Council - Regular Meeting

Good morning everyone. How are you? Or good morning, excuse me. Good evening. Uh, I'd like to call the Anaheim City Council meeting to order. Clerk, can you please call roll? Thank you, Mayor. Council member Bis, present. Council member Bukava, present. Council member Curts, here. Council member Meeks, here. Mayor Prom Leon present. Mayor Aken present. Let the record show we have six members present.

Thank you. The first item on our agenda is an invocation that will be offered this evening by Reverend Dr. Matt Lee from Sirong Community Church. Following that, I'll ask Mayor Prom Leyon to lead us in the flag salute. Will you all, if able, please stand? And Reverend Lee, you begin when ready. Madame Mayor, members of the council, it is a joy to be with you and to offer the invocation tonight. My name is Pastor Matt Lee. I serve as the new senior pastor of Sarang Community Church. Sarang means love in Korean. And in that spirit, on behalf of Salang Community Church, I want to express our love for you and deep appreciation for your dedicated service to the people in Anaheim. May God bless all your endeavors and the families you represent. Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, our creator and sustainer, we come before you today with gratitude and humility, acknowledging that you are the source of all wisdom, justice, and good governance. Thank you for the privilege of gathering in this place and for the leaders who have been entrusted with the responsibility of serving this city. Lord, we ask that you would grant these council members and all civic leaders wisdom that is discerning, humble, and courageous. In moments of complexity and decision, guide their minds towards what is right, just, and for the good of all people. May your people receive your loving care and let your loving care be channeled out from this place to every corner of our community. We pray for the prosperity of Anaheim that it would flourish not only economically but also in compassion, in justice, and in the well-being of every family and neighborhood. May this city be a place where people can live in safety, pursue meaningful work, and experience a deep sense of belonging. We lift up those in our community who are hurting, the brokenhearted, the struggling, and the overlooked. Would you bring comfort where there's pain, provision where there's need, and hope where it feels like hope has been lost? Above all, may we be a people marked by love for one another, seeking the good of our neighbors, and working together for a better future. By your grace, may you establish the works of our hands. And grant that the decisions made here tonight would bear fruit for generations to come. May our city shine the light of your glory in the name of Jesus, our savior and king. We pray. Amen. Thank you, Madame Mayor. As we begin

tonight, I want to recognize April as World Autism Month. A reminder to lead with understanding, with inclusion, and respect for every member of our community. That spirit is what part of what brings us together here today. Please rise and join me in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation indivisible andice for all. Good evening everyone. Uh, I'd like to start tonight's presentations by celebrating an incredible milestone for Blake's Place, which has been serving our Anaheim community for over 30 years. For three decades, Blakes's Place has been more than just a local family-owned business in Anaheim. Known for its authentic, delicious, I can attest to that, slows smoked barbecue and welcoming atmosphere, Blake's Place is a go-to spot where families and friends come together and connect over great meals. Over the past 30 years, they've served thousands of meals with quality and heart in every dish, creating not just delicious meals, but a true sense of community. So congratulations to the team from Blake's Place on over 30 years and we wish you successful 30 more. If you could please join us.

Would you like to say a few words, please? Thank you. I'd like to thank the mayor, city council, and the city of Anaheim for allowing us to be in this fine community for 30 years and hopefully 30 more. And just want to say, you know, I I started this 30 years ago, named it after my son Blake, who was 6 months old at the time, and now he's going to be taking over the place hopefully with the help of Lisa G here. And I just also want to say that it, you know, we wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for the community. um our team, the customers, and we're happy to be here. Thanks, Perfect everybody right here. Thank you.

You're next.

So, I'm excited to recognize another Anaheim business that is having an anniversary, and that would be here in Anaheim, our Radiant Beer Company. on their fifth anniversary. So for many, many years now, Anaheim has been known as Brew City and having welcoming policies to small business owners that want to enter the micro brew um business. And here in Anaheim, we love to help and welcome those businesses right from day one. Radiant Beer set out to do more than just craft great beer. They created a welcoming space for community. I even took a beer and bonsai making class at your place. The beer was great. My bonsai, not so much. Um, Radiant Beer has become a spot where friends can gather, where families throw celebration celebrations and is a welcoming place. So, thank you to the dedicated staff and leadership whose passion drives this business. Five years, we know, is just the beginning, and we wish you continued growth. So, congratulations on five years, and here's to hopefully many, many more. Great. If we can have everybody squeeze in a little bit.

squeeze in. I don't know if I can

blonde. So tonight we are also proudly recognizing an outstanding student athlete from our community, Alexa Smith of Orange Lutheran High School. So Alexa has earned the championship at the CIFSS Masters for Wrestling. She rose to the very top in a highly competitive field, demonstrating not only exceptional athleticism, but also discipline and resilience. Wrestling is a demanding sport, both physically and mentally, and she proved just how dedicated she is. In a sport that has traditionally been known as male-dominated, she proved what dedicated women athletes can accomplish. She's breaking barriers and showing strength and true girl power. We also want to acknowledge and thank her family, her coaches, and her teammates whose support has helped make this achievement possible. Alexa, congratulations on this wonderful accomplishment. You make us proud. you want to accept. Um, I would like to thank my parents for being my number one supporters and taking me to practice and making me better and my coaches that have always been there by my side.

All right. All right. another another recognition which is an Anaheim local baseball team, the Orange County Peloteros for winning back-to back championships and also for their commitment to giving back to our community. Going so going back to back takes consistency, teamwork and a drive to keep improving. and the pallet pelletos have shown what it means not only to compete on the field but to give back to their community. What makes this team even more impressive is what they have done off the field. While fundraising to travel for a tournament, these young athletes recognized that there were other children in their community facing greater challenges. Instead of only focusing on themselves, they chose to raise money for the Orangewood Children and Family Center to support kids in need. That speaks volumes to who these kids are. The team has built something bigger than baseball. They have brought compassion and pride to their team while helping their local community. I want to thank your parents as well as your coaches. You should all be incredibly proud of the children that you have raised and their accomplishments. To the Orange County Pellets, congratulations.

Oh, here. Let me see if the coach. Do you guys have a team captain that wants to say anything? Yes. Adrian. Adrian. Okay, we have Adrien from the Peloteros who is going to say a few words.

So, first of all, I would like to thank all the nice coaches and parents that help us bring bring us to practice, pay for our tournaments and all that other stuff. Also, I would like to thank Nora for for giving no Norma for giving the chance for us to be here. Without her, we would never even experience this place in the first place. And just like a team photo, we do it in rows and go by height or if you want to take a knee up front. right here. Turn that around here. Ready? Awesome. One more time. Thank you. Congrats, guys.

Thank you. So, next on our agenda are recognitions that are going to be presented at a later date. Madame clerk, will you please announce? Thank you, mayor. We do have five this evening. Recognizing April 6 through the 10th, 2026 as National Community Community Development Week. Recognizing April 13th through the 19th, 2026 as California mosquito awareness week. Recognizing the month of April 2026 as DMV donate life California month, Arab American Heritage Month, and American Muslim appreciation and awareness month. And mayor and city council, we do have a representative from the housing and community development to accept the proclamation with regards to national community development week. And they can step forward at this time.

Good evening, mayor and mayor prom and city council. Thank you for the proclamation and recognition of uh community development week. Uh our community development turned to over 50 years uh last year. Our housing authority is also over 50 years as well as myself. So I'm in the right department. Um but on behalf of Grace Stefka, our director uh myself and Andy Nogal as deputy directors. We're proud to serve that department. We have close to 90 employees that give back their time and energy. Whether it's our workforce development team who have the largest turnouts of our job fairs to our development team that just finished Azure Apartments at Harbor and 91 and the 91 freeway to our homeless services team that helped filled up that development in weeks uh all the way to our section 8 and housing authority team that really processed all that paperwork to get everybody housed quickly. So on behalf of everybody, thank you very much for the recognition. And do we have any more inperson um recipients?

No, mayor. That's it. Thank you. And I wanted to take a moment just to introduce we have Deputy City Manager Ted White is joining us um for the meeting tonight. So, thank you, Ted. And clerk, do we have any additions or deletions to tonight's agenda?

Mayor, city council, we do have one. Item number 15 is a public hearing. Staff is asking to continue that item to April 21st. And that is so that we can agendaize the item as a tax exempt bond in the aggregate principal amount not to exceed 25 million by the California Municipal Finance Authority for the Herrers Village phase 3. Thank you. So at this point, I'd like to um take the meeting out of order to address the public hearing continuence. If there is no objection, we will address agenda item number 15. And may I ask for a motion to continue that public hearing to April 21st? So moved. Second. Thank you. We have a motion and a second. Please vote.

The vote is seven eyes, no nays. The public hearings be continued to April 21st. Thank you. And clerk, can you please outline the public comment procedures and call forward the first several speakers addressing the agenda?

Thank you, mayor. Speakers have one opportunity to address the city council. The public comment period is limited to 90 minutes or until all agenda item speakers have been heard. Any time remaining of the 90 minutes will be provided to speakers who wish to speak on any non-aggenda related items but within the council's jurisdiction. A second public comment period will be opened by the mayor only if any non-aggenda item speakers were not heard during this first public comment period and it'll open at the end of council business. The time limit for public comment is three minutes per speaker. Those wishing to address the city council must complete a speaker card, which are available in the council chambers in the lobby as you enter into the chambers. The name and contact information requested on the speaker card is optional. Any unidentified speakers will be called by the speaker card number. At this time, I'd also like to announce that we provide Spanish interpreting interpreting services at every city council meeting. Simultaneous Spanish interpretation is provided through the use of headsets and consecutive interpretation is available to anyone who would like to address the city council. For translation services in other languages, we ask that you please contact the city clerk's office at least 48 hours prior to the scheduled meeting. At this time, I'd like to introduce our interpreter who will make the same announcement in Spanish. At this time, on behalf of the city council, we'll like to remind the public that Anaheim remains committed to freedom of speech, and we ask that speakers address the city council with civility and refrain from making personal, threatening, abusive,

slanderous or profane remarks towards any member of the council, staff, or general public. We appreciate the this spirit when you speak. The time now is 5:23 with a 90minute public comment period set to conclude at 6:53 or until all agenda item speakers have been heard. We do ask that speakers line up at the podium once they hear um see their name appear on the projection screen behind me. and mayor and city council. For agenda items, we have six speakers and I'll go ahead and call them forward. The first speakers are Joshua Collins, Vern Nelson, and Juanita Lopez. They can step forward at this time and the time limit is three minutes per speaker. Good afternoon. My name is R. Joshua Collins. I'm founder of Homeless Advocates for Christ on Facebook. And first I just want to encourage everyone to give the life to Jesus Christ who died for us on the cross to save us from hell to give us everlasting life must be born again to to enter the kingdom of God. And I want to talk about the homeless issue today. I'm thankful for this uh agenda item. Looks like you guys are doing a project for the those in need of affordable housing number 15 agenda item. That's great. Um I wanted to just uh put out some other ideas out there that could help the homeless. Uh, one would be prioritizing city- owned land for affordable housing uh, especially near transit areas. Uh, number two, to streamline permits and reduce fees for affordable housing. Uh, number four, to encourage, uh, Disney to contribute land or funding for affordable housing projects. Uh, definitely need to put pressure, I think, in that direction. They have so much. Uh number six, uh the city can create a local rent subsidy program to cover households until they receive their federal voucher. Um and also number eight, uh uh tiny home, not this isn't for you guys, but uh tiny home

villages. I think that's a great idea to have tiny home villages. Uh I think it is something we should think about, definitely put into practice because so many are on the streets still. A stadium full of people still needing affordable housing. Number the next one, stronger tenant protections, rent control, like we've been talking about, anti- gouging rules, and uh partnering with churches, nonprofits to create community housing trusts. Um just some ideas out I want to put out there. But some of these things you may be working on, I don't know. But the thing is, uh more needs to be done definitely. And and this one I know too, if it's not affecting you personally, there's typically much less urgency regarding the issue. Um, personally, as part of my ministry, I spent 10 years living among the homeless. As part of my ministry, I'm a math teacher from Spokane, Washington. I got born again. God called me to live with the homeless over 10 years. Uh, now I learned so much from that experience. I'm so thankful for it. But I want to encourage the council. uh maybe spend 3 days to 7 days living among the homeless uh pretending you don't have the funding, right, to have a house at this point and how that's going to affect you. You're definitely going to be a lot more urgent, right, as far as your own housing needs and maybe it'll help you understand more importantly uh how it affects other people that are still out there, right? Uh it's not a fun place to be and there's people out there have been out there for years and people that are seeking housing. I just talked to a homeless mother that she's out on the on the streets again. She has two kids that go to Western High School. So, uh, and she's out of a place. She's been working with the city trying to get get housing. So, imagine you have two children, not just yourself, but two children, right? Uh, it's a it's there's no reason a city like this shouldn't be able to help in that situation. I just really ask the council to consider and and and take up that challenge and maybe that'll change

your heart. Thanks for letting me our next speaker Vern Nelson followed by Juanita Lopez.

Hello council residents TV land. It's a nice evening and I should be out getting signatures for rent control in Anaheim. But there are just a few things that need to be said. First, none of us in the public have forgotten about Albert Arzola, and we're not going to forget about him. We all want to know which officer murdered him, and if he is one that we have had complaints about in the past, and which officer unnecessarily shot a bean bag round at his friend Emanuel's head 10 minutes later, giving him a brain injury. We want to see the unedited footage, and we hope to hear that the APD has stopped harassing this grieving family. Second, many of us are very disappointed And the four of you who voted to approve the dangerous festival housing up in the hills on the excuse that it's supposedly affordable, it's not affordable. This just looks like another 4-3 vote on the project lobbyed for by Kurt Pringle where the fix is in where the politicians in the affected area are allowed to vote the right way and not make their neighbors and voters mad because the powerful lobbyist knows he's got enough votes in other areas. That's just how it looks anyway. But I have to make several announcements. 90% of the voters we talked to signed for rent control in Anaheim enthusiastically and a lot of them thank us for what we're doing. But I keep having people tell me that they already signed a rent control petition outside a store Walmart or whatever. Well, I looked into that. There are no other rent control petitions out there. It's the paid signature gatherers who make as much as $15 per signature while we're volunteering. They lie and tell people the petition is about rent control because rent control is so popular. People need to look close at what they sign. Tennis United Anaheim has the only rent control petitions. They look like this. And if you're here and you're a registered Anaheim voter and you want to sign, uh, let me know before I leave, please. Other announcements. Um,

the great Anaheim Democrats Club is having a meeting Thursday night. We're going to have Sharon Corksova. Uh we're going to have Jesse Lopez who's running for assembly. We're we might have Vince Sarmto. And we're going to have the Working Families Party join us. It's going to be a historic meeting with lots of good food and camaraderie. And that's at the Untold Story bookstore Thursday night at 7. So, hope you can all come. And then th I mean Saturday is a concert. No, actually it's my concert. But I got lots of uh lots of great uh singers and musicians with me and we'll be doing Rapsidity and Blue, Moonlight Sonata, Beetle Stone, Shopan, Johnny Cash, Stevie Wonder, Cre No King songs and uh that's at the Unitarian Church Saturday at 5. I hope you can come. This is for everybody, all of you staff, council, regular people, TV land. Thank you. Um let me know if you want to if anybody wants to sign for rent control. I got to get out there and get some more signatures. Thank you.

Our next speaker, Wanita Lopez, followed by Christine Lopez.

You guys have a microphone.

Do you want to use this? Hi, my name is Juanita Lopez and I'm calling in behalf of my grandson Albert Arzola. I don't know why the police shot him when he had his hands up in the air. I just don't know why he done that. And um I want justice for my grandson though. Why would he do something like that if he had his hands up in the air? I don't I don't think he was a right person to get picked to be a police officer for doing that to my grandson. How if he had his hands up, you're going to shoot him. I don't see why he done that. I can't understand that. That's all I want to say. Okay. I'm the next speaker. All right. Good evening, Anaheim City Council Mayor, City Manager, staff. I'm here today again in support of demanding justice in the unlawful killing of my nephew Albert Arzola from Anaheim um by the Anaheim police's gang unit. There they are an entity that you all oversee. It's not the other way around. The city manager and you as council members and the mayor are the governing body. We the people elect the governing body to

represent our communities. Where is the leadership? I'm here to ask that the autopsy officers names and all the camera footage be released. This would be um in um adherence of state law. Please do not delay our request. We did attend the Anaheim Review Board and it seems like they want to prevent the community from attending these meetings. At 5:30, family members showed up early and they stated that the meeting was cancelled. And so some of our members went came from different counties to attend this event. So I don't know who's in charge of the security, but there's a miscommunication between security because I even um told my family member get them on the phone and I talked to them. And so it's unprofessional for you guys to have um the security tell the public that the meeting was cancelled. So there's a miscommunication there. Um luckily we still showed up and then the security was on the phone with somebody and the meeting ended up happening which was great. Um, we plan to attend the next Anaheim Review Board uh meeting which is scheduled on Thursday, April 30th. I did ask the Anaheim Review Board to please um let us know 24 hours in advance if there is going to be a cancellation because we take time off work and we um with gas prices so high um it's just common courtesy. It's heartbreaking to see the memories posted of Albert's family. Um, they truly have experienced the most horrific event anyone can experience. Albert, the most recent um picture that I that was posted was um Albert with a

chef uniform at work with the wearing an Anaheim Ducks hat um with the highlight that it's been four months and the pain is just getting worse. All they want is to have their brother and son back. They will live with this pain forever and our community will forever remember that this council did nothing to validate validate those cries and demands for transparency. We hope that this does not happen to another family but with inaction to address the root of the issue. Statistics show that this is just a matter of time that it will happen again. Ma'am, I'm sorry your time is should not be forced to foot the bill for avoidable incidents. Yet, the lame junk council prioritize its own agenda.

Thank you. And our next two speakers, Pearl Arzola,

Pearl Arzola, Grace Arzola. Mayor, then we'll um move to our general comments. And we have 14 um public speaker cards. Our first speaker from general comments, Mark Richard Daniels. I don't know what I could possibly say or just being here is to see the Arzola family suffer at each meeting and it's just like it just happened. Her their loss has just happened yesterday and yet how it's gone in the past. There's been uh incidents with the police and it'll have to go through the court process and uh then the city will settle with you. They'll, you know, kind of do that and then they'll try to place the blame. This has happened. We had the first uh uh zoom, the first uh police uh body cam and it was used in a court case and it was the first time it had been done since we started. And the uh victim was a lady from mid Anaheim uh Mon'nique Deckard and she was found partly mostly at blame and then the police were kind of sort of blame but then they were you know paid off the family and kind of made everything go away. But this is one of

those things that it happens and it's going to happen again unfortunately down the line. It just that's the that's human nature. That's the way it's going to be. I'm I'm sorry. I wish there was another way. Uh but my heart goes out to you every time I come here and I've been coming here for years since the 70s for validating.

Yes. And that's the least I can do. I'm just a a mere mortal and I can just pass my heart on to you in in the fact that we just had the Easter season and we still have to be mindful of people that are at loss and this is the first Easter that you've lost your

your Yes. And it's just a terrible thing and it will it'll I don't know I I don't know what else to add but uh my heart breaks every time I hear the stories. uh being Irish as I am, I guess it's just we uh have a way of looking at loss and it's just right there and we never uh we never let those persons there's an old saying that um that um as long as you keep them in your heart, they will never truly die as long as you keep that person right care. They can't ever be taken from you as long as the family carries on and remembers each birthday and and holiday. And I'm out of time. Thank you so much.

