's why I'm going to be supporting it. But I do want to stress to the city manager, to the public works director, to the department, that this cannot be the only solution we invest in. We need to build roundabouts. We need to decrease the speeding in our local neighborhoods because some of the locations in the staff report
4:32:27that i gave you those are not takeovers those are residents um doing the donuts at 12 a.m or 2 a.m at night and so for me investing in bollards making sure that this is why i am not a supporter of widening streets because widening streets this is where you're seeing this activity happen and And so whatever we can look to to other cities that are not just minimizing but eliminating this issue completely is also what we should be investing in through our budget. So again thank you and with that I'll make a sub motion to approve as presented.
4:33:05Thank you. Councilman Penelosa please.
4:33:42Thank you Mayor and I just want to thank you again Chief and really let the public know that at the end of the day, when you have dozens, possibly hundreds of teenagers or young adults getting hurt, injured, and even killed every year at these street events, I want you to put yourself in those parents' shoes. I wish, I hope, if I were any one of those parents, or those parents, I'm pretty sure
4:33:46that they would have hoped and wished that somebody, a law enforcement officer, somebody would have intervened. There's many ways to intervene. We need to have all possible ways to intervene. I'm pretty sure that those families would have hoped and wished that their kid got arrested and got a ticket or a misdemeanor because now their kid's dead. You know why? Why? Because they did it numerous times throughout the year and no one ever said anything. And they're allowed to. But if somebody had stepped in and punished a kid, guess what? They probably wouldn't have done it again and they wouldn't have gotten killed.
4:34:22It's the same as a new 16-year-old driver sneaking a couple beers from their dad's garage, their dad's fridge, and then driving because they want to be cool. What are we going to do? Not charge the 16-year-old driver with the DUI? Because it's like, oh, you know, poor kid. At the end of the day, I would hope, I'm sure those parents would hope that a cop pulls them over. And they know that the severity of their actions, what consequences it could bring. I'm tired of this, like, oh, well, this is why these laws are there. It will help them.
4:35:04At the end of the day, instead of letting them, you know what, let's not intervene, let's just let them be out there. And you know what, let them get killed instead. That's a better solution. So I don't appreciate the theatrics up here of wanting to paint it in another way. I mean, at the end of the day, I'm sure that those families, of all those young adults that have been killed and hurt, would have rather their kid get a misdemeanor. Because now, you know what, now their kid's dead. So I will continue to, at the end of the day, the ordinance that's before us is the same one that the council killed two years ago.
4:35:42When they brought an administrative citation as a warning. At the end of the day, that's a warning, and that's not going to do anything to keep this from happening again. I want the public to understand that. when you see those people running through your lawn and taking over these streets and blocking the intersections, and this ordinance that this council is trying to approve tonight is not going to do anything because of this administrative citation language in there. It's the same as a warning. It's the same solution that my colleagues presented the last time this was before us,
4:36:23which our officers have said won't do anything to keep the problem from happening. So those are my comments. Thank you, Mayor.
4:36:57Thank you. Councilmember Phan.
4:37:05Thank you, Mayor. I think, Madam City Attorney, the version that you have, or the version that we have on tonight's agenda is a little bit different from what we had last year, because last year the thought was to do an administrative citation first in all circumstances before a misdemeanor violation is cited. I think in this case, we're saying you have a variety of tools before you as a police officer facing the situation, and you get to make the decision when it comes to whoever it is that is in front of you that you need to cite,
4:37:08whether it's for an infraction, whether it is a citation, or whether it is a misdemeanor, arrest or citation. So, you know, hearing from our city attorney's office who's saying we're short-staffed, we don't have all the resources, but we also want to make sure that our officers have all the tools necessary in whatever circumstances to ensure that we can properly cite and, you know, disperse these spectators under this ordinance, I don't think it prevents you from, If in a situation like some of the photos that you sent us, you know, it's a major street takeover,
4:37:45they're blocking every intersection, then maybe every single person there should get a citation if that is your determination based on your professional experience and expertise. But there may be other circumstances where that is not warranted or just because we want to make sure that every single case is actually tried. For example, we have a shortage of judges today. Riverside County failed to pursue 1,500 criminal cases because they are delayed. They do not have the judges, the court staff, interpreters, and attorneys to go after, as well as public defenders to go after every case.
4:38:27If there is a way to enforce this violation and to prevent spectators that does not require thousands of dollars of city attorney time and achieve the same effect as our city attorney mentioned I would be supportive of that so I want them make want to make that very clear and secondly I do agree that getting a citation is better or a misdemeanor is better than dying I I don't think any of us disagrees with that but I think it's also really important to say that a A misdemeanor citation for someone who gets a $1,000 fine, depending on your income and
4:39:08who you can hire as an attorney, it's not a problem. In fact, in some cases, you can probably just plea that out. But for a family who is poor, whose kid made a really bad decision that day, who showed up because their friends showed up, that's devastating. That is the difference between you going to jail or your family being homeless because they couldn't afford that thousand dollars. So with that, I'd like to second the motion by Mayor Pro Temp Lopez to give our officers every single tool in the toolbox to ensure we do not have spectators for street racing. Thank you.
4:39:49So I'm going to close this out really quick. Can you talk about, and they'll stop my time when you start to answer, can you talk about the education piece? I think that's very important.
4:40:25Good evening. So when this first started, this effort back in 2019, when I was not in the traffic division, but still monitoring things from the division I was at, it was brought to my attention that we have created a couple educational videos. And so it's been recently my direction as the new traffic division commander to direct my staff to create some new educational videos that we can utilize and send out through social media because that's part of the educational piece. The educational piece is to get out to as many people as possible to talk about the dangers of street racing and takeovers as well as the consequences.
4:40:39You know, and it's about sharing maybe some stories from family members that have lost loved ones. I'm going to talk about how maybe they would wish that their loved one who passed received a citation uh instead of being uh passed away as a result of this action thank you sir and are you planning to
4:41:22work with the school district in this area as well or the surrounding school districts
4:41:42we're going to utilize every platform that we have available to us to hit all age groups
4:41:45that would include possibly the colleges getting on their social media as well yes ma'am the community colleges yes ma'am so thank you and i'm going to end with this is that um Councilman Panalosa talked about it. We do care about, thank you for that, we do care about that $1,000 fine, which can be, and correct me if I'm wrong, the judge has the authority, if they appear in front of them, to convert it into community service hours, is that correct?
4:41:51That's correct.
4:42:17So if you have a $1,000 fine, you usually end up with about 20 days of community service, is that correct?
4:42:18That's correct.
4:42:23And there's no fee to the families, is that correct? That's correct. So there's an array of things that the courts can do, and the juvenile courts is not like Riverside in that there's a probation department has a whole diversion unit is that correct yes and they're located MLB right across the street from right across the way from the Betty Lamoureux Justice Center yes okay so if because I worked in that unit for a short period time when I was looking at the reasons why we are incarcerating children of color so worked that a whole floor so I understand what each floor does and so
4:42:23the diversion the petition will appear in front of that officer is that correct yes they read it they look at it how severe it was then they make a determination say you're going to go to diversion you're going to do community service hours you don't have the ability to pay they call the parents and they talk to them um and so that diversion program is quite successful yes thank you um now when you talk about you know when we talk about victims because i hear a lot up here about you know we don't want to criminalize and we don't want to ruin people's lives and i'm all about that
4:42:56since i've worked in the world of restorative justice for a long time however i've also worked on the other side and i'm sure as officers for a very long time when you as councilman panelist talks about the victim of somebody who's passed when you hear the sound of a mother who knows that her child has died because they were hit by a car watching the street racing is Is that something that you forget, sir?
4:43:30No, at all. No.
4:43:57No, never. And I've been there many times.
4:43:58And so when you sit up here and make decisions for our community, we have to be mindful of not just the spectators that are getting a misdemeanor offense that maybe they're going to do 10 hours of community service. And there are other instances, as Councilmember mentioned, about, you know, they get into a little scuffle. Sometimes little scuffles turn into somebody getting extremely hurt and possibly even dying. Is that correct?
4:44:04Yes.
4:44:26Okay. So when I sit up here and with my lens, what I see is the quality of life is very important in Santa Ana. We do not want these people in here blocking our streets and racing. And we definitely do not want to hear the cry of a mother or a father or a sibling, for that matter, because somebody's been hit by a car or a car went through a wall of a home and landed on top of the baby that was lying in the crib sleeping. Am I correct?
4:44:26Yes.
4:44:56So thank you for everything that you're doing. And I will support that item because it is very important that we sit up here and we don't just look at, well, we're going to ruin somebody's life. As Councilman Panalosa indicated, and I think Councilman Becerra did as well, there are victims that you can see it on TV. A kid gets hit by a car. I've even seen them pull out guns. It's been on the news, correct? Yes. So let's not only protect the victims, but let's protect the officers that are also working on these terrible events. So thank you for the information. Thank you for your presentation. And we really appreciate it.
4:44:56We're going to vote at this time.
4:45:31Thank you. Mayor, I have a quick question of the city attorney, if I may.
4:45:33Yes, go ahead.
4:45:36Madam city attorney, so with the ordinance that you put in here, that you included administrative citations,
4:45:37Are you saying that our officers on site, do they have to do an administrative citation first or do they have the discretion to do any of the above?
4:45:46It's any of the above. As with all of our previous ordinances, it's just any of the above. So let's say that they were to see a spectator for some reason that they start to recognize someone that was there. They could say, nope, nope, this person's, they're going to get the misdemeanor. Let's say that they're there and they have the time to give everyone present a misdemeanor, they can do that. But it would also give them the ability to say, we're going to just write up these infractions and issue 100 of them tonight, because maybe that's how many they need, versus a little more time to getting more information for a misdemeanor.
4:45:55And you should realize that when misdemeanors are filed, those are processed and they're reviewed at the department and then they're sent over to our department. And misdemeanors require us as a condition of filing to make sure we have all the reasonable cause there's a little bit more work we have to do to file them and so we want to make sure that when they file them they have done them right because if they're not done right we won't file them with the court so they'll know what they need to do in the field if that's what they want to have
4:46:27filed okay thank you for that madam city attorney and and i trust our police department and that you're gonna zero in on this and and really um beef up that training and i hope that we go we go with the fullest extent of this law to be able to help curve this problem when applicable and appropriate. So thank you. Thank you.
4:46:53Thank you. Let's prepare to vote, please. It was moved by Mayor Pro Tem Lopez, seconded by Council Member Pham.
4:47:15The motion is to approve as presented.
4:47:23Yes. Commander, can we get an update? You want it monthly to start?
4:47:30Or maybe by the end of the year so we can get some information about how it's effective.
4:47:38Let's get one in December.
4:47:42That's good.
4:47:43Thank you. Thank you, Mayor.
4:47:44The vote is six ayes, one nay. Nay by Councilmember Hernandez. Motion carries.
4:47:48Abstention by Juan Villegas and Jose Solorio.
4:47:54Yes, abstention by Jose Solorio and Juan Villegas.
4:47:56All right, let's go to item number 16. It's the first reading of an ordinance and a placement on the ballot measure. I'm sorry.
4:48:01Did you want to do the public hearing?
4:48:11Actually, we're going to move, if we're good with this, the public hearing, and then we'll come back to the other item. I believe we have some speakers here and we want to get them out. Is that okay with you?
4:48:23No, I have to.
4:48:31Okay, Council Member, you have to go ahead with your abstention. Thank you, Mayor. So for both items number 17 and 18, Heineke Gould Properties LLC and Fairfield Realty LLC are clients of my employer. Therefore, I will be leaving the dais while this discussion is taking place and return when it is completed. Thank you.
4:48:36Thank you. I have a comment.
4:48:56Go ahead, Mayor Provenza.
4:48:58Thank you. So for public hearing items 17 and 18 due to the Government Code 8438, I am unable to participate in today's discussion or vote. And out of an abundance of caution, I will also exit the chamber so the council can deliberate.
4:48:59Great. Thank you. Okay, let's go to item 17. Before hearing public hearing item 17, Madam Clerk, please provide instructions to the
4:49:16Mayor, I'm sorry, this is a public hearing and we have lost our quorum. When you do presentations and you lose a quorum, we're a little bit more flexible because you're not taking action. Public hearings are legal proceedings and this is an appeal. There is a City of LA.
4:49:25Well I didn't see Councilman Hernandez leave the room.
4:49:41What you might want to do is take items, well I guess you could go back to 16.
4:49:42We need one more. I don't know where Councilman Benalosa is at.
4:49:50Hold on one second. Let's see if we can get it back to them. Thank you. I wasn't looking.
4:49:55Thank you.
4:50:26Mayor, just one more comment. I just want to remind the council members that when you have a public hearing and there's an appeal, there are special provisions here. This is a matter of due process for the appellant. What that means is that the City Council members, even when you have your quorum, should not be coming in and off the dais. There's a City of LA case that said when Council Members were not giving the hearing 100% of their attention, whether that's distraction on our electronic devices or leaving the dais, that they were deprived of due process.
4:50:56So if Council Member Becerra is going to participate, you may want to wait for him to return.
4:51:25No, we're going to wait. Okay.
4:51:30I thought, are we not on item 16?
4:51:36Yeah, but because you left the room, we didn't have a call.
4:51:39I thought you said it was a public hearing.
4:51:42What about you forwarded to 17?
4:51:4316 and 17.
4:51:45Oh. So we skipped.
4:51:48They're doing item 17. My understanding is they forwarded it to item 17, which is one of our public hearings on appeal. They bypassed 16. So we skipped item 16. Yes, you could have gone back to 16.
4:51:49Yeah, but you know what, they're not here, so if they're not coming back, we're going to go back to item 16. Are you coming in, Councilman? All right, let's go now. Public hearing. We have a quorum, Madam City Attorney.
4:52:00I know, but it's a public hearing, so all people that are participating have to be present as an appeal.
4:52:12Can you share again about getting up and down your seat and leaving the room, please?
