Read the February 17 meeting.

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© transcript Emily Beynon

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David Penaloza

Okay, Madam Clerk, please start the meeting.

Jennifer L. Hall

Yes, Mayor Pro Tem, please go ahead.

David Penaloza

Okay, good evening everybody. I hereby reconvene the Santa Ana City Council meeting to order.

Jennifer L. Hall

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. This is a meeting to conduct the business of the City. There's an opportunity to call for a recess or break or even to clear the meeting room if a meeting becomes too disruptive to properly conduct business. Warnings will be provided before any action being taken. We appreciate your cooperation.

Jennifer L. Hall

For everyone's safety, per the Fire Marshal, please do not stand or place objects in the aisles, in front of the dais, along the back wall of the Council Chamber, or in front of any entrances or exits. During City Council presentations, guests of individuals being recognized are invited to come to the front to take photos.

David Penaloza

Madam Clerk, please conduct the roll call.

Jennifer L. Hall

Recording in progress.

Jennifer L. Hall

Councilmember Becerra?

David Penaloza

Here.

Jennifer L. Hall

Councilmember Hernandez?

Here.

Jennifer L. Hall

Councilmember Lopez?

Here.

Jennifer L. Hall

Councilmember Phan? Here. Councilmember Vasquez? Present. Mayor Pro Tempagnoloza?

David Penaloza

Present.

Jennifer L. Hall

Mayor Meskwa? Four members present. That is a quorum.

David Penaloza

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Before we proceed to the Pledge of Allegiance, please make an announcement.

Jennifer L. Hall

For members of the public 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 in Zoom now in order to be in the speaker queue once public comments commence. This does not apply to public hearing item number 17 for which comments will be heard during that specific public hearing. Please hold your comments or raise your hand on those items until specifically called upon. Thank you.

David Penaloza

The first item on the agenda is a Pledge of Allegiance. If you could all please join me in rising and facing our flag, putting your right hand over your heart and just follow along. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

David Penaloza

Words of inspiration will be provided by the police chaplain. Please come to the podium.

Tonight I have a little story to share which should be of interest, I think, to everybody because over 20 years ago I met a young man over in our police department. He was working as a janitor. He was out of high school, going to college. And I could just tell he was driven. He was excited about life. And it wasn't long after that that he talked to me about going into the military and he wanted to be a chaplain. So we met one time and he went through his training and everything he had to and he sent sent him off. 17 years later, he was back. And this last weekend, I got to be with him

in Southern California. After 17 years of being deployed around the world, Afghanistan, he was on board the Theodore Roosevelt during the time they had COVID. He traveled everywhere where God would send him. He's now a commander, Commander Espinosa. And to see him dressed, standing before the people, remembering where he began among the city, among our department. I had the privilege of asking him one question. I said, what's the first lesson you learned? And he said something peculiar. He said, it's okay not to walk on the moon. I know he looked at me because my face was puzzled, and he said, let me explain.

He goes, over these years I've learned the people at service and help us get where we're going. He goes, if you think back in history, there was a time when we first landed on the moon. two people are always remembered buzz aldrin and lance armstrong he goes but nobody remembers michael collins but he was the one that piloted from the earth to the moon that ship stayed on board while they were on the moon and retrieved them back up and then took them home and he said we're surrounded throughout our lives by people who get us where we need to be and where we go

they're the ones that are significant strategic at the right time in the right place and he said that I learned that over these 17 years. It's a simple phrase, it's okay not to walk on the moon, means that we're surrounded by people every single day that are doing great and wonderful things that may not always be in the limelight, but they make a difference. That's why tonight, as you gather here, this room's filled with those people. Our city's filled with those people. And it's a privilege. And I learned from this young man so much in my old age. So God bless you all tonight. Bless our people. Bless our city.

Bless our first responders. and all those that serve.

David Penaloza

Have a good night.

David Penaloza

Amen to that. That was beautiful. Thank you for that. Madam Clerk, are there any additions or deletions to the City Council agenda?

Jennifer L. Hall

There are none.

David Penaloza

Okay, thank you. The first presentation is by Council Member Becerra. Council Member Becerra, please take it away.

David Penaloza

And if David Moreno and Ismael Guevara for Heroic Actions could make it up to the podium, please.

Phil Bacerra

David, if you could join me up here.

Phil Bacerra

here. eyes two individuals who exemplify true courage, selflessness, awareness, and the readiness to act in a moment of need. On February 6, 2026, an unprovoked and violent assault occurred near the 1300 block of East Edinger Avenue. An 81-year-old member of our community was struck without warning, suffering a head injury, facial swelling, and a contusion above his left eye.

Phil Bacerra

That wasn't for dramatics, I swear. Given his age and frailty, this attack posed a significant risk of serious harm. After the assault, the suspect fled on foot. And despite being injured, disoriented, and shaken, the victim attempted to actually follow the suspect while also calling out for help. It was at this critical moment that two extraordinary individuals stepped forward. You can guess who I'm talking about over here, right? Ismael Guevara, who was outside his nearby workplace, immediately recognized that the elderly victim was injured and bleeding. Without hesitation, Ismael pursued the fleeing suspect.

Phil Bacerra

Ismael successfully caught up to that individual, physically detained him, and maintained control until our police arrived. At the same time, David Moreno observed the suspect running while repeatedly looking back, followed by the injured victim calling for assistance. David quickly assessed the situation and assisted in restraining the suspect and then immediately contacted 911, providing critical real-time information to our dispatch. Ismael and David helped secure the suspect and ensured that the situation remained controlled and safe until our police officers took the suspect into custody. The actions of Mr.

Phil Bacerra

Guevara and Mr. Moreno exemplify the very best of our community. Because of their quick thinking and bravery, a violent suspect was detained, further harm was prevented, and justice was able to move forward. Ismael and David placed themselves at risk to protect an elderly neighbor and assist law enforcement without any expectation of recognition or an award. So I wanted them to know and for our entire community to know that their actions are appreciated and this is what Santa Ana looks like. A community that is compassionate that will drop whatever they're doing to help one another. A

Phil Bacerra

community that has each other's back that will protect those who are being harmed here in our community. So today it's my honor on behalf of the Santa Ana City Council to recognize David Moreno and Ismael Guevara and thank them for their heroic acts and service to our community. Let's give them a round of applause.

Phil Bacerra

Do you guys like to say a couple words?

We were just in the right time and the right moment. We were hoping for any reward or recognition. recognition. We just saw someone in need of help that day and we did what we had to do onsite to be able to help this person get the aid that he needed and the help to him. That's it. Thank you.

Good evening, everybody. Thank you for being here. It's my first time being here. I just I just wanted to say that, you know, like you said, we were at the right place. It was bad timing for the man, but as soon as I saw him, I was like, hey, what happened to you? He yelled out, that guy just assaulted me. So my first reaction was go after him. Like, don't let him go. So after that, he came to assist me and we were able to get the situation settled. So thank you very much for this recognition.

David Penaloza

Okay, thank you guys. Sure. Sure.

David Penaloza

All right. The next presentation is by Councilmember Lopez to Areli Munguia for exceptional service to the community you can please both make your ways up

Jessie Lopez

hi is that Ellie here

Jessie Lopez

Okay. Good evening everybody. Today I'm actually really thrilled to be recognizing and honoring a truly remarkable young resident of our city. Arely Munguia, a Santa Ana native who has dedicated herself to uplifting our community and sharing our rich culture with joy, authenticity and heart, often commuting by foot or public transit, Arely knows our community like the back of her hand. Arely has harnessed the power of social media in a uniquely positive way. Going beyond entertainment, Arely built an online community space that sparks joy and encourages

Jessie Lopez

cultural pride. But it does so much more than that. Instead of letting social media become a distraction, she turned it into a platform for meaningful connection and community building, where others see themselves reflected and feel encouraged to grow. From this purposeful online presence, her creative persona, Payasa, in Spanish it's Payasa, in English it's clown, Payasa is a character that has become a source of inspiration and courage for many in our city. More than just a performance, Payasa is a symbol of identity, Latino America pop culture, resilience, and artistic

Jessie Lopez

expression. She views herself as a canvas cultivating humor, beauty, and soul to every piece of content that she creates. Through payasa, Arely reminds us all how quickly we grow from children to adults and everything that happens in between and how important it is to keep joy and cultural pride alive along the way. The payasa payaso has always been a symbol of resistance and creativity under an economic system that is not equal. It does not recognize micro businesses, entrepreneurs, home-based business businesses, and has pushed people to the point of asking themselves,

Jessie Lopez

how can I survive? It is not simply putting makeup on your face and calling yourself a clown. It's street theater, micro business ownership, and cultural tradition wrapped together. It is ultimately creative resilience, again, in an unequal system. Arely's journey hasn't always been easy. She once described herself as shy and introverted, young person, someone who hesitated to step into the spotlight. But by breaking out of her shell, she not only discovered parts of herself she had not known before,

Jessie Lopez

she became a light for so many in our community who are on their own journey of self-discovery and confidence. Areli's story is a testament of power, of creativity, resilience, authenticity, and community spirit, and ultimately a reminder of the places we come from and the struggles that so many people are experiencing today. So today we not only celebrate her for what she has achieved here locally, but for the way that she continues to uplift us all. Reminding everyone the culture, joy, our heart are at the center of our community and so we want to thank Arely

Jessie Lopez

for being a voice of joy, a champion of culture, and a proud daughter of Santa Ana. Thank you.

Aside from the very kind words that Miss Jessie Lopez had to say about me this evening, I wouldn't be able to be here if it weren't for the people in my life who either have been in the past or still are to this day and who I have yet to meet along the way. I knew that I would get this way, which is why I also just wanted to write down a few points that, you know, no matter where we come from and what we look like, and despite the number of eyes that I may have on me or how I may appear on the screen,

I have people who I hold close to my heart and would do anything for even if it may not come easy at times. And no matter where we come from and what we look like, we are no better than anything or anyone to treat someone else differently or less than a human being. Thank you.

David Penaloza

Okay, the next presentation is, and final, is by council member fan to ty nguyen in recognition of the 2026 tut lunar new year

Thai Viet Phan

hi good evening everyone thank you so much for waiting i will blame my colleagues for for taking too long in closed session.

Thai Viet Phan

Well, as some of you may know, today represents or is the Tet Lunar New Year. In Vietnamese, we call it Tet Nguyen Dang. And it's celebrated on the second new moon after the winter solstice and can fall any time between late January and the middle of February on the solar calendar. So according to many Asian cultures, this year's Tet falls on February 17th. and marks the first day in the Year of the Horse. People born in the Year of the Horse are known to be energetic, independent, and freedom-loving individuals.

Thai Viet Phan

They are also known for their adventurous spirit, quick wit, and strong social connections, often excelling as entrepreneurs or athletes. Today, the City of Santa Ana and I want to present Ty Nguyen with this proclamation and to recognize him for his great contributions to the Vietnamese American community. And obviously great people are always named Ty, right? Yes. You know. And so Ty Nguyen is a Vietnamese American fashion designer based out of Orange County, California and he used to be a Santa Ana resident. And in 2002 he graduated from

Thai Viet Phan

the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising and joined BCBG Max Azaria. That's fantastic. And with all this experience he eventually stepped out of the shadows to pursue his own creative vision which sparked a journey that evolved into a clothing line and a brand known for modern feminine styling adorned and exquisite detailing. I heard about Ty in the middle of COVID, think back to 2020, and all of us spending our time watching Netflix. And if you remember Say I Do, our favorite fairy gown mother, Ty Wing, was designing the wedding gowns for these couples. And that, you know, I was living out my dreams.

Thai Viet Phan

And ever since then, I've been following you on social media, all the work that you've done. And some of you might even recognize his wonderful designs because he's designed fantastic Aoyais and events for major red carpet events such as for Kelly Marie Tran the black and gold Aoyai for the premiere of Raya and the Last Dragon. Ali Wong at the Time 100 Gala personal hero and Karrueche Tran at the gold gala. Maybe one day I will be lucky

Thai Viet Phan

enough no pressure no pressure okay and my birthday's in December okay we are the best and so but despite all of this and I don't know with what time running his own business being on TV designing for other people he has written a book he co-wrote a book called my's oh yeah a children's book created to inspire and and educate younger generations to embrace and appreciate their culture and heritage through the Aoyai. And he just told me, and you're gonna have to talk about it a little bit more, he's doing a documentary.

Thai Viet Phan

Like, you need to calm down, all right? We can't all live up to those standards.

Yes, yes, yes.

Thai Viet Phan

Yes, thank you. But if you do the premiere, Mr. City Manager, we can have it in Santa Ana. Yes, thank you. The gateway to Little Saigon, just wanted you to know that. and the mural. And so today please help me in thanking Thai Nguyen for joining us and for all the contributions you've made to the Vietnamese American community. And so now the City of Santa Ana declares February 17th, 2026 as Tet Nguyen Dang or Lunar New Year and we encourage all of our residents to celebrate the richness and the cultural heritage within our community and I recognize the value contributions of Vietnamese Americans

Thai Viet Phan

and Asian Americans to Santa Ana. With that, and we wish you lots of happiness, longevity, and lots and lots of money.

Thank you.

Thank you. There you go. Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for this recognition.

I'm so surprised by this because Santa Ana, our first home was in Santa Ana and our mom, well my partner's mom is also living in Santa Ana now. And so Santa Ana, Orange County, Little Saigon is a home for us since we immigrated into the United States from Vietnam in 1993. 1993. My parents are actually in Seattle, so they couldn't be here today. So today we have my partner who's been with me for, this October will be 20 years, and his siblings and some of our friends are here today for this special occasion. And I just want to,

beside what she said, what's Ty said about Ty? I just want to say thank you for this recognition means a lot when it's coming from home, from a community that have been supporting me all these years. As immigrants, as a child immigrant in an Asian household, there is expectation. A lawyer, B doctor, C engineer, D disappointment. So as a immigrant son, a gay son who is a fashion designer it has been a lot of disappointments but I use those

disappointment as motivation as an inspiration to listen to my heart follow my passion to do what I love and I'm so grateful that I get to wake up every morning to do what I love to create beautiful design for beautiful people and I think that's what life is all about and today I have our our nieces are actually at home doing homework but our nephews are here today I just want I want to let them know that embrace your differences and be proud of who you are and use those differences to inspire you to become good human in this society, in this world and do something good for the world.

And I'm really proud and really grateful to be alive and to do what I love and get this. It's, I'm speechless. I mean, I've been talking a lot, so I'm not really speechless.

Thai Viet Phan

As speechless as Thais can be.

Yeah, and so I'm very, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart, and happy Lunar New Year, and I wish you all great health, happiness, and lots of love. Thank you so much.

Thank you for everyone who worked hard. Next time when I come back, you all get out of here. Probably. Yeah, we have a lot of time to spend a lot of time. I know. I can do a little more. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

David Penaloza

All right. thank you for that great presentation council member fan and chukmungnamoy with that madam city attorney do you have anything to report out of closed session

mayor potem council members and members of the public there's no reportable action from tonight's

David Penaloza

closed session thank you for that madam city attorney this is the time of the meeting for the city council to receive comments from the public on agenda and non-agenda items Madam City Clerk, please explain to the public the public comment procedures and call the first speakers.

Jennifer L. Hall

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Pursuant to Resolution No. 2025-004, speakers are requested to address the City Council directly and to refrain from profane language, racial epithets, and libelous or slanderous statements that may disturb the decorum of the meeting. Pursuant to the Brown Act, the City Council may not enter into discussion at this time. Speakers will have three minutes for their comments. Before calling speakers, I'll report the summary of emails. As of today by 2 p.m., the City did receive 12 e-comments on non-agenda topics. Those were distributed to the City Council and posted online for public review.

Jennifer L. Hall

We'll now hear from members of the public that are physically present in the Council Chamber, followed by those on conference call or Zoom to provide comments on agenda or non-agenda items, with the exception of Public Hearing Number 17, which will be heard separately later. Please state your name and the ward or neighborhood that you reside in for the record. When you hear your name in the Council Chamber, if you could please line up in the center aisle behind the podium. First three speakers, Tom Frazier, Johan Lopez, and Manuel Avila.

Hi.

Well, a few things tonight. And I first tie Happy New Year. She left. And to the rest of y'all, all y'all, Happy Mardi Gras as well.

A couple things. First thing, I'd like for the First Street Multimodal Boulevard Project Study, I'd like you all to look at the recommendations of strong towns. I don't know if they were included in these final three or four revisions of that project, but again, Strong Towns is very involved in that, and I think they had some good proposals.

One Broadway Plaza. It's coming up in all your guys' future. Real quick here. I did attend the Sunshine meeting a couple weeks ago. Approximately 30 people were there, maybe six or seven, probably Hera's people. So very low attendance. I am pro-development, but reasonable development. This thing is a boondoggle. And unfortunately, the mayor's not here because Hera is chatting it up like he has the mayor in his back pocket, saying that she's all for this it's going to increase revenue in the city this thing's a

boondoggle it is luxury apartments he's claiming that they're going to be market rate apartments no way he said they're starting out at the Rafferty level which I think is three thousand dollars to four thousand dollars and the prices are going to increase as you go up the tower because you get the better view okay chiefly 600 plus units chiefly studio apartments and one-bedroom apartments that's not going to be serving our residents we have people here fighting families fighting for housing here and

we're gonna go with this boondoggle of a project so really everybody especially especially people that are running for office. I hope he hasn't paid you guys off already and he doesn't have you in his back pocket because it's crazy. 37-story building, two five-star restaurants on the top of the building, nine-story parking garage,

2,400 parking spots. Ain't gonna happen. Real quick, I'm running out of time. Chief's not here, But you know, it's come up in time, Chief. I don't know if serendipity is the right word or not. We honor two people for stepping up to people that got assaulted. I've witnessed two assaults by these thugs that have gone around jumping out and picking up people off the street. It is very disturbing. It's about time our local PD, DA, or somebody does something about it. Thanks.

Jennifer L. Hall

Johan Lopez, Manuel Avila, Carla Alvarado.

