Read the January 23 meeting.

Valerie Amezcua

Yes, Mayor, go ahead. I hereby convene the Santa Ana City Council meeting to order. Madam Clerk, please conduct the roll call.

Jennifer L. Hall

Councilmember Becerra. Councilmember Hernandez. Councilmember Lopez. Councilmember Phan. Councilmember Vazquez. Mayor Pro Tem Penaloza. Mayor Amezcua. That is four members present. That is a quorum. Madam Clerk, before we proceed to the Pledge of Allegiance, please make an announcement. For members of the public on Zoom or teleconference to request to speak during public comments on agenda items only, you must dial star nine from your phone or click the button labeled raise hand from Zoom now to be in the speaker queue once public comments commence. Thank you.

Valerie Amezcua

Thank you very much. The first item on the agenda is the Pledge of Allegiance. Madison, would you come up and lead us on the Pledge of Allegiance, please?

Jennifer L. Hall

Place your right hand over your heart. Ready, begin.

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

Valerie Amezcua

Thank you, Pastor Grimm.

Valerie Amezcua

this is the time of the meeting for city council to receive comments from the public on agenda items only madam city clerk please explain the public comment procedure

Jennifer L. Hall

and call the first speaker if there are any thank you mayor pursuant to resolution number 2025-004 speakers are requested to address the city council directly and to refrain from profane language racial epitaphs and libelous or slanderous statements that 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 we did not receive any e-comments related to today's special meeting do not see any members present in person who have submitted speaker cards

Jennifer L. Hall

for today's special meeting and no one has raised hand in zoom by the announcement by the beginning of the queue so we have no public comments for today's special meeting thank you madam city

Valerie Amezcua

City Clerk um the only item today is a work study the only item today uh is the City Council's goal setting Mr City Manager it's the floor is yours sir and first of all I want to thank you very much for for uh putting this together and for the council that is here present with us this morning

Alvaro Nuñez

and staff so thank you very much thank you Mayor if we could just put a copy of the agenda Agenda. So the the purpose of the of this meeting, and it will let me just review the agenda quickly, so you there's an understanding there.

Alvaro Nuñez

Next, of course, what we tested it

Alvaro Nuñez

There was working during testing period.

Alvaro Nuñez

So we'll do a quick. Then we read the agenda. And I'll explain the purpose of the workshop. We're going to provide a bit of an update what we've done this past year. And our expectation this upcoming year. At that same token, the city manager will begin a fiscal overview of what we're doing. And then the positive income of the local sales tax measure X, the budget process recommendations, recommendations and our fiscal obligations we'll have a 30-minute lunch and then uh assistant um city manager Ty will begin development and review growth opportunities strategic plan update and

Alvaro Nuñez

then next steps as a reminder this is a workshop um let's not uh I don't want the city constitute confuses with with a budget review for intensive purposes but it does send establish the ground wrong work as far as what the expectation is going to be. And for us, we went in to do this as a moment for review, a little bit of pondering and reflection where we're at. And as we begin a budget discussion in a couple of months, March, April, you get a better assessment where we are as far as the city current status of the city and we begin planning a little bit better.

Alvaro Nuñez

As far as the five year strategic plan, municipal code section, this is compliant with our SMC. Regarding that aspect, there's an expectation to later in the fiscal year to begin a 5 year strategic plan review. This puts us on course to start doing that again.

Alvaro Nuñez

Each fiscal year the city manager will contact public meeting to present the city's goals. The purpose of the meeting is to review the city's progress in achieving this plan goals within the community, and to gain public input and initially relate to the city's 5 year strategic plan. Again, this is the premise and the foundation. So we begin discussing the current status of the city. I would caution the city council not to overly or undervalue some of the information you're gonna get right?

Alvaro Nuñez

You will be receiving just to understand where we're at, how we see what we're doing, and start again reflecting and thinking for the next couple of months. we'll begin the budget aspects. You'll see that we organized the presentation in order to understand not just the budget components, what we've done so far, what 2026 is going to bring with us, and also the future expectations as far as where we see us growing in the next five years.

Alvaro Nuñez

And here we go. As far as the strategic priorities for 2021, 21. You see the priority financial stability to balance the budget every year, receive the a credit rating, and obviously reserve the intact and growing community safety increase on house response. We do crime, the community policing efforts, and of course the station of the 20 present zoning code priority. Priority also modern facilities and infrastructure, total capital spending 516,000,006, a little over 560,000,000 dollars over the next 5 years, primarily for water sewer roadways, price and library. And as you remember, there's just consummating.

Alvaro Nuñez

We're starting a review regarding some of the infrastructure and going to the city console and to the public regarding our store system and water systems. systems. You have the official city services, right? We established pbx express permits. We expect that in entitlements, customer friendly systems, permitting, doc license, business license payments. Again, try to make it easy so people understand where we're at in our progress. Cultura and parks recreation, increased public communications. You see our communication, especially on social media platforms. It's automatic Spanish, English obviously, and

Alvaro Nuñez

and even Vietnamese, and that's the core component. And so when people see sometimes there's a delay, it's because we wanna make sure the translations meet and are accurate. You don't wanna be making those type of mistakes.

Alvaro Nuñez

Obviously, economic diversification and expansion. We reduced the outhouse by 90%. We've improved zoo and many park facilities. And you see this 2026, you can get a lot more invitations to red ribbon cutting efforts. current and future property tax increases from the main place expansion related Bristol and the village

Alvaro Nuñez

delivering on our on our promises

Alvaro Nuñez

This is working. This is the intimacy that gives you that work performance type of work action.

Alvaro Nuñez

I am at that level.

Alvaro Nuñez

All right.

Alvaro Nuñez

Uh, uh,

Alvaro Nuñez

and I promise a process in economic development. And the reason why I am reading it out loud, other than because there's folks that are maybe hearing. But in this world, so tip in the minute you're seeing some of the items that we already accomplished at least for the last since I've been on board right we've streamlined the city council meetings we have tried to organize our agenda a little bit better and prepared better and you notice we haven't been in very very many late meetings I think we do well in the way we prepare the agenda our agenda reviews are probably more concise and we're providing better staff reports on the police

Alvaro Nuñez

oversight commission we appointed in the last six months the city council appointed but if you ask the charter the city manager did the appointment so we have the uh the director they're ready to review an ordinance and bylaws and if we're on track by probably by next month you probably have the most comprehensive uv so review um that we've ever had and probably going to be the best one in orange county we've increased engagement with state and federal lobbyists you see us involved with cal cities constant communication with the office of the assemblyman the office of the state state senator and Congressman Correa.

Alvaro Nuñez

And when I say the Office of the Assemblyman, we're connecting with Assemblyman Treta and we're making that communication. In addition, with our county offices, we constantly communication with Supervisors Armento's office fully when it's necessary and Supervisor Nguyen also when we can. We're in constant communication with the superintendent, of course, of Dr. Lorraine Perez of Santa Unified School District, but Dr. Moffitt and our Garden Group Unified, we get calls too, and we communicate as often as possible. We've done a same-day express permit program at the

Alvaro Nuñez

Planning and Building Office. That's always been a criticism regarding the way we function in our city and the sense of taking a long time. We've done a same-day express permit program for a specific type of permits, and so we're trying to expedite, and you're going to see an expansion So we're going to be in the extension of that this upcoming year. In addition to the main place, renewing their activity. You have a related Bristol and a village on South also being approved.

Alvaro Nuñez

And again, more city highlights and achievement communication again with not one but 2 Vietnamese business forums that we continue to communicate on that aspect. And of course, the first ever Tri-City Little Saigon collaboration.

Alvaro Nuñez

Our quality of life and culture. Well, we've delegated maintenance and groups with Caltrans. We put you in Pacific because we thought we were going to be able to have an agreement last week. Unfortunately, the office of the Assemblyman communicated that you need Pacific Council, so we could be that pending. As you notice, we're putting a positive spin on that because we think we're going to be able to negotiate some level of favor favorite contract with them. We've established and maintain some of the amirals concerns that we have in on civic center, for example, and even the media basket mural on Memorial Park.

Alvaro Nuñez

We've had I know you received many emails regarding concerns of related to the the artists. The restoration components we've our staff has met with them last week. So we we have an understanding we want to honor in the contract that they sign. So I think we're in a good process to make progress on those level of relationships. We will be bringing a comprehensive mural restoration and approval policy later this earlier this year, where you have actually communications and and a concise and I say comprehensive so that we understand it's

Alvaro Nuñez

both in the private and the public arena. So that includes parks and recreation, public works, and community development. And once the Arts and Culture Commission reviews, we'll bring it to City Council for review and consideration. Quality of life training to 40 police sergeants, that's something that Chief Rodriguez has expanded, making sure that all sergeants understand some of the key components that we're trying to focus. We've expanded the co-staffing. Obviously, you're seeing on East First Street, the drug debt abatements, we have at least three or four working with the city attorney's office.

Alvaro Nuñez

And again, those are not easy cases. Those take, when we take somebody to court and you're asking for property type of abatement components where you impact property rights, it's a serious, serious type of enforcement effort. So we want to make sure we thank the city attorney's office, the police department, my old court enforcement, and the way we're working on that. So you're seeing progress there. The anti-campus ordinance passed some time, doing some enforcement. That with Prop 36 is helping with our efforts. Again, I mentioned before the U visa process

Alvaro Nuñez

streamlining, which we're on track for review. In fact, we have a meeting later on today to do the final aspect. So again, you'll probably be seeing the more improved U visa process that we had in years in the City of Santa Ana. And again, the transit zoning code, that's doing a part of the the code modifications at this point. And so what we're pointing out, you keep seeing this sense of privacy and continuing efforts that sometimes get lost because that's part of the minutia of what city government does. And the parks, libraries, and other infrastructure, what we've done already, Centennial Park improvements

Alvaro Nuñez

in the lights and the restrooms, Santa Anita renovations, improvements at Delhi. Again, the Delhi library branch that opened, Bristol and Erichow parking lot improvement that's been there for years. And so you see a lot more activity now in the neighborhood safety and the street lesson communication the chaos coming soon. And again this goes to our 2,026. So make sure we can. We are our second team communicates with you the bus shelter replacement on February, 2,026. That's something into pool finally be done in March of 2,026. Then you hope library renovation or looking to open in March, 2,026 Centennial Dark Park and improvements.

Alvaro Nuñez

improvements we've done over there of the white trails the improvements should be done in March and July standing in McFadden the roadway improvements that were total splash pad again the first that that were promised what seven years ago so you're gonna have them by the end of this fiscal year coming soon South Coast Metro improvements the Memorial Park aquatics uh some of the signal lights are MacArthur and flower working with our other um jurisdictions restrictions Bristol Street face Cypress fire stations and again thank you for it um modifying

Alvaro Nuñez

the other contract just Tuesday so we can expand the lighting without delay to our Centennial Park um calendar for the playground improvements there and again stuff that's been as as people have us in as part of the shelves you see us getting it off the shelf you see us working on those So this year is going to be a very productive year, showing our completion of the work that we promised.

Alvaro Nuñez

Yeah, we're taking care of business, yes. So the roadmap forward, again, our shared values, community well-being, inclusion, collaboration, competence, professionalism, accountability, and innovation. The Council leads the direction. This is what we're meeting today again. As we move forward with a presentation, you might see this sense of doom within a budget. But we're we're with a stable status so i'm gonna say caution you, and as far as the reaction, it looks somber.

Alvaro Nuñez

But we have solutions and I think we're going to be to make the right type of changes and deviations and and amendments, so that we were sound in the future. The operational reality public demand for service can stretch us too thin to adequate address our shared values on funding mandates. Does you know such as housing increases without money for the supported infrastructure? I can ask us working with the State to make sure that local control social value. But understand that we have to meet our our our mantra and we got in our housing.

Alvaro Nuñez

I'll say this publicly. The the city cannot afford to lose residents and and move to other places. We should have the type of a city that allows for our our folks to continue to live here. Our kids to live here, and people to move into our city and and use our businesses and our amenities. How do we need to move forward? Commit to the full fiscal year impact decision, maintain maintenance, long-term replacement, obviously staffing multipliers for facilities and support and management. And again, our point today is to commit to prioritize.

Alvaro Nuñez

So our assistant city manager cat down, so we'll do the this key component.

want to know. Thank you. So good morning, Mayor and Council, formally. So I'm going to present our next three sections of information, and we'll get started with a fiscal overview. Throughout the presentation, we'll provide information and point out opportunities for strategic efforts. At the end of today's workshop, we have a list of proposed strategic goals you can modify or add to as you see fit. And then please feel free to ask questions as we go along. Excuse me, thank you. Kat, I was going to ask that you want us to wait for your presentation before we ask questions?

I think because the presentation is long enough, you want to... I think it's best that we wait for a section. Sounds good. I have some of the orbitals, but I'll go with Mr. Cigarangio, but I'll go back.

Valerie Amezcua

Okay. All right, thank you. We'll wait then. Thank you. Very good. Thank you.

Okay, so to get us warmed up today, I pulled together some interesting comparative information with the other two large cities in Orange County. That would be Anaheim and Irvine. The positive drivers in this chart are colored green and negative drivers are in red. So, for example, Santa Ana has a low assessed valuation when compared to the other cities, but a very high share of the 1% base property tax assessment. So I did these calculations based on data that I found in audited financial statements for all three cities, just so we know where I got that from.

So when we look at property tax on a per capita level, surprisingly, the three cities are fairly similar. You'll see in that top box right in the middle, Bradley Burns, or I'm sorry, general property tax per capita, 308, 317, 327. So pretty similar. You can see that we do have a lower amount of sales tax per capita for the Bradley Burns allocation. application, but when we add our local Measure X, our total sales tax revenue per capita actually exceeds that of the other cities. So the real difference between the three cities' revenue

sources is Anaheim's hotel tax, which is probably no surprise to anybody. On the spending side, which is the box on the bottom of the slide, we're in between the other two cities on a per capita I found that we spend more of our general fund revenue on actual services. So, in other words, we leave ourselves less to spend on capital projects. You may be aware there is little to no restricted funding available for some of our infrastructure and facilities such as alleys and city hall. So since we're not spending much general fund money on those items, we can start to understand why our facilities have deferred maintenance.

You've all seen this chart before the model indicates that without change we will have a budget deficit in the future. So the green line includes the half percent rate reduction scheduled for measure x scheduled for 2,029. Now, if that's a big if we were to ask the voters to make the full one and a half percent rate permanent, and they approved it, the green line would increase and reduce that gap in that chart doesn't mean that we're off the hook. We do expect a deficit this coming budget cycle, which means that the City Council may need to make some uncomfortable decisions in May.

The chart that we just looked at does not include expected tax revenue increases from new development. That model goes through 2035. You can see the chart on this slide here. Based on the numbers that were presented when these projects were approved, this is what we can expect in the future. So if related Bristol is fully built out in 2036, the net impact to the general fund should be about about 7.9 million and if the village project is fully built out in 2045 the net impact should be

another 2.3 million so this chart chart here shows the actual measure X revenue received on a quarterly basis since it became effective on April 1st 2019. overall the trend line has a positive slope, as you can see in the chart. However, you can see the revenue has kind of sort of flattened out over the last couple of years. So if we zoom into just the last 12 quarters or three years, we can see a definite downward trend in this local revenue source.

This is a look at cannabis industry trends by both county and city. We acquired this data from the state. By county on the left-hand side, we can see that taxable sales increased through 2021 then started tapering off. Los Angeles County has been hit particularly hard, and there's even a slight decrease for Orange County overall. When we took a look at the data by city for Orange County, now that would be over on the right-hand side of the slide, we see a trend line for Santa Santa Ana that looks eerily similar to Los Angeles County.

Unfortunately, our business went to Stanton and Costa Mesa, and that was after the City Council took action to decrease the tax rates in 2,022.

So we've seen the concerning revenue trends. Now it's time to look at some spending. Employee compensation accounts for about 55% of the general fund budget and 34% of the citywide budget. Now remember, employee compensation includes those folks that are providing direct services to the public. We do have approved Mous for many of our bargaining groups. If we were to make some additional assumptions about future SEIU full-time and part-time increases, we can expect to be over the labor budget in the current year.

Some of these numbers will change as we fine-tune calculations, but we did advise that the current year budget can absorb the overage due to staffing vacancies. When we look to next fiscal year, the expected cost of employee compensation exceeds the 10-year outlook by quite a bit more, which cannot simply be absorbed. So we're going to need to look at other budget balancing options to offset the increased cost.

Last year, the city manager indicated the 25-26 budget was going to be the last, quote-unquote, easy budget. budget if you look at the 10-year Outlook that we just saw on slide 13 and do some quick math you'll find out we were expecting an eight and a half million dollar deficit next year so we've talked about labor negotiations making that number a bit worse each year we get an updated actuarial valuation from CalPERS that's our employee pension provider with the required contribution for the next fiscal year that's 2.2 million dollars more than what the prior valuation

said. The 10-year outlook also assumed a $4.2 million sales tax increase, now that's both Bradley Burns and Local Measure X for 26-27, based on information from our sales tax consultant. The latest information suggests a much smaller increase. Our agreement with OCTA requires us to help pay for streetcar operations. Previously, OCTA advised our share may be about a million million dollars a year which is what we included in the 10-year Outlook the latest information from OCTA indicates that figure may be closer to two million finally OCFA recently approached us

to discuss their increasing call volume OCFA suggested at that meeting that we may need a dedicated paramedic unit at a cost of two and a half million dollars so we could be starting the next budget process with up to a $20 million deficit. Of course, we're not going to bring a draft budget to you with a $20 million deficit. Numbers may turn out to be more favorable, and we'll have recommendations to close the gap.

