Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

I'll call roll, sorry. Commissioner Escamilla? Commissioner Leo?

Here.

Commissioner Oliva? Commissioner Pham?

Here.

Commissioner Wu?

Here.

Vice Chair Venninger?

Present.

Chair Ramos? Vice Chair, quorum has been reached at 533 with Commissioner Escamilla, Commissioner Oliva, and Chair Ramos absent.

Thank you, sir. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, the Republic for which it stands, one nation, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, before we begin, I'd like to remind my fellow commissioners to turn off your microphones on when you're speaking, off when you're not. And when speaking, please place the microphone about four inches away from you. Thank you. Members of the public may attend the planning commission meetings either in person or visual via Zoom. I now invite the commission secretary to describe how the public can address and participate in this meeting.

This meeting is being live streamed via our portal at www.sana-ana.primegov.com slash public slash portal and YouTube at www.youtube.com city of Santa Ana videos. If you would like to provide public comment, you may do so in the following ways. Join the meeting via Zoom. Enter meeting ID number 845-79721-220. When the item you wish to comment on is being discussed, please select the hand icon to indicate that you would like to speak. Once called upon, remember to unmute yourself and state your name for the record. You can also join the meeting by calling 669-900-6833. Enter meeting ID number 845-7972-1220. When the item that you would like to comment on is being discussed, press star nine to let us know that you would like to speak. You will be called upon by the last three digits of your phone number. After you're called upon, you may press star six to unmute yourself. For those who are attending this meeting in person and would like to provide public comment, please fill out a request to speak form and turn it into the recording secretary. All speakers will have three minutes to speak. I will alert you when your time is up.

Moving on to public comments on non-agenda or non-hearing elements. Secretary, does anyone wish to speak?

If you're attending this meeting in person and would like to comment on non-agenda or non-public hearing items, please fill out a request to speak form and turn it into the secretary. If you're participating via Zoom and would like to comment on non-agenda or non-public hearing items, please select the hand icon to let us know you would like to comment. If you're calling in and would like to comment on non-agenda or non-public hearing items, please dial star nine and then star six to unmute yourself. I will wait for a few seconds. Vice Chair, we do not have any speakers.

Very good. Moving on to consent calendar. Is there a motion to approve item A, the minutes from April 13th, and item B, the excused absences? I move. So moved by Commissioner Wu. Do we have a second? I second. By Commissioner Pham. Secretary, please call roll.

Motion by Commissioner Wu, seconded by Commissioner Pham. Commissioner Scamiglia? Commissioner Leo?

Aye.

Commissioner Oliva? Commissioner Pham?

Aye.

Commissioner Wu?

Aye.

Vice Chair Benninger?

Aye.

Chair Ramos? Motion approved by majority vote with Commissioner Scamiglia, Commissioner Oliva, and Chair Ramos absent.

Very good. That concludes consent calendar items. Are there no public hearing items tonight? As there are no public hearing items tonight, we will be moving to miscellaneous items on the business calendar. Item one, this is the time and place for general plan consensus findings for the fiscal year 2026 to 2027 capital improvement program. Before we begin, do any Commissioners have anything that they wish to disclose regarding this item? Seeing none, moving on. Public Works Manager Haley Gilbert will be providing a brief presentation. Does the Commission have any comments or questions for staff? Okay. Is there a motion to approve this matter?

We need the presentation.

Good evening chair vice chair and Commissioners, and thank you for the opportunity to present to you our fiscal year 2627 proposed capital improvement plan. Some recently completed CIP projects that we have here are traffic signal installation at chestnut avenue and zoo lane. This project included the design and installation of a new traffic signal on chestnut and elk lane. We have Roussel Flood Protection Project, which features the upgrade of an existing city storm drain on Roussel Street from Warner Avenue to St. Gertrude Place and was identified in the city's 2018 Storm Drain Master Plan as one of the top 10 recommended capital projects. We have the capital project, Expand Communication Methods, Digital Marquise, which was part of the Revive Santa Ana Pandemic Recovery Program funded by the American Rescue Plan Act, ARPA funds. This project It installed digital marquees at five to six locations across the city to deliver important messages to our residents and other stakeholders about government resources and assistance, health and safety information, city events and programming and other news and public service announcements that benefit the community. We also have our local street preventative maintenance project, which provides the application of crack seal and slurry seal to various streets citywide. And lastly, we have our Santa Ana del high bike trail fencing project, which included fencing of the Santa Ana del high bike trail from the railroad to sunflower street. Some of our funding sources that we rely on for the Capital Improvement Program include a blend of local funding and grant funding. And we have gas tax, HUDA funds, which also include RMRA funding for road maintenance and rehabilitation. We have general fund, which also includes Measure X funding. We have refuse vehicle impact fee, Measure M local fair share funds drainage area fees and transportation system improvement area fees for our grant funding, we have active transportation program funds measure M competitive funding through cta and safe streets and roads for all grant program funds this year. Here's an example of what our tip book looks like in our one year budget sample all of our projects are listed by category with subtotals and all of our category totals which serve as a table of contents for all of our project worksheets. Here's an example of our capital improvement program project worksheets which list all of our titles include a project map and the funding sources. With funding broken down into the phases of the project costs, it also includes agency project contact division and project description and project need. For this year's fiscal year 26-27 proposed CIP, our program is $22,164,540. That is comprised of street improvements at $20 million, traffic improvements at $1.4 million, and city and park facility improvements currently programmed at $285,000, but there are additional funding that may be available through supplemental budget requests that are still being considered. Here is one of our projects that we are highlighting at MacArthur Boulevard Rehab from Harbour to Fairview. This segment of pavement rehabilitation was identified as high priority in the city's pavement management program. The city's pavement management program has been developed to prioritize and recommend our most cost effective roadway repairs and maximize the return from available funding for street pavement annually. Some of the project improvements that are included in this project are ADA compliant infrastructure, safety features such as high visibility crosswalks and bicycle lanes, type two bike lanes on both sides of the roadway. This is consistent with general plan goals and one dash 1.6 and 3.1 and 3.2 and 5.8 and also you D three. Our second project that we're highlighting is 17th Street Rehab Project from Grand to Cabrillo Park. And our goal is to improve the roadway pavement conditions and enhance our pedestrian accessibility and safety. And this project need was identified due to our poor pavement condition. As you could see, the pavement condition index was averaged at 44 for this segment. There is non-compliant curb ramps that do not meet our ADA accessibility standards, and there's damaged pedestrian infrastructure with uplifted sidewalks and curb and gutter, which reduce our pedestrian access and safety. All of our project improvements are to rehab this roadway, enhance the ADA features and do the concrete repair to enhance the pedestrian safety and traffic safety improvements. We have our Santa Ana grade separation project in the CIP, which identifies design funding for this project. And the project need is that there are current barriers and traffic disruptions with the current at-grade crossing. There's limited pedestrian and cyclist access, and there's poor connectivity issues with key areas for the city to connect rail, bus transit, and our streetcar project. This project improvements are proposed to do multimodal underpass design, which will enhance pedestrian access, as well as install a Class 4 protected bikeway in this project. The last project that we want to propose tonight is our synthetic turf Dan young soccer complex, this is for field number one it's still uses natural grass so to enhance our field durability. Which requires frequent maintenance, we are proposing to install synthetic turf this sports complex host a multitude of sporting events and has high usage, which requires fields that can accommodate and provide for consistent playing conditions. Additionally, this will include sports line repainting in addition to the field removal and synthetic turf installation. Our street improvements this year are proposed at $20 million, $438,340. We have $1.5 million for our alley rehab project. We have three planning projects which are comprised of $1 million. And we also have, which will help us with our pavement management program, with our project development and right-of-way management programs. We have our local street resurfacing, which include four projects this year. That will be our local street preventive maintenance, residential street repair program, industrial street repair program, and Richland Street sidewalk project. And lastly, we have $9.2 million proposed for arterial street rehabilitation, which includes 17th Street Rehab from Grand to Cabrillo Park, Broadway Street Rehab from 17th to Main Place, MacArthur Boulevard Rehab from Harbor to Fairview, and the Santa Ana grade separation design. For our traffic improvements proposed, we have $1.4 million that will include two projects for traffic signal synchronization at Fourth Street and Bristol Street corridor. And we have five planning projects that include multimodal project development, safe routes to park plan, traffic management plans, traffic safety project development, and traffic signal equipment replacement. For next year, we have one project proposed for our city park facility improvements, and that is that synthetic turf Dan Young soccer complex field one enhancement. Our proposed seven-year CIP is currently estimated at $63 million, and a bulk of that money is programmed into our street improvements, since we can rely on some of those grant funding on an annual basis projections. And our traffic improvements, we received some grants, which include the $3.4 million, which are programmed in our seven-year CIP. For our city and park facility improvements, that's going to reflect our one-year general fund money. Thank you so much, and we're open for any questions that you may have.