Our next speaker, Tracy Theodore. Good evening. I'm Tracy Theodore. Um, I'm with the Orange County Family Justice Center and Foundation. I'm here with my colleague, Miss Crystal Landry. As you know, uh, the Orange County Family Justice Center is a collaboration of agencies and nonprofits that provide resources for survivors of family violence. So, for us, that means child abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault, elder and dependent adult abuse. April is uh sexual assault awareness month as well as child abuse prevention month and so um to acknowledge those we are hosting a resource fair weather permitting this Saturday um at the family justice center and so um we have over 30 agencies joining us uh our very own Lieutenant Daniel Gonzalez and Sergeant Gus Smaya will be grilling hamburgers and hot dogs for whomever shows up. Um and so and we want to thank also uh council member Ma, council member Kurtz and Mayor Prom Leon for participating. Um and we invite the rest of you to please join us. I think it'll be a great um morning. The event is from 10 to 2. Um and so we hope that you will join us. There will be great resources and community. And secondly, um this is the 20th year for the family justice center which is quite a milestone. Um actually October will be the 20th anniversary and so we will also be hosting a resource fair in October and um we'll more details to follow of course but um I'm going to tuck that away in your memory so that we hope that you'll join us for that. Anything else? No. Okay, Crystal's my memory. Perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you for the time and we'll leave.

Sorry. Our next speaker, Ruben Greg Stoodto, followed by Jessica Betta.

Hello, Mayor City Council. Um, the phrase blind leading the blind found in Matthew 15:14 where Jesus says, "Let them alone, the blind leaders of the blind." And if the blind leaders lead the blind, both shall fall into their ditch or pit. Related parable down in Luke 6:39, false prophets. Now, a Bible passage that describes government authority, including law enforcement, police as appointed by God to punish wrongdoers, is found in Romans 13:1-7. what people are doing to me and not being governed by the Lord. You're being governed by corruption. Everything these cops, Garden Grove, Riverside, the sheriff's, Fullin PD, Anaheim PD, busting my head cuz I stand up against for my rights and ladies rights. So, I guess you Bible thumpers are just false prophets making money pimping God for Father God for cash. But anyway, now ladies, here's a movie you ought to you need to watch. Knockk Knockock with Kiana Reeves. It's a man that loves his wife and kids so much. He goes on vacation to do something and he's alone and two young girls has wild time with him cuz men are weak. But I'm not. Okay. And now I simply hotel where I'm staying. They mess with my car battery. They've been doing this for years. My family's involved in this crap. Taking air on my tires. So I had to buy a battery. They mess around my coolant. They be doing stealing things in my hotel room. And all those little punk gangsters. They think they're gangsters that we pay their child support cuz they ain't man enough to do it, but they keep on going back and out of jail. Little

tattoo freaks. And that's why they do this to me. And these cops ain't doing a damn thing about it. They let him get away with it. I called Todd Spitzer secretary today and told him what they did and they said, "Did you call the police?" Well, for they don't help me. They hate me cuz I I expose everything they are. Matthew 28-6 where angels tell woman at the tomb Jesus has risen. Wow. Jesus, I think, was a dummy because he died for all our sins. I don't think so. I've Stephanie gave me these ears at Easter. So, I did a YouTube video and put all the world I've I've many times, but I ain't dumb enough to get killed for your religion. Many times the cops have took my crap. Many times they arrested me falsely, put me in jail. Basically, this Christian stuff what they're doing. I'm way better than Jesus, but I ain't done enough to die for your sins. Have a nice day.

Our next speaker, Jessica Vera, followed by Olivia.

Good evening, Mayor. Council members, my name is Jessica Bisera, founder and president of Tree of New America, a 501c3 nonprofit, treeofnewamea.com. Our mission is to restore stability, dignity, and hope by ensuring access to basic necessities like food. Is never the reason a family falls behind. We serve not only in moments of crisis, but in everyday struggles that often go unseen. Through our coalition with Mary's Kitchen Pantry and Seeking Him Outreach, we have built a reliable system for consistent food distribution, serving families with care, efficiency, and respect. The face of need has changed. It's no longer just the unhoused. It's working families, parents choosing between rent, gas, and groceries. Households doing everything right, yet still struggling under today's rising cost of living. And I want to be very clear, because we are on the front lines, we are seeing a trend. Families who have never needed help before are now quietly showing up, hoping someone sees them before they fall too far behind. Demand is rising and it's rising quickly. As rent prices continue to climb, it's pushing more families to the edge. Food insecurity doesn't lag behind the economy. It leads it. What we're experiencing right now is not isolated and it's not temporary. It's an early indicator of increasing strain in our communities. Through our partners with Councilwoman Betty Martinez Franco in District 5 in Irvine, we've seen what's possible when a city and community organizations come together with intention. We're here to explore the opportunity to work alongside the city of Anaheim, bringing the same level of coordination, care, and consistency to our communities.

We have the infrastructure. We have the volunteers. We have the partnerships. We're asking for an alignment to bring these resources into your city and serve the communities proactively because we're not just responding to need, we're preparing for what's coming. Thank you for your time and opportunity to serve alongside you. Our next speaker.

Good evening, council members and mayor. My name is Olivia Hodigi. I have lived in Anaheim my entire life. I am 19 years old and I'm here today to speak about the values we live by in Anaheim, the city of kindness. My family and I are actively involved in our community. We participate in local cleanups, the Halloween parade, support small businesses, and enjoy walking down Center Street to visit the farmers market. So, when my sister was hired at a local bakery called Okiyama, we were excited for her, but that excitement was short-lived. My sister Adella is a brain cancer survivor. She has undergone 13 brain surgeries and nine years of chemotherapy. Because of everything she's been through, she faces some challenges. One of her arms is weaker, and she may occasionally need help with small task, but she is capable, determined, and willing to work. When she was hired, she was open and honest about the accommodations she might need. Despite that, 7 months later, she was let go. The reason given was that they couldn't accommodate her disability any longer. I'm here today because I'm frustrated, not just as a community member, but as her sister. I want to see Adela succeed. I want to have her independence. And it's disheartening that a local business in a city that prize itself on kindness couldn't find a way to support someone with a disability. My sister is not defined by what she can't do. She is defined by everything she has overcome and everything she still has to offer. Too often society defines disability by what a person cannot do rather than recognizing their

potential. and unique perspectives. Let us move beyond mere accommodations and focus on true inclusion where Adela's talents are utilized, her perspectives are welcome, and our rights are respected. Adella deserves to own her space, to be seen for her abilities, and to be valued for who she is. We are so proud of you, Adella, and thank you for everyone who ca came to support Adele and I tonight. Our next speaker, Mark Herbert, followed by G Price. Mark Herbert, anaheimgriefs.com. Um, I support the Arzola family and um, I'm going to do what I can and increase my efforts to help you out as best I can. I don't know how, but I'll try.

Thank you.

Um, I'd like to speak on fireworks at Disneyland tonight. The fireworks at Disneyland began in 1958, just three years after the park opened. During the late 80s and early 90s, Disneyland transition to regular nightly fireworks shows, moving from occasional entertainment into a consistent ongoing operation. For more than 67 years, fireworks have been launched over the same area of Anaheim. Let's assume the fireworks were launched on the average of 150 nights per year over the past 67 years. This works out to over 10,000 nights of Disneyland fireworks. And this doesn't take into the account the number of seasons that the Angels have been launching their Saturday night fireworks. This isn't an isolated problem. This is regional and it's been happening repeatedly for generations. There are hundreds of thousands of residents living within the fallout zone, not just in Anaheim, but across the neighboring cities of Santa Ana, Garden Grove, Fullerton, and Orange. Residents have filed complaints with the AQMD. Dennis Fitzgerald, he filed one 22 years ago. But this is just not an air issue. This is a public health issue involving potential impacts of drinking water, soil, and our neighborhoods. Right now, no agency is evaluating the full picture. AQMB looks at air. The water boards look at the groundwater. No one is connecting the dots. The LA Times attempted to do so back on July 3rd, 2010. It fell on deaf ears here in Anaheim. This gap doesn't protect the residents or the council. It creates liability. Perclorates pose a serious thyroid threat.

Perchlorolates percolates are require aren't required for the launch. They are required to provide the intensity and brightness of the displays that Disneyland is noted for. Is the OC Vibe aware of this problem? Are they going to stand quietly by as the city holds its hands and doesn't do anything? It reminds me of the case of the uh Windham Hotel where it took the city 27 years to figure out that 35 additional rooms were additionally added and they didn't find it. It was the state stepping in. Are we going to need the state to step in to do an investigation of the fireworks? Have you confirmed based on data that fireworks are not drinking water? Our next speaker, G Price, council members, residents have reported soot and debris from fireworks falling into their neighborhoods for years. And historically, Disneyland itself paid to clean up that debris from a nearby mobile home community year after year until COVID hit. So, we have to ask the obvious question. If there's nothing harmful in the firework fallout, why was cleanup necessary? And why did it stop? Because the firework fallout certainly hasn't stopped. The only thing that has changed is Disneyland has stopped paying to clean it up. And this isn't hypothetical. This is visible. This is repeated and this is documented by the people living there. Residents wiping residue off their homes, their cars, their outdoor furniture, ash and debris collecting in patios, playgrounds, walkways, settling into areas where

families live, children play, and people spend every day. This is not a one-time occurrence. This is night after night, year afteryear exposure in the same communities, the same environmental justice communities that are impacted with zero enforcement of environmental laws. There has been no public explanation of what the debris contains, no testing shared with any resident, and no long-term evaluation of where all this debris ends up. Residents see it, they smell it, they are breathing it in. But if Disneyland controls Anaheim, this issue continues to be conveniently overlooked. Our next speaker Mayor and council members, my name is Tom Fielder. My wife and I have lived in Anaheim since 1984, and we raised our three kids here. We are aware that Disney made changes to their fireworks in 2004, replacing traditional gunpowder launches with compressed air systems. Yes, that reduced noise. Yes, it reduced visible smoke, but it did not eliminate black powder and it did not eliminate pollution from fireworks fallout. As mentioned earlier, the colors you see in fireworks come from metal-based compounds. For example, red fireworks use strontium, which can accumulate in bone tissue and cause respiratory irritation. Blue fireworks contain copper which can form toxic byproducts and cause lung

irritation and inflammation and it is associated with something called metal fume fever. White fireworks use aluminum, magnesium and titanium which generate large amounts of fine particulate matter and can embed in lung tissues and cause long-term neurological concerns. Green fireworks contain barerium which is a toxic heavy metal affects heart rhythm, muscle function and and can impact the nervous system. When fireworks detonate, these materials are converted into fine particulate matter, specifically particles that are less than 2.5 microns in diameter. These particles are small enough to actually enter the bloodstream from the lungs. Air quality studies consistently show that fireworks events cause sharp spikes in these fine particulate matter, often many times above normal background conditions. But the issue doesn't stop in the air. These particles settle out of the air over time onto homes, vehicles, soil, vegetation, streets, and water sources. From there, contaminants can move through runoff and infiltration pathways and enter groundwater recharge systems. Some contaminants such as perchlorate can accumulate in groundwater for decades. It is a multi-pathway exposure issue, inhalation, surface deposition, and water contamination. Residents don't just see the pretty colors. They are exposed to the toxic components through multiple roots. heavy metals per chlorate and other toxic byproducts disperse settle and accumulate over time. So, let's be clear. The 2004 change reduced one part of the problem, but it did not eliminate particulate emissions, heavy metal

deposition, or long-term exposure pathways. Thank you.

Our next speaker, Stephanie Madante, followed by Mike Robbins and Janine Robbins. Council members, we already know Anaheim has drinking water concerns. The city has 15 drinking water wells, yet only seven are currently active. One of those wells, well 39, contains perchlorate, a chemical commonly associated with fireworks, and it is no longer used for regular drinking water. Perclorate is toxic. It affects thyroid function, affects children's growth and development, interferes with fetal brain development, and the source of that contamination has not been clearly explained to the public. We know that people are exposed through drinking water, contaminated groundwater, and food grown in contaminated soil. At the same time, Anaheim has had decades of nightly fireworks actually releasing similar compounds into the environment. We are asking a simple question. Has the city ruled fireworks out as a contributing source? If not, then you have a responsibility to investigate. If you don't investigate, it's a failure to act. When a city knows a contaminant is present, knows it is harmful, and knows a potential source is operating every single night. Refusing to investigate is not a neutral position. It leaves residents without answers. It leaves families unsure of what they are drinking, what their children are exposed to, and what the long-term risks are being ignored. A regulated toxic chemical is already in Anaheim's water system. That is a fact. And a longunning environmental source exists in this city that is never publicly ruled out. Those two realities deserve more than dismissal. They require answers.

Residents should not have to fight for basic clarity about their own water. The city should not be relying on assumptions or dismissals when the issue involves a regulated toxic chemical. If the city believes fireworks are not contributing, then the city should be able to demonstrate that with actual data. If the city cannot demonstrate that, then they should only the only responsible step is to investigate. Anaheim families deserve transparency. They deserve answers grounded in evidence and they deserve leadership that treats water quality as a matter of public health, not public relations. Our next speaker, Mike Robbins, then Janine Robbins. Makes you not want to drink the water or breathe the air. especially uh your kids. We're downwind. Uh Natalie, um city council, uh Disney invites us to wish upon a star, but this is about a chemical rain over Anaheim. Residents have already filed complaints with the AQMD about the fireworks. And yet, time and again, the issue was dei dismissed, minimized, or ignored. At the last meeting, concerns about water quality were quickly denied by this council without evidence, without data, and without investigation. This is the problem. Uh perchlorate, did you know perchlorate? It's called the thyroid assassin. It interferes with thyroid production in the it's in the air we breathe, in the soil, the water we drink, and long-term cumulative exposure. You know, even when I brush my teeth, usually I'll

I'll swallow some water while I'm brushing my teeth. I I don't even swallow the water anymore. I just have a bottle of water next to me that I'll use for that. Uh I think they mentioned it. AQMD looks at air. Water boards look at groundwater. And no one is connecting the dots. Uh you're responsible for this community. That means you have a duty, not an option. The fireworks impact our water, our air, and our health. Health implications. The health implications. They include you, your family, and your neighbors, and everyone else under the fallout and beyond. uh Kurt Pringle in 2002 said we could have an impact in public service and we've been coming to the meetings since then. Also, I'd like to say that we do leave early now, but we do watch the meetings on TV uh usually tomorrow. But and and I want to say it one more time if I can open my piece of paper. I'll need help if one of you can help me. Perchlorate. It's called the thyroid assassin. I mean that's uh that's just an incredible thought that that's in our water and the air we breathe. And there are other types of production now including drones that can put on great shows. and your service would be required to help in this particular matter. Thank you. It's time to set aside the plastic mouse ears for a moment and let's talk about

perchlorates. So to recap, you have decades of nightly fireworks resulting in perchlorates in the water system and hundreds of thousands of residents and tourists are in the fallout zone every single night. And before you deny the perchlorates, well 39 has them, and I dare you to prove me wrong. My point is that not one of you has given the health of your constituents or the tourists a second thought. If you had, you would know the answers to the questions that you were just asked. If you cared at all, you would have already initiated studies to ensure that we are safe. And if we weren't safe, you would take meaningful action to make us safe, right? So, council, can you without hesitation say that we are safe from firework fallout? The answer to that question is a resounding no because you don't know. Because you've never asked. Because you're sitting up there. Because Disney bought those seats for you. We don't know is not an acceptable answer. So here is the ask. City of Anaheim residents are formally requesting that this item be agendaized for discussion and direction for the following. Number one, initiate a cross agency investigation. include the EPA, the AQMD, the waterboard, OC healthc care agency, so we can see the prevalence of certain diseases in certain areas and independent environmental consultants that are not influenced by you or by Disney's so-called experts. You need to provide a public timeline

and reporting on the results of these studies because if you don't lead this, others will, regulators will, the media certainly will, and potentially the courts will. The community is watching, and we expect action. Next speaker Tim Barar people get sick and die

because of the decision you made.

Hi everybody. My name is Tim Vivar and thank you for having me. I'm I live in Anaheim. So I'm I'm part of the big Anaheim family including you. I have a smaller request compared to all these very serious issues. Uh I'm a disabled uh senior citizen and I had a small event to go to the police department at the Anaheim Police Department. beautiful building and I was there I think 10 years ago and as I was driving up maybe a couple of weeks ago I noticed that the um since I'm handicapped I tried to get a handicap uh parking the whole parking lot is is you can't see the paint. I know it's a small thing compared to what we're talking about, but I I was went inside and I took care of the business and I was asking the officers that hey, is there any way maybe you guys can repaint the parking because I I don't even know where to park. Even a police officers, they were all crooked and nobody knew literally you can't see not even a single line. So they said uh unfortunately it's not our our um we can there's nothing we can do about it. They told me to come to the council meeting and and mention it to you and uh basically if you could maybe find a way to repaint the parking lot. It's about 3,000 square ft maybe about 10 12 parking but as I'm came from Europe Budapest Hungary and wherever I travel the world if I mention Anaheim literally everybody knows where Anaheim is. So it's like you know because Disneyland and I was just thinking if if visitor come and visit our beautiful city and

they see the kind of a pothole rundown parking lot. It it's maybe for our our our how would I say I'm I'm very prideful to live in Anaheim. So if you could just consider it because the police officers couldn't do anything about it. I know it's a small thing. So, and were you at the station on Harbor? The main station as you drive in. Okay, we'll look into it. Thank you so much. Oh, I'm sorry to bother you with that. No, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Next speaker, Brian K. Happy day. Yeah. I noticed that Ashley, you keep saying process, which is just kind of what you want to do. Um, there's due process, which is Ashley. I'm up here. The speakers back on the meds and the indifference. I see. Well, it's a shame you talk about due process or you always say process. That's your process. There's due process and we brought you laws, facts, and evidence, and you don't want to follow that. You just want to do what you want to do, which is the process. You process. You know, it's a shame. At the last meeting, I asked you a question. you had promised to meet with me, made that a public invitation in front of the chief of police and 50 members of the public. And then you just sit there and stare off into the corner. You don't actually schedule the appointment. You don't even acknowledge it. And when I asked you about it at the last meeting, there was this 30 seconds Yeah, I spent all year being very nice to you, very polite, very professional.

And it's a shame because that 30 seconds right there, you ignore an Anaheim police officer for 30 seconds, you end up with a hole in your head. And it's a shame because the only reason why that happens is because you keep allowing it to happen.

