Council - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call the Anaheim City Council meeting to order. Clerk, can you please call roll? Thank you, mayor. Council member Bailis, here. Council member Curts, here. Council Ma, here. Council member Meeks here. Mayor Prom Leon present. Mayor Aken present. Let the record show we have six members present. Do we have any additions or deletions to our closed session agenda? Mayor, there are none. And do we have any U public speakers to address the closed session agenda? Mayor, we do have one speaker card. Uh Mr. Dwayne Roberts and the time limit is three minutes. Thank you. Welcome, Mr. Roberts. and I'm investigator.com. I'm here to address a serious failure to comply with the California Public Records Act. I have primmaasi evidence that a record clearly covered by a CP request I submitted on November 18th, 2020 was not produced by the office of the city manager, even though it was in James Vanderpool's possession. My request required disclosure of all communications involving Laura Cunningham of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce from July 24th through November 18, 2020, including anything uh in the city manager's possession, regardless of device or account. That created a mandatory duty to disclose. Despite that duty, the city failed to produce the now public September 23, 2020 Havasu retreat email. I never received it from the city. I have obtained it only recently from an outside source. Cunningham sent that message via private accounts to Vanderpool about a gathering with individuals who had financial interest before the city. This is precisely the type of communication the public records act is designed to capture. In 2017, the California Supreme Court made this clear in city uh of San Jose versus Superior Court. Communications about public

business are public records regardless of platform. Courts consistently hold that interactions involving influence or access with parties who have business before a municipality constitute public business. This emission cannot be dismissed as an oversight. It raises serious questions about whether off-ch communications were being concealed by Vanderpool and this concern is not theoretical. Similar issue recently surfaced involving a missing email allegedly sent to him by state treasurer Fiona Ma. Vanderpool's resignation does not resolve this. The problem is institutional. How this city handles public records, how it treats private account communications, and whether the public can trust the legally required disclosures that legally required disclosures are being honored. Leadership turnover does not fix systemic transparency failures. Given the seriousness of this lapse, I am requesting these actions. First, a written explanation for why the September 23 email September 23rd email was not produced. Second, a full accounting of any additional off-ch communications between Mr. Vanipole and individuals with this business before the city. And third, a clear description of the corrective and accountability measures the city will implement to ensure uh full CPA compliance. Anaheim residents are entitled to transparency. Public officials cannot shield communications by shifting to private accounts or by claiming no city business was discussed when interacting with people who have financial stakes before this government. The public's right to know is not optional. It is a law and is essential to restoring trust. I thank you very much for your time. Mayor and city council, that concludes our in-person comments and noting for the record, we did not receive any electronic comments on the close session agenda. I'll uh close the public comment section of the close session agenda and recess to close session. Thank you.

Good evening everyone. So, I'd like to call the Anaheim City Council meeting back to order. Clerk, can you please call roll? Thank you, Mayor. Council member Bis, present. Council member Bukava, present. Council member Curts, present. Council member Moss, present. Council member Meeks, present. Mayor Prom Leon, present. Mayor Aken, present. Let the record show we have all seven members present. Thank you. Do we have any additions or deletions to the closed session agenda? Mayor will go ahead. I'm sorry, not the close session agenda to our regular agenda. Mayor. Um, so under additions and deletions, um, we do have the continued public hearing. The council will make a motion. That is the last item on the agenda. Just making a notation that public comments on that, um, has been closed, but it will go ahead continue meeting to March 3rd, 2026. Thank you. So, I'm going to move to our invocation that was going to be offered this evening by Pastor Ethan Hedberg from Ambassador Church. Following that, Council Member Curts, could you please lead us in the flag salute? Good evening, mayor, city council. Thanks for letting me come and give the invocation today. Please join me in prayer. Almighty God, we come to you this this evening acknowledging your wisdom, your justice, and your love. We thank you for the privilege of being part of this community. And I thank you for the elected leaders gathered here who have been trusted with the responsibility of guiding Anaheim into the future. Lord, I pray that you would grant this council wisdom beyond their own understanding. May their decisions be guided by integrity and justice and a heart for the people that they serve. Give them discernment to lead with

humility and courage, seeking the good of all, especially the most vulnerable among us. Help them to communicate clearly and give them wisdom to discern your good, pleasing, and perfect will. I ask your blessing over the people of Anaheim. May this city be a place of peace, of prosperity, safety, and unity. Strengthen the families and support the businesses and empower the schools and provide for those in need. Let love, compassion, mercy, and understanding shape our community so that it may flourish under your care. Gracious Father, this is a very uncertain time in our culture. And we look to you to provide stability for our city, our citizens, and for those that are represented here. I entrust this meeting into your hands. May your name your your your name be glorified in this place. And may everything bring you glory. And may we serve our people, our community, our neighbors with love. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. I pray this in your name. Amen. Thank you very much. Thank you. Please stand again and join me in saluting our flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. So before we do our presentations, I would like to ask the city manager to report out on I'm sorry to the city attorney to report out on close session. So without objection, mayor, you've asked closed session report to be moved up to the top of the agenda. Is that correct?

Thank you. Uh any objections? So hearing none. Um, mayor, as item one on the close session agenda, the council on a vote of seven to nothing authorized the city attorney to file a petition for receiverhip against Marilyn Patt, owner of the property located at 905 Emily Street. As to item two, the council on a vote of seven to nothing agreed to accept the reg resignation of city manager Jim Vanderpool effective as of 5:00 p.m. this evening and subject to a resignation notice and agreement. And there's nothing further to report. Thank you. So this evening I have the pleasure of recognizing Catella High School's spirit squad for their dedication and volunteerism in the community. And it's probably not too hard to identify where our spirit squad is. Oh, nice. Yes. So, the Catella High School spirit squad embodies the spirit of Anaheim. When we think of spirit, we all think of school pride. But this spirit squad has shown that in their spirit, it's also about compassion and service. And they have stepped up for their community in a time of need. They held a drive collecting food and clothing to for those in our community that do not have it. So what you have done is not only show immense school pride, but shown the valuable lesson of giving back. It's a reminder that kindness and compassion is alive and well in the city of Anaheim. And you

do truly embody our city's motto as the city of kindness. And they do all of this while balancing school, their afterchool practices, and they still find time to give back. So on behalf of Anaheim, thank you for all you do in representing the red and black for the Catella Knights as well as for what you do for all of Anaheim. Could you please come up and join us for a spirited photo? Oh, I know. I I'm excited for this. Excuse me. and keep coming. Come on down here. And we're going to do three rows based on height. We know you guys. Come on down. Perfect. Now, council, do your best. Starting with our back row. Can I ask everybody one row at a time? And then if I could ask everybody on this side. Y

and then we will take uh we'll take some official photos and then we'll let families take photos. All right. Camera. You can't see the camera. The camera. Everybody look right here. Okay. Now, if you don't mind holding, uh, families come on up. How proud are you girls? Totally. Now, what's my name? Thank you. CLAP YOUR HANDS. GET proud to be a night. CLAP YOUR HANDS. Get proud to be a night. Clap your hands. Get proud to be a night. Thank you so much. That was so awesome. Can you Yeah. Like I'm in a good mood.

Oh yeah. Well, not too high though. I was just telling their coach, can they come to every city council meeting because we don't normally get that response. Um, and I would like to tell you ladies, the bow game is strong. You guys have awesome bows. Um, so thank you for coming, ladies. So, we have the honor tonight of also recognizing Randy Reyes. Mr. Reyes has left a 50-year legacy serving the city of Anaheim. He began his career with us in 1976 after graduating from Servite High School. He started as I know we have a rosary girl. I know we have a bunch of Servite families over here. Oh, Connelly. Oh, RIP. He started as a reception aid at Pearson Park, later growing into leadership rules uh roles, including site director. Since 2000, Randy has been a familiar and welcoming presence at Brookhurst Community Center. His commitment to service reflects a family legacy. His mom, Eleanor Reyes, also worked for our community services department and started our Tiny Tots program, which is still serving Anaheim families today. Great job, Mom. In addition to his city service, Randy spent 37 years teaching social science and physical education at Anaheim High School. He's going to retire in June of this year, leaving a lasting impact on

our parks, schools, and community. Thank you, Mr. Reyes, for your outstanding service. It's always hard to see an employee, you know, walk away after such a distinguished career. But all of our retirees, everyone that starts retiring seems really excited about it. So, although we're sad to lose him, he seems ready to go. So, if you could please join us up here, we'd love to take a picture. We'll have everybody look right here. Come on down. Come on down.

Oops, wrong way. Come on down. Don't be shy. You guys can't be shy. Come on down. Bring it in. Bring it in. Bring it in. Come on. Room on this side, too. Uh, first of all, I'd like to thank the city. All right. For hiring me way back then in 1976. It's been very pleasurable. I've met very many wonderful people. I thank my family for coming. I thank all these willing participants from city of Anaheim who worked with me throughout the years and I just want to acknowledge them too for their assistance and their help throughout the years. So thank you very much. Look right here. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Next on our agenda are recognitions to be presented at a later date. Clerk, could you please announce them? Thank you, mayor. Recognizing February 11th, 2026 as 211 OC day and February 2026 as 211 OC month. Recognizing February 17th to um 2026 as random acts of kindness day and recognizing the Feb um February 2026 the month as Black History Month, American Heart Month, and Career and Technical Education Month. Are there any additions or deletions to tonight's regular agenda? Mayor, as noted earlier, we do have item number 10 on the um city council agenda was a public hearing. The applicant has requested continue the public hearing to the council meeting of March 3rd, 2026, and council will be taking that motion at that time. Thank you. So, just to make sure um folks heard that. So on item uh number 10, the uh developer asked to uh have a continuance. So that will be coming back March 3rd. So that's item number 10 has been continued to March 3rd. So Madame Clerk, can you please outline the public comment procedures and call forward the first several speakers addressing our 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 open by the mayor only if any non-aggenda item speakers were not heard during this first public comment period and it'll be 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 at the back of the

council chambers. The name and contact um 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 Spanish interpreting services are provided at every city council meeting. Simultaneous Spanish interpretation is provided through the hu use of headsets and consecutive interpretation is available to anyone who would like to address the city council. For translation services and 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'll like to introduce our interpreter who will make the same announcement in Spanish. At this time, on behalf of the city council, we would like to remind the public that Anaheim time 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 you reflecting the spirit when you speak. The time is now 5:20 with a 90minute public comment period set to conclude at 6:50 or until all agenda item speakers have been heard. We ask that speakers line up at the podium once they see their name appear on the projection screen behind me. And mayor and city council, we don't have any agenda item speakers to address the city council, but we have several general comments that will go ahead and call those forward. If our first speakers, two speakers, I'll call their names. Well,

the first three speakers, Mark Richard Daniels, Susan Burroughs, and Ruben Greg Sodto. Good evening, everyone. Uh, did anyone see the uh Grammy Awards? Yeah, that's right. I didn't either, but a couple of moments came out of that were quite interesting. the uh uh Bad Bunny, who I couldn't pick out of a lineup or any of his music, I'm sorry, but uh made his first uh words out of his mouth were uh ice out. And uh so that was that was interesting getting a response from uh some of the that you call the president of the United States. uh just has to jump in there because of course he didn't get an award. Yeah. probably uh but it just the idea that that uh that just that moment alone ice out that should be on everybody's lexicon that should be on every every uh every place that should be ice out. We are we are basically an occupied nation. We're we're much like a third world country now. It's becoming uh it it's it's becoming very dire and it's not going to get any better. Then you've got the uh the head of uh homeland security, the ICE queen, uh who basically has to jump in there because she has to please her leader. and she's making comments about, you know, you know, oh, the ice, you know, they have to be there because of, you know, she's full of crap and they don't need

to be there. And don't let anybody tell you that they've mismanaged this to the point where we've had people getting killed, uh, two of them in the same city, and and there's going to be a lot more people killed. and uh injured and uh as soon as one of the ICE people goes down then then the government will uh you know jump in there with full force. They'll probably send the army in. But it it's it's just such a disaster. This is like something that out of a some kind of a a science fiction that the takeover of this uh secret army that we don't even know who these people are. Uh they're just coming out of anywhere with masks on and they're taking uh people hostage and they've already been proven that they've killed people without just cause. They there's absolute This is going to get very bad people. This is And that has nothing to do with what? Yeah. Yeah. You don't either. Our next speaker, Susan Burroughs. Yeah. Whatever. I just wondered, do we get a 15 minute second um you know, notice or something when we get near the three minutes? No. So, it's three minute public comment. Okay. The public hearing for that project was closed. So, oh. Oh, sorry. I thought you said 15 minutes. I'm sorry. I sort of started to say that, but I meant second. Yeah. Oh, it has not started yet. Okay. So, ma'am, just to let you know, Ma'am, just to let you know that right in front of you there's a timer. Yes. Okay. Thank you.

And I'll go ahead and let you know when you're It runs down. Thank you. Thank you for letting me come here um and speak. I'm kind of with the opposing uh viewpoint of the previous gentleman and so I believe we should all be able to speak and voice our opinions. Um my concern is with the order of Anaheim, a civil order. Um I believe you all got my email about my finding something in the public library. Did you get that? my email. No. Okay. Well, I do have copies here. Um, it states briefly that I found a bag of anarchy and obstruction in the public restroom of the public library has branch. Um, I believe we can all share our opinions lawfully and kindly and respectfully. Love the city of kindness. Uh, but so I I see this that was there uh a bag of anarchy. um urging people to have whistles and follow ICE trucks uh or vehicles and get involved and blow those whistles and as long as it's law lawful, I would agree. But then I also discovered I think that the library is using our funds, taxpayer Anaheim City funds to make the 3D whistles. And yeah, probably not a great idea. uh they should, you know, pay for themselves. But anyways, I brought the whistle. Um here it is and their brochure that in, you know, instructions how to go after ICE people. I support our AP Anaheim Police Department and their coordination with ICE. We we need an orderly city to even get to peace. Okay, maybe not. I mean, but we we all can do things. We all can have our opinion. Okay, I agree that

they can share their opinion, but it should not come out of taxpayer funds. That would really concern me. So, how do you know it is? I saw it. They We have a high-tech media lab with very expensive materials. And the green I made copies for you all. The green little insert card tells in which county libraries you can get free copying of uh you know, the plastic thing, the the whistle. So, I think and I heard it's not cheap to make these things. So, anyways, I'm giving you all copies of their instructions here. Um, and the brochure and I'm from West Anaheim and part of the JH Justice, Mercy, and Humility of Nathan uh Nathan Zug. Some of you know him. you know, it's a wonderful organization promoting kindness and respect at all times. So, anyways, um I just don't think it should be paid for by taxpayers. Okay. And I think that probably, you know, you hopefully, well, it'll be made part of the record if you didn't get my email, but you probably I'm sorry, your time is up. Okay. Thank you very much. Our next speaker, Greg Ruben Greg Stoodto. Mayor, city council. I just came from Riverside. I did their city council meeting. I do, too. Anyway, now everybody talk about ICE, this that, this, that. I think alcohol and drugs should be out of this world. Excuse me, this world. Their heads are all screwed up here causing problems. Causing trouble. Robert Morris, TBNN. And I remember used to watch these guys and follow these guys. Religious idiots. Trinity broadcast. Okay. He was busted

at 12 when he first started 21 years old. 12 year old girl. He he had sex with just came out. He got 10 years only did six months. Okay. That's uh now Greg Lowry Harvest Church. Uh Mr. James McDonald. for 20 years he was doing misconduct with kids, loot acts and stuff. Never called the cops, just got busted. Okay, now all these guys are pedophiles. I told you. That's why I get kicked out, but I expose everything. Everywhere I go, they put me in jail. I expose everything in there. Downtown D. I get kicked out because I had this shirt on. Big deal. Okay. They target me. Second time they kick me out. They don't take take care. the girls showing their breasts and wearing these skimpy clothes. They don't care about that because they're sick men. Okay. Now, um my social worker, Kaiser, I got back again. She says I have a lot of trauma through all the years of of being a little boy. My dad abuses me. Okay. That's why my nervous system mess up. That's why y screwing everybody. I y the cops in the station. I call I yell at everybody. I don't give a You know why? Leave me alone. I don't do nothing wrong. to expose them. What dirt bags they are now? All this stuff is coming down. Okay, my family, what they did to me, they're all behind all this is. My civil rights have been violated. My freedom of speech, freedom of religion and civil rights, you know, I' been been violated, been raped by the system, just like you girls do with drugs and booze the guys give you. God's been working overtime for me because of the church pastors all evil, kicking me out of the Christian churches when I'm trying to learn. kicking me out of Tyler Mall arrested me nothing f everything falsely arresting me kicked out of 24-hour fitness choose with uh fitness YMCA blink Arlington lanes the other day I go bowling and play shoot pool with some

people with some friends and there's a incident with these young kids 16 year old kids these guys are at a bar and he the mother she at him about they're 16 year old kid why are you getting this little kid's face and so I be tape it put all over the place. Cops came and now they're not serving liquor in the bowling alley the way it should be cuz your kids are in danger. That's about all I got to say for today. And you know what? You do what you want, but you know what? That's all bad. Thank you. Our next speaker, let's talk about the thriving culture of corruption in this city. Corruption runs deep here and has for decades. I would say it first came to light during Kurt Pringle's reign. It has deep roots. It was a textbook example last week during the city council meeting. There was a leak that came from one of you sitting up here who was in that closed session. See, you reconvened the meeting at 5:25 and I received my first text at 5:39 that Vanderpool was being kept on. Not even 15 minutes passed before someone leaked what had happened. Who was present in the close session last week? Were your council aids present? We saw someone come out that we were surprised to see who was in there. Who leaked the information? The residents of Anaheim deserve to have answers. It doesn't matter that Jim Vanderpool is leaving. What matters is that six of you voted to keep him. Your constituents need to understand and know that the six of you accept corrupt behavior. In fact, you not only allow corruption, you reward it and praise it. Why is that? Is corruption the reason there is such a

high turnover of city managers? The Orange County Register stated today that there's been six city managers since 2009. That strikes me as both odd and concerning. Let's veer over to Anaheim PD. This new chief is the fifth in the last decade. Again, this strikes me as odd and concerning. Why is there such a high turnover in these two positions, city manager and police chief? Is it due to corruption or something else? Anaheim PD has demonstrated their lack of ethical behavior over and over again. There was no investigation into the death of Jordan Bramman. No investigation into his dealer or where the drugs came from. Anaheim PD even went so far as to falsify records to hide that information. Armen should be prosecuted as should Vanderpool for falsifying records. Now Anaheim PD is refusing to give information to the family of Alberto Arzola, the teenager. the teenager murdered by them in December. Anaheim PD is refusing to protect residents during ICE raids. When did it be okay to let a disgraced corrupt former council person Trevor O'Neal mentioned 47 times in the jail group audit report? When did it become okay for to let him start developing smaller parcels of land throughout the city? This is a person who at the bare minimum provided a fake phone to the auditors and at the top was Harry's right-hand man. When did it be okay for city employees to lie, steal, and cheat? It is obviously accepted behavior since six of you voted to keep Vanderpool. Natalie and Ryan even went so far as to praise him in council communications. Even today, Natalie is quoted in the register saying, "I'm praying that he's going to change his mind. It's a very sad turn of events." Well, Natalie, you know what? I am praying that his exit is just the beginning of exodus of corrupt city employees. I believe that it's a sad turn of events that you would have even considered

keeping up. Sorry, your time's up. Next speaker, Mike Wobbins. Good evening. Of course, we're the militia. Uh, Fabella and Lyster have to go also. That has to be the following step. And if we had properly staffed emergency personnel, there'd probably be less likely chance of people having to even evacuate the hills. you you included uh mayor obviously but of course we're on still on the corruption the Anaheim gutter watch members of the council dishonorable uh bagmen and women um the continuing gutter of Anaheim politics has reached the high water mark and the resulting muck is pouring into the living rooms of the residents on the at the second story uh its distinctive backroom deals left out in the desert sun too wrong. The council members, past and present, have created a river of sewage. Really, this is too deep. Uh, and that you need to, some of you, especially Natalie, me, Kristen, Norma, uh, and Natalie, you have to come here in boats. I'm surprised there's not they don't have a thing for you to pull up your boats. Uh, the breakdown continues with another Crooked Angels deal in the offing. You're you're talking to the same people that set up the last deal in angels management. That you can't do that. You should look at the records of Ashley, too. uh the same people plotting the sale with illicit contributions since 2018. Uh that's the first stuff that was sent to the FBI was all the contributions to from the Angels to Harry and Trevor. But the Angels are just following the leader Disney Worldwide Anaheim pay-to-play politics. I often thought we should sit down with some council members one-on-one. Um but we we don't speak crook. Um, and hard to talk to a council

member when uh when Natalie or Kristen or Norma or Natalie, I mean, we're going to say, uh, what about the budget? Money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money. What about what about emergency personnel? Money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money. Campaign contributions go on. Taxes and fees go out the window. Uh, public land is given away. citizens are left holding a bag filled with nothing but debt and what a half billion dollars in debt. That's all. This is a failure of democracy. And that's what really pisses me off. Uh it's our civic nervous system. But at the 12t crooked water line level, watch for a hole in your boat and a subpoena at your door. What I want to talk about tonight isn't just one project or one vote. It's a pattern. A pattern federal investigators have already described where powerful interests get access, influence, and special treatment. And residents are left with the consequences. People in Anaheim expect their city to put their safety and well-being first. They expect decisions to be made honestly, independently, and in the open. When that doesn't happen, trust breaks down, and residents feel it immediately. Let's start with Anaheim Hills. This area is officially labeled a very high hazard severity zone. The law requires cities to make sure evacuation routes are safe before opening new development. Anaheim Hills has documented evacuation problems, and this isn't the first time a developer has tried to push a project. Anyway, in the last attempt, both Anaheim Police and Anaheim Fire and

Rescue came before this council and warned very clearly that the project was unsafe. It took significant public pressure for the council to finally vote it down, and even then, it wasn't unanimous. Now, a new developer is back with the same evacuation risks and a large charitable donation being offered to Anaheim Fire. Residents see what that looks like. It's the same pattern. Powerful interests pushing ahead while safety concerns get brushed aside until the community forces the issue. Now, nightly fireworks. They release chemicals like perchlorates, fine particulate matter, and metals such as barerium and strronium. all listed by the EPA because of their health impacts. The neighborhoods downwind are the same communities already dealing with higher asthma rates. That's not reasonable decisionmaking. Then now we have Disneyland Forward. The city approved a project with significant and unavoidable impacts using analysis written by the applicant. A council member even said, "If it's good enough for Disney, it's good enough for me." That's not independent judgment. That's exactly what kind of influence federal investigators warned us about. Perhaps the clearest example is still the Angels Stadium's corruption scandal. The city manager's now public emails from that era, including his December 2025 comment, "It won't stop me," show the mindset shaped by insider deals, not public service. Just last week, a close session leak about his employment made it clear that the old culture is still alive. Six council members chose to protect that system. Only one, Mayor Ashley Aken, broke from it. This is the pattern. Decisions shaped by influence, not by what's best for Anaheim residents. If Anaheim wants to rebuild trust, that pattern has to end.