But just for discussion purposes, in that worst-case scenario, if we were to simply recommend cuts to services, what would that look like? Keep in mind that a significant portion of our budget cannot be cut. That would be our contracts for OCFA, ambulance, debt covenants, and the museum support. When we focus on the remainder, we would need 7% cuts across the board. That's a low of $72,000 for city council and a high of $11.3 million for the police department. Now, we don't think this is where we're going to land. This is more of a worst-case scenario.

We're going to look at a variety of budget balancing tools, including raising revenue and improving cost recovery. Now, today we didn't plan to provide you with any specific budget recommendations, but you do need a heads up of what may be coming, and that's going to help inform your discussion today regarding strategic goals.

Next, I would like to cover the positive impacts of our sales tax, our local sales tax. tax. This slide and the next give you a quick overview of what has been added to the budget with our local sales tax that was approved in 2018. The information here is organized by ballot categories. You may remember the 2018 ballot measure included things like addressing homelessness, fixing streets, etc., and other general revenue purposes. Each year we provide provide a full accounting of local sales tax spending to the Citizens Oversight Committee and the City Council and the public. That annual report is reviewed by our independent auditor

and posted on the City's website. With this additional spending, we've had a lot of success stories and we'll get to that in just a moment. This is a snapshot of the staffing that has been added to each department since 2019. That 30% increase in staffing translates to providing additional services to the public. This is a quick snapshot of those successes afforded by our local sales tax. We cured a pre-existing operating deficit. We've been able to afford the annual

increases to our public safety contracts. We have cleaner and safer parks, a dedicated quality of life teams. We've eradicated illegal gaming and cannabis stores, dedicated money for streets, medians, streetlights, sidewalks, and alleys, sped up some of the administrative processes, and implemented modern software in many areas. We have faster counter service, more arts programs, more support for our undocumented residents, expanded library and recreation programs, faster graffiti removal, faster investigations, and more public communications.

Alvaro Nuñez

And on this one we do want to pause so so at least there's an extra a minute of reflection. All those signals or stuff again before measure x passed, then many felt were impossible to address. We were never able to be gain and and and complete seriously. Seriously, at that point I think we had 116 right city attorney, maybe 116 illegal dispensary dispensaries here in the city of Santana.

Alvaro Nuñez

Nobody thought we were going to be successful. I venture to say that we probably have the best cannabis legalized regulated type of business in Orange County. This whole component with illegal gaming that deals with organized crime, serious issues that and they affect the quality of life. Not only in the residential areas, but our commercial areas. This is something that will work with our police department. You see this level of involvement. And again for us, when people often ask, what is what did the measure X do? what did the sales tax do this line is just minimal but it's it's a very graphic of the

Alvaro Nuñez

accomplishments that that sales tax has done for the city and how the staff has act with the city has actually done it in a way that that shows significant gains and a big change before measure

x and we are compiling more detailed information to share with you and the public in the coming coming months so you'll have more detailed success stories with with data accompanying

so in November you did approve a contract with a pollster Tim mclarney of True North has an impressive list of credentials and experience True North completed 623 surveys with a margin of error of 3.9 percent and a 95 confidence level Dr mclarney gave us a preview of his draft report and I took some notes. So warm-up questions included quality of life in Santa Ana and overall satisfaction with the city. Results in those categories were pretty good. Next there was an open-ended question. Tell us what the city needs to change. The top three were

address unhoused issues, improve public safety, and improve infrastructure and roadways. Again, Again, this was open-ended, not prompted. So the initial ballot test used wording that complies with California law, and the initial result was a 64% approval. Keep in mind, a general tax at a general election only requires a simple majority to pass. After positive arguments for the ballot measure were shared, the retest increased to 67% approval. approval. After negative arguments against the ballot measure were shared, the retest decreased

to 63% approval. They also tested alternatives, a 20-year extension and a 1.25% rate. Both alternatives had a negligible impact to the result that was within the margin of error. The City Council will get a chance to see the full report soon and decide on next steps. It's likely we may recommend the city prepare for a November 2026 ballot measure to ride the expected midterm blue wave. If the measure were to fail, we still have 3 years to ramp down service levels and another option for a 2028 ballot measure.

Now, if we wait until 2028, the city may need to drastically reduce general fund services over a very short time period.

So even though we did not plan to provide budget recommendations today, we do have some recommendations for your process.

We expect to present budget information through a lens of must-have, should-have, and nice-to-have. And we recommend the City Council focus discussions on the things that we can change, not the things that are required by law or covenant.

Here is a high-level example of an internal service department. There are things that must be done to comply with law and covenants. There are things that should be done to protect the city and its resources. And there are things that are nice to do.

Here's another example of an outward facing department. I did a quick categorization for this illustrative example without consulting staff so forgive me. After in depth internal discussions we may find that some of these items switch columns. problems.

Over the last five years, we've had both Measure X and ARPA money available to us. There has been a ton of CIP spending on projects that improve quality of life for our residents, and you've heard about some of those earlier in this presentation. Moving forward with less resources, we recommend focusing on projects that reduce liability, liability, protect existing assets, and generate revenue. We need to be disciplined in our analysis of the full fiscal impact, including future maintenance and replacement, and we need to scrutinize funding sources with restrictions we cannot afford.

Projects should be based on master plans and professional analysis as opposed to individual requests. And finally, we do expect to continue the maximum 10% contingency rule and commitment to completion timelines.

Next, Min will cover fiscal obligations. Thank you, Kat.

Good morning, Mayor and Maple Tannin City Council. So the next section was talk about a few items here. year. First is relating city property use agreements.

So to better leverage our resources, delivery of our services and community benefits, the city has in the past partnered with public, educational, cultural and private development entities to assist us in delivery of our services. Currently, we have a number of agreements addressing The use of city-owned or formerly city-owned properties, and they are intended for long-range economic development or community benefit goals. The first two that we have related to caribou industry, the first is the YMCA, and the second is third and Broadway.

Both of these agreements are disposition of city-owned properties with the intent of economic development. development. The caribou is to buy the city with the new development, including hotels, residential uses on these agreements. There are a number of provisions that could allow the city to evaluate how we can partner and move forward, but also limited in certain ways as well. well. The Grand Central, this is with the California State University Fullerton. The fiscal impact for us on this is an annual cost of $343,000 for maintenance costs. The

terms of this contract ends on January 1st of 2029. The interesting here is that looking looking at what CSUF realizes from this lease. They're net positive, looking at between 600 to almost $800,000 a year. And yet we provide $343,000 in annual needs.

Centennial Park, we have the Rancho Santiago Community College at Centennial Park. They pay approximately 25% of the common area costs. And we pay 75%. The lease is effective beginning May 8th of 2020. And I thought this was a mistake, but it goes through June 3rd, 2101.

So they recently requested an amendment to set an annual contribution rate of 56,000 at a cap with a 2% increase, basically decreasing the maximum by 3%. Now, Godinez High School, no revenue to the city. It's a 99 year lease. The city's is sharing of the maintenance, electricity, aesthetic field repairs, causing us.

Sorry. Oh, yeah. So there you go.

Centennial Park, Godinez High School.

Rancho Santiago. So we currently pay 75% the share of the maintenance and operational costs, and the college district pays 25%, their share of $56,000. The agreement is to 2101, which began in May of 2020, and they recently requested an amendment to reduce the 5% down to 2%. Godinez High School, there is no revenue to the city. It is a 99-year lease.

The cost to the city for electric, aesthetic, fuel repairs, plus custodial contribution, approximately $150,000 per year. Here the school has the right to purchase the land for $1. With the approval of the park service facility, and if the lease terminate the S. As you will no longer operate the school additional other use of city property include Latino healthcare access.

access, Latino healthcare access, and a manual rent of 2%.

I'm sorry, $2. My glass is $2.

It ends of September 22, 2029 with two-year, 10-year extension. The ground lease of the facility is for the park that are currently associated with the community center operated by latino health access and if they were to return the property back to the city they would return it with the building on the site as well tko at jerome center no revenue to the city um the uh and the terms end of september 21st 2023 in terms of the dell high

Again, this is we have an annual rent of $1. This lease ends in September of 2040. And if they return the silly back to the city also there is the the building of Muslim return. Now the city is currently looking at a lease with the within their facility for approximately $3,766 a month. month. The Bauer Museum, this one, this is where the city pays approximately $1.7 million

annually for the maintenance costs. And the city received $1 per year. This ends in April, the terms end in April of 2026, with two tenure options to exercise by the Bauer's Museum.

Let's do public safety. So public safety is about protecting lives and being responsible with our resources. Policing, fire protection and emergency services all intersect, and all come with the rising costs. There are a number of issues that will continue to be prominent in our city, and we'll need to be a part of the strategic plan to help us meet the challenges effectively. Keeping our community safe while planning for a responsible future and looking at some of the issues.

leading police includes unhoused responses to incidents in our city, human trafficking, pedestrian collision, regional organized crimes, and the police department is looking also towards the use of technology including cameras as a force multiplier to help our police department deal with many issues. Relating to EMS, as Assistant City Manager Dunn mentioned earlier, Earlier OCFA is reporting a 40% increase in call for service over the last five years, resulting in a $2.5 million ask for an additional dedicated paramedic units.

Currently all ambulances are responding 24 hours, yet we see that there is a definite peak period and we see an opportunity for us to adjust our resources to focus on when and meet the needs of most needed and to make our responses more efficient.

The OCFA contract, this contract currently is $53 million, approximately 13% of the general fund, with an increase of approximately 4.5% per year. The current JPA term is through June 30th of 2030 30 and will automatically renew for another 20 years with the same terms. Currently there are 16 other cities where OCFA is paid through a share of the property tax and there are eight cities where OCFA is paid through a cash contract of which we are one of those cash cities.

Amendment to the cost calculation methodology or new cap on cash contract city will require require a two-third votes by the individual member agencies. And OCFA is considering a mandatory contribution from cash contract for cities through the regional CIP assessment. So if there's a change and it's voted on by 2 thirds of the cities, our terms may be changed, even though we may not want it

OCFA's recommendation for the fire station and discussing with the chief, we began looking at a planning process to address the increased cost for young volume through staffing enhancements as well as facility upgrades. We need to identify funding sources for the aging fire infrastructure that we have. So we have a Rp. for a comprehensive facility assessment to review the 10 fire station in our city, and we'll need to develop a master plan for funding the rehabilitation of those fire station and modernizing

In terms of the in-house services, we continue to only rely on restricted funding. When these revenue decreases, either we will have to evaluate how those services will be provided or how it will be impacting our general fund.

Animal Control, we currently have a hybrid program to where we contract with the county for what I call back of house services such as sheltering and other adoption services. We provide the front line services with two animal control officers and we do all the collections of licensing fee. The current contract is approximately $3.3 million and the staffing supply on our side is about half a million dollars. We are currently looking at exploring opportunity for working and partnering up with other cities to jointly look at a temporary joint agreement

that can help us go on our own and potentially have some better services with more cost efficiencies.

At this point, I'll turn it back to Assistant City Manager Downs to talk about legal liabilities.

Thank you, Assistant City Manager Tai. So let's start with general liability. Our legal liabilities do fall into two categories, general liability such as auto collisions, personal injury, and employment practices. Worker's comp is covered on the next slide. The City Council adopted a budget and reserve policy from 2,021. It sets a target reserve of 80% of our actuarial determined long-term liability. This slide includes a quick calculation of that target reserve, indicating we're approximately 1.7 million dollars short.

short. Our average annual payout is over $3 million after insurance coverages, and over the last five years claims have totaled $117.8 million, summarized here. Although the summary is not granular, I know some of you are interested in sidewalk payouts, and that accounted for $1.5 million or 1.3% of the total.

Our current year budget our current year insurance premiums are 12.3 million, which is more than we did budget and potential forthcoming payouts will change the next actuarial valuation and could potentially drain the 13.1 million fund balance. We believe this area is ripe for strategic goals which may include improving facilities and practices to reduce liability.

We have similar information for workers comp. There's a calculation of our target reserve in this case indicating we may be short by about $16 million. There's a summary of our payouts over the last five years with the average being $5.9 million a year. Once again, we have an opportunity to change practices and reduce long-term claims. When I say long-term, you may notice we are still paying claims for the former Santa Ana Fire Department. We believe that this is another area that can drive strategic goals.

We're paying workers' comp claims for Fire Department. Yes, ma'am. Okay, so I didn't plan to walk through all of the bullet points on this slide, but we have already been making changes through better interdepartmental cooperation, developing plans and strategies, increasing oversight, and simply getting more help.

Next, Assistant City Manager Tai will cover development and revenue growth opportunities. communities. While this is a one of the priority of the strategic plan, we have not done a really good job of implementing some of these economic development strategies and we this current staff believes that in moving forward as part of any strategic plan that this remains a priority priority because it's a fundamental strategy for us to be able to continue to not only improve our

services but delivering Community benefits as well as continuing to manage growth and development in our city and so in in in that light we need to continue to focusing on these areas including business development and retention I mean we already have folks here it's the easiest thing that we can do is to make sure that they are heard and that we can continue to keep them here we're looking at workforce development strategies to help our business with businesses with trained employees and connecting with santa and residents and will help us to attract new businesses and you

know considering marketing and we need to market our city we need to brand it so that people and and folks and other businesses know that when we, when we, you know, share our messages, we understand what's available for to us. I mean, to them in terms of services within the city. And we are continuing to focus on,

and we continue to focus on streamlining and approving improving and permitting our developments along major corridors along plan development areas within the general plan and then along our commercial industrial districts this is where we continue to grow and provide for economic development in our city

um we have a couple projects that we're working on currently one is the Civic Center development We have we have received direction from the city council in the past to evaluate how we can make this project happen to modernize and also create a central civics center area for our community opportunity to activate and generate additional additional tax revenue. I think there are key aspects of this is that the city has no money at this point that we can see in any meaningful way that could allow us to develop this on our

own. And the point we want to make here is that we also don't want to follow fail models of other cities where the city actually sells the land that it owns and rent it back through a P3 development development proposal that's not something where we were looking to do our goal is to maintain our assets and look for creative ways to help finance such a project um the developer as you know will not engage unless they make a profit so there are a number of other factors in the market that's a very challenging um in looking forward what we are looking to do is explore additional City land

land opportunities elsewhere in the city where we can leverage and create revenue that will help fund this project and as we move forward we'll provide City Council with updates on our progress we have met with a number of developers as well as experts in the areas of partnering with the private drum entities financing options and I'll continue looking for options to make this happen happened. The Riverview Golf Course, the city have had this golf course in operation since the mid 60s. I have had a private operator operating that and then eventually turned into a larger golf

course with the partnership of the county. Recently and as you know may know the golf course is expiring in terms of the current lease in April of this year. We believe that this is a really good opportunity for us to operate the golf course in a way that can benefit our community, generate additional regular activities, and reposition the golf course so that it becomes an economic component for the city as well as a public service to our community. And Assistant Manager, City Manager Tai, I might point out that we did pass out a separate summary sheet for Riverview

view golf course that you can get some more detailed information about this very fast moving project. Thank you. Thank you. So the city currently received.

So. Almost done.

So the city currently makes an average about $158,000 annually from leasing this land. As I mentioned, we believe that the opportunity for additional revenue is much greater, and therefore we are reviewing and evaluating the operation moving forward. We expect that we'll be taking a contract for the City Council to consider in your agenda on the March 3rd agenda to for us to take over the operation of this golf course.

Okay, so based on all of this information that we've provided you today, we do have a preliminary set of recommended strategic goals that appear on the next slides in your packet. We do seek your input. You may agree with us on some of these goals and you may have ideas of your own. So I think this is the point in time where you know we can walk through these recommended strategic goals quickly, and then you can start your discussion. Madam Mayor, do you wish to take just a very short recess before we move in or should we just keep going.

Valerie Amezcua

I mean, you know, it's up to all the Council if you guys want to go through this, and then we can take a break and then come back and have discussion. That'll be longer. Let's do that. That sounds good. Thank you.

Okay, So next slide. Thank you. These are some financial stability goals. So you might remember from your last strategic plan that there are strategic priorities. These overarching priorities of the city, and then we have these goals that support this the priorities. So for financial stability, based on what you've seen in this presentation, our first recommended strategic goal is to provide local sales tax information to voters.

That would be our success stories, if you will, and just factual data, because that's all we can provide to our voters, and ask them whether or not they want to make the 1.5% rate permanent on this November 2026 ballot measure. The second one is to develop and execute a plan to generate revenue from the Riverview Golf Course, which you just heard about. out. The next one is to develop and execute a plan for expiring agreements for use of city property. We do have a couple agreements that are coming up on the end of their term, and we may have some opportunities to negotiate more favorable terms for the city or even go in a different

direction. And then the next one would be to improve facilities and practices to reduce general liability, as you saw by all the claims against the city, that that area is definitely ripe for some strategic thinking. And then the last financial stability recommended strategic goal we have is to rework the workers' comp process. So in that same vein. Next slide, please. We have a couple goals, recommended goals for modern facilities and infrastructure.

So, just as assistant manager city manager tie was talking about, we need to develop a feasible plan for future civic center development include this may include working with the state and county partners to assemble contiguous land and exploring long term leases to generate revenue for construction debt. So there's there that that is a very complex project with a lot of factors and and that strategic goal, although very simply stated on this slide involves a lot of sub goals and tasks and and like I said, a very complex project.

project. The last one we have on this slide is to focus on Cip projects to reduce liability, protect existing assets, and generate revenue. And then we have 2 more slides of goals which i'll turn it over to assistant city manager tie to walk through. Thank you. in terms of community safety. we have a number of goals in looking forward.