4:52:19Yeah, again, yeah, because you are about to embark on a public hearing, which is an appeal, the parties are entitled to due process, meaning that you are required to be present throughout the entire public hearing.
4:52:23So just for clarity, so we skipped 16.
4:52:36Yes.
4:52:38Okay.
4:52:39We're going to go and I announced that. So we're going to go back. Perfect. So Madam City Clerk, are there anybody on Zoom? I have the public comments here.
4:52:40If I can make the announcement first, if there are members of the public joining us by way of Zoom or conference call who would like to make a public comment for public hearing item 17 only, please dial star 9 from your phone or select raise hand from Zoom now. And then just confirming with you, Mayor, that you're seeking to open the public hearing and hear the comments before the staff presentation?
4:52:48That's correct.
4:53:07First speaker is Steve Brim.
4:53:11Mayor, actually, we typically go with the appellant or the applicant first, and they're afforded 10 minutes for their initial presentation.
4:53:18So if the applicant or the appellant, the member for Fred Cohen and Fars Inc. wishes to speak.
4:53:29Good evening. My name is Michael Ayaz. I'm the attorney appearing on behalf of the appellant. A little unusual, we usually get the staff report first, but we did want to talk about the process by which we've gone through. We have obviously filed an appeal in this case and we think that the record is fairly clear in terms of the manner and method that this application and the decision on this case was processed and decided, particularly at the Planning Commission level. We feel that the Planning Commissioners unfortunately got it wrong. They were the facts were not there to support it.
4:53:44We had provided a myriad of scientific as well as testimony, not just opinion, with regard to this particular application. We have read for the first time yesterday the written findings which to date have not been sent to us and were apparently ratified without notice two months after the Planning commission hearing which is very peculiar and in in contravention of your own city code but we did read it and we have several issues with it primarily there is discussion in the report or the
4:54:20findings that were not made at the public hearing at the planning commission the planning commissioners made two findings and in the resolution for in support of denial there's a myriad of discussions about general plan, which wasn't discussed. There was requirements for studies, particularly with the noxious use, because what you're going to hear a lot today is opinions about gas stations being really dangerous from folks. But the reality of it is that even one of the planning commissioners that was very familiar in the chemical industry understood that the implementation of these new technologies
4:54:58that we're putting into this station, it's not a regurgitation of an old station this is a brand new station with the most state-of-the-art technology but there's mention about reports right yeah with regard to the noxious use now i i would ask that the planning i mean this city council asked questions of its staff were those were those required at any point no as part of the noxious use application those were not required and i'll remind you that the planning staff supported this project through and through up in up and through the Planning Commission and the idea that we were
4:55:37supposed to do some kind of studies that were not part of the application or part of the requirements is befuddling to us because again we are regulated by state and federal regulatory agencies that go well beyond what anything the city of Santa Ana could do and and the application for the noxious use is essentially hey if you're regulated by somebody because you're handling materials that require regulations we just want to make sure we're regulated by the air quality air quality we're regulated by CARB or regulated by the water district the fire department of county fire department there's a
4:56:12myriad of regulations and checks and requirements that go into putting into a gas station I would tell you that the cars that passed on Tustin Boulevard have higher emission output than this gas station ever will. It's, you've been to a gas station in the last 5, 10, 15 years, you've probably not been overwhelmed by fumes. And that is done because the state regulatory agencies and the federal regulatory agencies require specific scientific analysis. They require state-of-the-art equipment, double-walled fiberglass tanks,
4:56:50brine sensors. I mean you could fart in this gas station and the emission sensors would go off. The idea that by putting in a gas station that there's going to be some kind of natural disaster. I mean when's the last time you heard of gas station employees filing lawsuits, class action lawsuits because their employees got cancer? When is the last time that you went into a gas station and you had to pull away because the fumes overwhelmed you? This This location has been empty for 50 years. The idea that putting in a viable business is going to attract homeless people as opposed
4:57:29to a vacant lot doesn't make any sense, right? I mean, my client wants to invest $4.5 million into this community in probably the most regulated industry in the state of California, the one that pays for the streets, the ones that pay for the schools the taxes were at seven dollars a gallon today and that's because we're the highest taxed and regulated industry in the state of california when it comes to gas stations the findings were never made in the appropriate manner and method city attorney please let this council know if 41613 was complied with and i'll and i'll take that but on the record we've been
4:58:09flying blind from the very beginning of this process in terms of our appeal the appeal was filed 10 days after the decision was made the the resolution for denial was August 28th on a consent calendar that we never got notice of that we till today have never received and mailed to us that's irrespective of the decision that the Planning Commissioners made I will tell you as the city attorney pointed out in the case that I was involved in in the city of Los Angeles when certain council members left the room we had a council member Planning commissioner at that hearing more concerned with her flight than listening to the testimony.
4:58:49The decision had already been made before we got there and it's just patently unfair. There is no evidence or testimony on the record that can establish that this location is going to impact the future economic of the area. The finding was it'll impact one business, one solitary business it will impact. That was the finding. The creative crafting of findings some two months later with general plan issues and those things, those weren't discussed at the hearing. The other thing is, is that the other finding was we cannot definitively say that there will be no
4:59:28environmental or health impacts. I would question if a McDonald's could meet that requirement, if a church could meet that requirement, if a parking lot can meet that requirement, because obviously definitiveness is not something that is required as part of the application right we are regulated so heavily in this industry that i would again reiterate the the systems that are put in place the checks that are put in place in fact the state of california and the federal government require us to change out half a million dollars of equipment when something new comes out just so that we can meet the regulatory requirements.
5:00:06The idea that noise or vibration, that was never brought up at the Planning Commission hearing. The fact that traffic was brought up, well, there was no traffic study, and the planning department, again, I'll remind you, fully supported this project at the outset. And I still think that deep down inside, they do. But the Planning Commission got it wrong. You know, the idea that this will somehow be negative to the impact of the and the findings very specific it's the economic development of the area it's not just one business it's not just one place it is for the entirety of the city of
5:00:46santa anna and i would tell you again 50 years this location has been vacant 50 years you're going to hear from the property owner who's going to tell you that nobody is interested in this property but for gas stations you're going to hear that the economic impact that it'll have that that shopping center that they also own and operate. That the idea that traffic or vibrations or noise or fumes are going to somehow emanate are just without scientific data, they're just without facts, they're just without reason. You have all been to a gas station. You have all been to a gas station.
5:01:26And you realize that the gas station is not a place where a toxic dump site. There is so many things in place. So with that, the only thing that we are asking is the removal of condition number seven. I hope that you guys got our email that we sent. I'm not sure. I hope that you guys have listened to the Planning Commission hearing to see kind of what we went through. But we are willing to take the conditions, but for, and it's paramount to denial. So you might as well deny us if you put this condition in. But it's, we cannot be regulated as to when goods and services are delivered, including gasoline, to our place of business.
5:02:05It's like asking McDonald's, hey, you can only deliver meat between 8 and 10 o'clock at night. We cannot control the refineries. We cannot control the suppliers. We have spoken to them. They will not deliver to us within a time frame. They'll deliver to us whenever they can. And we cannot simply dictate to suppliers or the refineries, hey, we, the city of Santa or this gas station, the only one that I've ever seen this condition on in the last 20 years that I've been doing this, have a condition of when you can have deliveries made, particularly of gasoline. We just won't be, we won't have gas. We won't be able to operate.
5:02:43And so that condition persists as paramount to a denial. And so other than that, we are amenable. And I'm not sure if you have received the email that we sent to e-comment and Mrs. Cruz. I trust that you have. I trust that you have reviewed the staff report, the previous findings.
5:03:23Mr. Ihez, your time is up.
5:03:42I have 8 seconds left.
5:03:44That's...
5:03:47When it turns red, sir, your time is up. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you.
5:03:48Madam City Clerk on Zoom.
5:03:55Yes, Mayor. Noting for the record, for e-comment, we did receive 47 comments for this public hearing item number 17 on zoom first speaker is nikki titchi please unmute and make your comments you
5:03:57have three minutes hi my name is i'm a parent of two children at the school next door and i'm not just because i'm not just concerned about the fuma missions one was the last time children spent nine hours outside at a gas station. You don't take account of that. You pump gas for five minutes. Our children are 500 feet away. They play outside next door for over 50 hours a week.
5:04:11There's five gas stations that are 1.5 miles away, and we live one mile away. So the fact that this is even up for debate is mind-boggling. We're also taxpayers of the city as homeowners and business two businesses in the city we are begging you as parents of the school next door
5:04:41do not let this happen thank you next speaker on zoom mike decazra please unmute and make your
5:05:00comments hi um this is mike and taylor da costa we are residents of santa anna business owners and also have two children in attendance at the preschool next door. This is unconscionable. The fact that this lawyer thinks that a corporate's profits should go above the health, safety, and well-being of our children is absolutely disgusting. As the previous speaker said, there are plenty of gas stations in and around this location. and for him to say that no one has ever been overwhelmed by fumes at a gas station,
5:05:11I don't know what gas station he's going to. Quite frankly, I am always overwhelmed by the fumes at a gas station when I'm there and we leave the windows rolled up with our children when we're there. There is absolutely no way he can say that the scientific evidence doesn't support the notion that these children are in danger. when I take them to their doctor's appointments. I am frequently asked if they are exposed to any toxic substances such as gasoline, lead, asbestos. And if you're gonna put gasoline fumes in the same category as lead and asbestos, then I feel like that tells you something.
5:05:53We are asking and pleading with this council to deny this gas station. Yeah, in addition, I take my kids to school five days a week there, the traffic's already bad enough. And I don't know how this lawyer can basically say with good conscience that the traffic won't be affected by this, that it won't be any, that our kids will be any more safe going to school at Plumfield with a busy street right on the corner right there. Like my wife said, we're asking to deny please.
5:06:34Next speaker on Zoom, Kim. Please unmute and make your comment.
5:07:16Kim Lacy, I have a daughter that attends preschool next door. She's going to be in kindergarten next year there. I cannot abide by this going through. There's no reason to have a gas station there. Even the cheapest gas station in Orange County is just at Santa Clara and Grand. there's no reason to add another gas station there there's studies that have confirmed the longer that children are exposed to benzene or found in gasoline or higher risk of becoming developed a higher risk in developing a form of cancer this is even studies you can find this on
5:07:22baby center i don't want this gas station next to the school there shouldn't be a gas station next the daycare center or Denise her daycare.
5:07:58I oppose this. Thank you.
5:08:11Mayor that concludes the zoom speakers.
5:08:17Thank you very much. First speaker is Steve Bram followed by Michael Ayaz.
5:08:20I'm sorry are you Steve?
5:08:32Your mic, okay. Steve Bram.
5:08:35I'm Steve. Thank you. Hello. My name is Steve Bram, and I am the landlord for the applicant of this site. I own the subject parcel, and I own the adjacent shopping center next to it. I've owned this property for almost 10 years. My shopping center next door includes the U.S. Government Armed Services Recruiting Office, which recently expanded their lease and is uh will be doing a major rehab there other tenants in the property include numerous small mom and pop tenants at the site i've purposely
5:08:38kept my rents low here so that these small tenants can survive and provide services to the neighborhood around here covet during code during covet i'm proud to say that every single tenant remained. I worked with them so that they could survive and they're all still there now. So I consider myself an advocate of the neighborhood and providing services for everybody around there. The subject parcel has been vacant forever. I've owned the property for over 10 years, as I said, but this vacant parcel has attracted homeless in the past and I'm trying to put an end to that now.
5:09:15Also, the only potential tenants that have ever been interested in this site have been gas stations. There have been numerous gas station attendants who have applied, and the current occupant is the one that I decided to rent to. The gas station will be a welcome change to the current vacant lot and the chain link fence we have there. It will help generate business for the other tenants in the shopping center next door, including donut shop, snack bar, sandwich shop, Mexican bakery, pet grooming store, the workout gym. People will come across because they'll be connected. It will be open there.
5:09:54My lease to the gas station operator requires all the latest health and safety devices and requires a gas station to meet all the codes. I think there are more fumes that come from the carpool line when the kids are dropped off at school next door than what they'll get from the gas station here. And delivery trucks, when they deliver gas, they always turn their truck off as soon as they come into the site. They don't leave the truck on. So the issue of trucks coming during the day is really not an issue at all. Reminding everybody that this CUP for the gas station was approved years ago for this site.
5:10:32And this is just a modification of the CUP that they're asking for now. So I really urge the City Council to approve the recommendations of the previous CUP and to reject the denial by the Planning Commission. Thank you for your time, and I've got 12 seconds left. Thank you.
5:11:10Thank you, sir. Kim Cordoba, followed by Dale Halvick.
5:11:34Good evening. My name is Kim Cordova and I am the owner and director of Plumfield School, primarily the business in question tonight. We are located at 2112 East Santa Clara. I'm also a managing member of Purvis Enterprises, which owns and holds the property in its corporation. I'm here tonight to ask your support in upholding the denial of the CUP modifications. Plumfield School has a long outstanding record of providing high quality care to children of Santa Ana and beyond since 1972. I have had the honor and pleasure of owning and directing the school since 2006.
5:11:42To answer the question, it has come before commission prior for things beyond a gas station. I think about 12 years ago, it came for expansion of the center for residential year. I think it was a restaurant at the time. This ordinance was put into place in December of 22 for 500 feet within a school or residence. Plumfield lies well within 500 feet. In June of 2023, it was expanded to 1,000 feet. Again, we share a property line with this business. In June, the City Planning Commission voted to deny the application. Nothing has changed since this hearing. The school still lies within the borders.