Accountability isn't optional. It's the bare minimum residents deserve. Thank you. Our next three speakers are Joshua Collins, Liz Diaz, and G Price. Good afternoon. My name is R. Joshua Collins, uh, founder of Homeless Advocates for Christ on Facebook. And first, I want to encourage everyone to give their life to Jesus Christ, who died for us on the cross to save us from hell, to give us everlasting life. And of course, right behind us, it says, behind you, I should say, in God, we trust. Uh, we really need to do that. We need to trust in God. Uh, we need to obey God. And and that's what Jesus invites us all, a personal relationship. We've all sinned. We all deserve hell. And Jesus died to save us from that horrible place called hell to give us everlasting life. I just want to encourage also anyone um involved in any type of corruption to come clean. Come to the Lord. Right? Make it right. You know, and I'm not here to I'm not the judge of anybody, but you got to judge. We got to judge our own hearts, you know, and if our hearts aren't right, we need to make it right with the Lord. So, I just want to encourage you, anyone that's uh maybe not walking right to walk right because ultimately the truth comes out eventually anyway. So, uh just a matter of time. I also want to talk about the homeless issue. Uh uh there's actually a homeless mother that's going to be uh speaking right now after me, but she's uh looking for housing and and of course there's a lot of other mothers out that I met out that were homeless that we brought them here and they got housing, but how can we make it easier for homeless mothers with even with children in Anaheim schools to get off the street? That's that's kind of one of my concerns. U why is it that we even have some mothers that are homeless or or with their kids that are homeless and that kind of thing. What are we doing to make sure that uh the high school students especially or junior high whatever it is elementary that the family isn't homeless? You know what what are we doing to make sure that that's that's uh taken care of. So uh I know we're supposed to be a city of

kindness but uh sometimes these these mothers they they go they talk to sitting at they don't get any help. And so that's a big concern. Um and also of course um uh you can make a difference. One way you can make a difference also to help prevent homelessness is to create a system with day fines where people are fined on the basis of their income, not just a the same fine for everybody because $200 means a lot more to a poor person than a rich person. And so it isn't fair, right? It is it's not a fair system. And there's 43 countries that use the day fine system including Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, uh Germany, Austria, uh Switzerland, France, Spain, uh Portugal, Italy, Estonia, Latvia, uh and 43 countries income-based fine system in the legal code. So, if we did that, wow, you know, how many more would not be homeless today? How many people are becoming homeless because of different fines that they've received? And it hit them a lot harder, $200, than someone that was rich, right? right? Where it's like 10 cents to them. It just isn't a fair system. So, uh, and also in LA this year, income based traffic fine system is going in place. So, uh, that close to us, right? They're already kind of getting on the bandwing. I hope you guys do the same. Thanks for letting me speak. Our next speaker. Hi, my name is Liz Diaz. Um, I love God. I love the angels and the ducks, too. Um I'm a I consider myself a member of of this community of Anaheim. Um in 2024 unfortunately I had a separation in in from my marriage of 20 22 years almost. I was on the um h the city housing uh through uh disagreements. We just uh weren't able to come to an agreement and I had to uh leave the the my dwelling with my two children. Um, I put placed

myself on the waiting list as of December of last year of 2025. Uh, my divorce was finalized in um in April of 2025. I what I do is I am uh currently I do door dashing. I do Uber. I currently secured a job at Adel Taco. I'm just trying to make an honest living and secure um I could I secure uh housing for my children. I serve at at my church as a piano player. My son does drums and uh my daughter does occasional violin. My daughter dances and um we take pride in in living here and helping out the community too when we can. We give out sack lunches when you know uh whenever we have the time available and um I just want to uh you know uh extend my uh my plea to you and maybe I don't know there's I'm not saying you know um there's I know there's other people on the list but to perhaps maybe look at it. I I want to continue to serve uh this community with, you know, delivering food to people. It's, you know, it's something that, you know, I think, you know, they enjoy it. They get to stay in their homes and, you know, I get to and I get to take uh there's poss possibly people who are disabled that are not able to do those things. So, as a Door Dasher and Uber Eatats, I I'll do, you know, accommodate them with doing the, you know, groceries and and taking them their much needed food. And um and so I just wanted to, you know, thank you for your time. um for listening to me and I hope that um uh you have a great day. Thank you. The festival project is not just a planning mistake. It's a foreseeable public safety failure that exposes the city to enormous legal liability. The project sits on an extreme fire zone,

one of the most dangerous in Southern California. East Anaheim has burned repeatedly. We have lived through winddriven fires that move faster than people can pack. We know exactly how little time residents have to escape. And yet the city is considering placing a highdensity development right in the middle of the danger. The lack of infrastructure is where the liability becomes undeniable. East Anaheim has a severely limited roadway system, daily gridlock, and intersections that fail under normal conditions. There are no new evacuation routes planned. None. Not a single one. Our infrastructure cannot handle the people that live there. Now, when the city approves a project in a known hazard zone and with known evacuation failures and with documented infrastructure deficiencies, it's not an accident waiting to happen. It is foreseeable harm. And foreseeable harm is the foundation of liability. This development falls short in both retail and residential parking. It's too large for the site and its sheer mass is not compatible with the surrounding neighborhood. It lacks common sense that this is even being considered. So, we have to ask ourselves why. Is it because a former mayor is promoting the project? After years of corruption, investigations, and scandals, residents have every right to question whether this project is being evaluated on safety or on political pressure. Residents have constantly shown up just to have this item continued over and over again. December turned to January that turned to February and now is being pushed to March. The city is allowing the revisiting of the development agreement. Yet the public hearing is closed. When changes are made, I ask that you reopen the public hearing to

allow the residents the right to comment. Our voices do matter. Your job is to represent the residents, not the developers. Certainly not the lobbyists or the unions. It appears you care more about a labor agreement than you do about public safety. Don't sacrifice safety for profit or political influence. All of Anaheim deserves leadership that protects them, not leadership that knowingly exposes them to danger and legal risks because of campaign contributions. Reopen the public hearing and put residents first. Our next speakers, Jay Van, Jay Van Arsdale, Karina, and Lraine. Will the next speakers please step forward? Jay Van Arsdale. We'll go to the next speaker, Karina. Hello, my name is Karina. I'm here with CSOC and standing in solidarity with Arzola family. We come once again seeking justice for the murder of Albert Arzola. His life was cut short at just 19 years old on December 6, 2025 by the Anaheim Police Department, a department known to statistically shoot black and brown community members. We have yet to get the names of the officers involved in this killing and we have yet to receive the body and cam footage of both officers that hunted down Albert. We demand to see the unedited footage with audio and to let us determine the claims the Anaheim PD is making.

It's a shame to see the city council continue to stay silent about this issue. For example, Carlos Leon, I have seen and had a conversation with you at that Nahheim Home Depot where you came to volunteer, but all I seen was you coming for a photo op. I asked you about Albert and this body cam footage and you didn't show any humanity. All you did was shrug your shoulders and say you will wait for the investigation. You stated that you didn't speak on this issue after hearing the families at the council, but this wasn't your ward or because this wasn't your ward. But to me, that sounds like a copout. If you didn't stand up for all of Anaheim, then you should not represent even one portion. You later came to protest against ICE at that same Home Depot. All I seen was that you took a couple pictures and then you left before the march, but you made sure to post those pictures on your Instagram. We need more than Instagram likes to make a change. Anaheim City Council is all show. We need to see action. We demand the unedited footage from December 6, 2020 2025. We demand transparency and we demand justice for Albert. The next speaker, Lorraine Lorraine. My name is Lorraine. I'm the mom of Alberto's girlfriend, Mariah. I just want to say this wasn't fair. He was only 19. He was still a baby that had a future ahead of him and a family who loved him. So many families have changed. So many lives have changed because of this. So much hurt and sadness and pain. All we do is ask God why. Why him? He didn't deserve this. He

was a hardworking kid. Got up every day working 12-hour shifts. If you knew him, he was so shy, always smiling, always happy. To me, he was a great, very respectful. When he used to come to my house, he would always say, "May I use the restroom?" I would tell him, "Please don't ask. Just go." He would still always be respectful. I I um sorry, I still asked. My family loved him so much. My sons had a very good relationship with him as well. They loved going fishing together. He would be so happy if he caught a fish. He loved his family very much. The love he had for his mom and dad was special. He loved his nieces, his nephews, his sister and sister-in-law like his own sister. He loved going to Laughlin with my family. He was just a kid having fun and living life. On December 6, 2025, it all changed. Now all we have is memories. And we will ask God why. Why him? He didn't deserve this. And we all want justice for him. The next three speakers, Mariah, Grace A, and Leslie L. Mariah, if you can step forward. My name is Mariah and I am the girlfriend of Alberto. None of this was right. This could have been prevented in so many ways. He was a 19-year-old human being who deserved to be alive still. Why wasn't he given the help he needed right away? not being able to go make sure my baby was okay because of having to make sure all the little kids were

safe and kept calm while I was still processing what had just happened outside his own home. What makes it okay for Anaheim PD to continuously yell at us to stay the back inside or they will shoot when we were just wanting to tell Alberto everything will be okay? Especially his own mother being yelled at while she was just trying to hold her baby to make sure he was okay not knowing that was going to be his last breath. Having to walk out with six little kids scared for their own lives who were then called suspects seeing guns pointed at them and being kept in the cold for hours without being able to have the comfort we needed from family members. showed us how much they really cared. Seeing any cop car cop lights, hearing sirens has my heart beating fast and reminds me of December 6th, 2025 all over again where all our lives were changed and Alberto's life was taken. He was dragged from his home to the street where then where they then cut his clothes off and had him laying there in the cold till 4:00 a.m. Alberto always brought joy to everyone and he was always happy and loved so much. He didn't deserve this at all. It was such a traumatic incident to us all. We just want justice for Alberto Arzola and the full body cam footages of all officers on scene with audio. Thank you. Next speaker, Grace A, Leslie L. and Sergio P. Um, good afternoon. I'm Grace Arzola, the aunt. Um, Natalie, last week when you left, you said that a lot has changed since 2012, but not enough to save my nephew's life. So, even though changes were made, every life is precious, and it's upsetting. Additionally, you guys have us recite the pledge of allegiance in the beginning, justice for all. Where's Where's the justice for Albert? Where's his justice? In the last 60 days, your undercover division has been

filmed using excessive force three times. The death of one, TBI of another one, and most recently the pistol whipping. It's not your guys' officer's job to be out there judging people and determining what their sentence is. Yesterday when I was at the meet, the chief um the chief said that he that there was individuals engaging in tagging, which is not spray painting, which is not true. He was not tagging. And then he said it appeared that he was a lookout. So when did looking out, mind you, he never got his day in court because you guys killed him within 30 seconds. So, when did if that was the case, when did being the lookout for tagging result in a death sentence? And you guys said that the investigation is still pending, but I want to play an audio from the chief yesterday saying that according to what he had seen, the officers didn't do nothing wrong. So, if it's a pending investigation, how did he come to this conclusion? Release the video. It is not fair. And it we need peace. We don't sleep. We don't sleep. And we'll continue to be here. And it's not fair of us. Under review until this under investigation and under review until this point there's been nothing that is substantiated that the officer has done anything wrong that would dictate him being out of the Why don't you release the officer name? We can check. So, how is it still investigation if the person that oversees internal affairs has already determined that until now there's nothing that has been that the officers did anything wrong. So, stop lying to us. Please stop lying and say the investigation's over. We're not going to do anything. Another thing I do want to bring to your attention, I had a call today because your automatic doors, which is an ADA violation to not open,

have not been open for the past month. You guys don't have ADA seating. My niece, my cousin has to stand over there because she can't sit. And when I asked that, my niece wanted to speak. Susan told me, I believe it was you. Um, Susan told me that they would give her handheld microphone. Well, I'm sorry. People with muscular drophe could not move their hands. You guys are And this is not ADA compliant either. Shame on you guys. You guys should make this where everyone is accessible. And last week too when the grandma came and talked her was taken away. Shame on you guys. Hello everyone. my name. Um, I'm actually Albert's cousin. And yesterday, the chief stated that the police officers did nothing wrong, which is deeply shocking and disturbing to our family. This is especially concerning because moments earlier, he claimed he could not comment due to the case being an open investigation. Despite that, he still made a de a definitive statement excusing the officer's actions. My cousin was shot and killed without justification. Yet the chief has already formed and publicly expressed the conclusion that the officers were justified. This sends a harmful and painful message to our family and to the community. We strongly recommend that the Anaheim Police Department invest in proper public relations and communication training for your chiefs, especially because his responses came across as very reactive and explosive. And as we know, that's already a problem within your guys' police department. something we believe Anaheim PD must address in order to rebuild trust with the public. Albert was a promising young man who had just turned 19 years old a week before you guys killed him. Nothing, absolutely nothing will bring

my cousin back. Yet, the city council continued to act like nothing happened. For the first time, Councilwoman Natalie um from district three, sorry, three offered an apology and was and we did acknowledge that. However, it must also be brought to your attention that Alberto's family continues to be harassed and this harassment is happening in your district. You were elected to support and protect your guys' community, yet you guys are failing to do so. And then also last week you guys um had mentioned that you guys gave out a lot of toys that were donated by your own community and you guys um were made sure to present that in a PowerPoint. We also want to bring to your attention the Albert's family gave over a 100 trees to that same community and we personally we personally went to the communities where ice was invading them and they felt unsafe. We delivered those trees for two and a half days straight to ensure that those kids still had time to celebrate Christmas despite everything going on. Yet, you guys failed to also publicize that. I hope you all find it in your heart to allow and for to push for the release of the full body cam footage. The officers involved are still being paid while I will never get the chance to speak to my cousin again. We will continue to be here. We won't get tired of speaking about this. And again, I will play the audio for the community. And to this point, there's under investigation and under review. And to this point, there's been nothing that has substantiated that the officer has done anything wrong that would dictate him being out of the release officer name. We can So again, you guys should feel shame for what's going on and for electing your guys' new chief because he is a reactive person just like his officers. Thank you. Our next speaker, Sergio Pastio and Joe Gutteras.

Hello. Um, I don't know if you guys know, but ICE was having a meeting today at Angel Stadium. Yeah, I found out from a hottest center employee. They called me because they were scared. There's a lot of uh Mexicans, just a lot of mixed uh ethnicities at the Hana Center. I've worked there for three to a couple years. I liked it. And uh that's very scary. Um Dodgers, you know, in LA, they had no problem kicking out ice. They locked the gates. I The city owns the parking lot. You guys could do whatever you want with it. I spent so much money at Angel Stadium during the summer. My my parents complained, but I spent so much money at Angel Stadium. I'd love it. So, I'm just confused. Is my tax dollars protecting ICE now or what are we doing? Cuz yeah, they did have a meeting today. I don't know if anybody knew. And as well, I'm here for support of Alberola. He was only 19 years old. He had a dream. He he would tell me he's I'm trying to build a career. I'm trying to build off this. This is not just me. I'm going to make something out of myself. He was very determined. He was a smart kid. He could have just gone to continuation school, but we told him, "No, you're going to go back to Catella. You're going to finish it right because you're a smart. You're so smart. You're above this." He had a lot of drive. Thank you. Next speaker, Art Castillo. Thank you. U Mr. Acting City Manager, can we reach out to the angels organization um or just follow up on reports if there was any activity that we um need to report to the public? Absolutely. We'll look into it. Yeah. Well, um, just by the, you know, when I was 13, I started working for parks and recreation and it was a different kind of atmosphere and and then I was in, uh, 8th grade, I saw the changes of people

coming from the immigrant people coming in and people used them for work and sometimes they abused them, didn't pay them, didn't do things. And we gave them we gave them certificates to I you know cups to do their uh business and everything. Then then I watched them uh extort them attack them and give them tickets illegally. And this was something that I was watching and I said wait a minute how how are we doing that? When I opened my mouth you know after many 12 years of service I got fired. I was always threatened to get fired. Even the the incident at the um little people's park it's not it wasn't a riot. It was a retaliation and I watched it and there's a lot of things that happened there that that I still have nightmares. It's it's just didn't get get it didn't get in the paper, but it it's just tragic that we don't tell the whole you guys don't know the whole thing, the whole story. And at again, there was on um a YouTube video in Anaheim, Lincoln and Magnolia where uh this young Mexican guys telling a sergeant of Anaheim, you're you're harboring, you're helping and aiding these ICE agents which had the mask. And my question is too, if anybody can answer after, are those masks allowed to be on and they have their guns pulled out? What what do you do when you see them pulling out their guns? I thought there was a a law that when the officer pulls his gun, he has to report it. But they're always having their guns out now. Everybody's just gun happy. And what about shooting people, innocent people accidentally, ricochets and all that. So, um, this new chief, I don't know him, but again, um, I don't know if he knows enough of what goes on and if you guys don't know enough just to hear what we have to say, and it's not to argue and not to fight with each other. is to solve the problem to make a better city. And some of these officers go out and rogue and sometimes they're by high superior officers. They're doing call we call them Mexican stops. And I watch it watching kids. There was a there was a teacher at the high school and his her

husband was a gang enforcement officer and this kid was an honor student for four years and it was uh televised and everything ruined his life. And there's another young man who's working over here. I saved him from getting expelled and then all of a sudden uh he gets put in jail for something he didn't do and they let him out and he was going to be a fireman. He was going to the fire training center and he worked at the uh uh Disneyland and and he lost his job. But you know these two young men, they made it. They survived and and but you know none of them don't get to survive and Alberta was like that kind of a kid that was going to survive. So I really want you guys to really feel what we feel like. you know, some people don't, you know, to listen and give us an ear, do something. And the managers, some of them were nice, but they had to ignore me. They told me, "I'm sorry, I can't talk to you." These guys give me dirty looks. That's all they do. We never get any Am I supposed to talk to them if I have a problem? I'm sorry, your time is up. Just wanted to say that. Thanks. Anyways, our next speaker, Joe Gutierrez. Honorable honorable mayor, city council members, my name is Joe Guteras. I've been a lifelong member of the city of Anaheim. I've lived in districts 3, five, and six, and I'm here to voice my opposition against the festival development. Uh my opposition to the development is purely for safety reasons. I was a member of the Anaheim Fire Department for 26 years. in those uh in the fire service and in training specifically, there's a motto and it says if it's predictable, it's preventable. And in my opinion, a w a wind-driven outofc controlled wildfire in the city of Anaheim in the Anaheim Hills Canyon area is 100% predictable. We just don't know when it's going to happen. It could happen 2 am. It could happen during uh commuter time. It could happen at any time.