Moving forward, we need to address the Ems coverage and looking for opportunity to restructure our resources, as I mentioned earlier, and looking for ways to also improve our 911 call routing process that we currently have we are developing Developing a master of master plan for fire station rehabilitation. This will facilitate the city and planning ahead, not only for making improvements necessary for growth and development, but ensuring that we can fund it in a responsible manner. Center, developing a long-term plan for the Navigation Center.

As I mentioned earlier, it is primarily funded through a restricted funding source sources from the state. And if those funding sources cease to exist, we will have to evaluate other options. Developing a plan to address unhoused issues relating to public safety, as well as smoke smoke shop, other safety issues, even trafficking, pedestrian and regional organized crime. And you know, the use of technology as a force multiplier is something that a lot of communities

are looking to to help not only enhance the ability for a small staff to deal with public safety issues, but also to increase safety issues for some of the staff in using equipment equipment for advanced navigation and instead of having to send personnel directly to a site.

Economic development, diversification, and expansion. Again, many of the goals that I share earlier, many of the strategies I share earlier have been formed into a goal process. And we believe that this is essential and needs to be a core part of any strategic plan so that we can continue to create opportunity within our city as it relates to business development and retention workforce development.

development. you know, revitalizing commercial corridors and the many land use plan district that we have spent so many years making plans for like the Bristol corridor like the harbor corridor and the new 5 focus areas and also capitalizing on the fact that we do have a cannabis industry that's thriving. The City Council also several years ago doing their amendment process says that we would also be hosting a cannabis festival for the region. So accordingly we are planning for that as well.

And ultimately, you know, all of this needs to be serviced by our city and therefore we're We're constantly looking for ways to streamline our process, not only through reducing our regulatory requirements, such as updating the zoning code, but also how to use technology again as a force multiplier.

Okay, so at this point, I think you can go back or we can just take a pause. At this point, we're ready for your questions, your discussion. We're happy to to answer whatever we can and we're definitely open to your direction today to help us build that first draft of your next strategic plan for you.

Valerie Amezcua

Thank you very much. We're going to take a 5 minute break. Whatever you need to do, and then we'll come back and we'll start with questions and comments from the Council. Thank you.

Valerie Amezcua

Thank you, Madam City Clerk. Yes, Madison. We like it cold because otherwise I turn into a pumpkin. And not a good. I turn into a pumpkin. All right. At this time, thank you so much for the presentation, Mr. City Manager, Assistant City Manager, staff. I really appreciate it, and we all appreciate it. So let's get started with questions and I think Mr. City Manager, as you had indicated. Oh, Dc. I'm just please join the table in the presentations right there. You can get a copy. There's some public safety issues in there.

Valerie Amezcua

Mr. City manager, as you indicated when we first started this meeting, you stated, or or we knew, Assistant City Manager, Catherine Downs. This is not a budget meeting. Can you restate that before we start asking questions, please?

Alvaro Nuñez

So again, the idea was to provide an overview where we currently stand as a city. Some of the expectation regarding setting priority, which is a key component. But it was important for us to at least let the foundation as the current status of the city. Right. You've seen that you've seen where some of our previous agreements have yielded. So I think that's the key. So as you ask questions, our staff, we will take notes and ideas to prioritize whatever we receive today and then form what we feel is a good strategic plan based on what we hear today.

Alvaro Nuñez

So we can start forming a good draft for you maybe in April and have a better discussion and finalize prioritization of our objectives.

Valerie Amezcua

Thank you for sharing that once again, because I just don't want anybody and I know that everybody knows up here, but this is not a budget meeting. We're not giving you direction on the budget we're just giving my thoughts ideals laying out some plans and go bless you. Here you go, sir, for what we'd like to see and so there's some really important items in here. So hopefully we can all come to you know, here's some agreement or just throw things out that we'd like to see. Okay, so at this time, do you see check albums as join us from the police department? And so we have questions. So they'll go to you, Mr.

Valerie Amezcua

City manager. Okay, So let's get started. I know I have several questions as well. Our comments. So let me start count. I'm gonna start this way, and we'll work our way around. councilman becerra

Valerie Amezcua

can you give us a page number actually please

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Valerie Amezcua

Thank you, Councilmember Baskins. Thank you.

Alvaro Nuñez

We did three specifically just to attract and maintain businesses the last fiscal year.

I would like to see a little apply it on their products from our way but people are attracted from this and we create a new center to turn it up up

Alvaro Nuñez

oh no no in addition to what we already have i think we have seven to ten on the team and the ones we keep mentioning the three were three additional ones actually so um our team um As at least a manager, we had a 2. They have to approve 2 economic specialists. I think we have 5 economic specialist ones. So we have about 7 to 8 on the team.

Alvaro Nuñez

And right right. And in addition to that, obviously, working through our planning department, they also surface attraction and maintaining folks. some of the key components when businesses want to come into the city, they come to the pending counter. So that also serves as an economic advantage as far as bringing folks, people in.

Thank you.

We want to open quick, have some get the counter. We want a customer bill of rights for our customers. When they come to the counter, they're treated correctly, they're treated friendly, and not have that D&D attitude. I don't know if they do, but customer bill of rights would be great for expectations of how we treat our residents and people who are kind of confused with how we act here. So we are business friendly, so people can build their they're not they don't come with anxiety coming to see you know they come with a welcome.

So those are a few things that I have come back to it.

Valerie Amezcua

Thank you, Councilman Vasquez. that's about a fan.

Thank you. For me, I really like the work that our team's been doing with economic development and looking at new sources. I am interested in seeing the proposal for the golf course, As well as all these pending leases I mean obviously most of them who see with our time, and we're trying to deal with all of that.

I guess what i'm really curious about or really interested in looking at is, how do we continue to tailor our budget to the 3 priorities that at least a survey initially said were the most important homelessness, public safety and infrastructure structure I'm really obviously at the last council meeting I was very proud that our city team was able to obtain funding for Euclid because it's the thing that I get emails about all the time

um I am really interested in the cannabis system so I support that um but the thing I'm curious curious about or concerned about is obviously with any other city that comes up because cannabis gets us that's us what I think 80 of cannabis sales are from people who do not live in the city of Santa Ana um which and it I think the last ones were like 18 million 15 million 13. okay so it obviously went down a little bit and as other cities come up um that we anticipated that too

too. So I guess I want to just make sure that we continue to not support but expand on and really look at this industry that is still a large chunk of our sales tax base. And, you know, maybe because a lot of them are in Ward 1, so I'm very excited about that. Speaking of working with our local businesses, especially the large ones, I'm really glad that Robinson Pharma is now working with the city sponsoring the festival obviously we have andoril we have a lot of these other aerospace type clean manufacturing businesses um i want to see us you know continue to partner with them

one of the recommendations i do have is for economic development which by the way mark morley's been really wonderful working with some new businesses that are trying to open up in town But for example, I found out about a new business grant opening from a council member from a different city. I you know I really do think that every new business like I think maybe Councilman Becerra had brought this up, or somebody else. Every time there's a new business grant opening our team should be there, or at least offer to be there.

We should be because that's to me about making sure that we encourage businesses to open, that we want them to be here, and that we're going to continue to advertise them. Those are win-win situations for all of us. If I know the bb just really great I soft serve ice cream. I got the best coffee screen. I found out about them from social media influencers. They've actually becoming from the city, too. I do support the. The comments about tot I think that that makes a lot of sense.

You know. I know we have some hotels coming up, too. That's gonna be interesting for us. One of the i'm sorry i'm trying to look for the emails. else. I do support this idea of the ballot measure. I think that I do agree with the changes in this idea of the blue wave or whatever it is, but I do think that we need to take as many bites as the apple as we need to, if we have the opportunity to, and the sooner we can get it done, the easier it'll be to budget going into the future. And especially if we do have have reliable data to say that this is the opportune time to do it.

I think that, and arguably it lowers our sales tax. So I think that's a really beneficial thing, especially in the short term for our residents.

Oh, and then the last thing I wanted to see, and I, Director, I'm sorry, ACM Downs, the chart that you had for the must-have should have nice to have. I know that the departments are going to go through that kind of one by one. Are we going to get the same type of chart but more detail?

Yes, Councilmember. We expect to provide more detailed information for every department during your budget process. Okay. And we're going to get, I guess, dollar amounts or percentages associated with them? We'll try our best on that one, but some of it could get tricky. because there could be a contract that kind of covers two different columns, if you will. So we'll do our best to put dollars to it, but it won't be an exact science. Right. Okay. That's really helpful. And I guess I think it's helpful for me because let's say something that's nice to have, but it's $20,000 versus something that is a should have, but it's

20 million or $3 million. Those are very different, I guess, analyses also. when i'm thinking about it uh the last thing is i thank you always um encouraging the economic development in the little saigon community um you know we just they just had the big development of the replica of jabantan which is on bolsa um next to the robles a roll row and i think that that's an opportunity for us to really expand it's it's a community that we haven't really tapped into to businesses that we haven't tapped into. I talk to businesses all the time who want to open here,

but they're not familiar with the process. They have hesitation about working with a community that they're not so used to working in. So I really look forward to seeing what we can do, whether or not the bid, the Little Saigon bid happens or not. I think that there is a lot of opportunity for us to collaborate with these other cities to make sure that we bring money money and investment into the region and I bring I bring that up also because when investors or Vietnamese people want to open businesses or come visit Little Saigon they don't say they're coming

to Little Saigon they say they're coming to Santa Ana uh that still happens and so we should really be able to capitalize on that as we move forward and that's all I have for now thank you Mayor

Valerie Amezcua

Mayor Pro Tem.

David Penaloza

Thank you, Mayor Mezcu and thank you city staff for this presentation. It's very insightful and very, you know, a lot of it is something that we've known for a couple of years now, and it's good to refresh our memories and reiterate what is at stake here and what is coming before us. Along the same lines of Council Member Becerra, I'm definitely supportive of looking at an increase increase in TOT tax where we could we could further increase that revenue stream I also see a lot of the significant events coming from the these hotels but at the same time a lot of

David Penaloza

this needs to fall on the hotel operator a lot of the stuff that we're seeing significant events are coming from within these hotel rooms so there needs to be you know when I'm when I go to Anaheim and other hotels guess what I can't access this hotel if I'm not if I don't have a room key after after 9 p.m and when you allow I know that the embassy suites used to be locked up and now they're not and then they have all these issues going on at two three in the morning well you know a lot of it is is from the set from their own management so um we all have to be accountable

David Penaloza

here with various uh in various areas to be able to be an attractable uh place to stay and I hope that that we could do that um to along the the lines of um what uh mayor uh council member fan uh council member fan was saying is uh i'm also very supportive of this cannabis festival um however we've been talking about this kind of festival for three years now i mean i don't i don't see an f a true real effort to bring one uh and have one in this city and if we are serious

David Penaloza

about it that needs to move quickly. We can't just talk about something for three years and not see it come to fruition and that's not just unfortunate that's not isolated to the cannabis festival. That's too many many things that we've seen in the city. I'm thankful for the leadership we have on board now but we've seen a lot of stuff come off the shelf and get built and open but we need to to move faster. I think that it's great to ramp up our economic development team, but when I don't see that economic development behind it, that real economic development,

David Penaloza

it's troubling. I know that I've asked Assistant City Manager Ty about the Dutch Bros, for example, that was planned, you know, announced four years ago. And I think the last time time I heard was, well, there is an issue because of its proximity to the In-N-Out and the Chick-fil-A and traffic. It's like, well, you know what? Residents know that if you go to In-N-Out, you're going to sit in traffic. That's just the reality. And if we let these things, oh, it's going to bring additional traffic. You know what? Well, too bad. People, I know that.

David Penaloza

I know that if I want Chick-fil-A or In-N-Out at 10 p.m., I'm going to wait for 50 minutes in a drive-thru so those things we need to stop you know hanging ourselves on that and and and moving these things quickly because guess what in the time that we that there was an announcement made in the newspaper that dutch bros was coming to santa ana garden groves open to bowing valley is open too and so you see these things in other cities pop up so quickly but for us for whatever reason to what council member uh uh fast is saying they they it seems to just drag on and on and on

David Penaloza

and that scares people away from investing in our city um i i uh that was just a few examples that come up to the top of my head but i'm uh uh excited that we're moving in the right direction when it comes to these things but i feel like there's a lot more that we can do to really incentivize people from opening up business quickly in our city. The other one that I did not see in here, which I know is very sensitive and controversial to a lot of people, but it's Willowick Golf Course. I know that the city of Garden Grove is ready to move forward on something that could be mutually

David Penaloza

beneficial to both cities that are hurting financially. And five years ago, or four years ago, It was 1 elected official 1 mayor.

David Penaloza

Or mayor that sent a letter unilaterally without any approval without any conversation. The city of Garden Grove that there was no desire to move forward. Which was unfortunate because that should have been a council decision, but it was done. By 1 person only, and the city of Garden Grove is still ready to move forward on this and there's. I know there's people that built Grateful Fludge and the Denver train station in Denver and had such a massive retail component, have had want desires to develop Willoway Golf Course. But, you know, we have people that are advocating for housing, but advocate against development.

David Penaloza

development so it it's it's gonna we're gonna need to come to an await or two rough Awakening to understand that these things need to happen and move forward if we want to save our city from this financial uh crisis I also am supportive of seeing ourselves tax lowered uh so that we're not the highest in the county if we even if we lower it by a point 25 percent and make that a permanent permanent solution where it becomes 9.25 and that that that is uh um uh something that we would be uh supportive or that I would be supportive of those are just a couple of things I I um

David Penaloza

definitely want to see more uh focus and emphasis on the economic development uh side where it comes comes to to helping these these businesses get get in the door and and open quicker um and uh that which I'm excited for and this is uh this we're on the right track I I just want to thank staff for for being um for recognizing that we are looking at some financial troubles in the the next three to four years but it's something that we're going to have to really you know focus on and put our money where our mouth is what we want to really generate new revenue that's not an

David Penaloza

additional tax um so with that those are my comments Mayor I'm sure we'll have more uh later

Valerie Amezcua

um I'm sure we all will thank you so much Mayor Pro Tem so I'm just going to get started with a few because I know that we have a lot of comments here first of all the economic development thank Thank you, Councilman Vasquez and everybody here about supporting Tot and economic growth here in our city. I'm Mr. City manager. I think in deputy city manager passes. We hire the 3d staff. So can we get a report to the Council of since they've joined the city? How many how many businesses have come on board because I think that's very important that you stay in front because their goal practice I'm wrong is to bring in businesses.

Valerie Amezcua

Is that correct? Yes, Okay, So if you can just send us some information, I mean, I want to share with the Council, as you know, I have quarterly meetings and monthly meetings with certain groups. So one of the groups that I have quarterly meetings with with the chamber and the Hispanic Chamber is a business meeting, and you some I think Councilman Vasquez brought up bear paint. They attend those meetings, and they sit with those the very large businesses have joined us at those meetings, and we do meet quarterly, and i've been meeting with them since I've been the mayor.

Valerie Amezcua

I know Councilman Penalosa and Councilman Biserra have joined us as well. When they're available city managers, their economic developments there, the police departments there. there um and the last meeting that we had with the businesses um there were there were three priorities that we left that meeting with and I want to make sure I get them correct and I want to share them with you all the businesses asked for um better PR for the city so that we can attract more businesses and that is something I know that the city manager's office and staff are

Valerie Amezcua

working on but we do need to have better PR and I know we've had many conversations about that and And every department has their own PR, and I believe Debbie Sinrad, you're working on bringing PR together as the entire city. Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct. We recently consolidated a few of the bodies into the city manager's office. In addition, we are going to start back with our meetings for all of the department PR team to collaborate on those efforts.

Valerie Amezcua

Okay, because that was one of the biggest issues that they talked about is businesses, because those businesses that were there large long history here, higher local residents and whatnot, but it was about how can they also attract businesses to our city when we don't do a good job of PR, because when you bring it up and they talked about social media when you bring up Santa Ana, all the bad things pop up, we want all the good things to come up.

Valerie Amezcua

So their first priority was public PR. The second priority was public safety. Police department is always at these meetings. They support public safety, community safety. They talked about the homeless issues, the drug use. They want to be able to share with other businesses that it's safe to have a business here, to live here, to work here. And then the third priority for them was i'm gonna call it the permitting process, but it was just the umbrella of opening a business, getting a business going.

Valerie Amezcua

I think deputy I mean assistant city management is that your take on the permitting and the whole how to the concierge process that we have that think you mentioned about having more friendly process right so we do have a concierge process can you talk about that please so our staff are probably a couple of processes

going back one one is to work um as a concierge concept to where when a business come into the city uh we triage their situation right at the front desk and instead of sending them to different counters it's sent to a concierge person via economic development so that that person can manage and help that business throughout this process. So right now it's focused solely on businesses so that we can start to evaluate how effective that is in getting business open quicker. Another process that we've created is called a pod, which is helping to plan check our plan

reviews and permitting a lot quicker. And the pod process is that all the departments that are involved in planning permitting review all come together and review one set of plan at the same time giving the the um the applicant the opportunity not only to have direct dialogue with building planning uh code enforcement um public works and fire and police at the same time but also for us as staff to listen to each other and say where we have uh overlapping or redundant concerns that those get addressed or conflicting concerns so it help cuts down the

time the number of time uh that plans have to be submitted so that those are two programs that we're piloting right now and they become successful we're looking at how to uh be uh multiplying and increasing that level of service so thank you for that you have a question i'll continue you're done go ahead oh about it seemed tight so for that those programs do we i know we've done presentations for uh in certain areas but do we go to like the hispanic chamber the aging chamber restaurant you know conferences and things like that to do these types of presentations i

Valerie Amezcua

don't i i guess i'm just curious so really quick before you answer that one i can tell you that at our meetings that we have we have the chamber the business chamber the hispanic chamber we have um fair paint very large businesses that have been in here and then i believe you guys have shared

a conference yes the answer is yes we do share this information um the program right now as i mentioned our focus so that we continue to do that but we also do it through word of mouth uh because a lot of times um there we're very accessible to our community our city manager will get calls and we will point uh anyone who needs the help to to to get these level of assistance directly so the

Alvaro Nuñez

So if I may, and I think that that's part of the concern. So part of the aspects that ACM Ty is talking about is exactly those changes because we hear the frustration. So we're aware of that. And so one of the things that got ignored in his presentation, we've established a senior planner, right, who has the experience regarding the planning aspects and then we also have a plan checker also that kind of being available.