5:12:13The proposed gas station still does not add a new service to the area. In fact, it adds to oversaturation. And it's still detrimental to not only the health and safety of the 70 children in my care, but also my staff and surrounding residents. It was determined that the station would have a negative economic impact on surrounding businesses, namely Plumfield, as well as future economic development. It instills potential to contribute to unhoused population in the area. The station does not meet the general development plan goals. When gas can be purchased in the corner of Grand and Santa Clara, Tustin and 17th, Tustin
5:12:48and Fairhaven, expand that on to Tustin and 55 freeway. It fails to improve the quality of life of the residents. It has a negative impact on the transportation-related air quality as it increases vehicular traffic. We do not have a carpool line. It has a negative impact on local air quality due to the nature of its business. Furthermore, it does not protect the health and safety of the surrounding community. It has a potential to have a severe negative impact on Plumfield. I have spoken to many families, you've heard from them tonight, that through emails and
5:13:18letters they do not feel that a gas station is appropriate next to a center where their children play for eight to nine hours a day, boarding their playgrounds where children play in. They have said they would not consider enrolling their children in a school next to a gas station. Some have said they wouldn't even have looked at us. They worry about the proximity of where the driveways are to the driveway of this next station. It's within 20 feet. They worry about their ingress and egress onto Santa Clara. A mini-mart also includes alcohol sales. They have extreme concerns about that.
5:13:46Many of you are aware we are in a child care crisis in this country, especially in Orange County. We have watched schools and surrounding cities close. A negative impact on us means we can no longer care for children in our community. We have been educating children in Santa Ana for 50 years, over 50 years. I implore you to please consider these children's needs and the economic impact of the surrounding businesses and residents when you make your decision. Thank you.
5:14:17Thank you. Dale Halvick.
5:14:43Winston Covington and Danny Vega are next if you can please line up.
5:14:49Good evening, Mayor, Councilmembers, City staff. First off, I'd like to thank the Mayor, Jonathan, Councilman Hernandez, and Public Works and Public Parks and Recs for showing up for the grand opening for Santiago Park. It was a great, great day, and it's a great park, and if you have a chance to go up there, take a look at it. They did a great job on it.
5:14:54Plumfield School has been serving preschool families for over 45 years in the Santa Ana and North Tustin area. My two children attended the school back in the 90s and it remains near and dear to me. I can't help but think that placing a service station right next door will have an adverse effect on the school operations, but more importantly, the health and safety of the children they serve. city council discussions earlier this year regarding crosswalks centered around the safety for this safety of this the children of san anna while different the safety of the children is
5:15:22still a major concern concerning this project if this project requires regional state or federal permit to build a service station within 500 feet then it should be a red flag to you all A vote for option one to adopt a resolution denying the appeal and upholding the determination of the Planning Commission to deny modification to the conditional use permit permits is the right vote. Protect the children of Santa Ana. Thank you for your time.
5:15:57Thank you. Next speaker, please.
5:16:29Good evening, Barry. Excuse me. Barry Besqua, members of the City Council. My name is Winston Covington. I'm speaking tonight as the chairman of Portola Park and of Meredith Parkwood Neighborhood Association. I spoke against this project at the Planning Commission. I'm back tonight to speak against it again. The primary reason is safety. My neighborhood is very concerned about a nine pump gas station located on a very a very busy intersection being built right next to a very busy preschool, one that's been in business for 50 years.
5:16:32We're very concerned, contrary to some other opinions, about the environmental impact of the vapors, of the storage of gasoline, of the storage of hazardous materials, the impact that could have on the children right next door and within the residential community. Right across the street, right next to Stater Brothers, there's a very busy liquor store. Three doors down from there, there's the Fling, a very popular bar. I use their dry cleaners right next to the bar. I can't tell you the number of people I have seen when I'm dropping off clothes at 8 o'clock or 9 o'clock in the morning
5:17:12that are coming in and out of that bar. And as I drive to work, I watch these guys. They drive right on past the intersection of Tustin Avenue and Santa Clara, and I wonder what state under the influence are they in? All it takes is one to cause a disaster. There are nine gas stations within a very close proximity of this location. The next intersection up, the 7-Eleven at Tustin 17th, there's a gas station, another mini-mart. It's a haven. It's a hangout for the homeless. many times under the influence, I know, because my neighbors report this back to me.
5:17:53These gentlemen are quite often seen roaming through the neighborhood at night looking for anything they can steal of value. They hang out by day at Bartola Park, the middle of my neighborhood, which is right next to John Muir Fundamental School, where there's almost a thousand children. We don't want to see the impact that this could bring. The Planning Commission shot this down five to two. city staff has recommended the denial of the appeal on behalf of my neighborhood of patola park meredith park would i respectfully request your denial as well thank you thank you next speaker
5:18:32please hello mayor and council my name is daniel vega resident of ward 3. i'm here to speak on item 17, I urge you to go with option one and denying the appeal application. I urge you to listen to the great people at Portola Park, Meredith Parkwood Neighborhood Association, and heed their concerns. I urge you to listen to the great commissioners that you all have appointed to represent you. You have several neighborhood leaders here in opposition of this application because we wouldn't want this in our backyard. This is an easy one.
5:19:09please deny if there is an open law let's brainstorm on putting something together on a side note I was really happy about the discussion on item 15 I know neighbors of Sanana are gonna be really happy on the outcome of that thank
5:19:51you thank you very much that ends the speakers at this time madam city manager or assistant city manager can we get a presentation please thank you very much
5:20:05Mayor Min Tai are you ready? Thank you. Thank you Mayor and City Council. The public hearing tonight is regarding an appeal. Can I have the PowerPoint up please?
5:20:15Next slide. Thank you. The public hearing tonight is regarding an appeal of the Planning Commission denial of an application to modify a conditional use permit, which was first approved in May of 2020 that permitted the establishment of a new gas service station because the project has not been constructed and as a result of the modification requests a new condition and conditional use permit is now applicable to the project under the recently adopted noxious use ordinance adopted by the city council in december of 2022 for the vacant this is for the vacant
5:20:39property located at the northwest corner of tustin and santa clara appeal number 20 2306 was filed by project applicant for the vacant property located 23 2230 north tustin tonight staff's recommendations for the city council to consider one of the following three options actions the first one is to adopt the resolution denying the appeal and upholding determination of the Planning Commission based on their findings. The second action that the City Council could consider is to adopt a resolution approving the appeal, overturning the termination of the Planning Commission, and approving the
5:21:17project application as presented to the Commission on June 26, 2023. And the third option tonight that the Council could consider is to adopt the resolution approving the project based on the presentation presented to the Commission in June with any additional conditions that the City Council may desire and see that would be applicable to the project and that could be added as conditions to the project as modified by the City Council next slide please the this slide shows the location of the site at the southwest corner of Santa Clara and
5:21:59Tustin. The site has general plan designation of general commercial. The zoning of the site is C5, arterial commercial. The surrounding land uses include commercial retail as well as a childcare facility which is on a commercially zoned property located to the west. The site is about half an acre in size. The building proposed on the site is approximately 2,100 square feet with a canopy associated with the gas pump at 2,800 square feet. Next slide. The site is currently vacant, as mentioned, and has remained unimproved for several decades.
5:22:40On May 26, 2020, the Planning Commission approved the conditional use permit and a variance to allow the construction of a new gas service station. The applicant could have built the project during that span of time. However, they have come back and proposed revision to the site that require the Planning Commission to reconsider the previously approved condition of use permit. On December 20th of 2020, as I mentioned earlier, the City Council adopted the noxious use ordinance. That requires that when noxious use are located within 1,000 feet of a sensitive use,
5:23:18that it requires going through a special public hearing process requiring a condition of use permit. and therefore is the reason for why the applicant revision to the original CUP is before you tonight. The original variance was for the driveway because the site size and dimensions of this code required at least 150 feet from any section from the corner radius. However, because of the distance of the driveway on Santa Clara, that requires the variance. Access to some of the site as you see later on is through a share access to
5:23:56the site from the South Property Commercial Center. Next slide. The Planning Commission held the public hearing on June 26 to consider the application. They subsequently made the appropriate findings and voted 5 to 2 to deny the project applications. The applicant filed the application appealing the Planning Commission denial within the stipulated PO period on July 6. The resolution affirming the denial of the application which articulated the finding made by the
5:24:34Commission were sent to the Commission and was adopted on August 28th. As previous indicated under the recent changes adopted by the City Council the installation of the underground fuel tank requires a permit from outside agency. The gas station, as the applicant has mentioned, is regulated by CARB and other agencies, both at the state and federal level. Within this current application, the applicant proposes to modify the layout by relocating the fuel canopy from the southwestern portion of the site to the northeastern end,
5:25:05and relocate the proposed mini-mart from the northeastern portion of the site to the western Southern property line, basically swapping and flip-flopping the original design. The fuel canopy has also been increased from 2,100 square feet to approximately 2,800 square feet. The mini-mart has been modified to be one store and reduced from 2,600 square feet to approximately 2,100 square feet. The proposed hours of operations are from 5 a.m. to 12 midnight, seven days, and no alcohol license is being proposed with this application. Here's a picture of the site looking west on Tustin. As you can see the site is
5:25:44fenced in. This is the previously approved site plan as described. The canopy fuel station is located on the southwest corner and the store is located at the northeast corner. This is the proposed site plan. Next slide please. This is the sole proposed site plan where the canopy and the building has been switched location. The building is now located adjacent to the west and south property line and the gas canopy, and the gassing service station has been relocated to be along the front portion of the site.
5:26:25The vehicle egress in and out of the site, both on Santa Clara as well as Tustin, remains unchanged. This is a floor plan of the site showing the variety of services and display areas, as well as cashiers and bathrooms. Next slide. This is elevations of the proposed project, east and west elevations. and south and north elevations of the project.
5:27:06This is an elevation of the canopy as well to share the design consistent with the building.
5:27:42The request for...
5:27:51Am I slide 14? Yes. The request for CUP allows a service station and convenience store will provide added amenity to the property as well as for employees to work in vicinity and for residents to live in the general area. The two nearest service stations are located approximately half a mile to the north and to the south on Tustin. There is another gas station that is located in the city of Tustin near State Route 55, approximately half a mile away. In addition, the new use will activate the street corner, develop a vacant property on the prominent arterial, and generate property in South Saxe River for the city.
5:27:56Conditions of approval, property maintenance agreement, and standard in the SAMC have been included in the resolution should the council decide to approve the project and address the minimized potential impact from the project.
5:28:39The request for the conditional use for the noxious use in our original analysis would not pose a significant environmental risk to the surrounding sensitive land uses. I want to remind and share with the Council that the authority at the local level is on reviewing making land use decisions and evaluating potential impacts so that the city can address impact to the built environment. The gas station, in addition to being regulated by the city at the land use level, is also regulated by other
5:28:58agencies at the state and federal level, and those agencies have the expertise and the specialty in regulating health and the way that the gasoline is stored and dispensed. We, at the local level, are looking at the land use decision. We have the ability to provide conditions that would address and make sure that the gas station operates and have the appropriate approval by the various agency through the land use process, but not necessarily to regulate those areas that are regulated by those state and federal agencies.
5:29:35The project site has been modified to locate the fuel pumps to be away from the adjacent property. The convenience store has been moved towards the southern end of the site to further act as a buffer between the properties. The fuel tank from the southern end of the portion has been moved from the southwestern end to the northeastern end of the site as well. while these are underground, but they have been moved as well.
5:30:11Conditions of approval have been placed to ensure a reduction in the emissions of fuel tanker deliveries to the service station vent pipe. The ongoing operations will require periodic review by the operator to identify opportunities to upgrade or phase out less efficient and to update to the state-of-the-art industry standards. due to the site location near sensitive land uses such as the adjacent childcare facility and residential zone. Additional conditions have been also added to include mitigate the effect of vehicle idling, outside displays, on-site lighting, noise, vehicle maintenance, and installation of temporary equipment.
5:30:43The service station will have to meet all emissions and air quality standards established by the Air Resistence Board. And finally, the facility will close by midnight to prevent any noise impact from sensitive land uses, including both the fuel pumps and the convenience store.
5:31:25In their findings and the decision to deny, the Commission determined that they were unable to make the findings number two as articulated in the SAMC, as well as finding number three. In finding number two, they found that the proposed use will not, under the circumstances of the particular case, be, will not be detrimental to health, safety, and welfare working facility. The Commission found that the pool, so I could not definitely determine that the environmental impact on the health of the surrounding community. The Commission also determined that they were unable to make finding number three, as outlined
5:31:45in the SMAC code that the proposed use will not adversely affect the President's economic stability and future economic development of properties in the surrounding areas. The Commission found that the proposed project would negatively impact the economic stability and future development of adjacent properties of the surrounding area, and the project would impact long-term operation of the adjacent child care facility by the impact of the increased traffic congestion management of toxic substance on-site and increase in the presence of number of unhoused a population. CEQA and fiscal impact relating to the project.
5:32:24The denial of the appeal would result in upholding the Planning Commission June's decision and therefore no project would be approved and accordingly no CEQA required findings is required. However, if the City Council considered the approval of the appeal and approving the application either as recommended by staff in June of this year to the Planning Commission or as modified by the City Council tonight, the requested entitlement would be subject to CEQA. In the original analysis and recommendation to the Planning Commission,
5:33:00staff found the project is exempt from further CEQA review under Class III new construction or conversion of small structure, and the approval of the project would be eligible for a notice of exemption. Finally, there is no fiscal action associated with the City Council decision on this project. So tonight's recommended action, again, the three actions that you could consider is to adopt the resolution to deny and uphold the Planning Commission's decision, adopt the resolution and approve the project as presented by staff to the Commission on June of 2023. This is action number two.
5:33:39And finally, action number three is to adopt the resolution, approve the project as spread by staffing with any modified conditions. Thank you, Mayor.
5:34:15Thank you very much. We appreciate that presentation.
5:34:24So at this time, I believe if we'd like, if Michael, I ask you to have a rebuttal, and then we'll have comments from the council.
5:34:28Should I wait? He's not.
5:34:44He's not.