Hello, ma'am. Am I, is this my time? When does it start? Hello, my name is Manuel Antonio Avila and I have a very big project for you guys. Last time I was here, I talked about the Emanuel Bell Prophecy and Emmy through Kiali, but now I have the explanation of the Emanuel Bell Prophecy and you can see that it is a powerful prophecy. It's something that I found artistically, and I love it as an artistic beauty, and I try to reminisce and emulate Jesus with the art structure that the Lord has given me. My name is Manuel, and my art structure has so much power that I think the government should

make a funny introduction of it or explanation that it is beautiful. I'm not saying that it's God, because God can be anything, like different religions and stuff, but look at this. The The prophecy says, Leviticus 23.5 says, in the 14th day of the first month, even as the Lord's Passover. And my birthday is actually basically twilight. On Passover, the 14th day of the first month, and I found out that my prophecy got stronger. That's one of the powerful things, that my prophecy is the 14th day of the first month. But I found out that my soulmate, who's very important in Hinduism and Christianity,

both prophecies of Vishnu and Jacob, I just found out yesterday, the day, I mean, on the day after Thanksgiving, that Lucas's birthday actually does correlate relate towards my birthday infinitely, overlappingly with the exact date. So Leah's birthday is Passover too, because Passover can be celebrated on the 15th of the first month. And then it's my history that allows Leah to actually bask in my friend's birthday, because their birthdays are connected in my brain, and they never got disconnected. So it's actually a loophole of my life that allows Leah's birthday to ramshur out of the art and see her birthday, February 18th,

as Passover out of the Bible. It was pretty cool, because 15 and 18 are linked to my brain, and 15th is one of the dates that can be converted for Passover celebration, and it also says that February is one of the months that can be converted towards Passover celebration, where they celebrate it over on the 14th or the 15th, and that converts to the 18th because those two friends are linked together,

birthday competitively, where I don't know which one is which, and then look at this. And they departed from Ramses in the first month on the 14th day, on the 15th day of the first month, on the morrow after the Passover. So, those are four verses about Passover in the Bible. That's my birthday. Joshua 5.10 is another Passover verse. 2 Chronicles chapter 30 verse 2. For taking counsel on his princes and all the congregation of Jerusalem to the Passover in the second month. So, that's the one I found that amplifies my prophecy so powerfully in a way that it was already powerful. And then,

I think Christian community update it but if you see on I don't if you can see this and like blow it up as a whole bunch of cobalt versus and on this is another on rap group that I believe should be rewarded as essential angel with our government because they actually on breached on enlightenment and education with 10 of our prophecy and the architecture that it represents and that it could become and all this is the the art synchronicities that the Clockwork Indigo Movement had provided towards elaborating upon our prophecy and how they have wrapped it on me and my friend Leah infinitely. And we're so grateful.

Please reward the Clockwork Indigo Movement, please.

I love you. Sorry I didn't explain all of them. But I'll have more at meetings with you guys. I love you. The property's easy to get, Charlie. I was betting so much that I was going to get it.

Jennifer L. Hall

Johan Lopez, Carla Alvarado, and Crystal Gallegos.

Can you do them? And Christian, I see. Good afternoon, Mayor and members of the Santa Ana City Council. Especially good afternoon, Ms. Jessie Lopez. Good afternoon. My name is Johan Lopez, and I am a lifelong resident of Santa Ana, raised in a low-income household by immigrant parents. And I stand before you today as a first-generation college student at UCLA. My family story is not unique in the city. It is a story of many families here, families who work hard, who care deeply for one another and who too often must choose between essential needs because health care remains out of reach. I am also a cancer survivor. That

experience changed the way I understand medicine, prevention, and time itself. When you are faced a life-threatening illness, you learn very quickly that prevention is not abstract. Early detection is not theoretical. It is a quiet difference between suffering that could have been avoided and healing that arrives in time. That is why I'm here today. There is a community, there are Our clinic, the Community Dental Care, is located at 1600 North Broadway in Santa Ana that is currently providing free dental screenings and treatment with no out-of-pocket costs, six days a week. For many residents in our city,

especially working families, immigrants, veterans, and those living paycheck to paycheck, this is not simply helpful, it is essential. In low-income communities, the question is really whether people value their health. The question is whether they can afford to protect it. Too often pain is endured in silence because care feels financially impossible or because navigating the healthcare system feels overwhelming. When prevention is inaccessible, small problems become emergencies and emergencies become lifelong burdens. This clinic exists to interrupt that cycle.

It is supported direct by members by other local community who believe that access to dental care is not a privilege reserved by a few but a basic form of dignity that every resident deserves. The staff is fully bilingual in English and Spanish with Vietnamese teams, members, and volunteers who reflect the cultural richness of Santa Ana. Free dental screenings are not minor services. They are moments of protection. They allow cavities to be treated, gum disease to be controlled, and oral cancer to be detected before it becomes life-threatening.

They reduce life-term health costs, prevent missed days of school and work, and preserve something we rarely name but always feel, the simple stability of being well. Today, I respectfully ask the City of Santa Ana to help ensure that every resident knows this resource exists. Through letters, through city newsletters, social media, schools, community centers, and partnerships with veteran organizations, we have the ability to transform awareness into action and prevention into protection. Because when healthcare is accessible, children learn without pain, parents work without fear, families remain financially stable

and the entire city grows stronger. Santa Ana has always been a city defined not only by struggle but by resilience, by neighbors caring for neighbors and by communities refusing to leave one another behind. Expanding awareness of preventive dental care is one small but meaningful way we can continue that traditional care. Thank you for your time, your leadership and your continued commitment to the people of Santa Ana. Thank you.

Jennifer L. Hall

Carla Alvarado followed by Crystal Gallegos and Victor Fuentes.

Good evening, Council Members. My name is Carla Alvarado. Did you guys all receive my email two weeks ago after we were here?

All of you guys? I'm hoping that you guys did. it um it's been two weeks since i reached out to you guys to the city and um i honestly want to know if you guys were left homeless like a lot of us are still i'm facing this and it's a rapid thing going on would you guys have acted this slow 15 days might not seem like a lot to you guys but But honestly, time is the essence and it's critical that we get something done. I'm sure that there's a lot more that can be done.

And it's really, it might not seem like it's being addressed or given the priority that it needs to be. But honestly, we're still hurting. I still haven't been allowed to sell my home. I'm still suffering. My kids are still hurting. So, like I was asking if you guys received that email, we stood here and swore allegiance earlier to liberty and justice for all. Those words are supposed to mean something, not just when it's convenient, not just when it looks good, but when residents stand here asking to be treated fairly. So where is that liberty?

Where is justice when people are ignored, when people are dismissed or pushed aside? side. A pledge is a promise and tonight it feels hollow. We are not asking for special treatments, we're asking for the same justice we just pledged to uphold. If those words are going to be spoken in this chamber, they should be honored in action, not just recited as ceremony. We're here today because we exercise our first amendment and civil rights and we were punished for it. We feel like our city has failed us we live in fear and are targeted daily by the corporation and outside

corporation and by our management our residents are here hiding crying daily in our community what are you guys going to do about it every day that goes by is crucial for us we deserve justice that sign back there that you have e pluribus unum it says it means out of many one that's what i think that my city means this is not a motto it's a promise our city has broken individually we're overlooked. Together, we're evidence. Together, we demand justice, transparency, and the protections of our civil rights that our civil rights guarantee. We will not be ignored. We won't be silenced. E pluribus unum, out of many, one isn't

just historical, it's a reminder of collective strength. When people are facing pressure, injustice, and instability, the phrase speaks to a simple truth. Individuals acting alone are often dismissed. United, a group is harder to be ignored. We're strongest when we act as one calmly, clearly, and together. We were elected to serve the people, yet we're left homeless, silenced, and powerless while systemic abuse unfolds before your eyes. You want to say something real quick?

Okay. Good evening, city council. My name is Krista Gallegos and I live in Ward 5. I want to speak today on a non-agenda item. I live really close by to where this project is being proposed, the One Broadway Plaza. I literally live right across the street from it. I've grown up and on January 28th some neighbors and I attended the sunshine meeting hosted by Caribou Industries and I came into the meeting thinking I'm gonna keep an open mind see if they've made any like changes to the project they haven't it's the same as it is before and I went away I left that

meeting feeling very scared for myself and for my neighbors of how this project would impact our neighborhood this project proposes a 37 story tower or skyscraper that will only include luxury housing options as a member of the public shared before i did that will only really help people who aren't like low income or need the housing here in the city not only is the height of this building highly concerning again 37 stories which is a lot bigger than any other existing buildings in the area but also the impact to congestion traffic and air pollution and also the obliviousness i would say of the developers of

of this project. At the Sunshine meeting, there wasn't much concern of the schools and the children and the families who live in the area. And as someone who's literally lived there all my life, I attended El Sol Academy that's right across the street. It just caused a lot of worry for myself and my neighbors in the Willard neighborhood. So I seriously think that in between everything that has impacted our Santa Ana community, like in the past few years, we've had COVID. We've had the OC streetcar, which unfortunately has affected our downtown businesses. Right now, we're having

these ice raids. I feel like the last thing we really need right now is a luxury development that will only really cater to honestly no one who really lives in the neighborhood or who needs this type of housing. So that being said, if there's anyone watching who would like to get involved, please you can always talk to me. Anyone at home or here who's interested to learn more about this one Broadway Plaza project. Myself and a few neighbors in Willard are getting together and we're just trying to do our best to make sure you all know about this project which i'm sure you do and make sure that anyone who wasn't aware that

they they can find information and connect with each other as neighbors so we can support each other so yeah those are my two cents thank you uh good evening uh members of the council my name is victor fuentes yeah the reason i'm here is because i'm uh uh living uh proof and living witness of uh what my fellow neighbors just talked about of the place of Coach Royale that we're living in. So we're not living in a community anymore.

So we're living in a dictatorship there because I'm not against any rules and regulations, but I'm against the rules and regulations that they fit their will. So they told us flat out that we have to pretty much be like robots and follow whatever they're saying. And the reason we've been punished, obviously I'm getting evicted too. I don't know if next week I'll be homeless or not.

So I'm here to ask for help.

Obviously, we're fighting Goliath because they have money, they have lawyers, and they have plenty of resources, and we're David. And even though we don't have the resources, we have the strength to fight because we're not making things up. We're speaking the truth.

And I think the truth is something that it doesn't matter how much money you have, the truth always is going to win. So right now, I really thank you all. Obviously, this is my first time speaking to an audience and I'm a little bit nervous

and emotional because obviously I have a family and I don't know if my kids are going to be homeless even though they're adults they still with us we're a family oriented and it would know where when I be next week because next week is what I want to see what's gonna happen so we getting evicted and not because we break any rule and regulation is because they they don't like us there we speak our truth truth, we fight for our rights, and we stand up as a community, and that's what they fear us.

So, obviously, like I said, they have the money, we don't. So we need help, orientation, and obviously, guide us to fight this Goliath. And because we're speaking the truth, I mean, we're not hiding anything. Thank you.

Jennifer L. Hall

Mayor Pro Tem and City Council, that concludes the public speakers that are present. We'll now go to the Zoom speaker. When unmuted, please announce your name and the ward or neighborhood that you reside in within the city for the record. Victor Mendez, please unmute and make your comment.

Good evening. Can you hear me?

Jennifer L. Hall

Yes, go ahead. Okay.

Okay, so number 19 for your work session on the East First Street Multimotor Project. So I recommend tonight, tonight you approve the East Side concept, which is presented on slide number 48. That project will run from Zoo Lane to Sustin Avenue. The project has been deferred for several months, but the timing is still very good. In fact, it's perfect. The area is prime for this project and moving forward will certainly provide outstanding returns to the substantial amount of money the city's already invested particularly in the cleanup and the um upgrade of various um businesses and the street

itself uh so please continue all the projects that progress has been made along east first street by relighting this particular part tonight and moving it forward staff did a very good job in putting that out and I hope you can consider that. Number eight, the general liability and work comp payment report. You know, I had kind of a mixed reaction. First, it's good to know Santa and PD have taken a very proactive response to reducing or eliminating the trends that were presented on the work compensation side and seems well positioned for success based on my conversations. However, the report does not include the critical drivers

of in-work comp, namely attorney fees and medical costs. Those are huge and they kind of, you know, underscore what's really happening. The other aspect is that, you know, I think the report in itself indicates a need for strong litigation strategies, bring these cases to a more effective closure. Also, the report didn't really include aggregates, which would have been good to have and understand magnitude of size, et cetera. Finally, it's very difficult to understand why this report was never issued up until now despite a council revolution over the past seven years.

And as a citizen, you know, I've commented on this over the last five of those seven years. So this is a very difficult circumstance to accept. I understand you're moving forward, new city manager, new chief of police, et cetera, et cetera. But I think there's some staff that have been around since then and I think you have a reckoning about that to make sure it does not repeat itself in the future. Lastly, on the city manager report, a few comments. 32,000 for a Christmas tree, and that's all good, but perhaps an artificial tree can be procured and saved us some money down the road over the longer term.

$19,000 for employee recognition catering, and I think employee recognition is important, but consider the optics as fees are increased for residents. Number 70, $499,000 for stripping. I think that might be misplaced or a typo because of course both be for under 50,000 and lastly number 107 $3,700 for furniture for a wellness room for Santa PV I think it's money well spent it'll certainly hopefully go toward injury prevention and productivity for our police department which in turn helps with better response time and a better

Jennifer L. Hall

staff Victor your time is up thank you mayor Pro Tem and City Council that concludes the public speakers this evening thank you madam clerk consent

David Penaloza

CONSENT CALENDAR ITEMS NUMBERS 4-15 ARE BEFORE US. COUNCILMEMBERS, PLEASE ANNOUNCE ANY ITEMS THAT YOU WILL BE ABSTENING FROM DUE TO A CONFLICT AND IF THERE ARE ANY REQUESTS TO PULL AN ITEM FROM THE CONSENT CALENDAR, PLEASE FOR FURTHER DISCUSSION, PLEASE DO SO NOW.

Phil Bacerra

IF THERE'S NONE TO PULL, I'LL GO AHEAD AND MOVE THE AGENDA.

David Penaloza

I'LL SECOND THE CALENDAR. OKAY. I HAVE A MOTION AND A SECOND. Second motion by Councillor Becerra and second by Councillor Hernandez to move the consent calendar. Madam Clerk, please have the roll call.

Thai Viet Phan

Councillor Becerra. Yes, I did open the vote. Go ahead.

David Penaloza

One second. Councillor Becerra. Apologies.

Thai Viet Phan

I don't have anything to pull or recusal, but there was a recusal on the closed session item that was added.

Sonia R. Carvalho

We had two items of potential litigation on the agenda, and when it was discovered what those were in disclosed and closed session council member um van uh recused herself from and did not

Thai Viet Phan

participate in the room but i can't announce who it is correct but it is a conflict of interest

David Penaloza

due to my employer thank you thank you for that council member fan madam clerk may i please have

Jennifer L. Hall

the roll call um motion by council member becerra seconded by council member hernandez to approve consent calendar items 4 through 15. council member becerra yes council member hernandez Yes. Council Member Lopez? Yes. Council Member Phan? Yes. Council Member Vazquez? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempano Loza?

David Penaloza

Yes.

Jennifer L. Hall

Votes 6 ayes, no nays with the recorded absence by Mayor Homescua. Motion carries.

David Penaloza

Thank you Madam Clerk.

David Penaloza

Let's see where are we now. So that takes care of items.

David Penaloza

ITEM 16 FROM THE BUSINESS CALENDAR. THAT'S KIND OF A FIRST THAT WE DON'T HAVE ANY CONSEQUENT DISCUSSIONS SO IT THREW ME OFF A LITTLE BIT. THANK YOU, COLLEAGUES. BUT NUMBER 16 OF THE BUSINESS CALENDAR IS AN ORDINANCE PROHIBITING ANTICOMPETITIVE AUTOMATED RENT PRICE FIXING. MR. CITY MANAGER, MAY WE PLEASE HAVE THE STAFF PRESENTATION. SECRETARY OF DIRECTOR,

Alvaro Nuñez

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT, MIKE ISAIAH WILL MAKE THE PRESENTATION.

MAYOR PRO TEMP, CITY COUNCIL, The item before the City Council for consideration tonight would allow the City of Santa Ana to follow a process that has been actually handled in a lot of other cities such as Berkeley, San Diego, Portland. The Department of Justice, to give a little background, they moved forward on a lawsuit against Real Page. That was settled back in November. The State of California in October, the The governor signed into law some changes that went into effect January 1st, and so that provides additional protection.

And all of this is related to an algorithm that has been created that would unfairly create the rental market rent rates. And so what cities throughout the U.S. have done is adopt an ordinance, and that is what is before the Council of the Day. the lawsuit between the city of Berkeley and RealPage has also been settled and so what this would do is allow the City Council to put the ordinance on the books here in Santa Ana so if anything changes at the state level our residents are protected and the ordinance will be on the books here in Santa Ana and if

any anything else happens you can always make an amendment to the ordinance in the future to the section of the Municipal Code if it is approved and And what it's doing is an algorithm has been created with different companies. RealPage is one of them. And what it does is it takes information that's publicly available and stuff that might not be publicly available. And they're trying to set what a market rate would be for all two-bedroom apartments, for instance, in Santa Ana. Well, depending on where that apartment is, how old that building might be, they should be very different in those rental rates.

And so what the algorithm is doing is creating an unfair advantage for landlords. And so what the ordinance would do is prohibit the use and the sale of algorithms to landlords within the city of Santa Ana. If there are any additional questions, I'm here to provide additional answers and advice.

David Penaloza

Thank you for that, Director Garcia. So there's no PowerPoint presentation, correct, Mr. City Manager? Wonderful. Okay. Okay, I will now turn it over to my colleagues. If anyone has, Council Member Hernandez, go ahead, followed by Council Member Becerra

Johnathan Ryan Hernandez

and Council Member Lopez. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tempagnolosa. Thank you for the presentation, Director Mike Garcia. I had the pleasure of meeting with staff for my agenda review, and I'm happy with the city attorney's work on this item. I'll make a motion to move this item, thank you.