I've invited you and given you the opportunity to have information to make sure that that doesn't happen. all of these protests, the death, all this excitement, even the fireworks, if you follow due process, then you don't have these problems. It it almost feels like you want to have somebody come down here and protest. Or even more extremely, maybe your leader, the person who whispers in your ear and tells you what to do, maybe they want you gone. They want somebody to come down here and express themselves all over you and then you're gone. It's amazing. If you follow due process, if you respect us, live up to those statements that you make at the meeting, this would be very different. You still have an opportunity to meet with me, make these changes. Happy day. Our next speaker, good afternoon. I'm under the weather. Thank you, Natalie, for showing up for the family of the family. You know, the father that passed away. Uh prayers to your family. You guys been there strong supporting our community. I wish we can give that family a footage of what happened cuz that's what they're requesting. Thank you um Natalie I mean uh thank you mayor for being there at that protest anti-hings day protest. Um the other thing I want to say is yes also give the arzola some more um uh more answers and the uh footage of what happened. And the last is I want to thank the city and the people that are watching of all colors of the human race. As I uh have

my YouTube channel, I see that they are listening to the message of there is no water and they're changing their grass and putting desert plants. Thank you so much for putting your desert plants. We need we need water. There's no water. And I think it's important that we go back to the uh decolonizing not just the school name of the colonist cuz that's going to get changed. It's going to get abolished. But also the the um the landscape. It's very important to change the landscape. We did not have that grass uh before uh uh um 1857 1857 that came after and even before 1848 treaty was a lupidalgo. This is all stolen land and no one's illegal on stolen land and ICE, you know, um no more of that. Uh Congressman Lucaria and Janet Brown, we got to speak to Congressman Lucaria at the uh No King's Day protest. Um, I'm really excited that um, at least Vern's wife um, Donna got to tell Congressman Lu Korea, you're a straight liar. I was that's that's just the way she feels. And justice for her son, too. But in all behalf of the alumni of class of 98, I remember telling him, hey, if the don't forget that your ancestors wear waches or moccasins, too. You know, I know you might call yourself Hispanic or Latino, but we're not Hispanics. Hispanics are people from Spain. Elan Cortez, a concistador, a rapist, child molester. The old deal with them, child molester, chumos in prison. Believe me, some murals came down. You know, it's okay. We didn't have the permits. Miscommunication. It's all right. U but we'll still keep painting murals uh with permits. With permits with permits. Um and thank you, Natalie, for uh accepting that mural, the first one that we did with the Lakota Native American. I'm wearing the t-shirt with an American flag. And sadly, uh, it's a Native American with Jesus Christ. Not just Jesus Christ, but Native Americans. We've been hung for 500 years on stolen land. You know, this land we stand on is Tangwa Hutunga. And the police is still

shooting us. And the the police is the root of the Kluk clan. And um, I think it's time that we say that. I know the Statue of Liberty will be hit. Iran will attack us. China. The hopey say a flag with the star and the moon will attack America. So be ready for that. Save some some water. Thank you. Our next speaker, Grace Arzola.

Good afternoon, Grace Arzola. I'm the an of Albert Arzola. I was actually wasn't here like two weeks ago because I was at the Vatican and I attended Palm Sunday Mass and the Pope's message really resonated with me cuz it said God don't listen to the prayers of those that have blood in their hands. My nephew did not deserve to die that day. There has to be a change in policy. I was able to review the video and I'm able to see that one of the officers is holding him by the hoodie and the other one shot him in the head. And just so you guys know, we had an open casket. So that shot to the head was not to in front of him. It was on his back. And while I was hearing it, it just I felt like my soul was getting crushed. And I wish I would be able to see all the videos, but 10 minutes in, my heart felt like a ton on top of it. Just a ton. And what shocked me more was when, and maybe it's trauma that blocks some part of it, but when I heard the other officer ask the guy, "Are you okay?" And he's like, "Yeah, I'm okay." I really wanted to say, "How can you ask if you're okay? You just killed someone. Within 30 seconds, you tore apart all our family. All our family. And you're going to ask someone, "Are you okay?" I hope he's not okay. I hope he finds peace and finds God so God could forgive him for his sins because he killed someone. My nephew did not pose any threat to them. My nephew was walking into the home, was dragged by his hoodie, and shot at the back of his head. That is not okay. You guys have to hold those that you guys give power accountable. Again, we're not anti police. We're not. But we are pearl accountability. We have to if we're

going to give someone power, we have to hold them accountable. There has to be a way. Yesterday was 4 months since he died. We still don't have the names of the officers that committed this murder because it's a murder. And I invite you guys to get a copy of the video from the chief of police so you guys could watch it. And what broke my heart even worse was when they said he has a faint pulse and life-saving measures stopped. But I never saw the paramedics come and help him. For me that that that's just heartbreaking knowing that he his life could have been saved had the Anaheim PD had better training or this whole incident could have been avoided. There was no reason for that police officer to run out of an unmarked vehicle with a gun chasing kids cuz they're kids. We know that their brain is not developed until they're 25, their front lope, which is a decision maker. So, I want you guys to really find it in your heart to hold these officers accountable for what they do did and what they continue to do. And I ask for you guys to please watch the video so you guys could feel and get a sense of what we're going through. Thank you. Have a blessed day. Our next speaker I just honestly want to first and foremost give my condolences to the family of the tragic accident that occurred on Lincoln. It's unfortunate that those cops were definitely chasing that car because there's no way that a car is going to go that fast on that main street. They were fairing for their lives. The cops, you can ask anybody. There was people outside. They even said, I seen um a person talk and say that the cops were chasing that guy. The

sirens were not on or anything. So, what are you guys going to do with all of these people? You guys have another family that is mourning the loss that a life shouldn't have taken. And all you guys are right here sitting getting checks by Disneyland. And I'm pretty sure if that wall water that you guys are drinking right now was um had chlorine in it, would you be drinking it? No. Do you guys drink the water that's in your houses? Probably not. You guys probably have filter water because I do. I have filter water because I don't trust the water in Anaheim at all. You guys need to step up your game and fix what we are guy what we have been begging you to fix. We've been begging you to fix Anaheim PD, the water system, the affordable housing, everything. And you guys haven't done anything besides get your little trucks from the freaking mouse. That's all you guys been doing is getting the checks from the mouse and letting You think people are okay with the fireworks. The fireworks, everybody hates them. Honestly, everybody hates the smell. Everybody hates the sound of them. People have really bad PTSD and hearing those fireworks sound, they don't make you happy. We don't care about Disneyland. What does Disneyland do for us? Disneyland doesn't do nothing for us. Does it fix our water? No. Does it help us? No. Disneyland is just another source of income that you guys have. If it wasn't for Disneyland, none of you guys would be here at all because Disneyland appoints people in Anaheim Council so they could do whatever they want. You guys are just little puppets. Our next speaker.

Uh, good evening, Madame Mayor, members of the council. My name is Dave Zanger. I live in Anaheim. I wasn't planning on speaking tonight. Um, I came to uh see the goings on. I haven't been here for a while. Um, but then it dawned on me I did want to get up and speak about justice and the various kinds of justices that there are. Now, we all know money basically pollutes politics. And we all know that as long as the public safety unions have political action committees, they're going to swamp everybody else out. The other interest, of course, is Disney and the resort. I'm not going to get into that. I will say this though about the fireworks. This was a pet peeve of mine and I kept bringing it up at the Disney supplemental uh EIR hearing a couple years ago and I was serially ignored by your staff at the time and by your consultant at the time who told me that fireworks are not part of the original EIR and therefore were not necessary to address even though it was a new use. Now, anyone driving down the five freeway or north on the five freeway at 9:50 will see a vast cloud hovering over the freeway in Anaheim and following whichever wind current happens to be pushing that debris, burnt burnt heavy metal falling on your constituents, District 3, District 4 in particular, where I happen to live. Um, it's just inconceivable to me. Absolutely inconceivable how this could be permitted. Are there permits? Did Disney ever get a permit? AQMD tried to shut down fire pits at the beach. What are they doing? And who cares? Does anybody care? I don't know. I don't think anyone

in city hall cares. They They didn't care when I brought it up at the supplemental meeting as an unconssidered uh impact. I mean, at the very least, you can do a a some kind of process where you can find out who who authorized this use and why you aren't doing something about it, if there in fact is no authorization. I mean, to me, it's really simple. This is not complicated and it's been going on forever. And I have 38 seconds left and I will dedicate that to the the gods of the building. Mayor and City Council, that concludes our in-person speakers. Noting for the record, we did receive electronic comments. We received 14 general comments. Each of those were distributed to city council as well as posted on the city's website, which can be found at anaheim.net/public comment.

Thank you. We will now close the public comment portion of the meeting and move to council communications. Are there any council members with items to share? Council member Curts. Thank you, Madame Mayor. I have a couple of slides. First of all, I want to say thank you to the Ganita line Ganita Lane neighborhood. Um folks came out along with our APD, community services and code enforcement, walked the neighborhood, picked up trash, pointed out uh broken sidewalks, um particularly in the alleys in the area, talked about problems with homeless, um painted the trash cans. Uh it was a it was a uh a good morning and I want to thank the not only the departments that went out, thank the residents that went out to help. Um one of the truly great moments uh there was community services um had a had a bike that they were uh giving um in a drawing for the the residents that helped out. A young man won the bike, but he gave it to the little girl to a little girl who had helped her mom pick up trash. Um, it was very heartwarming and a neighborhood coming together uh to take care of their own neighborhood is was inspiring to us all. So, thank you to the Gonita Lane residents and to again uh public code enforcement, PD and community services. Next one, uh this one is also very

special. These the the folks holding the certificates are graduates from the SBDC eats program. This is a program. It's about a six-week program, both uh in person and online. And this one happened to be in Spanish and English, uh where folks can learn how to start their own businesses. There were some moms there that that I knew um had who had made things for their neighbors for family parties who all of a sudden thought, you know, maybe I could start a business. And so they learned how to uh get appropriate permits, how to go on social media, how to price their products, how to advertise their products. um a wonderful celebration for those graduates um and our own economic development department who is bringing this to our residents for free. No cost to them to participate. Thank you for Cal State Fullerton for uh helping with that and the Small Business Administration. Um and again, congratulations to all of the graduates. Thank you, council member. Council member Moss, and then council member Rubikava.

Uh, thank you, Madame Mayor. Uh, before I get started with my slide, I want to say to the Arzola family, you have not heard the words come from my mouth that I am sorry for the loss of your family member. So, um, we do have active investigations. Um, but you have not heard that come from my mouth. So, I'm sorry. Um, I do have two slides to share. Um, I want to thank our staff. On March 3rd, a request was made to take a look at how Anaheim can better support autistic individuals and families. And I want to thank our city staff for being so responsive and helping to move this work forward. Some of this work has been in place for a while, uh, such as sensory story times, um, but we see multiple departments contributing towards this effort in a very meaningful way. Uh, one example is at our golf courses where sensory support kits are now available and extra tea time at boxes is allowed when needed. We also see sensory kits in our libraries, quiet spaces at programs and events and this year headphones will be available at concerts in the park. This work extends beyond our residents. I want to acknowledge Visit Anaheim and the work that they're doing and have done to become a certified autism center. They are working with hotels and attractions to expand staff training and to make Anaheim more inclusive for visitors as well as residents. Um there is more work that we are doing. I look forward to sharing more announcements soon. But we know that one in 36 children are diagnosed with autism. um these small changes can make a really big difference for their families. And just again, I wanted to say I appreciate the work that our city staff is doing. Next slide, please. Um I also wanted to share that starting this month, I will

be hosting cleanup with your council member. So the fourth Saturday of every month from 9 to 10, we will be doing a community cleanup. Supplies are available if needed. We just ask that you wear closed toed shoes. for our first meeting on April 25th. We'll be meeting at Pioneer Park and we'll be cleaning um along Sun-kissed and the area around the park. So, um actually one of my earliest childhood memories is putting up signs around that park that said please don't litter. So, this is really a full circle moment for me. So, thank you for um the privilege to serve our community. That's all I have. You Natalie.

Thank you, Mayor Aken. And while our city clerk puts up the slides that we have, I just want to recognize the fact that I have the honor of representing 50,000 residents in the city of Anaheim and District 3. And I ask my council colleagues as well as those here today to bear with me because we have a lot of updates since our last council meeting was more than three weeks ago and we've had a significant amount of activity in our district. But the thing I would like to start with is a congratulations to the incredible Anaheim Police Department running teams who competed in the Baker to Vegas Challenge Cup Relay. Your dedication, grit, and teamwork continue to make our community proud. Anaheim PD currently has 420 sworn personnel, including 42 sworn women representing 10% of the workforce. Uh the this team for the first time had two women representing um runners. So, I just wanted to highlight them as well as the entire team. And I know Chief Sid is here as well. But the Anaheim Elite team placed first in their category and fifth overall, earning the title of the fastest team in Orange County. An extraordinary accomplishment, especially for a department that is not the largest in this region. Notably, this marked the first time ever that two sworn females, like I mentioned, competed on the elite team. So, I will also be requesting that we bring them in for recognition at the end of this meeting. Sadly, I also wanted to um recognize the fact that a sworn police officer also passed away during the Baker to Vegas run uh due to medical complications. And I will be asking that we close the meeting in his memory, but wanted to highlight Deputy Levi Vargas, who was only 30 years old and was competing in that race and unfortunately passed away. On a lighter note, um I also wanted to highlight a hundred-year-old resident who we will be requesting to bring into council at the end of this meeting, Irving Schwarz. Uh we had the

opportunity to honor him on his birthday, and I was joined by our chief of fire, Pat Russell, uh for this recognition. And so I just wanted to recognize all of the history that he brings to our city and hopefully we'll be able to bring him into council to um congratulate him on his hundred years, his century in our city and um the amount of work he still does. He's pretty spunky. So I hope at 100 I'm just as spunky as he is. I know that somebody mentioned that uh April is sexual assault awareness month. So I also wanted to recognize a couple things. And I know I mentioned this briefly last week, but this or last meeting, but this deserves additional detail. In response to community concerns following uh sexual assault that took place on March 3rd uh right here on Lincoln in my district, uh many of our departments came together including our police department, public utilities, public works, and our homeless assessment leaison officers. uh they increased patrols in the area for proactive engagement in this in that area where a 14-year-old was assaulted along with her mother. I know our chief recently uh acknowledged a public works uh uh employee, Mr. Sanchez, who stayed on the scene and helped the family during this process and was also able to provide some evidence towards uh capturing the the arresting the person who caused the incident. Uh but this incident did occur on Lincoln and Olive Street. Our Halo personnel continues to make additional outreach and I appreciate all of the response that we've received there. Uh these environmental improvements combined with continued patrols and outreach are intended to reduce opportunities for criminal activity in the area. So I also want to recognize public utilities because we have enhanced the lighting that and the next slide will show some of that. So we've enhanced the lighting. So now we have better LED lighting that goes along Lincoln. Uh I know that there's a lot of people who utilize this

area to walk and it's a pretty long stretch that does get a lot of um fast traffic in this area. So thank you to um our police department who also staged a uh police car camera in the area to capture any additional activity and to continue the um response that we've been able to give to the community as a result of this issue. So those are the lights and thank you to public utilities, public works, public and our police department for their quick response uh to this issue and to the family justice center because they have provided support to the mother and the daughter who were impacted. The young lady attended Anaheim High School and is a freshman there. So nobody should have to uh endure something like this. It was broad daylight 3:00. So thank you to the public works um employee. I think I saw him here a little while ago for his swift response because if you see something, you should always say something. I also wanted to mention uh the Crown Motel is a motel in our uh city that is in district 3 right off of La Palama near uh La Palama Park and it was a very impacted motel. we were able to purchase it as a city and we have uh turned it into housing to rehabilitate some of our um more challenged residents in our district. So, I want to thank everybody who came out to help uh enhance the way it looks, beautify it by not only painting it, but also planting flowers and just helping some of the residents that were there. So, thank you to our interim city manager, Greg Garcia, and the many employees who were there, including uh many of our uh communications team. I also want to uh highlight, but first I I will mention unfortunately on March 31st at about 12:45 a.m., there was a tragic accident right here on Lincoln and Anaheim Boulevard that unfortunately took the life of two individuals.

Alberto Viveros Ped Pedra, which I believe his family is here with us today. I just wanted to take a moment to recognize and honor the life of Alberto. A man whose legacy is deeply rooted in a family, hard work, and community. Mr. Pedra was a devoted father to 12 children, a proud grandfather of 30 grandchildren, and greatgrandfather to five. His family was the center of his life and that love extended far beyond his immediate circle to everyone fortunate enough to know him. For nearly five decades, he built his life here in Orange County, working as a plating technician and earning a reputation for his strong work ethic, dedication and meaningful relationships he formed along the way here in our county. Even after retiring in August of 2025 at the age of 70, he continued working full of energy, purpose, and commitment. That says everything about the kind of man he was. His passing is a tremendous loss, not only to his family, but to the broader community. And I did have the opportunity to attend one of the rosaries right here outside. And I just want to send my condolences to you and your family. And I will ask the mayor to close the meeting in Alberto's honor tonight. uh we honor his life, his legacy, and the love that you all have for him. So, thank you for being with us tonight, and we are sorry for your loss and praying for your family during this very difficult time. Also, uh in this uh same accident, we lost a local student who was 14 years old and a freshman at Anaheim High School where I attended, Andrew Joseph Sanchez was the passenger in the other car. Uh I also just want to honor Andrew and ask the mayor to close the meeting in his honor as well. He uh has a sister who also attends Arizona uh a Grand Canyon University in Arizona and uh is survived by his mother and his father as well. also tragically another innocent

life lost in um this unfortunate accident that took place on March 31st at 12:45 a.m. And to the grandchildren and the great grandchildren that are here tonight, you guys will make sure that your grandfather's legacy lives on. So, thank you for being here. And then this is the last thing I promise. So, um, we did have a public commenter who came in here tonight to talk about being terminated, uh, unexpectedly due to a disability. And I just wanted to mention a couple of things. I'm working with Sergio RmIrez from economic development. And I, um, have to recognize the fact that, uh, in Anaheim, we believe a thriving community includes everyone. People with disabilities deserve more than access. They deserve opportunities, dignity, and the chance to fully participate in the fabric of our city. When someone is told, "We can no longer accommodate your disability," the impact doesn't end with job loss. It can affect confidence, stability, and long-term well-being. That's why we are working alongside our economic development and workforce development teams to build meaningful resources for both employers and employees that support inclusive hiring, retention, and workplace success. So, I want to thank uh Sergio RmIrez for staying on top of this issue and making sure that we're responsive. Although this is a private employer issue, it's still something that is important and we need to make sure that we have resources available for employers and employees uh to take um advantage of uh because in Anaheim, we invest in people regardless of their abilities. We build a stronger, more compassionate, and more resilient Anaheim. So, I just want to recognize uh the young lady who lives in my district who attended on behalf of her sister, but this is an ongoing issue and I just want to encourage employers to take opportunities to find resources that are available to help train not only the um individuals who have a disability, but

also the team members that are working with them who may not understand how to accommodate or to work alongside people who who need extra help. So, um there are resources here that I will be posting as well as um I as I mentioned working with our economic development and workforce development departments to address some of these concerns. And with that, that concludes my council communications. Thank you so much, council member uh Mayor Prom Leon.