5:34:47Okay. Well, you just heard the staff's report, and I think if you guys would just have listened to the Planning Commission hearing, you would have seen what happened there. We feel very strongly that the record is clear. Whatever happens tonight, we hope that you make a decision based on testimony and evidence that you can rely on and not emotion. I have kids too and I don't discount what these folks are saying but ultimately it's on Tustin Boulevard the only thing that's going to ever go in there is a gas station folks and we are regulated beyond any other business that will ever come before you. There's no evidence or testimony
5:34:48otherwise. In fact the staff report that you just heard sounded very much in favor of the project. The only thing that I would say is we cannot accept condition number seven we will not accept condition number seven we just need to be able to get gas and goods delivered whenever the suppliers do them. So anything other than that is a denial for us. We just hope that you make the decision based on the testimony, the record on file. And we feel very strongly about the record either way. So with that, if you have any questions for us, we're all here. I mean, the property owner is here. My client is here. The architect is here.
5:35:26All that can answer questions about the tanks and the pumps and the various systems that are in place. But I think you have enough to make a decision. So with that, if you have any questions, we're here for you.
5:36:00Thank you, sir. If you want to just stay right close in case there are questions. Okay. Thank you.
5:36:11Do you mind if I stand? Oh, yeah, sure.
5:36:15Thank you very much. Councilman Becerra?
5:36:18I have no questions for the applicant. Do you want to close the hearing?
5:36:23Councilman Hernandez, do you have a question for the applicant? All right, we're good, sir. Thank you very much. Okay, go ahead, Councilman Becerra.
5:36:27Close the hearing.
5:36:35Oh, I apologize. I'm going to close the hearing at this time. Okay, we're going to close it and open it for any comments by the council, please.
5:36:35Thank you, Madam Mayor. You know, as a city this week, we just celebrated the groundbreaking of a full-service public vehicle charging center that will feature 40 DC fast chargers capable of charging any electric vehicle in as little as 20 minutes. That facility is going to also include a 5,000-square-foot Gelson's Market and an eco-friendly car wash. Director Tai, that vehicle charging center that I just referenced, does it require a CUP for pursuant to SAMC section 41-199.4 regarding noxious uses?
5:36:43The station you just described does not fall under a conditional use requirement for noxious use because it does not have any potential noxious use under our ordinance. it's also a permitted use under the commercial zoning for the site.
5:37:19Okay, but what I was focused on is just that it doesn't trigger the noxious use. It does not. Okay, perfect. You know, we as a council, we added section 41-199.4 of our code because environmental justice is important to us and to our residents. Now, while I'm opposed to approving any unnecessary noxious use close to existing homes and a school, I'm also opposed to relocating the location of the fuel canopy from the southwestern end of the site to the northeastern end of the site near the intersection of Tustin Avenue and Santa Clara. I'd rather see buildings close to the intersection than see those fuel pumps. But as a staff report
5:37:39states, quote, the proposed location of the service station adjacent to a child care facility will contain several negative impacts onto the surrounding community, which the redesign of the site does not address. I do not believe that there's a design that can address the negative impacts that this of this proposed gas station and what it will have on the surrounding community. So I do agree with the planning commission's findings that approving the CUP application to allow a gas station within the vicinity of an existing child care facility and a residential
5:38:17neighborhood would be detrimental to the health safety and general welfare of people residing or working near the site. So with that, I'd like to conclude my remarks by making a motion that this council adopt a resolution denying appeal application number 2023-06 and uphold the determination of the Planning Commission to deny the modification of CUP number 2019-41 and to deny CUP number 2023-03.
5:38:50I'll second your motion.
5:39:20Thank you. Councilman Hernandez, did you have comments? Any other comments? Let's prepare to vote at this time.
5:39:22Council member Penaloza.
5:40:02Okay. Can you voice your vote, please?
5:40:05If Council member Penaloza could voice his vote, I can add it.
5:40:11Perfect. It worked. Okay. Perfect.
5:40:16The vote is five ayes, no nays, two recusals by Mayor Pro Tem Lopez and Council Member Fan to adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Santa Ana denying appeal number 2023-06 and upholding the determination of the Planning Commission to deny a modification to conditional use permit number 2019-41 to allow the construction of a service station and to deny conditional use permit number 2023-03 for a land use that requires a regional, state or federal permit to handle store emit or discharge regulated compounds materials chemicals
5:40:20or substances within 500 linear feet of a public park school case through 12 or residential zone in the arterial commercial c5 zoning district for the property located at 2230 north tustin avenue appeal applications denied planning commission decision upheld
5:40:50so it's really hard for me to understand so i just turn this on can you repeat that please i I apologize.
5:41:08It's the motion carried on a 5-0 vote with two recusals by Mayor Pro Tem Lopez and Councilmember Fan. The action was to deny the appeals and uphold the Planning Commission decision to deny the modification to the CUPs.
5:41:13Okay, thank you very much. You're welcome.
5:41:29Before hearing public item 18, Madam Clerk.
5:41:33Point of order, Madam City Attorney, we don't have a quorum.
5:41:36Yeah, they're coming back right now. I'm going to wait before they come. I just wanted to make sure she's ready for automating. You're going to come right back before...
5:41:39Are we taking a small break? They're just coming. They're just running to the gentleman's room. I know they're coming right back, just so you know.
5:41:49All right. We have a quorum. Let's get started, please.
5:42:39Do you want me to have a link?
5:43:03I got to go.
5:43:04All right. Let's get started. Item 18, before hearing public hearing item 18, Madam Clerk, please provide instructions to the public who'd like to make a comment on this public hearing item only.
5:43:09Yes, thank you, Mayor. Members of the public joining us by way of ‑‑
5:43:20I'm sorry to interrupt, but the presentation should come first in public hearings. And we do have a presentation for this item.
5:43:22Okay. I was just going to let the Zoom go before I did the public one.
5:43:29This is just the announcement for them to raise their hand now?
5:43:31That's correct. Thank you.
5:43:33Thank you. So for those members on the public joining us by way of Zoom or conference call who would like to make a comment for public hearing item 18 only, please dial star 9 from your phone or select raise hand from Zoom now to be in the queue for when we open the public hearing.
5:43:35Thank you, Madam City Clerk. Madam City Manager, go ahead with your staff report.
5:43:49Thank you, Mayor. Can I have the presentation up, please?
5:43:53Thanks. Next slide. This is a public hearing regarding an appeal of a Planning Commission approval of a site plan review, as well as a tenant track map for a project located at Cabrillo Town Center, known as the Cabrillo Town Center, located 1901 East 4th Street. It is recommended the City Council adopt a resolution denying the appeal and upholding the Planning Commission's approval of the land use entitlements for the Correo Town Center project. The Planning Commission voted unanimously to approve the project on April 24th as part of the approval the Commission
5:44:05required the applicant to coordinate with the public agency to develop and implement a traffic calming plan that is acceptable to the department. Subsequent approval two timely appeals were received by the city on May 1st as well as May 3rd from Luzo jury on behalf of the supporter Alliance for environmental responsibility known as safer and from Mitchell's side on behalf of the Southwest Mountain State's carpenters respectively this is
5:44:42a next slide slide four yeah this is the general location of the site the site is located at the northeast corner of Cabrillo Park Drive and 4th Street the general plan designation is District Center medium-high DC with the zoning of professional and Village Center District for the Metro East mixed-use overlay zone. The surrounding land uses include Cabrillo Park to the north, a vacant site, the future of the Central Point mixed-use development to the west, medical offices to the south, and professional medical offices to the east.
5:45:14The site is almost nine acres in size. Next slide.
5:45:53The point of clarification, Madam City Attorney, sorry to interrupt the presentation, but I I just, I missed, I guess when I first went to the restroom, I noticed that my colleagues, other two colleagues, recuse themselves on this item?
5:45:58Yes. Yes, both item 17 and 18, my understanding is that Councilmember Fan, due to her employment, her employer represents either applicants or interested parties, and Council Mayor Pro Tem Lopez recused under the new Levine Act amendments regarding campaign contributions.
5:46:14Okay, thank you.
5:46:31The proposed project consists of demolition of four existing office buildings totaling approximately 87,000 square feet and the construction of new mixed-use development on two separate parcels totaling approximately 507 units, about 449 of which will be apartments with 19 live-work lofts and 58 townhome units. The project will also incorporate approximately 27,000 square feet of commercial space and 3.4 acres of on-site open space and amenities. Total of 1,025 parking spaces will be provided on-site for a ratio of 2.02 spaces per unit.
5:46:35This is the overall site plan, and this site plan is turned to the side, where 4th Street is on your left hand side on the left hand of the slide and 1st Street is on the right hand which is representing the north the front parcel is going to be developed for rental housing development project and the real parcel is going to be developed for the for sale product which is included on the site this is a rendering of the site looking at 4th Street and Cabrillo looking northeast here's another rendering of the site from Cabrillo Park Drive and the new park
5:47:14core place view this is looking southeast this is is an illustration of the interior entrance to the for sale project. This is looking at Northeast.
5:47:56The project is designed as an integrated development with two parcels that provide for both for sale as well as rental housing options for residents of Santa Ana. The applicant has opted to contribute to the production of affordable housing in Santa through the payment of in lieu fee, which is an allowance under the who or the Ohoko ordinance approximately eight million dollars is the estimated in lieu fee the commercial area as the previous mentions is probably 26,000 27,000 square feet have been designed to accommodate a range of uses that are common for these type of music structures as cafe
5:48:13small retails and neighborhood service issues the town center has been center Plaza has been designed to provide passive recreation to be enjoyed by the residents, commercial patients, and visitors to the development. The project features a durable and high design quality architecture materials as well as providing a range of amenities and open space. The project will provide 47,800 square feet of public accessible open space in the form of the Town Center Plaza, the Shopkeeper Plaza, and along the Cabrillo Drive as well as Park Court Place, and the new proposed Paseo along
5:48:50the eastern property line. The development is consistent with the objective and development standards of the MIMU, the Metro East Overlay Zone. The project will contribute towards a growing mixed-use community in the MIMU area. It will respect the vision of the MIMU by introducing a new access roadway that can be extended to the east as the implementation of the MIMU continues to complete a street grid as the area is transitioned. The development has been designed to be compatible with adjacent development in scale, height,
5:49:25as well as site configuration and design principles. The land use site design, the land uses site design and the operation of the development has been planned in a manner that will result in a compatible and harmonious operation as specified in the MIMU. The subdivision, as I mentioned, will provide for 58 townhome units to be sold. The development is also consistent with the general plan land use designation and conformed to all applicable requirements of the city's zoning subdivision code. The development site is physically suitable for the type and density of the development, and the development will
5:50:02not cause any serious public health problems or injuries to the public that conflict with the easement necessary for the public access for use of the property within the proposed project. As relates to the appeal, the appeal by SAFER is requesting that the City Council overturn the Commission's decision based on the following assertions. That the decision of the Planning Commission was in violation of CEQA. The city determination was analyzed using the 2010 overlay zone EIR and subsequent EIR was incorrect. The project has new different
5:50:39significant environmental impact that were not analyzed in the MIMU and that the project EIR would have been prepared to analyze the project. As part of the appeal the applicant did not however provide any technical studies or empirical evidence supporting the assertion or demonstrating substantiating that the project would result in any new or significant impact that was analyzed in the certified EIR and the new mitigation required or any new mitigation would be required. Furthermore, the applicant did not provide any information as to why they believe a project EIR should have been prepared
5:51:17or what a new different or significant environment impact would result from the project that had not already been analyzed in the MIMU and the certified EIR.
5:51:54The appeal by the Southwest Mountain States Carpenter is requesting that the City Council also overturn the Planning Commission decision based on requirement of local workforce and training requirements to prevent community spread of COVID-19 and other infectious disease, as well as CEQA compliance and inconsistency with the general plan. On August 17th, the city also received supplemental comment letter from the appellant which was I want to be clarify clear here that was outside of the 10-day appeal period the letter outlined the following assertion including in feasible transportation
5:52:06mitigation requirements and the inadequacy of the noise impact analysis by the certified EIR. Slide 15. The the city provided a comprehensive response to the appeal item which can be found in Exhibit 10 of your report. However, staff is providing a general overview of the response here regarding the comments. There are no substantial changes to the circumstances which could be undertaken that would result in the new or more significant impact and there is no new information of substantial importance that has become available that would
5:52:45result in more severe significant impact. Moreover, no subsequent ER would be required by the project. So pursuant to the guidelines, when we have conditions where no new information has been provided to substantiate it, we have to rely upon the certified ER as the document that has been completed for the project.
5:53:24One of the appellant statements that the subsequent EIR also requires the project to have a VMT analysis. This requirement is a new requirement by state CEQA guidelines. Under the state CEQA guidelines, CEQA laws, it does not necessitate or require a previously certified EIR to be updated with new information that has been changed over time but it does require that analysis be completed to ensure that the project that's been proposed is consistent with the previously identified and certified EIR and through the environmental studies that have been completed for the project
5:53:56it was found that the project was found to be within the scope of the development intensity and density under the MIMU as well as what was previously analyzed in the 2007 and 2018 certified EIR and subsequent SEIR. In terms of the fiscal impact analysis, the project is projected to be a value at $249 million and to generate a recurring revenue of approximately $23 million. The cities on the flood side in terms of expenditure over the next 25 years is about $14.5
5:54:36million dollars as projected which will result in a potential net revenue of approximately eight million dollars in addition during the construction of the project it will generate approximately 1900 jobs both indirect as well as direct and through induced jobs through to the area after the completion it will maintain approximately 32 jobs on site the city will receive approximately 15 million dollars in revenue from permit fees through the project construction as well as in lieu fees and park development fees in accordance with sequence sequence guideline as previously
5:55:16discussed the project is within the scope of the previously completed and certified eirs and based on sequence standard the city would need to require to rely upon the previous eir for its environmental analysis unless any new substantial evidence has been shown that the project has changed and new information has been introduced that would require new analysis.
5:55:55Staff's recommendation tonight is for the Council to adopt a resolution denying the appeal and upholding the planning commission approval of two resolutions approving the site plan as well site plan review as well as the tenant track map. Thank you Mayor.