Now picking up from here, does any of the commissioners have any questions of staff? Commissioner Wu.

I want to compliment you on your use of dollars for the park upgrades and the new parks along Bristol. For these remnant properties that we have, they will provide some more open space to overbuilt neighbourhoods. My question, though, is on the traffic management. Can you go to the slide where you're allocating $9 million for traffic repairs and all that? Yeah. What is the goal in traffic improvement? Is it just to move cars efficiently through or are you looking at safety or are you looking at slowing things down? Are you looking at things like reducing noise?

Yes, specifically these two projects are for signal synchronization. So you're right that it is looked at by our traffic engineering department. And usually those projects, they include collaborative applications to our grant funding agencies. So we partner with Irvine, depending on where our corridors link up so that we can share the costs with other cities for that connectivity issues. And they're always identified based off of traffic studies, so kind of the planning projects that accompany the design for these and grant application for these projects. So you're correct that we do try to target all aspects of traffic safety enhancements, but I know that in specifics we do partner with other cities to do regional studies and make sure that we are properly allocating our funding.

Councillor Hutchison In the case of those electrical Ricardo, in terms of a policy issue, that's not a public works issue, right? Or does it dovetail any way to kind of reduce those e-bikes on sidewalks and, you know, that they should stay on the streets?

Thank you, Commissioner Wu, for the question. transportation or mobility devices on the public right-of-way would not be a planning and building or zoning matter. That would be regulated separately either through PD or Public Works.

Yeah, because the problem we have is not only that but also noise, because they take the mufflers off or whatever they do. And for people who, you know, have to sleep to get up early in the morning, it's annoying. The other thing I want to know traffic is that I guess you dovetail when there's major developments, right? Like the one going on in Main Place, traffic dollars are reserved for some of those projects maybe and those developments down Bristol near South Coast Plaza. So are any of these dollars wrapped up in terms of traffic management or improvements related to those live and work projects that we have?

In this proposed CIP, I think that these two projects were funded from grant funding. But I do know that when we have developers such as the project that you mentioned, there are different requirements that we do ask them to meet based off of traffic studies. And so if that is identified in in the permit, then it will be something that the developer will have to address as a disruption.

Thank you. The reason I bring that up is I recently completed that survey that you have on the budget. And when it's, you know, it's so generic, they always, you know, public safety always come up on top. But what do you mean by public safety? Are you talking about fire? You know, are you talking about, you know, more police cars, you know? You know Sherman tank what are you talking about we don't know right. But only in the comment to put a section, we could comment on. invest in the Community make make prevention through investing in programs that improve the neighborhood such as neighborhoods stability rehabbing houses, you know. You know, increasing neighborhood pride and things of that sort, which we used to take care of sort of CD BG funds. But I don't know where that is allocated these days. So I'm sorry if I'm off topic because I thought we were talking about the budget and I wanted to know how this relates to the survey for the overall budget as well. And so what I'm getting the picture is that you're giving us the budget for grant or taxpayer measures funded projects, right? And so the other parts of public works projects that will come through the survey is recommendations for the general fund augmentation.

I think that you are very correct in saying that, and you're actually very on topic, that we had a project funded within the last few years that was Cypress Fire Station funding, and that was actually funded. It's going to be turning into a PAL station through the PD running that programming, and that was identified to reinvest in the community and do, as you said, to address on a preventative basis. So you're right that we do deal with projects like that if it is in the public right of way and it is a capital facility targeted for that. And secondarily to your question, this presentation is to present all of the projects which will be funded, proposed to be funded in the public right of way for general plan consistency. There's a resolution that's an exhibit to this item that y'all will vote on. and that is already approved by the city attorney's office and vetted for general plan consistency finding consistency it's part of our general it's part of our city's municipal code that we do this before the first reading of the budget and then secondarily that cip or sorry that budget survey that you took thank you for taking it by the way that information gets translated to our city's finance budget team and annually they actually share all of that information with the respective divisions, so that we can prioritize the community's voice and target those grants target those asks through supplemental budget requests and champion those projects that are identified in the survey. So please share that with all of the people that you know and keep doing that because it eventually does end up becoming future projects in the CIP that I will come and present and ask for general plan consistency in the future for. So you're right in all of that. You're correct.

And sometimes the public sentiment goes against planning, you know, regulations and zoning and all that. So that's why I was asking, and our lane is in the planning and zoning. So thank you very much for the explanation.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Any questions?

So, see where I should start. If there's any way you can break out for the public going forward, you mentioned there's a line for general fund and you say which includes Measure X. We need to tell the public what we're doing with Measure X funds. because the city will make or break its budget in the coming years if people don't say what we're doing with the Measure X funds. It's in the general fund. I get it. But if the general fund is upside down and the only money coming in extra is Measure X, then Measure X funds everything. So we need to be clear with the public because the residents of Santa Ana pay that additional tax and we need to tell them what it's going for. Now, you can say part of this is general fund, part of it's Measure X funds, because Measure X is in addition to. I just think that the public is going to be asking a lot of questions about where did it go? We passed it. What does it do? So I would say as you go forward, break out Measure X or mention Measure X. You mentioned it, but like be explicit with it. Because when I see an upgrade of the median or I see additional folks cleaning the medians, that's probably Measure X funds. right, or somebody fixed a sidewalk that's a smaller project, it's probably Measure X funds. So however you guys want to do it, but make sure you're explicit on what Measure X is included or how it's funded or how you supplement your grant funding with Measure X funds. However you do it, be consistent, but tell the public because they're going to ask questions. And then I have two other specific questions. First of all, I was fascinated that the, is it the Rozelle or the Ruzelle project that you have? identified in 2018. This is now 2026. So it took us that long to find funding, or it just is our regular cycle? Is our cycle every 10 years? How does the cycle work? Because there's street improvements. Say Alan wants streets improved in Artesia Pilar, but Carl wants his streets improved over in another prison. How do you do it? Is it on a five-year rotation, 10-year rotation? How does that work?