Uh thank you, Madame Mayor. Um it's uh been a difficult few days for for our community. Um, and so I wanted to um also ask you to adjourn tonight's meeting in the memory of Mark Tjo. Mark was a 2018 graduate of Servite High School uh here in Anaheim. He was tragically killed in a car accident um when his vehicle was hit by a suspect fleeing police. His girlfriend, Jennifer Alejandra Loera Sarco, and their unborn child also perished in the crash. The couple was just weeks away from welcoming their first baby. Mark, whose nickname was Tiger, was a standout soccer player while at Servite, twice earning all Trinity League honors, playing a key role in four Trinity League championships. He also volunteered for the school's ministry to feed the homeless in our community, all while maintaining a part-time job at In-N-Out. Mark went on to play at Vanguard University, where he earned a degree in business administration, followed by an MBA from Hope International University. He is survived by his father Tony Tjo, his mother Sandra Salivar Tjo, and his younger brother Rocky who is also a 2024 graduate of Servite High School. I want to extend my condolences to all who knew them, to the entire Servite family. Um they and them they everybody who knew them are in our prayers and if we could adjourn in their memory. Madame Mayor, thank you. Thank you. Um I wanted to share a couple of um items um and thank our uh team and staff that assembled um for the groundbreaking of phase two of OC Vibe. Um anyone that has driven around that area for the last couple of years has

seen so much occurring and going on. So, it was really nice to um welcome the Samueli family as well as other local um statewide leaders and council um to w to kick off the um phase two which will be the front of the OC vibe. Hopefully, we will be in the playoffs for the Ducks soon um and clinch that, but it's going to be a little bit of dust as they keep expanding and keep growing, but it's going to be a beautiful project when they're finished. And I always love listening to the Samuel family talk about how this project is coming in um quicker than expected and under budget because of their positive experience using all union labor. So thank you to the team that joined us in making this happen. Uh next I would like to report um with big city mayors. I went up to Sacramento for a lobbying day. Um this picture is with some of the um big city mayors is a group of 13 mayors in California that represent the largest cities in California that usually share the burden um of some of the most complex issues in the state. Everything um from public safety to homelessness to affordable housing etc. This specific trip was to advocate for HAP funding which is our homelessness assistance funding. Uh we are hoping to make it into um the state budget. Again, this is the program and this is the funding that help us do things from transitioning motel for our transitional age youth to um buying um home key projects like the ones we've done on Beach Boulevard as well as supports our services from the Salvation Army to our Halo team etc. So, it is really important funding that since most of these issues get pushed onto cities with um no funding to come with it, it's really important that we

advocate to make sure that we are going in the right direction and we don't lose the funding and have to close some of the programs we've worked so hard to get in place. Um, next I wanted to thank the public utilities team and um, Duku Lee for inviting me and the other female council members to his bright girls program. Um, this is during their spring break. a big group of of girls came to spend time at the center, learn about careers in STEM, learn about science in their own backyard, and take use of our amazing sustainability center, uh, which is just a hidden gem off, um, Olive Street. Um, so, thank you to all the girls that participated, and thanks to the team at public utilities, um, for trying to recruit the next group of female engineers into our public utilities and our city. Um last I wanted to congratulate um the owner um Saul at Biani Cafe. They just celebrated their third anniversary. Um I had a picture of our economic development director um Sergio and his family uh joined my husband and I um at this wonderful event um to celebrate this amazing familyowned um restaurant that has the best cafe um in around and hopefully many more years of um success in our community. So, that is it for uh council communications and I am now going to turn it over to our deputy city manager for any update. Where's

Thank you and good evening, mayor and council. Um, as you know, we've recently seen a number of projects go vertical and begin to take shape throughout the city. Uh, one more project that we're excited to see move forward is the future Anaheim Porsche dealership. I'm pleased to report that Porsche broke ground on off-site improvements for the project last week and construction is officially underway. The site is on Lincoln Avenue just immediately west of the I5 freeway. This land sat vacant for many years and it was certainly a challenge to develop. Uh but now we expect to see the future uh dealership beautify the area as well as bring significant new revenues for our residents and community. We're looking forward to the partnership with this family-owned business and are happy to welcome another auto dealership to our city. That concludes my report. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Deputy City Manager. Uh we're now going to address the city council consent calendar. Items 1 through 13 are before us. Are there any members of the council who wish to pull items for further discussion? Um I'm going to be Well, here I'll go ahead. Uh, Council Member Curts. Thank you, Madame Mayor. I'd like to pull items three and six. Thank you very much. Uh, Council Member Ma, I'd like to pull item number 10. Thank you, Mayor Promon. Number four, please.

Thank you. And I'm going to be um pulling item 11. So, with that, um, can I have a someone make a motion to move the balance? I'll move. Second.

We have a motion in a second. Please vote. The the consent calendar also included the adoption ordinance number 6624, an orance of the city council of the city of Anaheim, repealing and replacing chapter 10.24 water system cross connections of the Anaheim Munipal code to align local and statemandated public water systems cross-section control requirements. And this also concludes determination that the amendment is not subject to SQA because the action does not constitute a project within the SQA guidelines California code of regulations title 14 chapter 3 sections 15060 C2 through3 and 15378 in that its regulatory and administrative action does not not approve commit Anaheim to or result in any physical changes to the environment and that to the extent of the action could be considered a project and exempt from SECA pursuant to SQL guideline sections 15061B3. And the vote is seven eyes, no nays. Motion carries.

Thank you very much. So, the first item um pulled was item number three. Would you like a staff report, council member? Yes. Thank you. I'll turn it over to our deputy city manager. Thank you. I'll ask our public works director, Rudy Amami, to present.

That's great. And I'll pass it over to our principal planning uh manager, uh Joe Alcott. Thanks, Rudy. Good evening, mayor, members of the council. Uh Joe Alco, principal transportation planner here in the public works department. As you all are aware, uh the ATID was established in 2010 with the stated goal of promoting uh local tourism convention related programs as well as transportation improvements both in the resort and platinum triangle. ATID operates under general uh oversight of the council through its management plan. Um the ATID marketing component fund is overseen by visit Anaheim who is also here tonight and also has a presentation and the transportation component fund is overseen by the ATID transportation committee. Every year both of these uh component funds are required to submit annual reports for the prior fiscal year for city council review and approval which is the basis of the staff report tonight. And these reports focus on uh general financial reporting for the programs as well as project updates. On the next few slides, I'll cover the key components of the transportation piece and then I'll hand things over to Tom and visit Anaheim. Um the transportation component fund uh annual report for fiscal year 2425 was approved by the AT transportation committee in late January and then approved by the AT advisory board at the end of February. The uh sort of key highle data in the in the in the report include um the annual report this year reported on nine active projects that were funded by the ATID for transportation funds. Um the transportation fund came in at 8.5 million with expenditures coming in at 2.5 million. Uh there were outstanding incumbrances in the amount of 9.5 million and then at the end of the fiscal year a closing balance of 23.5 million.

Um I do have project updates I can get into if you'd like that or Okay. Uh real quick, there's nine projects as I mentioned. The first one is the uh changeable message sign uh update. Uh the goal here was to update 11 existing signs with new technology um new equipment trans in connection to our transportation management center. Uh 1.9 million was allocated to that project. 1.5 million has been spent within that prior fiscal year. Uh projects now deemed complete. There's a remaining balance of about 392,000 that will need to be uh closed out by the ATI transportation committee and returned to the main fund. Uh next project is the Anaheim resort safety ballard project. Uh the project is looking to install uh safety pedestrian ballard protection improvements at four key intersections in the resort. So Harbor East esplanade, Harbor Way, Harbor Catella, Harbor Convention Way. Um Harbor East esplanade is complete and Harbor Wayway is currently under construction. Final design work has been completed for Harbor Catella and Harbor Convention Way. project had 2.5 million allocated to it and 1.75 million has been spent and there's about a $745,000 balance on this project. Um once harbor Disney way is complete uh we'll return to the other two intersections and assess next steps in terms of budget and um direction from the committee. Uh next project is the uh intelligent transportation project systems project. This is to um provide updated uh signal equipment and detection systems in the resort. Uh 160,000 was allocated. 137 has been spent to date. There's a remaining balance of 25,000. Um, in terms of next steps for this one, staff continues assessing various uh performance of various detection devices, and if we find one that performs to our specs, uh, we'll re-engage with the transportation

committee on next steps and potentially asking for additional funding on that. Uh, the resort sign program, the reject, the objective here was to replace the old trailer mounted signs in the resort, repair outdated signs, and replace five CMS signs. uh primarily along Ball Harbor and Disneyland Drive. 5.6 million was allocated to this. Um 43,000 has been spent to date. There's a remaining balance of about 5.5 million. Uh this project's been broken down into two phases. Uh a near-term phase is focused on addressing more immediate needs like upgrades and replacements and then a longer term phase will look at positioning uh new changeable message signs. Um staff's currently working with Disney to finalize where those locations might be. Uh however, it's kind of on a wait and see until we see traffic patterns after the emergence of the Disneyland Forward project. Ball Road Disneyland Drive. Um the objective here was install signage and striping and traffic control improvements. 1.15 million was allocated. Uh $457,000 was spent on this project. There's a remaining balance of about $679,000. Projects been completed and close out and final report expenditures will be reported in the next fiscal year's annual report. The resort pedestrian circulation study. Um this study is looking at um assessing public support and construction feasibility of potential pedestrian bridges around the resort. uh committee allocated 1.9 million and to date 488,000 has been spent. Remaining balance of 1.4 million will be likely spent this fiscal year. Um in terms of project status, we completed our phase one public outreach which consisted of doing a public survey and business stakeholder working group meetings. Uh since those activities were completed,

we took that public impact input back and we are working to um set up the feasibility assessment and gearing up for a second phase two of public outreach to present some of the findings that we've come we've put together. We anticipate phase two public outreach to occur later this year. Uh real time passenger information systems. This was an allocation to actually to ATN. The goal was to provide uh real-time passenger information on ATN systems. 1.25 million was allocated and the pro and 1 million was spent. Uh the last component of the project which was uh passenger information signs at the Disneyland main transportation center never occurred and the ATN board has requested that this or they have taken action to close this project out and ask us to return any unspent funds in that allocation back to the AT general fund. ATN operational support. So during fiscal year 2425, there was an allocation of 1.55 million to support ATN. Um that payment occurred in this fiscal year. So um we'll we'll reflect close out in this next fiscal year's annual report on this allocation. And then we conducted a transit feasibility assessment. Uh this was uh the committee allocated 45,000 to hire a consultant to do due diligence on ATN and assess whether it was feasible to trans transition ATN um from a nonprofit to a city-led transit agency. Um 19,500 has been spent on this project and the remaining balance to 25,000 will be closed out in this fiscal year. Um, in terms of finding that assessment concluded that it was not uh prudent for ATN uh to become a city-led transit agency and we continue working with ATN as they are winding down operations. Um, mayor and council that concludes the overview of the transportation

component. Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Just have a couple of questions. um the Anaheim Resort pedestrian circulation study with 1.9 million being allocated for that. Um we're also working on resort 2.0 which is also looking at pedestrian circulation. Can you tell me how those two come together so that we're not double spending on anything?

Uh yes, they're um actually complimentary to each other. So the pedestrian circulation study was a direction we received from the AT transportation committee to go look at not just the the volumes of pedestrians that we have today out at the resort to serve them but also look at the future growth in the resort and how we could look at parallel routes and also um mainly uh centered around safety and how do we move them across some of our major corridors. So that led us to bridges and identifying what locations make sense for future bridges and then uh looking at the feasibility of those locations, potential costs and different uh scales of bridges that could potentially be there. So that really just centered around that. Um but the larger 2.0 study that's a highlevel planning document that goes uh way wider beyond uh just the pedestrian circulation but also looks at transit. It looks at uh safety. It looks at the uh look and feel of the resort and then also looks around land uses and how we could uh promote additional development and support that development in the future. So it's complimentary to the other study.

Has the results of your study been shared with 2.0? It has. So all all of the previous work that we've done um has been given to the consultants that are leading that effort for us and they are taking that into consideration and as they consider transit options and things like that how that pedestrian connection will intersect with that. Great. Thank you. So it's not money lost as we progress to 2.0. Absolutely. Thank you. One more question. Um you have a reserve for of 23.5 million. Are there current plans on how that's going to be spent?

There are no current plans. We we identified what was um allocated, but as we are progressing over the next couple years to look at a replacement for ATN, this is one potential source of revenue for that. But again, also what comes out of uh the uh resort 2.0 if we plan for bridges uh preliminary studies for the east west connector. So there are multiple options um or projects that we could identify as a potential use of this funding. Great. Thank you. I have no further questions.

Thank you, Director. Um I had a So when you went, you said there was 1.5 million for the um pedestrian circulation study. Was that a grant or was that um general fund money? No, that that's all being funded by the ATID transportation. Oh, it's performed by the ATID transportation. Okay. So, when we go to the consultants, are we giving them open-ended questions about pedestrian circulation or are we directing them that we want bridges?

No, we're asking them to go out there and do their own analysis and then do these community outreach meetings to hear from our stakeholders in our community and then come back with the the best options that they're proposing. and then we'll work with them through the process of what works with our background and knowledge of the resort. Okay. And is that something that you um that I guess we can share with the community because I'm not sure what I know stakeholders I'm assuming are hotel owners, those with businesses in the resort district, but what about workers, residents, etc. How are we collecting this community feedback?

Yeah. So, um, we're scoped to do, uh, public open houses as well. Uh, we went to this first round for the business, the community to really get kind of a yay or nay. Does does this make sense? Are we talking about the right locations? We're looking at, you know, future forecasts, those type of things. And once we've kind of talked to the businesses and got their take on things um, in terms of because they would be likely the most impacted. Once we have a more we took their input now we're working on the feasibility and the cost and all of the kind of more uh technical components of bridge concepts. Once we have that solidified we're going to re-engage with the public later this year and that will include public open houses.

So are we I guess we keep talking about these pedestrian bridge concepts but we haven't I mean as a council talked about it decided whether that's the direction that we want to go. I'm not sure what the results were for um some of the hotels that would be impacted. I'm I don't know if there's going to be eminent domain involved and we're going to have to condemn some property or if it's all going to be on public property. Like these seems like really highlevel questions that that at some point need to be brought back to us before spending another million and a half or some dollars of ATID money um on a plan that we might not feel is in the best interest of the resort community.

Yeah, thank you for that question. That's exactly why we're doing the study is to be able to look in in detail those types of questions of um will they can we build them within the existing rideaway? Will they have property impacts? Will they have uh line of sight impacts to properties? Um what would they look like? What would they cost? So at least we have some background. So when we have these discussions and want to know if we want to take the next step with these uh bridges, if it's the right thing for us, at least we know what they'll cost, what they'll look like, what the impacts are, what the feedback was that we got from uh stakeholders so we can have those discussions. And so besides bridges, what concepts for pedestrian circulation were brought forward?

Well, we we looked at safety in general. So that's part of the Ballard program that we are doing now. Um, so how we keep the existing pathways that uh pedestrians are using in the resort, we want to keep and maintain those. Um, but as we look towards resort 2.0, we've always talked about we we we have 26 million visitors a year now, but how do we plan for 40? So that means we have to really have good strong parallel paths in optionality and as we also see growth, how are we going to plan for that? We want to at least be able to get ahead of the game. So as new uh properties want to develop, there isn't a surprise to them down the road that potentially there's going to be a bridge here or if they are developing their plans, how can they integrate those plans so there there's better intersection between the bridges and the p circulation at the street level and their properties. So they'll be complimentary.

Okay. Um I had pulled item number 11. I think that's also you and it kind of dubtales um from this report because it's another transportation resolution in that we're adopting a master transit plan and so I guess I'm trying to understand how this fits in with our master transit plan which is then citywide and this is resort specific but we talk about in the master transit plan the development of the east US connector which will be paid for out of aid potentially and grants or other sources. And so where are we in that process?

So those are two different sites. This one's really just looking at the pedestrian movement, the circulation at the ground level, the transit plan on item 11 that is looking at u you know transit in the form of buses, shuttles, uh the east west connector and how we make the uh you know bus stops better, how we make um you know timing and operation better, how we make ticketing better. So they they do intersect but they're they're separate studies and separate purposes. But when we look at a study like Resort 2.0 0. That's kind of that overarching study that's bringing all these different plans together to make sure they they're coordinated.

And so, how are we in on priorities? Because it's a limited funds with 25 and a 25 million. Yes. in the transportation fund um between an east west connector, multiple pedestrian bridges potentially. How are we prioritizing where we're going to be spending our money given that that's not going to be enough money to cover all of these things?

Yeah. So, the priority one is is phasing too. So phasing has a lot to do with it and the timing of this and as money continues to come in and how how we do on grants um you know availability on priorities project sometimes relies on what money is available um through grant programs. So uh if it's bridge funding we could find or pedestrian safety funding we could find then we're going to you know prioritize bridges for that. If it's strictly transit funding then we're going to prioritize those projects. Uh but part of all this outreach too is to work with all of our stakeholders in our community to figure out what is most important to them. Right now I can tell you all of that is important. They see the value of keeping our pedestrians safe and having good circulation for them, but also having transit um be able to move people around the resort. And that's why this next two years is so critical for us to bring all of this together. And that's why we're doing these studies to to give us the information to do that in an intelligent way. And for the transit um master plan again they had public open houses and outreach. Did we include uh the resort workers in any of those open houses or can we at least get a commitment that we are talking to Anaheim residents and resort workers that are the main commuters going to that area as well as using the our transit system.

Yeah, that is absolutely our intent and I know Joe could maybe add a little bit to that in terms of our our audience. Yeah, we worked with community services to identify um community major employers, community organizations, uh nonprofits, as many people as we could. We cast a wide net for the community working groups. We had two of those meetings as well as two public open houses. Public open houses were advertised on our website, city hall, social media. Um the first one was advertised actually on ATM buses when they were operational. Um so that to in order to try and capture some of those people as well. Um, so we did opportunities to reach out to those people.

Okay. Thank you. Um, I jumped ahead to item 11. Does anyone else have any questions on item 11? If not, um, I was going to ask for a staff report. All right. Staff report. Well, we haven't We should finish this item first, I would think. You want to vote on this one? No, we still have a second component, the marketing. Oh, sorry. I jumped ahead to 11.

Right. I'll go. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Tom Morton, Convention, Sports, and Entertainment. And the Anaheim Tourism Improvement District has two component funds. Transportation, which we just heard from. We also have marketing component funds, which are overseen by Visit Anaheim, and Visit Anaheim has a brief presentation on their annual report from fiscal year 2425. So, with that, Mike Waterman and I'll advance the slides.