5:56:24Thank you very much. Appreciate that. I now open the public hearing for members of the public that would like to provide their comments in person and virtually. We have one on Zoom.
5:56:39Yes, Mayor. Thank you. The representative for Supporters Alliance for Environmental Responsibility, Marjan Abubu, please unmute and make your comments. You have 10 minutes for your presentation.
5:56:51Hi. Can you hear me?
5:57:04Yes. Go ahead.
5:57:05All right. Thank you so much. Good evening, Mayor Ameskwa and honorable council members. My name is Marjana Bubo of Lozo Drury, and I'm here on behalf of SAFER, the Supporters Alliance for Environmental Responsibility and its members who live, work, and recreate in and around the city of Santana. SAFER submitted written comments for the record early this week. And to some of our concerns, SAFER, along with our independent expert review, find that the project is not within the scope of the program EIR and subsequent environmental review is required. Pursuant to CEQA guidelines section 15162, project is not within the scope
5:57:06of a previous program EIR if new information of substantial importance, which was not known at the time the previous EIR was certified, shows that the project will have significant effects not discussed in the previous EIR. Certified industrial hygienist, Mr. Bud Offerman, explains that the project's emissions of formaldehyde to air will result in very significant cancer risk to future residents and employees of the project. Formaldehyde is a known human carcinogen and is listed by the state as a toxic air contaminant. As applied, the materials used for this project will ultimately exacerbate the health risks
5:57:45to populations exposed to these contaminants. During the presentation, it was said that mitigation measures beyond those required by the certified EIR are not required unless the project would result in new or more severe impacts compared to those analyzed in the certified EIR. Again, I want to reiterate the comments that we did provide and the expert analysis that we did attach to the record. It's also important to note that the previous 2007 and 2018 MAMU EIR did not address indoor air quality impacts or formaldehyde
5:58:21emissions. The 2007 EIR includes some mention of toxic air contaminants which points to the city's awareness with potential air quality issues for future projects such as the one before us. However, such reference to air quality relies on decades-old data which is now obsolete. Nor does does such information indicate its connection to the project that is being heard now before the city council? Because these impacts and its corresponding mitigation measures are expert proposed were not previously analyzed, the fair argument standard applies and an EIR is required to address and mitigate this impact.
5:58:56Moreover, this potential impact could not have been known until 2019 when the first study was published showing that homes using composite wood products that comply with CARB standards vastly exceed CEQA significance thresholds for cancer risk. Therefore, this impact was not known and could not have been known when the 2007 EIR was certified or even in 2018 when the supplemental EIR was certified. When scientific information was not available at the time of prior CEQA review, more recent studies showing that a project may have more serious human health or
5:59:35environmental impacts constitute significant new information requiring a subsequent eir um and yeah just in closing safer respectfully requests that the city council grant the appeal and direct staff to prepare an eir for the project in accordance with sequa thank you for considering these comments
6:00:13thank you we're good yes mayor that was the first appellant is that the only and yes there's no
6:00:39other speakers on zoom we have ed mccoy please and dave rand
6:00:46good evening honorable mayor members of the city council i'm ed mccoy with fairfield for the developers of this project i want to thank staff for the two years of hard work that we've gotten to get to this point as staff explained the regulatory framework of this site is established in the memu the memu has a nearly nearly 20-year history with the city and with its current update in 2018 which included the subsequent eir not a supplemental er which he's he mentioned over the years the city has invested significant resources to create and implement the plan with the intent of reviving and modernizing the
6:00:58plan area ultimately resulting in a beneficial return on your investment our site is in the village center which allows up to 10 stories and envisions a lively active village with a mixture of land uses that are cohesive our project is a mixed-use development that provides ownership housing rental housing retail and public open space, as well as more than $15 million in fees and an ongoing increased tax basis. Our project is clearly implementing the vision and intent of the MIMU Village Center District. We are in full compliance with the adopted MIMU and EIR. We have no special requests, no deviations, no variances.
6:01:29The MIMU is intended to enhance this area of the city while giving developers a clear understanding of what is required. We were attracted to this site because the MIMU gave us clear understanding of what the city wanted. We believe upholding this challenge puts the city's future MIMU investment in jeopardy because the rules will have changed. If we or any other developer were required to complete an EIR, we would not have moved forward with this project, especially now given the headwinds of the market. Please consider the benefits of the overall city.
6:02:06The fees, the substantial property tax increases, the variety of housing, ownership housing and rental housing provides housing for workers in the area, as well as customers for the local businesses. And the retail is set up to allow for incubating businesses that want to come to Santa Ana. This appeal is based on a secret technical issue. Your planning staff, your city attorney, our attorney, our consultants, and your planning commission all determine that the EIRR was adequate. We are delivering what is envisioned in the MIMU. We implemented a full community outreach program in compliance with the Sunshine Ordinance,
6:02:38provided specific infrastructure analysis, reports, and all the other requirements that the city had, as well as CEQA. The project is compliant with the general plan, zoning, and CEQA, and all analysis concludes that there is no merit for this appeal. Findings cannot be made to support the appeal. The state is very clear that this type of project shouldn't be denied based on the type of labor used. use. Fairfield has always been an open shop which allows for qualified trades to bid. We don't limit competition nor do we preclude the use of union labor. In fact, Fairfield
6:03:14has a responsible contractor policy that is required by our ownership which is CalSTRS. We are required to reach out to the local unions to ensure that they are aware of our projects and if they choose to bid on them. And please understand that the unions don't represent all local qualified labor. We just completed two projects locally in Orange, and in those projects we used Orange County based framers, Orange County based parking structure contractors, our landscape sub is from Santa Ana, and our cabinets makers are from Santa Ana. These are
6:03:47locally qualified employees that are benefiting by these projects. So I'll let Dave come up and hit the technical issues, but I ask that you respectfully uphold the Planning Commission's unanimous approval and deny the appeal. Thank you.
6:04:19Good evening, Madam Mayor, Honorable Counsel. My name is Dave Rand, the law firm Rand, Pastor, and Nelson. To add to the staff report, I just want to note, CEQA very much encourages the use of prior programmatic EIRs for subsequent projects that are completely consistent with what was evaluated in the program EIR. That is exactly what has happened here. Now, it has been correctly stated that to do that legally, the project, the later activity before you, can have no new environmental impacts or increase in the severity of impacts that was analyzed in the 27 EIR.
6:04:37There are hundreds of pages of environmental findings, analysis, and detailed overview going impact area by impact area, proving up that this project is within the scope entirely of the program EIR and includes no new impacts. In addition, what has not been stated yet is the record also includes new analysis in the form of expert technical reports in the areas of air quality, historic analysis, geotechnical reports, greenhouse gas emission analysis, phase one environmental assessment, a new
6:05:14noise report, and a traffic and VMT analysis. All that were commissioned to specifically look at the environmental impacts of this project and reconfirm that there are no new environmental impacts or increase in severity of impacts than was analyzed in the program EIR. The safer appeal focuses on one issue, the issue of indoor air quality impacts associated with formaldehyde. There are no AQMD or CARB related CEQA standards or thresholds for that particular impact.
6:05:54Today, expert information was submitted into the record rebutting the analysis that SAFER has put forth, evaluating their allegation that there would be formaldehyde impacts, and concluding that the analysis they offered up grossly overestimated the possibility of formaldehyde-related impacts, and completely overlooked the fact that California regulates indoor formaldehyde to a greater degree than any nation in the state. And the background regulations, particularly the California Composite Products Regulation and the California Green Building Standards Code,
6:06:29both which specifically ensure that indoor formaldehyde impacts won't occur, were not evaluated in the safer analysis. So that does not constitute substantial evidence that there is a formaldehyde-related impact. That has been rebutted. And again, the evidence before you confirms and reconfirms that the EIR is valid and this project can go forward completely consistent with that environmental analysis. Thank you very much for your time.
6:07:11Thank you. Talia Nehmer?
6:07:40Talia Nehmer Good evening, Mayor, Council Members. My name is Talia Nimmer and I'm here on behalf of Southwest Mountain State's Regional Council of Carpenters. I'm here today to discuss why you should not uphold this project as it would be a violation of CEQA. Although we've heard that no new EIR is warranted because the project's within the scope of the MIMU and that there's no new information, that is simply not the case.
6:07:43First, I'd like to point out that under CEQA Guidelines 15162, new information can be in the form of mitigation measures. Here, since 2007, there have been new mitigation measures that have come to light, as well as new factors that were not assessed in the MIMU. First, the Metro EIR, I'd like to point out that the Metro EIR actually states that individual projects should be subject to separate environmental clearance and review. So on this ground alone, it's clear that the project should not be approved without subsequent environmental review. Second, the Metro EIR failed to analyze the project's transportation impacts that are
6:08:21as required by the existing CEQA and city standards. Specifically, the Metro EIR failed to quantify the project's anticipated VMT and whether any VMT-reducing mitigation measures are warranted. Such assessment is crucial since the Metro EIR actually found that there would be significant and unavoidable transportation impacts. Additionally, the Metro EIR failed to analyze greenhouse gas impacts altogether and didn't assess whether any mitigation measures would be warranted to mitigate such impacts.
6:09:02The Metro EIR also failed to take into account all nearby existing sensitive receptors when assessing noise impacts, such as the Lake Diane apartments, which are directly behind the project site, and unlike the other sensitive receptors analyzed, are set back from the busy streets and freeways and represent quieter locations. Nor did the Metro EIR take into account the project's outdoor roof deck and the noise impacts that that will have. The Metro EIR's lack of analysis of these factors cannot be rectified by attaching studies to the staff report.
6:09:38Rather, as Section 15162 of the CEQA guidelines established, this new information and new mitigation measures must be quantified and assessed in a subsequent EIR in order for the project not only to be CEQA compliant, but also so that both the city and members of the public will have an understanding of what the project's environmental impacts will be before the project moves forward. Thank you.
6:10:13Thank you. Councilmember Comments. Councilmember Becerra.
6:10:36Mayor, I believe you have one additional card. Mr. Tafoya.
6:10:41I'm sorry, where's?
6:10:44Mr. John Tafoya.
6:10:47Come on up, Mr. Tafoya. I have cards everywhere.
6:10:49Mr. Tafoya, I found your card. I have them everywhere up here.
6:11:04sorry sorry good evening madam mayor council members uh my name is john tifoy i'm a union carpenter i'm here to speak today as a union carpenter i'm not gonna talk on this all the legal bumbo jumbo stuff i'm just here to bring um to your attention past practices of fairfield applicant has used contractors in the past on other projects like silver line construction Covey Concrete that have built projects both to say they are local contractors of our immediate areas. They built projects like Town and Country
6:11:08Apartments here in Orange, The Post in San Diego, Glassell Park, Glendale, Gravity Apartments, San Diego, Moreno Boulevard, Mixed Use, San Diego. Contractors like Silverline Construction that exploit their workers in forms of cash pay, straight up under the table, money in envelopes, no 1099 type of stuff. Kickbacks. Workers obligate to pay back a percentage of their paychecks to keep their jobs. Forced to give fake information when approached and asked by compliance agencies.
6:11:47Overtime violations. Workers, when asking about their overtime pay, their replies are, hey, you got a job, so it's good enough. Jobs have injuries not being reported and laid off immediately. All these claims are documented in written statements and videos of actual workers or ex-workers of these contractors. These claims, I read, again, are all documented. Developers that hire, willing to hire contractors, have total disregard for workers' rights. As long as their projects are built as cheap
6:12:23and as possible as they can, they are willing to turn a blind eye. They will not take responsibility on violations that take place on their projects and pass them off as responsibilities of contractors. One thing is to understand that if a developer is not aware of these issues, but when the contractor understands and knows of these violations and still continues to hire these contractors, then in my opinion they're as guilty as those contractors. Then they are guilty again of those contractors. Whether these are local contractors, like I said, or not, a violator is a violator. This will happen
6:13:03in our city if these types of developers do not commit in writing to do all they can to prevent this from happening on this project on their projects this is why we're bringing these issues to all parties involved in this project before it starts so no one can claim ignorance that when these if these violations occur so I'm asking you know at least to table the vote until the developer can commit in writing is that that they will do thank you for your time
6:13:45Thank you, sir. Is there a rebuttal from the applicant, please?
6:14:17Thank you, Madam Mayor. Again, for the record, Dave Rand on behalf of the applicant. I just want to rebut a few points that were raised by the Carpenters law firm. First, with respect to vehicle miles traveled, the prior EIR did not analyze vehicle miles traveled because the law requiring VMT was not in place yet. And what has been ignored is there's clear case law, recent case actually out of Orange County, that makes very clear that EIRs that predated the VMT regulations do not need to look at VMT impacts for subsequent projects.
6:14:25All that is needed is an evaluation of whether this project is within the scope of the congestion-based analysis that was analyzed in the prior AR, and the record indicates it absolutely was. So not legally required based on Olin Properties versus City of Newport Beach. Having said that, because the issue was raised, a VMT study was introduced into the record for informational purposes. That VMT study concluded there would be no VMT impacts because the project screened out based on the city's own VMT criteria. That study was reviewed and its findings were concurred by your Public Works Director.
6:15:06With respect to greenhouse gas emissions, case law also very clear. Greenhouse gas emissions not having been analyzed in the prior EIR is not significant new information that would require subsequent environmental review. Nevertheless, the record includes a greenhouse gas emission analysis of this project, proving that as an infill project proximate to transit, consistent with GHG reduction plans and policies, there would be no greenhouse gas emissions impacts associated with this project. The Carpenters allege that the project would create noise impacts
6:15:45and that specific sensitive receptors like the Lake Diane apartment project was not analyzed. That is not true. The noise study in the record specifically looked at that receptor and found that the project would not result in a noise impact to that apartment building. The fact that that receptor wasn't analyzed in the 27 EIR is irrelevant. You can absolutely include new analysis and new information to confirm, based on evidence, that the project is consistent with the findings of the prior EIR. And finally, the mitigation measures that were outlined and required in that prior EIR
6:16:19will all be carried forward and imposed on this project to ensure that the environmental impacts will be adequately addressed and all mitigation measures will be adequately enforced. Thank you again for your time.