Yeah, so thank you for those questions. And I love that idea. We definitely are going to make that change for Measure X. And you're right that we do need to be more explicit about the good work that we do. So thank you for that. And this year specifically, I know that $1.5 million for our alleys has been allocated for Measure X. So we can definitely follow up with that in future presentations. And to answer your other question, you're correct that when we do a master plan, that identifies a myriad of projects. And the funding for all of those projects in a perfect world would exist, but you're right that we do have to be strategic tackling that priority list that's identified. It was identified as one of the top ten projects for storm drain citywide. And I do think that our storm drain manager, he does budget for those on an annual basis. But he also is strategic about it because he receives a lot of grant funding. So in addition to it, like that's kind of step one for identifying all of our needs. Then it's use that to apply and get grant funding so that we can tackle these needs. And you're right that during that time we sustained the pandemic, right, and we had holds from the government on some of our grant funding, and we kind of had to restart. So we are tackling that backlog, and depending on the funding available, but as well as other master plans that we It might be targeting traffic studies, walkability. It depends on the scope of work. So we would plan for that incrementally and fund it and tackle project by available funding, yes.

Councillor Allen- OK. And then I have one other question. You're going to replace the natural grass at Dan Young with new turf. Do you know what the longevity is of the turf? Is it five years? Is it ten years? Because I know that other cities are doing the same thing. Is it a 10-year project? I mean, obviously you amortized it over that period of time, but so is it a 10-year kind of replacement cycle you're going to be on? I'm just wondering because turf's gotten better and better and better. So I'm just wondering, you buy turf this year, you replace the field.

I know all our fields in Santa Ana are worn down.

Will it last the 10 years or the five years or whatever you invest in?

Yes, and that's something that we definitely look at because that's going to depend on the usage, right? So if we're projecting pretty high usage, I think that we definitely are looking at a productive use of five to ten years. And I think we also have different warranties that are in place that protect us. So I can find the specifics from our Parks and Fleet Facilities Manager and follow up just so that we have that exact

contract terms yeah just because you see i see other cities where there's irvine or newport or costa mesa they're replacing grass with turf just because they're cost effective the question is what's the longevity so that the public knows hey in five years or seven years hey we're going to flip this around again just so they know that there's some some rotation to it or some They know that it's just going to keep kind of being upgraded.

Ms. You're right about that. And as an asset, we do depreciate that asset. And so I know right now it's these synthetic turfs, they are budgeted in our seven-year CIP. So it's going to be at least we're planning for that throughout that 10-year basis. Mr.

Okay, thank you. Those are my only questions.

Mr. Mr. Pham, do you have any questions?

Mr. Yeah, in the CIP program book you provided. It looks like, if I'm reading correctly, about $3.5 million from the general fund of the $20-odd million that you're proposing for, and the rest, well, the largest chunk is labeled other. Is that just miscellaneous grants that are added up to total that $12 million?

Yes, you are correct that I can actually, in the other funding, it's going to be comprised of our vehicle impact fee. So that's going to be the funding that we receive from our solid waste contract. for their impact that we negotiated because with those heavy vehicles, the heavier the axle, the more damage it does to our streets. So I made sure that we got some money from that contract so that we could accommodate for that in our industrial street repair program. And the other projects are funded through grant funding. And you're correct that we do only have a small portion of general fund in our CIP because We are majority funded through grant funding.

And then are the different grants, are they tied to specific improvement? Like if you were to, that's why the selection of our projects are kind of a little bit of this, a little bit of that, because the funds that you're able to receive kind of ask you to address certain areas within the city.

You are very correct that with the grant funding, those are restricted funds. So it is going to be tied to the project application and the cooperative agreement that we enter into with the funding agency. And so similar to those studies that we talked about in like master plans, or different identified projects through our, maybe it's our payment management program priorities, or depending on the program operation, we would then translate that into the grant applications, and then we would deliver the deliverables that meet that scope of work specifically. So you're right, how you see the segments very broken up, it's because we are dealing with incremental funding on an annual basis, and it helps us be competitive compared to other cities, It's easier to get $5 million on an annual basis than it is to ask one time for 20 million. So we're very successful in Orange County in obtaining grants, which offsets the general fund investment in our program.

And when we kind of categorize these improvements, we're projecting that these improvements are done within the year because you're allocating $20 million for this year. I'm assuming with the assumption that all these improvements will be done within this fiscal year so that you can allocate, let's say, assuming next fiscal year another $20 million to something else. And how does that track?

Yeah, you're correct that I think that most funding agencies realize that the completion, the design and construction potentially of a project within one year is very, very fast. So what we are presenting on an annual basis is new funding allocated towards that project phase, whether it be the design, the construction or the planning of a project. And then what those funds on an annual basis every year get carried forward if it's an active project. So on an annual basis, we're only bringing forward to you new funding that is either being added to existing projects or new projects that are identified. And they are carried forward until project completion, which usually grants require completion within three to five years.

So we, in some cases, we have projects or we have proposed improvements probably from three years ago that probably used up its own budget for fiscal year 2025, used up its budget 26, and now we are kind of trying to balance the books and take some new money to kind of finish off those projects.

That is a very correct assessment. And in addition to that, if the project doesn't require new funding, then we would just fund another project with that new grant funding, yes.

But in theory would we need the general fund money? Let's say you have, you know, $12 million and some change allocated, that $3 million is only 20%, 15% of that total $20 million. Let's say we are in a deficit and we don't have from the general fund to allocate to the improvements. We can still do improvements just based on a lower annual fund, right?

So that question, yes, you're correct that we are very successful in still delivering projects that are just grant funded. The city council has empowered us to apply for grant funds and deliver those projects. So you're right that we still would be able to deliver a portion of our projects. However, the investment that the general plan makes into our CIP is directly enhancing our pavement and our pavement annually for over 400 arterial miles in our city requires upwards of $30 million investment annually. Currently, we do not fund it at that. So we are carrying similar to a budget deficit. We are postponing our deferred maintenance of our streets. So if we took away the small but mighty investment of 3.5 million of our general fund, it would make our streets depreciate at a rate that would be very hard to reinvest. It's similar to letting a street get so bad that it's gonna take 10 times the investment than if you would have resurfaced the street when it was in good condition. So I might argue that it's actually in the city's best investment since we are very low general plan allocation. It's a big bang for their buck, but I'm also advocating on behalf of Public Works. Thank you, Commissioner.