David Penaloza

Okay, thank you for that motion, Council Member Hernandez. Council Member Becerra, please go ahead.

Phil Bacerra

Thank you, Mayor Pro Temp. So my question goes back to, and I don't know if this is going to be for Director Garcia or our city attorney, but so I was a little frustrated because when this item came before us last time, we talked about litigation that the city of Berkeley was facing. And that litigation was significant enough that Berkeley hit the pause button on their ordinance. And so my concern was, in looking at the staff report and the draft ordinance, there was one mention of Berkeley. one mention, and it said, RealPage filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Berkeley in April, 2025, challenging their ordinance

Phil Bacerra

that bans landlords from using algorithmic revenue management software for setting rates. While the litigation is pending, and as RealPage will be monitored, city renters cannot wait for the lawsuit to run its course. With all due respect, I disagree, because I think our city renters, our city homeowners, our city businesses are better served when the city is not facing further lawsuits. Director Garcia, you said that the litigation has been settled.

That's correct. At the time when the staff report was being prepared, we had heard they were coming to a settlement, and our city attorney staff has mentioned that it has indeed been settled.

Sonia R. Carvalho

So when was it settled? The case actually settled, according to our records, on January 14th of this year, 2026. When we prepare these types of things, our staff will look at updates. They'll look like a PACER system. That's where they actually, court clerks will enter information. Today actually, quite frankly, based on some questions that you asked, I asked my staff to not just rely on that, but to actually call up to the Berkeley City Attorney's Office. They were able to make that connection. And I was advised that that was settled on the 14th and that they had entered, that they had actually adopted a new ordinance.

Sonia R. Carvalho

So we took a look at that ordinance today. We looked at it. We believe that the ordinance that's in front of you, because that ordinance that we presented to you was not based on Berkeley's ordinance. It was actually based on San Diego's ordinance. San Diego had already made some improvements to their ordinance in light of the Berkeley litigation. So we actually crafted ours more along the San Diego lines. And then we went and redlined the old Berkeley ordinance with the new Berkeley ordinance. And we do not believe that our ordinance needs to have any changes.

Sonia R. Carvalho

changes. There was one thing in a recital in the Berkeley ordinance which said what the ordinance is not intended to do. If you wanted to add that, it might be a nice thing to add, but it's not legally necessary. The ordinance that we have before you, we believe is legally sound.

Phil Bacerra

So you said that the litigation was settled in January? January 14th.

Sonia R. Carvalho

Did Berkeley adopt their new ordinance yet? I believe that they have. I think that was the information that we got today.

Phil Bacerra

Okay. I guess I'm just going to express my frustration that you have a city like Berkeley who has demonstrated a commitment to their residents and they put forth this ordinance or their version of the ordinance and they were facing litigation. And so they said, whoa, this is going to be, and their quote was significant costs for the city. So they hit the pause button. Berkeley did, right? Berkeley hit the pause button. Here in Santa Anna that same concern was raised and yet our staff and I'm looking at the city attorney and community development one mention of the word Berkeley one mention and that was yeah well it's

Phil Bacerra

too too important to wait I I don't that just seems very reckless this seems very irresponsible to just simply oh yeah it's happening oh well I mean so I guess what I'm frustrated also is just There's the timing. Did nobody bother to check before the staff report came before us? Madam City Attorney, I look at Mike Garcia because this is within his shop, but this is a legal issue. Are you not checking, especially because we talked about it in open session. It wasn't like it was just something that sprung up in an email today. This is something that was known about this item, that there's a litigation in another

Phil Bacerra

other city with significant costs to that city. And yet when this report came to us, nothing in the report, but in the ordinance, the draft ordinance, there's one mention of Berkeley and it says, yeah, but it's too important, we gotta pass.

Sonia R. Carvalho

We added that recital after staff had prepared the ordinance, our office actually added the reference to Berkeley, because you know that I like to disclose to you when we believe there's litigation out there. But we also presented that because as you may recall, when the item was brought forward, we were actually directed to prepare it. there was there was direction to do that we then got a call from from our staff asking us to prepare it and that's what we did so I totally understand your frustration I totally understand that you're you have concerns but we did our

Sonia R. Carvalho

best to disclose from the legal standpoint that's why we disclosed it based on your question I wanted to follow up with the city of Berkeley our staff did that just this morning and we found out that it had been settled so so

Phil Bacerra

So your reference in here, again, in the ordinance, the recital that you're talking about, all it says is that Real Page filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Berkeley in April, 2025. It doesn't say, hey, council, just FYI, you may wanna be concerned that there could be some significant cause. You don't mention anything. Just simply, the fact is a lawsuit was filed.

Sonia R. Carvalho

But if you go back and look at the time, I just wanna make sure I get this correct. When council, I think it was Council Member Lopez, when you raised this issue and you asked your colleagues to bring it forward, forward. We had a very extensive conversation about that. If you go back and read the transcripts, you'll see that we did that. And notwithstanding that, we were asked to draft the ordinance. So I don't question your policy direction.

Phil Bacerra

No, but this isn't about whether you were asked to draft the ordinance or not. This is your role to say to us, this is fine. In other words, everything you're telling us verbally tonight, everything you're telling us should have been in the staff report. I

Sonia R. Carvalho

potential litigation? Well I believe that I made that disclosure at the earlier conversation when this item was presented to me for review because I review the ordinance I put that disclosure in the ordinance. So you

Phil Bacerra

didn't think it was necessary when the item came back to remind us of the

Sonia R. Carvalho

potential litigation issues? I don't I do not I believe that I was very adamant at the first meeting and disclosing to you what I thought were considerable risks and notwithstanding those risks I was given direction by a majority of the council and i i have to perform at the majority vote it's not about performing for the majority

Phil Bacerra

it's about just giving all of us your legal advice that's what it is it's not saying look i'm going to support this ordinance tonight let me finish i'm going to support this ordinance tonight but my hesitation going into it and what i expressed at the previous meeting was the concern about litigation all you had to put in here is some of what we talked about earlier today via email which was, yeah, I looked it up, and yeah, you're fine. But it took my inquiry today for you to disclose that to us. We didn't know that when we had the discussion before. So it's fair to say...

David Penaloza

Councillor Bussera... Hold on, hold on.

Phil Bacerra

There are new facts that were introduced. I think that's something you should have included in the staff report.

Sonia R. Carvalho

I don't draft staff reports. Mayor Pro Tem, if I may just have an opportunity to respond. I don't draft staff reports. I don't review staff reports. unless I see an issue, I will ask staff to show me a staff report. And if I believe there are issues that need to be disclosed, I will disclose them. In this particular case, the Council, I would ask the Council members were well aware that this ordinance had created litigation in Berkeley. Notwithstanding that, we were asked to draft the ordinance. So I went, what I did do is disclose it in the recitals, because I think that a fair

Sonia R. Carvalho

criticism would be if I didn't say anything to you, if I didn't reference Berkeley. I, I, it is a very careful balance to point out to you after you've made a policy decision to move forward on something, to point out to you, hey, look, slow down, caution. I think that's what we did by adding that language in the ordinance. We prepared it and we gave it back to staff. If staff wanted to change their staff report and add further information about that, that would be their job to do.

Phil Bacerra

You think the staff, you think the city manager should be adding in legal advice?

Sonia R. Carvalho

No. Okay. I think if staff is aware that we have legal concerns, I don't draft the staff reports. I can give advice, and I often do suggest that they do this or that, but we don't draft the staff reports.

Phil Bacerra

No, that's fine.

David Penaloza

Okay, we're going to come back to you, Councillor Becerra. Councillor Becerra, Councillor Lopez, can you please go ahead?

Jessie Lopez

Yes, thank you. Well, first I want to thank our team, the City Manager's Office and the City Attorney's Office, because this is good policy. This will protect all the renters of our city. It does not matter if you're in a market rate unit or not, right? The purpose here is to prohibit the consolidation of our local housing market, which is again just contributing to the bigger issue of people who are getting rent increases year after year because perhaps their data is being used against them. And so my job is to fight for a good policy. This is something that we strongly believe in. This is something

Jessie Lopez

that the state obviously has heard the calls of thousands of people and not just our state but many other jurisdictions and so I do recall when we had this conversation with my office introduced this item you know the concerns that other cities were essentially experiencing we are this council is not new to the strategy of litigation being used as a strategy to to stop good policy from being implemented. And so that's really at the core issue here. And part of the direction was that your offices spoke to these jurisdictions that had defeated or that had settled

Jessie Lopez

so that we could learn what they did differently so that we could implement that. And so again, I wanna thank you. I know you've all been working on this over the holidays because you also recognize the benefit that I will have for our constituents. I do want to thank my colleagues. They supported this which is why it moved forward and it is coming back and I think that people can understand why this is needed not just in in the city of Santa Ana but I think as a model in terms of a blueprint that other cities can also implement that can be litigation proof right because we're not

Jessie Lopez

taking it another city's ordinance and just copying and pasting we're actually comparing them we're figuring out what worked here what didn't work here so again for us I just want to thank our team for the work that they've done we believe that this is good policy and ultimately this is policy meant to protect all of the renters of our community thank you okay thank you for

David Penaloza

that comes from her Lopez comes from her Vasquez please thank you I want to thank

Benjamin Vazquez

Councilmember Lopez for bringing this to the dais and for the vote and the remarks we had. Thank you for the work that we had and preparation. Madam City Attorney, I do remember you bringing up Berkeley and we knew we had a struggle in front of us as we called this to be moved on. Now that Berkeley has won, it is more useful to us to have this policy ready to go. In my ward, in the center of Santa Ana a one bedroom is now $2,100. That's the mortgage of my house on Van Ness Street

Benjamin Vazquez

for a three bedroom, 6,000 square foot lot, three bedroom house. An apartment now on Bishop, on Townsend are $2,100 for a one bedroom house. So this is very much necessary of how rent has has gone up extremely in the city of Santa Ana, in the heart of Santa Ana, where our families can't afford and they're moving into those one bedrooms as that is all they can afford. Thank you.

David Penaloza

Thank you, Council Member Vasquez. Council Member Phan, please.

Thai Viet Phan

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I'm excited to support this item. I thank you, Council Member Lopez, for bringing this forward and to our state legislators for thinking about this. As we all know, with the use of technology, AI, and algorithmic price setting. It's impacting so many aspects of our lives today. And when it comes to housing, that is the most fundamental need each of us have. And so I'm very supportive of this. There's always going to be litigation whenever we do anything to support and help those who need it most in our community. And I think that's a fight worth having. So I'm excited to vote for this, and I look forward

Thai Viet Phan

to it helping our residents. Thank you.

David Penaloza

Thank you, Councillor Fann. Any other members of the Council wishing to make comment?

Phil Bacerra

I'll just go ahead and second it because I don't think it had a second. So let's second it.

David Penaloza

Okay. Thank you. So it's a motion by Councillor Hernandez and a second by Councillor Becerra. Please I guess our screens are working right. They were working the first time but I didn't notice. So please use your devices in front of you.

Jennifer L. Hall

This is to introduce for first reading an ordinance of the City Council of the City of Santa Ana prohibiting anti-competitive automated rent price fixing.

Jennifer L. Hall

And the vote is 6 ayes, no nays. Motion carries.

David Penaloza

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Now we move on to item number 17, which is a public hearing relating to the purchase and sale agreement for 1901 West Walnut Street. Mr. City Manager, may we please have the staff presentation?

Jennifer L. Hall

If I could please make the announcement for the public speakers first.

David Penaloza

Oh, sure. Go ahead.

Jennifer L. Hall

Thank you. Yes.

David Penaloza

Before hearing public hearing item number 17, Madam Clerk, please provide instructions to the public who would like to make a comment on this public hearing item only.

Jennifer L. Hall

Thank you so much. Members of the public joining us by way of Zoom or conference call who would like to comment on public hearing item number 17 only, the purchase and sale agreement, please dial star 9 from your phone or select raise hand from Zoom now in order to be in the speaker queue once the public hearing is open following the staff presentation.

David PenalozaItem 1

Are there any...

Jennifer L. HallItem 1

Do you want to hear the staff presentation before you open the hearing?

David PenalozaItem 1

Ah, okay. Yes. Item number 17 is a public hearing relating to the purchase and sell agreement for 1901 West Wilderness Street. Mr. City Manager, presentation please.

Alvaro NuñezItem 1

Just a quick introduction from Community Development Director Mike Garcia. No formal PowerPoint presentation.

So Mayor Pro Tem, City Council, the item before City Council for consideration is the sale of a 0.38 acre parcel that was acquired by the city back in 2007. The prior structure had been demolished back in 2011. 11 and then the City Council approved a disposition development agreement with thrive to create a regenerative farm cafe operations artists and retail space and community gathering areas a lot Colmena is a micro farm that provides local food access small business development workforce participation and

long-term community steward stewardship our planning and building agency went went through a review. This property is in a C2 commercial zone, which is a permitted use, the micro farm. It went through a mitigated negative declaration, and there was actually soil contamination at the site that was handled through working with Thrive and UC Irvine on a really great process using bioremediation. Planning and building has also determined

that the sale conforms with the 2022 general plan update what is before the city council is not just the sale but also uh in a 178 000 difference between what the property was appraised at which was 1 million uh thirty thousand dollars and what they are proposing to acquire the site at 852 000 The reason for that is that they received a grant from the state of California, and that grant had set the acquisition price at $852,000.

So an economic subsidy report is required for this purchase and sale agreement. That is also in front of the city council tonight. The CERN Plus Land Act compliance has been met. It is under a one-half acre, and it's not contiguous to any qualifying public land. And so the state HCD has signed off on this. And basically, the $178,000 is what is in the economic subsidy report right now. This would be a nice windfall compared to the monthly rent that we're receiving at $1 a month

from Thrive for the next 95 years. So the item before for consideration is to approve the recommendation is to approve the subsidy, adopt the economic subsidy report, which will be maintained on our city website, and allow La Colmena to continue operating. We did add in language about not being able to sell it to, and they have agreed to this, and it's in the purchase and sale agreement that the property will be continued as a micro farm it wouldn't be sold to another group that's going to be utilizing it for another type of use so

we're happy that we've been able to reach this purchase and sale agreement and ready for any

David PenalozaItem 1

questions from the council thank you for that presentation um i will now uh call on councilman

Benjamin VazquezItem 1

revasquez for comments thank you so much i'm excited about this cell of land it's a beautiful BEAUTIFUL FARM. IT'S IN TWO BLOCKS FROM MY HOUSE. IT IS IN COUNCIL MEMBER HERNANDEZ'S WARD BUT I ENJOY IT SO MUCH AND HAVING COFFEE THERE. I INVITE EVERYBODY TO COME AND VISIT. THERE WAS A CONCERN THAT YOU JUST SPOKE TO, DIRECTOR MCGORGY, ON SECTION 310.1, PROHIBITION ON ASSIGNMENT OR TRANSFER. IS THAT EXACTLY WHAT YOU SAID? ONLY IF THEY CHANGE IT? THAT'S CORRECT. WILL THE CITY SAY WE'LL BUY IT BACK? OR WHAT HAPPENS IF THEY TRY TO SELL If they try to sell it or change it or change it.

They would have to just work with the city to make sure that we approve with the sale and it fits within the construct of what the current use is.

Benjamin VazquezItem 1

So we can't arbitrarily just change it without them doing something different. Thank you.

David PenalozaItem 1

Thank you for that, Councilman Vasquez. Councilman Hernandez, please.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 1

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tempanguiloza. And thank you, Director Mike Garcia. I also want to send a big thank you to La Colmena for the amazing work that they do in the city of Santa Ana I will put a motion on the floor to approve this item

David PenalozaItem 1

thank you thank you for that motion before we do that let's close the public hearing first but I think we still have anybody else wants to speak the only

Jennifer L. HallItem 1

clarifying go ahead I'm sorry just to clarify and besides whatever comments you all are making as the council you will still need to open the public hearing to hear the public comments and then close and then a motion could be Thank you.

David PenalozaItem 1

Mr. Director Garcia, the only clarifying question I had is I know that we, if for whatever reason they sell the property, that difference in payment or market value compared to what they're buying it from us now, do we get that back?

That's correct. The $178,000 would come back to us if they were to sell it with within a 30 year time frame.

David PenalozaItem 1

Perfect. Yeah. Within how many years? A 30 year covenant. 30 year. Okay. So within 30 years if they sell it for market rate, whatever that is, we will make sure to get that money back from them. That's correct. Okay.

David PenalozaItem 1

That is the only questions I had. I guess I now open the public hearing for members of the public that would like to provide their comments in person. And virtually, Madam City Clerk, do we have any speakers?

Jennifer L. HallItem 2

Yes, Mayor Pro Tem and City Council, we do have speakers both in person and on Zoom. Before calling them, I'll note for the record that we did receive two e-comments related to this public hearing prior to 2 p.m. today. Those were distributed to the City Council and made available online for public review. So we'll call the speakers here in person first. If you could please line up behind the podium when you hear your name. Speakers will have three minutes for their comments. Ricardo Muniz, Ana Leti Hernandez, and Maria Andrade.

David PenalozaItem 2

Go ahead.

Well, thank you, Mayor Bortrem and Council Members, for this opportunity. My name is Ricardo, and I serve as the Community Engagement Advisor for Thrive Santa Ana. In my role, I have the opportunity to witness La Colmena, not simply as a site, but as a space shaped by real participation and long-term relationships. Community engagement here has never meant outreach alone. It has meant shared decision-making. Through our membership structure, governance committee, residents are involved in the conversations about land use, programming, stewardship, and the direction of the organization.

They are not observers, they are contributors and leaders. La Colmena has also been a place of El Mercadito Carrusel, a community-rooted marketplace that creates accessible entry points for small entrepreneurs. Many vendors participate where there is also mutual aid, so it becomes more than just commerce. It becomes confidence building, skill development, and community visibility. I've seen neighbors meet each other for the first time here. I've seen youth observe adults modeling collaboration and collective responsibility.