6:16:58Thank you. The appellate, any rebuttal?
6:17:10I just wanted to touch upon the contention that the recent case law confirms that no VMT analysis was required. And that was because that previous project was found to be within the scope of the EIR. But given that the project here has not been assessed many of these project aspects, I would contend that the EIR, the MIMU did not cover this project and therefore this project is not within the scope requiring additional BMT analysis.
6:17:24Yeah, again I just think that given that there's a ton of information that was not analyzed in the MIMU EIR and subsequent EIR is warranted for this project.
6:17:58And Mayor, the appellant on Zoom as well. Is there a... Yes.
6:18:10Go ahead.
6:18:15Marjan Abubo, please unmute.
6:18:16Marjan, would you like to unmute and make your rebuttal comments?
6:18:24Sorry about that. Again, good evening, Mayor Miskwa and Honorable Council Members. is just a quick point to the developers council. I think it is true that a noise study was prepared for the memo EIR and was included and specifically as it relates to the sensitive receptor at the nearby apartment. However, from our analysis of the memo EIR, it's also true that that when they conducted measurements for that sensitive receptor, they only did it for very short intervals
6:18:28and they don't completely capture the noise impacts that would arise as a result of this project. And so it's a little bit misguided to explain that the noise analysis was conducted when it was inadequately conducted. Thank you.
6:19:07Mayor, that concludes the comments and noting that we received three e-comments that were distributed to council and posted to the website.
6:19:27Thank you, Madam City Clerk. With no further comments, I hereby close the public hearing. Council members, Council Member Vassari, you have a comment?
6:19:34Yes, Madam Mayor, thank you. I want to begin by thanking the Southwest Carpenters and SAFER for engaging our city and providing us with this opportunity to discuss this project. I also want to thank the carpenters who have stuck around for the evening and actually spoke tonight, so thank you very much for that. I agree that the local hire of workers that reside within 10 miles or less of the project site can reduce the length of trips and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The project applicant requested to meet with me, and when we met, I'd asked whether they
6:19:41had engaged with any of the organizations that could help facilitate the local hire of workers. and I was told that they had not had those meetings and had not reached out and I was very disappointed with that. But now I want to turn my focus to the Metro East mixed-use overlay zone plan area where this project is being proposed and the objectives of this plan. So MIMU objective 1.2a states create an active mixed-use urban village where it is possible to live, work, shop, and play all within a short walk of each other. MIMU Objective 1.2.L states facilitate project designs that encourage adequate amounts of
6:20:14retail or commercial space to service residents and or employees within the development and the larger Metro East overlay zone area. On this project, there is only a total of 5,800 square feet of commercial space on the entire site and all of it is located on the very southwest corner of the project site. That is not within a short walk of most of the residential units within the proposed project. And from what I see on the proposed plan, the 5,800 square feet of the proposed commercial space is divided into what I could tell at least seven small spaces. So that comes out to about 828 square feet per retail space.
6:20:54The average convenience store, not a grocery store, just a convenience store, The average convenience store in the United States today is at least 3,000 square feet. So if you live up towards park, court, place, such as in the proposed townhomes in the proposed project, the proposed commercial space is not within a short walk of those townhomes. The closest grocery store is almost a mile away up on 17th Street. The closest convenience store is all the way down on 1st Street, almost a half a mile away from the townhomes that are located or that are proposed on the site.
6:21:34So it truly frustrates me, and I look at our staff when I say this, that we keep getting projects recommended for approval within the Metro East mixed-use overlay with little to no commercial space included in these mixed-use projects. I mean, mixed-use is literally in the name of the plan area. So I do appreciate the diversity in housing that has been proposed. With 449 rental units, there's at least 58 for sale townhomes. that's 11% of the total residential units on site that are for sale. Again, I appreciate that, and that is something that staff should strive for in future mixed-use projects.
6:22:05But that one aspect is not enough for me to support this particular project. So if we as a council don't demand quality projects and stand by the objectives within council-approved plans, then we are going to fail to see our vision realized. So I'm going to go ahead and move that this council approve appeal applications number 2023-02, 2023-03, and deny site plan review number 2023-01 and tenant of track map number 2023-03 because the proposed development plan is not consistent with the MIMU and it will not further the objectives outlined in section 1.2 of the MIMU overlay zone.
6:22:43I'll second your motion.
6:23:25Are there any other comments for the council? With that, let's prepare to vote.
6:23:27The vote is 5 ayes, no nays, 2 abstentions, recusals by Mayor Pro Tem Lopez and Councilmember FAN.
6:23:53Appeal applications approved and the project denied.
6:24:02Thank you. We're going to go back to item 16 under the business calendar.
6:24:06We can get the other council members in, please.
6:24:16All right.
6:25:02So item number 16 is the first reading of an ordinance and or placement of a ballot measure. Madam City Attorney, may we have a staff report.
6:25:07This will be a very brief staff report. This item has come back to you after a Council requested item. The item before you consists of an ordinance that mirrors the ordinance that the City Council previously adopted for Rent and Stabilization Just Cause. We also presented to you with the option of an ordinance which would require what we call a supermajority or 5 7 vote of the City Council to amend certain provisions of the ordinance in the future. We were also asked to explore the possibility of presenting a ballot measure which would
6:25:17allow the voters of the city to approve either the first version, which is the one that mirrors what is currently in effect, and then the second version which would mirror the 5 7 vote requirement of the council to make amendments to certain sections. Our staff recommendation included consideration of your adoption of the current ordinance, we call it like a readoption or affirmation. It's the purpose for that is in relation to some ongoing litigation and a second amended complaint that was filed. So as this was a council generated item we will leave it
6:25:54to you to have a discussion and to tell us which options, if any, you want to pursue. If you do want to conduct a first reading, those ordinances are in your packet and available for you to choose among the two of them this evening.
6:26:34Thank you, City Attorney. Just to confirm, was that your staff report?
6:26:49Yes.
6:26:54Okay, thank you. So we are now on item 16. I will open up debate for the Council to provide their comments within the three minutes timeline. Go ahead, Council Member Hernandez.
6:26:54Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I'll keep my comments very brief for the sake of time. I am supportive of Options 3 and 4. Thank you.
6:27:06Thank you. Any other comments? Go ahead, Council Member Vasquez.
6:27:15I, as well, am supportive of Items 3 and 4. I did come to this body to serve families in War II, and I need to protect. that came in and i ran to protect rent control i walked my neighborhood and i saw the necessity i see it every day in my classroom children of banana are 17 percent housing insecure the mckinney vento numbers are percent unified school district 17 at valley high school it's 27 that means out of
6:27:21Every classroom I get, 11 kids are housing insecure.
6:27:54Are housing insecure. Thank you. And I see them every day, and I see their struggles. And as I teach, and I've been teaching for 20 years, and at first, it wasn't housing. It wasn't rent that was a problem. A lot of the kids, it was about having health insurance or domestic violence. And as the years have gone up, a lot of kids, more children are complaining about rent with their families. So that's why I am supportive of this for items three and four. Thank you.
6:27:59Are there any other comments? I don't see any speakers here. Councilman Becerra.
6:28:34Thank you, Madam Mayor. So the direction provided at the September 19th Council meeting was to bring back one resolution for a ballot measure to affirm the rank control ordinance with the requirement of a supermajority for amendments to particular sections of the RCO. So when Councilmember Lopez said that she would like to see options, it was Councilmember Fan that very clearly stated that her direction does not include options and that she only wanted a ballot measure brought back to the Council at the October 17th Council meeting. Note that today is October 3rd. The first proposed
6:28:37ordinance states that it is affirming adoption of ordinance ns 3027 amending article 10 of chapter 8 of the muni code and creating a new article 19 in chapter 8 of the muni code pertaining to the rso and the jceo so madam city attorney if this proposed ordinance is to simply affirm Madam City Attorney? Yes.
6:29:09Okay.
6:29:34So what I was saying was this first proposed ordinance, okay, if it's to simply affirm ordinance NS 3027 that was adopted back on October 18, 2022, why does the word amending appear in the proposed ordinance?
6:29:35Let me take a look at that.
6:29:51That may be a typographical error if it says amending because it was supposed to this item, option number two, was supposed to be just a mirror of what already exists and the purpose of even presenting this to you again was purely for the litigation purposes.
6:29:58And while you're looking at that, what's really frustrating is this is already a complicated matter as it is. So, in Section 3 of the first proposed ordinance, it states, divisions 4 and 5 of Article 10 of Chapter 8 of the Muni Code are hereby amended and moved to the new Article 9. But the existing divisions 4 and 5 of Article 10 are blank. So, what is it that we're moving over? And then, an Article 19 in the first proposed ordinance shows no changes from what is currently in the Muni Code and does not reflect the movements of divisions 4 and 5 from Article 10 into a new Article 19.
6:30:15So I don't know that we can even do a first read on that before us this evening. I mean, this is a cluster. This is not even clear. It's very confusing. And for someone like myself who's a land use professional trying to read this and seeing all these different movements, I mean, if anything, it evokes suspicion. On the second proposed ordinance, the staff report states, approve the first reading of an ordinance amending Article 10 of Chapter 8 of the Municode pertain to the RSO JCO to require two-thirds approval by all the members of the City Council for future amendments.
6:30:52But the actual draft of the second proposed ordinance states that the ordinance is amending Article 19 of Chapter 8 of the Muni Code, not Article 10. Again, another error. And I don't like to say this publicly, but it's either sloppy or an attempt to try to confuse us into pushing or pursuing something that's not really there. So the only item that this council should be looking at this evening is supposed to be a ballot measure to ask the voters to put or to affirm the rank stabilization ordinance and to put in this super majority. So everything else that we're talking about tonight shouldn't even be before us.
6:31:24It should be just that. It should be the ballot measure language to reaffirm. It shouldn't be us taking a vote to reaffirm anything. And in fact, the way that the staff report's written, it talks about to cure, I forget the exact verbiage, but basically addressing potential litigation. That's not what was discussed at the last council meeting. When this was on the dais and everybody was up here talking about this, this was about this specific thing. So here we go again, and I don't know what's going on up here. I really don't. I don't know if what we talk about up here is just for show and the real meat and potatoes
6:32:03are being cooked off the dais i don't know but it's really frustrating as somebody up here trying to represent their constituents to have that these conversations that are happening and then what was talked about in public on this dais is not what ends up in our staff reports and before us so the only the only legal option for us tonight is to do nothing and perhaps staff can come back with a cleaner version that reflects the actual discussion that was held on this dais at the last council meeting. Thank you Madam Mayor.
6:32:39Your time's up. You've got to come back for the next one. Council Mayor Fan.
6:33:09Thank you Mayor. Tonight, well I guess a couple clarifications. I brought about a month ago, I believe, an item to consider bringing back an amendment to the rent stabilization and just cause eviction ordinance to require five out of seven votes, so a the two-thirds majority vote for certain amendments. The meeting following, I requested, a council requested item to discuss potentially bringing back a ballot measure to put this forth to the public. Now, I believe we did discuss a mid-October meeting, but we've never before, as far as I know,
6:33:14said that staff couldn't bring something back sooner than when we anticipated it. And so tonight, these are both items that the majority of this council has directed staff to go forward and bring back information for us and so for me I would like to support or at least I would like to direct staff to support item excuse me option number three which is approve the first reading of an ordinance that would require the two thirds approval of all members of the City Council for certain future amendments relating to the RSO and the JCEO I'd also like to direct staff to
6:33:55bring back a ballot measure as evidence in option 4 that's listed on the staff report with the appropriate resolutions ballot documents and staff report relating to the ballot measure in option 4 at the next council meeting which will be in two weeks thank you and I guess with that I would motion for approval of option three as well as direction to bring back ballot documents and election documents and resolutions for option four thank you
6:34:32no for the mayor pro tem lopez yes thank you I'm happy to second the motion and staff I will be supporting item 3 which is the two-thirds requirement for specific amendments and item 4 for the ballot language measure documents and timeline which is what I requested the first time so thank you
6:35:11Councillor Becerra thank you madam mayor I'll go ahead and do a sub motion that we do option one and do nothing tonight because of the complete confusion and cluster that is before us this evening thank you okay there is a
6:35:37motion on the floor there's a sub motion I'll second your sub motion so let's prepare to vote
6:35:53some motion by councilmember Becerra seconded by mayor Mesquita for option Number one, to do nothing. The vote is three ayes, four nays. Ayes by Mayor Mesquia, Councilmembers Becerra and Penaloza. Motion fails.
6:36:15Okay, let's go back to the original motion.
6:36:30Mayor, I have a few questions for the city attorney.
6:36:34I'm sorry, I didn't see your name appearing. Go ahead.
6:36:37So, I just wanted clarity. So, is Councilmember Fanta asking,
6:36:40with the supermajority, is that, I mean, is that allowed?
6:36:47As we discussed before, the city charter speaks to what you need to adopt an ordinance, and then there's the whole idea of what you need to amend an ordinance. So the legal advice we've given you in the past is we believe that these supermajority requirements are, you can adopt them if you want, but the problem is that if a future council comes forward, they can adopt an entirely new ordinance that would repeal these earlier ordinances, absent them being approved by the voters.
6:36:53So, this ordinance, if you were to have a first reading of an ordinance that requires a supermajority vote to amend, and do that, I've opined that a future council could simply repeal that ordinance and adopt a brand new ordinance. So can you do it? Yes, you can. As a practical matter, it will only take four votes to completely repeal it in the future.
6:37:33So, Council Member Phan's motion is merely symbolic because you…
6:38:01It's not symbolic.
6:38:06Because at the end of the day…
6:38:08Right.
6:38:09You can't impose a supermajority on the ordinance.