That makes sense. And then just out of curiosity, I've been noticing that there's been crews, I'm not sure if it's a private provider, doesn't look like a city provider, that have been cleaning up the bus stations, taking out trash from the trash bin pretty regularly, a lot more than what I used to see. And so I'm wondering, is that a public work item or budget line?

Yes, actually, thank you so much for noticing that. And I'm going to share that with our maintenance manager, Pedro Guillen, because that is actually one of our public works contracts. We have a contract that runs 24 seven with the city that is cleaning constantly our public right of way. And you're correct that Pedro's operations does receive a lot more general fund than our CIP and they have a portion of the measure x dollars. So that is a really good investment. And in addition to the 24-7 for cleanup, and that's our contractor that we have hired through our city contract, we have graffiti abatement as well. That is a 24-7 operation. So thank you for noticing that, and I'll share that compliment.

That, I think, is a well-funded project. Thank you.

Commissioner Wu? Commissioner Bao and Commissioner Leo brought up a subject that I was wondering. Sometimes projects take about 10 years or 15 years to get to. I know we wait and we have to remember we pull out the old budget document and we show it. Where is this budget? But my question is actually... City Council Chambers, Can you please stick on top of those contractors, because at the last meeting. City Council Chambers, When we were talking about the still high sidewalk and three. City Council Chambers, It was brought up that you had a contractor but didn't do well, so you got rid of me got someone is projects on on on track so. That would be nice if we get all our contract on track so that you know we don't see the street tear up and all all those. dirt moving trucks on side, you know so. And speaking of that those parks along Bristol how soon will they be all done.

So you're talking about the completion of our active Bristol project?

Yeah, you've got the playground equipment there and you've got some dirt moved around and stuff like that.

Oh, potentially you're talking, okay, you're talking about the park on 10th and Flower?

Yeah.

Okay. I can check the construction schedule for you because that's, I think that I can share with you when that will be completed. I don't have that in front of me because that's a prior year CIP project that is under construction. So I can get that information for 10th and Flower Park, as well as any other parks that are being proposed along that Bristol corridor. And we will follow up with you on that.

Okay. The Dirt and Bush was allocated funding for a Chinatown memorial. And it was put on hold because of the drainage thing for a while. And that got completed. And we had a smaller memorial. And then some folks wanted to make a bigger one. And I got it. a call from the city manager office is that we're going to rededicate the new one and then that got put on hold so i'm just wanting uh whatever money was promised before and the monuments that have that was promised i'd like to see it you know uh i wanted a big rock you know chinese rock it's kind of tall strong and all that what i got was a tiny you know arizona rock you know definitely garbage can you know so uh but um well let me follow up with the city manager's office so that way we can see um where that is and and if there were a funding that was identified to modify that memorial yeah because uh so much of our history is being erased intentionally now it's nice to remember what the first generation that come to this country uh suffer to um you know endure and they were part of the nation building. Thank you.

Thank you so much, commissioners. Yes, I have a few questions. Is there, in your department, is there a follow-up intrinsic review after every project to say this is what we said we were going to do and this is what we accomplished and this is the timing that we're on time or not?

Yes, we do have different reviews depending on the project stage. So when we are developing the plans, the specifications and the estimates, we have different coordination with the different divisions. So for instance, if it will require water utilities, and connections or maybe utility company coordination, we coordinate at the 30, 60, and 90% of our plans. And we also have a constructability review that takes place with our construction team. We have a kickoff meeting with the contractors after we award a project. So there are several project metrics in place that monitor the project schedule, scope, and deliverables. As well as after the project is completed, we have as-builts that are prepared, and that will identify what was built, whether to plan or any change orders that took place. So we do have all those attributes that we have and that we monitor to deliver projects.

So you do have then capable of reporting your percentage of completion, how many are on time, how many are not? on budget, under budget, those natures?

We do, and it's actually on our city website. You can view it if you Google City of Santa Ana Public Works projects, and we have a project schedule that's updated on a quarterly basis, which lists all of our active projects, a schedule and budget, exactly what you are talking about. And we list that to the public every few months, so that way we can be held accountable to our residents and community.

Because I really concern this state when you have things like the bullet train that's been tremendously over budget, tremendously stragged out, even our own local rail, which is sad because I'm a supporter of local rail, and I'm not going to vote for another local rail project again because of the fact of how badly the county handled that project. I want to make sure in the city that we're not doing the same thing, that we're taking necessary steps to realize. And I do realize that there are some projects that overrun, and there's reasons highlighted for it. My background is now chemical, and we used to have to, after a project, and if you assumed responsibility midway through, you assumed the other guy's problems as well. But at the end, you had to write an intrinsic report. Did we achieve what we said we were going to achieve? Did we get the one-year turnaround that we expected? And so you had that final intrinsic report on a project.

Yes, you are very correct. And I think that that's something that we are very cognizant of. And we pride ourselves on making sure that internally we do push forward all of those controls that we do have power over. And you're right that some projects they do take a little bit longer, especially our projects that involve rail coordination. and other coordination with entities that are external to us. And so you're right that we're following up very frequently. And we do pride ourselves on delivering projects. That's something we're really good at.

Because on these projects that I mentioned, one of the big things is consulting and the charging for consulting. You're running on charges of consulting. All these projects have a certain amount of consultation, which is fine. We don't have the expertise in-house. But we do monitor that if we You have a half a million to a certain contractor he does deliver.

Yes, actually we pride ourselves on being the only only city in orange county that we do 80% of our design in house. We actually only contract out about 20% of our design for our cip projects and of that we have. licensed civil engineers that are managing those consultants, so I would argue that out of all of those cities were actually have the most local control when it comes to design yeah.

One thing in the city right now, and I don't think it involves you guys, and so please correct me if it doesn't, but we've been having a traffic study program, three different phases over the last eight years. Spent well over $2 million out of general fund with nothing to show. And that's my, as a citizen of Santa Ana, what I see and what I'm concerned with. So if the public works hire a consultant to do a traffic study, that does not involve capital improvements, does it?

If we did, we do have a traffic engineering division, and I know that they do traffic studies internally. And if there was a specific study that you could reference so that I could know if it was done in-house or potentially bid?

Well, I'll tell you three that I'm aware of. One was a general traffic survey. A consultant came in to review our parking throughout the city. That was reduced to just two areas in the city, second project. Also, that was well over $750,000. And then the latest one was the review of our parking permits, none of which we've heard any results from yet. And people in the neighborhoods are asking, where's the results of all this money being spent? Now, I bring this up, like I told Wells, only $700,000. $100,000. No, it's not. If you add those three together, you're well over $2 million. We paid consultants and have nothing to show.

Now I'm familiar. So you are talking about the review of our parking permit, and you're correct that I think that our traffic division did do a revamp of our parking permit system. So you're correct that I can find out more specifics for you regarding the deliverables and what was paid for within those monies so that we can demonstrate that the funding was properly allocated was that general funding or what was that capital funding. I would have to take a look, but I know that from it depends if it's permit it could include a blend because I know permits bring a lot of revenue into the city, so it might have included some general fund based off of the permit. revenue. But otherwise, I know that a lot of the studies that traffic works on are using Measure M grant fair share dollars. So I would have to take a look specifically at that contract. And when I follow up with you about it, it will include the source of funds as well.