the um we we don't know we know when it's going to happen but we don't know what the amount of destruction could be. We know that we can at least minimize we can't prevent the start of a fire necessarily but we can minimize the damage that it does. Didn't we learn something from the paliside uh palisades aladina or the paradise fires? And just a quick story about a hero of mine. My name his name is Rick Rascorola. He grew up as a British citizen but in the 60s he became an American citizen and fought with the first of the seventh cavalry in the battle of Idrang in Vietnam. His gallantry is illustrated in the movie we were once soldiers. After his retirement from the military service, he was hired by the Morgan Stanley financial services and he became the vice president in charge of safety and security. In 1933 or 1993 I should say the World Trade Center was bombed. Okay, that was the first time after that bombing. He tried to convince his bosses that they should relocate to a lowrise maybe in New Jersey or somewhere else. Um they ignored it. So he instituted uh quarterly evacuations and that became important of course on 911 uh 2001. That morning, right after the first plane hit the north tower, in the south tower where he was, the audible alarm started sounding and directed all employees to shelter in place. Rick Rcora countermanded the order for the Morgan Stanley employees and he ordered that an evacuation should start immediately. Today, he's responsible for the count for countless of lives, over 2600 Morgan Stanley people and countless others that he was able to evacuate that morning. Unfortunately, he was killed. He was last seen on the 12th or 11th floor and he was going back up to search for stragglers. So, my point in this whole story is he saw a potential disaster. He

did the right thing. If it's predictable, it's preventable. Any development in Anaheim's in Anaheim Hills in that choke point should be delayed until we have a robust infrastructure in place. Sir, I'm sorry. Your time is up. Measure of citizen involvement. Sir, I'm sorry. Your time is up. The know your way plan is just a small part of what is needed without improving the infrastructure. Your three minutes is up, sir. Okay. Thank you. Can you please call the next speaker? Our next speaker. Our next speaker, Betty Farnsworth. Hi there. Good evening. and thank you for paying attention and allowing us all to speak. I really appreciate it. And Mayor Ashley, thank you for having the stones to believe in transpar transparency and to cast your vote at that closed door meeting. I really appreciate that. Um, I've been a citizen of Anaheim since 1966. I know I don't look that old, but I really have been. My husband's lived in the in the city of Anaheim since 1957. We've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. Um, tonight you're going to hear a lot of us talk again about traffic, infrastructure, getting our loved ones out, know your way, who the hell knows the way, lack of infrastructure, etc., etc., etc., and it goes on and on and on. I just want to sum it all up to one word, safety. Yes. As elected officials, each and every one of you, and I don't give a rat's ass what district you're in, you you each have a responsibility and

an obligation to protect all of the citizens of Anaheim. Perhaps perhaps you all need to revisit the strategic plan that's mounted there about public safety, infrastructure, its goals, the mission, the values to allow a building of 447 units in a Cal Calire identified very high fired hazard severities severity zone is a complete dereliction of duty. This district six is the only district in that type of zone. I lived when the Palm Lane Apartments burnt down. It was nothing like the Canyon Fire, the freeway fires. I'm old enough to remember it. Um yet it appears to me that some of the council members are choosing to ignore an extreme safety issue because they think district 6 has not contributed to the housing element numbers. This is that is such biased thinking. People's lives are in jeopardy and some council members want to have a pissing match to compare numbers. My district has built this amount of units. Mine's built that. What's district six? Let's all grow up. We're all in the city of Anaheim. It's it's a sad commentary on our city government that human life is secondary to numbers to a numbers game. And I really sh Oh, took the words out of my mouth. Shame on you. I ask you to remember safety also equals liability. And if this passes, your time is up. Should be held liable. Thank you. Our

next speaker, Vance Disney, followed by Joanie Garner. Our next speaker, Vance Disney. Anyway, on the last uh issue uh with the Regal Theater in a word, retro um retrofit. And also uh you know me for the freeways. Uh, I have a new freeway design and we should all be thinking about that when we're stuck in traffic. But, uh, now everybody's everyone's stuck playing statuette for the NFL where they're forced to watch a bunch of fly mops and bobbleheads dig up their ass, pull the pull the out their ass, toss it to toss the in the air, then they all fight over who catches the while the announcer describes the tush push. And yes, the politically correct word to say the n-word is fly mop because some fly mop infected our businesses with the crown act right before co. And no, it wasn't the NAACP that freed the slaves. So don't call lighterkinned people crackers. But according to the crackers, the fly mop slaves were only good for light work like picking cotton and they had to be forced to do that. But the fly mops are still twerking in the fields and calling calling it work in the NFL, confusing hands for feet, calling it calling it football, but mostly handling the ball. Not even the monkeys are that stupid. They only confuse their feet for hands. So not even the Olympics won it as a sport, though maybe a special Olympic sport along with the treadmill vault where the they race backwards on a treadmill, then stop all at once, vault head first into a wall. Then they think they're smart because they have they have a to have to wear big helmets. So now they're they're covering them up with extra padding. Not sure how the baseball bobbleheads got on the field, but are they going to give them bats? Seriously, you know, refs aren't the

refs are a bunch of KKK cluxes cuz they always cheat for the new anal gland. And you can't have a fair contest burning one guy to sticks for another person's crimes. Also, God sending shies to hell really isn't the exact definition of love. And you sure as hell can't get any eco environmental advice from pastors that preach the apocalyptic end of the planet, which is an act of violence. So, know the first thing about the law before you speak. Freedom of religion as opposed to Christianity we all fought against in 1776. Maybe maybe when you say your grace, you need to slam your eye into a steak knife and take a good look at your God. So, it's better you just watch the children play at the high schools and the colleges where they're not getting paid to act stupid. And uh I came up with some new um football designs, football helmet designs, and a better uh tack ball uh league with the Gladiator um helmets, the bugeyed helmets, moto helmet, uh a lion helmet, a dungeon guard, and an armor helmet. But uh as for as for ice, maybe you should start pronouncing it as icky. you know, stop trying to if you don't like them, give them a bad name. Call them icky. It's spelled icy, you know, and they're a bunch of cowards because they don't show their their uniforms or their their identity. So, they're they're not men, they're mouse. Iggy mouse. Our next speakers, if they could please step forward. Our next speakers. Hello, city council members. I'm here again. I'm here to formally oppose the proposed residential development at Festival Shopping Center. And I respectfully ask that we open the public comment again for March 3rd City Council meeting. Why, you may ask? There's still questions that the public does not have answers to. There were a lot of questions raised by Mayor Ashley Aken

last time, and we deserve to hear those answers in terms of other opportunities for where this development can take place. To have those answers not be allowed to comment on them just doesn't seem fair. The developer was given additional opportunities to revise and present their proposal, including commitments related to union labor. That is not more important than the safety of your residents that you took an oath to protect. Residents deserve the same opportunity to respond when significant safety concerns remain unresolved. Important issues are still outstanding, including consideration of alternative locations for this housing project. A traffic report that has not yet been publicly shared, that is old, that is irrelevant. Reopening the public comment is necessary to ensure fairness, transparency, and public trust. My primary concern is evacuation safety. It's not the routine daily traffic. That's not what the point of this is. The project relies on know your way evacuation plan. Well, let me tell you, I said this before. I've lived here for 30 years. I knew my way. I could not get out. That is like saying you have all the answers to a test and the test was never given. It doesn't matter. Similarly, we were at the meet uh the fire or the uh police chief last night. Nothing was there about know your way. There is no education. At a recent meeting that we were at, over a hundred people were there. It was asked what zone you were at for evacuation. One person knew the answer. So your know your way is not worthy. You cannot depend on that to keep us safe. In active wildfires or other similar disasters, people do not behave calmly or predictably. If you lived through

what we lived through in the last two fires, you would feel the same. But you don't live here, so you can't relate. You can tell us that you will close the roads. You can tell us that you will direct things one way. Try to close the 91 freeway. For example, last Thursday night, the 91 freeway with the rain, it was closed. Fire truck behind me just trying to go to an accident. Dead stop. Couldn't move. They would probably get there quicker by walking. And yet you want us to add a thousand plus cars and residents to that. Paradise fire, Aladena fire, Maui fires, of which I was at during the Maui fires, Canyon 2 fires, complex fires. Have we not learned? Ma'am, your time is up. Natalie, you won't get our vote if you continue to support this project. Your time is up. We'll have our next speaker step forward. Excuse me. Excuse me. Quiet in the chamber, please. Thank you, Mr. Gainner. Please continue. Okay. Honorable mayor, city council, I want to thank you for giving me the chance to stand up here and speak. I'm a 33-year resident of District 6. Um, we moved in a couple years after being married. We've since had two kids, raised them into great adults. We love the area. Um, I try not to speak on things that have already been said. I get a sense of what you guys go through at these meetings. I thank you for your service. I really do. But I'm here today to speak about reality because we've lived through these fires. We live right above Festival Shopping Center, right above Target. It's 23 miles to get from my driveway to Target. In a one of these fires, we were ordered to evacuate. We

tried. It took two and a half hours to get to Target. Two and a half hours just trying to get on Sana Canyon. Finally jumped the curb, went in the middle of Festival Shopping Center, hoping that the fire couldn't get to us there. That's reality. Verse what I'm guessing for those of you that are supporting this is based on some traffic study. I work in commercial finance. I finance large apartment buildings. I'm an underwriter. I have been for 37 years. I know that my models, the best model, financial model, traffic study model, no matter how good that model is, no matter how good the assumptions are, they don't work. Case in point, if models worked and really could predict real life, we'd all be rich. We'd know what stocks to buy, when to buy them, when to sell them. They don't work. They try to approximate real life. But I can tell you what real life is. It's two and a half hours currently without these additional thousand cars in that landlocked, roadlocked area trying to get just a quarter mile to Santa Ana Canyon so we can get out safe. Another thousand cars on top of that is not responsible. I'm asking each one of you to think about this. That was my wife that spoke. We were stuck in Maui during the fires. We were one of the last apartment complexes or condo complexes to be evacuated. We were the next in line. We had the the the um the privilege but the absolute heart-wrenching experience of having several residents that lost everything that had their businesses burned down, that had their houses burned down, that jumped in the ocean to to safety come to our complex because it still had energy. And we listen to their stories. They could at least jump in the

ocean. This little area is landlocked by hills that burn and will burn again and San Canyon that can't support the infrastructure as is. We have nowhere to go. We're not saying I think there's this perception that district 6 is a bunch of rich people and doesn't want multif family in our neighborhood. Put it in just put it in the other side of San Canyon where people can get out. We can't. Thank you, sir. We'll have our next speaker step forward. Hi, my name is Doug Robbins. I'm here speaking in opposition to the proposed festival shopping center project. The EIR reflects a scenario where a fire breaks out in Deer Canyon. I live right behind the festival center. I've been here for 40 years and have never needed to evacuate regarding a fire in Deer Canyon. The only time evacuation has been necessary is when the Santa winds are blowing like crazy and the fire always comes from the east through the canyon. DIR also says that evacu evacuation times will only increase by seven additional minutes. That is not realistic even in perfect conditions. Uh the ER the EIR reflects conditions that favor the project and the developer and not worst case scenarios. Some of you have said that you believe that because the theater was on a site with a thousand parking spots for visitors that would be the same as the hund the thousand vehicles from the proposed development. I'm sorry but people will not be going to the theater when the hills are on fire. That is not common sense tells us that won't be the case. This development will put 1,000 extra cars on the already overcrowded streets during an evacuation time.

Many of you have admitted that mistakes were made during the 2017 fire and that the fire department has made changes to correct these mistakes so they won't happen again. You say we now have a plan so no need to be concerned. You think the fire department in Palisades, Eaton, and Paradise didn't have a plan that they thought would be adequate? That's right. And I'm sure they did. And 116 people lost their lives to those fires. I think it is arrogant thinking to think we have all the answers now and all the other fire departments didn't. I appreciate the fire department's efforts. However, mistakes will be made and another disaster will happen here. How many more lives have to be lost before we say no more? Bottom line, the mayor pointed out we have already met our building requirements for the area. In addition, even before any building starts, we have a three-hour evacuation time. And now you want to add additional time to an already ridiculous evac time. And we are supposed to believe that we have no evacuation worries based on an unproven plan that will need to be perfectly executed. There's a lot of moving parts and it has to be done perfectly. I'm sorry. This is a whole lot of wishful thinking. Public safety should be your number one concern. So why why build? It's that simple. Why build? It's that simple. We don't need it. We don't want it. It's not necessary. Please vote no on the project. Have our next speaker followed by Pearl, Brian Kay, and Shelley Robbins. Good evening, mayor and council members. I'm Christine Lopez, and tonight you hear me again, disappointed in all of you. My nephew Albert Arzola was the

victim of an unjustified deadly use of force incident by an Anaheim gang unit officer for an infraction involving tagging. It's fair to say that if it was justified, then we would have all the unedited footage of both officers already made available. We ask that the footage be released now. Council member Norma Compos Curts, this happened in your district. What have you done to meet with the family? If anyone takes this job seriously, you can no longer ignore the outcry for transparency. Mayor Aken, put this request to a vote. This is what Anaheim residents need right now. It's real governance, not wall flowers that pretend they care about real issues affecting their communities. This also applies to the inaction of dealing with ice in our neighborhoods. You have failed to address the demi the demand for transparency. You have received over a hundred email requests from um uh speakers and emails and over 1,000 views specifically for the purpose that you do what's right for the Anaheim community and family of Albert Arzola. Please do not ignore us anymore. Your constituents elected you to represent the public interest and protect their communities, not hide behind your political donors. The new police chief, Manny Sid, is an OP has an opportunity to be transparent and build the trust of the community by releasing the entire footage. Without this, the residents will continue to have many questions unanswered and their trust in the police will grow distant. We are here to seek justice for the Arzilla family. Yes, but we also want change so this doesn't happen to another family. The public has witnessed various events recently that questions the

department's trust. We want transparent communication and proactive community engagement. The culture within the department is in question. How they police our diverse communities need to be addressed because right now our communities feel targeted and not mutually respected. Our next speaker, Pearl, followed by Brian K. Hello, my name is Pearl and I'm the sister of Albert Arizona. I am here to speak about the kill killing of my brother that occurred December 6th, 2025. He was not a criminal. He had no criminal record. We want the unedited body cam footage of both officers involved. We also want the names of both police officers. The Anaheim PD is quick to pay my brother as a criminal, but not to not quick to release the names of the officer who murdered my brother. And I just want to state the fact that before I came to this meeting, there was an officer driving by my house harassing us. And he went to the front, busted a U-turn, and went to the back of my house. And you know how I know that? Because I ran my ass to the back of the house to see where they're going. And yep, they stopped right in back of my alley. So, what are you doing, Norma, to do this You're not doing nothing. If you want, I will invite you to my house so you could come with us for a week and see how you like to be harassed by the cops. You wouldn't like that you would run your ass to. Do you even live in Anaheim? I like want to know. Do you? Because you probably don't. And Natalie, you probably don't even live in Anaheim Hills and you want these poor people to get burned. That's up. You should get burned before they

get burned. So, all of you guys need to figure out what the you guys are doing to help us. You guys want us to get shot and you guys want them to get burned. That's up. Brian K followed by Shelley Robbins. Brian K. Happy day. You know, one word that's being thrown around a lot is process. Wait for the process. Invest in the process. If a process works, then we keep using it. If a process doesn't work, then we should stop using it. Right now, the process in place isn't working. It keeps resulting in people dying. This process is wrong. And I can see, you know, at the meetings last night and this morning, you're trying to defend what's going on yourself. And you keep using the word process. Wait for the proc. 30 times Anaheim police have killed unarmed people. and they keep doing it. And that's because it's the same process. You're already waiting for the outcome in a year that the police officer will be cleared because that's the process. You know, one of your friends came to me because they had a rodent problem. The sweet elderly woman had to hide in her room from an hour before sunset until an

hour after sunrise because the rodents ran her house. Companies told her, "Hey, it's going to be thousands of dollars and it'll take years. We may never get rid of the problem because that's the process." Somehow I found out about it and I said, "I'll go over. or I'll talk to the in 3 days my crew, my little rag tag crew solved the problem and she doesn't have rodents anymore because sometimes you have to let go of the process. You have to find a new one. You have to find a way to take care of the problem. Giving everybody excuses isn't solving this problem. And Ashley, my mother's Catholic, my mother is a mother. government official. Okay. So, I see that potential that you have to do something different to do what's right. And before process, we have the Constitution, which is the supreme law of this land. And if you follow the Constitution, we may not all be happy, but we'll be able to agree. Not just on my case, not just for me, but for yourselves. That process doesn't care. And that process will kill you, just like it killed an Anaheim police officer. Just like it leaves Anaheim police officers unable to sleep at night. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to Anaheim. from you to the victims of the process to make it different. Happy day. Our next speaker. Good evening, mayor. Good evening,

council members. Thank you all for taking the time to listen to us speak. I know it's been a rough night. However, I do want to talk about the festival shopping center proposal. As it stands, it should not move forward due to clear deficiencies in both traffic and evacuation analysis. These deficiencies are not simply inconvenient. They are at odds with SECA's foundational requirement that environmental impact reports must reflect real world conditions to enable informed, responsible decisionmaking. The project study is based on a Tuesday afternoon snapshot from 4 to 6 pm. However, local peak traffic regularly extends well past 7 due to after school activities, work commuters, and regional spillover from the 91 freeway. By excluding these critical hours, the analysis fails to capture the volume and congestion patterns that define our actual risk, especially during emergencies. Worse, the EIR relies on a narrow corridor data and overlooks congestion at key intersections known to bottleneck such as Santa Ana Canyon, Weir Canyon, Yor Belinda Boulevard, La Palma Avenue, and Cannon. These omissions weaken a study's validity under SQUA, which requires that data used to justify environmental safety be complete, representative, and transparently analyzed. In high fire risk zones like this, traffic modeling is not an academic exercise. It is a matter of life safety. The city has stated that fire behavior modeling was performed using worst case scenarios, which is commendable. However, the evacuation modeling does not follow that same conservative approach when it accounts for human modeling. It assumes ideal human behavior, orderly zone compliance, no early self

evacuation, and perfect coordination among multiple agencies. These assumptions are inconsistent with what actually occurs during wildfires. The panic, gridlock, and spontaneous decision making made by everybody trying to evacuate. There is also no defined evacuation time standard in California or locally that's been determined by the the fire department to set what is an acceptable evacuation time frame. Without that, there is no clear threshold to trigger denial of a project. Oops. But would you even when cumulative risk becomes dangerous, SECA had was designed precisely to fill this gap by requiring rigorous realistic impact analysis before irreversible decisions are made. Furthermore, the festival project shifts the site from intermittent lowdensity commercial use to full-time residential occupancy, not shopping center attendees. So, it's a guaranteed, not a hypothetical of how many people will be there. Ma'am, your time is up. Welcome. Thank you guys so much for your time. I appreciate it. Please keep us in mind. Thank you. I urge the city council not to approve the festival center project as it is currently described. The conclusion that the site is better suited for the project because it would result in fewer two-way trips than an active movie theater is a distraction tactic and does not negate the fact that the project exceeds the city adopted VMT per service population threshold. The developer's reasoning assumes that the site must either be a feeder or housing. In actuality, the site could be many things, retail, restaurants, medical facilities, etc. Having the site remain commercial would be more substantially beneficial for the residents of the senior community and other neighborhoods

behind the project. Res residents could cross the street and have close access to festival. The fewer trips conclusion is also moot because it is not considering the traffic conditions at the time the theater was approved. When the theater was built in 1992, the senior community across the street was not there as well as much of the surrounding neighborhoods. It is likely that the theater, if the theater was being proposed today, it would be denied. Everyone knows the immense evacuation risks this project contains. One detail that baffles me is how 900 plus cars are supposed to evacuate from a parking structure that only has two exits, one of which feeds into another parking lot that will contain additional traffic. Another fire related aspect to the project that has not been mentioned is the wildland urban interface regulations. This project would require a buffer zone of 100 ft and a 5-ft non-combustible zone around the property. While the developer renderings are beautiful, they are not realistic. Hundreds of palm trees mere feet from buildings which when ignited by one rogue ember would become bombs of flames that would engulf the project. This is irresponsible and dangerous. According to this according adding to the horrific traffic situation this project would create is the fact that there are no walkable elementary, middle or high schools near the project. All of the minor residents would have to be driven. Finally, I want to remind you of any personal experiences you may have had with miss mixeduse developments. I've been to several. Ontario, Los Angeles, Irvine, and the one across the street from the main place mall in Santa Ana. One thing remains the same in all of these developments. There is no parking. Time and time again, parking meant for patrons of the retail and restaurants is used by tenants, extra vehicles, and

tenant guests. Consistently, developers pack in units and put profits over people. The same is true for this development development which has decreased the average square footage of the individual units. 400 plus units is too many for such a small footprint and would adversely affect the quality of life of the residents and the project of the project and Anaheim at large. I urge you to consider the recommendation of substantially fewer users. Ma'am, I'm sorry your time is up. Thanks. We have our next speaker step forward. City Council members, Mayor, good evening. We urge you to vote no on the festival center. We do not think it's a good idea to put so many people in such a small place. Have you ever done a fire drill at your house? Even the family of four? It's a planning disaster and nightmare. Everybody's running around. They're pretending like they're on fire. Everything gets crazy. Nobody gets out. Now imagine you get in-laws maybe living with you for a short period of time. Maybe grandparents coming in. Maybe a sick loved one. Now imagine another fire drill and another completely different scenario. Way worse. Now multiply that by a thousand. A thousand homes evacuating all at the same time. Fire's inevitable. It's not a conspiracy. Even insurance companies know this and that's why they dropped all of us now. Know your way. We don't really understand how they're going to notify us. It's unclear. When is it your turn to evacuate? Is it a phone call? Is it a text message? Is it an email? Um is it a police announcement? Because you we know that the police are going to