Thanks, Tom. Appreciate you driving. Uh good evening, Mayor Aken, Mayor Prom Leon, council members. Thanks for hearing us tonight. As Tom mentioned, we're going to present our 2425 annual plan to you tonight. Um you can go to the agenda. Um I won't read through all the stuff. You guys can read it, but uh our our purpose tonight or my purpose tonight is to try to um give you a summation of our annual report, which you should have received in February. Uh this is a um summary presentation of that report with the highlights that hopefully you will find uh interesting u indicating what visit Anaheim is doing to drive our strategy um highlight our um efforts on the scope of the impact of the city. So with that you can go to the first slide. As a reminder just to set things up uh we work on a fiscal year or on a calendar year like our most of our members the hotels and um restaurants. So uh but as you know the city works on a fiscal year. So um some of our KPIs uh are approved by our board um and reported out on a um calendar year. And what we've done in this report is um extrapolate our calendar year to ma match your 2425 budget. So um with that we'll go ahead and jump to the next deal. Uh we just want to also highlight which was very important to this body. Uh we did take the state recommendations as we were walking through uh this annual report. It involves quite a bit of changes from our report from last year. Um little bit more efficient. So we were specific on making sure we included occupancy rates, convention center bookings and a number of convention center presentations within a year. We also established based on the state recommendations a fund accounting tracking system which we will go through today. Um, and this is the

annual report that the state recommended we present to the city. And um, as you all know, every time uh, we have a city council meeting, we do uh, through Tom's help present our subcontractor agreements for your review. All right. Uh, you can go back one. Sorry, Tom. Driving fast. So, just as a reminder, uh, part of the state's recommendation was to create this ATID advisory board. Uh it's a sevenperson board, four people from the city, three people from the hotel community. And that this report, the full report, which is about 60 pages, was reviewed and approved by that group uh back in February 2026. And again, this is a summation of that report. So for 2024, our KPIs are listed up here. 53 conventions, uh two billion dollars of economic impact, and uh two billion marketing impressions. You can see how we achieved um our percentage to go goal and over last year. So 24 was a good year for us. Next slide. This is our 24 our 25 KPIs again 54 conventions won more than the prior year. Uh 2.3 million economic impact, 3 million marketing impressions and we did not track in 24 definite room nights. You as city council asked us to do that. So, in our 2025 KPIs, uh we did uh set a goal for definite room nights, uh which was actually well wellreceived by our resort community, um because they don't really care about attendance or marketing impressions, but they really like room nights. And you can see where we came in relative to goal and to prior year. This is just more of a FYI statement. So, um quite often we meet with you, you're like, well, how are we doing? Um you know, how do we compare? So the next few slides slides will walk through kind of how we've done Anaheim's done um and

then how we compare to California and the nation. So you can see we're running just under 75% occupancy which um this is the 2425 summation. We actually just recently got a report from Smith Travel that uh last year calendar year 25 visit Anaheim had the fifth highest occupancy in the country. So uh excited about that. You can see our ADR and RevPAR and room revenue, hotel supply and hotel demand. So 242 25 mostly because of the fires in 25 was pretty flat, slightly down. Um we had a much better back end of 25 and are starting off 26 really strong.

Hey Mike, can you speak to what ADR and RevPAR is?

Sorry, sorry, I do that. Norma gets me on that all the time too. Uh so ADR is average daily rate. Um, revpar is simply the math of occupancy times rate gives you your revar. Okay. Um, this is the slide I alluded to last slide. So, um, also very favorable to Anaheim. This is a comparison of occupancy, ADR, and RevPAR, revenue per available room. Uh, you can see Anaheim, uh, pretty aggressively ahead of the state and ahead of the US both in occupancy, ADR, and RevPAR. Um, just as a quick side note, when I was in uh Anaheim back in 2014, 2013 working for Marriott, um, our ADR in Anaheim was about $40 lower. Big tribute to the luxury products, the Weston, the JW, and the Viv for rising the whole tide. Next slide. So, really proud about this slide. this we track our percentage of share of the top 250 conventions u in the United States there's only 250 and they only meet in about 20 cities this is the 10 biggest cities but there's really only 20 cities they can they can meet in and we track our share of those um top 250 conventions and uh when I got here in 24 um I asked Ronnie our chief sales officer where do we rank he said we're about Last year we jumped to nine, meaning our our we have the better you are, the lower you are, the higher your share. And happy to report two weeks ago we got our numbers. This is it. And we actually came in third behind Las Vegas in Orlando. So beat Chicago, the number one convention city, and we also beat San Diego. Next slide. So, this is our um and I'll go kind of fast through this because I'm sure you've read um this report, but we track business booked, actualized business.

Business booked is what we booked, but but in in the year for the year for all future years. And then actualized business is business that actually comes in. It could have been booked five years ago, but it's coming in during that period. And then convention sales events, which goes to the state recommendation. Uh that's the events we held. Next slide. So meeting sales, we have conventions are citywide conventions that use multiple hotels and the convention center. Meeting sales are indep are meetings that uh meet in one hotel. We call them in-house or meetings and you can see the numbers there. So I'm going to go kind of fast through this because you know marketing is amazing driving impressions. Scott and his team do an amazing job. But you can see the impressions we're making 196 million. Um the bigger number here is trackable accommodations revenue at almost 42 million and non-accommodations revenue which is rental cars, restaurants at a little over 70 million. And then the next two we track communications and tourism results separately. Um so you can see the impressions and revenue uh followers and uh media clips which is a big driver for us through social media and then our tourism impressions and room nights. And I'm gonna this is really hard to read. So um you asked us to present our fund balance uh to the team uh which we did. This is as of June 30th, 2025. And then the next slide is through December of 2025. And Christina Dawson is our chief operating officer. If you have any questions about this, uh you never want a sales guy talking about math. Um but I open it up if you want any questions. I have a question. How do you track um when you're saying sorry can you go back like two slides?

Keep going. So when um when you are tracking like how many rooms that you attribute to like room nights here? Is that because they book through your website or use some type of code that they could only get from you?

Yeah. So the the technology has gotten so much better nowadays that we can track through Google Pixels in a lot of different ways. So we don't track if somebody picks up the phone or goes on Disney.com and books directly with Disney. That doesn't we don't take any credit for that. We don't put in any of our reports. So it has to come from a promotion or an activity or a sales event that we touch somebody and can track it through the technology to make sure it comes back to our specific results. Good question. Thank you. Uh, Council Member Bis.

Yes. Thank you. First off, I'll just say this. Uh, thank you for including some of the data that's in there that wasn't in there last year. It was definitely helpful to see. I'm definitely a kind of guy that likes to see it, overlay it, and, you know, follow the trend. So, with that, I have a question. Yeah. I noticed that in August, so when I see your your occupancy rate, we've got an average roughly for let's say the last three weeks in August about 70%. But yet when we follow over on the ADR for August, I noticed that that's some of the lower room rates. I was just wondering if you could explain that.

Yeah, so the, you know, the the seasonality of um any destination, Anaheim's no different. Um and and the challenge with August is um people start going back to school. Um you know, our big peak times are right now spring break for Q1 is our biggest time. The summer's strong obviously June, July, August starts, you know, kids start going back. So there's um it's a little bit of a low for us before it starts getting into um a magical Halloween time of year. So August has a tendency to drive lower rates typically. So even the fact that we're potentially busy on this side, we're still charging less.

Yeah. And the ch the challenge with August is it's not a really strong typically a strong group convention compression month. So it doesn't drive um a ton of uh business into the hotels or into the convention center. So um so unfortunately uh all the hotels are sort of in that leisure boat kind of competing against each other. Okay, I have one more question along the same guy or along the same lines. It didn't happen very often, but I noticed at least three data points where we've got the occupancy rate, let's say 50% and then we've if you look over to the ADR on the same year at the highest rates and I'll give you the first example I saw was uh looks like the second, excuse me, third uh Sunday in June. The we've got 50 50% occupancy, but we got 274 for a room rate. just

yeah I I I would have to look at the data to be able to you know professionally answer that. I know a lot of things but that's um not I don't have an answer to that. I I could speculate it could be you know we could have booked a really a couple really nice big group pieces of business in-house pieces of business you know and when you book them two or three years out you know they don't know how strong the demand over that period of time is going to be. That would just be a guess. Okay. Maybe give me a call. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're meeting tomorrow afternoon. Okay. I'll have that for you. Thank you, Council Member Curts.

Thank you. I want to get back to some basics. Um, and I know you've included it, but I want you to verbalize who pays this money. Why Why do you have these millions of dollars? Where do you get them?

Yeah. Yeah. So our funding as you know is uh back in 2010 the resort community came together and said hey um we were funded through toot and the resort community came back and said hey we want to fund our own success so we want to add a 2% T a tourism improvement district which we get 75% for marketing visit Anahheim gets 75% for marketing and the last the other 25% goes to the transportation fund so out of town visitors are paying our budget Um, also I want to make a point the the money goes to the city and then the city distributes. So the city does take a percent off the top for administration. Correct. 1%.

And then this year uh some money is taken out for housing. Yep. I have that in my slide coming up. Okay. So um the balance is split 7525. That is correct. on the 75% who makes the decisions on how it's going to be spent.

Yep. My we have a 23 person board made up of uh primarily hotel general managers uh both in uh the city of Anaheim and the city of Garden Grove. We represent both cities and uh all of my every budget we submit has to be approved by the board of visit Anaheim. Okay. So you personally aren't making decisions on how to spend money. Neither does your staff. Yeah, I'm not I'm not I am making decisions based on the board approved budget and then we go out and decide how we're going to spend that.

Okay. Another basic question based on uh the agreements for TID. How does that money have to be spent? Yeah, the the TID agreement is very specific and this is a statewide specific requirement. It's not specific to Anaheim. And it, and I'm paraphrasing, it basically says um anything spent with T money, whether it's Anaheim T or Garden Grove T has to materially benefit the T payee, which are the hotels.

So the city could never just take some of that money, use it in their general fund to improve a park. That is correct. Okay. Um there's a question on the I on the nimleness of visit Anaheim. Yep. Uh the world has changed quite a bit and travel in the world has changed quite a bit in the last several months. Sure has. How quickly can you change what you're doing to accommodate that change?

Quite quick quickly. We last year um when uh you know we saw what was happening with Canada, we had material efforts, we had trade shows, we had money spent, we had marketing dollars set aside to spend money in Canada after a a visit with the visit California team. It was absolutely clear to us from we heard from Air Canada. We heard it from multiple uh vendors up in Canada that they're not coming to the United States. So we pivoted. we we dialed significantly back our spend in Canada. Um, conversely, we saw Mexico really really strong. They were up almost 11%. So, we shifted some of those dollars from Canada uh quickly into uh Mexico. Additionally, we saw demand softening um in the summer. So, in Q2, um, I went to the board and asked them to fund out of our, um, out of our reserves, um, some supplemental marketing, $2.5 million for us to drive incremental domestic demand into the destination for summer and fall.

Thank you. Last question. You kind of mentioned that you have a reserve. We do. Almost 19 million. Yep. It's going to be coming up in a minute.

Okay. Um, who decides what you're going to do with that? Yeah. So that is also a board designated uh number. Um and I'll jump in it since you have it right there. We have uh this is our reserve. It's just under 19 million total. Five and a half a little over five and a half is three months uh of operating expenses. Industry standard is six um convention commitments. We um which is very standard in our business. We often subsidize rent or transportation to win a piece of business from a competitive destination with a lot of Tom and his team's help. So, um, you know, if NM, uh, wants a $50,000 discount that comes out of our, uh, reserves and gets listed in that convention commitment. Um, sales and marketing initiatives are, um, things like, um, you know, a new trade show booth, uh, those kind of things that are going to drive, um, and position Anaheim more favorably in the meetings business. And then industry events, I'm going to talk about that in a minute, but a lot of these industry events uh are they're sort of a pay-to-play scenario, meaning if you want this major convention, which is an industry event to come to your city, you have to subsidize it. Um could be a first re first night reception, last night reception. There's a lot of variables and we have five of those events coming in the next 5 years. So, we've set aside 4 million for that. Uh and the total of all those together is just under 19 million. And that's all reviewed and approved by my board.

Thank you. I don't have any other questions. Thank you. So, I think you have a couple more slides to share.

Yep. So, um to Norma's earlier point, thank you, city council. Last December, you voted and approved unanimously the um Anaheim Hospitality um housing assistance program. And this is primarily or only for those workers who live and work in a T hotel in Anaheim. It is a housing assistance program that has we're still working on the components, but most likely have a rental assistance program, some sort of first-time home buyer program, and some sort of emergency relief uh program. But these three individuals have volunteered. And we strategically uh chose these three uh because they represent the entirety of our community from a hotel perspective. Paul Sanford is the CEO of Wingcom representing the larger hotels and the brand hotels. Uh Bill O'Connell uh representing the smaller midsize hotels and independent hotels. Um and then also Greg Eisman from the Tropicana Suites and Camelot um who has been very um uh instrumental in helping us understand these small independent hotels and what they need. And these three individuals will be working to um to create the the guidelines for how this program gets executed. All right. And I talked about these uh five events. Um all five of these events. So 26 is CDX, 27 is connect marketplace about 5,000 people. Merit's Elevate is coming in 28. Uh MPI which is meeting planners international the largest group of travel professionals meeting planners in the world. uh bringing their annual meeting here in 29 and then IPW by US travel is the largest global uh travel and trade show globally. So these five events will bring 20,000 industry professionals to Anaheim over the next 5 years when we are growing uh unbelievably and will drive uh future business for a while.

And then uh for driving demand, we normally this kind of goes to your question. Uh we created last year 100 days till summer, kicks off in March, gets people excited about summer. Uh we brought the Savannah bananas in two weeks ago. Um which is uh literally sold out the city for that weekend. Uh sold 90,000 tickets. Last weekend was our first standup Chow Down, which is an event that we put on with our partners um primarily at the packing house and around town. We sold that out which was amazing. And then uh last but sort of not least, the imagination campaign uh which drove a ton of business uh was just recognized by Visit California as the best PR campaign. And that's my presentation.

Thank you. Um any more questions on the marketing spot? Council member Ruba Calva and then Council Member Meeks. I just wanted to say thank you so much for providing so much detail and and for listening to the feedback that we provided last year. I know it was harsh and brutal at the time, but we got to this point. So, thank you. We can see the improvements in toot and I just want to um show my gratitude since I give you all of my other feedback, but also share my gratitude for the work that you guys are doing on behalf of our city. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Meeks, and then Mayor Prom. Um, I also I want to thank you particularly for the statistic on room nights. I mean, that's that's important to all of us. It's important to you. It's important to all of us up here. And so, having that factor, you know, there's a lot of other things going on in your little marketing world, but that's one we can all relate to. Agreed. So, I appreciate you bringing that. And then once again, I just want to thank you and the hotel years for supporting the contribution to our housing program and making that um home ownership and living near work feasible for our workers out there. So, um thank you. Thank you.

I'm kidding. Thank you, Madame Mayor. Um just a few questions. I'll echo my colleague. I I know that we had a lengthy conversation last year uh regarding this and so I appreciate the information and I appreciate you taking the the state audit recommendations as part of this as well. Um I think it's a very important step forward um in in hopefully turning a new leaf right in being as transparent as we can and being as efficient as we can because at the end of the day as I said a year ago uh we want you to be successful. We want you to succeed because that means that our city uh is is successful and that we're succeeding. So, um I did have a couple of questions specifically and I don't have the page number to reference this. So, this can be information you can send over if you don't have it, but I'm curious um in one of the in the report you were talking about domestic versus international travel and the changes that you've seen over the last year. So, I'm curious if you might have that. I know it's it's kind of on an annual basis in the report. I'm curious if you have a a month-to-month breakdown uh of that data for the last year. I'd love to see it and see glad to share that

kind of what the impact is. I think you mentioned Q2 was um a bit of a drop from what we were expecting and you know there's no it would be difficult right to um connect that to a specific reason. I think there's probably a few and uh that that could be it. Uh but I'm curious to see what that data looked like and what the impact was. And then I'm curious is to or just to confirm you're saying that or can you clarify for me was our top market always Mexico and then Canada was it Canada and then Mexico?

Yeah, Canada has been our number one international market by far for the last 50 years. And uh for the first time ever uh it dropped to number two behind Mexico. And it was interesting when I was at that uh that summit we were in uh with Physic California last earlier last year, you know, we were talking about, you know, Canada and and and they were like, "We're not coming. Nobody's coming." I'm like, "Then you would have been fourth. Like, you dropped from one to two, so you're still coming. You're just not telling anybody." So, you know, they're still coming. Uh Canada is still a strong market. Um but um they did drop and when we anticipated that and we are actively working with our partners in Canada to try to when they're ready to travel we want them to know Anaheims wants them to come.

I'm curious and I feel like I've asked this of you before but in how do you track the the who's coming from Canada? Is it like Yeah. So there's there's multiple we have a um an annual agreement with a company called Tourism Economics and almost every DMO globally uses their data and they have access to um to visitation from anywhere we want in the world and they track it all through their system. So we get really accurate data from them. Okay. Thank you. And then you mentioned um that you had requested 2.5 million in supplemental marketing. Can you explain that one for me again?

Yeah. So, you know, with with a lot of conversations with a lot of you and Tom, um you know, we had a sizable amount of reserves, which which was concerning and and um I went back to my board and said, "Look, you know, we don't need 30 million in reserves and we don't need 25 million reserves. We need money right now to drive marketing into the summer and fall to help our hotels because we were hearing from our hotels that they're struggling." So, it was an unbudgeted ask um and my board approved it and Scott and and the team uh executed it flawlessly and we can share the results. We don't have all the results yet, but it was very successful. Are those the results? Yeah, they're in the deck.

Okay. Um so, 475,000 impressions. Thanks, Pepe. You're always got my back. Uh trackable room nights, 174,000. uh 55 uh million in trackable hotel bookings and another 35 million in non- room revenue for a total of 90 million. So 2 and a.5 million drove 90 million into the market

and I appreciate that. Does that mean that because those 2.5 million were so effective, are you budgeting those in for the next year? Well, we we would, but um as Norma pointed out um that 9% that comes off the top um is about a million5 to2 million which we didn't have incremental funding for. So unfortunately this year we do not have um the $2.5 million incremental although we do have money in our budget for the 100 days till summer and in in campaigns that will drive business this summer and the fall.

I appreciate that and this will be the last question on that point. Uh but I'm curious as to was there anything that was done different with those 2.5 million uh as opposed to or was it just it was more? Yeah, it's a little bit of both, right? So we um we have an amazing marketing team and they use data to drive everything. So we can now understand through the data points like for example um Palm Springs went from like 15 our top 15 markets to like top five and we're like what is that? So we drove the data. So, so the team really started targeting key feeder markets that we know have shown a propensity to come to Anaheim and those are the markets we targeted versus, you know, trying to go after everybody.

Okay. Thank you. And the last question I have, and you may have touched upon this a little bit already, in terms of the transportation with ATN going away, um, have you shifted or done anything uh, marketing wise to kind of dissuade any concerns about visitors coming to Anaheim? I know that social media is very active about well do I even want to go and kind of going down that route. Is there anything that we're doing?

We haven't really proactively. It's you know the challenge you know the challenge with telling people we have a transportation problem is there's folks who don't know and that we don't want to inform them that it's a problem. And we do really feel like looking at the ATN data almost and and Matt Hicks from uh who sat is the chairman of ATN before it kind of went away um said almost 85% of the visitors of ATN were going from Toy Story lot to the Disney. So we're just trying to solve for the 15% which is still a big deal but it's a much smaller deal. So, we're not going to make a big deal about it. And we're working behind the scenes to make sure our hotel partners don't go and hire 20 different buses, clog up the streets. So, we want them unified. And we've been working with the hotel community to make sure that they all work together, whether it's through Mosaic or other transportation services to provide a a solution that doesn't make it worse, but makes it better. And so essentially in terms of kind of what we're tracking, what we're seeing out there, you haven't necessarily seen

knock on wood and it's been really busy. Um we have not seen uh from any of our social media or anything uh negative results relative to ATN in in the month of April. Got it. Okay. Well, uh that's all the questions I had for uh for this and again I'll echo my colleagues and I appreciate the um you taking the feedback that we gave you uh last year and incorporating it and and and making the effort. So glad to do it. Thank you. Uh Council Member Rubikala and then Council Member Bis and then Council Member Curts. Thank you. So I was just going to mention so I know the 2.5 is not budgeted but the success of the Toot is your success right? So the more revenue that's generated through tot you get a percentage of that. So

not tot but t I'm sorry. Yeah. So but either but that's directly. So either way there's a potential for the better we do the better we all do. Yeah. So then you can definitely budget for that. Yep. Perfect. Thank you. Council member Bis.