Very good.

Thank you. Thank you, Vice Chair.

Are there any questions? I just want to ask an additional question. Go ahead.

This might be just, you know, housekeeping. But, you know, I just worked on a project with the city. And when I reviewed the plan check fee, our engineers are being billed at $245 an hour to review plans. Since you were saying that a good portion of the design of these projects are done in-house, is there an internal billing that's different in terms of are we billing ourselves at industry rates or are we more cost effective because we're in-house?

So I think that's a two prong question so when I was talking about the design that would be the design of capital improvement projects so that's going to be. In the public right of way and permit is going to be private development funding that is invested. into the city's general fund. So they're a little bit different fundings, but you're right that in terms of permit funding, that is going to include a fee study that the city did, and that might include an indirect cost rate percentage. So a billable rate that might've been applied to that review. And that would have been based off of similar to how a consultant will bill the city upwards of that amount for a principal civil engineer hours or depending on the scope of work that would have been included in the in the fee study when calculating those costs. And you're right that that specific fee would be itemized for that type of review. And it would include salary and benefits and cost recovery for the city to review those plans.

When we have our engineers design our own projects in-house, what I'm asking is, is it at industry rates? Are we charging the taxpayer the same amount as if Our consultants and outside consultants would have designed it.

Thank you for clarifying. So no, we do charge that billable rate, which is a billable rate that is approved by the funding agencies. So we will charge that to receive cost recovery from our funding agencies. But in terms of designing projects in-house or for the community, it is not billed at a billable rate.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Seeing no more questions, I do have a question myself and this is for Ricardo. Is this a file and receive or do we have a vote on this?

You would vote, that's correct. I got a motion.

Okay. Is there a motion to accept?

Yeah, based on previous staff presentation and public works presentation to the Planning I'd like to motion that we adopt a resolution finding the fiscal year 2026-2027 capital improvement program consistent with the general plan because of the previous meetings that we had and today's clarification, and as it relates to the general plan. Second.

Oh, okay. Commissioner Wu and Commissioner Laudelio have seconded. Secretary, please do the roll call.

Commissioner Escamilla. Commissioner Leo.

Aye.

Commissioner Oliva. Commissioner Pham.

Aye.

Commissioner Wu.

Aye.

Vice Chair Venninger.

Aye.

Chair Ramos. Motion approved by majority vote with Commissioner Escamilla, Commissioner Oliva and Chair Ramos absent.

Okay, that concludes the business calendar. Moving on to the study session. We have Assistant Director of Finance and Management Services, Sharon McCree, to provide a brief presentation. Shannon, yours.

The presentation is going to be put up on the screen.

You want to save the ceremony?

Excuse me, can I have an English version?

Oh, you didn't get an English version? So before I get started today, I can actually address your questions earlier to Haley. I can talk about the Measure X spending plan, and I can also talk about the questions about how broad they were. I can either do that now, or I can do it after the presentation. Your choice.

I have no problem with now. I'm sorry? Anyone? I propose we redo it now. Present, Measure X, go ahead.

We can start with the presentation and then address the questions later.

As you go through, because I noticed on a couple of pages, there's no mention of Measure X. I'll answer the question.

Let me just say it now. We do publish our Measure X spending plan. It's in our budget book every year. It's a detailed spending plan in the budget book. In December of each year, if you go to the, if you go to finances department page and there's an icon that says measure X, and if you click on that and you go to the measure X oversight committee, you'll see two files from each of the year since measure X. has passed. One is an agreed upon procedure report performed by the city auditors to make sure we spent the money on the permissible uses of Measure X. And we also post an annual report of revenue and expenditures, which details exactly the revenue sources that went into the Measure X spending plan and how we actually spent the money. Because you know, sometimes a budget, it's mostly a plan and it can change. So we always close out the fiscal year talking about what we did actually spend Measure X money on.

So you can go to both those areas.

In terms of the budget and the broadness of the categories and the questions, this is always a tightrope that we are always trying to navigate. And let me give you an example. Last year, the community budget survey had 17 questions and took about 13 minutes to fill or complete. We got so many complaints. This survey is too long. It's too detailed. I'm never going to take the time to complete this long of a survey. Please make it more simple. So this year we made it more simple, which means the categories have to be even broader. And so we got it down to seven questions and now it takes less than three minutes to complete. But I can tell you that whether it's a year where we ask a lot of questions or we ask little questions, it's always like there's too many or there's not enough. I can also tell you that since I've worked for the city now for five years, in every budget cycle, community priorities have not changed. They're pretty consistent. And when we contracted with the scientific polling survey, which did do the whole, you know, scientific questioning and all that detailed statistical stuff, the priorities identified by the scientific polling survey matched the results of our community priority survey. So that tells me we're not totally off base, but we can do a better job of explaining the term public safety. And for the purposes of the community priorities survey, it means police, fire department, and EMT services. But it's still, that's such a huge category because so much of our budget are those three services. So I'm gonna move on and start talking and going through my presentation. Feel free to interrupt, however you like. Thank you so much for having me here today. I'm going to provide a brief overview of the current year's budget, discuss the budget process and where we're at as of today, and encourage folks to complete the annual community priorities survey. The results of this survey help City Council allocate resources for the 26-27 fiscal year city budget, which commences on July 1, 2026 and runs through June 30, 2027. Similar to other public sector agencies, the City of Santa Ana uses fund accounting to promote transparency, accountability, and responsible stewardship of public resources. This pie chart reflects all of the city's major fund types and how resources are organized based on legal restrictions, funding sources, and intended uses. The largest portion of the pie is the general fund, which you'll see in blue. This is the city's unrestricted operating fund. This is the only fund over which city council has broad discretionary authority, allowing it to prioritize and allocate resources for core municipal services such as police, parks, administration, community programs, and planning services. Because of this flexibility, city council spends much of its budget deliberation process focused on general fund priorities. The citywide budget increased 6% this fiscal year compared to last year. Most of this growth is attributed to the capital project funds, mostly due to increased grant funding from the Orange County Transportation Authority.

Can I ask a question? Sure. Of the $424 million, how much is Measure X?

Can you give me one slide?

Yeah, I'll give you one slide. I'll give you one slide. Because I think, realistically, when you read the newspaper articles where there's an Orange County register, Voice of OC, City Council's contemplating Measure X, but the public doesn't know what the Measure X funds go to. And I will tell you, those of us who have lived in Orange County a long time, Measure M says, I'm going to do these things, and I did them. Give me more money. We're now going to go back to the public at some point and say, we want you to either renew Measure X or even give us more money. Well, what did you do with my money? And that's going to be the question. So the more we're explicit and open and transparent about what we did with it all, and I understand you have a QR code and but the more we're explicit in what we say, because the public's going to watch this and say, where's Measure X? So that's all I'm saying is like I told Capital Improvement before, we need to be a little bit more explicit about Measure X because the taxpayers agreed to give the city more money and they want to know what they got for their money. That's all I'm saying. So how we communicate that is probably a bigger thing than what you spent the money on.