Alvaro Nuñez

And so what you see, you see in this key decisive type of mechanics of folks there, and then addressing that, I'm not going to say myth, because it's part of the reality that we face where we have this perception that takes a long time. So what he's mentioning is actually those items where we are doing that now. And so we're looking for the little time to say, look, it's working, it's working. and so we're monitoring that on a daily basis and we are promoting it at meetings acss local chamber of commerce anytime we go to presentation we we say that in fact when we're at the meetings we're

Alvaro Nuñez

with the chamber of commerce the spanish chamber of commerce the big developers we made a commitment you give us a a project and we can't deliver in 30 days give me a call right don't don't ask don't Don't ask for commitment. Don't ask for the city to compromise. You know you bring a good architect, a good engineer, a good project. If it takes more than 30 days, give us a call that's what we're doing now.

Alvaro Nuñez

So can I just finish really quick? Yeah, actually, if if if we got to me right if and this is part of the component that we're talking about this whole procession issue right it shouldn't have to come to to the a flow. But the reality is we have this perception that, you know, as at least four of you have mentioned already, and actually the mayor mentioned it, this is a concern out there. So for us, it's to make sure that the message we send at the top is also the message being sent from all the organization. That's the key when we say that.

Alvaro Nuñez

Because a lot of times we're dealing with historical perception, a bit that way. and and so we're trying to say is it true and and we need to know where it is so we can correct it

Benjamin Vazquez

and when just real quick sorry thank you mayor it's okay so when we have a timeline that I asked for and expectations are set then it's not taking for oh my god another month we have a timeline I expect to do it I did my part exactly as building out now the city does their part and we build it

Alvaro Nuñez

at that time and we all have the same expectation exactly and one of the items that that ACM ACM and tied in I mentioned is, for example, we're careful to monitor if it took to plan check reviews. Okay, let's bring them in obviously there's a communication issues. So those are the items we're trying to address because your frustration is arbitration right? We we don't want to be critical staff in in our city. We want to make sure that we were successful and and that's like you like you indicated. We make commitments, and then it seems like we talk about it, and there's no fulfillment.

Alvaro Nuñez

The items that ACM ties mentioned is literally concrete decision making aspects. We're putting staff to say this is when we need to correct, and so this is the corrective action we're taking. So now we need to make sure we're we're successful. So really quick.

Valerie Amezcua

I'll finish on the business, and we also go to meetings. Councilman Bastera and I in the South Coast region are not quite what is the name? We go to somebody I don't know the Metro Alliance, and that's where all the big developers are in the businesses, and the police department joins us. and the ACM's office and the city manager's office. And what we find there with the developers is they always wanna know from the PD, what are you doing from a public safety standpoint so that we can come in and build? We actually had another, we had a meeting with a big developer who wanted to build, I believe, a hotel in the city,

Valerie Amezcua

but he specifically wanted to meet with the police department to say, how safe is it? And what are you going to do to make sure that my development is safe here? So we are doing that. And I just wanted you guys to know about the business meetings that we do have. And so we are working on that. So that's what that's what I'm going to just be very frank. As you all know, it's no secret. I do not support the Cannabis Festival for lots of reasons. For me, mostly it's I would hope that if you're going to have a Cannabis Festival, you're going to have a DUI checkpoint on the way out because it's liability.

Valerie Amezcua

liability. And I just don't want to be known personally. That's me personally as a city that has a cannabis festival, but we all have different feelings about that. I know that when I share with my faith-based group, which has grown because as we know in the city of Santa Ana, we are a faith-based community. I don't know any church, small or very big, who's in support of a cannabis festival. And you're at those meetings as well. So whatever the vote is, it is what it is. But I don't support it because I think there's other ways that that we can generate revenue I believe we've rented out Eddie Westfield for two concerts and

Valerie Amezcua

a three-day Ramadan um event is that correct so we're gonna make some money ACM down is that

Alvaro Nuñez

correct a little bit but we're still going to generate something okay yeah at least we're not

Valerie Amezcua

losing we're not losing right we usually are on the losing end so we're not there so I'm glad that you guys are taking that approach to to generate some revenue off of Eddie Westfield and I'm I'm looking forward to other events happening there. Mayor Pro Tem, you talked about Willowick. When I was first elected, I reached out to Garden Grove. The mayor of Garden Grove said, no, thank you, mayor. We're not interested. So now they have a new mayor. That would be great. If they come to the table, the mayor before me, there was a conversation and a meeting between that mayor and the mayor that was there, I believe it was Jones.

Valerie Amezcua

And I was like, no, we're not interested. interested and then when I became mayor Jones was still there no mayor we're not interested and then now with Stephanie um we can reach out to her again because maybe the majority of garden grow the council has shifted which is great if it has um but I believe that is going to be um and correct me if I'm wrong Mr city manager that is going to be a very big task for us in the city because part of the community is going to want portable housing housing Park the other Park's going to want want apartments, you know, who knows, right? And so we just have to, and all of the above, right?

Valerie Amezcua

And so, and then are we going to, you know, by eminent domain, take homes from the Santa Anita area and push families out? So that's a process that it's not going to happen overnight. I do agree with the mayor for a time that we should start some sort of conversation because, and probably not in all of our times, it's not going to happen. It's going to be a very long process. And then as we grow and we continue to grow, I saw and hear about fire. And forgive me if I'm wrong. And you guys, some of you have been here longer than I have been. But the giants before us went with county fire because we were supposed to save money.

Valerie Amezcua

I'm not sure we're saving money. So if we, is that, are we saving money facing downs?

Honestly, not that much. Okay. In the big scheme of things.

Valerie Amezcua

So I would like some sort of report and you can share with the entire council. as you know, the start where we are currently, what does revenue look like? I appreciate the little information here, but I want a deep dive into the data to look at cost and what agreements we have with them, because I know with COVID, the calls went up, right? And so they always talk about how it's increasing and it is, I get it. But just like we always say about police, it's the same with fire, but nobody ever talks about it because they're firemen, right? So,

Valerie Amezcua

So but they cost a lot of money. And when I say that in the community, people look at me and I'm like, yes, they cost a lot of money. But nobody talks about them because they run into burning buildings, which I appreciate them because I don't ever want to run into a burning building. But you also got to look at the public safety as a whole law enforcement and the PD and the fire costs going up. I can't say thank you, President Becerra. She's the only president. president but otherwise i would a chair yeah we would blame him but we're not going to blame him

Valerie Amezcua

for the class but if we can get a report on that because it is going up and then is it what's the benefit for us so i i'd like to know in the long what is the benefit for our man of city treaty

i think you were here when all of that happened um maybe as we go on this meeting you can talk

Valerie Amezcua

a little bit about why that be i mean i don't know if you can do it briefly okay of those changes

I think some of the things that aren't often recognized by cities when they decide to transfer some of their what I call their historical services are things I think miss downs mentioned earlier, you continue to have the tail of the workers comp liability. When you did have the fire department, you continue to be responsible for the physical struck facilities for the fire department. and for the improvements of the fire department and some maintenance issues that are having tremendous impacts internally on our staff who have to put some effort into maintaining fire

facilities versus our streets and things like that. So I think there are some costs that may not have been anticipated. I think when the analysis was originally done, it was just how many fire personnel do we need? What kind of service do we need? And over the years, other costs have crept in in different areas that might have been anticipated or weren't anticipated.

Valerie Amezcua

anticipated so and thank you for sharing that because yes the workers cop we're still carrying that baby correct no no i'm not no that is that is correct i just want to know that when you do

summarize it for us what is that call right and and there are other things too um you know with the the control over the services and how uh resources are deployed so here's an example for you we know that roughly three quarters of their calls are medical related and um the uh every single unhoused call that goes through 9-1-1 ocfa responds to regardless of whether it's a simple call or not they respond to every single one and when you look at city resources um you know on a

like a cost level, like if I were to go out and respond, what's the cost of me doing that? Or, you know, code enforcement or anything else. When you look at FIRE, that is our single most expensive resource that you can possibly send to a call.

Valerie Amezcua

I'm sorry, could you say that again?

Our single most expensive resource you can possibly send to a call. And they respond to every single unhoused call, regardless of the description of it. And I really appreciate them

Valerie Amezcua

and we need them, but you're right. And I don't think we ever talk about that too much on the dais about, you know, how they respond. I know I've been out with Colt and some of us have been out with Colt and they respond and they don't just come out like a little one truck. They come out. And so what is the cost? And so Mr. City Manager, if we can look at that, and by no means, I'm not asking to change anything but as we move toward i'm talking about measure acts and you know taxes and whatnot and we're we're not the highest in the county um there's other cities westminster

Valerie Amezcua

los alamitos and seal beach is 9.25 and other cities around us are also they're going to have it on the ballot this year to increase we all know everything's going up so but we have to show what we're doing right that's what why pr is so important and we have to talk about what is fire doing and what is the cost and we need fire right and i remember with related um it was about building new fire stations or upgrading fire stations and we do need them some of them are so incredibly old and it's kind of scary that our fire staff sleep in there but it's the same thing

Valerie Amezcua

with our police department if you look at our jail if you look at the roof that is leaking if you You you I've been in recently a couple of the police cars when I was riding on a colt in a ride along and the cars make these terrible noises. You're not quite sure if the car's falling apart. And I I'm being serious. I was like, you know, my goodness, we need new cars. Right. So that's just one of the things. And and I really want to take a deep dive into fire. I'm not asking you to change anything. I want to make that very clear on the record.

Valerie Amezcua

but I do want to look at it so we can share it with the public and we can do a good job when it comes to PR sharing. This is how much fire is costing us. This is how much PD is costing us. This is how much community relations is costing because they need to know what we're doing. I don't want to be like other cities and hit the point where, hey, we're almost at a state of bankruptcy because we waited until the day before to start addressing Measure X. So we're being very proactive and thank you for the survey that you did i think that was wonderful um and i'd love

Valerie Amezcua

to see their results i think they're great and it tells us what our community um is looking at

Alvaro Nuñez

and what they want so if i may uh mayor can put slide 25 back on the on the screen and i think that's that's a significant aspect one as far as our initial information from the pollster is that that as ACM Downs mentioned, we hired a professional aspect regarding that. Council Member Kai mentioned this, we may take an opportunity given the current election aspects, you know, this whole blue wave coming in may have a factor to it. So we don't wanna miss that opportunity. As you mentioned, Los Alamitos, Westminster and-

Valerie Amezcua

Seal Beach.

Alvaro Nuñez

Seal Beach have 9.25, just like the city of Santa Ana. So we're no longer the highest. If you go north of the 605, north of the 605, you have literally cities that are bigger and smaller than us with a 10, the double, one more point. City of Long Beach is 10.25 on the sales tax. Now, obviously, we don't want to get into a point where we want to be the highest. But again, if you look at the slide, especially 25, where we committed to the voters and the voters voted for this.

Valerie Amezcua

Polling result? No, no.

Alvaro Nuñez

Oh, yeah, the before and after.

Alvaro Nuñez

You will see that at the very minimum, and I'm saying this at the very minimum, as a significant impact, you've seen that the voters asked for something when they voted for the sales tax, and I think the city has delivered. This is this is a paramount significance for us. And so we want to make sure that people understand that when we think about a sales tax and and and and cities usually not having a like you said, sell their their their accolades into a good boy promoting it. We can without a doubt say, look back at that time we were going for it, and look, and we saw stuff, and we can point out to significant wins.

Alvaro Nuñez

And I think that's the focus that we want to continue with. Thank you.

Valerie Amezcua

And one final thing, I know other people have comments. The in-house services on page 43.

Valerie Amezcua

And there's a bullet point here. New law to inspect homeless shelters may result in a fiscal impact. Can you talk about that a little bit, please?

Alvaro Nuñez

ACM.

Alvaro Nuñez

Ty. Okay.

So we currently have $12.65 million in the district of town going into our health services.

Valerie Amezcua

12.6?

12.6 of the district of town.

Valerie Amezcua

Okay.

And we also have approximately $11.4 million coming from general county to various activities of the province,

So in total, the allocated funding for this year is In addition to that, we've got So, as you can see about one third of that funding is coming from restricted funds. And if these are impacted and new laws also coming from the state on on what we need to do or how we can use those funding or how we address homelessness.

It could significantly impact our resources in terms of how we continue to fund the services and the allocation of resources to other services within our city.

Valerie Amezcua

Thank you, Acm. I really appreciate it. So what I heard you say is 32 million of restricted funds is what we're spending is that correct?

Valerie Amezcua

Correct 32 million is that correct that's correct so we're talking about our shelter um Colt uh what else our landscape cleanup crew City net right elimination Foundation is that correct that's part of it is that am I anything okay so and the reason I bring that up as you know um Council Council knows I've brought up a couple times now the shelter since I've been the mayor and I don't it's not that I don't agree with the shelter or I'm not okay with it we do need to help the unhoused definitely but I think it's really important that we take another look at what

Valerie Amezcua

we're doing there and how can we help them really help people get off the streets and and get housing, get a job, get an education without spending $32 million.

Valerie Amezcua

Because as the PD always reports, DCMs would you say about 97% of the populations on the street currently is resistant to assistance? Yeah, I believe that's the number that I keep hearing between 96 and 97% of the unhoused on the street. Well, Council Member Sarabay used a different term, but I'll call them unhoused that are on the street. They don't want to go to the shelter, right? So we're spinning our wheels. We're constantly out there, you know, as a city arresting, getting them into shelter if they want, getting into Salvation Army, whatnot.

Valerie Amezcua

But I would like us to look at, you know, one, how is the new law? When it will go into effect, I want to know when, what is the how, and then what are we going to do as a city to address this? because this is a lot of money. And if you look at our outcomes, yes, we have those that have received housing. You know, so now on our website, it was like 800 people that was, you know, housing or not housing or moved them or returned them back to their homes. But what are we getting for our buck, right? What really, what are we doing in our shelter? Because the county has a shelter here. It's a 400 bed shelter. So I guess the question is,

Valerie Amezcua

what's the difference between our shelter and their shelter and do we need to have i'm not saying close the shelter i'll be really clear this is just a conversation but looking at what can we do either to improve the services that we're giving um we can't make certain we can't make things a requirement um even though some of them i'd like to um but what can we really do let's get down to the nitty-gritty about how do you help somebody get off the streets it is not just three hots in a car there's so much more to it and i i'd really like to to hear about that because when we're going to talk about the budget um i'm going to

Valerie Amezcua

bring it up over and over and over again and um i i haven't heard from illumination foundation i don't know if anybody else has or do they submit to you quarterly reports they do and in their

quarterly reports ACM Downs what's in there there's data like how many outreaches did they do how many people did they get off the street how many people did they you know provide this service to or that service to it's it's those kind of you know that I'll call it service counts so basically it's the same information that can provides us yes and it's also on the city's website

Valerie Amezcua

website too right so the information we have on the website okay but we're talking 32 million dollars so and I'll come back to that and again I'm not asking to close I'm just asking that if we can take a look at what are I mean I think in the beginning you know when I first got elected it was like oh yeah we have this sheltered great um and I asked her report on you know how do we get here what are we doing what's it you know what is the what do we want this to be and how long do we plan on having this and so it took a really long time to get a response um it took a

Valerie Amezcua

while from previous leadership and so now mr city manager i know you're looking at that with your team and so i think it's important that not only the council but the community knows that we're not going to be in the unhoused services forever i would hope that that's our goal so i think one

Alvaro Nuñez

of the key components and it goes to the totality of the issues when we deal with them house the component right ACM ties focus was if if if we hear from the state right especially just at the calcium meeting Sacramento any potential loss from you know 2 billion to 20 billion dollars and so obviously the state budget has a direct impact at least to this specific issue from the house because we generate as he indicated 12 million dollars that are unrestricted funds what What does that mean? That means that it's literally given from the state to the local level for specific use.

Alvaro Nuñez

And so that's the key to the extent that they lower that. It's going to impact the way we provide services because that's the direct link to what we're doing. The other issues is, as ACM Downs mentioned, the sole response from the fire department, which is the item that sometimes gets ignored in this discussion, right? Right? 70, 80% of the costs are exactly for unhoused type of components on the street. So that has an impact on a budgetary referrals. And then obviously, then also our own quote right when when we not all cities have a quality of life team.

Alvaro Nuñez

Right? But when we focus on that, remember, that key component was how to provide the services right with the changing properties, do the level of enforcement. And then at the same time have this custodial access of private property so that we don't get sued right? So that's what we're trying to offer and so when we look at the with the project in the success rate right? That's what we're to look into month to year right? They have made a slow response in providing information. That's not what we're doing now. We're monitoring we're making sure that we get in our our back for a buck.