I've seen how this space holds cultural expression, economic opportunity, and organizing under one roof. So, La Colmena contributes economically, but its impact is also relationship and civic. It strengthens local leadership and reinforces the idea that land can serve communities' needs in a long-term way. And I'll end this with this. This moment reflects years of engagement and effort. La Comena is not simply a transaction. It is a contribution of community stewardship in Santa Ana.

Jennifer L. HallItem 2

Next speakers, Ana Leti Hernandez, Maria Andrade, Luis Sarmiento.

Yes, good afternoon everyone. My name is Analeti Hernandez. I am a resident of District 3. We are here tonight to request approval of point 17, the purchase of the land, the colmena, by Drive. Santana will strengthen the strategy of the community land fiduciary commission. comunitario santana a largo plazo apoyará el crecimiento de un importante proyecto de propiedad comunitaria la colmena ya demostrado un impacto

económico significativo a un beneficio comunitario como la creación de talleres sobre agricultura arte y más tanto para el vecindario como para la ciudad en general la come la colmena ha sido ejemplo para otras comunidades ofrece una vida de desarrollo para aquellos negocios y una entrada para emprendedores y productores locales gracias por apoyar la propiedad comunitaria y el cuidado del colectivo en nuestras ciudades bendiciones

Good evening. My name is Ana Leti Hernandez. I live in Ward 3. And I'm here to ask you for the approval of Item 17, the purchase and sale agreement of La Colmena by Thrive. and this is the Santa Ana Land Trust that's going to benefit the community this is a growth project that has it will benefit the community and has benefited the community la colmena is a community benefit the project that will that has worked provided workshops for agriculture for arts and much more this

will benefit the neighborhood and the community at large and la colmena is an example for other communities surrounding communities and this is going to help develop business entrepreneurship provide income to local business owners so i thank you for your support

Jennifer L. HallItem 2

in this and god and god bless you maria followed by louis starmiento and laura pantoja

Thank you. Now it's my turn. I'm here to ask for support for point 17, the purchase of the Colmena. I want to talk about my connection.

I went to visit around the Colmena, to the neighbors, to each house, to the apartments, looking for the name, how they wanted the space to be called. There were many proposals, many people didn't know what the Colmena was. Bueno, en ese tiempo no teníamos un nombre. ¿Qué era el lugar de lo que estábamos hablando? Cuando les explicábamos y les decíamos, muchas personas ya sabían de ese lugar y se sorprendían porque decían que era un lugar donde había anteriormente había mucha delincuencia y estaban un poco como sorprendidos. ¿Pero qué es? ¿Qué es lo que va a ser?

Entonces, entre todos buscamos el nombre a base de encuestas que hicimos. When the Colmena was inaugurated, people came, people felt at home, people felt welcome. The neighbors celebrate that we are there. The connection we have with them is that we can go with confidence and ask them if they can participate with us, We can have the permission to be at your house to have a celebration, and it is with great pleasure that connection with our neighbors has been made.

The personal impact that I have had is that of seeing how the community gathers, how the community was waiting or wanted to have a place where they could feel at home. and why not share a little and be and relive what is their culture, because there we have a little piece of what could be or what is our culture. It has grown and given many opportunities having cooperatives, that cooperatives are businesses where workers are the owners.

Eso es algo muy importante porque ha dado mucho beneficio mismo en la comunidad, porque los dueños de los negocios son las personas, las mamás, la gente que estuvo luchando, que ha venido trabajando de tantos años para estar ahí. El impacto más amplio que hemos tenido es las familias vienen a pasar un tiempo de crecimiento y cuando record en el espacio cuando ven el lugar nos comparten nos dicen me siento en casa gracias por tener este espacio porque es algo que me identifica y algo con lo que estoy a gusto de estar aquí muchas gracias

yes thank you my turn now I'm here to ask you to approve item number 17 LACOLMENA. THIS IS GREAT AND I DID, I VISITED LACOLMENA AND I VISITED THE NEIGHBORHOOD AROUND AND THE APARTMENTS AROUND AND WE, WHEN WE WERE IN THE BEGINNING TRYING TO CONSIDER WHAT TO NAME THIS SPACE, WE WENT AND DID SURVEYS. WE ASKED FOR PROPOSALS FOR LACOLMENA BUT BEFORE IT WAS CALLED LACOLMENA WE DIDN'T HAVE A NAME. WE ASKED PEOPLE WHAT DO YOU WANT TO CALL THIS NAME AND And when we explained the proposal and what this place was going to be about,

many people were surprised, saying, oh, this used to be a place that had a lot of crime. And so what do you want us to do? What do you want to do with this place? So we were asking for names. We conducted surveys. And when La Colmena opened, people felt right at home. People felt welcome. The neighborhoods came around to celebrate. and when we go around there's a trust that is built with the community when we ask people to participate to go to their homes to to celebrate this and I'm very

glad for this and there's a personal impact for me and when we contacted people people felt at home when people go to that displays they feel at home and they it's a place for us to share our culture and to have this piece of our culture that is in the community the opportunity to have cooperatives and a cooperative is where the business people the businesses the workers are the owners and this is of great benefit to the community to have the owners the

workers own the place the same people who are there the moms that supported THE PEOPLE WHO SUPPORTED AND HAVE WORKED THERE FOR YEARS ARE THE OWNERS AS WELL. SO THIS IS OF GREAT IMPACT TO THE COMMUNITY. THERE'S A LOT OF FAMILY GROWTH THAT IS THAT TAKES PLACE THERE AND PEOPLE FEEL THANKFUL AND PEOPLE FEEL AT HOME TO BE IN THAT PLACE IN THAT SPACE AND I THANK YOU AND WE THANK YOU FOR THIS FOR IDENTIFYING THIS PLACE.

Jennifer L. HallItem 3

! Luis?

Good evening, council. Thank you. I will try to be brief within the time limit. First, I do want to thank city staff for working with us the last several weeks to put together the purchase and sale agreement and working through these terms. I know from the work that we do that it is a challenge to make community needs which can be so broad and complex into these uh documents and processes with the city what we have is a one-time opportunity because of state funding some of you might be aware that our project was awarded

as a pilot project by the jobs first california initiative and we need to approve the purchase and sale agreement today in order to make the timeline for the end of our grant so thank you for working with us through that um there were some uh letters of support that i'm not sure if made it through um we have our co-ops la milpa cafe radiate salsa urban farms and a few folks that have been organizing events,

El Mercadito Carrusel, also DJ Tropicasa, neighborhood and local groups that have been using the space to develop entrepreneurship, and we're hoping that you all were able to hear about that. So thank you for approving the purchase and sale agreement today. That is by far the primary goal. There is one ask if any of the council members and staff are open to it. One of the terms in the purchase and sale agreement allows the city the approval of

any new use at the site. So the existing uses, the urban farm, the cafe, the artesanias are all approved uses. But any new use, the example that a community member gave was if we wanted a new vendor that's selling, for example, ice cream, we would need to go to the city to approve that. As a community land trust, we would like to have that ability to approve new tenants. And we know that the city does have a process to approve new uses. So, we don't believe that needs to be in the agreement.

So, if that could be a change that council would make from the dais, we would really appreciate it. If that's not feasible within the existing timeline, we understand, but that is one thing that we wanted to ask about. So, thank you again for your attention and for helping us make this happen.

Jennifer L. HallItem 3

Laura Pantoja?

Good afternoon. My name is Laura Pantoja. I am a resident of District 5. And first of all, I want to thank the council for carrying out a totally different project of economic development in Santana, like La Colmena. I also want to thank the staff for helping us with all the permits. It was a great help. Everyone put a grain of sand. but also thank you to those who have visited us. I am part of the Milpa Café, it is a cooperative of five women, three adults and two young people, who have been very much supported by the community since we opened, right?

We have been opening for six months and we have had a lot of success in our sales and I want to give the opportunity to have a business, right? I am part of a movement called Mercadito Carrusel, which we have been selling for years in community spaces. And the fact of having a local has been a very big opportunity. And I want to thank you for creating a new type of economic development. It is not the same to sell the land to individuals as to leave it in a community legacy. And that changes the story. And speaking of history, we have to talk about the future.

It's hard, right? You are leaving a legacy in a totally different way of creating prosperity for the Santana families, but especially for the young people, right? La Colmena is a place where young people go to do their homework, to have tea, to talk, they have music, and it's something that doesn't exist in Santana. It's the first time that community spaces are truly for the community and will create prosperity. And I invite you to sign the purchase agreement and leave a legacy for the families and for the future. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Laura Pantoja. I live in Ward 5. Thank you, City Council. Thank you very much for approving this project, something that is different for economic development. La Colmena, I wanted to thank the staff for all the quick and swift approval of the permits. The attorney, everyone, everyone who has been involved, and I invite you to visit. I was part of La Milpa Cafe. It's a place where five women, three young people, and five adults work there.

And we've been there for six months, and I want to thank the successful sales for the place. This is a business that El Mercado Carousel is modeled after, and we've been doing this for years. and this place is great opportunity for a new economic development for the city and this is turning land that is there for the community benefit and this is history that you are making and you're creating a legacy here for prosperity for Santa Ana families.

And in La Colmena Cafe, there are kids, young people that come around AND DO THEIR HOMEWORK AND DRINK COFFEE AND CHAT AND SPEND TIME TOGETHER. THIS IS THE FIRST TIME IN SANTANA THAT THERE'S SOMETHING LIKE THIS WHICH WILL BRING PROSPERITY. AND I'M HERE TO ASK YOU TO SIGN THE AGREEMENT, THE PURCHASE SALE AGREEMENT SO THAT YOU CAN CREATE THIS LEGACY FOR FAMILIES AND TO HAVE STRONG FAMILIES HERE. THANK YOU.

Jennifer L. HallItem 3

MAYOR PORTEMP AND CITY COUNCIL, THAT CONCLUDES THE IN-PERSON speakers we'll move on to the zoom speakers now danielle please unmute and make your comments

hello can you hear me yes please go ahead okay this is completely it has nothing to do with la comela am i still allowed to to speak on another subject no this is for the public

Jennifer L. HallItem 3

hearing la comena purchase and sale agreement only um the regular public comment period already

already concluded. My hand has been up the entire time. So who?

Jennifer L. HallItem 3

Mayor Pro Tem and City Council that was not pertaining to the public hearing. Okay. So do we go on to the next speaker? Yes. Next speaker, Anna Urzua. Please unmute

unmute and make your comment. Yes. Hello. Good evening, Councilmembers, Mayor Pertem. My name is Anna Ursua. I am on the board of Thrive Santana, and I also work with Cooperacion Santana. We are a non-profit that supports people to launch, residents of Santana and Orange County, to launch their businesses where all the workers are owners, just like a few folks have spoken tonight. I also want to thank you for all of the work and support and ways in which you and your predecessors have made possible this type of economic development, like many of the speakers have spoken to already. This type of

economic development that works with community members in addressing needs and visions of community members that are often impacted by rising costs of of living that are often pushed out of communities. This type of economic development is making a difference to where we can see people actually being able to remain in Santana, being able to thrive, and be able to enjoy the benefits of a beautiful place like La Colmena. And this type of economic development is getting attention and getting support. We feel really proud to have gotten that award.

The grant for La Colmena from the state of California is Jobs First Initiative. La Milpa Café also received a grant from the Catalyst phase of this Jobs First Initiative. So it's exciting to be able to put Santa Anna in the eye of the state in these types of initiatives, really seeking to share power with community members that are impacted so that they can make yeah those visions possible so it's been an honor to work with alongside businesses at La Colmena

and we're really grateful for your support I want to echo that request if possible for tonight night that the clause in the purchase and sale agreement currently requiring the city to be approvers of new uses a la colmena if that's possible to be removed since the land trust would be the owner of the site and we believe there are multiple avenues like uh like um what is it called the permit uh occupancy permit that businesses already go through um they're or believe that there's already procedures in place to be able to do kind of the due diligence.

And in this way, the Land Trust Thrive would have the ability to, yeah, operate and manage the site along with the businesses in making those decisions. So thank you again, have a good night.

Jennifer L. HallItem 3

Next speaker, Carla Juarez.

Jennifer L. HallItem 3

Please unmute.

Hi, good afternoon. My name is Carla Juarez and I am in Ward 2. And I have been a participant of, back then it was the Daisy and Walnut, and now known as La Colmena. and I too I am in favor of approving the sale so I implore you to please do the right thing and stand with the community by improving the cell and not only approving the cell but also allowing them like giving them like the right of decision making as they have they've always practiced since the beginning of

making their own choices which would include selecting their own tenants so So La Colmena, that is known now as La Colmena, it was a dirt lot, not just dirt. It was actually full of debris. And back then, the community gathered and cleaned and had movies at that lot that was just full of dirt. So ever since then, they were intentional and not to the point where surveys were made, doors were knocked, meetings were held. So everything that you see at La Colmena is because the community surrounding La Colmena wanted it there.

That includes the garden, the community space, the parking, the businesses. And not only the businesses are businesses, but they're co-ops, meaning that the workers are the owners of the business. So I also implore you to please take advantage of the state funding grant to purchase the land that will belong to the community. and then in a democratic way that they make decisions of what happens there, like what goes on, what goes off, and please do not take that away from them. Give them the right to choose their tenants. Also, I wanted to share that please take advantage

of the state funding. We don't want to lose another opportunity of state funding like we have in the past that directly impacts our community. and not only impacts them but benefits them so another thing about La Colmena is that one of the things that is you can have your birthday parties there or you can have your parties there because most people are renters and they can't have a party where they're renting and La Colmena also has a scale-based donation where if you can't afford to pay there it's okay it's based on it it could be zero so it has a huge impact on our community and i wish there was a colmena in my ward

but if i know that if it happens there it will one day happen in my ward so please i i please approve it and also do not um please take off that clause and allow them to make their own decisions like they have made thank you have a good night

Jennifer L. HallItem 3

mayor portemon city council that concludes the public speakers that were

David PenalozaItem 3

in the hearing when it was opened thank you so much for that uh madam city clerk uh with no further comments i hereby close the go ahead oh my comment oh yeah okay i i hereby close the public meeting and now are there any comments by my I MOTION TO MOVE THE ITEM.

Benjamin VazquezItem 3

I WANT A SECOND MOTION BUT I WANT TO CLEAR SOME THINGS. SOME OF THE SPEAKERS TALKED ABOUT US APPROVING TENANTS. CAN YOU PLEASE CLARIFY THE LANGUAGE THAT'S IN THE CONTRACT?

Alvaro NuñezItem 5

SO IT'S PAGE 7, ITEM 5. SO WE'RE NOT APPROVING THE TENANT. WE JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE IT CONTINUES ITS CURRENT USE. I THINK ANA SAID IT IN COMMENTS. WE CAN SUPPORT THEM. still review the tenants to the regular CFO process. We want to make sure that they don't stop what they're doing and go into something else. If we read it as prohibition of assignment or transfer, buyers should not assign or transfer including an assignment or by operation of our lease in the buyer's interest. In other words, they continue to maintain the current use. So we're not looking to regulate or approve the tenant like the ice cream that was mentioned

Alvaro NuñezItem 5

by Mr. Sarmiento. That goes to the regular CFO process. We want to make sure that it continues to be used and processed only.

Benjamin VazquezItem 5

Is it as long as there's a farm, retail store, some kind of food place that has permissions, or whoever might be running it?

Alvaro NuñezItem 5

The way it's approved now, correct. So we don't want a complete change of use.

Benjamin VazquezItem 5

And why do we have that in the contract?

Alvaro NuñezItem 5

Because this is the way we're approving it, right? This is the whole issue about us giving this assignment to the property, right? Right, part of the discussion when city council gave direction was one, right, and with the understanding that we are selling it below market value, what are certain conditions? If they decide to sell, we receive the money. We wanna make sure that this microform stays as a use of microform with the current retail. So in other words, once we sell, we keep those tenements from the contract, it could be something else.

Benjamin VazquezItem 5

But they could change the tenants without coming for?

Alvaro NuñezItem 5

Yes. It's not the tenants issue at all.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 5

That section is really meant that they don't divest themselves of any ownership rights, you know, do anything exclusions on the deeds. It actually reads that they shall not assign or transfer the buyer's interest in the property. And we define that interest in the property. We would look at that as to their ownership of the property because they're going to own this property, right? The deed's going to say it's theirs and it would revert to us if they don't continue that use that we specify. PEOPLE COME ONTO THEIR PROPERTY AND USE THE PROPERTY FOR THAT INTENDED PURPOSE. WE DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM GIVE INTEREST LIKE SELL 30% OF

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 5

THE INTEREST IN THE PROPERTY TO SOMEONE ELSE. THAT'S WHEN THEY WOULD HAVE TO COME TO US AS AN ASSIGNMENT OR IF THEY'RE TRYING TO SELL AN INTEREST, THEY WOULD HAVE TO COME TO US.

Benjamin VazquezItem 5

WE WOULD BE ABLE TO APPROVE IT IF THEY'RE TRYING TO RAISE

Alvaro NuñezItem 5

CAPITAL TO IMPROVE THE PROPERTY. THEN THEY CAN COME TO US. THAT'S THE KEY. THEY MAINTAIN THE OWNERSHIP. THEY MAINTAIN THE OPERATOR.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem 5

And the reason for it you asked council member is because we are selling it to them for less than fair market value So the city does have and you've saw through the economic report that that our director mentioned to you that was a consideration We do have a duty to make sure if we're going to sell property for less than fair market value We have to make sure that we give the public the benefit of that of not receiving the full sales price Thank you so much. I'll second the motion. All right. Thank you for that clarity madam clerk

David PenalozaItem 5

Councilmember Hernandez and a second by Councilmember Vasquez to approve the sale of the property. Colleagues, will you please use your screens in front of us?

Jennifer L. HallItem 5

Motion to authorize the city manager to execute a purchase and sale agreement with Thrive Santa Ana Inc. for the sale of city owned real property at 1901 West Walnut Street in the amount of $852,000. $1,000.