Agreed, agreed.

So I'll give you the one more slide.

Oh, I was wrong. It was two slides. Okay. I forgot about this slide. Okay, so Santa Ana is unique because it has more unrestricted revenue than restricted. This is largely due to the city's 1.5 local sales tax, also known as Measure X. In many other cities, most funding is restricted, which means the city council has less flexibility in how the money can be used. Today, we will only address the city's general fund. Now, here's where you can see Measure X. The primary sources of revenue in the general fund are property taxes and sales taxes. For each dollar property tax that you pay, the city receives approximately 19 cents, with the remaining portion going to the countywide services and schools. If you shop or dine in Santa Ana, you pay a 9.25% sales tax. the city receives 1% of the normal application or the allocation plus one and a half percent for voter approved Measure X. And where you're gonna see that on here is you're gonna see the sales tax, Bradley Burns, that's the state allocation. So the 1% that goes into the state and then the state gives it back to us. What you'll see right underneath that in dark blue is the local sales tax. So for 2526, it was almost $84 million and it, It generates more money to us than the Bradley Burns allocation, the statewide allocation. And part of the reason for that is because for the Measure X portion of the sales tax, we do not have to compete with the county pools for online sales taxes. We get all that 1.5% for ourselves. And I could rattle off the permissible uses of Measure X, but I'm afraid I'm going to miss something.

So as a local... So the local's $83 million, $83 million 95. Right. That's all Measure X?

That's all Measure X.

Well, next time just put Measure X. I'm just being honest. We're all residents and we all pay that tax and if you say local sales tax, people are like, oh, sales tax? What do you mean local sales tax? But if you say Measure X tax, People go, oh, now I know where my money is.

And I can tell you the direction was to pivot away from Measure X just because if we ever do another ballot measure, we were afraid that people would only know what Measure X was and that would be labeled ever since. But more people have said, keep it called Measure X and not the local sales tax.

If you think about Measure M, we've had Measure M1, we've had Measure M2. The public knows what the tax is and If you tell them that it is going to be Measure X 2 and it's just going to extend what we got, they'll say, okay, or they'll say no. But I'm just saying that everybody's head's wrapped around Measure X because guess what? Orange is trying to pass a sales tax. Irvine's going to contemplate one. Fullerton 1's contemplating one. But ours is Measure X. We might as well just say it's Measure X. And from a branding perspective, you've already built a website for it. So we're talking semantics, but Semantics, I think matter at least when it comes to the extra tax we pay to benefit the city.

Absolutely, especially in terms of branding.

Along that line, our property tax is like 23.17%, right? My question is, could a project for the finance department is to look at other ways to raise revenues such as looking at economic development? in terms of commercial industries here, you know, a health medical industry. I don't know what AI, not AI, I hate AI, but something to do with other kinds of businesses that we currently don't have here. We're not going to do it. We're more of a spending kind of city because we have low working people in the city and they demand services, right? And in order to pay for those services, we got to find some other people to have money to spend it in the city or something that we could tax them. So it seems like the hotel thing doesn't generate a lot of taxes. Sales tax, you got to have money to buy stuff to pay that sales tax. And so is there any revenue that we could come from developing and promoting industries to come here?

No, that's, yeah, that's a really good question. And I can tell you at the, I believe it's the May 5th city council meetings, the community development agency is scheduled to provide a presentation on our economic development efforts. We get this question a lot and we get it a lot when we're out in the community. And so this presentation is meant to address some of those questions. I can tell you that in my short time in my new role, I have seen how much economic development work does happen at the back end, but it just takes so long for you to see the fruits of all your hard work. And it's like for Bristol related, I think in our early direction staff report, it's gonna be like 2036 before we start seeing any increase in revenue because of that project.

Yeah, and then along that line, Commissioner Leo also hit on the nose that we're surrounded by cities now that have live and work projects. So they're following our lead, but they're not doing any low income housing and affordable housing. So we have to lead the way in terms of finding other ways to draw businesses here before they go to Irvine because they have open land. We have to sell the fact that we have buildings and business park that have outlived their lifespan and are ready for other people to occupy it, like the ones down on, what's that area, McArthur? You have a lot of buildings. When we was looking for 100,000 square foot building, we were looking in that area. And those that size building if you have a good you know. vitamin company or something that needs that clean room stuff you know the sales tax on that and the jobs that will employ would help us our budget agreed agreed so and can we recommend targeting some dollars towards economic development and promotion of the city.

uh because some people still feel that we're a city for gangsters absolutely yes and angel hernandez is here taking notes and he what he does they come to all of our community budget outreach events and they're the ones who take notes and then we'll eventually compile it to share with city council and the departments based on what we hear and the point i'd like to make about the promotion is that um we have we are a city full of entrepreneurial

Immigrants because sometimes there are not jobs available to us, so we use our mind a culture or ability and the hard work to create businesses okay. Our young people now and not talking about helping their parents with her tamale stand they're talking about starting a it company and or web company or something. and then selling it as an IPO. And I was amazed as I'm listening and working with young folks in high school here in Santa Ana that they have big dreams and big, you know, possibilities. So the access to capital is where there is capital because I sit on the board of a CDFI that provides new market tax credit. And i've been dying to get a project going in Santa Ana so if you know one, let me know I recommend that for funding and then we could get you know new entities to come in here because we sure have a lot of young people with good ideas.

agreed and stay tuned for the economic development presentation. I'm going to finish off just a couple notes about general fund revenue. So current year revenue is estimated to be $413.8 million, which is a very minor increase of almost 2% from the prior year. Slower consumer spending and higher interest rates are limiting both sales and property tax growth. And I can tell you that at our mid-year report, we did reduce our sales tax estimates based on the sales tax consultant's recommendations, and that's just because You know, folks are strapped, and their disposable income is challenged, and they are just not spending it in the way they were.

Just quickly, when we raised Measure X, there was a lot of concern of people who didn't go by outside the city.

Sure.

Have you seen any effect of that?

So we can't really see where people go if they're not spending it here. There's not really any way we can do that. We can kind of see on a very broad scale of what categories people are spending money on and in what areas they're spending money on. But we can't see how folks that decide to go to Tustin, for example, instead of shopping in Siena, we don't see that as much.

Councillor Hutchison. Okay, with two slides you've presented to us, it shows that we already have a problem with revenue only going up 2% and spending is going up 6%.

That's going to be my next point. Councillor Hutchison.

One question I do have, I'm sorry, Chris. One question I do have, on property tax, there is, mine is set from when I moved in in 1979, eventually you'll sell and the new owners will go up to current market value. How much of that increase in taxes do we see come to the

Well, that's interesting. So any of our property tax growth outside of the 2% is largely due to real estate transactions. And I can tell you that we were hovering in the 5% plus range for several years on our property tax growth. We are down to like a 3% growth in the past year. And that's really because, according to our property tax consultants, the number of real estate transactions are slowing down, and that's impacting our ability. So the more the economy contracts and people don't sell their homes, then you're going to see our estimate be closer to the 2% increase, assuming the CPI is higher than 2%.