be busy navigating traffic, telling us where to go, and Orange has said that they're going to navigate us away from Orange. So, we're not going to be able to evacuate towards Orange. We just asked you to fix the holes in the know your way before adding dense housing to a project. The project is not required by Reena. So, why not significantly if you're if this is going to happen, not significantly drop the units. There's no reason for it. I know that sometimes we're not going to get what we want. Sometimes you're not going to get what you want. We all have to do what we need to do. I understand that. But we can significantly drop the units and increase safety by doing that. And I'm asking you guys to think about that. Thank you. Guess what I'm talking about? Good evening. My name is Steve Hair and it's about the festival project. Pardon my voice. Uh, you know, a number of months ago, this this council uh stopped the salt project and it was rightfully so. You did a great job and thank you for that. And and once at that time, if I remember correctly, the main reason was the safety, the evacuation. It was it's already bad enough. About 10 or 15 years ago, the smoke was coming very close to our house. And I sent my wife down. She went to see her sister. She was going to go to her sister. It live two, three miles down Santana Canyon Road. About 10 minutes later, she turned around, came back. She said, "I can't get out. I cannot get out. I was already hosing the house down. Well, that's okay. If I want to stay and die and hose my house down, I'll do it. But I could not send my wife

out for safety. She had to stay there with me. Adding 500 unit almost 500 units to the festival area ain't the answer. It's not the answer. And you know that. And if I remember correctly, the last time the police and the fire units were totally against that project that in Deer Canyon and I'm sure they're going to be against this. So we ask that you again really think about it because everybody here, I can't think of one person where we live would say, "Yeah, build 500 more. Get $1,500$1,500 more cars so we can add to the already con not enough road system." So once again, please I ask you when it comes up, when the vote comes up, do what you did before, the right thing. Reject it. Thank you very much for your attention. Our next speaker, good evening, mayor and council. Um I'm another uh festival guy. Yet another um I'm here to speak about the proposed Shay development. There are two big drivers for safety related opposition to the project. Both are evacuation related. One is the collective memory of the fire disasters in the past and the other is the lack of belief in the efficacy of the know your way plan such as it is. Nothing can be done about the history. But the second issue can be addressed by better communication. Currently, I assume in the interest of simplicity, the plan has been boiled down to a directive about which direction to drive. Having a plan is necessary, but not explaining it or defending it is a bad look. It leaves people to use their imagination and develop hopefully

invalid assumptions about the plan's realism and the underlying motivations. I suggest having those in charge of implementing the plan, meaning managing it at runtime, explain to the residents how it will work and get feedback on the assumptions they are using. Ideally, this is in some face-to-face community event, but should also be backed by some documentation. No plan is going to be perfect in the face of a relatively unpredictable threat. Uh, but people of good faith at least would sleep better knowing the plan actually exists. and has been thought through. A few specific scenarios should have should be walked through and at least one that mimics the Canyon Fire 2 scenario, a rapidly expanding fire originating near the 241, which uh many have in their minds. Personally, I'd like to take the Canyon two fire scenario and play it at 12 a.m. when almost everyone is asleep. This is far from unlikely as the winds there are often strongest at night. In this scenario, a time when commercial property is empty. There is guaranteed to be over 1300 unconscious people that will possibly need to be quickly evacuated, possibly in a panic. It's also a time when a functioning Anaheim alerts would be critical and it isn't functioning. In closing, transparency is key for calming community nerves and placating safety opposition to the project. That is assuming transparency will confirm the asurances the community has already received. The longer transparency, a common theme here, is delayed, the more the fears of the future victims of Canyon Fire 3 will be confirmed. Thank you. Our next speaker, Grace McGee.

Good evening, council. Um, I'm Grace McGee, a 31-year resident of Anaheim Hills. I ask that you please vote no on the festival project next month as indications are that you are wanting to vote in favor of it. Please recognize that the Edwards Theater traffic has already been replaced in our area and vastly more so by all the cut through 91 freeway traffic already coming into our residential area over the past several years. Are you seriously willing to risk all the lives of the families that live here by adding even more traffic to a very high fire severity zone? one that already has three-hour evacuation times. And are you really willing to risk all the lives of the families who might move into that proposed festival project? While buses are staged for public school evacuation on windy days, what about all the private schools like Hillsboro and Hepatha in the area and kids dropped off at activities like baseball or da the dance academy or karate? How are they going to get evacuated if parents can't come into the area to get them per the know your way plan rules? Are you really willing to risk all of these children's lives? What about all the elderly at the Overlook, at the Palasio, at Brookdale, and at the Meridian Senior Living Facilities? And what about all the elderly that might be stuck in their homes? Are you really willing to risk all of their lives? You seem to think that adding a 241 toll road connector to the fast track and a possible Fairmont exit ramp only over to your Belinda and a lane on the 91 freeway is going to

magically solve all the daily bumperto-bumper traffic from the 91 freeway cutthroughs and drastically reduce the thousands of cars already in our area on a daily basis. Those sadly will not even make a dent in resolving the existing horrendous traffic issues we already have. Also, district 6 has already contributed much more housing than several of your other districts such as the hundreds such as the hundreds of units at Tustin and La Palma. Don't forget that. And what has changed for all of you council members to support the festival project when just 16 months ago you voted against Deer Canyon due to wildfire and evacuation concerns? Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed except that two similar huge Southern California neighborhoods in Altadena and Pacific Palisades were decimated due to wildfires in areas that weren't probably even known as extreme higher severity zones. Ma'am, your time is up. Take care of us and vote no. We'll have our next speaker step forward. Hello. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. I am Lita Ericson. We built our home on Owens Drive in 1978. Uh we've lived there 46 years. We built it in compliance with the general plan requirements which call for low density housing in this very high fire d uh fire risk area. Um

in the fall of 1982, this is my true story. My children were one and three. My husband was out of town for the weekend. My sister was visiting. A firestorm came from Corona. The Sana winds drove it. I climbed an aluminum ladder to go to the roof to water it down. I put soaker hoses on the top. I turned on the water. There was no water pressure. The I looked down. The people below me were watering down their roofs. I gave up. I I went to my four-wheel drive truck with my sister and children in it. I drove across my neighbor's property to a 4-foot drop off to Pawsum Hollow Martin. That's uh below Owens Drive, but not connected. Um, as I I left the roof, I saw the burning emmers coming over the hills that will be the salt development in a line as the Santa Ana Rivers, Santa Ana uh uh winds came down. So, I uh as I left, my neighbor below me asked me if I would help her evacuate her livestock. I promised Patty I would return, but I could not. I did not understand when once you're evacuated, you cannot return to an evacuated area. Note that I evacuated successfully in 1982.

I still feel guilty for not being able to help part Patty Barkstdale out with her livestock. Now, over the last 40 years, I've seen Mhler Loop um develop many more side streets, more residents. I have one way out. My neighbor fenced that area. I went down before. I have one at way out on the moler loop. I was on the moler loop for the canyon to fire. Ma'am, I'm sorry. Your time is up. Good afternoon. My name is running deer tech. Obsidian knife, heart of the mountain, deolotin. We stand in solidarity with our brothers in Anaheim Hills because in Anaheim Hills, we have our secret societies of Native American code talkers we have called the Red Points. We're at a tribal office meeting in Anaheim. We talked about the red points and in that area there's also animals actually take a trails. We take trails. There's ancestors buried. Native Americans buried there. And if you're Mexican in Chuco, Cho, you have Native American blood. So we feel for Arsola as well and we feel for the people in Anaheim Hills, but for Arsola, we also want justice. We want that the videos get shown. It is time that they show. We if we city mayor, we met earlier. It was very hard for me to be there and to trust and I still don't trust the police, but hopefully like the mother said, maybe this is a step for us to start maybe trusting. It's going to take a lot to trust. And a lot of our people have been harassed, deported, mistreated, killed, uh racial profiling.

When I went to Catella High School, we uh met uh the Brown Berets, the Alan, and Meta. And I remember meeting this beautiful lady named Lupe. And I remember, let's walk out against Proposition 27. And I was already alert and ready because my grandpa taught me my oral tradition that we speak Aztec, Nawat, like the word Chipotle, Awak, Seattle, Wisconsin, Chicago. So now it is time that we do the right thing. city mayor and city council and staff that we do the right thing. And I'm glad that the city manager got uh fired, you know, and there's probably going to be more people that are going to get uh fired. The other one on a good note, too, I also want to say thank you for uh getting the grass out in the city of Anaheim, whoever's in charge of that, and putting native desert plants cuz we had desert plants. We had npopales, cactus, uh we had aloe vera, savil native plants that we eat, you know, that's vegan. That's traditional foods for our people. And we had those plants. By the way, Mark Daniels, before the colonist arrived from Europe, you know, the colonist came and they put grass for money. Just like the homes that they're trying to build in Anaheim Hills, the same thing is for money. It's always for money. If Black Elk speaks was here or crazy horse or sitting board, Chief Seattle, Seattle means one water. Se means one. And now what? Aztec. Mishika means water. ATL like Atlantic. Atlanta. If Chief Seattle was here, he would say, oh, I remember his quote. He said, "One day you will know what it is to have the last tree." And it seems like they're cutting down more trees and building more homes if not in the vitals up in the hills, but our ancestors are calling now. And this is the time to heal. And then when I was in South Dakota at the Sundance, I got to talk too much, but I met a lot of descendants of crazy horses, Citybull, and even Geronomos descendants, Coakla. And they said that the medicine wheel must come together. The medicine wheel is the four colors. And I'm so happy to see our white brothers and our brown brothers come together. hopefully our Asian brothers and our African-American brothers too because once that medicine wheels the the people that control you guys the cabal they have the money but we got the numbers when we say justice we say for justice

sir your time is up NOW hi I'm Tannis Dunbarto and um I wanted to express my opport opposition to the proposed festival center project as I'm deeply concerned about the ramifications of the project due to public safety and evacuation concerns. In light of what occurred in the catastrophic devastating Pacific Palisades fire, I believe the only thing that prevented a similar fire occurring in Anaheim Hills is that there was not a shift in the winds. Plain and simple, we were lucky last time with the gridlock that happened due to last time we had a fire in Anaheim Hills. If you add hundreds of more people in their cars to a similar situation, the time frame for evacuating puts at risk lives significantly more, especially if we were to experience winds similar to what happened in the Palisades. This area already has experienced fires which proved there is limited ingress ingress and egress making evacuation a known problem. Excuse me. Approving a major new development without proven effective evacuation plan wi without a proven effective evacuation plan places us residents at increased risk. The safety of the residents of Anaheim Hills must be paramount to allowing a new apartment development to be built. I ask that you all deny the approval of the festival c center's proposed building of apartments or alternatively delay it until evacuation and emergency access issues are fully resolved so as to ensure the safety of all of us in Anaheim Hills. I ask that the owners of the property look

beyond and consider building other services for the community on that property. We don't need more housing up here. We could use more restaurants and services and grocery stores. I can't imagine what's going to happen when they add a thousand more uh cars grocery shopping at Costco. Just go over there anytime. You know, we miss the theater. you know, Anaheim Hills um lost the Festival Theater and Cinema City Theater that was closed. Um, independently from expressing my above concerns, I want to propose that the planning department in collaboration with CALR and the highway patrol consider coming up with a plan in the event of a catastrophic fire event to close down access to the 91 freeway at outlying areas and block certain entrances to the freeway so that only entrances in Anaheim Hills or Yor Belinda would be open so as to allow residents to flee the area in a significant ificantly shorter amount of time. Furthermore, given the close proximity of Santa Ana Canyon Road and the 91 freeway, additional access points from Saint Ana Canyon Road into the 91 Freeway could be planned and built so as to be opened. Ma'am, your time is up. So, thank you. Next speaker, Tammy Hill, followed by Doug Hill. Good evening. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate your service. My name is Tammy Hill. I do live in Anaheim Hills. Um I know that my neighbors and people here have all spoken to you about various reasons why. Um understanding that when you do have a catastrophe that you need to have a plan. In business you have to have a plan. You have to have a strategy. So, I understand that the know

your way plan looks great on paper. There's a lot of things that can look great on paper, but in practicality, it doesn't always flesh out the way we want. Take the internet for example. It takes how long to test and model and test and redo it to make sure that it's functioning correctly. Sorry. Oh. Um, so with that being said, Paradise also had a plan. Their plan was a fivehour evacuation for their residents. So they were giving them five hours and that was okay. Within 40 minutes it was complete chaos and that was a half an hour before they got the official word to evacuate. As many of you have seen on TV, they a lot of residents left their cars, their vehicles because it was faster to run. that was not only unsafe for those residents that lived there, but that was an obstacle and it was unsafe for the police and the fire department that was coming to help them. It created obstacles. It created distractions. The other thing I want to say tonight is I really do appreciate your time. However, sitting in some of these city council meetings, I have to say it is very disheartening to hear, well, my district did this and your district didn't do that and you don't do enough and we do too much. When I was younger and I started playing in sports, I had a coach and my coach sat us down the very first game and said, "Don't ever compete against your teammates. You compete against the other team." And I hope that you can take those words to heart because I was told those words a long time ago. You don't need to do the math, but it stuck with me. Thank you. our next speaker. Well, good evening, mayor and city

council members. Um, my name is Doug Hilp. I've been a resident of East Anaheim for 30 years, and in that time, I have evacuated twice. Once in 2008, 100 once in 2017. But we'll come back to that in a minute. Uh at the last city council meeting you guys had a map of the festival plaza and I believe it was zone five which was the upper tier of festival plaza is what you are being proposed to reszone. Uh that entire area is planned to be reszoned not just the section where the movie theater presently sits. My prediction is is if you put this 400 plus apartment building there, you will squeeze out the other businesses that are on that tier and eventually it will all become dense housing, which is inconceivable in East Anaheim. The area was never designed for dense housing and now that it is zoned or determined to be a highf fired hazard area makes it even less responsible to put that type of housing there. The comparisons made that oh there's so many seats at the movie theater and it would be similar to the number of residents is is completely erroneous. If there's a fire, people are not going to the movies. They're not going to the stores. They're leaving. They're they're closing those um type of places where if there's a fire, people are trying to get back to their homes in order to get their loved ones, their pets, their precious property and evacuate. We're not going shopping. We're trying to get out. What happens in an fire evacuation is there is panic. There's pandemonium that takes place. People want to get back and save their loved ones, save their property, whatever they can in order to get out. telling people you can't come in. Guess what? They're going to go anyway. And if you don't let them in, they're going to

park their cars and they're going to black all block all these access ways. Know your way is a no way. When the fire comes, people are going to react as they see accordingly and they will get to their property and do whatever they need to in order to get out. 3 hours. Three hours is what it took me to evacuate back in 2017. the more housing that's in that area is going to turn into four hours. Come on, guys. 3 hours is unacceptable. 4 hours is criminal. It can't happen that way. Before there is any more development in East Anaheim, you need to put in the infrastructure first. That's a no-brainer. Infrastructure before building. Give us ways out. There's all kinds of ideas. You you can you can expand San Canyon, make it six lanes instead of four. Give us a real overpass at Fairmont. Not some walkway, but a way to get out of there. Take care of us. Yes. Protect us. Your number one responsibility is to protect your constituents. That's us. Protect our lives. I'm sorry. Your time is up. Our next speaker. Hello. I'm back again. I am going to talk to Ma'am. I'm sorry. We I'm talking um for Sergio Arzola. Oh, she's talking for Kimberly that cannot come up here because you guys don't have um Well, we can um take the we can take the microphone to the back. Okay. Yes, but she cannot hold it because she has No, we will we will hold it for her, ma'am. It's fine. Thank you for the spot. And I want to let you know that the builder for that uh property is right there. Girl, you've been asleep this whole time. He's been asleep. He's been yawning at all of your guys' concerns.

Listen, ma'am. I need Thank you, Madam City Clerk. Can you please bring a microphone? Do they want to speak? We do have would the woman mayor speak. I just grace sorry I didn't mean to call you out. Um would she would she like to speak if we get a hand? Okay. Thank you very much for letting me know. So can we um call on M speaker is Andrew Wner. Go the next one. It's against the law not to have 88 accommodations. Just so you all know meetings now. Um, in recent communication from a city council member, an argument supporting Festival's development impact during the evacuation was the following. Since a full-scale test of the plan isn't feasible since it would require complete shutdown of the 91 freeway and the 241 toll road, a traffic model was implemented to confirm the plan will work. Thanks to council member Meeks during the city the last city council meeting uh last week. I had the opportunity to discuss the traffic concerns with the director of public works Rudy Amami. He also referenced this traffic study during the conversation and seemed very cautious when I asked for more details. Um such as when it was conducted. I couldn't get a straight answer on that one. I specifically asked for the study that night and in a follow-up email. I

was assured by staff that I would have it early this current week. It's going to be Wednesday tomorrow and I don't have it. A public records request for that information was submitted on January 23rd. And yesterday we received notification that the city is exercising their right to delay the response by two more weeks, putting it at February 16th. To get this, in addition, I asked Mr. Amami for details outlining the communication procedures between fire, police, CALR, and neighboring cities as referenced by council member Meek's comments during the January 13th city council meeting. These still have not been delivered. I asked police officer last night at the Anaheim Hills Golf Course about it, and he said he's never seen it in writing. You're being asked to make a final decision on this project while key evidence remains hidden from the public. That's not fair. That's not transparent. For that reason, I am formally requesting that you reopen the festival public comment period at the March 3rd meeting so residents can review and respond to all the information that is supposedly guiding this decision. Please provide your response before the end of this meeting. Thank you. Our next speaker A little difference in height here. Good evening, Mayor and Council. I also am here to um speak against the festival project. I think there's a lot of assumptions being made that are not correct. Um we vividly remember the evacuation in 2017. We appreciate that the city has acknowledged the failures and the improved coordination, but what exists today is a is a modeled plan, not a

proven one. There's been no real world evacuation under these assumptions, and we simply don't know how the plan would work in a wind-driven wildfire. The question as to why we're adding any additional burden to is unacceptable being that our evacuation time already is three hours. The claim that roughly a thousand additional vehicles would only add seven minutes does not reflect reality. You ever been in a parking garage and try to get out of it with a thousand cars in front of you? It's going to take a few more than seven minutes. And evacuations do not move like commuter traffic. They bottleneck. Those of us higher up on the hill are trapped in gridlock with the lower ones being able to exit while we are stuck waiting for the entire streets below us to exit. Roads are shared with police, fire, engines, ambulances. There's helicopters overhead. It looks like a damn war zone when it's going on. And conditions are chaotic. Visibility is reduced because of the fire and the smoke. And people are under extreme stress. We've been told that there's going to be infrastructure improvements. they need to happen before any kind of development. I also need to reiterate um what Andrew was just saying. You need to reopen the comments up to the people. Yes, your your your applicant your applicant who's been sleeping apparently over in the corner um has requested he's requested a continuence to March 3rd so that he can address some of the concerns. We also should be allowed to address the concerns. This impacts us greatly. Um, and then also I do want to touch on there is a big concern over reszoning the whole parking lot and the builder being able to come in where 24hour and the the preschool is and later on turning it into a density project that

we don't get any say in. And I also want to say Ashley, thank you for standing up for transparency and for check and and for checking up on ICE. And I hope to God that you guys follow up on what's going on with ICE because that is not okay. I want to stand in solidarity with the Albert Arzola family. I think this is absolutely terrible. Terrible what's going on. They need some closure. Give them the videos. And Pearl, president, girl, president for you. Linda Hurley. She is such a tough act to follow. Um, I really didn't prepare anything. I kind of wrote it while I was here, but um I just want to say that the know your way protocol is an excuse for the builder to develop on that site. That's all it is. Um for people that don't know, there is a senior senior facility living facility right behind where the old movie theater used to be. Um that houses approximately 225 people. The developer is putting in twice that number of people. And imagine those seniors unable to drive very well to begin with having to go out on one street that will let them out onto Santa Ana Canyon if they can even get out there. Thousand cars a thousand cars more. So that to me is is I mean I would have thought right there that's a a kind of a deal breaker.