6:38:09If all you do in the future is amend the ordinance, you're going to need the required votes. But in the future, if you want to repeal the ordinance, you only need four votes because of the way your charter is currently drafted. I think the idea from what I'm understanding is if these ordinances are presented to the voters and the voters approve it then they would only be allowed to be amended in the future by the voters or under certain circumstances as set forth in the ordinances that come back to you okay and thank you for that and madam
6:38:12city clerk have we I know the cost of a ballot measure has come up a couple of times over the last couple of meetings have you gotten that information on what it would cost for a ballot measure to go before the voters?
6:38:44Yes, Mayor and Council. I did reach out to the Orange County Registrar of Voters for election estimates for November 2024, consolidated general election, which will include four candidate seats and a potential measure. And they informed me, as stated in the staff report, that the cost for the measure is estimated at $8,500.
6:39:00$8,500?
6:39:21Yes. Now that would be the register of voters cost here for the city in my budget. I would also have to account for translation and publication in the newspaper, but the translation of the ballot material does go through the ROV and is included in the overall elections cost that's included in the staff report.
6:39:23Okay. And at the end of the day, any election measure that would go before the voters, in order for you to be able to pay that bill, you would require funding for it, correct?
6:39:40Yes, and I would be presenting that as part of my proposed budget in the next budget cycle.
6:39:51Okay. But you would need five votes to approve?
6:39:55For the budget to be approved, yes.
6:40:01Okay. Thank you for that.
6:40:04And if I may just quickly address the concerns with regard to item number three, it is a correct reference to the article, just to be able to explain originally when you adopted the ordinance in Ordinance Number 3027, you were amending because you were bringing these two sections together. After they were brought together and created, they actually are now sitting within the article that's referenced. So, just so that you know that, that is not a typographical error. And there certainly is absolutely zero intent on the part of my office or anyone in it to mislead the council in any way. I would have appreciated a heads up.
6:40:07I did get the courtesy of two council members reaching out to me today on what they thought was an error, and I admitted that. But I did not get the courtesy of knowing there were concerns about this section. I could have addressed it. Thank you.
6:40:47I'm sorry. So you're saying you were not notified?
6:40:59I was not. Earlier you had a question about an ordinance where I took initiative and did something extra and I was contacted and I was able to provide a reasoning for that and be prepared for this evening as one of our matters of our code of ethics and our core values is not to grandstand or to treat your appointed staff without respect and so I did I knew nothing about this and I know that you guys do agenda prep with the city manager's office if someone had just called I would have been prepared to answer this question tonight not leave you nor your public with the impression that we would mislead you well thank you for sharing
6:41:02that because I think it's very important that you are always informed of what's going on and hopefully you know we're not going to do some grandstanding up here. So Madam City Clerk can we go back because I think I heard you but I just want to be clear I even have my microphone on up here. So you said the cost is $8,500? Yes that is the information that was provided to me by the
6:41:35registrar of voters the entire breakdown of the election is estimated the total costs range from $279,085 up to $327,742 but that is because it is inclusive of a citywide ballot for the mayor's seat and three council member seats the costs include the consolidated election the postage for the vote by mail ballots, the cost recovery of the new election equipment, and the cost of one measure. They did base that on an estimate of 3,000 words and two pages, and the estimated cost
6:41:57for that measure is $8,500. If it exceeds 3,000 words or two pages, depending on the length of the text that is placed into the voter information guide, the cost, I would imagine, would go higher,
6:42:34but their estimate is the $8,500. Let's just say hypothetically the next meeting where we add another, the majority adds another item onto the ballot for 2024. There's an additional cost for
6:42:46that too, is it correct? That's correct. And then my past experience has been that it is the same cost per measure that gets added because it is the cost of the printing of the pages, the translation of the language into those pages. And so that would likely be the same estimate for each and every measure that goes forward. We may have better estimates as we get closer to the election, but this is the information that they prepared for me this week.
6:42:59Okay, thank you so much. Council Member Becerra, please.
6:43:28Thank you, Madam Mayor. Real quick, Madam State Clerk, can you read back what the motion is that we're going to be voting on?
6:43:31So I have a motion by Councilmember Fan, seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Lopez to approve option number three and to direct staff to return back with resolutions and related election documents pertaining to item number four of the recommended actions at the next meeting.
6:43:40So number three being approve the first reading of an ordinance, retain to the rent, okay, blah, blah, blah, two-thirds approval, and then four. So this is not to affirm the ordinance. This is just simply for focusing on the supermajority.
6:44:00Yes, item number three is a first reading of the ordinance to amend the municipal code to require the two-thirds approval of the members of the council for future amendments. And then item four would be the election of sending the existing ordinance to the voters for their affirmation.
6:44:15So this is, as Council Member Paloza said, this is just kind of a waste of our time to do number three. Number four is really the thing that I guess the four up here that want to do it can do, which is actually take it to the voters, or at least to have a real impact. because as we've been discussing multiple meetings uh all it takes is four people up here to adopt a resolution or an ordinance that can change this whole thing um and one one last thing i just want to add before we go ahead and vote i guess um is that you know one thing tonight that's happened
6:44:38a couple times is council's given direction and then we see something that's different on in our our agenda packet so when we talk about what we don't want to see or what we don't want to have happen i i feel like that you know we have great staff and they i always see them taking copious notes about what we say up here but it just really frustrates me when i get this item back and having gone back and actually watched the multiple meetings that discuss this and to see it come back with options when i remember very clearly having watched the video yet again last night that
6:45:09options weren't what was supposed to be brought to us it was supposed to be one simple thing when I've got a whole restaurant menu of items when nobody asks for that, that in itself is frustrating. Thank you.
6:45:44Council Member Friend. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Madam City Attorney, for bringing both items two and three to us. I do understand that as our City Attorney, your job is to ensure that the City of Santa Ana is well protected legally and in every way possible. However, as I mentioned, I am supporting item three today. so there is no need for item two. I'd also like to say that this is not a waste of time. None of us here are trying to waste anyone's time. This matters. This matters to the people who are looking down the barrel of potentially not being
6:45:56able to afford the next rent increase. I have had to borrow money to afford rent payments from friends because I did not have it and my parents didn't have it. I have had to go into debt to afford rent. And I know so many of our residents in the city of Santa Ana face that decision every month. In talking to residents, I learned and I learned more about the fact that folks don't buy food. They don't buy their meds because they're trying to afford rent. This is not a waste of time.
6:46:36This is standing up and saying it is important to us to do everything that we can to support a policy that is keeping thousands of families in the city of Santa Ana from being on the precipice of homelessness. This is saying we will stand up and make sure that a law that is seeking to protect tenants and residents in the city of Santa Ana is going to be as protected as possible. And of course, yes, I support a ballot measure because that is the only way to make sure that whether the political winds change or the dynamics in 10 years or 20 years, whatever
6:47:09this council looks like, our residents can be assured that they're not going to be facing a $300, $400 rent increase next month when their income is not going to be able to afford it when four or five members of the family are working full-time minimum wage to afford to stay here in a city where they were born and raised this matters and this is why i had brought this item forward and this is why i'm supporting it so i hope to get the support of my colleagues thank you
6:47:50mayor pro tem lopez oh thank you um so i want to address the cost issue that keeps coming up because I think it's the second time that people are trying to say oh I'm so worried about the cost but you know when when this council was debating the corrupt recall the cost wasn't an issue right that unexpected burden on Ward 3 taxpayers wasn't a concern to this body if you're worried about the cost of the city then ask the POA to stop suing the residents of the city because they've what are we at, 15 lawsuits now? For what reason? So if you're concerned about the cost,
6:48:21then do everybody a favor and advocate on behalf of the residents. If you're worried about the cost, we should all be responsible to taxpayers in public and in closed session. So I support giving young families the opportunity to save for home ownership. I support giving families the opportunity to stay in the city that they were born and raised in I support giving our residents the opportunity to keep their kids in our school district that is why I support this item this is not a waste of time it is me reaffirming the
6:49:03priorities that I ran on that I was duly elected on I ran with a very open and transparent platform and championing affordable housing was one of those was one of those pillars you know rent civilization was another pillar of the campaign and if we're serious about reducing and eliminating homelessness in our city there are thousands of studies that people can read yale just released one of them about how helping residents stay house truly helps eliminate uh people being in our public
6:49:37streets so that is why i support this item thank you thank you councilman panelists thank you madam
6:50:12Madam City Attorney, I do want to agree with Councilmember Becerra about the multiple times now that staff receives council direction to do one thing and you come back with a slew of options on staff reports. And twice tonight, I do remember very clearly what Councilmember Fan's direction was two weeks ago was wasn't to come back with a menu of items to move forward on. And I same with the spectator ordinance which we already addressed tonight. What I find
6:50:20troubling is that I firmly believe that there are conversations happening and policy being made behind closed doors multiple times as is evident by tonight. I know that when we were discussing the ward maps last year, we heard Councilmember Lopez ask our demographer, oh, is there a way that we can meet offline to talk about what we'd like these maps to look like? Throughout the budget process, every summer, every year, I hear a number of my colleagues ask the city manager, oh, maybe we could talk offline.
6:50:57And I could go to these multiple meetings and take these little pieces of council members asking to talk offline.
6:51:36Because they don't want to disclose to the public how they really feel. And how they make so, I don't want to see this moving forward. So I hope that your office is paying close attention to the direction that this council was giving in the public realm here and that we're not coming back with with
6:51:46options that nobody discussed if you would just give me a second to respond to that I did not attend your April 29th council meeting and when this item was was August August I'm sorry August meeting when the item was first discussed and there was a clear discussion at that time to bring back options. I wasn't here but that's what was reported to me. We had our staff go back and listen to the tapes. At the last meeting there was a focus, you may recall at the August meeting, there was specific discussion that you could not talk about those ballot measures. But we left that August meeting with the idea
6:52:09that you want, well that what was approved was to explore options. But Mr. Funk at the point said to you, but you can't talk about those ballot measures. I understand Council Member Phan wanted to raise that. She wasn't allowed to do it so she put it on the next meeting and it was at that next meeting that you zeroed in on the ballot measures but no one then said oh by the way don't go do don't give us the options that we asked for in august there could have been confusion on our part i had multiple people in our office review there could have been confusion but i want you to know one thing you know i take
6:52:44this job very seriously and if you are accusing me of meeting with your colleagues and somehow going around the back of the minority members on this council, it is 100% absolutely wrong. I can tell you how many times I talked to Councilmember Fan whose item this is, and it was very briefly and had nothing to do with these options. I can tell you with respect to the spectators, nobody on this dais contacted me to ask me about those enforcement options. If you don't trust that to be true, then you should ask me to leave, because I have always given you good, objective advice.
6:53:15I do not get involved in your politics. You do your job, you get your votes, and I'll do my job and I'll give you legal advice.
6:53:55Well, right now it looks like you're drafting policy, Madam City Attorney.
6:54:02I draft policy at the direction of the City Council.
6:54:05Okay. Well, perception is reality at the end of the day.
6:54:09I understand that. And like I said, I don't wish to fight with you. We're not going to argue about that. We're not going to argue about that. I don't wish to do that, but I won't also sit here and let you make accusations because I did not do that. I'm not making accusations.
6:54:12I'm saying perception is reality.
6:54:25Well, there is no reality there. I did not talk to your colleagues. You can ask them right now. I did not speak to your colleagues. The advice you've been given tonight is the best advice I can give this municipal corporation. That's all I can tell you.
6:54:26Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Did you put your hand back on there, Mayor Brotten?
6:54:40Yeah, I did.
6:54:46Okay, go ahead.
6:54:47Yeah, I just want to address your comment because don't sit here and project your actions or your insecurities, whatever you have going on, onto me. I have not spoken. No one's doing that, madam.
6:54:48We're not going to do this. This is why people look at it like we said earlier about show this.
6:54:59We've heard you multiple times want to talk offline. We're not going to do this.
6:55:03I waited for you. Please wait for me again.
6:55:07I wasn't done yet, first of all. She's speaking.
6:55:08We're not going to do this.
6:55:10We're not going to do this. clerk I want the record to reflect that I have not spoken to the city manager in days. I have not spoken to the acting city manager in days. I have not spoken to the city attorney's office about this issue in days. In fact you were out of the office. I couldn't reach you because you were out of the office. So please let the minutes reflect that because I welcome the public to PRA my text messages, my emails, my phone calls. I have made my position on this just so very clear from the very beginning. I don't need to be working around to try and influence something that
6:55:12the council majority has already given direction on. Thank you.
6:55:48Thank you. All right. We're done here. I'm going to make my final comments and then we're going to vote. So there was a comment earlier made about money and recall and I don't really want to get into that. The reason that I personally think it's important that we all ask what is the cost because when we're looking at what we're paying for and yes I've only been sitting here since January and there are many many lawsuits that are pending in this city and that are going to cost money so what I would say is madam city clerk could you please make sure that you keep us informed on the
6:55:51cost and I know you put in the reports and thank you for doing that and again I'm not talking about the recall. It's going to happen whether we like it or not. But there is a cost, and that's why I think Councilman Penelosa had brought up at the meeting about ad hoc committee to address all the things at one time to put on the ballot. And so we have this item, we have the undocumented voting item that we don't know where that's going to go. And I'm sure four votes it'll move forward. So there's a cost there. There's other things that going to go on the ballot so that is why we had talked last time about an ad hoc committee
6:56:30and yes i did for the record call the city attorney and say um the ad hoc committee because i'm still up here learning things and i'm not going to sit up here and act like i know everything what is the process i've learned it before explain it to me and so an ad hoc committee for things that need to go on the ballot for 2024 would be great it would resolve a lot of issues but when it comes to cost, it's important that we all know and that the public knows. Because when, if there is an agenda or if there's this, that, or chicken fat, whatever you want to call it, everything that we do costs money. And it takes from our constituents.
6:57:07So with that, I just want us to move forward and it's very embarrassing we sit up here and argue. We're all adults and we're all professionals. So if we can move forward with the vote and we can end this meeting.