Can I ask where the Amazon tax goes, the money you get from Amazon? Sure.

Well, you're going to see it in two different places. You're going to see it in the sales tax Bradley burns for the state allocation and then 100% in the local sales tax. Like I said, for the sales tax that Bradley burn, it goes to what's called county pools, and we have to share with everybody else, but we do not for Measure X. So the 1.5%, 100% of it goes to us. So you'll see it in two places.

Just because now Amazon is a large tenant in our city, I just thought I'd ask the question. They own several things in the city, so I just thought I'd ask the question.

You know what's crazy is if you look at Ontario's revenue over the past couple years, oh, my gosh, and that's all because of Amazon.

Right. Well, we have two. We have the old register building, and we have that big distribution place down on Dyer. But thanks for now I know what that is.

No problem.

Can we stop those trucks and just hijack some tax dollars off of them as they come in the city?

So I'll just say this, and to make matters more complicated, raising new revenue in California is especially challenging. Any new tax, as you know, requires voter approval, and city fees can only recover the cost of providing services. We cannot generate a profit. Okay, so now this is how we spend the money. The city's general fund expenditure budget as of July 1, 2025, was $424 million, which represents a 3.5% increase compared to the prior fiscal year. As you said, that's higher than the revenue coming in. General fund expenditures are rising faster than revenue because costs for labor, health benefits, and pensions continue to grow, along with inflationary increases in goods and services that the city purchases. So like if the collective bargaining units came in at 5%, 4%, 3%, but our revenue is only growing at 1.8%. So that's how structural deficits happen. Our OCFA contract is usually at 4.5%. This year, they're estimating only a 3% increase. So we're gonna be able to capture some savings there. But again, it's just that our contracted mandate expenses keep going up.

So, well, So any other city, if we were to look at their pie chart, the police department looks about the same?

Yeah.

Is it between 35% and 40%? Is that what public safety normally runs in most cities?

I would say it's more like 50%. In other cities? Mm-hmm. And so if you combine, and what we do is we always, for the purposes of like analysis, we always combine like police with fire and emergency medical services, and then you see closer to 50%.

So we're kind of like in the middle range when it comes to the cities.

Yeah, we're very on brand with our peers when it comes to those percentages.

Okay. So let me, so while you're flipping to the next slide. So I'm in the healthcare business. I understand that there's been increases. When you present to the public, do a bar chart that goes like this. our expenses, and then this is what's inflated. Because then you can see, well, I didn't raise my prices, I didn't raise my taxes. But guess what? My pension cost went up this much, this went up this much. For me, it's pharmaceutical, supply chain, and labor. And if you put that out there, people go, oh, now I know. We're taking in this revenue, but look, look what grew while I tried to hold constant. Because people sometimes visually don't get it. We get it because we deal with the pie chart, but people get bar chart. You know, when you lay it next to each other, my cost went up. Well, we didn't do anything at the city. We didn't raise your fees. We didn't do nothing. And these went up. Also, what's going to go up? Trash is going to go up, right? I don't know if water's gone up. Some of that's outside the control of the city.

Sure.

And electrical rates went up. All of that went up into that affordability mix. So you can't blame the city for that. But if you put it out there, then the public will go, oh, well, the city's actually being responsible with their money compared to others.

Right. That's a good point. I do want to show you one thing. If you look at our general fund expenditures, you'll see that it's $424 million. But our general fund revenues were $413.8 million. And let me explain what's going on. We still have a structurally balanced budget. What happens is every year, the city always has vacancies. And some projects don't get completed on time. So we never spend 100% of our budget. What we don't spend gets rolled over to what in the public sector is called fund balance, which is like our savings account. And we allocate a portion of our savings account that exceeds the reserves. So our reserve requirement is 18% of recurring revenue. So we take the difference between the reserve requirement and surplus funds from the fiscal year, and we appropriate it into the next fiscal year. And that's what we called our use of spendable fund balance. And what we do, they can only be used on one-time projects because you obviously don't want to hire someone's salary with one-time funds. That's how you go broke. And so we earmark that money for one-time projects only. And you're going to see us questioning City Council at the May 5th City Council meeting on how they want to spend our estimated spendable fund balance for this fiscal year.

Can I ask this?

I'm sorry?

How much did you estimate for this coming year we're going to have excess?

I'm sorry?

How much of that funds, unspendable funds are we going to have?

We're projecting right now, at early direction, we projected $11.6 million that we'll have. And you'll see us ask City Council for their input on where to spend that 11.6.

Do we typically recommend that allocation for debt services? Because debt services seems like it's taking up, you know, 2% is minor, but it's $60 million.

Right. And it's actually going to go up to right around the time measure X is scheduled to start sunsetting. And so the city staff has been planning through for that eventuality through what you're going to see on our May 5th presentation. It's called the annual contributions to the pension trust stabilization account. And we've been putting millions of dollars in it every year. So when our pension obligation payments really start skyrocketing in 2029, we don't have to use the general fund to make those payments. We can rely on our contribution, our trust contributions. So we have been planning for the eventual sunsetting of Measure X, as well as our increase in pension obligation payments that are scheduled to increase. In the past few years, we've paid off, I want to say, more than $10 million of our debt. We paid off the police jail holding facility. There's a couple other things that we've paid off recently.

Are we, you know, also, you brought up the pension. The pension is a good 10% of the general fund, I think. No, sorry. Yeah, 10%. Is it cyclical where we see, let's say, 10 years where not many people are retiring? Or is it kind of consistent that new staff but also retiring staff that's consistently rolling through?