Jennifer L. HallItem 5

So it is five ayes, no nays with absences by Councilmember Becerra and Mayor Meswa. Motion carries. Item is approved.

David PenalozaItem 5

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Before we move on to Item 18, I will call a five-minute recess.

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David PenalozaItem 5

We now reconvene. the city council meeting at 8 33 p.m next item is a council member requested item item number 18 was requested by council member lopez council member lopez please take it away uh thank you uh and

Jessie LopezItem 5

thank you city manager and city attorney for the consultation on my submitted item tonight i'm really asking whoa tonight i'm asking uh my colleagues to consider our request which is uh to to move forward, you know, modernization language in our municipal code, chapter 31, which governs our parks, along with related provisions in chapter 26. The city of Sonana has 49 parks and open space areas. These are shared spaces with family, gather with community meetings, neighborhood meetings, and where a lot of teens play, neighbors connect in small businesses,

Jessie LopezItem 5

also you know really benefit and make use of this space and many of the rules in chapter 31 were adopted decades ago and do not fully reflect the need of our parks and the way that they are used today by many of our constituents in our community and so this item really proposes targeted updates to modernize our municipal code, reduce unnecessary barriers so that our constituents can can make use of our park space that we've invested so much in trying to modernize and support community use ultimately while maintaining safety and operational oversight.

Jessie LopezItem 4

And so we are asking again the city council to consider updating vending in parks, in city parks under municipal code 31-2.18 and chapter 26. Currently, vending in city parks is generally prohibited under the Santa Ana Municipal Code. So the most basic way that I can put this for my colleagues in the community is we do not allow paleteros to operate in our parks. And that to me is pretty unacceptable. Paleteros are beloved members of our community and so we are looking to strike this language that is very prohibitive, that does not allow people to make a living for themselves.

Jessie LopezItem 4

And ultimately we don't, you know, and ultimately we believe that these things are happening. We're very supportive of micro businesses, small businesses that perhaps don't often get recognized. And we don't want language that essentially will give, you know, code or PD the ability to cite people who are just trying to work and make a living and provide a good that our community actually wants and loves. So that is one specific example. For example, we are also asking for the permit threshold to be amended. Under the current rules, permits are required for gatherings of 40 or more people and for certain other activities.

Jessie LopezItem 4

And there could be many gatherings at a park for a family celebration. There was just a gathering to honor whenever community members have passed away. And so this threshold, because it is so low, it is creating unnecessary barriers for our constituents to be able you know to have something at the park without essentially someone feeling like they can say well do you have a permit should you be at the park because you don't have a permit and that is not the goal of our public parks and so I am asking my colleagues to help me raise the threshold so that all of our neighborhood associations all of our

Jessie LopezItem 4

constituents can enjoy their parks without being asked for a permit the The third item is the use of our current skate parks under Section 31-5. Recreation trends have evolved, and skate parks now accommodate a broader range of self-propelled, non-motorized wheel transportation apparatuses, such as a kick scooter. Our current code does not reflect this reality, and our young residents should not be punished for this. You all know how much I support youth investment. We have advocated for more skate parks.

Jessie LopezItem 4

And so we really want to thank the users of our public facilities that are really coming across these issues and reaching out and saying, hey, how can we work together to resolve them? And so, you know, we always try and do a great job of being as informative, as descriptive as we can be in our council member requested items. It is plainly put in our report. I'm sure that my colleagues have read it. I'm sure that you all have read it. We had a consultation. and to us this really is a win for our city and we hope that our entire City Council will support our requested changes thank you thank you council

David PenalozaItem 4

member Lopez are there any questions or comments by the City Council I will call on each council member to provide direction council member Hernandez then

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 4

council member Becerra please Thank You mayor pro temp Enola I'd like to thank council member Jesse Lopez for this item I fully concur with everything that that that the council member shared. Parks are safe havens where families should feel welcome. I do think that increasing the size of being able to have a family gathering is important, given that Santa Ana is a community where if you stop by any of our parks, you may see a large number of people celebrating a birthday party, or whether it be a or in a lot of cases, our parks are used for or get a mess to gather the community in the event you lose a loved one.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 4

So I think that this is important, that we are a city that is embracing the culture of our residents. I also do think that it is incredibly important, City Manager Nunez, for us to allow our street vendors into the parks, for us to have ice cream vendors, paleteros, eloteros, lo que sea. say in El Salvador Park, a park that I frequent, we have a street vendor who has vended there for 26 years. His name is Bartolo. And he's commonly always on the outskirts of the park, but it is that institutional knowledge that he has of that neighborhood and of the families and of the people that live there that makes our community safer.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 4

So I am fully supportive of this item. That'll conclude my comments. Thank you.

David PenalozaItem 4

Okay. Council Member Becerra, followed by Council Member Vasquez.

Phil BacerraItem 4

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Tim, and I want to say thank you to Councilmember Lopez for bringing this item forward. I think there's a lot of things that, when it comes to our parks, that we need to update. And I know that our city manager, I want to thank you, because you've been introducing some things, kind of piecemeal, but again, just critical items as they've come up. But I think this is more inclusive of a bunch of things that are of concerns, things that I've received calls on in my ward, as far as residents who, I think as the Councilmember said,

Phil BacerraItem 4

I just want to have a picnic, want to have a gathering in the park, and we need to make it easier, not harder. I understand the need for permits. I understand the concern from our folks in public safety to make sure that things are organized a certain way, but we've got to look at how to make it easier for our parks to be better used. Who do we want to see use our parks? Our families, our residents, or folks that want to do bad things? The folks that want to do bad things, they don't care about the permits. They don't care. They'll just go in and do their stuff.

Phil BacerraItem 4

stuff. We need to activate our parks even more and how can we do that? So I think this item has that potential. The devil's always in the details. I think when it comes to park vending, I would ask that it be limited to our mobile vendors. When we talk about some of the vendors that I think some of my colleagues have brought up, those are the ones that are mobile in nature. I don't want to see a turf war when it comes to stationary vendors in our parks. So I think having mobile vendors is a good way to make sure we don't have that sort of situation um the skate park uh expansion yeah that makes total sense as well we see a lot

Phil BacerraItem 4

of innovative toys and and means to what one could use to recreate in that space so i think that's good and simplifying the permits i would also add or ask that we look at ways that for those those gatherings where we just can't allow it without a permit that we figure out a way to make it easier like in other words maybe a qr code and some of like the shade structures and some of those places where someone can just you know snap it do a quick uh reservation and that way they they are able to have it so um but i'm supportive of the item i'm looking forward to see what staff

Phil BacerraItem 4

brings back um but those are my comments for now thank you thank you go ahead council member vasquez

Benjamin VazquezItem 4

thank you thank you council member lopez for bringing this to us and the comments from the our peers from Bessetta and Hernandez. I really appreciate the mobile, just having the mobile vendors there because I really want to esquite when I go to Jerome Park as they're coming through. That's the most beautiful thing you can eat at a park and having a picnic. So I'm looking forward to that. And, you know, with the housing issues and how families live, they don't have space for them to have parties in their own houses where we're one on top of each other and the parks

Benjamin VazquezItem 4

PARKS ARE THE ONLY PLACE TO HAVE. WHEN WE WERE TALKING AT PACIFIC PARK, IT WAS PICOLO NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION, WE WERE TALKING ABOUT HAVING A PARK THAT HAS PLACES FOR FAMILIES TO HAVE PARTIES. THIS IS NECESSARY FOR US TO COME TOGETHER BECAUSE WE'RE JUST CRAMMED INTO HOUSING IN SAN ANA AND THIS IS A RELIEF FROM THAT TO GO OUT AND CELEBRATE WITH YOUR family so appreciate that as well and i'm also supportive of having kick scooters as many kids use them and i love having kids uh going to the park and using any toy they can and using our

Benjamin VazquezItem 4

skate parks because it's a safe haven for them to have and i don't want to keep kids out or away from a park because they can't play have a skate kick scooter at the park so yes i support this

David PenalozaItem 4

Thank you, Council Member Vasquez. Council Member Tai? Pham? Council Member Pham? I'm

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

sorry. It's okay. In Vietnamese culture, you go by your first name. Okay. Yeah, it's all right. Take it away, Tai. You can also call me MPT or PFA. That works, too. Penny's Madrina. Go ahead. Madam City Attorney, I think most of this just seems like cleanup. We already I already have state regulations for street vending. I'm very familiar. I've written several ordinances for street vending. So I think cleanup is always good and that might just require a broader conversation about cleanup of our municipal code as well as our charter. I understand staff is probably working on something comprehensive.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

I know it takes a really long time. We have quite an old municipal code and an old charter. harder. So that's perfectly fine by me. I think this is just... It just makes sense. Where I'm totally okay with it. I think the main concerns for any of the eating is trash cans. If we have to update or any type of practical needs in our parks, I think that that works just fine. I don't know about the scooters. I'm old, I like to walk on the walkways in the parks. And these youths, you know, they get in the way, Council Member Lopez.

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

What about it? Just saying, it's scary when they come at me with their scooters. No, I was kidding. That's very supportive of that. I think the main, the other thing I wanna ask about the gatherings is I completely support you know maybe increasing the threshold and whatnot maybe especially depending on the size of the park. My biggest concerns would be you know as we get bigger gatherings for parties I think there were needs for staffing for parks and I think that's a conversation we need to have. It'd be different if we had like a vigil you

Thai Viet PhanItem 4

You know, obviously any type of political action would be perfectly acceptable, and probably not creating a lot of trash, but I've seen in other parks when you have big family gatherings or parties or holiday events, and then all the trash cans are super filled up, and that's also not something that we want. So I'll leave it to staff to kind of think about what the best kind of balance for that would be. and I just look forward to this coming back and hopefully also other I know it's a lot to ask but proactive actions to do some clean up with our municipal code. Thank you.

David PenalozaItem 4

Thank you Council Member Phan. I also just want to thank Council Member Lopez for bringing this item forward. I am overall generally supportive of the points and the items brought up however I do kind of raise similar questions and concerns reservations as councilmember Phan when it comes to the gatherings not not so much the the raising the threshold but taking a pause and looking at why they were put in in the first place let's say I want to go in and have a party or celebrate my kids birthday at Memorial Park and another family does as well on

David PenalozaItem 4

the same day you know what happens there when when we're now we have two groups that are under the 60-person threshold. And so I think that's why this started, is to have these reservations and these permits for special events so that we don't have those issues arise because they will. Eventually, this is, I mean, I've, and where I live in Memorial Park, there's times when four or five of my neighbors have parties going on at once, including myself, right? So it's going to happen. So I think it's taking a look at those issues that might arise and seeing how we could work

David PenalozaItem 4

around those and see what we could do. So along the lines of Councilmember Phan, seeing what staff brings back and how we could amend these different areas of whether it's permitting or vending and what that looks like, I'd be very supportive of that. So thank you.

David PenalozaItem 4

Council members have questions comments? All right Mr. City Manager have you captured Council direction?

Alvaro NuñezItem 4

Yes.

David PenalozaItem 4

Wonderful. Okay. Thank you.

David PenalozaItem 4

Item number 19 is the City Council work study session regarding the First Street Multimodal Boulevard study. Mr. City Manager may we please have the staff presentation.

Alvaro NuñezItem 4

Thank you Mr. Mayor. public works director Rudy Rosas.

David PenalozaItem 4

All right. Thank you, Mr. Rudy Rosas, our interim public works director. You have five minutes. I'm kidding, but let's make it quick.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem, Council Members. Item number 19 on tonight's agenda is a presentation on the progress made on the First Street Multimodal Boulevard study. We will be presenting our technical findings, community input, and an overview of the highest-rated concepts.

So let's begin with some citywide statistics. Our residents use diverse transportation modes. Fifty-five percent of our residents do not have access to a private vehicle. There are nearly 22 million bus boardings and alightings annually. There are over 17,000 bicycle trips and 53,000 pedestrian trips daily. We are a multimodal city. But why focus on First Street? For starters, it's a very busy street. On a typical weekday, there are between 20 and 36,000 vehicles, 2,900 bus boardings,

1,300 pedestrians, and over 250 bicyclists, mostly on the sidewalk. Unfortunately, First Street has a traffic collision rate that is higher than average. In fact, it is over two times the national average for similar roads. On average, a collision occurs on First Street every 27 hours. 11% of those involved bicyclists, 12% involved pedestrians. For comparison purposes, Harbor Boulevard has more daily vehicles than 1st Street, yet has a 35% less collision rate.

And 17th Street, another similar road, experiences half as many collisions as 1st Street does.

Next, we'll review the existing conditions and characteristics of 1st Street. The limits of the study are between Bristol Street and Tustin Avenue. It is a six-lane roadway, has 12 bus stops in each direction, sidewalks are about 9 to 10 feet wide, and there are no bicycle facilities.

First Street is heavily used by senior citizens as there are multiple senior living apartments along the corridor, as well as the Santa Ana Senior Center nearby. by. First Street is also heavily used by students coming to and from Santa Ana High School and other schools in the area. Yet there are narrow sidewalks and outdated 80-acre ramps. The street is highly used by pedestrian yet there are limited crosswalks, some up to half a mile apart. When you do get to a crosswalk, you must walk over 80 feet to cross the street.

Right turn pockets are limited and left turn pockets are often too short causing traffic backups.

First Street is home to one of the busiest bus routes in the county, however buses stop right in traffic lanes further impeding traffic flow. Bus stops often lack shade and lighting and bicyclists travel on the sidewalk and mix with pedestrians. For these reasons, a comprehensive review of First Street was sought to recommend safety improvements to benefit all types of users. In collaboration with OCTA, City of Santa Ana was awarded a grant from SCAG to perform such a study. To assist staff with this effort, in May of last year, City

Council awarded a contract to HDR Inc., a global traffic engineering and transportation planning firm with extensive local presence and experience. And at this point, I'd like to invite our consultant and project manager, Dawn Wilson from HDR to take us through the rest of the presentation. Great. Thank you, Rudy. Again, I'm Dawn Wilson with HDR. I'm a principal project manager and also a registered engineer, both in traffic and civil engineering. Pleasure to be here this evening to talk about the project. I'll tell you that I've I've been working on Complete Streets projects now for more than 30 years with communities

all over California, including very diverse communities, much like the city of Santa Ana. This is an exciting opportunity to improve safety and mobility for your residents. We started this project with establishing a project goal. You can see that up here on the screen. And that is to improve the travel environment along First Street and connect people to places through a variety of reliable safe and affordable transportation options so to really understand how people travel and what the barriers are today our team conducted an extensive data collection effort we conducted walk audits

collected traffic count data and crash analysis we like to travel demand modeling and we've spoken to numerous people including riding the bus to understand what those mobility barriers are today. We use this information to then help inform both our outreach process as well as how we identify recommendations for the corridor. So for the next few slides, I do want to highlight two very important pieces of data, and that's the traffic volumes along the corridor as well as our safety assessment.

As Rudy mentioned, over the course of a seven-year period, 479 crashes occurred within our study limits and 23% of those involved pedestrians and bicyclists. Now when we look at the severity of those crashes, 18 people either experienced severe injuries or fatalities. They died as part of these crashes. Why is this happening? beginning. Let's start with your signalized intersections. On this corridor, the signalized intersections are the only places with marked crosswalks and also places where the crosswalks are controlled. And some of the distances between your signalized intersections are more than half

of a mile. What happens is people just choose where it's convenient to cross. They end up in the median and it's very hard to see people and drivers just don't expect, excuse me, expect them to be there. Rudy also pointed out first street's very wide 82 to 84 feet that means the pedestrians are exposed when crossing the street for more than 30 seconds to vehicular traffic. And then I just wanted to highlight very quickly the bicyclists as 85 percent are riding on the sidewalk that clearly tells us there's a concern about safety riding in the street but also when

we have bicyclists particularly faster moving bicyclists interacting with pedestrians or riding on the sidewalks which are rather dark they're very hard to see and those interactions can be deadly so while we understand what the different types of projects are we need to understand why the crashes are as severe as they are when they involve the pedestrians and that's directly related to speed the posted speed limits on this corridor between 35 and 40 miles per hour and while during the peak period most cars are traveling around that speed limit

When we get outside the peak periods, cars are traveling much faster, well outside the 85th percentile speed, up to 46 or 50 miles per hour. And why is that important? Well, if you look at the graph that's on the screen now, you can see that at 40 miles per hour, there's a 45% chance of not surviving a crash between a pedestrian or a bicyclist when it's involved with a motor vehicle. That risk increases for our elderly and for our youth. And as speeds increase along the corridor, you can see that exponentially the risk of a fatality goes up very quickly.

And when you hit 50 or 60 miles per hour, it's very difficult to survive that type of a crash. So addressing the speeds not only during the peak period but off peak period is essential and also consistent with your Vision Zero program. So how do we know and what are the issues with speeding? How do we address those? Let's start with traffic volume. The dashed line across the top of the screen here represents the amount of capacity at what you would consider acceptable level of service D if for three lanes of traffic going in the same direction. That's 23,000 vehicles, 25,300 vehicles per day.

So the blue lines represent the eastbound traffic and the green lines represent the westbound traffic and daily traffic numbers. And you can see in all places where we collected data along the corridor, the volume is well below that level of Service D threshold. And what that tells us is that while you might see some congestion during the peak period, when you get outside the peak period, traffic is free flowing. There's no friction to help slow vehicles down. Therefore, vehicles are traveling faster than the speed limit. So we looked at the two-lane threshold to see what the capacity at level of service

D would be, and that's 16,900 for two lanes in one direction. And again, when you look at those columns on the chart here, you can see almost all of the segments we counted in the westbound direction fall below that threshold, and the ones that are in the eastbound direction are just slightly higher than that. This tells us there's an opportunity to revisit the capacity in the westbound direction to help address some of these speeding issues.

So we used this data to help inform the process of developing some concepts. And very quickly we'll go through the flowchart that shows how we got to our recommendations that we'll review tonight. This blue line shows our first phase of the project where we did our field walk data collection and took the data to our first community workshop. In this next line, this shows our second phase of the project where we took the input from our data analysis in the workshop and identified a whole series of different options. We presented those to stakeholders and we did a feasibility assessment.