At the end you answered I guess my question. The first thing I heard though is you said hey we have a problem. We have a problem. And I was thinking to myself, uhoh, wait a minute. But then I heard you say we didn't have a problem. So I'm going to ask going on to Rudy. Since the uh the uh spinown of the transportation that's out there, have we seen any problems that are existing? And how how has it been managed? Are we are we seeing a good flow? I know we've got the toy story that seems to be uh the major bulk of the traffic that's there, but I'll let you answer that. We were out there on day one and we've been working with the resort community um you know in the last you know 45 60 days on on planning for this event and and I'll say that we've done really well. Um I think most of our visitors haven't really noticed and a big part of it as Mike said is you 83% of that wrership was the Toy Story line and Disney had that service up on day one. There's also a group of hotels that have already banded to to bring a service in and that was up and running on day one. So that takes a chunk out of that 17% and then uh Garden Grove also put up a service that's taking care of another big chunk. So we're really still working. I mean we're still working behind the scenes really hard um to come up with a circular that circulator that can capture the rest of the visitors. But I'll say uh I don't think things can could have gone any better um with what was coming.

Perfect. Well, I'll say thank you to city staff for putting that together for sure. And I'm happy to hear that the end of the statement was we don't really have the problem. So, thank you very much. Thank you. One comment. Um, thank you for listening. Thank you also for listening to the advisory board because their recommendations were taken. But I also want to thank Christine because I don't think you put this report together. Oh, no. For sure. So, thank you. Yeah, the whole the whole team, Christine and Pepe and a whole bunch of teams. So, it's a for sure a team effort. So, so thank you for that. And with that, I'd like to move the item. Thank you. Uh comment from U. Mr. Amami.

Madame Mayor, I just wanted to correct the record on something. You you asked me earlier about the 19 million uh balance that the transportation committee had if we had that uh any plans for that funding. Um the AT transportation board did uh approve the acquisition of the ATN properties um which will be coming back to this council for approval. So that will be a significant portion of that funding for the purchase of those properties that will be held for uh transit and transportation purposes in the future. Just want to correct that. Oh, I have a Yeah, I'll wait till it comes back. I move the item. Yeah, I'll second.

So, we have a motion by council member Kurtz and a second by council member Rubikala. Please vote. The vote is seven eyes, no nays. Motion carries. Okay, Rudy, I think I have you for most of these items, so I'm going to just jump to 11 since that's also a transit item and y'all are already up there. Um, can we please have a staff report?

Pulling up the PowerPoint now and Mr. Joe Alco will give the presentation as well. Uh good evening again, mayor and members of the council. Again, Joe Alco. Um by way of background, the city transit master plan is a long range uh vision document uh for improving transit in the city over the long term. Uh it's used to provide guidance on local transit advocacy as we work with partners uh future project development prioritization inter agency coordination as well as pursuit of competitive grants as funds become available. Uh the city's current transit master plan was adopted in 2007. Since that time a lot's changed. Uh plan development's changed, transit technologies changed, service models have changed. And so things are very different on the ground today than they were 19 years ago when the plan was currently put together. So going back to 2024, um we secured grant funding to start working on an update to the transit master plan. Um all of those efforts have consolidated in the draft that is before you tonight. Uh the plan contains a total of 14 recommendations uh that that were subject to quite a bit of public outreach. We included community working group meetings uh stakeholder working group meetings uh and hosting two public open houses as well as conducting a survey where we got over 100 responses. And on this slide we have a summary of the plan's main recommendations uh which have been broken down into four uh categories. First category focused on developing bus stop and access improvements. Uh so working to improve uh transit stops and their connecting infrastructure. Uh the second category focused on ATN service or the resort service area and this entailed

identifying uh considerations for future uh area transit services in the resort. Uh the third developed uh capital improvement recommendations for new service types and then we developed uh final service improvement recommendations. Uh moving into the first category again the bus stop access uh recommendations we focused on identifying improvements uh at shel specifically at shelters providing more seating options electronic signage uh real-time arrival information uh maps and providing route uh recommendations. Uh the next recommendation in this category was to fill in sidewalk gaps that uh presented challenges in first and last mile access in terms of getting to transit stations. And then uh recommending that transit signage be uniform and uh consistent throughout the city. We have various operators which I'll show on another slide that operate here and they have all different signages. So making the system system more navigable is a definitely a policy priority for the city. Um, now next up to was the uh recommendations that were originally developed for ATN. Um, however, uh, again, these were developed prior to ATN's announcement of discontinuation of service. Uh, in light of this, we went back, we re-reviewed these recommendations and found that regardless of who is a transit operator in the resort, these are good long-term recommendations um, for service in the resort area. And um the first recommendation is to identify or to develop a more userfriendly app. The app that was currently or previously being used was not all that easy or reliable. So um working with a future uh resort operator to pursue um a better app for the resort area. Next u resort uh area the transit routes working with the resort provider to make them be more

streamlined. ATN was operating a pretty complex system. um which could lead to some level of confusion at times as well as high operational costs. So we definitely see a need for streamlining whatever system might emerge coming out in the future. And then finally implementing a clear route schedule with timets um so that the writers know exactly when the bus is coming. Uh and then in terms of the capital investment recommendations, we we are recommending three items. First, it's recommending highcapacity transit on several of our high volume bus routes here in the city. So, things like bus rapid transit. Uh we're also recommending that the east west transit connector which was in the previous plan be maintained in this plan. We see that there's a lot of potential here and we want to continue to work on um feasibility and looking to secure potential grant applications to support moving a concept forward. And then finally, we have minor uh roadway type of capital improvements that would uh enhance bus speeds. So things like bus only lanes, Q jumps, farside bus stops to allow buses to get out and ahead of traffic so that they are a little bit more faster operationally. And for the last one, we we are recommending service improvements. We identified working with our transit stakeholders uh OCTA and primarily Metroink uh to add more frequent service on again the high OCTA bus routes and then working uh to with Metroink to advocate for more off- peak service to uh serve the Anaheim area so that um people that work non-traditional commuter schedules and those looking to take partake in entertainment venues at the Honda Center would be able to do so through transit. Another important recommendation we're uh recommending here is to simplify and establish uh fair transfers for agreements. Sorry. Um this just shows

the the various transit operators in the city. All of them have different agreements, different fair policies. Um it it is complicated to navigate and as a policy we're recommending that we work with these agencies moving forward to get it to be a more streamlined process, user friendly to people from out of town and tourists um to be able to access the system. And our final service improvement uh recommendation is to uh evaluate the usage of microtransit in areas of the city that don't generally have land use um that would support traditional bus systems. So we're thinking Anaheim Canyon and Anaheim Hills. Uh we believe these areas will likely benefit from these services. Uh so we're recommending that these concepts be laid out for initial feasibility assessments to see if this is are these are service types that could actually be financially viable in these areas. Uh mayor and council, this concludes my overview of the recommendations in the plan. I'm happy to answer any questions and I just want to note again that this is a long range plan. It's the vision document. It's to support advocacy, future development, inter agency coordination, those type of things. long range support future grant pursuits that type of long range planning. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Prom. Did you have any questions? Uh, thank you, Madame Mayor. Uh, just a a note, um, the actual report itself, I because it says draft, I'm assuming we can still update it. My recommendation would be maybe uh when you're referring to ATN, not sure if we want to refer to it in the past tense. Um, I know it's a minor thing, but if we're updating it, we might as well, you know, update it as best we can. Not sure if that's something that we can do on that one. Yeah, that's absolutely we can do that.

Cool. Uh, uh, thank you. Um, and then I I I I appreciate the clarification. You're there's a number of recommendations in here. Some of them are to us, some of them are outside agencies that we that we work with. Correct. That is correct. Cool.

Thank you. Um and so I just wanted to just wanted to clarify that and I know we had that conversation. Um obviously we serve you know a lot of us serve on these boards and and these other agencies that um we would be trying to make these recommendations and updates for. But just wanted to uh really highlight that and clarify that that there are a number of different organizations that play a role into some into all these recommendations. The question that I had was, you know, for those outside agencies, and I know you mentioned it's this is a very it's a long-term vision document. Um, but do we have for some of these concrete next steps versus here's our transit master plan? There it is. It's nice and here's our recommendations, but what comes next, I guess, is the question.

Yeah, as Jill mentioned, I mean, this is a high level planning document. definitely identified some near-term um improvements that we could make and we're going to be addressing those in the near near term. Um but also some of the longer term that we've been working on, you know, with like the East West Connector and and advancing those policies. Uh but also as we uh go after grants, um a document like this is very helpful in in um you know, it's usually an application process, point process. So having this in our long range plan is important. But as we were out there doing all of the outreach and community getting the community feedback, we didn't want to ignore the things that were just not out that are outside of our control. So any of that information that we could get that we could take back to the partners that we work with every day or even in a advocacy advocacy document that we could put out there so that all of you as well can help support what we're hearing from our community that they want to see out of their transit system. I agree with you and I I think what would be helpful for me is is you know as staff is hearing these concerns that yes we can work on on the long-term solutions but that we're also you know if if we're if I think the slide before this had um or the one before that that one for example more frequent service on the top eight OCTA routes as an example I think that's something that you know I'd like to talk about sooner versus later right and so having a plan and and whether that's as a board member bringing that forward and talking to OCTA staff um or what the essentially the next steps would be for for some of these I think is important for me.

We'll definitely be working with you on the the OCTA items. I'll push those forward. Cool. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Meeks and then Council Member Moss.

Thank you. Um one of the good things about doing a process like this is is there's overlap, too. And we talked you talked a little bit about the recommendation of whatever the future of ATN is having a more userfriendly um app and you also have a recommendation there of making um fair transfer agreement so that everything's on one card or something. As we move forward in the next couple years, figuring out what that new transportation circulator in the resort may be, let's make sure that we think about that and how it's going to tie into hopefully a countywide or, you know, Californiawide transit card or something that uh it will just fold into instead of having a separate app for the resort and a separate app for an east west connector and a separate app for the harbor bus. Absolutely. I mean, I don't think anything that we're looking for is hasn't been done and and been done really well in other places in the world. So, uh there are models um to look at and as we put together a transit system for our resort, that's something we want to make sure is on the forefront of our thinking and planning as well.

Okay. Thanks. Thank you. I echo council member Meeks. I'm kind of apt out. So, if there's any way of avoiding having to download an additional app, maybe tapping into existing um technology, that would be great. Um question about the bus stop amenities. Can we go to that slide, please? I just wanted to clarify. Will these amenities be citywide or are we focusing in the resort district? We originally started

apologize for that. We had originally started in the resort district because OCTA had a grant program where they were funding um bus stop improvements at the uh county's 100 busiest uh bus lines. So many of the ones in the resort of course fell into that. So there was funding for that. But that gave us the opportunity to do these pilot projects where you know where you don't see the traditional old benches, you see more of the stools and the leaning rails and other amenities. Um and that's this is something that we've seen uh successful in the resort and we are now trying to uh look for additional funding to push that out into other areas of the city.

Thank you. Um safety as a priority. Um I think of lighting and safety. How do we prioritize whether the specific amenity or the specific bus stop? Like do we do all one bus stop everything there or do we do lighting across all bus stops? How does that work? Yeah, if there is a shelter then we we put in lighting for all all of those. Um if there is not a shelter, it's just a stop, then we'll work with our public utilities department because they're always working towards proper street lighting everywhere. Um but if there are specific areas that we need to look at, we we can certainly address.

Thank you. And then last question, um we have an aging population. Baby boomers will not be driving in the next x amount of years. How do we factor that in our formulas? Or do we? Um well at a high level I mean I think the county takes the lead on kind of the demograph demographics of the um uh county and how it's changing and they've been doing a pretty good job w with that um with their access program across the the county but also I think our community services department has done an amazing job with their senior wheels program as well. So as we continue to see the success of those and we're going to see that population continue to need that we'll see those grow but the good thing is that we have the groundwork and a system in place that we can grow. Thank you. No further questions.

Thank you, Council Member Bis and then Council Member Rubikava. So, Council Member Ma just asked my my first question. So, I'm I'm going to I'm going to same question. I'm just going to rephrase it a little differently. I realize that this is a high level uh access and report but my question is did you take a look at the uh paratransion services and senior services with inside the city and did you come up with the idea that says we've got a good program we need to add to that program or was there any uh studies uh specifically related to that don't think we addressed it specifically

no we didn't we didn't look at it specifically They know. Okay. And then this the second question I have is I I know I read this plan a little bit and I don't know if this follows if this falls in Anaheim's uh I don't think Anaheim necessarily is the one planning for this. Maybe the OCTA, but I know that we've got the um the Southwest Gateway line coming down uh currently hopefully making its way down to the LA County border. um wondering the feasibility of continuing that on through to maybe uh Harbor in Garden Grove. Is that something that should be um possibly included or looked at in this plan?

Um it's probably a little bit larger than this plan, but it is something that we can certainly work with our our OCTA board members since it is OCTA rightway u to be be able to bring that line down. And I know they've they've studied studied it uh over the years. Um but it's some something with now what we know what's happening with LA on that line that we can bring back to OCTA and push for that as well. Is that something that can get included in this report? Um I I think we can go back and u make a mention of it and add it to the report. I'd appreciate it. Thank you. You're welcome.

Thanks Rudy. Uh, so I just mine's more of a comment. I was just going to say um thank you for uh adding more um to the plan to have more frequent uh pickups because after we saw the strike when Teamsters struck struck and OCTA wasn't able to operate, it impacted a lot of people in my district in particular. So, I appreciate that frequency uh especially 7 days a week cuz oftent times I see my residents on Saturday and Sunday waiting for buses that come every hour instead of every 15 minutes as they usually run. So, thank you for that. And then I also want to um thank you for including the um the what are those called? the shelters or the bus pickups because oftentimes the people who are taking the bus have been on their feet all day and then they're standing in the sun not really sure where to wait. So the fact that we're able to have somewhere for them to sit and I know strategically we had removed those in the past because of some of our other um safety issues that we've had. So with the frequent um just with our police department and Halo team leaning into all of those issues, I think we'll probably be able to avoid some of that. we might want to keep that on our radar, but I do love that we are going to be enhancing those for our city and for the residents who are using our public transportation system. So, so thank you.

Thank you, council member. Um, Mayor Prom, thank you, Madame Mayor. Just for clarity, how often do we update this, Rudy? Sorry. 19 years was the last time this was updated. I won't tell you how old I was. We we we won't we won't wait that long again. I What would be the goal? Uh how often should we be updating this? Is it like a strategic plan that we can review annually? Is it every 5 10 years? This is probably something you would probably do in the five to seven year range. Okay. To keep it current. Okay. Um yeah, 19 years. That's a very long time. And a lot's changed.

And a significant amount has changed. I mean since the draft so much has changed, right? Um the the other question I had and just keeping in mind the 5 to seven year range now I guess would be and I don't know if you mentioned the Olympics is that something at least some of these goals are some of these affected in terms of their priority level as we start seeing you know as we as we're planning for the Olympics are any of these because of that coming in do they move up in terms of priority or um recommendation level?

Yeah that that's a great question. And I'm glad you asked it and that's why a plan like this is important. So, if we're already showing for, you know, some of those short-term improvements like the the bus only lanes or the Q jumping and we have that in our plan and if there's uh funding that's available through LA28 to make some of these improvements for the Olympics, then we could look to have that fund these improvements um for the Olympics, but then they would stay in place for the long term as a legacy um for us u for meeting our future transit needs. And do you have a list of what those what some of those projects or what those recommendations would be?

Not a a defined list. These are just again really highlevel recommendations of what we would like to do. So we would look at specific areas. So um you know for the Olympics for example Cella would be a a really good uh candidate for that. Got it. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Um I when we're talking about the long range plans, I mean I know that highspeed rails on here. Um do we have I especially for the east west connector. I mean I feel like that's a high level project that has been talked about and been in our um transportation plans for I don't know what would you estimate how many years? Um well I I think it was probably about uh 12 15 years ago when we first started looking at the street car system and that was kind of the genesis of it. Um but you know that that stopped and now we're picking that work back up as we're hearing that uh that is a priority. Um so uh yeah it's been been talked about for at least 15 years. Do we um do we have any indication um like realistically if we like when if you know we were able to secure the funding or we as a council or the next council decided to dedicate a substantial amount of LPMR towards transit? You know, realistically, what type of time frame could we have something up and running?

Um I'll be honest with you, I don't think we could. some of the what we're talking about for the East West Connector and those those new technologies, we probably wouldn't be able to do it before the Olympics. Um one, we with just the SQL process alone would would probably take 18 to 24 months. Um and then you have design and construction. So um best case scenario, if we had all of the funding today, I I would say that's probably a a five, six year process until we have a system up and running.

Okay. I've lost hope for highspeed rail. I just want to be alive for East West Connector. I have more hope for that. Um, okay. I pulled this item, so I will make a motion to move it. Seeing no other questions. If there's a second, we have a motion and a second. Please vote. This is item number 11. Item number 11 is a resolution the city council of the city of Anaheim approving the 2026 Anaheim transit master plan update. And the vote is seven eyes, no nays. Motion carries. Thank you. Um, next item that was pulled by Mayor Prom, item number four, also with Mr. Mommy.

May we have a Do you want a staff report? Staff report, please.

All right. Um, well, the item before you is the award of a construction contract for the park substation line extension project supporting the Gypson Canyon Memorial Park development. This project will install new underground electrical infrastructure and street lighting along San Canyon Road to support future development and public utilities will provide the improvements with costs reimbursed by the project applicant. Staff uh recommends awarding the contract to outsourced utility contractor LLC as the lowest responsible bu bidder in the amount of approximately $4.88 million plus contingency. The bid is consistent with current market conditions and considered reasonable. The project is anticipated to begin in the third quarter of 2026 with completion in 2027. That concludes the staff report and I have uh general manager Duku Lee with me here as well and can answer any questions.

Thank you. I'll turn it over to Mayor Prom.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I I don't have that many questions. um more than anything um wanted some clarifications, but more than anything wanted to just make a comment about um I mean this is this is a very important step in what will eventually be uh the veteran cemetery in that area. Correct. Um, and it's just a it's a highlight of at least for me, and we've said it, I I've said it before when we were talking about the actual decision uh to approve uh make all the approvals on the city side that it it truly was and is an honor to um be have Anaheim be um the site for this uh county veteran cemetery, and this is, I think, another step in in making that uh move forward. The two questions I wanted to ask you was um the staff report mentioned that there's also a water main extension that we would need to install in terms of the timeline and how the is there you have to do this first and then the water man extension is there um or is it kind of do they dovetail um can you talk about that?

Absolutely. So, the water man uh is in the design build process and so we're going through the that bid uh cycle right now and so we hope to bring something back for city council consideration sometime this summer. Um that one will take a little bit longer than this. Uh they were looking at different types of options uh to not bring the water main. they were looking at their cost uh uh capabilities and so they decided that they do need a portable water line and so um that process will take probably about two years. Okay. U so that'll come with us this summer. Would that um would any of this work be taking place at the same time?

Uh potentially. So the design process would take roughly about a year or so and then construction starts thereafter. So there may be a little bit of overlap and one of the things that we're doing is because we don't want to waste resources. For example, uh after the electric work this project is done, we're going to hold off on final paving, let the water main project go forward. Uh it'll follow public works standards and then afterwards that after the water project, that's when the final restoration would take place. Okay. Thank you. And then just in terms of potential impacts of construction, um I know we hear a lot about the traffic concerns. Can you talk a little bit about what steps we're taking to mitigate any potential traffic concerns in that area?