Also, I wanted to say another thing. Um, you know, all fires have deaths. All of them do. I mean, it's just a given. But when you take the number of people, 50 some odd thousand in Anaheim Hills and compare it to Paradise who had 20 some odd thousand and the number of deaths were like 85 because they also had the limited ingress egress problem. Now, you're going to take twice that amount of people. Nothing is going to work. We may end up with over 200 people dead by that time. Now, I don't know how you people are going to feel about it. That is a that is a judgment call. That may be a judgment call on your part. I don't know. All I know is when I was a kid in school, I learned that my representatives were supposed to represent me, not developers, not a bunch of people who were giving money out and and favors and whatever else. That's what I learned. and it's not that way anymore. So, so I I I just want to say that that Carl Sean so eloquently said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. I've just given you proof of every fire we've had in the last 10 years where there were deaths and nobody could outlive them. So, please make the right decision and forget about the developers. We don't need more housing. You've got the excuse. Our next speaker, Stephanie. Hi, good evening, council. Um, I'm Steph. I'm with CSO OC and I'm here in support of the family of Albert Arzola. Um, he was the young a young man who was

unjustly murdered in cold blood by Anaheim PD. I am here to demand that the city council take action to hold the officers who killed Albert responsible. We demand that the names of the officers be released. They should be in jail and fired from the police department at the least. Members of the PD have recently said that officers deserve due process. Well, I wonder what things would have been like if the same police department made sure that Albert had due process. But instead, they decided he was already guilty before they chased him and executed him near his family home where children were present. Shame. Um, this was a racist killing. Black and brown people don't get due process. We demand justice for Albert Azola and his family and loved ones who are here tonight fighting bravely and fiercely. Um, I also uh vote no on the festival development because if there was ever a time for the city council to intervene, it would be when the citizens of the city's lives are at risk or in peril. Thank you. The next speaker, we'll call again Jay Van Arsdale. We'll go to the next speaker, Mark Herbert, followed by Kenneth Batist. Um, Mark Herbert, uh, anaheimgree.com. I'll note this meeting. I'll make an effort to be prompt on this one. Um, I've heard a lot of words here from this council. This council, the mayor, council member Ruba Calva, council member Leon, council member Campus Curts, council member Meeks have been

sitting there three years, and I've heard a lot of words about transparency, accountability, and public engagement. But what I've noticed the past three years is their actions don't match their words. So, I'm going to list a few here to to illustrate this. Let's start with uh LA Times article July 25th, 2023 documents a cover up between the police chief and the ex city manager. Two, Salt Development. During that hearing, it came up that there was unlawful addresses submitted early in the planning process. As well as Bill Ericson brought up that the fire plans weren't what they promised. City did not follow up and investigate that. The Anaheim Community Foundation has been turned into, I hesitate to use the word, a slush fund, but I invite you to listen to the audio recordings of the 12126 meeting and then compare it to the staff report given at the following council meeting. They don't match. and the city. The reason those people were given notice during council communications for their Christmas gifts is because they channeled their contributions through the Anaheim Community Foundation. Your family didn't go through that channel. That's the way things work here. Um, now these aren't missteps. These are manifestations of the corrupt political atmosphere at city hall that

the council operates under. And it's their policies. It's not Harry Sedus. They've been here three years. Citizens and residents have been bringing up many of these complaints about how they treat the residents when they come up to speak and there's been no changes. None. This is your atmosphere. It's up to you to change it. Hello everyone. Giving honor to God. Those on the council serving the God of the people. As we know, corruption has been systemic in the city of Anaheim for years. Matter of fact, that's why we're nearly $6 billion in debt by the And this was uh verified by the state controller that went ahead and redlinined us with the city of Compton and bail. Uh our old city manager said it must be some mistake. We'll just go ahead and write a letter and send it on up there. But ain't nothing else been said. So that just shows you how things go on. Okay, I'm guess my time is growing short, so let me get straight to the point. I the Albert Arzola I find this out and this is common when the police are right they release that video immediately to show the they show that so they don't have to go ahead and go through a buildup of thing but when you go ahead and try to hide it and say it's because of an investigation or something of the sort usually they have something to hide. My point of it is this right here. We all, no matter what we do, should be accountable for our

actions. That's what's wrong with America today. We are not accountable uh for our action. First thing, let me go right here. When you put a clown in charge, what you usually get is a circus. And America has become a big circus. Right now, our status in this world has went down. and all of us. So, we're talking about going ahead and snatching people with 8 million million a day. $8 million a day for funding ICE. Let's make sure we get that straight. $8 million. And they want to go ahead and spend other money to go ahead and cover that. That's like going ahead and having your insurance off your house snatched and you ain't know what to do. So, all of a sudden, you got you in there for yourself. this point of what we're talking about these 500 powers of these apartments. We dealt with this seven or eight years ago when they was ready to turn a shopping center into that. My message to district six is when you allow the developers to go into other districts and build threestory town homes over all single homes all around it. It's just a matter of time before they come for you. developers, real estate developers get away with misconduct and other other districts priming their pump for district six. My point is this right here and I'm going to close with this. I went up there to that fire after it went over with. My hearts went out to those people. In the last District 5 meeting, I talked to the fire chief asking him what could we do for for district 6. Mr. Batis, your time is up. We need to do more. Thank you,

Mayor and City Council. That con that concludes our in-person speakers. Noting for the record, we did receive electronic comment uh comments. Um item number 10, we received 95 comments and um for general comments, we received 18. Each of those comments were distributed to city council as well as posted on the city's website at anaheim.net/public comment. Thank you clerks. We are now going to close the public comment portion of this meeting and move to our council communications. If any council members have items to share, please ring in. I'll start with council member Moss. Thank you, Madame Mayor. I have two slides to share this evening. Just want to give a quick thank you to Anaheim Fire and Rescue. Last Saturday, they uh visited Sycamore Junior High and did a sidewalk CPR training for students and their families. So, I appreciate their time um taken on a Saturday to go out there and um give our families more confidence if they see an emergency. And then I would like to invite uh residents of district 5 to Sun-Kissed Elementary School on Wednesday, February 18th uh for our open house among other topics. We will be uh we will have information about street takeovers, code enforcement, fire preparedness. Um you can share your thoughts on Angel Stadium. We'll be talking about traffic safety. uh Chief Sid will be there and we'll be talking about OC Vibe and fireworks. So, uh residents of District 5, please come out and uh take a look. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Council member Meeks. Thank you. Um, District 6 will also have a community meeting on February 19th and

I have asked the um, fire department, the police department and the public works department, our traffic engineer to be available with more information on the traffic modeling and the know your way. Um, regardless of the outcome of the festival project, I am I feel very positive about the additional exposure that the fire safety has gotten with the community. We have been outreaching to the community for five years over the know your way and a lot of people still don't know about it. So, I I encourage you all to come out and find out, you know, what zone you're in, how it's going to work, how the communication is going to be held, how how you will be notified, and and the questions that you have, which are important questions. Like I said, regardless of the festival shopping center, it is important to everybody that the future evacuations of the area work well, get everybody out, and that we're all safe at the end of the day. Thank you. since they're supposed to create it. Vote no. Thank you. Thank you. Um, assistant city manager, I think, um, when I'm Oh, sorry. I should ask you directly, Council Member Meeks. On 18th, where is the meeting? It's the 19th at the East Anaheim Community Center. Okay. So, the East Anaheim Community Center in the evening from 5 to 7. If you do not live, I know we have me district 5 mentioned as well as district six. We are having one in every single district. So, we will put that out on our social media. We will put that out on our Facebook and Instagram. Um, so whatever district you live in, if you don't know, it's a great opportunity for you to look it up. Um, and then attend the meeting in your local area. However, you are welcome to attend any of the meetings as is convenient to you. Um, so I think I don't see anybody else with council communications, so I'm going to turn to mine if you don't mind pulling

up my Oh, sorry. Council member Rubik Alva. Thank you, Madam Clerk. I believe I have a couple of slides. So, I wanted to um ask the mayor to close the meeting in honor of San Bernardino County Sheriff who passed away this week um due to cancer. So, just sending um some love to the people who he has left behind and just honor him and remember him for his sacrifices and for the battle that he fought. not so hard with cancer. Next slide. I also wanted to remember and I also just need a shout out to Grace from Housing Community Development. So, this is Maria Pon and unfortunately she passed away today and um it was Grace and her team who helped her pass away with dignity by finding her housing. She had been homeless in our city and living on um various people's couches, including Sophia Romero, who is a community leader in my district. And I just want to thank Grace and her team for all of their commitment to our community, but also ask the mayor to close the meeting in honor of uh of Maria. And then to the Arzola family, I want to say I know your grandmother was here last week, but I do want to let you know that as a person who grew up in Anaheim and I have family members, my condolences do go out to your family. And I know I posted this and mentioned this last week, but I will keep your family in my prayers. And I do have to reinforce the fact that there is a process and there is it is a you will get I guess what I would like to say is that there it's not it's an independent process. So it is being um reviewed by the district attorney's office. It is not an internal investigation. Internally what we review or at least the police department is they review process and look for other things to be conducted differently. So I just wanted

to reassure you that that is ongoing. Um, we will continue to work on behalf of the residents who live in the city to make sure that there are uh good things that are happening for our residents, but I will also ask the mayor to close the meeting in memory of your son, cousin, family member tonight because he was a resident of the city of Anaheim. And although not my district, still adjacent, and as I mentioned, I grew up here. So, I do care about all 350,000 people who live in our city. So, sorry for your loss. Um, but I do want to reassure you that it is an independent process and our police department is here to serve and protect all people who live in our city. And I am sorry for the loss that you are sustaining at this time. And then I just wanted to mention so we um uh did uh accept the resignation of our city manager Jim Vanderpole. And although I will mention Matzel to you directly, he was the one person who fought to make sure that your murals that you put up did not have permits because you would do these independently across the city. So I will just mention a couple of things. Our city manager's decision today to resign comes after years of extraordinary pressure. And I want to acknowledge the resilience and professionalism he demonstrated throughout the time he served our city. Despite difficult circumstances over the past six years, he delivered for our city and served as a steady source of stability for our employees and our residents alike. While this was not the outcome many of us on this dis had hoped for, the foundation he helped set for our city will will remain here. And I want to thank our assistant city manager Greg uh Garcia for taking over the helm today as Jim had has left. But I am confident and I want to say this to all of our department heads and to all of the city employees and to all of the residents. I am confident that the

people who are representing you on this dis care truly about the future of our city and will continue to fight for everybody who lives here regardless of Jimmer's here or not. So with that, I conclude my council communications, but I do want to thank Jim Vanderpool for the service that he provided to our city as I know he brought tremendous stability to Anaheim. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Bis. Thank you. You know, I too am going to say a little bit as well. You know, Jim provided very consistent leadership for the city during several challenging periods. He was involved in advancing the Beach Boulevard renovation project which has been a major priority for a long overlooked section in district 1 for many years and his efforts contributed moving that project forward. He also led Anaheim during CO 19 pandemic and helped us guide through a very difficult and uncertain time. You know, Jim was the longest tenored city manager that we've had in the last 15 years, and I believe stability and city leadership are important factors in maintaining confidence in our local government, both for our employees and for the broader community. I know his tenure provided a level of consistency that was valued by many within the city and throughout the community. And I'll just say, you know, I hope as we move forward and select the next city manager, we'll focus on the qualifications, the experience, and the capacities necessary to effectively lead our city. So with that, I'll say thank you. And then I also, as everybody else did, I will also note that District 1's community meeting is tomorrow night, Wednesday, Brookhurst, uh between 5 and 7 p.m. So I hope to see you there. Thank you. Thank you uh Mayor Prom Leon and then council member Kurtz. Uh thank you madame mayor. I participated in the uh point in time

count. This is a a a count that happens every two years uh led by the county to get an understanding of how many unhoused individuals might be living in our streets. Um, this is something that it's it's it helps us with numbers, but at least for me being out there, um, I'm able to hear stories, uh, stories of folks that are experiencing unsheltered homelessness, uh, many of them because of bad luck, many of them because of financial constraints. Um, many of them es escaping uh, domestic uh, violence and and hard relationships. Um, I met a 19-year-old uh who has been living in homelessness since she was 15 because she was escaping uh uh domestic abuse. And so, uh, for me, these this experience puts things into perspective um because there are folks that are experiencing um homelessness in our streets. These are human beings at the end of the day. They're our neighbors. And so, I just want to thank our housing team uh Grace, Sandy, uh Kevin, uh who was able to join me uh for their continued work. And we know it's not easy. We know it's not an overnight solution. I know we've made a lot of progress. Um, but there is a lot more work to do. And so I I just want to say thank you to to everybody that participated in that. Um, and uh and helped uh helped make that uh uh a reality. Um, and I also uh just want to echo my colleagues. Um, I also want to thank uh Mr. Vanderpool for his service to our city um and the work that was done during his time leading our city. In his role as city manager, Anaheim made progress on important priorities and delivered results for Anaheim residents. Leadership transitions can be unexpected. They can cause some uncertainty, but I have full confidence in the strength of our city, in the professionalism of our team. Anaheim city employees are the backbone of our city and their dedication to residents remains constant. Anaheim will keep

moving forward. I wish Jim well in whatever may come next for him and again want to extend my gratitude to our city staff who day in and day out continues to work for the residents of Anaheim. Thank you. Thank you. Um Council Member Curts. Thank you, Madame Mayor. Um I too want to thank Jim Vanderpool for his service to our city. Just wish him and his partner the best. I won't list all those accomplishments as my colleagues have already done that. I want to thank um Greg Garcia for stepping up and ensuring that we're going to move forward. I want to thank the department heads as they've reached out and made sure that we're aware that the city will keep going. Their commitment was not to a person is not to a person. Their commitment is not to those of us here. Their commitment is to our residents and our businesses in the city and have committed to ensuring that we will move forward. So I thank you to to the family of Mr. Arzola. I have a 19-year-old grandson myself and the thought of losing him is petrifying. My heart, my prayers go out to the family. I look forward to a full and complete and transparent report

and I'm assure you that it will come. I know it's taking a lot of time, but it will come. Yes, ma'am. I have noted that request. Um, I all I can tell you right now is that that investigation will be thorough. Thank you. Thank you very much. Um, I just wanted to share uh some of the events that I attended. Um, clerk, if you could share with them. Um, I wanted to thank the SyrianAmerican Medical Society um for inviting me to their event this weekend. they um since the fall of um the leadership in Syria, it has been much easier for them to work with their communities. But this is a group of doctors of all different fields um that are raising money to send critical life-saving care to those that have been impacted by uh years and years of civil war in Syria. Um, and it was so wonderful to see so many members of our ArabAmerican community out there um, supporting this great cause. Um, last week after our council meeting, um, I got to represent the city at the US Conference of Mayors, um, where I chaired a panel, um, on arts and, um, representing voices in our communities as well as have meetings with our two United States senators to talk about issues including ICE, including immigration, um, and what we can do to really make sure that we are keeping our communities ities safe. Um, so I want to thank them for meeting with the California delegation of mayors as well as me personally. Um, next I want to give a special shout out to our police

department, our fire department, and our great public works department that made the um, last half marathon weekend uh, for a while while construction goes on at the park a huge success. Um, I was able to do uh barely the 10K as well as the half marathon. So, kickoff doing over 19 miles this weekend. Um, it was so wonderful to actually have a course that went through downtown um through our small businesses um right by city hall and then back up to the resort area. So, to all the officers, fire personnel, public works that were out there um all weekend as early as 1 2 o'clock in the morning, thank you so much. you made tens of thousands of runners very happy. Um, last I want to mention, I know it's been mentioned by the family who joined me in uh the Azora family that joined me in District 6 last night um as well as um folks that came out this morning um doing the our meet the chief events. Uh, one of the things that really impressed me about our current chief is is the fact that he really does want to get out in the communities. Um, you know, to get out and to meet people, to see our neighborhoods, to see what his officers go through, um, and what they see every day. So, this is just the first of of several that we're doing, but just wanted to thank all the residents that came out um last night as well as this morning with your great questions um and taking the time out of your very busy days to meet our police chief. So, with that, I will turn it over for the city manager's update. Mr. Garcia. Thank you, Mayor. Just have one update for the council and uh you all stole my thunder a little bit. I just wanted to share a slide on the upcoming uh district uh council meetings, the community open houses. Uh so our first one as was mentioned earlier starts tomorrow with district 1. Um we welcome

all residents to join us uh for the open house in their um district. Uh folks can drop by any time between 5:00 and 7:00 p.m. There's no formal presentation and no need to arrive right at the start. City leaders and staff will be there and we look forward to hearing from our residents and connecting on what is important to everyone. Um each district's open house will cover a variety of topics relevant to their neighborhoods. And among other issues, uh staff will also begin seeking some high level feedback and thoughts on what residents think about the stadium site um per the direction of council. So we're kicking off that robust outreach process. Uh on the screen behind me, you'll see the dates for each open house and you can find locations and other details on our social media or our website anaheim.net/openhouse. And that is all. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Acting City Manager. So, we will now address the city council consent calendar. Items 1 through 7 are before us. Um I would like to pull item number six. And I'll now ask members of the council, are there any other items for which they would like to pull? Starting with council member Rubikava. Oh, sorry. Okay. Uh, sorry. Could just be council member Curtz. Thank you. Uh, just a quick question on item number five. Wonderful. So, with items number five and six pulled, is there a motion to move the remainder? Second. We have a motion and a second. Please vote. The vote is seven eyes, no nays. Motion carries. Thank you. So, item number five was pulled by council member Curts. Would you like a staff report or do you have a specific question?

No, ma'am. No staff report necessary. I just have a a quick question. Um, certainly I support the the purchase of the the truck, the vehicle. Uh, can you tell me how long it'll take for us to receive it? Uh, good evening, uh, mayor, council members, and council member Curts. Thank you for the question. The, uh, vehicle is going to take about 18 to 24 months through the build and delivery. A long time. Um, how are you doing the work without the truck now? So, the service levels continue. This is one of two Packer trucks we have. We we lost the the larger one that we're replacing um due to a fire. Um and we did get insurance proceeds to help us pay for the new one, but unfortunately with all of the acquisitions for vehicles and uh um the timing does take a lot longer. So, we are supplanting the work with um pickup trucks and steak bed trucks and the other smaller packer truck that we have. Thank you uh to public works for making revisions on your plan. Uh hope you can get it sooner than 24 months. Thank you. I thought if no one has any questions, I'd like to move the item. We have a motion in a second. Please vote. The vote is seven eyes, no nays. Motion carries. Thank you. Uh the next item was um pulled by me, Mr. Assistant, City Manager. May I have a staff report? Yes. Uh staff report will be given by Duku Lee. Good evening, mayor, members of the city council. This item is for two power purchase agreements to receive wind energy along the and the associated renewable and capacity attributes. The facilities are located near Tahachchip, California, which is about 30 miles

southeast of Bakersfield. In spring 2025, APU staff issued a request for proposals for renewable energy and received 16 responses. Terent submitted a proposal for two facilities which have been operating since 1999. Together, these facilities include about 120 wind turbines uh with a combined capacity of 78 megawws. That is enough clean energy to serve about 29,000 Anaheim homes. And for a contact, 78 megawatts is about 15% of our peak demand during a hot summer day. A key benefit of these facilities is that they can begin delivering energy shortly after execution of agreements. We also receive renewable energy credits that help us comply with state renewable power regulations. And the capacity from this resource helps to meet the original grid operator requirements for reliability and capacity. The pricing of this resource is $18.5 million per year and includes energy, the renewable attributes and capacity. By bundling these components, Anaheim avoids approximately $6.7 million per year in separate market purchases on the wholesale market, resulting in a net annual cost of about 11.8 million. Additionally, we only pay for the energy that is delivered. So, when the wind is not blowing, we're not paying for any resource. And overall, these agreements support Anaheim's clean energy goals while maintaining affordability and reliability for our customers. And I'm available to answer any questions. Thank you. I had a couple um a couple questions. I mean, one, I know that we say this whenever we have a a public utilities um agreement before us, but this is not coming out of our general fund. It's coming out of uh the public utility um funds. Correct. That's correct. We have both an electric utility fund and a water utility fund which are separated from the general fund of the city. And so this would come from the electric portion. That's correct.

So as we go for 60% uh renewable power by 2030 and then the requirement to have 100% um renewable energy by 2035 2045 2045 um you know how is that going to if we are contin if if we are required to continually buy more and more energy from operations such as these renewable power agreements is that going to have any effect on our rate holding holders. That's a great question. It's something that we get from our residents. I think uh in general what the feedback we get from our residents is they do support and want green energy. However, they don't want their bills to go up significantly. Totally understandable. What we've been doing is we've been divesting other resources. So, for example, in December of last year, we took our final um power, our final kilowatt hour of energy from coal. And so, this is essentially replacing that. So what we try to do is we minimize our uh costs in order to um uh be able to afford these types of resources. But uh your point is well taken. How do we do this and still advance um state policies, climate policies while trying to maintain affordability? And right now our uh differential between us and surrounding Orange County communities served by Edison, it's roughly it's actually getting close to 50% now. Thank you. And do we have a plan in the future to um purchase or buy into in an ownership stake in these renewable power companies or do is the long-term plan to keep entering into agreements to buy power from them? So I think we want to maintain flexibility in terms of the strategy. Right now having power purchases um that come before us is optimal. We did actually look into could we put in a battery storage next to one of our existing plants and we did issue a

solicitation and it came back extremely expensive. So as we look at what happens with uh tariffs or other types of uh power impacts cost impacts I think we want to try to maintain as much flexibility as possible. Um thank you um for answering my questions. I believe uh we have a question from council member Bis. Thank you. I have two questions. Can you estimate what will be the potential cost increase uh of this particular uh contract? So in terms of rates, yes, thank you. Sorry, I should have said that first. Yeah. So um there's not one specific contract that adds. We have a $300 million power supply portfolio and this is part of that portfolio. So if you take the uh associated percentage of that, right, it's not quite 10%, so closer to about 6%. That's the cost of our total portfolio that we get. Also, keep in mind that we're only paying for the energy that we receive and we're able to offset some of those costs based on what we're able to recover through the wholesale markets and that tempers uh the cost impacts from this. And uh we're as I mentioned where we're um replacing coal energy that we used to receive. So this is helping to replace the void that we used to pay for through fossil fuels. Sorry. So okay, I get it. You're it's a small portion of the purchased power. So, is that then 6% possibly that we would see a a raise in rates? No. No. Because our $300 million U power supply budget is roughly about the same. And so, this is what we've seen. I can tell you what we've seen in terms of our rate increases over the last number of years. It's about one and a half% per year.