We then narrowed that down to eight options brought to the community at workshop two. We used the input from workshop two as well as an initial benefits and tradeoffs assessment and technical analysis to narrow down our concepts to three which were presented to the community at workshop number three and we've since gone through a second benefits and trade-off analysis to make sure that the recommendations we bring for you before you tonight align with the goals of the project the workshops were spread out throughout the life of the project over a period of five months and you can see that they were aligned with the very

with key decision points as we went through the process. As we went through our community engagement, not only through the workshop, but through the other touch points that I'll go through in just a couple of minutes, we reached over 1,100 people in the community at in-person events. And while we went out and talked to them about all the different elements of this project, consistently the things that we heard were issues about safety, lighting, needing landscaping, and shade while they're walking along the sidewalks or waiting at the bus stops, concerns

about bikes on the sidewalk interacting with pedestrians and safety in that space, concerns about affecting traffic flow, and then safety around the bus stops. I'm just going to highlight very quickly our in-person touch points that occurred, again, during this five-month period. We had the three workshops. They were all held at the Roosevelt Walker Community Center, which is located in the middle of our corridor easily accessible by our by the residents in the area each of the workshops were conducted over a two-day period in the evening for two or three hours hoping to

encourage as many people as possible to attend so while we had about 185 people attend our three workshops we had even better success when we went out to the community at pop-up events I'll note that we went to a variety of different events from very large ones like Fiesta Petraeus and the Chicano Heritage Festival. And then we went to more focused, the food pantry as well as the coffee with the mayor, walk to school day. We even went to Santa Ana High School and met with their youth. Importantly, we also met with the neighborhood associations. We attended the neighborhood association leadership meeting.

and then we also went to several of the local neighborhood associations and while we reached out to all of the neighborhood associations the ones that you see here are the ones that invited us to do a presentation and share information about the project and Henninger Park and Pacific Park invited us to come back and provide additional presentations and updates on the project as they were the closest to the the steady corridor In addition to our in-person touch points, we also had extensive online participation.

This included reaching more than 10,000 people using several different online tools. The city provided us a link on their website to a project-specific webpage. The webpage and all of our community engagement material was provided in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese. And all of our print material provided QR codes to drive people to the websites in their respective languages. We also had several city postings on Twitter and Facebook informing the public about upcoming meetings. And we conducted online surveys to collect additional information from the public about the project.

We conducted several focus meetings. We had 28 different stakeholders that were, the list was developed based on input from city staff and city council. And the ones that you see highlighted in black or in bold are the organizations that chose to attend our meetings either online or in person. All the others were provided information about the project updates via email. In addition, we invited the school district, community colleges, and local schools to participate, particularly the local schools that are located within our study area.

Finally, we conducted focused meetings with the leadership within the city regarding the three final concepts that I'll be reviewing to identify any potential concerns or issues and to confirm that the concepts that we're presenting are consistent with current planning and engineering projects and I wanted to note that the community-based organizations listed here both participated in our stakeholder meetings but also helped to helped us reach out to the community about the project they helped distribute excuse me distribute meeting information to their membership they helped us also identify when sectors of the community seem to be

missing from our workshops so we could identify some of those small group group meetings to reach all sectors of the community, and they helped get the word out through social media. So, we appreciate their involvement in the process. Ultimately, the data analysis, the community engagement, and the preference surveys that were conducted led to the identification of the three final concepts that align with the needs and the issues that we've identified on First Street. Before I get into the details, I do want to note that all of the concepts that I'll present tonight do have some common features.

That includes improved landscape, new curb ramps, ADA accessible features, transit signal priority as well as emergency preemption. And we wanted just to point out that the fire hydrants that are along the curbs today would remain in their same location curbside within the parkways. there'd be no gap. I'll also point out as I mentioned before there's a concern about the distances between the controlled crossings. There'll be five new or there are five new identified crossings in our plan shown in the colorful dots on the screen. The goal was to place those at about 500 foot

increments so every 500 foot feet with this plan there would be a controlled and signalized pedestrian crossing or traffic signal. So that should greatly reduce the number of mid block crossings outside a controlled crosswalk okay moving forward we're gonna now break the corridor into a west side and an east side the west side goes from Bristol Street to Zulane and then the east side goes from the i-5 freeway ramps at Zulane to the eastern city limits at Tustin Avenue so let's start with our west side concepts three three different concepts have been developed. If you could go on to the next slide. And for

each of these we're going to talk about the number of travel lanes, the width of the sidewalk, where the buses are traveling and where they're stopped, and then also the interactions between pedestrians and bicyclists. So for concept one, which we call the multi-use path concept, this concept maintains six six travel lanes, that's three lanes in each direction, as well as a mixed use path on the north side of the street and a sidewalk on the south side of the street. So as we think about these and we talked about travel a little bit, there's a lot of ways

that we could present how traffic might be impacted or affected by the different concepts. And while delay is one way to do that, it's very hard for most folks to understand the impact of delay at a single intersection as it relates to your overall travel experience on First Street. So we used change in travel time to describe the traffic conditions and the changes between the different concepts I'll be presenting. Before I go into that I just wanted to point out very quickly that if we did nothing but manage travel time or manage the traffic signals and loud

traffic to grow over the next couple of years, the actual travel time for a passenger vehicle going in the eastbound direction would be about 11 to 12 minutes and in the westbound direction would be 8 to 9 minutes now when we look at buses because they do make stops at the stops and it takes a while for people to board and disembark the bus travel time is really 17 to 19 minutes in the eastbound direction and 14 to 16 minutes in the westbound direction so on any given day when you're traveling along the corridor the change in your travel time could vary from one to two minutes very easily that represents

about 10% of your travel time so as we go through and we look at the changes in travel time anything within about a minute or two would be considered a normal variation in traffic and not particularly significant or something that you would notice but beyond that you probably would begin to notice that change in your travel pattern so with that in mind concept one number one when you look at your change in travel time for the most part there would be very little change in your overall experience traveling along the corridor in fact you might see a little bit of a benefit because of the transit signal priority

that I highlighted so when we look at this concept in in cross-section you can see here that this if this would include a 14 foot wide shared use path on the north side of the street I'm sorry on the south side of the street only and on the north side of the street it would simply maintain a sidewalk now while we would want and encourage bicyclists to use the south side of the street because a multi-use path is bi-directional there is a chance that because there are no bike facilities on the north side of the street that you may still see some bicyclists on that side we are able within the shared use

path on the south side of the street that 14 foot area to provide a four foot parkway and a 10 foot shared path and again that's bi-directional and this has about a 76 foot wide cross-section so what does this look like this is a photo looking at the corridor this is just a quick rendering and then an example of what this might look like in practice so you can see the plantable area the two-way path and again you can see that the six lanes would be maintained in the rendering.

So concept two is what we call the enhanced pedestrian and bicycle zone concept. This concept, we reduce one lane in the westbound direction. That would go from three lanes down to two lanes. And as I mentioned before in the graph that we looked at, the volume in the westbound direction is about 20% or more or less than the volume in the eastbound direction on a daily basis, and also during the peak periods. So, by taking away this one lane, we're able to further improve the sidewalk zone area, which will allow us to provide both a separated bikeway and a sidewalk on both sides of the

street while maintaining a consistent parkway and an area for utilities and street lighting within that parkway behind the curb. And then looking again, how does this affect our travel time? in this case we do start to see in the westbound direction an increased travel time for autos still more or less within that reasonable range but the buses may see a slightly higher westbound a.m. peak travel time compared to some of the other alternatives so as we look at this again in cross-section there are numerous safety benefits associated with the enhanced pedestrian and bike zone

concept. The first is the narrow cross-section of only 66 feet. By narrowing this down from 10 feet over the other concepts and 16 feet over existing conditions, we reduce our exposure time for pedestrians by as much as eight seconds, which is pretty substantial. In addition, this would provide this separated ped bike facility on both sides of the street, and while While the concept that you see on the right aligns with the sidewalk zone on the south side of the street, this would also be replicated on the north side of the street as well.

This is the only concept that can provide a continuous separated space for pedestrian and bicyclists, as well as providing the landscape and parkway zone along the curb on a consistent basis. So what does this look like relative to the corridor? You can see the photo with the overlaid rendering, and then we do have a couple of examples that show a physical separation on the top, and then using visual cues such as pavement treatment and surface types on the bottom that could show just the physical conditions just using different textures.

In this case, this concept, the bicyclists are directional, which meaning they travel in the same direction as cars. And in all concepts, the bicyclists are at the sidewalk level. So these folks would be behind the curb at the sidewalk level as well. One of the concerns that we've heard about reducing the number of lanes from three lanes to two would be the buses queuing up in the curbside lane. And so we've addressed that by identifying bus turnouts. And we've also looked at some right turn pockets that would help decelerating or stopped vehicles

vehicles from being in that outside lane and the type of lane jockeying or queuing that occurs when buses and right turn vehicles slow down or stop. These are two examples of what those bus turnouts might look like, again, only in the westbound direction.

The third concept is called the bus lane and bikeway concept, and this is the last of the three in the west side of the corridor. door this one provides for travel lanes for autos and two dedicated bus lanes as well as a bikeway up at the sidewalk level on each side of the street this in this concept the buses would travel curbside in a dedicated lane but at the right at the intersections right turning vehicles would be able to enter that lane we'll say there's no physical barrier between the auto lanes and the bus lanes so compliance would be through enforcement if vehicles were to enter

that outside the right turn areas with this concept the existing sidewalks again would be improved to allow for separated bikeways and sidewalks however there is not enough room in the sidewalk area to provide that as well as a consistent Parkway so when there are streetlights or hydrants or trees the the bicyclists would need to weave around those and enter the pedestrian zone. We'll take a look at that here in our cross section. But before we do, just wanted to point out the change in the travel time here. Obviously this with the four lanes would have the greatest impact on the auto travel times,

still mostly within the reasonable range, except for perhaps in the westbound in the evening where some of the right turning vehicles we start to see have a higher delay at some of the busier intersections. The buses do have the greatest improvement in travel time. I will note that the greatest improvement happens in the eastbound direction in the PM peak, and that's really only about two minutes compared to the other alternatives that we've considered. So we'll look at those holistically in just a minute.

So looking again at the cross section, you can see the bus lanes in red and the four travel lanes. And I wanted to just point out the cross section again on the right where we highlight the pedestrian and bicycle zone within the sidewalk area. You can see that there's no physical separation or landscaping here. When there is landscaping or trees, the bicyclists would need to move into the sidewalk zone to go around those. And the same thing would happen with any type of bus stops. And that's more clearly illustrated when we look at the next slide, which is our simulation. You can see here the outside lane is the bus lane.

The bicyclists would have a dedicated space. And then when it comes to going around the streetlights or the bus stops, they would need to weave into the sidewalk area, narrowing that down to about eight feet. So we look at how the different concepts compare to each other. this is really all about trade-offs and identifying how the different modes will benefit from the different concepts that we've looked at this first one just gives an overview again of those travel time comparisons and you can see that for the most part concept one would have very little change in our travel time

and then concept three while that would see some increases in travel time except for in the westbound PMP those are all fairly minimal when we look at the The buses, again, which is on the next slide, please. There we go. You start to see, again, that for the most part, the buses benefit from transit signal priority in concepts number two and number three. The third concept has a dedicated bus lane, and the true benefit there is an additional two minutes of travel time savings in the AM, I'm sorry, in the PM peak in the eastbound direction. But for the most part,

there's not much of an additional benefit with the bus lanes with that concept but there is an impact on the auto travel time so when we look beyond just travel time when we start to look at the trade-offs in alignment with the key objectives of the project which are listed down the left side of this slide and we're able to understand how the different concepts truly stack up in terms of a multi multi modal corridor so concept number one that's our multi multi multi-use path concept, which winds the sidewalk, again, only on one side of the street. And again,

while we would encourage the bicyclists to stay within that path, bicyclists may still continue to sidewalk on the other side. And while maintaining the six lanes may provide some consistent travel times and have a minimal impact on delays, it does have the fewest safety issues of the three concepts that we looked at. The enhanced pedestrian and bicycle concept provides It provides separated bike and pedestrian spaces at the sidewalk level, again, along the length of the corridor, and provides a dedicated space for landscaping, utilities, and street lighting.

Reducing this width really does reduce the crossing distance the most for our pedestrians, including for our most vulnerable users, our elderly, and our children. And while this concept results in the highest increase in travel time in the westbound direction, We're addressing that through the addition of right turn pockets, bus pull outs and other features that will help keep traffic moving, albeit at a slightly slower speed. But those slower travel speeds would be a benefit to the overall safety along the corridor. And then finally, concept three, the bus and bike lane concept, it does have the most limited

space for pedestrians and bicycles in the curb space, but provides benefits to the transit vehicles along the corridors. doors, it does not provide a dedicated space for the utilities or the bus stops, but can be accommodated by moving the bicycles into the curb space. And autos in this case would experience a higher delay, but we would see a two-minute benefit for transit vehicles over the other concepts that just included transit signal priority. Finally, I just quickly wanted to highlight the east side concept for which we have only

one plan this concept as you can see on the slide has four travel lanes as opposed to the the existing six as I mentioned previously the volumes on the east side drop off significantly on the east side of i-5 and by reducing the traveling in each direction we're allowed to where we have the opportunity to move more of the public space into the sidewalk area improving the pedestrian and the bicycle zone and this concept is consistent with the metro east mixed-use overlay zone and the public realm plan and would align with the planned intensity of development through

this area so with that again we appreciate the opportunity to be working on this project and be happy to answer any questions that you have thank you thank you for the presentation are

David PenalozaItem 17

are there any questions or comments by the city council i will call on each because we're to provide direction um who wants to go first because remember hernandez go ahead thank you mayor pro

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 17

temp and yolo so thank you for the presentation today madam um i just wanted to provide some some comments to the city manager's office um i'm really happy with seeing this presentation and the opportunity for us to provide feedback an area of importance for me is is the bus stops and lighting i think that the bus stops um if we've learned from the uci playful learning landscapes on main street they have integrated learning and play and they've combined those elements at these bus stops and they've also been strategic as to if there's a grocery store adjacent to a bus stop

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 17

they may use education information that is relative to that that stop and those grocery So for instance, the North Gate on Main Street has an abacus, so people can count and it helps children learn. It's bilingual. So I would love to see us, you know, integrate some partnerships with UCI Playful Learning Landscapes, given that they already have the resources, the money, and it doesn't cost the city any additional monies to partner with them. That would be a great opportunity for us to expand learning at these bus stops where people spend idle time waiting for transportation where that allows for a mom or a father to then

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 17

interact with their child and I think that that's beneficial I am supportive of a module that will increase pedestrian safety while also protecting bicyclists so that will be concept two for me I do want to emphasize my number my number one priority is making Santa Ana more ADA accessible in the sidewalks, in the curbs that we have. So I like concept two because the extra wide sidewalks creates more room for ADA access and accommodates a separated bikeway. I think that that also will make the streets safer, more accessible.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 17

I am very supportive of seeing more street trees alongside the first street corridor. I think that that will help us with having a cleaner environment, more aesthetically pleasing as well. Number two, the priority for me is the separated bikeways. I think improving pedestrian safety and bicyclist safety while also giving them, you know, a space where they can move faster is important. I like concept two because it also gives us a shorter amount of distance between pedestrians having to wait for a crosswalk. It makes it shorter and it provides more intersections where there can be controlled crossings. That's very important.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 17

I also like reducing to five travel lanes. It slows traffic speeds while also helping us increase the amount of efficacy that some of these buses can get through the First Street corridor. corridor. I am not at this moment I'm not supportive of a bus lane. The only reason why is because I didn't see a presentation from Okta as to how they will increase bus schedules. If we had buses running every five minutes, I would feel more inclined to support a bus lane. But given that Santa Ana has not seen nor have we received any feedback that

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 17

that there will be an increase in bus routes. I don't feel that we're in a position to prove that just yet, but given that this is a work study, maybe they hear our feedback and our comments and the presentation looks very different next time. But at this moment, those are my comments and that'll conclude my feedback today.

David PenalozaItem 17

Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Hernandez for that comment. Next is Council Member Becerra. Go ahead, please.

Phil BacerraItem 17

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Well, first of all, I just want to confirm, Director Rosas, the study that was done was funded by OCTA, correct?

Thank you for the question. The study was funded by SCAG, and we were awarded that money in partnership with OCTA.

Phil BacerraItem 17

The reason I'm asking is just so anybody knows that this study was funded by grants secured by our staff, and I just want to give you guys the proper kudos for doing that, for for bringing those resources in so that we can analyze this corridor. And I think the consultant did a great job of justifying why this corridor did need this study. 21 million bus boardings and 55% of our population does not have access to a private vehicle. I think that's very telling. And I, you know, it's funny, we're at a point in time where I don't think that's negative. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

Phil BacerraItem 17

We've had developments approved in town where we've had professional developers tell us that more and more of the younger generations are looking at rideshare they're looking at transit and so if we're going that direction especially given that we are the urban core of this county then i think adjusting our infrastructure makes sense we've been doing a great job of that with the class 4 bike lanes that we're seeing throughout the city so i appreciate that as far as the concepts that we have before us i personally think that the the end result will

Phil BacerraItem 17

be probably a blend of some of these i don't know that i'm going to just say two three or one um i think council member hernandez brought up some good points when it comes to concept two one thing and i've shared this with you director rosas is that i as much as i would love love to see bus only lanes throughout the entire city not just first street but in order for us to have those that means OCTA needs to commit to providing bus service with the adequate headway and when I say adequate headway I don't mean from ten minutes to eight minutes I mean we're talking like five and three minutes like a real true

Phil BacerraItem 17

transit corridor you're asking residents who are already on a street that has very high vehicular traffic to possibly give up a mixed flow traffic lane there There better be a good incentive to do that. And so I think what that would require is for OCTA to make that commitment to our community and this council that they'd be willing to provide bus service on the 64 route that goes up and down First Street. Let's see if we can get them to five or three minutes. That would be ideal. And not just during peak period. I mean, we're talking around the clock.