Yeah, so our typical uh call our good neighbor policy is have uh construction um hour limitations and uh we we will have those in place for these projects as well. So that's staying out of that peak uh traffic zone. So construction doesn't start until after 8:30 in the morning and stops uh before 3:30. Um, but also we're going to do a lot of community outreach and and signage and let people know that as you've seen our our projects before, we'll put changeable message signs out there to let people know that to expect heavy delays if they're going to take that route um to hopefully avoid the area and know they shouldn't go down that road. Um the the fortunate thing too is you know that this um uh road isn't used by too many of our uh residents either either. So we won't see our an impact to our residents, but it's usually um by uh commuters are using it to avoid the 91.

Which leads to the the the last question that I have was because I know that OCTA is doing or is going to be doing work uh in this area um and is doing some work I think or is going to be doing some work. Can you I'm assuming there's coordination between the agencies to make sure that we're all on the same page. Correct. Uh that's correct. The project that'll be coming up is TCA. So they're going to have their uh uh the toll-to- toll connection from the 241 to the 91 and they will be using a portion of this road for bypass when they have night closures. Um and they will be participating in some of the uh restoration work as well. So there's there will be close coordination with them as well. Okay. Do you anticipate any delays because of that uh overlapping construction?

Um no no we don't anticipate delays. We've been communicating with them. Okay. Thank you again. Just wanted to I I thank both of you and your teams for for the work on this. Again, it's another step forward in the veteran cemetery here in the city of Anaheim and just appreciate the work. Thank you, Council Member Meeks.

Well, echo um Mayor Prom's comments about uh the Veteran Cemetery and how proud we are and supportive of this project. Um, this project has other benefits too with we're going to get some road resurfacing. Um, but it also um there's not much electrical service out there. There's a service line for the church and things. This project um undergrounds that. Correct.

So um show you this. This is what the roadway looks like right now. Um the scope of work includes the civil infrastructure and new underground lines that will go through there. But that pole line is owned by Southern California Edison. So we don't have any facilities on there. So as a result, we would have to have either the developer or some other resource pay to underground for Edison's lines. So that's not part of this project. And that would have to be either through other resources or grants or other things in order to pay for Edison undergrounding.

What uh what does this line serve? What does Edison serve out there? They pass through the city and they also do currently serve uh the kindred church area and so when we go through that area and build out then we will pick up that service. Okay. But they Edison line still serves something else besides that kindred church. There's some uh traffic controllers and other things that they serve. So this line basically comes down weir canyon underground. They rise up on Santa Ana Canyon and then they kind of pass back through gypsum canyon. And so all they're serving is traffic control things out there,

but it's a tie line that they they use to route power through there. So they don't have a need to underground it for their purposes at this point. And my understanding is they put covered conductor to help with some wildfire mitigation on this line. Okay. All right. Yeah, I was really hoping to get uh all the power off of our lines and be able to get rid of that. That's too bad. Um, so this, as you can see in this picture, this road is only one lane in each direction. So will we be able to maintain one lane in each direction through construction except for maybe short-term closures overnight or off peak hours? Yes.

Yes, we'll be able to use traffic around it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And um, Mr. Did we reach out to Edison to see like what the cost would be to underground this?

So, we have uh general costs for undergrounding any lines, electrical lines. Generally, it's about could be 4 to6 million on the low side in upwards of 8 million on some of the more congested areas. So, my estimate here is 4 to6 million per mile. This is a mile and a half. So, you're talking about a little over 910 million here on a project like this. So um Edison is not compelled to use their funds to underground um you know for with outside of their service territory. And this is something that we face throughout the city. It's not just this area. It's areas like East Street um Ball Road Crescent. Uh there's about 50 miles where Edison traverses through the city of Anaheim. uh even though they may not be serving Anaheim customers because Anaheim's built out over the years and Edison used to have lines that served the various areas.

Okay. Thank you. Um Council Member Bis

uh Duke, quick question. Would this be a project if the uh grant funds were able to go to say a local utility? Could this be something that could be applied for with the Spark Grant? Um, I think it would be a possibility, but what we've seen with the Spark grant, this is the Department of Energy um, transmission plan. They've been awarding more regional uh, interstate large projects that are transmissionoriented rather than local distribution types of projects. That's something that we've heard. Uh we we're in the process of trying to get um support, congressional support to encourage the Department of Energy to look at distribution projects as well. Um however um this current cycle, I don't think it would be um something that we could move forward with.

Sure. Well, I guess so. My my second followup to that then is if the spark grants were to include some of the local uh utilities that are out there, would would this be a really good time to advertise, hey, call your local uh congress person and uh say, hey, let's let's include the word local utilities in the spark grant possibly, but I think starting with the congressional letter to make that letter uh have other um representatives sign on and then encourage the Department of Energy. I think that would be a good starting place uh as opposed to individuals um submitting letters.

So, I'll ask maybe um I don't know what the you know support here might be, but maybe that's something that we could start here with the city council, bring that letter before us and see if it's something that we could sign and send on to the legislators. Sure. Thank you. Um Mayor Pam, would you like to make a motion? Uh move the The vote is seven eyes, no nays. Motion carries.

Thank you. The next item on our list, also with Mr. Amami, is um item number six, which was pulled by council member Curts. Would you like a staff report?

No, I don't need a staff report. I just want to I have a a specific question, actually. Um it's noted that it the funds are are reimburseable. Um is that part of the Disney Forward project and commitment from Disney? Uh great question. Yes, it is. Uh so uh as part of the Disneyland Forward project, they've agreed to pay for all of the staff costs. Um and in return, they're looking for expedited review services to do that. So, um, to be able to do that without expanding our, uh, staff, um, for a short period of time or this is going to be probably a 18 months to two-year period, um, we looked for a qualified consultant that has been, um, very active in designing projects in the resort and working with the city that has the knowledge that can focus solely on the uh, Disney rideway projects. Um, so that's a number of intersections, roadway projects, the flyover that they have into the new parking structure. Um, and we went out for a competitive bid. This consultant rose to the top and will be fully reimbursed by Disney and in addition to giving staff the support we need to be able to make sure we can meet the commitments of the time um commitments to return the the plan reviews on time.

Great. Thank you. I appreciate that. I'll move the item.

Did you have a question? Thank you for clarifying that. I mean, I know we hear a lot that um you know that Disneyland and Disneyland Forward gets favored treatment, but I think it's so important to point out that they are paying for this themselves because if we didn't have this, it would pretty much shut down our planning and building department and we wouldn't be able to service the tens of thousands of other small businesses um in the city. So, I'm actually I think it's just I really appreciate staff, you know, recognizing this and making sure that this was a negotiated um point plan in Disneyland forward. Um so, I think council member Curts made a motion

and a second. Thank you. Please vote. Vote a seven eyes, no nays. Motion carries. Thank you. You are off the hook. Um the next item is item number 10, which is um pulled by council member Moss. Would you like a staff report? I don't need the full staff report. Just a couple questions and comments for our fire chief.

Thank you. And I have some questions, too. I was going to pull this as well. So, Hello. Thank you in advance or I should say thank you for your service period. Um I'm really excited about the possibility of getting a dog for our department. My understanding is that up until this point, if we needed a peer support dog, we would call in a K9 from either Orange or Huntington Beach. Is that correct?

That's correct. We could we would use those two uh agencies or Orange County Fire Authority. When was the last time we had a peer support dog uh of our own? Never. We've had a couple working canines in the past, one assigned to our urban search and rescue team, excuse me, and an arson accelerant dog, but we've never had a peer support dog. You know how much I love animals. Yes, ma'am.

Um, this is a really exciting thing, but I do want to point out some more serious um, statistics that I was reading in the report. Um, 40% of professional firefighters are experiencing clinically significant levels of anxiety and depression. I also want to point out that the suicide rate for firefighters in the United States is nearly double of the average working age adult. And according to the CDC, first responders are more likely to die by suicide than in the line of duty. So those are really staggering points.

Apologize. Unfortunately, uh that that is correct. And I apologize. I did introduce this is one of our battalion chiefs, Pat Burton, and he heads up our uh wellness, which also covers our peer support and our mental health program. So, that's why I had him come in here tonight if there were some questions he would be able to answer better than me. But those those numbers are are correct and they are very, you know, sad. I just want to acknowledge the risk that you all take, not only in going into buildings, but the cancer exposure and the mental health impact. So, um, those are all real things. Although this is an exciting issue, I want to acknowledge those, um, really serious numbers. Um, and then to that point, I just wanted to ask what type of peer support we currently have in place.

So, currently, we have we have several levels. We have our chaplain service. We have trained firefighters that are kind of the first level of peer support. We also have clinicians on uh, call 247 uh, that we can call. Um yeah, as as he said, we had of all those other levels that are already in place right now. We've been able to partner with our APD brothers and utilize some of their services as well. Um and we also have our own internal peer support group, which is what I lead currently. Um so we have those different levels built in. One of the biggest issues, as you've read from the statistics, is the kind of the stigma of the firefighter making that first call, making that leap out there. So with with our own internal peer support group that helps generate that kind of that closeness of having you phone a friend as opposed to having to try to call somebody else they're not willing to do that they can call one of the clinicians and it's 100% uh you know confidential. So we have several different layers layers built in right now.

Thank you. And I know animals have a way of providing comfort that humans don't have capacity for. So I look forward to supporting this item. Thank you.

Thank you. Um, I had a couple of questions, but I'll preface it. I also like dogs. Um, but I had some questions just on is can you walk me through why I I think when we first had a conversation, Chief, um, we had talked about the the cost being absorbed within your current budget, but it looks like we are asking for an amendment to the 2526 general fund budget. So, is this going to be something that's going to be I guess can So, it's not just for next year's budget. We are changing your budget for last year to June.

Yeah. So, and I actually starred that because as I was rereading the report and in I I was uh the uh the startup the $9500 startup is coming out of the discretionary Anaheim Fire Department budget. So, what you see in this staff report is is not we're not asking for more money. That's coming out of our current fire department budget. I I realize that it says it and that was an oversight on my part that I didn't catch that to get it changed before it went to council. Okay. So when we are looking at making a motion so the cost to um of this program for this fiscal year will be zero.

That that is correct. It it also in the report it talks about it's probably going to be 6 to 8 months before we get the program up and running and get a dog trained with the handler. So we would be into the ne next budget cycle. So our budget would under our discretionary spending would cover the cost of this program. Okay. And can you um walk me through it says uh 95 more or less $9,500 for one dog for one year. Correct.

Yes, ma'am. And that's broken down as I'm sure you you saw this here, the cost for the the uh salary um percent for the uh the handler, the supplies, so forth, and and uh allotted overtime for a certain number of hours that are required for peer support training with the uh with the dog. And that's on an annual basis.

Okay. Um, I'm just asking because when this was first presented, this was the first question I asked, which was I love I love the idea. What is it going to cost? And it was around $10,000 for up to two dogs. But if one dog is looking at $8,000 annual cost, how is that going to work if we want to add a second dog?

Yeah, thank you for the question, Madame Mayor. I think that uh different people providing different information, it got a little uh confusing when we originally proposed this program over two years ago. We wanted to look at if we had to build out to two peer support canines with our size. We're prepared. We're going to do track everything. How many times the dog is called out, how many hours, all that. and we looked at putting into the policy having at some point if we needed two dogs. Um the prices that you were seeing and all of our conversations was to start with one dog and build from there depending on the needs of the organization. So the the price breakdown that you see here is for one K9. If we came to that we needed a second K9 due to the hours that the dog was working, the amount of call outs for our firefighters and and the public, we would come back and ask for a second dog. And that might be a different uh discussion with that amount of money. That might have to be a budgeted item as opposed to uh discretionary funding.

Okay. Okay. And I guess that kind of leads into my next question, which is, is this position going to be taking a firefighter out of a station not responding to calls?

So, the short answer is it could for a short amount of time like like other things that that happen like when our fire investigators get called out. Um, if we uh have to send a firefighter to a a clinic maybe for a minor injury or something and we wait, there are times that that that does happen, we look uh uh at all the options to keep all of our companies staffed at at minimum staffing. That could be grabbing folks depending on the time of day, time of year, grabbing uh two of our firefighter paramedics on the one of the paramedic squads, uh putting them on there temporarily uh until we get a determination of that. Um, uh, if there's a rig going to training and there's a firefighter that's already had the training, rather than him sit him or her set through the training, again, we would that, and that's kind of what the battalion chiefs do on a on a sliding scale all day long, is move the pieces around to keep our staffing what it's supposed to be and keep units in service. But we know some things do come up that we have to adjust for.

Thank you. Um, I was, well, I should say dangerously researching because I was looking at things on the internet. So, I don't know. I just want to make sure that my informationation um is is correct. But it seems like the the 24 hours is pretty regular for training in a calendar year, but then we add an additional eight hours um to bring it to up to 32 hours. So my question is what is the like what is the minimum requirement to have certification every year to be a peer support handler and if that is if somebody is not if it's 24 hours of training a year and they don't do additional training are they still paid for those eight hours or is it just if additional training is required

thank you so minimum as as I understand it uh is 24 hours to for the certifications uh to be a peer support K9 handler. The additional uh 8 hours to 32 is if something comes up or if there's something that they need uh to do. But but that is not if they don't need that that time or don't need to do any training then we wouldn't send them to receive additional training above the 24 hours.

Okay. Thank you. That's very helpful. Um I get my last question is I know we ended up um doing this as an LOOU um to theou with AFA. Does that mean that if the program is not successful or if there is not somebody that wants to be a peer support K-9 handler that this program um is mandated to occur? or is it something when we say it goes to the end of the year, it can be in your discretionary budget every year?

Yes, ma'am. Thank you. So, like a lot of our uh specialties, it's at the discretion of of the fire chief. Meaning, if we got to a point, let's say we didn't have anybody that wanted to be a handler, could, you know, looked at at at some of those things, like when we had our our other canines that had different functions, we didn't have people that were qualified or wanted to be uh canine handlers. So, we suspended those programs. And that would be the same with this. If we got to a decision that we realized that that we couldn't support the dog, I doubt we would ever say we wouldn't need the dog. But if if that if that came up, I could make the decision that we would not have to have the program.

And then are you charged, chief, with the oversight of this program with um hours, costs, etc.?

So, uh that would be under our operations division under um deputy chief grant. I would review that. Obviously, every time we start a new program, you uh you dive into it as deep as you can to make sure everything uh is going the way it's supposed to. Chief Burton will be the kind of day-to-day contact with it. and he's logging and has plans to really drill down so we can provide information if asked or things on like I said how many times the the dog is called out how long that is the time is it for a firefighter maybe another first responder uh here in the city or another city a civilian that that may need need help so we can track all those things so um we we will know exactly how the program is is uh uh tracking Okay. Thank you. I would appreciate that when we uh if it passes, you know, if we come back that we're tracking what the actual costs to the program are, how many training hours have actually been um dedicated to this program as well as any potential overtime that was incurred by other officers. Um I, you know, I think that's kind of how we get a a whole picture um of this program. Um, and then I know it mentioned, sorry, my last question. It mentioned um the policies um and procedures for this program. Have those been drafted? I didn't see those in the staff report and if not, who will be drafting them and when will they be ready?

So, they are being drafted largely. They're they're done. Again, that is with deputy chief uh uh Grant Grant and with uh Chief Burton here have been working on those uh and going back and forth when there are questions with our with our labor group to make sure they're on board and understand and that's uh a lot of the policies just as an example, ma'am, are like uh you know how the dog will be housed when it's at the station, how more of the nuts and bolts, not really the the financial aspect that is in the in the LOU. So, we're anticipating that that the uh um policy will be done here uh this month and we'll have it approved by and looked at by the AFA and and by our staff and be ready to go with that. It's it's almost there now as I understand. Is that correct, Chief?

Yeah, it it should be done at this point. I was trying to get a draft for you guys today, but I was unable to uh to obtain that for you, but from my understanding, it's complete. Yeah, I I understand you will a different person or department will be tracking the hours and the finances. I was more concerned that pol any policies and procedures are obviously going to be approved by risk management RHR to make sure that we're all on the same page. Absolutely. Risk management has been a partner with us from the start. I believe they've seen the the policy um and and have made edits to that as other people have. So, um, yeah, we're touching every touch point we can to get it right from the start.

Wonderful. Well, I am very excited about this program. Um, I hope to expand too. Um, you know, I if Well, I think setting it up the first time can be the hardest, but hopefully we can have a lot of success and and um, you know, grow our four-legged force um with the fire department. Uh, council member Bis and then council member Rubikava. Thank you. I got to work on uh pressing my buttons quicker so I can get the questions out rather than saying, "Well, I think somebody else already asked this question." But uh first thing I want to ask or first thing I'll say is this. You know, I'm a dog guy. I got a dog at home. There's no doubt when I get home my blood pressure goes down. So, um I hope that it'll have the same effect on our guys out there as well. Um, and I think you probably already answered this question, but I'm going to ask it just a little bit differently. You know, uh, with the addition of the dog, do you see that as impacting any of our level of service at any point in time? Because I think that's important.

So, yes, sir, thank you for the question. I do not see it impacting our level of service. that level of service may be a little flexible for a few hours while we adapt like I gave some examples earlier that when we do have to uh flex a little bit or pivot a little bit to to accomplish what we need what we need to do.

Okay, perfect. I think that's important also just to double up but to keep track of that data and see how that data works I think is important. So I'm I'm I was glad to hear you say you were going to do that. And then the last comment I'll make is as I was reading this uh staff report that you guys put together, by the way, thank you. I really like the fact that on the uh last paragraph, I think on the third page, you did say that the dog would return home with the handler after shifts, allowing for necessary ref and maintaining a work life balance for the animal. So, I wanted to say thank you for u looking after the dog as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Well, my nephew is a firefighter for LA County, so I um and also uh mental health and wellness is a big priority for me as a council member, and we host an event every year, and thank you guys for supporting that every year since we've started it. So, I do support this um uh initiative that you have. Thank you for including it in your discretionary budget so you're not asking us to increase your budget. And um I know you'll probably be able to do that moving forward. And but I do have a question. How come we keep bringing resolutions instead of just having budget items that So I I guess I'm curious as to why we went the resolution route for the K9 dog and not just start a program using your discretionary dollars to so I guess that's just my question seems a little more complicated than necessary. I I will uh uh say that this is a LOOU, so it's part of anou uh which does require council approval. I think you're adding some uh premium pay to an employee. So that's probably the main reason that's in the version of a resolution.

So I think that would be great to kind of explain that for because it just seems a little over the top to have to do the whole LOU and and with the premium pay, but okay. and especially because we just did the contract for AFA. So that probably would have been something that could have been done during negotiations. So I would just recommend that next time if we could consider doing that when we are negotiating labor agreements if this is going to be part of that because it just makes it less cumbersome for all of us. But I do support this initiative for our firefighters. I appreciate the work that you all do and I think adding a support peer dog to your dayto-day will be helpful. I I I have a German Shepherd. If you guys ever need a dog to train, he needs some TLC cuz we're a little too busy to walk this poor guy. But um anytime you can borrow Hulk. So, thank you,

Mayor Prom. Thank you, Madame Mayor. Um, I will I will vote to support this chief, but once you get the dog, you have to bring them in for us to meet him too. Yes, sir. Absolutely. That was your pause is concerning like no, we're not bringing him in. Uh, no. In all seriousness, I I I appreciate my colleagues and I'll echo their comments and anything that we can do to try to support better mental health, especially for our first responders, uh, is definitely something that I am supportive of, so I appreciate it.