Alvaro Nuñez

And so making sure that we've been successful. Obviously the county has its own consequences and considerations. And so you're right. We need to evaluate on a quarterly basis and a yearly basis. What are we doing? How are we doing it? Are we being successful? And how best we can do our jobs?

Benjamin Vazquez

That's the key. I think you go ahead. I think what the mayor wants is data that we get people into our shelter. Like how long have they been there and why aren't they leaving? she wants some information to make sure and then how do we help them leave right and what are the services they got right so in a positive way because we want to make sure that we fill in the spaces and we live people and and get them into housing so that data will help us be will help us uh improve our services i appreciate that i also with the yell center on a ride along i went

Benjamin Vazquez

with uh with the quality of life team 60 of our our unsheltered people in santana are not from santana they don't qualify to go in the shelter and we have 70 beds we have quote unquote 70 beds at yale we don't have beds at yale it takes four hours for us to do a background check our police officers and the quality of life team are not going to sit with an unhoused person on the street for four hours to wait to go to the yale center we need to be able to do we need to talk to yale or the county or the sheriff whoever's in charge there to let us do our own background checks

Benjamin Vazquez

so if somebody outside the city needs housing and they're going to accept them we can move them up along that's that's top priority right there that's a big that's a big hole that we have 70

Valerie Amezcua

beds on paper actually councilman and thank you very for supporting this item it's 125 beds well that the county was so and it has been a fight just so you know uh maybe i should use a term a discussion a very hearty discussion about them giving us 125 beds so if you have the ability to have a conversation with them over there truly they have they're supposed to have 125 beds for us and they do not and it is a fight to get somebody into you're right our cult officers have to spend

Valerie Amezcua

hours and sitting has spent hours so we end up just taking them to yale i mean to carnegie to our shelter or they don't capital in our shelter because they're not from Santa Ana so it's like okay now what do we do with them and that's where other organizations hopefully come in because the county budget alone what is that over 13 billion dollars and you know there's money for the homeless there so if you have the ability to really reach out to them and to make it an impact and say, hey, where's our 125 beds? We want them because it's 125 beds. Wow. Yes.

Benjamin Vazquez

I'll make sure we bring it to agenda on the county commission too.

Valerie Amezcua

Thank you so much.

Benjamin Vazquez

And also, if we could, we did so good in removing people from the streets and into housing that we should be talking to the governor to increase our funding. We are the model city. We are the model city, not only in Orange County, Southern California, California. If not the country. And we should be getting money from the state and the federal government on how to do real work. So we need to make sure we put that out there. Make sure the state, the governor knows and our congressmen know, our state assembly and our senators know, state assembly people know to give us money. So we've tried, I mean,

Valerie Amezcua

last year, as you know, I went to Sacramento with the city manager, the police chief and our deputy chief. We went multiple times to meet with the governor's office. Councilman Becerra went as well. And we always ask for more money and we're told there is no money. And then we were pushed out of the big 13 mayor's group because it came down to almighty dollar. They don't want to share the money with Santa Ana. So we are doing those things. Council member Vasquez. But the more you get involved in, everybody else gets involved in. All the council members can send a letter up there saying we do need some assistance right now.

Valerie Amezcua

I'm sure we'll be told there's no money, but we are the model agency for housing. We're the model agency for policing. Actually, I'll be sitting on a panel, the U.S. Conference of Mayors with the chief to talk about what we're doing. CULT is being looked at as a model policing project with Santa Ana PD and what CULT is doing with the quality of life team because other cities We go on a ride along with our cult team to see how do we implement that in our city?

Alvaro Nuñez

And so, and thank you for sharing that I presume it's just about I just want to mention that in addition to our California legislators. Obviously we communicate with congressman the Korea and and we have communications on this issue with the office of Padilla and Senator shape. also. If we're able to go and we don't get snowed out the next week, we'll probably get Washington, D.C. And that's the aspect where we do, you know, when we go to the office, it's harder to get them here through our team lobbyists in Washington, D.C. and through the National Conference of Cities and the U.S. Conference of Mayors. It gives an opportunity

Alvaro Nuñez

to connect really face-to-face with their staff and sometimes with the actual senators themselves. themselves so this is another that we keep pushing since we got to the office

thank you I just I just want to say thank you to everybody for your comments today this has actually been a much more productive discussion than I had anticipated not gonna lie um so with that being said I just want to clarify a couple things so on fire and I think we've all been on ride-alongs no fire does not go out on every single unhoused call they do go out on many of of the calls but not on all of them uh depending on the situation because you're in house but I I hate that we call it in house there are people out on our streets whether they're housed or not

are they committing crimes that's why someone's calling the police on them are they unresponsive because they've decided to you know shoot up or drink themselves into a street that's why we're calling we're not driving by the street going I wonder if they have a condo or an apartment or a house we should call somebody figure it out what their housing situation is it's because they're doing something that catches our attention or our community's attention um and so with fire when i got on the council long before i was at um on the board of ocfa i'd ask our former city manager hey

is there a possibility that we could go back to san anna fire and the numbers just weren't there the numbers weren't there i've talked to all the firefighters as far as our san anna fire alum as as well as those at OCFA, there's advantages to being part of an entity like OCFA, the shared resources. There's so much involved. But I will tell you, though, San Ana is in a much better position than a lot of these other agencies. Irvine likes to flirt with leaving the authority. It's cute because you know why? When they leave, I'll be happy to sit there and watch their fire

stations locked up, being used for nothing. In the meantime, if we wanted to leave, we already had at least the first step. We have our fire stations. We'd have to obviously do a lot of investment and a lot of other things if we were ever going to do that i don't think i appreciate the the request for data i would love to see the data as well but at the end of the day i'm willing to bet you right now we probably would be at a disadvantage at leaving ocma but i think that one of the things if we're concerned about cost related to fire it's part of we want to generate

revenue right or that means we got to have a safe place to live and that means a safe place to do business if you've got people that that ocfa has to keep responding to because they're passed out of our bus stops and our parks and our streets that generates calls for service that generates money that we have to spend so i think if we want to lower ocfa and fire costs and paramedics costs then we got to really be focused on public safety we got to make sure we don't have so many of those costs where we're as a collective city having to um pay that burden um i appreciate

appreciate Councilmember Vasquez's comments earlier about trying to make sure that we are business friendly when it comes to permitting and concierge services but I think spend some time with uh Assistant City Manager Tai we are award-winning right and I'm not just going to blindly defend our staff when it comes to those sorts of um improvements that need that are needed because I would tell you while we do a great job at the counter and permitting I think we have a lot to be desired when it comes to plan checks and actual inspections because they're they're good at pushing

the papers the problem is they're not good at stamping the plans quick that's what we need so we need more of them um you know one one other revenue idea that i i've talked about with some of you individually and and staff but i just want to share out loud and that is the stadium the stadium has one awesome tent the number one national or number one in the nation football team and yet when you look at that stadium you wouldn't think about our day to day right i mean the locker rooms are i mean i think men might get an application for historic preservation for those

bathrooms that's how old they are outdated we need we need to we need to look at investment in the stadium i know right we need to look at investment i know we're not going to wholesale just knock the whole thing down and build something else but we need to look at improvements improvements because as we try to utilize the stadium for other things concerts other events whether it's a cannabis Festival whatever it is I don't care how stoned you are if you go in those locker rooms you're going to walk right out okay so we've got to think about what we do a key word

how stoned you are so um the other thing two two last things I want to say so you know we talk about the stadium you know up here we are talking about a 9 500 seat building and how we can improve prove it to generate revenue. You know, we were once part of the Big 13 in San Jose, which is a part of that same club. They were, I think it was last year, they just worked with the San Jose Sharks on their arena in their downtown. Why does that matter? Because here's the city of San Jose partnering at the major league level. And I love Mar-a-Day and I love the positive attention it brings us. And here we are talking about partnering

at the high school level. They're going major league, we're going high school. I think we need to start thinking major league. You know, we have lengthy conversations about the OC Street Call. And I think it's going to be great. I think it's going to be an added value down the road. In the meantime, yesterday, LA's announcing that they're going to burrow a tunnel under the mountains to connect the west side to the valley. But we're going to go, what, 2.7 miles? So we got to start thinking big. I mean, we, you know, we look out the windows of City Hall and we see a nice flat landscape.

We need to start thinking bigger. We want to talk about how we once were in the big 10, 13, 20 cities, or how we should be in those cities. We gotta start doubting at that level. You know we play varsity, or we shut up. I don't want to shut up. I want to play varsity. I want to get up there. So we need to do that. I think when it comes to our Pr. Image, you know the thing is we're in the middle of Orange County, which county is famous right? Some of our neighbors have done things that have helped us be you know in a positive light. Where the piece of writers in lunch county we birth this can so and I didn't we do so.

I think there's a lot of positive things here in the city. I think you know we talk about public safety data. It shows that we're getting safer. Our police are doing more. Our services are helping, and there's not was was places where we shouldn't need to send police right? There's all these things that are happening, but I think we do need to be more proactive on our image. We're not we're not telling our story there's an urban legend I don't know how true this is. But back in the day, a former mayor, the recent one, or a mayor. You can guess who had somebody that they were related to that worked for the Oc.

Register, and the rumor I was heard was once a week there was always a nice puff piece about how wonderful singing is every week. Not just oh, hey, last month you remember when they profiled hours. Oh, every week there was something about the artist village programs that we're doing with the community centers enhancements to our parks. Oh, my God, is you got another monkey? Yeah, I mean there's always something positive. It wasn't always crime, crime, it was positive stuff that was that today. You know I think someone mentioned influence or someone mentioned social media.

And I want to thank the city manager because I know he's giving more resources to Paul and our public information folks. But we've got to start telling our story. And we have an amazing story to tell. And I'm not just saying that because yay or say no. No. Honestly, fair market. We have an amazing story to tell. I mean, there's neighboring cities that have hotels. And I wouldn't want to stay there. It's boring. Here we have vibrant culinary scene. We have murals. We have all these fascinating things. We have great bones in the city. be a great story to tell but we just gotta start telling so it's all right thank you

council mayor pro tem

David Penaloza

bringing to the city um if you look out the city hall windows today on the eighth floor guess what you're looking at a future i mean olympic site the honda center in 2028 it's going to be posting olympic games that is 10 minute drive from here um so it's like having meals the city tried to make an effort to court some of that for some of that olympic village it's going to come with that right uh to welcome exactly um and i i i think about those things and the potential so thank you for just one of the photo down in this conversation

Can you use your mic? I'm sorry. I had just finished negotiating an agreement for a city with LA28.org. And one of the things that they are doing is they are contracting directly with the hotels and hotels in different locations. They're just going directly to them to kind of get them rented up for their people. I actually asked them if they were doing anything in Orange County and here particularly.

Valerie Amezcua

Thank you, Madam Secretary. I appreciate that. Yeah, I know that the city of Anaheim, they're actually all the hotels and motels are reserved already. They're full to capacity for the Olympics and the World Cup and everything. So imagine how much money they're going to make. But as we've had many conversations on this in this room, what hotels do we have? By the 55, you know, on First Street, we have a, what is that, a Marriott Holiday Inn, which I wouldn't recommend anybody stay at yet. Sorry, I know. We're working on it. It's getting better. It is getting better.

Valerie Amezcua

Yes, Madam Deputy City Manager, did I say something that prompted you to?

No, but we do have an embassy suites, the Holiday Inn, all on Hotel Terrace. And we have made big efforts within the past few years to increase security in that area. And we have gotten great comments back from our hoteliers saying that that area is so much more improved now than it was just a few years ago. We do also have the Doubletree Hotel, the Zezza, off of MacArthur and Main, and we have a Marriott off of Harbor. So we do have a few hotels. We are hearing that those are filling up.

The issue that we have is the more that we improve our image here within the city of Santa Ana, we're able to have higher prices for those hotels because currently they're a lot lower than the surrounding cities.

Valerie Amezcua

And thank you for sharing that. And I agree with you. We do have some, but we don't have what other cities have. And yeah, there's no Sheraton. No, there is not. And so you can go to by South Coast Plaza and cross the street over to Costa Mesa and stare at a very nice hotel there. there. And so thank you for sharing that. Yes, we do. And the hotels I know that Council Becerra meets with in his ward, because they're all in your ward, I believe most of them, right? The hotels and ones and Councilmember Phan and I don't think any are in yours.

So you got a Northgate.

Valerie Amezcua

Okay. But my point of bringing that up is that Anaheim makes a lot of money off of TOT. And I think one of the council members, I think it was Councilmember Mayor Pro Tem, Tim talked about safety at our hotels. I know when we go to those meetings and the police department is there. And yes, you're right. They've done a great job. They've sent out the dog. They've sent out multiple officers. Now they go there on a regular basis. But it's also up to the hotels to provide safety. Yeah, when I say a hotel, if it's not secure where I'm the only one that can get in with my card, I don't want to stay there. And so we are doing a good job.

Valerie Amezcua

But do we have enough hotels? No, we do not. and we should have been building them many many many years ago and they were not so it's not the blame is not on us I'm not trying to say that but also we talk about growing housing growing you know developing hotels and you know all these things that we want to bring to our city but we don't even have enough police officers to cover right now we're I mean our police department's done a great job of hiring but we're not at full 400 yet we're we are um what are we at dc alms how many officers are we short so we have 31 so it was 28 then it went to 29 then went 30 so now

Valerie Amezcua

we're at 31 vacancies to get you know people retire you're too retired we hire a couple more so you know they've done a great job but i would love to have the eddie westfield built out to to use it and have modern day a partnership with modern to be great to have a partnership with modern day have their logo everywhere they pay us to you know have that um so we're generating revenue but at the same time we also have to provide public safety officers there or they're going to provide I mean I don't know those are plans that we have to talk about as we move on

Valerie Amezcua

so any other questions around this item because I have a question about the golf course um what What item were we talking about? We were talking about generating revenue and-Okay, economic development.

Benjamin Vazquez

Eddie Westfield. And I want to go to two issues that was brought up in the dais by Council Member Becerra, where we had the CityNet contract and the administration costs were high. Let's look at all our contracts and we negotiate to lower administrative costs. Not just CityNet, but everybody else. That was a great idea. Good job on your part by going ahead and getting that done. done also our contracts where we should have exit clauses and they don't read they don't meet certain requirements and we've we got everybody talk about it we had the parking

Benjamin Vazquez

lot in front of the Yost take a year and all the businesses took a 50 hit and my God will shut down we we should protect our businesses and these contracts that we negotiate when we're building out we take the fault and people lose their livelihood so make sure that we have an exit

Alvaro Nuñez

clouds so and i and i think that's that's part of the discussion and you saw from the deputy um deputy um excuse me from the deputy city manager and also from my acm um ty we we don't want we don't want to sound defensive because we we understand what we're hearing from the city council and we agree right we often said it we chose some giants but we're playing the cards in front of us and most of the items you see us focus us is exactly addressing this item when when we when we it's not a flippant comment when we say we're taking it out of the shelves and

Alvaro Nuñez

implementing it right you're seeing that uh our meeting today was to focus that we've we've heard the the hard comments and this this administration in april will be two years for us we have literally done many of the stuff that were stuck there for two three four years right five years And that's key when we're talking about this item with the downtown, and we don't want to mistake make them stick other cities do from a developer component within their destitute to pay rent, you know, and their own city hall property right that's

Alvaro Nuñez

we want to do and so we sent uh city manager updates right to to illustrate that we are meeting with the county trying to consolidate some of the properties here next to to um city hop so that we're able to do a better negotiation with developers when um uh acm uh ty says we've met with key developers we met with related we've met with some folks that have built here in the city have have the national type of composure so we can get they get to that but it's not an accident that that anaheim but yeah but they haven't i mean this is my point that that didn't

Alvaro Nuñez

occur again april two years uh you know some folks are building but you know anaheim they started building the sheraton the hilton last year they had it and this might have for us the stuff that we're deciding now and this is what i mean about this year and and this especially like this meeting today and in a public forum in a public meeting which i don't think was done before is that to show the hard component that we have to do. What we do today is foundational. You said it, Willowick is a perfect example. I have a coffee with city manager from Garden Grove next week. I think on the 5th. Just to have discussions on get together,

Alvaro Nuñez

city manager, and at the same time, talk about this kind of components, the animal control. Why do we have to lose $30 million? dollars they pay i think two million dollars and what can we do originally right uh no different than you know hey where we will wait where are your people where are my people i see what my city council members are saying so so so again this is why we're having this meeting so you see that that uh we have the same level of i don't say frustration but the sense of bewilderment that everything is passing around us and yet with the company see it and and here we are right uh

Alvaro Nuñez

We've been to city council meetings where we have folks actually actively advocate against four-star hotels in a city council meeting. You've been there, right? And then here we are saying the city should do this, and why are we missing that? I say that because this is type of that balancing. Yes, housing at Willowick. Yes, commercial, high industrial aspects that yields for the city, for us and Garden Grove. And yes, also mitigate so that we don't impact one of the oldest neighborhoods in and not just the city and the county, Santa Anita.

Alvaro Nuñez

That those are are where we have to deal with. But the fact that we're saying it allows us that so it at least doesn't get lost with us. We we we talked to one of the customers who indicated we approved, you know, some of the parking improvements 3, 4, 5 years ago. Garden Grove opened their jail facilities in less than 18 months. Right? That's the focus for 26. That's the focus you're seeing that. And I say that because sometimes there's this perception sometimes that sometimes the administration has been a little hard.