Okay. All right. Last question that I have is you put in here that um our renewable portfolio standards will reach approximately 42%. I'm curious, you say okay when the wind is blowing. So how do we do you factor for when the wind is blowing as to what the percentage of the uh power purchased is? Yes. So there is a modeling that's done based on wind profiles. As I mentioned, this resource has been in existence since uh 1999. And so we look at historical win patterns to see what we estimate to be able to receive from this resource. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Bakalava. Did you have a question? Thank you. It's more of a comment. I just want to thank you, Duku, for your leadership. I um Anaheim Public Utilities is probably one of our most valuable enterprise assets. I know people try to say it's the angel stadium, but it really is our utilities. So, I want to thank you for your ongoing investment in making sure that we are the most competitive. When you compare our rates to Edison, uh neighboring cities are constantly going through brownouts and losing power and we don't experience those same issues, especially with the state's electrification goals. Um, I think we're ahead of the game. So, I just want to thank you for your ongoing investment and then also give you some uh kudos from people in LA County who have mentioned that LA Department Water and Power um are way behind on not only the investment that you're making here, but also in making sure that our technology is um top-notch. So, you can actually identify a power outage uh remotely and not have to go search for two days to um identify where it is. So, thank you for your continued investment in time and effort and um and just making sure the residents of Anaheim have what we need. Thank you. Thank you. So, with no other uh questions, I'll make the motion to move this item. Can I get a second? Second. Please vote.

The vote is seven eyes, no nays. Motion carries. So item number eight is our presentation u by the chief of police on his strategic priorities for the first 100 days in office. Um acting city manager, may we please have a staff report? Yes. Thank you, mayor. Uh happy to um welcome our new chief of police, uh Manny Sid, and uh he's got a short presentation for you all. While we uh work on getting the PowerPoint up there for part of the presentation, I want to start by saying thank you for the opportunity to come before uh the council mayor. Uh all honorable council members, excited to be here. Uh have an opportunity to share a little bit about what my first 30 days have looked like, a little bit about what I intend to keep doing as we go through these first 100 days, and then some early priorities. But before I dive into that, I want to take the opportunity which kind of dubtales to what I've heard from coming from the dis uh but maybe more specifically to the PD and I think it was council member Leon that talked about the the fact that a transition for any organization is not easy. It creates a level of anxiety sometimes, uncertainty. Um, but I am here to tell you and I think as represented in this room, uh, if you look around behind me, we have nearly every management level uh, employee at the police department, both sworn and professional staff here. And I think it speaks volumes. And I will tell you that uh, that anxiety and that challenge in a transition includes your police chief coming to a new organization, um, learning the organization, learning the city, uh, but getting to work to building a team with all of these uh, men and women. And I will tell you that to a person, every one of them uh have uh accepted me with open arms uh and an excitement and a sharp focus that bigger than me or any one of them uh is the Anaheim Police Department and making sure uh that the service level never suffers, that we show up every day,

provide a high level of safety to this community, keep pushing that forward uh and try to improve it at every day. So, uh, I want to take this opportunity in front of all of you, uh, to the staff that I'm working alongside with, and this extends all the way down to our line level staff, both professional staff and sworn staff, uh, and say thank you. And, uh, I'm excited to be here with them. Uh, excited about the road ahead of us. We certainly have work to do, some challenges and things ahead of us. Uh, but I feel really, really confident that, uh, with this team standing behind me, uh, and the other men and women that come to serve this community every day, we're going to be in a good place. So, um, as it relates to my first 100 days, what does that look like? Really busy and, um, a lot of long days and nights, as it should be. Um, and it really is encapsulated with a couple of just really important focuses. First, uh, to really learn and assess number one, the organization, uh, get to learn this community, uh, and do a lot of learning and assessing. And um I'm going to spend a little time talking about what that has looked like internally, what I think that looks like externally. And then I think the other really important priority for me, which I think is at the core of where we should be as an organization is building relationships. And those relationships uh of course start within the organization but extend out into this community to the folks on this dis department and city staff around uh our city organization. So doing a lot in the way of again assessing it and uh and building out the organization. So again what a little bit of what that looks like starting internally. Um, I have made it a point through uh this first month, I'm I think in my 34th or 35th day, um, to really dive into the department and that has meant everything from attending every one of our patrol briefings, uh, days, nights, swing shifts, weekends, um, getting an opportunity to meet the staff, getting an opportunity for them to get to meet me, talk a little bit about expectations that I have of us as an organization, of

them, the framework in which I will try to lead the organization, um, as well as setting up and I've been doing this now for a few weeks and we will continue doing it for the weeks on end is going around and meeting with every section within our organization of you know 650 some odd people and meeting with the management and the supervision of each section and getting a decent understanding and a snapshot if you will summary of each section and its function uh where they are today what their staffing looks like where they feel their strengths are where they feel we have room for improvement uh which gives me an opportunity to assess the organization kind of nuts and bolts get to know some of my leadership team uh and start to work on things collaboratively of what that's going to look like going forward. So, doing that across the department with both our sworn staff as well as our professional staff. Um building those relationships extends out to our union leadership u across the organization, both sworn and professional staff. And I've had the opportunity uh to meet with everyone of the leadership of all of the unions that uh are encompassed at the police department. uh down done a couple of town halls uh in our training auditorium where a handfuls dozens uh as the APA I think had well over hundred folks there uh also had one with a significant dozens and dozens of folks there uh as well as some of our management teams sitting down with them obviously those are smaller more intimate groups meeting with their leadership talking a little bit about the future getting to know them giving them the opportunity to know me uh and trying to really work on earning their trust as well as getting buy into a collective vision moving forward and it's been really successful. Um that of course extends to the men and women you see behind me here, the management team of the organization. Again, getting an opportunity to know them. Um they have a lot of talent, history, and understanding of the organization, where it's come from. Um which is incredible valuable value to me. Not that I'm overly concerned with being in the past, but understanding that that past shapes a little bit about

what the future's going to look like in the context of where we are today. um that extends out to our department heads and uh I will also tell you that in one short month I've had the opportunity to start to get to know some of the men and women that lead all the different departments in our city and I will tell you there's an amazing amount of talent and leadership amongst that group and I'm really blessed. I've had the opportunity to work at two other cities and I will tell you that already it's clear that this executive team is second to none and uh you know I would put them up against any of the other folks that I've worked with before. So excited to work with them. I'm going to be meeting with many of the department heads one-on- one. Just the other day, spent ti time time with uh Chief Russell and his entire executive command at the fire department, getting to know them, making sure they get a chance to know me, and I will continue to do that over the next few months. Of course, that extends to the folks sitting up on our dice, our elected officials and city leadership that represent the people of this community. Had an opportunity to spend some one-on-one time with some of you. I have others that I know will be planned coming here in the weeks that come. Again, understand not only your priorities and your respective districts, but also where we're trying to go, um, as a city organization. Then externally, um, you know, as the mayor touched on, it is really important to me and something that I have done with any of the cities I've been a part of, um, is to build strong relations in the community. And it's my desire and focus that I want the folks of this community to figuratively speaking feel like they can reach out and touch me and interact with me and uh have dialogue much like we had last night uh up in the canyon and uh so I'll be really working really hard with that. Uh that extends everything from our school districts. Had an opportunity to attend a round table with our superintendents from our many districts that are a part of our city here uh as a part of continuing to make sure that we have strong uh collaboration and ties with the leadership of of our schools um because of the the efforts that we make around our youth services and the importance of that around safety around our schools and other other things that we'll talk about as it relates to that. uh that

extends out to all the stakeholders in our community and whether it's our hotel years, leadership from our resorts uh and our many different venues. Um already have had the opportunity uh to attend that. Had an opportunity to attend uh meet and greet with a lot of the hotel years with council member Curts. I've had the chance to meet some of the leadership team um at the resort and we'll continue to dive in um as well as at our stadium. uh an opportunity to keep diving in and getting to know these folks, understand their needs, uh what they expect from us and what that partnership should look like. Uh community events, I think today they're on full display. Um already have been diving into attending a lot of community events, whether they've been formalized ones that we're, you know, kind of advertising right now in the way of open houses and, you know, meet the chief and the mayor all the way to more kind of I'll call them grassroots opportunities uh to dive into some communities and get to know people uh kind of on a different wavelength. and I really enjoy that part and I'm going to keep continue to do uh a lot of that um as a way of really just building a strong presence in the community. Uh attended my first police review board uh meeting recently. It was a close session uh uh one but I intend to be uh if not present at all of them at most of them uh moving forward. I think it's an important part of my job to be present there uh and hear everything and see and kind of be a part of that process at every turn. Uh and then lastly, something that I know the department has had in years past, uh and I intend to refresh it here in the months to come and re-establish, uh a chief's or community advisory panel, uh be a group of a cross-section of the community, uh that I can use as a group to vet things off of uh whether it's, you know, initiatives, policies, where we're going with certain things, use as a sounding board, uh and really be a group that I can use for council and get a different perspective from varying parts of our community across um you know the vast landscape that is Anaheim. Next slide please. Thank you. Um so as

it relates to um strategic priorities I preface this by saying uh these are the priorities that I have that are that are early on. Uh keeping in mind that I'm I'm it's 30 days and uh still have a lot of assessing and learning to do. Uh but these are things that you know I I feel really strongly about. Um you know I I believe myself to be what I would call a fundamentals police chief. So, a lot of what you're going to hear is is kind of back to basics fundamentals and uh I will start with building a team. Pardon me, building a team. And uh I think when I had the opportunity to come before the council at the time of my confirmation, I talked about the importance of that. It's my opinion and belief that the success of any organization is going to largely be dictated by how well we develop a team, foster one, preserve one. Um I think we if we have a strong team then most anything is possible. So talked a little bit about what we're doing to develop one as you can see already getting to work with some of that uh at the management level but that also has to extend down through our organization and that's with all our um our line level staff supervisory staff um our different unions that represent uh these folks and making sure that we can find some collaboration and a common goal in pushing this organization uh forward. Uh part of that's resetting some expectations and making sure that there's a lot of clarity around what those expectations are and that we're going to have a sharp focus on putting this organization and our mission first above everything else. That we're going to take care of the people around us both within our organization and the people we serve in this community. Uh and that we are going to strive to set a standard of professionalism that's unmatched by anybody else. Um, part of building that team is going to be as a part of assessing the organization, um, reorganizing it to some degree. Certainly putting my own touch and philosophies on it, but also trying to make sure that we are as

effective and efficient as possible, uh, so that we can excel as a team and that we can get the best out of our folks and set them up uh, for success with the many challenges that they face. Also important points in this is really just improving morale and that is important to me and um I think a a workforce that feels good about coming to work that feels supported that's in an environment that they think they can thrive um is going to be a happy workforce and a happy workforce is going to work really hard and we're going to get the best out of the amazing talented people that we already have at this organization. So doing a lot to build trust um reset expectations all as a part of fostering a high level of morale. And then as we start developing things out there's opportunities for me and the men and women of the management team and leadership team to make sure that we're doing a good job of succession planning and developing the organization up and down not only for today where we are today. We are a very young organization uh but for what the future holds and I'll talk a little bit about that in a second. So, first priority, just really building out a team, establishing that, knowing that that's got to be the baseline. The next one, which is more the X's and O's of it, is what I will kind of refer to as rep prioritizing patrol. Uh patrol is the backbone of any police department out there. And I think most of my colleagues, you know, law enforcement executives will usually say that. Sometimes I think we'll fall a little short in having our actions match um saying that it is the backbone and the lifeblood of the organization. This is something I'm really passionate about. I assure you that the folks behind me will probably chuckle because they've heard me talk about it at Nauseium already. And it really is the outward facing and in the bread and butter of any organization. And uh we are going to uh both looking at our organization internally find ways to really prioritize patrol not only in the way we staff but the way we support patrol. um more police officers out on our streets uh I believe helps number one impact response time

which has to be a core function and a measurement of how effective we're being as a police department. The hope is that for the most part our community members live a life and enjoy a community that they don't largely need to call us, but if and when they do, um I will dare to say that they want us there two minutes ago. And in those moments when you're dealing with something, seconds feel like minutes and minutes feel like hours. And I want to ensure that we can get more cops out on our street so that we can drive down that response time. While we are putting more cops out on those streets, um it is academically proven that it will help drive down crime. Visible presence in our communities, visible law enforcement presence helps deter crime, uh which is certainly important to us, not only statistically speaking, but I think it also helps improve the perception and feeling of safety, which I think is an important piece of what we're trying to get done. uh as a part of getting more officers out on the street, we want to ensure that our officers have the ability to go out there and be proactive and show some of those smaller challenges and issues, be it um quality of life concerns uh or those quote unquote low-level crimes, I think if we do a good job of taking care of the small things, the big things tend to take care of themselves. So, wanting to get more folks out on the street, get them into in particular some of our more impacted neighborhoods where they're dealing with different and unique challenges, whether it's gang activity, um, or or any of the other challenges, homelessness, uh, some of the challenges we see up and down Beach Boulevard, and the list goes on. Uh, I think the more officers that we can get out on our streets, we can drive up that presence, we can have a direct and indirect impact on all those challenges that we are facing. increase in traffic enforcement. Um I will tell you which is not unique to Anaheim. Um this has already in my one month here been one of those top two or three things that I get a fair amount of questions and concerns about rightfully so. Um you know we have a traffic bureau

um that's pretty lean and we definitely want to look to grow that. It's an important supplement. It's kind of one B, if you will, to patrol. Um, not only the work that they go out and doing, good traffic enforcement and education, they're also a gigantic piece of what we do in and around our resort and our special events and hosting those things and hosting them safely. So, wanting to bolster that and really increase our efforts around everything from dealing with street takeovers and racing all the way through to ebikes and some of the work that we want to do there, commercial enforcement. um you know uh one day I'd love to see us get to a place where we have a commercial enforcement unit given some of the major entities we have in this city and dealing with some of the safety that surrounds that. Uh and again that visibility I think is going to be important. Um I think I've heard it almost to a person from all of you sitting on the das and I've heard it already in a month being in this community um is this is a community that is largely very supportive of this police department and if there's one consistent ask that I hear a lot of is that they want to see more of us and they want to see us out there. So uh definitely want to be responsive to that. Next slide please. My third and fourth priorities of my four, if you will, um, at the core of any good law enforcement organization is largely predicated on how well we can build, develop, and preserve trust and credibility with the organ with the community that we serve. It's at the core of what we do. How we're affect how effective we are or not is going to be to a large degree dictated. Does our community believe in us? Do they see themselves in us? Um, are we policing in a way that's reasonably responsive to what they are looking for in us? So uh when we talk about professionalism um accountability transparency these ideas at its core it's all about building in my opinion building trust and having um the credibility in the again in the communities that we serve. So as I go through assessing uh the organization again building those relationships making sure folks get a

chance to see us in a different light and have engagement with us uh and feel a level of inclusivity with everything we're doing is important. Um, I'm going to spend these first months reviewing a lot of our processes and policies, particularly what I will call the heavy-hitting ones, things in and around use of force, our pursuit policy, uh, and other critical incidents. The ones that are all our policies important, but the ones that oftent times we hear about whether it's in our council meetings, in our communities around these really important and critical matters, making sure um that our processes are as good as they can be, always be looking to improve them at every turn. Um, I will tell you the department has a lot of significant both internal and external processes to review a lot of these things on face value. They look and sound and appear to be really good, but that doesn't mean that we can't continue to improve them uh and find better ways as we evolve as an organization. transparency. I think it's an important part and uh particularly as it relates to data and I think data needs to be an important part of how um you know we plan and and conduct policing in the 21st century. Um and I think that we want to be as transparent as possible. People in this community need to be able to feel uh as much as reasonably and humanly and legally possible that they can kind of figuratively speaking look under the hood of the organization and kind of see how it runs and what it looks like. So u you know data comes to mind and really being as transparent as we can with that transparent with our policies again as much as the law will provide. Also around that idea of professionalism um making sure that for me down through the organization that we are as fiscally responsible as as we can and uh as the operation will dictate. Um and obviously when we talk about fiscal responsibility in most any police department right at the top of that list is a topic of overtime and making sure that while uh it is an important part of the function and the service that we provide uh as a police department particularly with the

unique situation and circumstances of our city with a lot of the major events and the resort and some of the other large entities we have in the city over times a significant part of how we staff those safely and provide a level of service. also making sure that we do everything we reasonably can to be as efficient as reasonably possible. Last and certainly not least is thinking about the future and certainly my focus will of course be in the moment we are today and and how we build around this moment, how we meet this moment today, but also thinking about how we continue to grow for the future. And uh this is an exciting time I think for this organization at the police department and for the city. And uh there's a lot of exciting things to come for this community and this city in the the years to come. Whether some of the large events like LA28 coming to our jurisdiction, the growth of the resort, OC Vibe, some of these other really major exciting things uh is exciting stuff, but we need to make sure that we meet that moment and we meet it with success. And that means thinking about the future and thinking about tomorrow and planning for it. Uh whether it's our staffing models and our staffing plan, how we do a good job of leveraging technology. Uh you know, technology is an important part of any good 21st century police department. Making sure that we find the right balance and the right technologies that fit what we are trying to get done, fit our culture, uh that also are uh fiscally responsible. uh and that we use it as a supplement of of finding ways to provide a high level of service. So whether we're talking about drones and real-time crime centers all the way through to trying to find ways to streamline the job of our line label staff, particularly our police officers, uh and get them back out on the streets, not sitting necessarily in front of a a keyboard, having to write reports or other ways that we can streamline the job and automate it and evolve with technology uh is going to be an important part of what I'm going to want us to do. emergency preparedness, whether we're talking about good collaboration with our fire partners and

assisting them with the challenges that come with that. We have again whether you know it's the resort through to some of these other large venues like the stadium and the arenas. Um you know how we prepare for those things, how we protect those things both from local threats as well as ones that even are outside of our community and is important part and making sure that we're prepared for that emergency that is out there and we don't know what it is. is whether it's a natural disaster. Um, you know, the first responder piece of our job, you know, from a police department standpoint, we spend a lot of time talking about fighting crime and traffic and rightfully so, the law enforcement piece, but the first responder piece is incredibly important, too. And uh if we have the big one, if you will, or some of the challenges that we saw last year with with fires and all these things that are very very real, we need to do a good job from a public safety standpoint, us and our fire partners to prepare for those things and to be ready to meet that moment as successfully as we as we possibly can. Next slide. Mayor and council members, that concludes uh my brief overview, but of course available for any questions that you might have. Thank you uh very much, Chief, for that informative overview um of your uh priorities. I wanted to see if you could go back a couple slides. Um one of the things that um I want to start with thanking you um I know that you've met with probably most of us uh individually um to kind of discuss, you know, our priorities. um in in our interest in the department. And so one of the things that I wanted to um ask you about when you were talking about staffing and focusing on the future is um you know kind of what the size of our force needs to be. I know um I I'm really interested in looking at how we grow our our police force, kind of what our path to 500 is. um it's a large number um but with the

building and the and the large projects and the growth that we're seeing in our community, I think it's something that is going to be uh on the forefront um for your tenure um for the years that you're going to be with us. So, can you just kind of touch a little bit when you what you um what your kind of plans are and what do you think we need in um terms of sworn and unsworn officers? Mayor, thank you for the question. Um before I dive into it, let me preface it by saying it is not lost on me um that you know the public safety arm of our city is a significant part of our budget. Obviously Anaheim's not alone in most city governments of city entities, public safety is usually the lion share of the budget. And whether we're talking about police officers all the way through to professional staff, it is not lost on me that that they come sometimes at a significant cost. Um and and that is dictated by a lot of things that are bigger than I think anybody that is in this room. Uh but providing a high level of public safety to any community. Um there's a lot that goes into that, but at its core and at its foundation is a staff. It's the police officers out on the street and the professional staff that support them in doing that job. Uh there's a lot of metrics in which you can look at what is the appropriate size uh police department for any given community. One of the ones that is used largely across our nation is cops to resident ratio. And you know, we have roughly 350,000 people here. The national average for cops to 1,000 um residents is usually right around 1.5 officers per thousand residents. If you do the math at 350, that's a pretty large number, bigger than 500. Um, also, you know, particularly when you talk about the city of Anaheim, the residential population in this city only tells half the story. Um, with 25 27 million visitors a year and the resort and the com and the OC vibe and all of