I also have some name suggestions, but we can cross that road once we get cross that bridge when we get to it. Thank you. Um, so Council Member Ma, would you like to make the motion to make a motion to move? I'll second. Just to clarify, I think the chief indicated that there's no need to enhance the budget. So is the motion for So do would that's not in the LOU though. It's in the motion. It's in the motion. So if the motion is staff recommendation minus that budget enhancement, I think that's what the chief was saying would be more consistent with what he's asking for. So I proudly make a motion minus the budget enhancement. Yeah.

Right. So, just for clarity, we are approving this motion in the LOOU, but we are not requiring any new appropriation of funds to the 2526 general fund budget. I'll second that. The motion included approval of resolution the city council of the city of Anaheim adopting the letter of understanding establishing the terms and conditions of a peer support K9 program for employees represented by the Anaheim firefighters association local number 2899. And this also includes the amendment removing the amendment of the fiscal year 2025 Anaheim fire and rescue budget in the amount of 9517. And the vote is seven I's no nays. Motion carries. Okay, that was our last item that had been pulled from consent. So, we are going to move on to our business calendar. Item 14 is a presentation by Visit Anaheim on the value of sports tourism and sports group business in the city. Mr. Deputy City Manager, can you please introduce this item?

Thank you, Mayor Council. I'll ask for a presentation from our convention sports and entertainment director, Mr. Tom Morton. Can we just talk about how slow those guys were in leaving? Uh, good evening again, uh, mayor and council. Tom Morton, Commission Sports Entertainment, and Council Member Curts had asked for a presentation from Visit Anaheim on sports tourism and sports group business. And with that, I'm going to load it and I'm going to introduce Katie Wright, who will be providing that presentation. Hold on, Katie. You're good. You're good. Just tell me to advance.

Perfect. Thank you so much. Good evening everyone. It's a pleasure to be here and present on this topic. My name is Katie Ray. I'm the convention sales director sports segment for Visit Anaheim. So sports touris tourism in Anaheim is a substantial topic for us here at Visit Anaheim. Um beyond the financials, sports tourism is crucial for our city. It brings future tourism pipeline, health and wellness, city pride, compete and see top level sporting events here in the community, international exposure, brand recognition. I think we saw that firsthand here early on in this meeting when we saw the youth sports get recognized and how big of an impact it can make on on the youth in our community. In addition, we wanted to discuss the collaborative efforts between Visit Anaheim and the Orange County Sports Commission. So, I know there's been a lot of questions of the uh collaboration there and how we work together to bring business into the great city of Anaheim. So to back up, Visit Anaheim has two segments for the sales. You have convention and then you have meeting sales. So I personally handle the convention segment. Anything that has a room block that goes into the Anaheim Convention Center, that is my my piece. It it goes straight to me. And then the meetings team handles anything that just has a room block but does not touch the convention center. So these could be your groups that are at your local parks, at the Honda Center, what have you that is on the meetings team side um going into Orange County Sports Commission. So they are a fantastic organization. They do support our efforts tremendously, but they're also focused on Orange County as a whole. That could be Irvine, Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, any of the cities in between in addition to ours. So while we

are at similar trade shows, we are at similar um developments and such, we are focused on very different things. My goal, my number one goal is bringing in sports business to the Anaheim Convention Center. All right, so I wanted to also highlight some key wins from 2025. So we have BlizzCon. This is only the second time that it'll return uh in 2026 since CO. It used to be an annual event. It's an e-gaming esports event. I'm sure you've heard of it and are familiar with um this this event. 23 hotels, 10,500 rooms annually. So, we are very excited to welcome them back here in a few months. USA volleyball. This is a relationship that I've really worked hard to foster and develop here over the past few months. So, we just had their first tournament uh this past weekend at the convention center. nearly 600 volleyball teams, all youth girls teams, and it was wildly successful. Many of the hotels were impacted. We have 11,000 room nights that come from that tournament um each time that it comes in, and then we're also welcoming them back in January for back-to-back tournaments um early January 2027. And to highlight the impact of that one, the back-to-back tournaments for USAV in January 2027 has the near similar uh economic impact as NAM does. So, it's like we're adding another NAM to the month of January. It's lovely to see. I think we'll see 2027 start off very strong. Fencing is another key win. I know this sounds a little obscure um but bear with me. May 2026. So we have them here uh for the first time they'll be using hall E which is an underutilized hall in our facility. So what I've been targeting is

the lesser used um meeting spaces and halls to try and offset some of the uh revenues there. So we have the fencing coming in and then they're also looking to come back in 2027 if this one does well. And I'm also working on a USA fencing uh nationals as well. All right. So, 2026 key action items. My this is my checklist, my to-do list for the year. So, establish Anaheim as the volleyball headquarters. As we've mentioned earlier, USA volleyball is a key component. There's numerous uh groups that are looking to get in on the volleyball segment. So, we are working hard on that. Fill short-term open pockets. So, I like to joke that I play Tetris all day. I'm looking for the open pockets. I'm looking for those little pieces that I can shift into uh the convention center. So in addition to that, I also look for ways to stack business. So I'm trying to do this strategically. I'm not looking to stack um let's say cheerleaders with pharmaceutical. I'm looking to stack it with the right type of mix of group and also keep in mind the wear and tear on the facility. So, if we have a heavy uh parking group per se, I'll look for something that isn't as heavy on the parking side. So, being strategic with that and working with Tom and his team at the convention center to do so. I'm also developing relationships with top e-gaming stakeholders. So, trying to push through additional events such as BlizzCon. Um I have my eye on the GDC, EVO, PAX Unplugged. Those are some of the biggest ones here uh in the nation and I'd love to see them in Anaheim. So, I'm working on that. And then increase market exposure. So, we're partnered directly with Sports ETA um to gain exposure to the rights holders. So, I'll

actually be going there to their summit here in two weeks to visit with 40 to 50 right holders uh to get their leads to bring them here to Anaheim. All right, competitive landscape. So, our top competitors in my market are Orlando, Dallas, Houston, LA, Las Vegas, Atlanta, and San Diego. I'm sure none of that comes as a big surprise when you see the landscape and what their their primary drivers are. So, the top two drivers for decision- making are host fees and financial incentives as well as venue costs. So these are two key pieces and two key hurdles that I need to overcome with each piece of business that I look to bring here. A lot of the destinations of our compet competitors such as Houston, Dallas, Orlando, they have the funding, they have a lot of grants and such that they can give to offset some of the rentals and that is a key piece especially in the e-gaming segment that I run into often. the destination location, destination offerings, hotel rates, destination demographics. We have that pretty much on lock. We are our our community here in Anaheim, the hotel community really works hard to I know we mentioned ADR here recently. They work hard to keep the rates as economical as possible given the type of market that I'm I'm working on. um destination demographics. We're a safe city, especially in comparison to a lot of these other compet competitors. Our city is very safe, very walkable, so they can bring their youth sports groups here. All right. And then we have Anaheim's Golden Decade. So, five partner events as Mike had outlined earlier. We have the FIFA World Cup, 2027 Women's Volleyball World

Championships at Honda Center, LA28 at the Honda Center, Rugby World Cup 2031, 2033, and then Salt Lake City, Utah 2034. A lot of these are just more highlevel um notoriety that we will get from these events. A lot of times we get the question of exactly where is Anaheim and we're always fighting to say we're not LA. We are in Orange County. We're right below LA, but just having that additional lens on our city, I think, is a great thing for us. All right, that's all I have for you.

Thank you so much for um that presentation. I just got my Olympic tickets and fencing was one of the ones that um my girls wanted. So, the fact that you have fencing and as a former rugby player that we're having rugby, too. I mean, this is this is wonderful. Um, are there any questions or comments by council uh on this report? Council member Meeks. So, you you talked uh a couple slides ago about, you know, what they're looking for, cost, things like that. Is there um do some of them care about the attendee market? because it seems like some of these um you know you can bring in the competition but like in the Pokemon one there's just so many people in this area that came in and paid them a lot of money to attend. Um so is that a big piece of some of this on some of these sports things?

It absolutely is. That's a big piece for ones like Pokemon, BlizzCon, Volleyball. We have the demand here in our market and in our community for these events to be here naturally. They don't have to convince people flying across the country to do it. They have people coming locally and across the country to attend these events. So, it makes it easier for the organizers. Yeah, seems like that's I mean we have a lot of things going for us. maybe a little more expensive, but

yes, we have a lot of key items going for us. And that's honestly what I rely upon a lot of times when I'm talking to these clients is it may be more expensive, but look at how much easier and how much savings you have on the marketing side or your registration side because you'll have great attendance. Okay. And just just to add, our drive market is roughly 20 million people. Yeah. Which is huge. I mean, it's huge compared to I'm going to go to, you know, well, anywhere else really.

Yeah. Anywhere else. Um, and do you think there's a strong market for um sports outside of the convention center? So, if we had facilities like sports fields and things like that, that we could have the same sort of impact on some of these sports tourism events. Absolutely. There's tremendous market. Um, each of these trade shows that I go to, they get a little confused that I just do the convention center. They're looking for parks in our community. And the demand for specifically soccer, baseball, softball is tremendous. They would be filled every single weekend, I think.

Yeah. And I know some of the other communities around us have built sports complexes. Yes. But they don't have the visitor infrastructure that we have here with the hotels and things close to those fields. So, um, it's something I've asked the city manager's office and our team to to look at and what are the finances of that and is is it something that makes sense for us? I appreciate this information. Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you, Council Member Bis and then Council Member Curts. My first question is, and thank you for going back to this slide, but how did that guy get up that high? That's my first question. That's why I went back. This picture is awesome. Uh that is um quite the lift for sure. Um

we'll work on it after. It'll be fun. We'll be working on it for for a long time. I wonder if there's like a mattress or something that we don't see in the picture. They kick off the other person so they kind of like All right, thank you for that. Uh seriously though, uh you know, you talked about e- gaming and I think that's a definite uh wave of the future, good place to be. Um, so the quick question I would ask is, is our convention center set up to handle the bandwidth uh for an e-gaming convention? Yes. I don't know if you want to discuss Katie says yes. Okay.

So, so the one thing from a convention center technology perspective is is we are at a point right now that if anybody asks if we can do anything technologically, the answer is yes. So our pipe for bandwidth is significantly 100 megabits. So we can handle most all e- gaming.

Okay. I like to hear the word. Yes, that's for sure. Um and then the second question I have is we you talked a little bit about youth sports and the local parks. I'm curious um how how or what is the impact on our local parks uh for that? And are we are are we addressing that in uh say backdating maintenance charges to the uh sports groups that come in?

Absolutely. I think there's room for that especially as you're negotiating with the the tournament organizers and making sure that all the upkeep and grounds are are built into the cost of the rental for those programs. um the rights holders and the tournament organizers generally understand that there's rental of the the space just in general upkeep but also in the manpower to to execute the program.

Right. So the city I know charges X dollars to rent a field that's there. Are we maybe this might be a question for the parks department, but do we have a additional fee if somebody's running a uh you know a league that's coming in and using this the fields as well? I do not know the answer to that. Okay. I do apologize. Do you know what are the uh top fields that are used? Is it uh soccer fields, ball fields? Do they use it as football or what is you know what the top sport is that's advertising currently? It depends on the season, but soccer, baseball, softball are the top ones. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Curts, and then Council Member Moss. Thank you. What I'm amazed at as as I'm um driving through the the the resort areas, youth con uh youth sports conventions, what I've seen is that these kids live in Orange County, but they stay in our hotels during that convention period. So, um what are we doing to increase youth sports?

Absolutely. Okay. So, we do encourage the youth sports, make it more of a family trip. We explain to them that this is an experience for their for their kids to come in and act like an adult, show that they can be a hotel and control, not running down the hallways and what have you. But this is also an experience for them. This is memories that they're making as a family um that they're really trying to drive in instead of well instead of driving in they're trying to stay you know somebody from visit Anaheim told me that even during maybe it was Tom that even during times when um co as an example some of these youth sports continued

they did so youth sports was the first thing to come back to our city. It was also the first thing to move out to places like Phoenix and Vegas, places that stayed open. They wanted to continue meeting and they're very resilient market. Um, so they're a very dependable market. They may not be the top grossing. They may not be the flashiest ADR, but they are resilient and dependable. Thank you, Council Member Mos.

Thank you. And those sports sports parents are tough. Um you mentioned soccer, baseball, and softball as the top sports. Are we seeing growth in any other sports? So those would be the top sports for parks in general outside of the convention center. At the convention center, we're seeing extreme growth for volleyball and basketball specifically. Um those we constantly have demand for. Cheer dance has always been there. There's always going to be growth there as well. I know it's a little harder on the convention center at times for cheer and dance to be in there. Um, but we've seen tremendous growth on that side, too.

Thank you. Tom loves it. Um, they tend to spread out very quickly. Um, I have an interest and passion in parathletes. Is there any opportunity for adaptive sports? Do you see a growth in that or a rise in that? You know, I have seen some adaptive sports. Um, we've seen wheelchair basketball come through, wheelchair rugby come through. Um, those I will say rely heavier on the financial incentives and support and that's something that we don't quite have at this moment, but as a fellow sports parent and um, I would love to see it. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Um, one last question. Um, oh, and then Mayor Prom, have we has Visit Anaheim or any surrounding cities ever, I guess, hosted like an invitational, if we have the room for volleyball, basketball, and if so, what kind of goes into that? I haven't seen us host it, and correct me if I'm wrong. Um, but I would say there's a lot of logistics that would go into hosting it yourself. It's everything from courts to sourcing the correct teams and the best teams. Um, at this point I wouldn't advise to do that.

Okay. Thank you, Mayor Potm.

Thank you, Madame Mayor, and thank you for the presentation. I I think when you said that the USA volleyball events were the equivalent of NAM, uh, you know, anyone who's been to N, I think it's the second largest that we that we host. I mean, it's a it's a huge huge event. And so, um, that caught me by surprise a little bit, but it's good news. Uh, it's good news. Um, just the clarification on just your role and how you work with the convention center. Can you clarify? Is your role more just kind of being the the liaison and kind of connecting these groups that want to come in with the convention center and then kind of letting them have that conversation whether it's a good fit. and and then you mentioned that you you try to use unused halls or halls to basically maximize the the our area. Can you just share how that how do you how do you have access to the information and if you can clarify those if that made sense?

Absolutely. Thank you for asking. Um so I I do actually book into the center. I partner with the ACC team in checking dates, checking the stack if this is a good piece of business to put in during those dates. Once I have the green light, then it's all negotiations with the client that I'm working with. It's not until they request the lease that it actually goes to the ACC team. So, up until from the time of finding the business to the point of requesting a lease, I'm in direct contact with the client. Um, in terms of looking at the space, I do have access to see the space. I cannot physically put something in there without them knowing it and without them doing it for me. Um, but I can absolutely see the space. I can see if it might be a good fit and run it by them.

And then I'm getting into the weeds, but just out of curiosity. So, when you're having that conversation with a potential client or with a client and um, excuse me, I'm eating snacks over here. You're good. Um, when you have those conversations with the client, I I know that there's a lot more that goes into hosting an event at the convention center, right? Because you have the the lighting and internet access and all these different things depending on what group it is. Are you also the point person for all of that or is it here's the space now, here's the convention center staff to deal with kind of the rest of it depending on what they're doing?

Also, a good question. I try to stay out of the weeds as much as possible. I'll give general guidance and highle um details of what the convention center can do, but if they're looking for specific bandwidth, I want them to get in with Kevin Patch with Smart City, I want them to be with the experts and know exactly who they're going to be partnering with and get it directly from them.

Awesome. I appreciate that. And then just one final comment and I think I'm going to a little bit out of scope of the presentation but I know uh Tom you you've sent some over some information and I apologize if it was already covered um with the World Cup coming coming up um as we're talking about sports and youth sports and I know I you've sent over a memo just in terms of I've asked about community events or watch parties or things like that and then you had mentioned that there's a licensing fee to to show some games. I just wanted to throw it out there and I don't know if that's something that if if it's just a free community event if that is still falls under the the the requirement of having to pay a licensing fee to kind of to show games. So, you all probably have more information on that than I do, but I I just think it would be a good um if that's something we might be able to explore and potentially provide for the community in partnership with all of you and tie in sports tourism in there somewhere because I think it is important, right? And we may not be hosting any World Cup matches, but it's going to be a big event. And uh hopefully some of those visitors from LA do end up coming here. And I I'm sure that there's a whole other presentation you can give just on World Cup and Olympics. But I just wanted to throw that out there. Again, I know we're only a couple months out, but um otherwise, appreciate uh everything that you guys do and everything that you do.

My pleasure. Yes. Thank you. I don't see no other questions or comments by council. This is anformational item, so we don't have any action by council. Um, item 15 was continued to April 21st. We don't have any public speakers left over from the first section. So, this is now the time for future agenda requests by council. Does anyone have anything that they'd like to put on a future agenda? Um, thank you council member Ruba Kaliva and then council member Meeks.

Thank you. A couple thing Well, one of the things I would like to request is a discussion on um easing the traffic. We heard a lot of public comments from individuals from Anaheim Hills about Santiago. So, just would like to get a staff um uh report on and presentation on what we've done to study the area, how we can either widen what are our options to help alleviate some of the traffic. I know um council member Meeks is probably already on top of this, but I'm interested now that we have all become interested in the traffic on Santiago. Uh so, that's something that I would be interested in seeing. And then I'd also like to ask Mayor Aken to close the meeting in memory of LA County Deputy Sheriff Levi Vargas, Alberto Vos, Pedra, Andrew Joseph, and Andrew Joseph Sanchez.

Okay. Thank you very much. Uh, next would be Council Member Meeks and then Mayor Prom. Um, I would like to bring in the public works staff me member Jose Sanchez who helped with the uh helping the woman and her daughter who was being attacked and understand he played a pretty significant role in that. So like to acknowledge him from us. Thanks. Wonderful idea. Thank you uh Mayor Prom.

Thank you Madame Mayor. Uh, not necessarily an item to bring back, but I wanted to put it on staff's radar for followup. And I'll I'll pause if any of my colleagues are already working on this, but um, a couple weeks ago, um, the family of Mia Mahia uh, unveiled a bench, uh, that they made in in her honor, and her memory, and so I'm I'm wondering if we can explore they they wanted to put it essentially outside of their their house in their culde-sac, and I guess was told by code enforcement they weren't able to do that. Um, in addition to following up on that, I'm wondering if there's something we might be able to look at of potentially either using that bench or a duplicate of that bench uh and maybe adding it to one of our parks um just uh um again in recognition and memory and also potentially as a as a way of providing resources for folks um just for people for mental health and and things they might be going through. So, if that we could follow up on that and have a conversation, that'd be great. So just generally, how do people donate or dedicate benches and public facilities?

More specifically, if if we might be able to explore establishing some sort of um very specific to this case of either putting that bench somewhere in one of our parks or or doing something to kind of memorialize um Mia Mia.

Okay. Thank you. So with no other uh requests for council items and no other business before this council, I would like to adjourn this meeting in the memory of Andrew Joseph Sanchez, Alberto Pedra, Deputy Levi Vargas, Mark Anthony Tjo, and Jennifer Alejandro Law Zarko. Thank you. We will be having our next meeting on April 21st, 2026.