Phil BacerraItem 17

You look at other cities that have these exclusive bus-only lanes, that's what they have. They have the headways that justify it in those areas. I love the idea of trying to integrate more bike paths. I think I look at this and, you know, whenever I see the bike lanes next to sidewalks, the way it's shown like in concept three or even concept two, it always reminds me of the beach. Like you're, you know, you're sharing the right of way and sometimes it works and sometimes it gets interesting. And so I like the fact that our city has done a great job in investing in the Class 4 bike lanes.

Phil BacerraItem 17

And so that's something I would like to see along First Street as well. But yeah, I'd be excited if OCTA was ready to commit those resources to here. I think the other thing, AB 43, the idea of being able to reduce speeds. I think that there was a staff person in the city here, Corey, who used to work here. I remember being at a neighborhood association meeting in mid-city and he was, I'll say it, he was arguing with the residents, but so damn passionately about the idea that every

Phil BacerraItem 17

mile per hour that you can lower the speed, the number of lives you save is so exponential. And so, I mean, look, I know I have a lead foot at times and, wait, are there cops still here? Never mind, I didn't say that. But I like to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible, but at the same time, I've said from this dais many times, especially in my ward, there's a lot of places where streets or arterials really aren't arterials, they're highways, and they function as highways. I think our consultant mentioned that there's large spaces between traffic signals, and there's stretches in my ward

Phil BacerraItem 17

that are amazing drag strips, and they shouldn't be. We've gotta stop that. that. So I love a lot of the concepts you're talking about as far as the treatments for pedestrian crossings and not just simply drawing some lines in the road, but actually having to provide the appropriate infrastructure to make sure that people can cross safely. So I'm not going to commit to one single concept tonight. I think I've blathered a bunch of stuff out to you to take in, but I do appreciate this study and I'm looking forward to seeing seeing what comes back as far as, I guess, number one, what input you get, you know,

Phil BacerraItem 17

once you kind of put it all together, but also, two, cost. You know, when we were seeing the talk about, you know, signals at each of those crosswalks, I went, that's amazing, and it's expensive. So and if we've got that much money, I've got a couple more intersections in my board that I could use a couple of signals. But in all seriousness, thank you for doing this study. I think this is great. I'm looking forward to seeing the next steps.

David PenalozaItem 17

so thank you thank you councilmember sarah counselor uh vasquez please thank you thank

Benjamin VazquezItem 17

you very much uh for those comments and uh i agree with everything both council members have said and i do like the bus lanes i do appreciate like what's gonna come first the chicken or the egg and you gotta set the plan and right now is the time where we have a chance for a part of the city let's see what bus lanes can do and i'm an advocate for it because at this time we see every every kid in Santa Unified School District that wants a bus pass gets a bus pass. And culturally, we can move towards that. It's the time now as every child is able to get on the bus for free and use it and begin

Benjamin VazquezItem 17

that process of bringing in using public transit and having safer roads. First Street is dangerous. I appreciate the shrinking of the streets. I was a kid who had crossed McFadden, you know, when it was four lanes, and that was a rough, you know, cross. And now it's one lane, and it slowed down, and I appreciate the comments as we get used to it, but it didn't slow me down that much. And there was a long line to get on from McFadden, from Bristol to Wright Street, but it went by by quick. I'm like, oh, that was quick. The flow was easy, and it flowed evenly.

Benjamin VazquezItem 17

evenly. So first I was like, damn, everybody's right. This is a mess. There's a long line, but I appreciate the slowing down and it became safer crossing those streets. And I hope First Street, I just saw a woman get ran over on first and rate the other day, and it was just horrific. And, you know, hopefully, you know, rest in peace to her. We do have deaths on First first street and was one of my neighbors a unhoused woman who was known in the neighborhood so whenever we can reduce and also help for public transit and I appreciate everything else

Benjamin VazquezItem 17

everybody has said but those are my comments for now thank you thank you Councillor Vazquez

Phil BacerraItem 17

Councillor Becerra super quick I know Chief Henry would be mad at me if I didn't ask as far as as Code 3 preemption systems. Do we have those on First Street today? No.

Phil BacerraItem 17

Okay.

Male Speaker 2.

David PenalozaItem 17

Can you please step up to the mic so that this is captured for the record, please? Thank you.

Male Speaker 3. Good evening, Council. Zetka Kula, Cities Traffic Engineering. We do have fire preemption on First Street, but as part of this project, it would be GIS-based base preemption, which is way better, far more responsive as the emergency apparatus are approaching the intersection, they will be detected well before the intersection, not at the intersection. Mayor Redekopal, Fantastic. Okay, perfect. That's all I have. Thank you.

David PenalozaItem 17

Mayor Redekopal, Thank you. Councilmember Becerra, any other comments? Councilmember Lopez.

Jessie LopezItem 17

Yes, thank you. I'm really thrilled to be having this conversation, right? It wasn't too long ago where I, you know, I said the number one reason why people are dying in our community is because of how dangerous our public streets are and so I know that this is something that we've been working on internally I want to thank the leadership team I want to thank Public Works for not just applying for the grant but making sure that you gave our community the best opportunity because ultimately we're talking about how do we protect our residents right and so I think that this is going to be a really transformational project

Jessie LopezItem 17

project, whatever concept, you know, the community wants to see a support and whatever concept the council ends up supporting, even if it's not the concept that I ultimately want, I think that whatever change can happen in a good direction is going to be great. And so, you know, I first read as I understand it as a top bus route, right? I see you nodding your heads. And so I think the statistic that you opened up with was probably sobering for so many of our residents.

Jessie LopezItem 17

And I also think that it is really great that our community is understanding that over 50%, 55% of our residents here, you know, use public transportation not as a luxury, but because it allows them to get to work, to get to school, to go to the doctors, to go grocery shopping, to do the Monday things that many of us do by using our cars.

Jessie LopezItem 17

And so I think it is imperative for me, for my office, to approach this conversation from the understanding that my role is to support all of our residents and to understand that I want to see investments in public transportation because the data is telling me that the overwhelming majority of our constituents depend on this service, right? We've said for many years that the city of Santa Ana provides the ridership for agencies like OCTA to exist.

Jessie LopezItem 17

And so I do think it is imperative that we support that mode of transportation. And I would be very, very, very supportive of seeing single lanes for buses on First Street. right there for me I cannot ignore the data that is being presented I want to make sure that buses are you know I'm not even trying to be funny but that they're reliable and fast for people to get to where they need to get to and so if there is a concept here that my office can support that is going to accomplish that that is what I will do there the only concept that I can tell

Jessie LopezItem 17

you now definitively that I will not be supported is concept one for the obvious reasons that it is not providing you know a robust tools to protect our constituents from what we're seeing in our community right now and so I just want to thank the consultant the entire team for being honest and just saying that because I think that is imperative for our entire council to understand and so I I don't know that I'm ready to commit to a concept but I think that we're heading in the right direction and overall you know when we can have elevated bike lanes to the level that sidewalks are on you know actual trees

Jessie LopezItem 17

with a large canopy when we can have expanded sidewalks so that people don't feel crammed in our public streets those are all the things that I'm going to be supportive of because I think that they're important I hear from my constituents every single time you know that they love the East Coast they love Boston you know they love Europe because of how safe it feels for them to be able to walk you know in walkable communities how safe it feels that and how good it feels for them to be able to rely on a reliable public transportation system

Jessie LopezItem 17

right I don't think that you know investing in one area is necessarily certainly going to create all of that but I think it is a change in a good direction because ultimately these are the systems in place that we need to be investing in you know for the obvious reasons because more people are aware of their own footprint you know and I think that concept 3 I think that other concepts would also help address the mission of the city the the goals that that this body has discussed in terms of reducing our own greenhouse emissions. And so I think that there's a lot more that we can flush out here.

Jessie LopezItem 17

But overall, thank you to Public Works. Thank you, Rudy. Thank you to the entire team that has been going out to community meetings, to all of the folks that are helping us move this project forward. This is the first step. There is still more time for community members to give us your feedback. I know that for many of you, this this is the first time that you're hearing about this, seeing this, and so please, let us know what you think. I think all of those comments are gonna be helpful for this council to make the appropriate choice moving forward, thank you.

David PenalozaItem 18

Thank you, Council Member Lopez. Council Member Fenn.

Thai Viet PhanItem 18

Thank you, staff and our consultant for this presentation. I feel like I need more little movies or something, maybe some background music.

Thai Viet PhanItem 18

But I definitely don't love concept one. I just think the more types of uses that you get mixed up in there, it gets scary, it gets dangerous for folks. I would be too afraid to ride a bike, although I don't like riding bikes in general, so maybe scratch that. I think my favorite as presented is concept two. I do know a lot of cyclists who don't want to ride their bike with cars. It's scary, especially when it's very traffic-y. Obviously, I always support separated bike lanes, protected bike lanes.

Thai Viet PhanItem 18

I think that's just really important as we move forward throughout the city and as we enhance our streets. I guess I'm not informed enough about the buses, and I think that is something that we should bring OCTA in to have a conversation with them, see what they can commit to. And I think we obviously have very high bus ridership, but if it's only going to be a portion of First Street, what does that look like? How does that actually improve? Are people just commuting through First Street? Are they going end to end in that area? Let's take a look at that because if...

Thai Viet PhanItem 18

I guess my question is, if people are cycling and they're staying on First Street, that would be a bigger priority to me than if a bus is just driving through and you're taking up all this space that otherwise can have protected bike lanes and for pedestrians because of all the kids walking to school in that area or going to the local businesses. But other than that, I would love to see those two ideas fleshed out with OCTA at the table. And I do agree in part with Council Member Vazquez who said, you know, you kind of have a chicken or the egg issue with the buses.

Thai Viet PhanItem 18

But at the same time, just because we put these protected lanes out there, we don't know if they're going to increase bus routes. We don't know if they're actually going to provide the services that we need and we want. But what we do know is that we do have a lot of pedestrians. We do have cyclists, a lot of kids in that area. So thank you again. and I guess I look forward to whatever next steps that we need to bring back. Thank you.

David PenalozaItem 18

Thank you for those comments, customer or fan. I just wanted to make sure we have quorum. Thank you for the presentation to our staff and the consultants. I'm kind of torn. I go back and forth between concept two and one just because all of these look great. I'm definitely not supportive of bus only bike lanes just just because I've seen and continue to get the wrath every single day from our constituents about the changes we've made to standard, the changes we've made to McFadden, that is an ongoing just frustration from our residents of those changes that are well intended

David PenalozaItem 18

and I'm hoping are, you know, when they're completed, they're everyone learns to get used to them, right? and adapt but I keep thinking about that and so I guess one of the things that I wanted to see is I'm happy that I that we saw that we did a lot of the outreach that was noted in in the presentation the different in-person touchpoint meetings and the social media engagements but what I would like to see is the actual comments the the feedback from residents samples of the feedback

David PenalozaItem 18

that we heard. Right now currently we're just seeing that we saw you know 521 responses from the online surveys but what were those responses? What was the majority of those responses? What did they say? And the comments along the lines of all the other engagement meetings what was the feedback right? I know that a lot of these concepts that are being presented today I was shown these concepts before we did these outreach meetings in the meeting with public works. So I know that these concepts aren't a true reflection of the feedback that we heard

David PenalozaItem 18

from our constituents. So I would like to see what those comments were, because these concepts were already designed before the feedback was, before the outreach was done. I mean, that's just just the reality. And if I'm not if I'm mistaken please speak now.

Thank you Mayor Potem. We started with 12 concepts in total in looking at this originally that was then whittled down to eight and as we went through the community meetings those eight through the feedback from the community have been narrowed down to these three. But But I appreciate the comments and when we come back, we can bring more detailed information as to what the survey responses were for each one and how the community specifically pointed to these three concepts.

Alvaro NuñezItem 18

Okay, yeah, I would like, go ahead. May I pretend, just to interject, so to provide context, because I think Acting Director really didn't give it so much. Literally 12 concepts and as a reminder, right, we're looking at a main interior in the center of a city, we have a lot of accidents, literally deaths, right? And as was mentioned, you saw the speed, right? So it's a high speed area, a lot of commuters, a lot of bicyclists, a lot of petitions, a lot of accidents. So when public works and the consultant says, how do we mitigate that? And so that came with 12 concepts. From those 12 concepts, got mitigated to eight.

Alvaro NuñezItem 18

Those eight, the three you saw today was that. So you are correct, to put it bluntly. They were preconditioned in presentations, but the moment was why. They would be conditioned to address those key critical factors. How do you minimize speed? How do you avert any more dangerous conditions? How do you improve some of those areas? And again, those were the key concepts they looked at.

David PenalozaItem 18

Thank you for that, Mr. City Manager, which I appreciate, but I would still really appreciate appreciate seeing that feedback of what is the desire of our constituency and I and I appreciate the desire to help get people from one side of the street to the other side of the street because that is very important I remember about four or five years ago I a lot of the residents down in Memorial Park area were asking for a crosswalk they wanted a marked crosswalk on st. Andrew and we've had this conversation mr. city manager between flower and Baker because

David PenalozaItem 18

there's a park and there's people that are trying to cross a wide stretch of st andrew and having to run half the time because of how fast cars are coming and i was told by the previous public works director uh that we couldn't put a crosswalk there because then the city uh becomes liable for people trying to cross the street and to get to the park which to me i thought was one of the most stupid thing i've ever heard but that was what i was told right why we couldn't put a crosswalk there. So I'm hearing staff and I appreciate and I want to see crosswalks where we can put them because First Street does have large stretches of

David PenalozaItem 18

streets where people can't safely cross the street and that should be our goal. So how do we navigate that change? I mean I know that state law has changed in regards to jaywalking and and is that something that we've seen an increase in since that law took place uh chief of police i i see you nodding your head uh yes thank you mpt um

we did collect that data and prior to the law ab2147 freedom to walk act prior to the law in In 2021-2022 we had 153 pedestrian traffic collisions. In 2023 the first year we had 202. That's about a 30% plus increase. In 2024 we had 214. So there is a significant increase after AB 2147.

David PenalozaItem 18

»» Yeah. And that's good to know because again, I support any concept that moves towards that direction to helping people safely cross the street and narrow the streets where we can, specifically with crosswalks adjacent to neighborhoods, but also obviously the reduction of lanes is again, obviously I would love to be the East Coast, but at the same time there isn't a day that has gone by

David PenalozaItem 18

since the construction on standard and McFadden started that I don't hear it from a resident from a constituent of why are we doing this who made this decision this isn't what people wanted so it opens up that thought right that is is this something that we should take a bigger pulse on or a better pulse on from our residents whether it's it's moving towards and putting it towards VOTERS OF WHAT THEY WOULD LIKE TO SEE OR YOU KNOW AND I'M JUST THINKING OUT LOUD HERE THIS ISN'T SOMETHING THAT I DEFINITELY WANT TO DO BUT JUST A GENERAL IDEA BUT THOSE ARE MY COMMENTS OVERALL SUPPORTIVE OF

David PenalozaItem 18

LEANING TOWARDS TWO LIKE ONE JUST BECAUSE IT MAINTAINS THAT THAT THOSE LANES BUT THOSE ARE MY COMMENTS WITH THAT DOES ANYBODY ELSE HAVE ANY COMMENTS NO OKAY ALL RIGHT MR. CITY MANAGER HAVE YOU CAPTURED THE the council's direction and desire. Yes, thank you. Okay, all right.

David PenalozaItem 18

It says you're gonna summarize all of that, but I don't expect you to. Do you want to?

Alvaro NuñezItem 18

No, I'm not gonna summarize that today. Thank you for that. I do wanna thank the, let's be blunt here. I do wanna thank again, I can, Public Director Rudy Rosas and the consultant, I think they did a great job. Again, this is that type of, again, only because as Council Member Vazquez mentioned, the whole chicken and the egg kind of mentality. We do gotta start making these type of changes in this way. If I recall, Chief, our fatalities last year pedestrian bicycling was what, 36?

Alvaro NuñezItem 18

Over 30.

There's 34 fatalities.

Alvaro NuñezItem 18

Right, so those are the things we're trying to mitigate and minimize and still have avert the concerns that you said. As far as the individual crosswalks, in the neighborhoods among neighborhood parks, ask us again and we'll evaluate.

David PenalozaItem 18

Okay, thank you. Okay, that brings us to city manager comments. Mr. City Manager, can we please hear your comments at this time?

Alvaro NuñezItem 18

So this is an acknowledgement to the Carpenters' Unit upgrades at the baseball field at Salvador Park. A special shout out to their president and executive director, Jimmy. They've partnered with the cities in Santa Ana and different parks in our neighborhood. And this past January 31st, the local cooperatives union, in coordination with the public works, completed the replacement of the baseball backup at Salvador Park right before baseball season. And so this is a continued relationship we have with that union, and we will appreciate their work and continue assistance in helping with us.

Alvaro NuñezItem 18

In addition, last week I had the opportunity to join Council Member Vazquez Hernandez in our Mexican sister city, Saguayo delegation at the celebration, a special invitation of the patron saint, San Joselito, which is San Jose Sanchez del Rio. As part of that component, if you notice, so they acknowledge our receipt of the surplus equipment for water. This is a meeting with their fire department and their public and the council members acknowledging

Alvaro NuñezItem 18

our receipt and thanking the city council for their assistance in providing that equipment.

Alvaro NuñezItem 18

As part of the cultural component, we had again the opportunity to see the pilgrimage and the patronage of the saints of San Joselito. And this is the event where they actually hide that type of religious component. And for those who don't recognize and don't know the start of San Joselito, this is the patronage set of a child for that matter, who during Mexico's history of the war of of Los Cristeros represented some of the religious faith in Mexico and part of that acknowledgement and conflict. So they acknowledged and paid patronage for three straight days and they walked. And some of the council members actually joined

Alvaro NuñezItem 18

the pilgrimage which was what, three, four miles I believe. So we acknowledge their participation. Me and Council Member Vasquez didn't do it.