Alvaro Nuñez

This is how we get there, right? We make the commitment, we focus it, and that's what we showed this kind of work study so that people understand it's gonna get a little hard and sometimes making hard cause makes for frustration. but at least we balance that.

Valerie Amezcua

Mayor Pro Tem, go ahead.

David Penaloza

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, City Manager, for those comments. I think that, you know, and I appreciate the Mayor bringing up the Seattle conversation with Mayor Jones, and I think that was when you think about the history, I mean, think of having a conversation and dialogue for six years, and then one person just shuts it down on his own. So I think it's important that we continue, and I'm happy you're going to meet with the City Manager over there. I think it's one of my very first city council meetings after I was first sworn in in 2018. I hadn't had a city council meeting at the city yet, but we had one in Garden Grove.

David Penaloza

It was a joint city council meeting. And I think that's something that we got to talk about and have it. It's like a nip it in the butt if there's a pleasure or direction or to move forward to build something. I mean, I think of the potential impacts that it could have to the Santa Anita neighborhood and whatnot. And we need to be able to move forward in a direction. And we could protect these neighborhoods. We could set protections from the get-go, you know, that this is what's going to take place.

David Penaloza

I know I look at cities like Englewood and Compton and, you know, and they say, hey, there might be potential impacts we're not going to move forward with. SoFi, the Forum, I mean, the Oracle Arena, all these massive hubs of entertainment. But again, we just say, we just hear the loudest person in the room and we completely back away. And it's like, well, we could move forward, but with protections. We could protect those neighborhoods and do all of the above. There's a... Sure.

Valerie Amezcua

Sure, I'm sorry. Can you use your you can use your mic and ask that again, please.

Can you give me the same speech that you give me all the time about Santa versus Ingle when it comes to size and output.

Alvaro Nuñez

So so one of the things that that we came as part of the administration, and again hearing some of some of the issues here. And that's why I mentioned the meeting when we have have discussion about 4 star hotels, and we have people literally advocating against the 4 star return the city. Right. I look at cities, and I say city of Inglewood in the last 10 years, and maybe they've been working for 15 years. Right. It's a city at third art sites right I think the the area is, you know, we're 27 square miles. I think they're 10 10 square miles obviously i'm sorry did you say Inglewood is 10 square miles.

Alvaro Nuñez

Yes. We can confirm, right? Let's Google that right now. But I think it's a third our size.

Alvaro Nuñez

We're a third of our population. I think nine square miles. Okay, nine square miles. And then they have 100,000 population. We have 310 plus. And obviously 27 square miles. And independent of the historical forum, they've added two key aspects as far as to bring attraction. attraction in the last 10 years so so for us those are the items that at least for me I look at we talk about Carson uh it's just even smaller and it's an attraction there have the the soccer type of components so so when we came in that's that's the aspect we're looking for when I mentioned my

Alvaro Nuñez

discussion with the city manager and Garden Grove is that we're waiting for coffee just city manager to city manager but you know and it's more of a collegiate type of meeting but but also because because you know inevitably what are we going to talk about business uh we didn't mention it here in in a part of our our highlights you know we had the first workforce working with with two unions now we're going to have another one in April with additional units again never done before um part of our workforce board now we have Dr Lorraine Perez as the superintendent be part

Alvaro Nuñez

of our city's workforce uh type of work to help us direct us again these are these are key decisive decisive components that we're working on yeah no but but I but I mentioned that customer so so you see it doesn't get lost on us and sometimes we respond because we're staff and we're proud of our staff and we're proud of what we're doing is that we sound defensive and I want to be guarded against that but when I looked at Inglewood two main stadiums and we don't have that and we don't have the hotels and the jobs remember I often say as part of my my example with when we talk about

Alvaro Nuñez

the angle and let's say we do have folks that you know as part of the hotel union and they live on on on on let's say at highland and and and uh pio pico and they get a car you know they can be and picking up the kid at pio pico if they you know within 30 minutes 50 minutes from their job versus taking an hour and a half they work at the sheraton in bueno park or or hilton so for us we have to look at those level of components in a very general way and i think you're right the the whole wheel of which is you said yourself, we need to be able to look how both communities benefit and make sure that we were more mindful of that.

Alvaro Nuñez

We're not folks that were here 30, 40, 50 years ago and I'm not criticizing anybody, but we're mindful of the impacts that certain developers make. And so we're more careful in doing that. And I think you see not only the cultural value of folks, people like my team has, and I personally, but we look at those things because we're part of those communities. We were born in and raised in those type of communities.

Valerie Amezcua

Thank you very much. Okay, So we're gonna take a really quick break while they bring in lunch, and then we'll continue really quick.

David Penaloza

Just go ahead and to that point I mean thank you for acknowledging that I I think of you know. So I just looked it up. So if I stadium by itself is 43 acres, I mean, think of the size of a will of it. so there's yeah there's there's enough room to do all of the advice anyways

Valerie Amezcua

anyways well the streetcar is another discussion so we'll have another time so again mr city manager thank you we are looking forward to hearing about your meeting with garden grove city manager so we're going to bring in lunch and then we'll continue but madam city clerk if you can

Valerie Amezcua

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. Okay, we're back and let's get started. Okay, any questions from council members or comments? And let me start really quick. It shouldn't be a long answer here. I'm kind of hoping it's not. The Riverview Golf Course, I believe since 1964 or 71 something, 1961, we have not made any changes. It says the city began leasing land for Riverview Golf Course in 1964. The agreement expires in 2026. We are only averaging about $158,000 annually from the lease. I do know that people come from all over the county to golf there because it's actually one of the better golf courses.

Valerie Amezcua

I know some students come from South County. I've heard I've been there. I've had a coffee with the mayor there, and I've seen people from all over coming there. So, Mr. City Manager or Assistant City Managers, are we doing an RFP at this time? And I'm not saying to switch it to anything else because I did meet with the constituents in that area when they were very upset because it was placed on the agenda, I believe, last year about, you know, moving the golf course. And so when I met with the community, the room was full. The cabin was completely full of residents. And they said, no, we do not want you touching our golf course.

Valerie Amezcua

The only complaint that one or two of them had was like, raise the nets because the golf balls hit my window. That was like two people out of the entire full room. It was full to capacity. And so what are we doing now?

Alvaro Nuñez

So, um, can you use your mic?

David Penaloza

Yeah. I just wanted to say that there's, there's a resident that lives along river view. And if you knock on her door, she'll give you a bucket of golf balls. Yes. And I don't call. And she was like, can you please take them? I give them, I give, she said, I accumulate

Valerie Amezcua

a bucket a week. Yes. I was like, wow. Anyways. So they want, if we can raise the net as we go go forward with RFP, just something to think about raising the net for the residential, because yes, Mayor Pro Tem is correct that that is the only complaint I've ever heard is the golf balls in their backyard. So can you tell us what we're doing?

Alvaro Nuñez

So ACM, Ty will give a little bit more information, but just so at least it's on the record. We are maintaining the use of golf course, so that's not being changed, right? You are correct. correct the original contract and extensions originally in the 1960s we don't generate much um revenue from it anywhere between 150 to 200 000 which is and you like you indicated it is quite a bit of a use and so the stuff that we are going to be looking at is making something by level of improvements and at least you know be better neighbors we make sure that the residential

Alvaro Nuñez

folks that surround the golf course do not are not negatively impacted as you indicated and ACM times will give you a little bit more information where we're at right now. So ACM when

Valerie Amezcua

you give the information when you talk about doing doing improvements to the golf course we're not going to be paying for those improvements is what I want to know in your presentation. Right but if somebody let me hear what you have to say first. Thank you mayor. So the golf course

Of course, as you're aware, the current contract ends in April of this year. The current operator has expressed to us that they don't desire to extend their operations and wants to either for the city take over or the county.

While they did make an offer to continue to the end of the year, they offer terms that we didn't feel was favorable to the city. So therefore, we pursued the option of the city at the minimum operating in the interim and also look at an extended options.

In the process of doing that, we will provide information on other golf courses and other municipal courses where cities have a management company operating on the city's behalf, not managing it and sharing the profit city, but operating on the city's behalf and running the golf course based on the city's directions. And this is a model that we saw at Fulton. We also saw that, I believe, in Santa Barbara, and I did reach out to the county of Orange.

They also have this company called course, of course, course, operating at some of their golf courses also, and they have provided some very good reference. So through our we were also looking at putting our Pt. See what else is out there. so that we're able to look at options. However, through making contact with these references and and looking at the operations, we were able to exercise the option of piggybacking onto a an rp process with the city full of them did where they went out for

for RFP seeking an operator and ending up contract with this course school company. So that's what we'll be recommending to the city council as to consider taking on a contract management company to help us manage the golf course and also to really redirect the resources of the golf course for better use so that we can start to number one, modernize the facility, upgrade some of the equipment and facilities such as the netting, which we received a lot of complaints about, the maintenance of the course, the CARP facilities.

All of those will require some level of investment into it by the city. However, we project an operational net positive for the city if we do take it over. As you mentioned, we currently only receive about $150,000 annually from the course. The total revenue that the course does receive, the way it's structured right now, we get 10% of 50% of the gross revenue. And then we get a portion of the alcohol sales.

And so that's a very small amount of what we estimate to be about $3 or $4 million annually that the golf operator brings in. So by us taking over and managing the course, we could not only potentially realize more of that revenue stream, but also potentially increasing it through looking at enhancing facilities, rental for events, weddings, turning the golf facilities such as the range into, we understand that their equipment like Topgolf, that they have equipment that creates the the atmosphere and the rental facility without having

to significantly modifying the way that the the range and the golf poles are using the range so many options for us and so that's what we'll be considering to bring into um to the city council in march for you to consider uh for us to take over via a management company yes some of the equipment to answer your question, Mary, will we have to be invested because it is our golf course? It obviously would have to come from a revenue base. So the investment initially, we'll have to evaluate how we can take the revenue from the golf course and be able to allocate it to make the

reinvestment occur over a number of years. So thank you for sharing that. Okay, so if I heard

Valerie Amezcua

you correctly, you said the city will be taking it over briefly until we get somebody to run it. What does that look like, the timeline? What department will be running it?

So we want the transition to be seamless from the public's perspective. We don't intend to close the golf course. The goal right now, we are working for a transition plan to have this company come into place before the end or start operating by May 1st.

Valerie Amezcua

So it's coming to the council's second meeting in March?

First meeting in March, we project.

Valerie Amezcua

Well, hopefully it's the second.

Yes, so are we able to because there are folks that are employed there now so as part of the consideration for taking it over, can we just make sure that as part of that we look at absorbing those employees. We have discussed that that's absolutely.

That will be a discussion with the contract. Okay, yes, but I would like that to be a part of that.

Valerie Amezcua

So, Madam city attorney before it comes to the Council you'll look at that contract or you look at those things.

Jennifer L. Hall

Absolutely not actually have meetings with I have meetings with staff scheduled.

You need a microphone. Sorry, Yes, and I already have meetings on Monday morning scheduled with some staff members to make sure we understand the deal points in terms.

Valerie Amezcua

So we can get that drafted. So thank you, Mr. City manager, because I think one of the council members talked about, you know, things are moving under your leadership, which is great, and with your team. And so timeline comes to the council second meeting in March. And then when do you think you'll be as a city will be running in?

Valerie Amezcua

May 1st. So then I would just ask again from a PR and is that we somehow notify the community what we're doing? Because I just started getting emails about it and maybe other council members have as well. And I don't want anybody to tell our story. or give some other story. And so let's just get it out there to the community that, hey, we're taking it over, nothing's gonna change. As a matter of fact, there will be improvements and we'll be generating revenue. And I think that would be a great story to tell. I don't know if anybody else has any comments, any council members have comments about that?

Valerie Amezcua

Okay, seeing none, who's got a question or comment? Thank you very much for that information on the Gold Coast.

Valerie Amezcua

No comments. Okay. It looks like we're going to, we're doing here. Okay.

Valerie Amezcua

So let me go to page 56. If nobody else has any questions, I'm going to go to slide 56, recommended strategic goal. So thank you guys for sharing this. No, I'm not touching the cannabis this festival on 57 but i'm with the page 56 um yes so under community safety says develop plans to address unhoused issues at smoke shops human trafficking pedestrian collisions and regional organized crime i don't need you to go into the detail organized crime at all um i don't think I think that's something that I personally would not want shared.

Valerie Amezcua

Police department does a great job addressing organized crime. So when you talk about unhoused, address unhoused issues at smoke shops, it's a little odd for me. So you're addressing the smoke shops with all the legal activity that's going on in some of them, the gambling, human trafficking. Is that what you're talking about? It says unhoused issues at smoke shops, human trafficking. Can somebody?

Alvaro Nuñez

yes so that um two points one this gets us to the you know end of our meeting today so again as part of strategic priorities and and we relate it to community safety this is a perfect example when when you have uh we're trying to address a comprehensive issue right one the the uh attractive nuisance from the smoke shops right would probably be the best way to place it it and then how it attracts folks that are maybe unhoused drug addicted components right because uh

Alvaro Nuñez

um okay let me let me be more specific some of our smoke shops are are selling or being allegedly selling items they're not supposed to be selling some of the noxus uses some of the the illegal cannabis components, offering free wifi that helps with some of the illegal gaming component. So when we address community safety and we phrase it this way, so you understand it's not just a homeless issue, it's not just the attractive news with illegal smoke shop, and it also deals with organized crime. So we're trying to give you a comprehensive perspective when we tackle something like this.

Valerie Amezcua

No, and I appreciate that, but I guess my lens is always very different is my background. So when you talk about develop plans to address unhoused issues at smoke shops, you're just basically saying the police department city will continue to address the smoke shop issues. Because I know that they've done operations in some of the smoke shops where they have found gambling, prostitution. I don't know, D.C. and where else they've located in those operations. But it's not just unhoused people.

Alvaro Nuñez

No, no, but that's the key. What I'm trying to get at is that it's our house people,

Alvaro Nuñez

comma, smoke shops, it's illegal business, not just police department, but using code enforcement. Yes. Right. But some level of human trafficking, you know, partnership with the

Alvaro Nuñez

necessary regional task force that are helped with that. When we say competition, collision, yeah, it has to do with housing, unhoused folks, but there's folks that sometimes based on their house capability may be hurt because of the traffic conditions so we're trying to be very comprehensive in expanding that so not just a specific on one issue if you focus just on the house issues we'll phrase it a different way so it's it's easy to understand

Valerie Amezcua

for public should always focus on the unhoused i mean that's a that's a i think that's a priority for for us is unhoused people that are on the streets but i'm just saying that when i read this I guess if I was a constituent at home reading this, I'm like, well, okay, our unhoused are causing all these issues. It's not just the unhoused that are part of the problem. There are people who come from other areas throughout the entire county to our smoke shops to buy dope, to go and then buy NOS and to do whatever they do.

Valerie Amezcua

We'll present different human trafficking is you know we know that's a problem every police every city has to deal with human trafficking. Pedestrian collisions I correct me if i'm wrong I think we have a very high rate of pedestrian fatalities.

Alvaro Nuñez

How many I think we need the year for with 36 Dc.

Valerie Amezcua

Alms is indicating we have 36 fatalities. So thank you, Mr. city man this is what i think 20 in 2025 we had 36. yes so just in the short time of this year we've had a couple already um so yeah so i'm reading it it's just for me because you know i look at words i just don't want people to think that get a copy of this that unhoused people are the issue here with this item it's the smoke shops illegal activities it's human trafficking that's happening all over the country but here in san anna rpd is focused on that definitely pedestrian pedestrian collisions that's a traffic issue as well it's not just a PD issue or code enforcement

Valerie Amezcua

it's it's a city I mean we're looking at bike lanes and and down First Street and other parts of our city I'm sure that council members here just like I do that some bike lane people some people want bike lanes um some people don't we have a very high rate of people getting struck or killed by cars that are on bicycles I would not ride a bicycle in the city um I love my city but but I definitely would rather walk than ride a bicycle. And then regional organized crime, I think that just falls under the police department's purview anyways. So I just don't want people to think that organized crime in Santa Ana is a huge problem.

Valerie Amezcua

Organized crime is everywhere. You just don't, I mean, so that's, I'm sorry. Yes, it's very organized, but it's everywhere. So when you put this in there, it kind of makes me feel like, okay,

Alvaro Nuñez

And again, as a priority, strategic priority is how we prioritize our resources. And so when we say because again, we'll community safety, what do you mean by community safety? All this right? Okay, that's and so and so what will what change the praise?

Valerie Amezcua

No, you're changing the council members.

Alvaro Nuñez

I think you're right. What we don't want to do is miscommunicate or have a misunderstanding out there. But I think you raised an excellent point. Right. So we try to be a little bit more elaborate in our definition.

Valerie Amezcua

The last question I have is the use of technology as a force multiplier. We're talking about license plate readers and other technology to assist

Benjamin Vazquez

this enforcement camera PD whatever it may be okay that's what I wanted to say any final questions uh for uh Community Safety uh pedestrian safety ever we have a city event if it's for families let's do teach pedestrian safety to children to families so often I see people walking the street and sometimes I'm not looking both ways this way look that way look that way let's go uh I I think I think it's necessary to teach that and go back to the basics of how to cross the street. It's just not we used to do it when I was in elementary and I don't see it being done.

Benjamin Vazquez

I don't I don't see enough of it and I see many families, including the mothers and the children walking without looking and teaching the children how to do that across the street. So that's a big issue is having that education on so on the street.