the other things that we have that make us exciting come with a workload associated for not only public safety, quite frankly, for all city services. Um, so there's a lot there. That said, it is fully clear on the fact that uh even if you gave me a hundred positions today in funding realistically, I couldn't hire a hundred police officers in that time. But certainly what I would obviously in support, you know, with city leadership and in conjunction with the other city departments certainly would recommend that I think as an organization, we need to set forth the plan to start growing towards probably in and around that number, mayor, that you mentioned about 500. I think 500 will still keep this organization at a fairly lean position, but one that I think it can operate at a very high level at. We don't have to be a department that's incredibly fat or drives that ratio higher than anybody else. I think it's also a piece of what we do here to pride ourselves in being able to be lean and still be highly effective. But certainly there's a a balancing act there that we become too lean and we start doing less with less. And um there's a toll that certainly is, you know, put on staff at some point when we when we get to that place, particularly with all of the workload, if you will, that's associated with that. But I think in and around 500 is a probably very reasonable number given again size of the city, the complexities that come with it and um again realize that that's not a one day to the next um mission if you will, but certainly you know a plan over time towards working towards that I think is going to be an important part of not only meeting where we are today but preparing for the future. Thank you. Um I also wanted to um touch on your um priority about use of technology which we know every month, every year is changing rapidly. Um we have a we did a major investment with

focusing um on our real time crime center. So, I just wanted to see if you could kind of touch on what do you see um as kind of the future of the real time crime center and how do you see that fitting in with your department? Thank you for the question. Uh I couldn't agree with you more. I think as I as I mentioned earlier, technology as a whole needs to be a part of the future of our organization. I think of all the departments uh within the city organization. PD is no exception to that. Um, the department has already over the last couple of years, as you all know, stood up a real-time uh real-time crime center. Uh, something that you're seeing more and more in law enforcement around uh the region, if you will. Uh, an important part, and I think uh not only does it make us more effective and efficient in doing our job, safer at doing our job. In a lot of ways, it does serve often times as a force multiplier for us, which is important at a time when we're trying to find solutions to things in and around staffing. Trying to be able to balance that and utilize technology the best we can um to improve and and um and make us more efficient and more effective at what we get done, I think is important. And then, you know, there's other technologies out there that also again maybe help us streamline the work that our people do every single day. And um whether it's the amount of time and hours that our officers spend having to write police reports at the end of every day um you know as things like AI and artificial artificial intelligence come online the ability to maybe cut that time in half. Well that's more time that those police officers are back out on our streets uh and things of that nature. Of course, it's finding a balance because as you highlighted accurately so, you know, technology is moving at light speed and it's tough to keep up and we want to be educated and well vetted when we make decisions and and commit funds and and commitment to some of this technology that it makes sense and that it's going to, you know,

help sustain us moving forward. So, we'll be looking at it, constantly weighing it. Um, I think as I have mentioned to to my staff already as it relates to technology, I don't know that we need to be at the bleeding edge of every technology that's out there, but I certainly don't want to be trailing behind everybody. And I think there's a balance somewhere in the middle there to be found of how it works for us at APD. Thank you. Are there any other questions by council? If not, this is anformational item which we're not taking any action on. Uh, council member Meeks and then council member Rubakala. Thank you. And thank you, Chief Sid. Um, I really appreciate, you know, you've had a whole 30 days to, you know, wrap your head around the whole department in Anaheim. Um, but really it's important to kind of understand where you're going and and help the uh department um kind of rally around and and build that team effort. Um, and you know that I would I appreciate you looking at the overtime issue and historically the department has had a significant amount of overtime and as we do look to grow the force, I encourage you to look at the most fiscally responsible way to allocate the hours that we need. Is it with additional officers or is it with overtime? And I've been concerned about burning out our officers with overtime. Um, and because a lot of this is hours that we know we're going to need. We we are not the occasional. I mean, the Olympics might be an occasional um event that we will use a lot of overtime for, but baseball games and the resort and things like that, those are things that are on our agenda every year in and out. And so, um, it may be better to grow our, um, team than to burn out the ones that we have here. So, I appreciate you looking at that and the best way to accomplish that. Thank you, council member. I couldn't agree with

you more. Uh, it is a topic of conversation that me and this management team have already early on started to have. Uh, and in short, uh, I think there's a balance to be found. you know, is is overtime to some degree always going to be a part of what we do here and policing this city and providing high level safety? It is. Um, but I think with some staffing and some efficiency, there's a balance to be found and I think there's an offset to be found, if that makes sense, that as we do uh fortunate hopefully at some point start to grow the organization that there should be a reasonable understanding that there'll be some offset in in how much overtime we are using and needing to use. So, uh, not only from a fiscal standpoint, but as you touched on, and it is a really important thing to me, the burnout factor, as you stated, that's a very real thing. Uh, the job that the men and women, particularly sworn staff, go out and do is, uh, one that we want them cleareyed and healthy and rested in doing, uh, and nothing less. Thank you, Council Member Ruba Kaliva, and then Council Member Curts. Thank you, Chief Sid, for coming in today and giving us an overview of what you plan to focus on over the next 100 days. I know you've only been here 30 days and it's probably been like drinking out of a fire hose. So, uh, I appreciate the thorough, thoughtful, um, assessment of what your priorities are going to look like. I'm not going to ask you to, you know, share what you think we need in terms of more police officers. I actually appreciate the fact that you're doing a deep dive internally to see where you could better utilize the current resources that we do have. Um, as you know, as a city, our budget has been significantly impacted. But having a chief who comes in who fully understands what the needs of the community are, how you can repurpose your police force, sworn and unsworn, that makes a big difference for policy makers who sit up on the dis as we go into budget season. But I do encourage you to take a a really good look at what you need. I know there's been staffing

studies that we haven't all seen the full report on. Um but I I urge you to do your own assessment. I am not a believer of consultants who come in and tell us what we need when we really know when it appears to me that you're actually in there in the weeds doing the work. So I appreciate that. I want to touch a little bit on the overtime uh aspect of things. So for me, overtime is a quality of life uh issue. And I don't think it's really a policymakers um uh role to create policy to tell you how to utilize your budget. When we um vote, when we approved you as this uh person who's sitting and leading the Anaheim Police Department, I truly believe that you'll be able to determine how you're going to use your budget, whether it's going to go to overtime or however you're going to decide to utilize that. So, I have full faith in your steps moving forward. Um, but I do hope that you will work closely with a lot of our partners in the city who do happen to enhance the overtime that we have here. And I think I'm more concerned about the mandated overtime because I think that truly contributes to the quality of life issues that many of your officers are facing, including um our dispatchers. So, I know I know you've heard the story about that. We get complaints about dispatch. It's not because they're not doing their job, it's because they're overworked and probably underpaid. So, I think those are areas to definitely check out. But as you are, I'm going to ask you also as you're working with Disney and the Ducks to um decide what the need is there. Right now, we have 12 to 14 fully burdened um uh bodies that are dedicated to that area. I'm not sure that's enough. So, I hope that you take the time to truly assess what the fully burdened um cost is to the city. We did an assessment recently with um Anaheim Transportation Network and we did

discover that we're not getting fully reimbursed for many of the things that are going on in the resort. So, I just hope that you feel supported to go ahead and and look to see what we actually need, whether it's 12 fully burdened or 25. So, um, I hope that you feel empowered to go ahead and and truly figure out what we need to, um, to support that arm of our of our economy. Um, I also wanted to mention, so major events, huge, and thank you all for being out here this past weekend, but I do have to say, um, I did get some concerns from residents asking, you know, are these police officers on overtime? is Disney completely paying for all of the um overtime that is being utilized by APD as they were in social media posts and all of these other things. So, I think that's something to be aware of moving forward. That is a three-day event. Are we really compensating our police officers? It was all hands- on deck. It impacted patrol across the city. So, just something to keep in mind as you're working on that as well. And then to kind of go on a softer subject, your chief's advisory council. I'm interested in, you know, one, did you have one in Glendale? And two, what is your vision for that? And how will you recruit the people who you will be leaning on to provide you with direction as it comes to Anaheim? Council member, thank you for the question. I did have one in Glendel that I stood up there. Uh we went through a process there where we accepted applications citywide from anybody that was interested, put some parameters in place, pretty, you know, basic parameters around uh the type of folks we wanted. really what we were looking for by design as I touched on was a cross-section of the community uh culturally, ethnicity, uh different faith groups, so on and so forth. wherever we could find it, different stakeholders in our community, school district, so on and so forth, trying to get a get a good cross-section of the community that I and the the the executive command of the department have an ability to meet with on the regular,

not only build strong relationships, folks that we can use as sounding boards, building trust in our communities. It gives them an opportunity to be educated on the why we do certain things and some of the context around that, which they in turn go into the communities and kind of educate folks and give them perspective. But they do the same in return for us. You know, sometimes we look at an initiative or in operation and we look at it through the lens of law enforcement and sometimes not intended. So, um maybe we miss certain things and if the folks in that room are perceiving something or having a feeling about something, there's a really good chance that some segment of the community somewhere is going to feel that same way. What can we do uh to alleviate that concern or to repackage it or or make tweaks to it? So, I think there's a lot of value to it. Uh my intention will be as I stop drinking out of a fire hydrant and uh find my uh find my sea legs if you will is that later this year we will put out a process uh where folks from across the community will have an opportunity to weigh in uh and apply for it. Uh and we will look to you know make a selection of a a big enough group that we have a cross-section but also a small enough group that it's manageable and that there's some personalization to it. Uh, I think it's an important part of, you know, in a in a great tool for a police chief and a department to use, just another way to get a a finger on the pulse of the community. No, thank you for doing that. And I hope when you do um put together this advisory group, you also go deep into the community. So, you know, we have a very diverse population who lives here in Anaheim. I represent 50,000 people and even just within District 3, we have very affluent and we have people who are not, but they're workingass and they care about our community. So, I hope that you don't just limit it to people who are developers or who have interest in the resort, but truly are people who live here and are moms and dads and people who have kids at our school. So, I I just hope that you do truly dig deep and not just people who have connections or who have contributed to foundations

in our city, but really are the people who are just day-to-day who may not have the time to go to a meeting once a month, but will be able to tell you what really is happening on Pauline Street or Bush Rose and Vine. So those um families I think are the ones that we need to make sure that we're reaching because they are living the day-to-day sometimes nightmares in some of these communities where there's just uh negative activities that's going on. So we certainly will. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Curts and then Council Member Bis. Thank you. And I think it's a slide just before this one where um re prioritizing. Thank you. Um, I really like this this uh rep prioritizing parole. Uh, certainly the respon reducing response times is key. Uh, but I also like the fact that you want to get into neighborhoods and as you work in neighborhoods, impacted neighborhoods, um, you your officers will get to know the neighborhoods and know the people and be able to actively work in those neighborhoods to make them safer. Um, and so I I really I really liked that that piece. Um, addressing uh the underserved communities with visibility and key engagement. Um, and I know as I uh have meetings, just had one a week ago. Um, that's what the neighborhood is looking for. They want to be safe. They want their kids to be able to play outside. They also don't want um to

they don't like comparing themselves to another neighborhood that seems to get more attention uh from not only our officers but from departments in the city. So uh I like that you are uh emp emphasizing that uh neighborhood engagement. I thank you. Thank you Council Member Bailis. First off, chief, 30 days. Congratulations. Um, maybe we'll have you back in another hundred days. I'll be here and and take it a piece of advice anyway for me. I've only been here for what, a year and a couple of months. I'm not sure that that fire that fire hydrant stops pumping. So, just uh be wary of that. I got to talk to the fire chief about it. Well, when you do, will you call will you call him for me, too, please? Um, I'm going to try not to go over or ask some questions that have already, uh, been done, but I'm curious, um, you brought up, you know, a set of metrics for response time. I'm just curious, um, do we have what that current response time is now, and maybe that could be put out in a report to us um, now so we just get an idea of what those response times are. as it relates to that, you know, because I talked a little bit about transparency and data. One of the things that we're going to get to work on here hopefully in in the this near future is pushing out something like a monthly snapshot of, you know, just key metrics is response time, uh, you know, crime rates, traffic citations, issues, just some heavy hidden stuff that we'll be able to push out publicly, live on the website, get it to this group that you can use. Uh, but I will tell you as it relates to response time, I think we're in that high six minutes, pushing seven minutes, I believe. I hope I'm not misstating that. I'm, you know, 30 days in. Uh, as it relates to an emergency response time, and I', you know, this is pretty um, uh, how do I say, u wishful thinking or really aggressive, I guess,

is the word I'm saying. I'd really like to see us drive down to, you know, five minutes or less for that emergency response time. Thank you. So, you just answered my second question, which was, are we going to be able to get some data from you? Uh, because I think it's important that not only the community, but also the city council members, you know, get an idea of, uh, what's going on out there in the community in terms of metrics that are out there. So, thank you for that. Um, I like to hear that, you know, you're going to make sure that we review all of the policies. I think that's important. In addition to that, I heard accountability to make sure the officers are following the policies. So I think that's important as well. And then you mentioned uh you you framed it in the idea of transparency of data. Somebody else brought up uh you know technology technology data kind of go together. So a couple questions I have on this are do you think we will get to the point with technology that it'll be proactive rather than reactive? And what I mean by that is the city spent a lot of money on cameras. We've got a lot of cameras out there, but uh I'll give you the example. I think we had an incident over at Twilight Reed Park, uh a couple a week and a half ago, let's say. I think there were some fireworks that went off. I know we have cameras out there. Um I don't know if you know that did anything to help uh catch or or if we're even able to see. So that's that's the first part. appreciate the question. Uh to answer it most specifically, yes. That said, you know, just to provide a context and and this is probably for a whole other discussion in and of itself, but um coming from an organization where we stood up a real-time intelligence center, pretty significant size one. Um it absolutely allows us the opportunity to be proactive to serve as a force multiplier. The other side of that

though is that also oftentimes and what I experienced in the city of Glendale is it also creates an increased workload and um you know things that we need to respond out to uh that now you've now added to our officers on the street having to respond to some of these things. So there's a balance to be found there. I also think as the technology evolves, we might get to a place where we don't have to have a human monitoring that camera. There might be technology that will be able to just send us alerts to do it, but that'll come with time. So, um, yes is the short answer, but there's a lot of context I think that also needs to be considered when we when we have that conversation. I hope that makes sense. Thank you. In addition to technology, obviously you're looking for ways to, you know, either save time or to make the uh daily job safer for the officer that's out there. So, this isn't necessarily technology, but there are could possibly be, you know, when we talk about saving time or putting more patrol officers in the area. Uh, I know one of the things you and I have talked about is where the patrol starts at. We are a very long city and perhaps starting patrol in the center of the city for everybody is not the best. So, I know you're looking at that. I just wanted to bring that up. And then my last comment, and look, feel free to say, Ryan, it's only 30 days. I'm not there. I haven't gotten there yet. But um you know, it was mentioned earlier, we had the point in time uh uh count. Uh I was also out there. You had an officer, and I so sorry, I I don't think I know his last name. He's one of your Halo officers. I'm going to call him Officer Ryan. and I got the opportunity to see uh city resources used uh with homelessness. Uh there was a person out there knew the officer obviously had a good rapport and the lady said, "Hey, look, I'm interested in getting uh services and I think within an hour maybe the lady was picked up and on her

way and I I appreciate that, but my question is this. City has a ton of resources out there. Have you started to look and to look into and or uh possibly change when we have service resistant people that are out there? I know in my district uh there are people out there that over and over and over and over again. So, I'm just curious if you're addressing those issues. If you have something you can say about it tonight andor in the future. I'll start by saying, council member, it's only been 30 days. Uh no, in all seriousness, um yes. And I part of the reason I say yes is some of those challenges I've dealt with before. Um I think as I continue to assess and understand the challenges, the successes of units like our Halo team, which I'm only scratching the surface of and I get a better kind of in the weeds understanding. I think it's incumbent ultimately on me to try to remove certain obstacles for the unit as they're trying to do the work and then try to be responsive to the challenges we're seeing in our community. What I mean by that is that might mean coming back to other departments in the city, whether it's public works and how we maybe design certain areas to to deal with certain challenges all the way through that if I think there's um you know from an enforcement standpoint that something for our city attorney's office to consider to give us an added tool u from an enforcement standpoint and everything in between in that pendulum uh incumbent on me and the department to come back with some of those recommendations and explore those options and we certainly will. Thank you. Thank you, council member. Council member Moss. Thank you, mayor. Um, just wanted to ask you what your thoughts are on the role of um, school resource officers. I know right now there's an event going on. I think it's at Catella High School. Um, I always appreciate our officers connecting with the youth. U, so I'll say I'm I have a great deal of bias with this for two reasons. Number one, I'm a father of two daughters who attend high school and middle school. So, the idea of having a

safety presence in and around that school all the time with the very real, I hate to say threats that exist sometimes in our communities with that uh is important to me. Number two, um a big part of the reason I wanted to become a police officer and I thought that there was a possibility for me was because of the early interactions I had with an SRO when I lived, you know, in a low-income community and that interaction was unique and was a part of shaping my view at that time of what I thought law enforcement looked like. So, I think it's immensely important. I know the department and the city have done a lot in the way of growing that program. Uh we have a whole youth services section headed by one of the lieutenants that's here, Lieutenant Pñena today. Um really important and certainly not looking to walk that back by any stretch. I think we're just getting to the place of where we should be. If anything look to hopefully in the future maybe even grow it. Um if I remember correctly, I think we have most of our schools covered. There might be one or two that are still hanging out there if I remember the snapshot summary I had with with my folks in that section. Uh but I'm a big supporter of it. Um again, not only from a safety standpoint, the relationship we build not only with the students, parents, and the administration, I think it's really important. Thank you. As a parent of an eight-year-old, I really appreciate that. Um and I also appreciate your value of teamwork and working as a team. I think um we were talking and when we start focusing on ourselves and self-service, we get off track. So, thank you for that. I could not agree more. Thank you. Thank you, Coun Mayor Prom Leyon. Thank you, Madame Mayor. Thank you, Chief, uh, for coming in. Uh, and appreciate the work that you've that you've been doing. Uh, I think me some of my comments may be similar to my colleagues of, "Hey, man, it's only been 30 days." Um, but I know that we had a lengthy conversation before your appointment meeting and and kind of talked a little bit about the difficulties uh that you might be facing in the moment that uh is is in our city. Um, and so my just wanted to start off, I know you've said it before, but I

think it's a great opportunity to reinforce if you can talk a little bit about how our police department's role is public safety and not immigration enforcement. I know that continues to be a topic in our community and although we haven't seen verified activity in the last few days that doesn't mean that um that it's over that it can't happen um at some point. So if you could just for me it's about making sure that we're continuing that trust and building those relationships with the community and that they can call you um because you have nothing to do with immigration enforcement. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I mean in truth I think we could spend the rest of the evening talking about it. It's such a layered and complex challenge. Um, but I don't mind bringing it up again because it it bears repeating given the the the gravity of the whole situation on so many fronts. Uh, I'll start with just again to be as crystal clear as humanly possible. Um, we as a a local police department, as the Anaheim Police Department, we don't involve ourselves, assist or aid um in the enforcement of immigration laws. Um, both by state law which governs that, our policy which also governs it, as well as our practice and philosophy. It is not our role. We're not looking to make it our role. Um and it would be completely inappropriate for us to do so. Um the challenges aside of the obvious come with that in that you know I I talked about trust and the credibility of our entity as a police department is so you know it's a big part of predicating our success and the current enforcement that we see from the current administration in in the manner that it's being done. I know, I understand and know that there are many communities that don't know the difference between us and our I'll call it federal partners even even in moments where they're not being very partner-like. Uh but it creates immense challenges for us. Uh and what I don't want for this community for any member of this community is for them to feel hesitant in calling us to help them in the way of upholding public safety or being the victim of a crime um be it

domestic violence or an assault or a theft. um we are here to serve them and absolutely keep them safe and aid them in that. That said, it's also an important topic to bring up and to also be just crystal clear with it. I know it's been something that I've seen around the region being talked about. It is also because the law is very clear on this um not appropriate nor legal for us as a police department to obstruct in any way the federal officers in doing their job and in doing their um immigration regardless of how we feel about it and whether we agree with it, whether we like their tactics or not. Um it does not allow you know it essentially would be obstruction of justice. would it does not the federal and local laws do not allow us to step in and intercede in that regard. We're not here to aid them, but we can't stand in their way either. So, um again, it is not lost on me, particularly as the son of two immigrant parents, the impacts that that's having on a lot of communities all over the region, all over the nation for that matter. Uh we will continue to do everything we can to educate our community about what we're here to do, how we're here to support them, how they shouldn't shy away from calling us and whether that's being boots out on the street from myself down through to my staff, building those relationships, educating them in every way that we can, we'll keep doing that. I appreciate that, Chief. And and I think to your point of what you said earlier about just the different priorities uh and and one of them obviously building that trust and and building those community relationships and uh talking about transparency. Um and so I'm I I agree with you. I'm a big believer that there's always room for improvement no matter what it is. Um there's always room for improvement. And so I appreciate that you're looking into the policies, the procedures, everything as it relates to transparency and doing what we can um to to build build that trust with the community and to be as transparent as possible. Um I think it's a it's a multi-pronged approach. I mean, similar to homelessness that I'm about