6:57:46Have you made a motion, Council Member Phan? And who seconds your motion? Okay. Let's prepare to vote.
6:58:02I don't know. Was it Councilman Hernandez or Mayor Pro Tem Lopez? Mayor Pro Tem Lopez was the second. Madam City Clerk.
6:58:13I'm going to close it and restart, please.
6:58:21hold on
6:58:36so motion by council member fan seconded by mayor pro tem lopez to approve option number three the first reading of an ordinance of the city of santa anna amending article X1X of chapter 8 of the Santa Ana Municipal Code pertaining to the rent stabilization and just cause eviction ordinances to require two-thirds approval by all members of the City Council for certain future amendments, including a CEQA determination, as well as directing staff to return at the next meeting with ballot measure, documents, and election material pertaining to item number four of the recommended actions.
6:58:38the vote is four eyes three nays nays by mayor mescua councilmember becerra and councilmember
6:59:19penaloza motion carries great madam city manager do you have any announcements yes mayor i do a
6:59:25lot of lot is happening in our city this week so tomorrow is national walk to school day October 4th and the annual event encourages students and parents to increase their physical activity, practice pedestrian and bicycle safety, reduce traffic congestion and strengthen connections between families, schools and communities. And then on Thursday we kick off the Santa Ana Birch Park movie series. It begins Thursday October 5th. It starts at 5 30 and it's in partnership with the Frida Cinema. And then on Friday we have our very first Police Independent Oversight Commission is being held here in council chambers on Friday, October
6:59:346th at 3 p.m. And I know council member Fan already had mentioned, but we have Mid-Autumn Festival happening this Saturday from 4 to 9 at Centennial Park. And then you may see some people running around taking pictures. That is our public works agency that is developing the first citywide street lighting master plan our consultant avari their cars will be marked with the avari name you might see them taking pictures and measurements of city lights on city roadways and alleys and that's all I have thank you council
7:00:14comments they're listed on here I don't know if you can make them in your council closing comments so we'll start on this I councilman Vasquez thank you I had a
7:00:48busy week and thank you everybody who hosted me this week from Santa Ana Active Streets with their last meeting of the year we were at Delhi for the Socoló and fundraising the Hispanic Education Endowment Fund heath had another and they also hosted as well and Latin and last Latino health access and let's promote all that thank you ladies for hosting us and having us at your at Gala what I do know is it's October and I can't wait for Dia de los Muertos Santa Anna has the best events for Dia de los Muertos and Centro Cultural de Mexico
7:01:00is bringing back Noche de Altar is Galacas is of course doing Viva la Vida amazing work by Rudy and his people happy birthday Rudy turned 50 and the best day of the death festival is at Valley High School for Valley de los muertos you're all welcome to come out november 2nd we do a beautiful event we create altars uh well i invite the whole the whole staff and also the council to come mayor please show up we'd love to have you and see what we do at valley thank you thank you mayor frotem lopez
7:01:39thank you um i first want to begin by thanking public works staff and parks and rec staff for today's unveiling at Santiago Park and all of the residents from the surrounding neighborhoods for coming out and supporting the work that our staff is doing you know the new gas house project includes bathrooms a new playground EDA ramps trails it included new picnic areas upgrades to the nature center and so much more and so we're really excited to be finally unveiling the project. I know it's been a long time coming and a lot of
7:02:16unexpected delays like unexpected rain really slowed the project down and so I want to thank our staff for moving forward with it and also want to announce that we're having office hours in Portola Park this month and we'll release the logistics of the event in the next couple of days.
7:02:57Thank you everyone. Have a good night. Thank you. Councilman Penelosa, please.
7:03:14Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just wanted to announce that on September 20th through the 22nd, I announced it at the last meeting, but since it's listed on the agenda, I wanted to point out that the city paid for my travel to travel to Sacramento to the League of California Cities annual conference where I was sworn in as second VP to represent our city on the OC division. League of California Cities like ACCOC and all these great associations that our cities are part of continues to fight for local control. Local control of all the crazy legislation that's coming out of Sacramento that the city is
7:03:19constantly keeping an eye on trying to push back and trying to make sure that we have a say on what's good and what's bad for our city and not people up in Sacramento so continue to do that for our city and happy to do it and that's it mayor Mascua good night everybody thank you councilman Hernandez please
7:03:55thank you madam I just want to thank our residents who tuned into today's meeting I want to start by giving a special thank you to Parks and Rec and Public Works on a beautiful unveiling of a brand new Santiago Park Santiago Park is one of my favorite parts in all of Santa Ana history my daughter grew up going there I grew up going there as a child so to see so many families come out bright and early looking forward to the beautiful amenities I want to thank our parks and rec staff and Public Works because the collaboration between you two as evidenced our park looks tremendous and I want to thank my
7:04:14colleague mayor pro tem Jesse Lopez I know that she was a big advocate for us as a council you know investing in parks so I also want to say thank you I want to thank my colleagues. We have an exciting calendar of diverse events to close out the year. This Saturday we have the Mid-Autumn Festival. It's a beautiful celebration. It was well attended last year. I encourage you each to be there and I'm looking forward to seeing my neighbors. I also want to thank my neighbors from Washington Square neighborhood. As you all know Ward 5 was very much a district that was impacted by lack of open space. Since being elected
7:04:49in 2020. There are two parks coming to Ward 5, one which will be unveiled in the next two weeks off of Tenth and Flower. Thank you, Parks and Rec. Thank you, Public Works. We have one off of Raitt and Myrtle, pardon me. That'll be the one that opens in two weeks at Carruthers Park. Tenth and Flower will be coming at a later date, which is in the Willard community. I want to reemphasize how important it is that we as a city work to fill those gaps that we have in the areas of open space. Washington Square is a historical neighborhood, a very diverse neighborhood with rich history that has not had access to a park.
7:05:28I look forward to working with my colleagues and our city manager on identifying a pathway forward so that we can create a park in the beautiful Washington Square neighborhood. I would like to close my comments in the memory of Felton Shipp. Mr. Felton Shipp was a San Ana resident who passed away on September 23rd. He leaves behind a legacy of family, history, culture, and community. Mr. Felton Shipp is the husband of the late, great Helen M. Shipp, who started the Orange County Black History Parade.
7:06:05Tragically, he has passed of old age, and he will be gone. He's gone but not forgotten. We will always remember him here in Santa Ana. We do have the honorary Street Toppers celebrating his wife's legacy, Helen M. Shipp. And so I just want to send my love and gratitude and strength to the family during a difficult time. May Felton Shipp rest in peace.
7:06:43Thank you. Councilmember Becerra, please.
7:07:08Thank you, Madam Mayor. On July 18th, I was selected by this council to serve as Santa Ana's voting delegate to to the League of Cities 2023 annual conference on September 20th to 22nd, which the city paid for my travel and accommodations. After attending various workshops and sessions on a variety of topics such as homelessness and municipal infrastructure, it made me appreciate what we've done here in our city on those subjects and how other California cities could actually benefit from the lessons that we've already learned here in Santa Ana and some of the best practices that we've already cultivated.
7:07:12This past Saturday, myself and Keltzmer and Peñalosa were at the Discovery Cube celebration of their 25th anniversary. And even every time I say it, it just kind of blows me away because I still remember going to Skate Ranch down the way there. And so when I think of Discovery Cube, as attractive as it is, it's still the old Barker Brothers building, but a lot better than it was back then. So I'm very happy that they've been around for 25 years and that they've been able to provide our city's youth and orange county's youth with uh engaging
7:07:48science-based programs and exhibits uh this past sunday i also had the opportunity to attend the induction ceremony for the uh 2023 class of the san anna college athletics hall of fame and talking about uh ed caruthers he was there uh though he wasn't one of the um inductees but sal mendoza former school board member a real quick story i want to tell that i really appreciate was that uh sal was running a race he was a runner and he got tripped up and so he fell and he was a fast runner but what he ended up doing is he got up he didn't complain and make a whole stink of it he
7:08:21just got up and hauled butt and finished a very close second almost beat the guy that tripped him but finished close second but the part of it that's really amazing is that because he did that his team won the entire meet because of the fact that the points he picked up for that second place finish rather than crying and complaining and laying on the side he picked himself up and busted his butt and got a strong second place and ended up helping Santa Ana College win so and there's a lot of other stories like that at the event so I just it was really wonderful to be around all
7:08:56those legends and this upcoming Saturday October 7th at 10 a.m. I'll be holding my monthly community office hours as I've done since I've been elected consistently since 2019 over at George Upton all-access park at Carl Thornton Park. Thank you Madam Mayor. Thank you Council
7:09:26Mayor Feng. Thank you Madam Mayor. On September 28th to the 22nd the city did pay for my registration for the League of California Cities and I attended and was also sworn in to be a representative for the OC Division of the League as the second district representative. Recently on September 28th I was lucky to be tapped to speak at the Rove groundbreaking and I was there with councilman Peña Losa and I'm just so excited for this innovative new business that's coming into town to make electric vehicles more accessible for our community and one of the things I forgot to mention when I was there is
7:09:42yes it's bringing jobs it's bringing fresh produce because they're collaborating with Gelson's but what I think they don't understand is that Santa Ana is one of the most polluted cities in terms of air quality and by moving toward clean energy vehicles and electric vehicles we are and they are a part of cleaning up Santa Ana's air and our environmental justice issues so I'm very glad that that is a win-win situation for all of us I'd also like to say that the Ward 1 team is collaborating with Santa Ana College on
7:10:24October 12th for a panel for those who if you want to be a lawyer join us as a lawyer on this council we get a lot of questions I get a lot of questions about you know the LSAT why do you want to go to law school what does it take what are the student loans and I have worked with our team and in fact our city attorney's office to tap either Santa Ana residents or those who have grown up in Santa Anna's Santa Anna and who are now attorneys to come back and talk to students grown-ups high schoolers anyone who wants to attend to learn about what it takes to become a lawyer and that'll be October 12 from 6 to 8 p.m. at
7:10:58lecture hall a-210 at Santa Anna College there will be food and until supplies last and finally I want to wish my dear sister a happy birthday it is her birthday this week. There are a lot of Libras and Virgos in my family and I hope that she has an amazing time. Thank you. Thank you. It's been a very busy
7:11:39time. So this weekend Councilman Penelosa and I were at the Habitat for Humanity ribbon-cutting. It was absolutely wonderful. Two families received their homes, their mortgage, but they also received new cars from AAA. And so what a blessing. They did not know about it. I don't think too many people knew it was going to happen. So it was just wonderful and lots of tears and Senator Unberg was there with us. And so it was just a great event and we blessed two families with new homes and the homes are absolutely beautiful. We took a tour of them, the central air, central heat, they're just
7:12:03and they fit right into the neighborhood so thank you for that um also i was at the santiago park grand opening re-grand opening today where we've invested 3.5 million dollars into that park and it was wonderful to be a part of that and it's not just one person up here on the council that does the work it's all of us and it's also city staff and so sometimes up here people get credit by one person depending what time of the month it is or time of the year it is but it takes a village so the city staff did a phenomenal job and so thank you to everybody who made that happen and the community that was there that are now
7:12:44going to be using the park and benefiting from it all of our constituents and so I want to thank everybody again it's not one person that makes this happen or the person in that ward it is the city staff that does the work. We show up, we speak, we talk to the constituents, we ask for things to happen, we request them, but it really is our city staff who go above and beyond and do the work. So I really want to thank them and congratulate them for our job well done. Also next week Councilman Panaloz and I are doing a walk at Memorial Park so we're looking forward to that, hearing from the residents and
7:13:24hopefully city staff will walk with us so they can hear some of their issues and concerns and then I want to thank Councilmember Becerra for going along with me and meeting with the city staff as well meeting with the governor's office and we gave them the tour of our shelter here in the city of Santa Ana they were very impressed they're happy to see the work that we're doing it was great to spend time with them and hear what's happening in Sacramento of course we asked for additional funding and that's never not in the discussion but But we reminded them that the city, that we've done a great job and will continue to do a good job.
7:14:01We're not going to solve it overnight. And we did make the comment that surrounding cities needs to also pick up their weight. And so it was a great visit. I have coffee with the mayor this Saturday, October 7th from 10 to 12 at Davis Elementary, which is at 1405 French Street. And I want to thank the staff that go out there with me. Constituents have many, many questions and lots of requests. I don't give any direction. I just let the mass staff and the staff do a phenomenal job. Police department, fire, planning, parks, rec, housing, everybody's out there to answer the questions. And so I thank you all for coming out on Saturdays.
7:14:39And then finally, or not finally, one more thing. On November 4th, I'll be having a girls conference with Girls Inc. and Santa Ana College. Really excited about that. 200 girls will be joining us at this girls conference. And so looking forward to seeing and meeting amazing young ladies and having our keynote speaker. It's going to be great. And finally, Madam City Manager, on October 17th, I'd like to add, and I'll discuss it further with the city attorney and with you or Assistant City Manager, Stephen Mendoza, I would like to add the rental registry to that next meeting,
7:15:21have a presentation, and get more information so that we can share with our constituents. Because I've been approached, and Madam City Attorney, I think I've shared with you as well, and I met with Mike, and thank you, Mr. Garcia, for your time as a staff. Lots of questions, lots of concerns, lots of letters are going out, being asked to pay money, give information, rental agreements, lease agreements, all has personal information. And I'm also concerned as a resident and as a constituent up here and as the mayor that our community is being asked for that information.
7:15:56So I'd like a presentation on October 17th because I think we pass things sometimes and we don't think long term about the effect it's going to have on people. And so you want to protect people. We talk about up here about protecting immigrant rights and things of that nature. But here we are asking for lease agreements and rental agreements. So I will close with that, and I'm looking forward to the presentation on the rental registry on October 17th. The next meeting is October 17th at 6 p.m., and this meeting is adjourned.
7:16:30Thank you.
7:17:25