Alvaro Nuñez

So I can say this and maybe as part of our our draft for for April we included. We the the chief Robert Rodriguez has already indicated expanding the traffic patrol more motorcycle type of a level of enforcement, so that we are. We have we try to minimize and address some of the the district collisions, and so that's something that will be focused and so focus. as well he has he's initiated a plan and so we should be able to have something by april

Valerie Amezcua

um as part of our draft for this so councilman vasquez maybe we uh maybe mr city manager person we just you have a good relationship with the new superintendent at santa unified and they can start teaching again at the elementary schools about crossing the street looking both ways and because you're right people just walk i mean i can't tell you how many times i almost hit to people they just walk and I know jaywalking is not illegal anymore and so they just feel they can walk and cars are going full speed and they end up getting hit and they end up getting killed and

Valerie Amezcua

so it's really sad and so we want to make sure we address it but I think in partnership with the school district we can address that as well and because Lorraine's there and she's willing she wants a partnership with us I think that's great we can do that Mayor Patek

David Penaloza

Thank you, Mayor Mesquine. Thank you for bringing that up about jaywalking. And maybe this is more of an ongoing question and conversation with our police department to study and look at, see if we've actually seen an increase in pedestrian vehicle deaths since the state of California made jaywalking legal. legal um so that's something that we should keep in mind and and if we have seen an increase and look at other cities if they've seen increases because that's another thing that we could also bring up to our state legislatures uh legislators um to address but that's a good point on that and

David Penaloza

um and on the subject of bike and bike lanes let's let's stop no more it stopped nobody uses them

I'm sorry you don't stop no we need bike lanes you have to have them you ride your bike I don't have a bike but yeah but you do need bike lanes because part of getting funding from the state and doing mitigation measures under yeah it is it also helps people slow down I get complaints all the time on hazard because people hit the little protective bike lanes but you know what But slow down because there are there's a school there, elementary school students and things like that. You have to learn how to adjust because we don't want people to keep driving super fast down main where there are a lot of pedestrians.

We do not want people to drive super fast down hazard with a lot of pedestrians. And as we're redoing Euclid, which has the number one pedestrian related accidents, we need people to slow down.

Valerie Amezcua

Yes. And by the way, to slow down. so we should put the cameras back up and give people speeding tickets no that's a whole other

thing but i guess my point is and protected bike lanes none of those painted lines or the weird the little plastic things like i know it costs more money no bulb outs are important that's what slows people down drive slower then you won't hit the bulb outs you know if you hit a tree that's in front of you that sounds like you're not paying attention while you drive It could have been a person. So I really think that part of safety in the city is people need to slow down.

Valerie Amezcua

So I agree with you 100 percent. I think, though, if you go to all the community meetings throughout the entire city, you know, you have you can have a room full of people. And very few of them want bike lanes throughout the entire city because what we're doing is we're taking lanes away from from cars. cars yeah and I understand we want to slow down I understand you know we're getting funding from Sacramento get all that but um we're it's it's a no-win situation in my humble opinion because you're going to put bike lanes very few people are going to use them um and we want to slow

Valerie Amezcua

cars down and we should think of other ways and yeah but I guess it's a cultural it's a cultural shift but we also need to think of other ways to get cars to slow down look we we need to diversify

the moats like we can't just be like it's not 1980 it's not 1960 you know we're not i'll just let's just build more lanes let's build more highs if we did that there'd be no token every time you expand a lane on the highway you get more cars driving that's that those are facts so we need more we need more bike lanes we don't need less of them i didn't i'm just saying no but to the point we need more protected bike lanes the delineators do no good but i mean look when When they build it all down on South Bristol, you're welcome. They're going to have it. It's going to be beautiful. It's going to be amazing.

And they're all protected bike lanes. We made sure they were class four. That was one of the things that I asked for in both those projects. And it's going to be great. And when people say, how come they get all the nice things? Because we're advocating for those things because they're protecting residents who use bikes. Not everybody drives. Not everybody takes a bus. But I'm not going to get rid of those modes because there's not enough.

Valerie Amezcua

I'm not going to get rid of them. I'm simply saying it's going to be a great session.

Benjamin Vazquez

I just want to say thank you too for advocating for bike lanes, but, and keep supporting bike culture, riding your bike in the right way, the halvits, the lights. So make sure we have people using the bike lanes. So, so the right way. So we, we keep supporting the bike filter, like our, our group, uh, what's a Santa and a riders or something like that. so as long as we keep uh supporting them and other groups and giving the education that we need to support including the e-bikes we need to support some kind something for helmets for adults on e-bike because everybody should be wearing a helmet and well an e-bike is a motorcycle

that's a different discussion miles an hour is kind of rough it's a motorcycle that's like I drive an e-car no it's not a car but 35 miles an hour they don't need a they don't need a helmet

Benjamin Vazquez

it but for a motorcycle you think state legislature so that's something we need to we need to talk about also i want to add uh for for safety uh i saw a thing on community policing and and uh i agree with it and i have negative examples of policing in my ward but i also have a positive one from 2004 2006 when we had community policing on uh mini street and we had officers who would would uh collect broken up bikes fix them and give them to the kids we had officers who would see a family who are evicted and then go talk to a a building manager next door or the landlord next

Benjamin Vazquez

door and make a connection can you stay here for a month can they they have a a new lease or they see a young man hanging out with the gang they grub the young man take him to their parents and and have a conversation with the parents. This is in the news and there's an article in the register and it was good work. So that kind of community policing in neighborhoods that happened to be in Ward 2 would be the expectation. Like we could do community policing at neighborhood associations, at coffee cup with a cup at night out. But in the neighborhood, Central Santa Ana, we need it all the time and I've seen the good work happen.

Benjamin Vazquez

happened uh Antonio Romero happens to be my uncle who who led uh who was part of this thing so I I do believe in and good policing I know there's I know we have many good officers uh and those are the things that I want to see and I get reports and I don't want to I'm not sharing I get reports from my students who don't have that kind of connection with police piece right and there's a good 3.5 GPA a football player triple triple letter and because they wear

Benjamin Vazquez

dickies and a and a black shirt they're gonna be profiled and that that should and I look at my my class and i'm like jeans and black shirts 80 of my kids fit fit the profile 80 and that's not right we know we know in my class we know them two guys are associated but you aren't all associated like we know but they all dress alike there's no that's a cholo that's a gang member that's an associated person they all blend in now council member can i ask you a question yeah you know in

your class which ones are the gangbangers and which ones aren't right uh i mean like you i mean you know that right like you know them by name you know like who's the wannabes and you know which ones are actually hardcore right you know who they are don't worry i'm not listening i'm not leading you down a trap but the reason i'm saying is because the reason why you know is you know the kids you're there you're constant in their lives one thing that i've been adamant about and and i I know our previous chief had no interest in it. And I'm hoping we'll get there at some point is we need cops that are actually in our communities

consistently, not just guy badge gun. I'm talking about that's Officer Martinez. That's Officer Smith. Like, you know who they are. I know it's not feasible to walk a beat and sometimes maybe not even bike a beat. But to that point, the idea of having certain officers. Now, we have the commanders right now, the North and South commanders. That's a great start. And that goes in the right direction. and I refer a lot of my residents to Commander Lopez. You know, you have a problem, you need additional assistance on, go to her. But day in and day out to your point, when you've got officers that are profiling, and yes, it happens,

but it would be amazing if we had officers that are consistently, like let's say they're around Valley, right? And officer rolls up, sees the kid in the dickies

Benjamin Vazquez

and goes, oh, that's little Jose over there. He doesn't wanna be, he's not a problem.

Like they're not gonna stop him. They're not gonna do anything because they know who he is. they they get an idea of what's what's going on so i mean to your point you're right it happens but i don't think it's unsolvable i think it's something that just needs a commitment to a certain type of policing yeah

Benjamin Vazquez

create that community for everybody right how does that where there's a second about the one time

know that that kid needs a new bike or know that his family's got an issue with rent he doesn't know because he came in he's there and he's off to the next call on the other side of town town versus the ones that are in that area consistently that keep getting a call to that house versus 10 calls to that house by 10 different officers responding. You have a consistent set of officers that are responding. They start to see the trend. They start to figure out ways to address it. And show the neighborhood, right? No in the neighborhood. Exactly. So I think those are great

Valerie Amezcua

points. And I just want to say that Santa Unified has their own police department. I don't know how many officers they have now, but they have their own police department and they should be just as is involved, if not more than our police department here for the city of Santa Ana, because they're at the school sites and they're, you know, they know the kids. And I have to tell you that when I sat on the school board, one of the issues that we, that we worked on was the dress code. As you know, Mr. Councilman Vasquez, I went in your classroom. We talked about that,

Valerie Amezcua

about the dress code, right? Because kids were being suspended for their, the color they were wearing, but that's not in our purview. That is a school district and hopefully they still are you know they're they've addressed the dress code and they're not suspending kids or identifying them as gang members just because they wear a certain color i don't know what they're doing i can't speak for that right now but um you know the point i brought up was like hey some families go to the five and ten to shop so yeah i wear a white t-shirt every day they do it's called

Valerie Amezcua

five five for ten yeah you get you get five it's five for ten whatever and whatever it is and so So they wear white T-shirts and brown khakis because that's what they can afford. And so the district was or blue shirts and the district was suspending them at that time.

Valerie Amezcua

Yes. So as a board member, we changed the dress code. And so I hope they still are, you know, they're not suspending kids anymore based on that. I don't know what they're doing right now, but hopefully they're not. But from a city perspective, I just have to say, Mr. City Manager, our police department has been, they do so many things in the community now. The chiefs at them, the DCs are there, the commanders are there. I think we can't do it all. They can't do it all because at the same time, they're trying to respond to calls. And then you have cult and, you know, maybe we want a third cult.

Valerie Amezcua

I don't even know if we can afford that or have that. I don't know. know. So community policing is for me personally is such a big term and I was I'm old enough to remember I'm sure DC you remember as well and Averill some of us are a little more mature like fine wine. We remember the weed and seed we were part of all of those all of those operations and so they have to continue but I don't I'm not I don't use the term community policing anymore more because I think it has such a broad, broad definition, right? But I do think our police

Valerie Amezcua

department should have good relationships with people. And we have broken it up. I don't know if you see, you want to talk about the chief has broken it up into four quadrogerants, the policing and the patrolling. And so that the patrol officers in the same area on a regular

basis, is that correct? Yes. So our patrol officers on annual deployments in the same area. So they have the same beat for you.

Valerie Amezcua

And they're making contact with the community members, going to community meetings. If they're invited, I mean, I want to make sure that they're being invited as well. I know I invite them everywhere and many of us invite them. So are they going?

Yes. Anything that the police department engages in within that specific area, they will be a part of.

Valerie Amezcua

And I know the commanders do a phenomenal job and they're out there. Even on their days off, they come out. So there's no such thing as a DAF. I get it. But I did want to ask the city attorney something because Councilman Vestas, you brought up a good point about previously. Yes, I think the city as a whole would would help with, you know, him being evicted. And yet people were like, hey, your son's a gang member, so we're going to evict you. Right. So I don't know if that's still happening today. I think we're watching that. I would hope it's not happening in our city. But Madam City Attorney.

Valerie Amezcua

attorney, what is the liability if, you know, our police officers, which I think is a great, I mean, it'd be great if we could do it. I just don't know that we can. If our police officers were to say to that apartment owner, hey, why don't you rent to Johnny, be good in his family? And then they do, and then something happens. I mean, I would never recommend that any of our

employees, including particularly in PD, get involved in private, you know, contractual relationships like tenant lease types of situations. I do think that having a community policing program where police officers understand who the owners of the apartments are, who the operators and managers are, and who the people are, that sounds like a very good way to build safety within those neighborhoods. But I couldn't recommend that we actually have people facilitating that. We do have the just cause protections, which is a really good thing. And I think that

we have that rental housing that's created through our ordinance and our charter amendment. I really think that may be the way to bridge those issues so if the police department identifies someone in need they're out doing their community policing they identify hey i think there's a family in need or if we could just get these people housed maybe their kids can go to school that might be a good phone call to our housing people because they're the ones that have the connection to resources

Valerie Amezcua

but so then maybe our housing people thank you maybe our housing people send out that information to our schools or you can share it on our school sites to say here's what the city can help you Because it's not a police issue or or you know, council issue. It is. How do I get that information out to the community? So it's kind of like the us in front of that is right. We got to get all that out to the community. So the just cause so we need to get it out there 2 things.

Alvaro Nuñez

One. We already have our folks from from the rent stabilization program. Interact with good district face face meetings.

Valerie Amezcua

Well, he if Council member bosses haven't right anything so so we'll do a better job of communicating.

Alvaro Nuñez

But definitely we listen, Solomon, and so we are directing our staff to go to the face meetings, connect with the split district, and provide the level information on the on the law enforcement component like to expand on deputy chief. Chuck Elms comment right the patrol officers are assigned on a yearly basis, and on the same area. In addition to what you pointed out, the chief has to expand it to two more teams and direct the patrol. So you'll have an additional team on the north side of Santa Ana, and then the south side, therefore dividing us into 4 quadrants.

Alvaro Nuñez

Then you have another team that that would suggest another team specifically in a certain quadrant. There's also there in addition to the regular patrol officers, and I think that's the key so that folks can develop that level of interaction.

I think this might be for Dc. elms so I I completely support all the thoughts about folks being involved with the community, knowing the owners. But we have 31 vacancies in a city that the number of officers that we currently budget for is actually lower, right, than some recommendations, I believe. So I guess it just seems like this is a great idea that I don't know how we're going to staff it. Our officers, I believe, the ones who are on patrol, because obviously we have a number of them who are detectives and whatever.

And then the ones who are actually on patrol, they're running to calls, to call, to call, to call, to call. They're not doing anything. They're not waiting around just to give someone a speeding ticket. They really are going to calls. So I'm just trying to understand how in a city of 27 square miles we would have someone. I get it if we had, you know, and we're all highly dense city, too. So I'm just asking a practical question.

Alvaro Nuñez

I think there's a difference between understanding the program component and then beefing it up. So and I think that's what the chief is saying. So why don't you have patrol officers assigned on a yearly basis to the area? That's one. If you notice, years before when we came in, we have a north-south type of commander, right? Commander Franco Cruz on the north side, Commander Maria Lopez on the south side. And so they divided the city in half. The last three months, six months, we implemented the program to divide now the south side in two parts and the north side in two parts.

Alvaro Nuñez

And you're right, it is going to take time to beef up to the adequate personnel that we have. But at least the technicality, the technical programs are there. And it's just a matter of, I don't want to say patience, but it's an understanding. You're right, it's a practical question. It's not a lack of ideas. But when they get mentioned, I want to make sure they understand we are implementing the good ideas. It's just taking a little time to get the right level of staffing.

Well, I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't think we're going to get the right level level of staffing because the shortage of police officers isn't unique to Santa Ana. It's all over the country in every jurisdiction everywhere. And please correct me if I'm wrong. No, you're right. You're absolutely right. So one of the things we're trying to do to free up and you're right about the officers on calls, right? They are call to call to call. They're very task saturated. One of the things we're trying to do is leverage all the technology that's out there as force multipliers.

And when we do that, we can free up some of our officers to run these programs, to have better engagement with the community. Can you clarify what you mean by force multiplier? Because that sounds really scary. Maybe use a different word.

I'm just like, what do you mean by that? oh that's an industry term so a perfect example would be um a a call for service on the south end of town right and um we don't have any officers in that area we can utilize technology um such as a drone to respond to that area and an officer wouldn't have to go we're seeing that the cities surrounding us that have some of these technologies are being able to handle calls without actually sending an officer. And I can just imagine all the possibilities that we could do with those

resources if we're not constantly responding with calls for service. So, well, y'all can brainstorm about a better term for that because force multiply really does sound really scary to me. um but increasing our staffing yeah okay so the but but what i wanted to what i'm trying to get at is that obviously there are all these great ideas we can create programs that we try to implement but with the realities of limited staffing right you still we could put another 10 million dollars into the police department, I do not think we will hire, be able to hire and have zero vacancies

because the issue isn't just the pay. The issues go beyond how much someone's going to get paid to be a police officer in America. There's a lot of different things too, right? Same thing with social workers and teachers. I don't think you can pay someone all this money for them to do all the things you're demanding of them. So I guess what I'm trying to figure out is, is do we have a realistic plan that can be implemented with the force that we have? Because if we're assuming we're going to get all 400 officers one day or hoping, I don't think that's a realistic goal.

Alvaro Nuñez

And 100% correct. And maybe we'll start doing also the glossary of words, which we don't like, force, mortifier, suppression. Words are very important. Right. All those old style 90s words. But remember, look, I'll say this. Five, six, seven years ago, we didn't have quote.

Alvaro Nuñez

Right? We didn't have quote. It didn't exist. Now it's a typical type of assignment that we have. And so this is how we're pushing this issue. Right? There were good ideas 20 years ago. Right. And and some of us, you know, should be in one being here more than 20 years. And we used to remember problems at the police department that allow for certain things like that. Are there ways to to ensure we have more people in the field? When now we have and i'll say it out loud without, you know, leaking out some secret aspects. But this whole discussion, do we still need 3 shift versus 2?

Alvaro Nuñez

There's ways to evaluate how we have staffing and how we maximize staffing in the field. And that's currently items that we're discussing with the chief and his executive team. How do we put more people in the field that we have currently and not cause adverse impacts both to the individual police officers and then maximize staffing? And that's what I give you that, right? What are we doing different in this? Again, that's just the police department, public works, parks and recreation, court enforcement, planning, right? Those are the things that we're looking at. And so I just give you that as an example.