Thanks. Yeah.

Alvaro NuñezItem 18

Again, for those that don't recognize, Saguaro is literally a town like 12 hours away from Guadalajara. And they're famous for their huarache components. And in fact, that's their key aspect. They've known for that for over 100 years as far as the huarache aspect. In this sense, we went to see folks that actually have three generations of doing huaraches. In addition, you see on the left side a photograph of a person actually completing one of the Sahuayo famous hats in Michoacan. It's known as the Sahuayo hat because they're one of the ones that actually make this type of hat. And it's typical of Michoacan.

Alvaro NuñezItem 19

And you see one of the workers there working and forming the hat as far as it appears. And I know many of you bought some and there's some at the city council chambers. But this factory, as simple as it looks, is three generations doing many, many hats throughout Mexico.

Alvaro NuñezItem 19

We also had the opportunity to look at our panaderia. They're very proud of this panaderia. I guess a three generation also. And they're the ones that I think are going to come to our business expo in March. And so you see them showing us the typical component, a factory in Somaya, not atypical 211 here in the city, and that's our participation there. This is a forum meeting with our city council in the library in Sahuayo, and where they're looking to continue to partnership with the city. And so this is one of those components where as far as the council meeting, in addition

Alvaro NuñezItem 19

to continued partnership, they requested very specific items. One is the exchange of students, both from Santa Ana to Saguaro, then from Saguaro to Santa Ana. And this whole component of exchange of books and participation in that learning component. So this is a critical moment where you really have a joint meeting with the council members and, of course, some of our staff there making point and acknowledging some of the connectivity. And, again, what are we doing? we're expanding our relationship, ensuring that when we participate as a sister city with Sahuayo that we're actually making certain types of benefits and enjoying that

Alvaro NuñezItem 19

life, typical culture exchange that extends beyond the discussion, beyond the photo ops, that we're actually delivering on certain items.

Alvaro NuñezItem 19

And that's it. Thank you. It was my first time to Sahuayo. You know, I've been to Michoacan, different place in Michoacan. My family's from over there. And so I think one of the things that stood out from the President Municipal, Manuel, and his staff is the fact that they were very cordial, very receptive, and they're looking forward to the second business expo. They provided different ideas. I think this coming March, March 27, I believe, the weekend, you're going to have quite a bit more. We're going to triple the amount of people coming from Michoacan.

Alvaro NuñezItem 19

We're working with the Mexican consulate, so we invite everybody to continue being aware. Thank you.

David PenalozaItem 19

Mayor Paterson. Thank you, Mr. City Manager. Okay, I will now move on to Council Comments. I will call on Council Members to announce their comments. Council Member Becerra, please.

Phil BacerraItem 19

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I just want to start by asking our Chief, as I always do, how many vacancies do we have this month?

33.

Phil BacerraItem 19

33. Okay, thank you for that. that. Recently, there was an article that was published regarding a court case that was filed alleging retaliation against a former Santa Ana police officer or police employee, excuse me, involving former Santa Ana police chief David Valentin. In that article, the author shared with the public, those who were not in the courtroom during that trial, that quote, while Valentin was on the stand, attorney John Barber revealed that Valentin, who retired hired in October of 2023 has a contract with the city that gives him $300 per hour to cooperate in the ongoing cases.

Phil BacerraItem 19

The contract is not listed on the city's public documents portal. Barbara revealed that an amendment to the contract was made specifically for this case, where his hourly rate for cooperation was increased to $350 per hour. Since this information was published in a public place, I've been asked by numerous residents about that contract so I just want to be very clear right here that I was not informed of that decision by the city attorney or the then former acting city manager to enter into that agreement and I would not have supported it if it came to the council and I do not support that agreement with

Phil BacerraItem 19

Valentin today and I do not support the amendment to that agreement signed by our city attorney to increase the amount paid to Valentin there are other police officers both current and former who have testified and they were not compensated by the city to as the agreement with Valentine states for Valentines cooperation assistance participation and appearance given the questions that I've been asked by residents all who were in shock that our city attorney would enter into such an agreement I felt it was very important to make it very very clear that I did not know about that agreement until that

Phil BacerraItem 19

article was publicly published and that I do not support the approval of that agreement. And on a much more lighter note, I want to wish everybody a Chuk Mung Nam Mai, Happy New Year, Happy Lunar New Year. Last night I had the opportunity to visit various temples throughout Santa Ana, Westminster, and Garden Grove, and Ty, help me if I butchered this, but I had a great time at the last temple which was Hoi Quang, right?

Almost.

Phil BacerraItem 19

Go for it. was it? That place. I went there and I had an amazing time right there on Westminster. Our police were doing a great job of making sure that folks were enjoying themselves safely. So I want to acknowledge that. And then we're kind of an interesting day. So today is the beginning of Ramadan for our Muslim friends and neighbors. So I'd like to wish all of them Ramadan Mubarak and Ramadan Kareem, which is basically have a blessed and generous Ramadan. And then for our Catholic and Episcopalian friends and neighbors, you know, tonight is Fat Tuesday and tomorrow is Ash Wednesday or the beginning of Lent.

Phil BacerraItem 19

So I just want to wish everybody a peaceful Lenten season and may be able to power through those Lenten sacrifices. Good night, everybody.

David PenalozaItem 19

Thank you, Councillor Becerra. Councillor Hernandez, please.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 19

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Good job on today's meeting, sir. Congratulations on running a very efficient meeting. Thank you. I want to thank the members of the public who tuned into today's council meeting, as well as the city staff who prepared our agenda. I wanted to share with the public that the City of Santa Ana did pay for my travel to visit our sister city of Sao Paio from February 8th through February 12th. I had the honor of joining the pilgrimage. I participated I participated in the walk. I participated in the mass as well as got the privilege to participate in their council meeting.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 19

The sister city relationship that embarked and began in 2021 is now seeing the city of Santa Ana donate surplus water equipment. And it's important to us that when Sao Ayo prospers, Santa Ana prospers. So I wanna thank our city manager's office. I wanna thank our deputy city manager, manager Sylvia Vasquez for being there. You both represented the city with pride and with integrity, and you made us very proud to be elected from the city of Santa Ana. Because to see our executive management team out there

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 19

fully diving into the culture that is Sahuayo when we have over 40,000 residents who live in the city with roots from that beautiful town, you all got to see firsthand that our residents are in that community. They were participating in the pilgrimage. We ran into residents who were wearing Santa Ana hats and we would bother them and say can we take a picture with you? And and it was really Something that truly was humbling to be on the receiving end of I was with the city manager Nunez and I ran into former kindergarten teacher of mine and her sisters were there and

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 19

They live in the neighborhood where I live in as well and in that connection is so sacred because I had no idea how deep those roots were but to see that with you all is very special so I want to say thank you I also want to thank the city manager's office for working with residents in Sullivan and kindly want to ask you to update the entire council if you can send us an email about what our CDA department is doing to work with the residents from Coach Royale I understand that there are residents who have not filled out paperwork entirely if we can have our staff follow up with them at your direction city manager I think if we can

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem 19

meet them halfway whatever barriers do exist let's help identify them and let's help those residents get that paperwork in so that we can fully and get we get the best picture of what's happening to these residents and then we could take the appropriate steps to help them um and i would also just like to close in memory of vicky tofoya i know we we closed in in memory in the past but i just want to formally do this and request that we send her family a certificate um in memory of our adjournment that'll conclude my comments thank you thank you councilman hernandez comes from

Jessie LopezItem 19

lopez thank you well happy lunar new year everybody i had an amazing time celebrating tets at centennial park um with our community and i want to wish you all um happiness good health and prosperity in the year of the horse chuck mong and i also just want to invite our community to our next park cleanup on march 7th at santiago park there's been a lot of rain a lot of winds there's going to be a lot of debris so please come on out and join us help us take care of our local park help us protect our waterways and get involved it's a really great way to meet other people and

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contribute overall positively to the city i also you know just want to echo your comments city city manager and thank the Carpenters for always asking, how can we help the city? How can we give back to this community that has given us so much? They've helped us in Santiago Park, and I'm very grateful to their leadership, to their members who do this work on their day off, right? Like, we have to remember that they're doing this for free. And so, you know, they're putting their their skills to the test here. And so I think it's a beautiful partnership. I hope that we can only strengthen it.

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And I just really wanna thank them for their efforts to help us beautify our community spaces. And as you know, my colleague mentioned, tomorrow does mark the beginning of Ramadan, a sacred month observed by our Muslim community all around the world and here in the city of Santa Ana as well. And Ramadan is a time of fasting, praying, reflection and generosity from dawn to sunset those who are able to fast as an act of faith discipline and spiritual renewal it's also I think a time for us to really center compassion and understanding and you know care for our

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neighbors help feed the hungry strengthen family bonds and deepen one's commitment to justice and service you know to really our constituents I just I just want to wish you a peaceful and meaningful Ramadan. May this month bring you clarity, strength, and countless blessings. I hope that we can acknowledge it via the city social media channels. City Manager, I think that would be meaningful to a large constituency here. And I just really hope that people are allowed to express their religious freedom and their cultural expression,

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oppression, because it is foundational to our democracy. And so I do believe that our diversity is one of our greatest strengths, and I will always be proud to defend these human rights. I also want us to, you know, I think lastly, on behalf of my office, I wanted to provide a quick update. You know, the city manager and the city attorney have been in consistent contact for many months because of all the work that happened citywide, but really in the district. And I just wanted to share with our community that has been really invested that the methadone

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clinic on East First Street is officially closed. And our team can confirm that. And they also don't have any plans to reopen. And as things develop, we will continue to keep our community informed via our newsletter. And I just really want to thank our leadership team, the city attorney, you know, for being, I mean, all of us, right, like we're on the receiving end of so much on a day to day. And so I think that this is, you know, our community is seeing all the investments in East First Street. We just had a productive conversation about the investments that we want to make, and this is part of that bigger vision.

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And so I just want to thank you all for your work that you do day in and day out. And, you know, it doesn't always get discussed. It doesn't always get highlighted. But it really means so much to us in Ward 3, particularly the neighborhoods that have, you know, that have been on the receiving end of inaction for many, many years. And so I think that this is moving our district in the right direction. And so I want to thank you all for the consistent follow-up. We've had very tough conversations. We fought, but we are getting things done. And so I just want to thank you all, PD, code, planning. Really it's been an entire team effort.

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And so I want to thank you all for your contributions to getting us here. And again, have a good night. thank you mpt for a very efficient and respectful meeting have a good night thank you councilmember

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lopez councilmember vasquez thank you very much i want to thank the city as well for paying my travels to sawayo michoacan mexico it was a beautiful travel and also thank you to the staff of sawayo the mayor manuel and all the work that they did and treated us really good and we but we had a great time and not only that, but we were able to see their artisan work and how beautiful it was and have conversations and that we're gonna expand it this year. And my goal is like, as I said at the meeting, like let's expand it again and let's expand it incrementally every year.

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So we fill up our hotels with that word that council member Phil Bessette likes so much, that TOT tax, right? When we expand it so big that it supports Santa Ana and it's something that it would work well for both communities and it's doing it now as it's bringing people to us. We were able to go to the library that is in need so I wanna see if my office can start some kind of community support to do a book drive I've done before but how do we get the books there and that's just a work that I wanna take on to see how the people of Sahuayuan-Santana ARE GOING TO SUPPORT THE LIBRARY THERE AND WE'LL GET IT GOING AND

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DO THE INFRASTRUCTURE FOR THAT THROUGH MY OFFICE. WE WERE ALSO INVITED TO GO TO A SPECIAL NEEDS SCHOOL AND IT IS JUST JOYOUS AND BEAUTIFUL AND THE KIDS WERE AMAZING. WE HAD A GOOD TIME. ONE KID JUST DRAGGED ME AROUND AND WANTED TO SHOW ME EVERY CLASSROOM AND FINALLY WE HAD TO TAKE HIM BACK TO EAT BECAUSE HE HAD TO EAT HIS LUNCH AND HE HAD A LIMITED TIME BUT WE WERE playing soccer and having a great time when i say we i mean gassan was playing soccer

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and we just it was a beautiful event and i want to do a teacher to teacher support for that particular school and see what we can do to get in manipulatives or raise funds to they have tablets for speech and to communicate so we're looking at that as teachers as uh we spoke uh uh about that as you were there. So there's a lot of work to be done and appreciate for us being there and helping to support where the support is needed. Also, you know, I want to wish everybody a happy Lunar New Year. Looking forward to the parade in Westminster this Saturday. A happy Ramadan to

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everybody. We are going to bring taco trucks at every mosque for Iftar where we break fast at at sunset in Santa Ana and their halal tacos in a taco truck through taco trucks at every mosque. And I'm looking forward to having those tacos as well. I wanna do mention thank you to the Police Oversight Commission for taking on the U visa and making it easier. It reforms the necessary barriers for immigrants and victims of crime seeking the certification required to pursue immigration relief. and we've broken down the barriers that we had. I want to thank Councilmember Jesse Lopez

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for inviting me to a meeting with Sandra DeAnda and families that were affected by this, and to meeting with the city manager. Thank you, city manager, for bringing this forward. And thank you, Sandra and Jesse and the families for including me with it. I want to thank the Police Oversight Commission for taking on the work, for OC Justice Fund and Western State College for doing some of that research along with the community. You know, I really want to thank my commissioner, Carlos Perea, who I met when he was 15, undocumented child organizing with the Orange County Dream Team.

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He went on to organize a group called RAIS and then Resilience OC, and he helped organize organized a lot of new orgs around Orange County that are doing this work so I do appreciate all the work that everybody is doing and it's just a good day for Santa Ana that we continue to bring on this work. Thank you and have a good night.

David PenalozaItem 19

Thank you Councilmember Vasquez and if you guys have noticed I am not Mayor Emeskwa. With their permission I have I'm going to tell you guys that she was out tonight on Seattle We had a planned medical procedure. Who's, oh, Council Member Phan, I'm sorry. Did I skip you? I did skip you. Council Member Phan, go ahead.

Thai Viet PhanItem 19

It is Lunar New Year.

Thai Viet PhanItem 19

You didn't even wear your Aoyai today.

David PenalozaItem 19

Okay, we're doing this.

Thai Viet PhanItem 19

All right, I know, go ahead. Well, first, Happy New Year to everyone. Thank you so much to all the staff who wore their Aoyai. It was truly wonderful. I remember my first year here being the only one who wore an Aoyai and every year we've progressively, well I kind of you know threatened in a gentle manner everyone to wear an Aoyai and it really it really means a lot. I think that the fact that our leadership team, our city, our employees are so reflective of our community and so willing to be

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be open to the different cultures in our community and to really embrace it, I think is such a wonderful symbol of what Santa Ana is. So I too was in Sahuayo, the city paid for my trip. It was my second time there and I always learned so much working with our community and our team there. there. Being able to see what we can do to help residents there with our surplus water equipment, which also coincided with my fifth year serving on the Metropolitan Water District

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Board, to see how crucial this work is and the fact that they don't have access to these resources and this equipment is something that I think a lot of us take for granted. But it's not just for their benefit, right? We are working on economic development here in the city of Santa Ana. There are a lot of warehouses in Ward 1, and I would love to see that expand in Santa Ana and for our residents. I want to thank the Parks and Rec Department, our libraries, and everybody involved in our Santa Ana Lunar New Year Festival. It was very well attended. It was super fun.

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It's just always so wonderful to see our family members, our community come out and again celebrating these different cultures. I mentioned that Santa Ana is the gateway to Little Saigon. We are the home to Little Saigon. We, you know, many of us refugees have no other home but Santa Ana. and to really see my culture celebrated here where before you could come to City Hall and not have anyone who spoke your language is truly an incredible thing to see. I also want to congratulate my cousin Kathy for getting engaged.

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And I was in Philadelphia, and I want to bring this up because I was able to visit the Liberty Bell.

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And the bell has a message that says, proclaim liberty throughout all the land until all the inhabitants thereof. And that is, I think, something that we strive to do here in the city of Santa Ana and as Americans. And I think that was particularly poignant for me as a refugee and immigrant, and especially during Black History Month. So I want to read a little poem from a little shop I visited in Collingswood, New Jersey. And it's a shortened version of a poem that the shop owner's great grandmother had. She was born in 1904 in Jim Crow South in South Carolina, I believe, and migrated north

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with the Great Migration. And the poem's called Chatterbox. They call me a little chatterbox, but my name is Little May. The reason that I talk so much, I have so much to say. I love my mama and my daddy. I love my sister too. And if you'll be real good to me, I'll be sure to love you." And I think that really resonated with me because as a young black girl in the Jim Crow South and to be able to speak your truth, to be able to speak up for yourself and to to be able to grow up and raise a family in this country

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as something that is, I guess we're all trying to strive for. And so with that, I wish everybody a great Lunar New Year, a reflective Black History Month, and a safe time out there because I hear it's still raining. Have a good night.

David PenalozaItem 19

Member Phan, apologies for skipping you over. Made me feel really bad there. I should have let you close the meeting. I mean, that was beautiful. Thank you for that. But with that, the Mayor was out tonight. For the record, she had a planned medical procedure on her knee. She gave me permission to say that. I didn't have any HIPAA laws. So she should be back at the next council meeting. We wish her a speedy recovery. and with that I am just very sad that I missed the TET Festival, I missed Sawayo. My family and I were on a planned vacation, much needed, but we're back now

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and but I'm thankful that it went well and the pictures were beautiful, jealous I wasn't there to participate at both Sawayo and the TET Festival, so thank you Councillor Murrafan for your leadership there and Parks and Rec and everyone everyone involved in making that happen. With that I won't say much more. Councilmember Becerra already mentioned it. Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. So remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. Happy Ramadan and I hope that the next 40 days of Lent, people really reflect and use that to, whatever that means to you, really.

David PenalozaItem 19

really um anyways that's it good night uh meeting adjourned with no further business before the city council i hereby adjourn the city council meeting uh the next city council meeting will be held on march 3rd 2026