to talk about for a quick second. Um but it's a it's it's not just one thing, right, that does it. It's a it's a combination of it. Um, so as I mentioned, homelessness uh does continue to be a top uh issue uh that we uh are facing in our communities uh especially in district 2. And I do want to say for the record that I appreciate the efforts of our our Halo team. And so I I have a I have a staffing question for you on that regard. Um, but I also, um, and I'm going to preface my question or comment by saying that as I said earlier, I'm 100% mindful that not everybody that is experiencing unsheltered homelessness is there because of a crime or because of substance abuse or because of drug use or anything like that. One of the takeaways that I have from uh the Halo team and some of the officers is, you know, it's not a crime to be homeless. Uh, but it is tough to be homeless and not commit crimes. Um, and so I I I think number one, it just as we take a multi-pronged approach to homelessness, I know we've made a lot of progress. Um, still continues to be a top issue. I'm not sure if we're ever going to get to a point where we, you know, say we're done, we're good. Um, I think it's going to be ongoing, but I I do think it's important that we uh hear from and learn from the folks that are out there doing the work uh day in and day out. And so, um, I I so I preface all of that by saying, and I this is definitely probably one that maybe not in the next 60 days, uh, and it's probably a long-term thing, but I do, um, I'm wondering if there's any consideration or to put on your radar in terms of the creation of a narcotics unit uh, within the police department um, that could potentially support the Halo team as they're out there. um because they do um they they do run into a lot unfortunately of drugs and so uh I don't know I I don't want to put you on the spot. You don't have to commit or

anything, but I'm wondering if you have any comments on that and if that's just something that I can put on the radar as we continue to try to do um everything that we can uh to to try to address the the issue. Uh I smirk with this one because this one's actually really easy for me. Uh yes. And um uh certainly from my own bias, I spent a majority of my career as I came up the ranks when I was once a police officer working narcotics both at the street level all the way through to major regional narcotics working with our federal partners and everything in between. Uh Los Angeles is still the biggest Haida high drug intensity area, the greater LA area in our nation and uh the largest city in Orange County. um we should have a contingent of our department working not only street narcotics to impact the things that you talked about but also on a regional level to deal with the folks bringing dangerous drugs into our community. So that is absolutely a priority of mine. That is absolutely a goal of mine to kind of reestablish our narcotics teams both locally and you know what we call from a major standpoint. Uh but u as you very briefly touched on you know the staffing challenges that you know surround that. Um and um you know I talk about efficiency, prioritizing patrol. Um also keeping in mind that in some instances, you know, Rob and Peter to pay Paul and trying to prioritize and find that balance. Uh hopefully as we get to a place where maybe we're growing the organization and some of those resources become available. It is absolutely a desire mine and a priority. I appreciate that, Chief. And then to talk about the staffing part of it, um again, not to put you on the spot or anything, but from my understanding is that we've approved um eight officers and then two sergeants specifically for the Halo team. If that's just something that you could look into, uh because I do believe that that is a a big piece of the puzzle in terms of what we're seeing across the city. And I'll just comment because I know when we first started up here that it was two officers and then we've grown and expanded that based on

the essentially the the the positive effect that it has had in the community. And so I don't know if you have any comments on that. Yeah. Um number one, there's been from my assessment both even before I got here, this city and this department have put forth a significant effort in dealing with this and I think you see its results. as you touched on, still some work to do, but certainly the city and the department have come a long way with it. Uh the numbers you stated, uh I believe to be accurate uh in growing that Halo team. I think there's a vacancy, I think two vacancies that we still have and filling that. Uh that's just a matter of getting some new officers hired, getting them through the academy and getting to a place that we can fill the couple last vacancies on that Halo team. Um and in truth, you know, we could easily add a few more with the work that they have, you know, to do. There's no shortage of it and they're incredibly effective. the work they do day in day out is nothing short of impressive. So again just continuing to tackle it from a staffing challenge and and work through that. But um yeah the value of the Halo team and the additions uh that this DAS has supported and the department has put towards that are paying dividends you know 100 time over. Agreed. Thanks Chief. Yes sir. Thank you. And council member Rubakalva did you have a follow-up? I did. Can you share a little bit about your um strategy for gang activity in Anaheim especially? So my district we have um Glenn Neighbors, we have Pauline Street um adjacent to my district, but in district 5 we have um Benmore Canfield. So those are areas that are um and I know district 4 has a lot. We've had officer officers uh shot or shot at by 13-year-olds who had a weapon. So, just what are some of the strategies that you have for repurposing some of your current resources? Council member, I appreciate the question. Also, something really, really important and a priority and one that I'm already working on and maybe realigning internally, how we address that. Similar to what we're talking

about as it relates to dealing with some of our homelessness and mental health stuff, that multi-prong approach, I have the same general philosophy as it relates to good gang enforcement, suppression, and deterrence. Uh, three-prong approach. Number one, we absolutely have to have good youth engagement. And I think we have that with some of our diversion programs, the engagement we have in our our schools, whether it's our grip program, safe streets, uh shortstop, I think is another one. There's there's a handful uh with Lieutenant Pñena and the group there with youth services, that's really important. We're going to keep growing those and every anywhere we can find Adam, we're going to keep doing that stuff. It's important idea being that we can keep our youth from even going down that path. That's the ultimate win and that's where we want to be. Prong number one. Number two, I think we need to have boots on the field in the communities. You know, regular gang suppression enforcement day-to-day uh uniform officers out in the field focusing in on some of our more challenging neighborhoods, more more impacted neighborhoods uh in the way of doing gang suppression, gang enforcement, as well as engagement with those folks and even building relationships with some of those young folks involved in that. Uh so I think that's really important. And then the third part is more of the investigative arm, the long-term piece of it. Uh going after some of the folks that are responsible for these, leading some of these groups and organizations. Um you know, also important. So going to find a way to do all three. I think right now we probably have a pretty good handle on two of those three prongs. I think we need to strengthen one of them and and that is going to be in the works over the next couple of months. And I do appreciate that. I mean, I think that you already bring a a sense of leadership that we haven't seen at the police department for quite some time. You're the third chief that um has been in your seat since I mean since I got elected in 2022. So, I'm and and the number of police officers who are here to stand behind you and with you to support you I think is already showing how your leadership is trickling down. And I hope that the culture continues to

be positive because I you and I had this conversation. And I think our youth, one negative interaction with law enforcement could either send them towards a gang or uh positive. So, I think making sure that we're um being personable and um treating all residents with dignity and respect regardless of where they live is is priority number one for me. Um, I've gone out on ride alongs and I'll give Lieutenant Penny is getting a lot of shout outs today, not only by you, but me, but we've done fun on wheels in some of the most challenged district part of my district. So, just making having um our police officers who are playing soccer with kids and just um these kids are looking up to you. If they can see it, they can be it, right? So, I think those are priorities for me. So, thank you cuz I can already tell I don't think I've ever seen this many police officers in our council chambers. So, thank you guys for being here to support uh Chief Sid, and I look forward to seeing all of the positive changes that you'll be making at Anaheim PD moving forward. Thank you, and thank you for your support. I appreciate it. Thank you. Um well, this is an information item only, so there is no action by council. Um I want to thank you and all the men and women of the Anaheim Police Department for being here today um and showing your support. It means a lot. Thank you, mayor and council. I appreciate look forward to working with all of you. Thank you. Um so the next item on our agenda is item number nine which is an item I requested. So, last week I had asked for an agenda item to um look at the possibility of an internal investigation into the allegations of unreported gifts by our city manager as well as undisclosed documents in response to P requests. Um in addition,

I asked for our ethics officer's memo uh attorney client privilege memo to be released um to make it a public record. Uh as we've seen in the past week um it has been disclosed that the FPPC which is our state agency uh has started their own independent investigation into uh whether there was a violation of the gift reporting and disclosure requirements. Um we have um addressed and are looking into the failure to um potential failure to respond to public records requests that has been revealed and um a formal report has been made on the disclosures from last week's closed session which is going to be looked into by the DA's office. So, given that the official state and local enforcement agencies are currently investigating these actions, um I'm going to withdraw my request that we ask staff and the um city attorney's office to do any further um investigation into this and let the enforcement agencies that are um responsible um to continue that. Um, but I would like to make a motion to wave the attorney client privilege as to the January 26th, 2026 memo from the city attorney's office so that we can share it with the public. Uh, make it available to the FPPC as well as the district attorney's office. Um, it's pretty straightforward request. So with that, I would request um a second and any discussion um on be that the council may have. Okay, thank you. We have a second to the motion. Um, I'll start with Council Member Rubikala and then Council Member Meeks. Council member Rubikava, just before we

get started, I just wanted to point out that until and unless the council waves the privilege, the actual subject matter and the contents of the memo should not be part of this discussion. Obviously, if the council votes to wave that privilege, it will become a public record. Thank you, city attorney. Um um I think my question is more procedural. Um does the district attorney have subpoena power to get access to attorney client privilege documents? Um I'm not sure if that's the case to be honest. I I know they have a attorney in my experience. Uh they do have a review of records. They have like a separate division that looks at whether the records they've collected are protected by attorney client privilege. uh and don't uh and segregate those from the actual um actual investigation. Having said that, uh don't know if that's a blanket rule. I just know that's been my experience. Um the document in question, I I almost feel it's a dramatic request to ask to wave attorney client privilege because we could actually just request that you provide a memo uh with similar information that would then be accessible to the public. Is that correct? Um, yeah. We could probably draft some sort of public-f facing memo that explains um well, you see what the topic of the memo is, so we could probably do it in a more generic fashion. Yeah. And I would be more comfortable doing that. That I don't um I I value attorney client privilege and work product and I think that um we are setting a dangerous precedent by um waving it. But I do not have a problem requesting something similar from our ethics officer to provide an analysis on um something similar because I think we've already had this discussion and how we thought it or I mean I at least I

will speak for myself how I think how I think it's important for us to all get an overview of various policies and I will not say what policies in order to not violate the Brown Act but I think that that would be my Um, I would prefer to do that, but I'm more curious as to do you think this sets some sort of negative precedent on in terms of the attorney client privilege when we could to I I think what I'm trying to say is to eliminate the um political theater. We could just ask for something similar to be created and shared with the public. Correct. Um, yes, you you could do that. I don't necessarily think it establishes a precedence for future uh privilege records. It's a pretty limited uh waiver. So to the extent it's not going to open up the door to other privilege information uh that would require a future vote by a council if it decides to do that. I mean I'll vote yes on this because I think it doesn't help. I mean I actually think it's kind of hilarious but I think I would vote yes because it's kind of something that you should be providing to everybody anyways. Thank you for your thorough assessment of the thing we can't talk about right now. Um, but I do thank you for taking the time to provide it to us and I think the public should be able to see it. But I I think just the dramatic sense of like let's wave privilege. It's but I will support this. Council member Meks. Um, I'm I concur. I don't object to providing the information making it public and the but I also want the city attorney and the ethics officer to look at the memo carefully and make sure that it doesn't violate any personnel um

issues that that should be kept uh confidential and get us into trouble in that way. I I don't I think we we feel comfortable with it. Um but we will take another look to make sure that um that's not happening. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Um Council Member Curts and then Council Member Bis. Thank you, Madame Mayor. Um having a difficult time with this. I I think I'm going to vote no on it because the document was shared in close session and council member I don't I'm sorry. that I that that we shouldn't probably get into that. Okay. What I don't what I what I am hesitant to support is the fact that um we are allowing documents to be shared uh like this. Um I don't want anybody else any other personnel issue any union negotiation uh to anybody presenting material to us in close session to think that with a simple vote we can wave some privilege and share all the documents. So I'm hesitant to to vote yes for for that reason. Um I I would like to think that what is discussed and shared in close session stays in close session. So um um is there a question that's okay? Um thank you council member Bis.

Thank you. I guess I have a question for uh maybe Ardan and stop me if I go over the line please. Mhm. When you prepared this document, did you look at this as being an employee related issue? I think I can answer that Ardan if you don't mind. U yeah so we um wanted to provide some guidance to the council on a subject that was getting a lot of attention as far as what the legal standards are. Um it was just so that it's very clear this was not a factf finding mission or an investigation but rather a use of information that I think has been pretty well um publicized uh and providing some guidance to the council um that was it a specific personnel record under the definition of that term? We don't think so. Um, so we we think it's probably uh generic enough that it would be um okay to to um to release without violating any employee information. So I want to make sure I heard that correctly. This was prepared as an employee document but you don't think that it has implement has the the power to stand up as one? Yeah, I don't know. I'm not familiar with the term employee document. Uh in public records act, the term personnel record has some has some meaning and uh certain personnel records in certain contexts are not um public records. We're not convinced that the information contained in this uh meets that definition. So let me think for just a second here. So I heard you say then you don't think that there's any precedence to be set by voting yes and or no.

It does not it's intended to be a narrow waiver as to this particular memo which which keeps it narrow to the extent that there's another uh record or document that's attorney client privilege. It doesn't wave it as to that. It's as to this particular document and we think that's the intent of the council as well. Thank you. Thank you. Um, you know, I think as I said last week, I think having an ethics officer is something that I was very supportive of and I think is an important role that we've established in the city both for the public to be able to contact the city if they have um issues uh similar to we have internally with fraud. Um but out out of that I would like to lean towards the side of showing the public what you what our ethics officer does. Um what they weigh in on uh what guidance they provide bride to the council. Um I do want to you know Mr. City attorney did um remind me when we were discussing this that you know the the it's not an elected city attorney or an elected ethics officer. So they do represent us as their client. So we hold the privilege with which we can then choose to disclose document by by document. Um, and so if we want to rework it, call it something else, uh, I just think that we should just establish a, um, starting with here and starting with this memo, maybe we can have a, um, broader policy discussion at a later about a later date about having ethics opinions online for our public to see when we ask our eth ethics officer to provide guidance. That's a larger question than what we're dealing with today, but as it pertains to specifically the January 26th memo um

from last week, um I think that it's something that we should disclose to the to the public as well as the investigating authorities that are um potentially looking into issues. So, um with that, I'll call for the vote. Oh, I'm sorry. Did you have another um I do I So the only other question So we're talking about the memo but not documents. Yeah, it's a very specific memo. Yeah. Okay. And then I know the Brown Act uh uh allegation of violation was mentioned right now on the DIS. So other um if you received some concerns about a Brown Act violations, are you guys f because I know the way to report a Brown Act violation is you have to report it to the governing agency where it occurred. So that would be the city of Anaheim. And then would you guys then be taking the proactive approach of letting the DA's office know? Well, my understanding is a district attorney knows. So well I mean cuz there you guys other things have been brought to your attention as well regarding that close session and other people having that information and timestamps and reposting and stuff like that. So you I mean are you guys notifying or providing all of that information as well. I just want to make sure that we're following the right process. Yeah. I mean that's what we intend to do is follow the process. So my understanding is city uh the district attorney is uh making an inquiry and we're certainly going to cooperate with that. Okay. And I just want to make sure that the scope is broad when you're doing if you've had other council members who've expressed a concern about Brown Act violations that you are also forwarding those over to the DA's office. I can't say we're our goal is to advise to avoid Brown Act violations and when there is an inadvertent Brown Act violation to cure those so that there's full disclosure. It's not to go to the district attorney every time there's an issue. That wouldn't be our role. Um, but if obviously if there's something uh that's clear uh intentional um that uh

violates a Brown Act, that's a different story and we handle that differently. And I do appreciate the memo that you provided to just con to provide us all with direction on what close session is and how the Brown Act operates. And I know that our city clerk provided us earlier this year with changes to the Brown Act. So, thank you for um providing council with all of that direction as well. Thank you, council member. Um, so we have a motion and a second. If there's no further questions or comments, please vote. The vote is six eyes, one nay nay from council member Curts. Motion carries. So, um, I'm going to forward and move on to item number 10 at the request of the applicant. Item 10 is being continued to the meeting of March 3rd. Is there a motion to continue? I'll second then. Okay, we have a motion and a second by council members Curts and Meeks. Please vote. The vote is seven eyes, no naysay. Motion carries. The public hearing will be continued to March 3rd, 2026. Thank you. So, we have um no non-aggenda items left over from public comments. Correct, clerk? That's correct, Mayor. Thank you. So, now is the time for future agenda requests by council members. Mayor Prom, do you have a future agenda item request? Uh I do, Madame Mayor. Uh I would like to agendaize uh uh the appointment of an interim city manager for our next uh council meeting. um as well as uh an item to direct our HR department uh our HR team to begin putting together options for us to review uh for consideration for a search for a new city manager. Um and then uh I'd like to

bring in Radiant Brewery for recognition. It is uh their fifth anniversary. It's officially a District 3 brewery, but it's the honorary District 2 brewery. Um and so those are those are the items. Just for clarification, um, Mayor Pertam, is that the, uh, appointment item is a close session item, right? Uh, for next meeting, uh, are you also asking for the next meeting, the discussion with the HR director or is that flexible? I think that would be flexible. Um, I think at least beginning the process to search for the what the search might search options might be for us to consider. Okay. Um, but that is flexible. So, uh, yeah, and maybe the HR director would be available or ready next meeting, but as long as there's some flexibility to have that discussion, I think that's what we're looking for. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Ma. And then Council Member Curts. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I am hoping to get an update on the Lincoln project. Um, I'm starting to get phone calls from businesses and residents, so the portion of Lincoln between State College and East Street. If we can get an update, that would be great. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Curts. Thank you. Um, we received a an email earlier today um on the status of uh Anaheim Contigo and thank you very much for the email, Shaunie. Um, but I have some questions and maybe we can bring that to council for discussion. Um, how long will the the funding last at the current rate it's being spent? um do we need to supplement it in any way? What are your thoughts? Uh and importantly, I think are we meeting the needs of the community that is accessing this account? Are we missing the mark anywhere? So, uh and and th those folks

that are talking to the people that are accessing those dollars may have some additional information for us. Uh again, more important to me is are we missing the mark any place? We can schedule an item at the next council meeting. Thank you. Uh, Council Member Meeks and then Council Member Rubikava. Thank you. Um, I just want to add on to Mayor Prom's um, request and to bring in some options on moving forward with a nationwide search for a new city manager. Um, our previous city manager was very strong, led the city through some of the most important times in our in our city and and moved us forward from some dark times to advancing some initiatives that will bring revenues um to our cities for decades. So, we need somebody strong in the city. It's a very big complex city. I want to make sure that the city um or the uh HR director brings um a nationwide process similar to what we did with the uh police chief and that we will find the best city manager to continue to lead us forward. Thank you. So, I also wanted to um to add to that. So, if we could also get a written memo from the HR director at when I mean I'm sure she has something at hand since this is like our common thing. Um, but I'd also like to see um the process that we did conduct. Uh Jim Vanderpole did a really good uh process with our chief. So, if we could see what that look like. I know we've already have that memo. If we could just get it recirculated and if she could include that in the pro presentation when she comes to council that would be great. And I and I appreciate that uh Mayor Prom has requested it be a public discussion because I do think it's

really important that the CEO of the city is something that we discuss publicly in terms of process and I know everybody on this dis is concerned that we find the right person who has city manager experience. So I'm I'm looking forward to that next step. And then I also just wanted to remind uh the mayor if she could possibly close the meeting in memory of of uh Mr. Arzola as well as um San Bernardino County Sheriff Grant Ward and Maria Bonce, Anaheim resident. Thank you. Thank you. I know we had a resident come and ask for an answer on the uh festival project about uh where the uh public comments would take place and I apologize I don't have that answer for you. But the comment I will say is that there is a comment period at the beginning of the meeting that certainly can be used to talk about anything that you have. So I apologize I don't have that answer for you today. Thank you. Uh Mayor Prom. Uh thank you Madame Mayor and just to dovtail off of my colleagues um comment regarding the Contigo program. Um, and I'm okay with with that item coming first, but I would like to work with staff to um potentially bring back an expansion of the program. Um, I think it it dovetales off of um my my colleagues uh item, but just wanted to bring that back at a future uh future meeting per staff and and and our work to see what might what might make sense timelinewise. uh staff, we can work with you and kind of uh figure out if it's something that we could make as part of this item or if it's a separate item. Thank you. Um so with no further business before the council, I'd like to adjourn the meeting in the memory of Alfred Arzola, uh Sergeant Ward, as well as Maria Pon. And we stand adjourned

until February 24th. So just clarification.