Alvaro Nuñez

Remember, five, six, seven years ago, we didn't have quote, and we still had the staff deficiencies. And yet now we have an extra two officers to quote. We're looking at ways where some of the detectives bureaus, we're looking at, you know, is there a need for that versus not? 25 years ago today, we have 50, 60, 80 murders. We're averaging less than 15, which is still something to look at. And so we look at those things with the chief and executive leadership team. How do we maximize staffing to ensure?

That's awesome. I really appreciate that. And I think, you know, when we're talking about strategic goals, the only reason I bring that up is not to be a negative Nancy. Nancy, I think part of this, the work that we're doing right now and with this budget is to say, what can we be realistic about? We have all these desires, but at the end of the day, we're limited in resources. And I want to make sure that when residents hear, hey, we want to do community policing, this is what we want, this is what we want to implement. But they also get a

realistic view and a realistic timeline of what's possible and what's probable. Because I think part Part of the reason why people can feel so disillusioned about government is that sometimes we promise the moon and stars, but we can't deliver it. I'd rather under promise and over deliver. I like what you just said there, because I mean, it's true. We don't want to over promise. And sometimes we all, I'll throw myself in there. We're all guilty of, you know, aspirational things we say. And then it's like, that's not our lane. Why are we even saying that out loud?

But I want to go back to what you were saying earlier, like where I think kind of spurred a lot of this conversation. And I don't want to speak for you. so correct me if i go wrong but i i don't think councilmember vasquez was trying to say that the cops are going to stop doing police work and they're going to go out and become the the rent stabilization folks or they're going to stop dismantling a homeless encampment and start fixing bikes well i mean i guess they could go to the homeless encampments because they do fix bikes there too but that's a different story but but in all seriousness there is i think a desire to to

kind of see the more softer approach but one one thing i would it's funny i was talking to somebody about this when it came to public work someone one of my constituents asked me about after hours you know like certain things that public works could be more responsive to right after five o'clock and i said well you know there is an after hours number which of course as i was saying it as the words were leaving my mouth i'm like they don't know that hell the fact that i know that's bizarre right but but most people what do they do when something goes wrong i mean how many of you have

ever called ocfa directly none of us i haven't but we all call pd right there's something going on PD, the dispatchers are expected to be that triage to say, yeah, I'm not thinking your tree falling down is a cops issue. I'm going to call public works. The dispatchers will call public works, right? So I think to your point, it's just more of, I guess, trying to hopefully have these cops be able to be versed enough to just get them to where they need to get to. I mean, again, it would be a bizarre video to watch a cop filling out a rental application for a constituent. I

I think you'd probably get a lot more pushback of what the hell is he doing? I've got this guy down the street that needs a cop.

Well, but again, a cop versus, you know, someone in housing, but, but I mean, at the end of the day, I just, I, I appreciate what you said because I, I never took it as a literal, like the cop was going to stop, you know, um, enforcing the law and, and start a job.

Valerie Amezcua

I don't think any of us took it literally, but I just want to, we all, I always think about the liability end of it, right? Like, you know, if a police officer was to ask an apartment owner, hey, can you rent to this family? And then it goes sideways. Well, no, no. Versus the city attorney or the city manager, like, oh, there's liability.

But versus in that situation, if a cop said, oh, you know, you're having a problem with housing. I know who to call. I'll call Mike Garcia. And like, because we all do that all the time. I'm not trying to do that grunt work. I'm trying to give it to the right staff. I go through city manager and so on and go through. through so hopefully our cops are at least versed enough to get them to the next step right but as

Valerie Amezcua

opposed to just I guess being well I always say we are the great connectors right there we are and I I'm gonna make that shirt I'm gonna sell it we're we're the great connectors all of us in this room are so like earlier discussion about Amira with OSHA I'm going to connect them with Sylvia you I'm sorry, with Deputy City Manager Vasquez, or if it's a community issue, I may send them to Project Kinship for re-entry. So we are the great connectors. That's what we are. And I didn't take it either, but Council Member Vasquez about literally, but I just want to also, I always like to remind people that Santa Unified

Valerie Amezcua

has a budget three times our size, and we also need to hold them accountable, just like we look to hold the county accountable as well, because we're not Mikey. We cannot take care of everything, though we'd like to. And I think Council Member Fann has a great point. Before we leave today, we look at, and we didn't give direction. We had a great conversation and good ideals all over the room. But the PD is stretched so thin as it is. They're like, you know, they fix everything. They can fix your flat tire to build you a new house to, I don't know. They really are expected to do everything and they can't.

Valerie Amezcua

Just like we're expected to do everything and we can't. Our city manager is expected to do everything and he can't. So it becomes about a team and really looking at what are our priorities as the city leadership, the council members, you know, to the city manager, what are our priorities? And in April, you'll bring us the budget again and we'll go through it. But I think leaving today, I think we all heard what our priorities were and were aligned in many ways. We just say it differently. So I don't know. But I think it was a great meeting today. And any final comments, council members?

Benjamin Vazquez

Let me throw out an idea that we tried to pass before, and I know people at the table were against it, but it was a good idea to do a force multiplier to support police to be able to do more work. We're not using that word anymore. Of course. Okay. But we were going to take 12 positions that are not being used and hire more dispatchers. And we were going to hire a field mental health experts to help police on the streets with those ideas and hire traffic officers. officers to instead of having our regular police officers, we have traffic officers to do the work

Benjamin Vazquez

and hire with those positions. I'm not a professional at policing, but whatever other positions or however we could use those resources that are not being used right now to give them more time to do work and to support officers to get to get more calls. I think I'm open to it and having that conversation with everybody here uh to give the input and what your priorities would be with that i i think it's a great idea to support our officers by using these resources that are not unfilled but not take them up the table well if i could just jump in real quick i'll just say

you know if it was easy enough to just slide the resources over for a minute and bring it right back but you lose it when you do that and and i right now we are woefully understaffed when it comes to officers. And regardless of whether one believes that we should have police officers or not, I'm not going to get into that debate, but I'll point to one statistic that I know my residents are very obsessed with, and that is response times. Now, they may not call me and call it a response time, but they'll say, I called the cops and they didn't show up for an hour. I called the

cops, they didn't show up for an hour and a half. Now, yes, we have these vacancies, but to me, that's basically ignoring that concern for something else and that concern about look that's why i've been trying at every council meeting to ask our chief hey where are we at with these vacancies not because i want to take the money and put it somewhere else but because i want that money that's sitting there to be spent on what we as a collective council ask for to be spent on which is get bodies and get officers out there to respond to those call times now

Now, as DC Elms has talked about, and so has our chief, we need these, again, force multipliers, whatever multipliers we want to call it. But the technology, it's part of the process, right? We talk about what we want cops to do. We want them to enforce the law, but we also want them to be more sensitive to the community and their needs. Well, we're asking them to do multiple things. I think if we start taking this money away from them when it comes to staffing, we're almost sending a signal to the world that the response times are not relevant, that that's not a concern. I'm not going to do that.

Like for me, 400, we're not even at funding 400 yet. 400 is like a verbal aspirational goal. We're at 386 funded officers. We still have room to grow in funding to get to 400. And I think if you were to ask folks in the world of law enforcement, they would say 27 square miles, 310,000 on paper, probably a lot more people. And you've only got 386 funded. You're only aspiring to 400. 400 I think they would go okay and they would roll their eyes and walk on so I can't in any way support us not pushing our PD to get those positions filled not move the money away but

get those positions filled and go further yeah I'm sorry go ahead I appreciate it uh your comments

Benjamin Vazquez

and then I understand where you're coming from but that's why we would get mental help to support the police to get to those calls that's what we would have traffic officers but let's get the catchers from those though the county to do because they fund those types of things use the county right

now really because the county for mental health issues i've got a lady i've got a lady down in my ward that we call the county for that constantly does not show up for constantly every day and you know you're included on those emails the lady at iheartpancakes she but but half the time the county mental health folks don't show up 90 but i think she's so so there's that when i got on the council there was a request from some of the pd that were really getting involved with the homeless stuff that said it was um county um clinical or no clinicians mental clinicians anaheim has two

full time we were ha we were using one half time so let me ask a question really quick do you see

Valerie Amezcua

um we have a social worker correct we have one that the county gets time though we have one that

I believe we contract with that comes out with one of our office and we pay out of our city budget

Valerie Amezcua

correct and we used to have a correct me if I'm wrong two from the one from the county and they took them correct they removed them yes they we had two from the county they removed them is that correct Mr. City Manager yeah it's not working so yeah so that's what I mean where again I believe I believe you said on the homeless committee with the county. So those are things that you can bring up because they have the ability to provide us with assistance and it would be great if they did that. And so and this is a conversation around the police part. Do you see arms when how many officers are in the queue to be hired right now?

So I think we have about twenty two.

Valerie Amezcua

Can't hear you. I'm sorry.

We have about twenty two to twenty three that are in background investigations right now.

Valerie Amezcua

And do we have any in the academy right now?

Yes, we have six or seven.

Valerie Amezcua

Seven in the academy. I know I've gone to three graduations in the last four months. We've gone, I've gone to four, three graduations in the last four months and it was like seven officers, four officers. And then I think another one was like three or four officers again.

So we have a class of seven getting ready to start and they'll start the next one.

Valerie Amezcua

OK, so but we hire seven, three retire. We hire ten, five retire. What is the population? What is the percentage of our officers that are. You know, less than or five years or less, you know, roughly.

I don't know that percentage, but we are getting better. We're a young police department, so we're seeing less retirements. than we used to see, which is good. And we've increased our hiring rate.

Valerie Amezcua

Right. I was talking to some of the officers and one of them, I asked him, how many years do you have before you retire? He said, Mayor, I have 33 years before I retire. I was like, wow, that's great. You're so glad you'll be here for 33 years with us. So, but no, I think it's great. And Mr. City Manager, you know, we need to look, as I always share, I listen to words. And so we do do need to um use different words because i think some of the words that we use are from the era of the super predator time right and so which is my time in your time and dc elms that's what it was

Valerie Amezcua

called you were super predator back in those days and suppression yes and so amen and the marching orders back then were very liar they were very different back then and it's a story you can write a book about that one um but i think we just need to soften our words and how we use them in the pd um for when we're sharing what they discuss in private when they're having their meetings about you know addressing organized crime or human trafficking that's their business but when we're sharing it with the public i think we need to be very careful on the words that we

Valerie Amezcua

use and counselor fans right you know force multiplier the community doesn't know what that means they're just like oh my gosh they're they want to be aggressive yeah and so and that's not not factual at all so it's kind of like you say unhoused right exactly so we'll do better on the

Alvaro Nuñez

semantics and and use the more accurate reflective language that's but but the chief you know we have given the shift quite a bit of latitude right you saw an increase in modification of the pay for example with jailers so we can help attract more jailers and have them keep you know them working at the jails not just as a transitional phase as they move to other careers uh we do looking to do the same with dispatchers so we attract um uh see where we're with the pay with the dispatchers how do we do better to attract dispatchers how do we provide more dispatchers

Alvaro Nuñez

and so we don't have this level of burnout and so and and then at the same time as the super police these because he has a very robust budget he does supervise quite a bit of different disciplines he has quite a bit of latitude so we're asking him to prioritize where we can better service the communities without compromising again any of the fields that he thinks are are important so those are the things we're looking at thank you any final

Valerie Amezcua

comments from the council members yes thank you for a wonderful meeting thank you uh for everything

Valerie Amezcua

Can you use the mic, please?

Can you do the retreat? I want to say it was 2022, maybe? Before my time.

Valerie Amezcua

Well, no, no, it wasn't a bad thing. Don't worry.

Benjamin Vazquez

No, way before my time.

Yes, it was on Zoom. yeah and we had jacob green and greg devereaux do like a did a poll was it public well no hold on so so so first he interviewed us one-on-one then they did like a little polling and then they put it all together and the fascinating thing was you would look at the polling and the council was all in the same like mindset about what the priorities were the thing i like about today is we didn't have the the um the liberty of being able to be like private right it wasn't just like i'm saying all this just al row and if you hear it and same thing it's like we're all saying the same thing

out loud to each other to the zoom gods so it's good i mean it's good that we're all saying this and hopefully my only ask of everybody is just let's take what we're saying and doing here and let's apply that as we get into the uh council meetings and support our staff so that we can actually make some of the things that we're talking about happen so i mean i'm really i'm far more excited about things now after having this meeting so thank you guys i just i want to

Benjamin Vazquez

add that um i do and it's just not the police department but the city as a whole i want to make sure that we increase wellness to our officers and morale so everybody feels they have a chance of being promoted and heard that there's a innovation uh conversations within within departments and different groups and how do we create like a uh this is a a workplace of choice uh everybody wants should want to come to work in Santana uh and be here in all departments so I think um for many years we never seemed to be that innovative City when we had a leader like

Benjamin Vazquez

like Pulido and now we had uh oh you want to tell you and now we have leadership that wants to make sure that everybody's listened to that people feel they're connected in this city where they work and this should this would be their home and we retain people because they love it and I just see people they come in and they sweet they sweep our people and they're like yeah better you know greener grass somewhere else but we should be that greener grass and we should create spaces for them collect you No, a collaboration lounge, a gym for everybody, or a lunch area.

Benjamin Vazquez

Things that we need to be positive to create positive things across, not just the department itself, but across different departments. So we become a better employer and a better city.

Valerie Amezcua

Mayor Pro Tem, anything? No? Okay, nothing from the Mayor Pro Tem. Councilmember Fenn? So Councilmember Vasquez, just so you know, on Thursdays they do yoga at the police department. And there is a wellness center at the police department and meditation area you can go to. It's actually pretty cool. You go check it out. I've been there and yeah, they have jazitsu as well. But I know the city manager hasn't been to the meditation area, but I have. So I do want to say thank you to everybody that's here today. I know it's a Friday morning. We started early.

Valerie Amezcua

And, you know, those of us that are here, thank you guys so much for coming and investing in our community and spending time with those. And council, thank you so, so much. All of you here. Mr. City Manager, thank you for putting this together. You know, this is just great stuff we're talking about. D.C. Alms, thank you for being here for the police department. And I think, as Councilman Becerra says, great conversation. conversation and sometimes we react to the loud noise that comes to the council meetings and we we shift right we're like oh my god they're yelling at us like the hotel issue you know

Valerie Amezcua

people came and they didn't want a four-star hotel in Santa Ana they wanted something else but yet but yet yeah they came twice but yet we constantly say we want good things in Santa Ana so So I know as a mayor, I've learned when the noise comes, I listen to the noise, but I just don't take it personal anymore and it doesn't sway my vote. And sometimes it's painful, because I am human and we all are up here. And I look at council member Fan half the time and she's eating her M&Ms or something. She's like, you want some? And she always makes me feel better when it's just that ugly yelling that's going on in the chamber, right?

Valerie Amezcua

And so their noise will always be there. And I'm glad that we made this meeting public. I hope people are watching at home because nobody's here with us, but thank you guys all so much for sharing.

Valerie Amezcua

I think as we move into the budget, mid-year budget in April, this is no surprise. We can go back and tell the constituents, please go back to the meeting that we had January. What is today's date? January 23rd, it started 9 a.m. Even the mayor pro tem wasn't, he was talking, talking but we um we still had a meeting um so when we look at the mid-year budget we can say January 23rd we talked about this and we're not giving you direction or telling you what you're doing we're just we shared wonderful ideals here today and how we can make our city better we

Valerie Amezcua

shared what we're doing to make it better I mean I don't know how many people knew about the golf course I knew because I asked you you know how many people knew about the business meetings that that we're having because I go to them every month with your quarterly. And so I just want to say thank you to everybody. It was a great meeting this morning. It was really good. So thank you, Mr. Magic.

Alvaro Nuñez

So I want to thank the mayor, mayor, Portem and the city council members, and we'll follow up with those who are unable to make it. But the thing and this is why we did do it public. The previous meeting was in public. We wanted to make sure that people understood where we were. And we understand that sometimes we as staff may not hit 100%. But think about it this way. 90% is still on me, right, teacher?

Alvaro Nuñez

And I say that because this is the stuff that we're looking to do, right? Some of the accomplishments, when you go back and look at the information we provided, You see that we were successful in implementing the sales tax. You see the items that we're doing, some of the information that we share today, we're going to make more public. And it's because sometimes it's not an excuse but a rationale, but it's Fulke lost the minutia of the work and staff just starts doing the work. And this is what we focus on the last 18 months at least since I've been here.

Alvaro Nuñez

here. And so hopefully today's presentation public as it was and let's not forget we're going to have another meeting on Monday, right? So we understand that this 26 is going to be pivotal for us. So I want to thank the Council members. I want to thank, of course, my team, ACM men, Ty and ACM Cat Downs, of course, my deputy city manager, Chuck, representing the chief, our clerk who helped us today and will be helping us on Monday, and Sonia, city attorney's office for being involved this is the executive leadership team that we're working with uh why not the emt because we wanted to make sure you understood the focus was at the high

Alvaro Nuñez

level make a direction because we will garner their input at a later point but we have to make those level of decisions at this level you are the policymaker yes we want to be inclusive we we want to make sure that this leadership has to make hard decisions sometimes right and and it's not in a bad way or a negative way it's simply issues that we have to address because sometimes as councilmember typhan said we have to um make sure that we don't over promise right and there's an easy way to say no sometimes right so i'll say it again 100 is the goal but

Alvaro Nuñez

90 is still a name thank you great thank you very much this meeting is adjourned the next

Valerie Amezcua

meeting is on Monday at 5 p.m. it's a special meeting for the police oversight thank you