I would say that we are seeing a little bit of a change because you know the California pension whole program changed like in 2013 and anybody who is in what's called CalPERS before 2013 is what's called a classic employee and they have much higher pension costs than somebody like me who became a city employee in 2021. So I'm a lot cheaper for the city than someone versus who got here a long time. But I would say we are now at the threshold where the people who aren't classic employees like me are the majority. And classic employees are no longer in the majority. So, you know, over in the long run, that is going to save us some money. But also, you know... People keep living longer they're living longer and they're living healthier and so those all those things keep increasing pension costs and that could be a good thing, and so we are facing those kind of changes. So these are the results of our community priorities survey from last year. These are the top spending priorities identified by the Santa Ana community during the last budget process. Over the past five years, these priorities have remained consistent with public safety and road and sidewalk maintenance continuing to lead. So far this year, we've received over 1,900 survey submissions, which is way short of our goal. We're asking for your help in promoting the survey. Please encourage family, friends, coworkers, and even your enemies to participate. We welcome input from anyone with a vested interest in the city of Santa Ana. And I don't think there's anything on here that looks surprising to you folks, right? This slide provides some notable examples of how the city has acted on the community's feedback in allocating funds for the current fiscal year. It shows the tangible impact of your input from programs to projects and demonstrates that the city listens and responds to what residents prioritize. In other words, this is how we close the loop on prior year funding decisions, turning survey responses and community input into real investments that benefit the Santa Ana community. And I would say all the items on here aren't necessarily funded through the general fund. They're just reflective of new money that we were able to add into the current fiscal year budget. And we do conduct community engagement year round now. We found that if we got started in January, by the time momentum really picked up, the budget build season was coming to a close. And so we worked really hard to achieve all this momentum for what, for nothing? And so now what we do is we are out in the community year round and we're always welcome to come to any kind of area nonprofit or neighborhood association meeting or anywhere where we're asked to talk about how, okay, this is what we heard from you and this is how it translated into funding decisions. And so I'm always extending that invitation or that offer. Every year, the budget office sets a few key goals. First, we aim to cast as wide net as possible reaching the community. This includes residents, business owners, and all stakeholders. Secondly, we work to improve engagement numbers each year. To help with this, like I said, we now keep the budget survey live year round. The primary reason we're here today is to ask for your help in promoting the survey. Balancing the budget is expected to be particularly challenging this year, which makes community input more important than ever. The public's demand for services is outpacing the city's legal ability to raise revenue. And when the sales tax decreases from 1.5% to 1% in 2029, the city will lose more than $30 million in revenue. While city leadership is already planning for this decrease, resource allocation will become even more difficult. And realistically, not everyone will get everything on their wish list. So the City of Santa Ana prides itself on financial transparency. On the City's website, you can find the current year's fiscal year budget in detail, prior year budgets, annual financial reports, and Measure X information. Finally, we ask that you take a few minutes to complete the community prior survey. Like I said, it takes less than five minutes, includes only seven questions, and most questions allow for open-ended responses, so you can share what matters most to you. And the whole idea with doing that is if you see an option that doesn't speak to you, just write it in, and we are gonna share the most commonly written in open-ended responses with city council as well. Thank you for sharing your time with us today. Do you have any further questions?

I'd just like to comment that you have done a super job. This is the third presentation I've heard you made in the last six weeks. And so I also appreciate the honesty that you and your fellow folks have given to the public. So I never felt like you held back any answers. You said what was there, which I appreciate on it.

Oh, thank you.

You can't win. So let me ask you a question.

But you do a good job. So let me ask you a question, Carl. You may know more than me. So you've gone to the neighborhood associations?

Mm-hmm. Not all of them.

Okay. Carl, have they dispersed it? Have they dispersed the survey through the neighborhood associations? Yeah. Yes, they have.

And we had a meeting with staff, and we asked questions of that.

Okay, because that's one universe, right?

But I'm still annoyed that it ends up looking like page six.

Well, we heard today that a lot of other cities look the same way.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's so. But if we're trying to disperse the survey, I'm trying to think of other ways to disperse the survey, right?

Well, the missing element is economic development. People don't understand how to raise money. They know how to spend it. That's part of our job, right? Yeah. So I think what we need to do as commissioners and city council people is go out there and start promoting the city and saying, you know, we need more revenue.

So in addition to the neighborhood associations, we also visit with area nonprofits. This year we finally got in with Santa Ana USD. We went to their family and community engagement, like professional development, and so we got to talk to a whole bunch of teachers all throughout the district about getting their families to complete the survey. We attend citywide events and we bribe parents with toys and giveaways for the kiddos to come to our booth and then we get them to complete the survey. We also have a little jar activity for kids so they can provide input and we visited with Santa Ana College as well. And this is like I'd say my fourth year really expanding the community engagement process and not waiting for folks to come to us so us to go to them. And each year it's becoming easier and easier to get folks to return our phone calls because of it.

So let me give you, so I'll give you another group. I know that the mayor has a faith-based group that she meets with once a quarter, probably 25, 30 churches. There's another captured audience that are all Santa Ana people. Covers temples on the west side, the synagogue on the east side. The pastors can say it from the pulpit. We'd like you to just complete the survey. Do it here. Maybe another way to capture different people. And the thing is, is that whoever it is, the mayor, the vice mayor, or whoever, council members, if those churches answer, if our TGP law answers, then you'll get more of what's coming out of Allen's neighborhood than just Allen completing the survey, because Allen's comments may be different than others. So, but I'm just trying to think of other ways how you distribute it, and I think that's it. And... I think we can all talk to our council members who appointed us to say, hey, when you're up here giving your public comments, please fill out the survey to help you.

Yes, thank you.

Because it helps you, it gives them, and it also gives them public feedback.

Sure, sure.

All right, so, all right.

We have a number of festivals in the city. Do you have a tent there at those festivals to ask for? We do.

We were at Dia de los Niños this weekend. We were at the Lunar event as well. This year we had to prioritize. So we are extremely short staff at the moment. And so we also haven't had that many city events this past spring because we didn't have the annual Easter egg hunt. And so some of our weekends are actually spent. I joke that right now we have two jobs. Our day job is actually compiling the budget and our night job is coming to do these types of things. So we're trying to find enough time for both.

Out of curiosity, you know, historically, these surveys that you get from the community, how do they Your budgeting, is it to cut where to cut expenses or where to allocate more expenses?

That's a really good point. And in response to feedback, every year when budget season's over, we kind of go like on a feedback tour, like tell us what you thought about this year's process and what stunk and what can we do better and what was really good. And what came up about I think two years ago was how do you not have any questions about what services to reduce in the event of, you know, a looming deficit. And so we added that question. And so now I think it's question two or three on the survey, but you're right. We can't just talk about what we're going to spend more of. We also have to know what we can spend less of. And we are going to have to, at some point, make a decision about what the city is willing to stop doing because it can't afford to keep doing. And that's where city council, that your input's so important because city, Council can rely on that for their decision-making.

Or as a matter of reallocation, right?

Right, right. Or just shift and, you know, this is why having a strong strategic plan is important because when you have a strong strategic plan, it makes the funding allocation process easier because you know what your priorities are.

But we're dealing with it now rather than... Letting it be done in the newspapers, right?

Yeah, and that's another good point. I think ACM Downs was talking about if city council ultimately decides that they don't want to pursue another ballot measure, then we need to start taking steps now to ramp up for that $30 million reduction. We don't just wait until it's here. We start working on that now.

But to Commissioner Leo's point, the public needs to know why they need to agreed to another right right and I rely on the experts for that I can just talk budget see I'm there already because I understand how you spent it now could you explain it to us and and the grilling you got from Commissioner Leo you know that helped it was a nice grilling yeah it's okay I just wondered in your job do you spend any time educating Council because we do have some inexperienced Council members

So I don't in my role, but I would say Alex Trinidad, our executive director, and Catherine Downs, the ACM, do spend a lot of time one-on-one with council members in talking to them. I think even in the state of California now, there's a requirement, like a financial literacy component that city council members have to do. I don't know what that training looks like. I haven't seen, but I do know that they spend time talking to council every year, like, how did we get here?

It's one of the areas that I see, the understanding of... what it costs to have a consultant or non-staff person in a position. And this is not an anti-city attorney position. It's just business. It's not personal. It's just business. We pay very dearly for her because she's not a city employee. And so we're paying her company so much. And I just don't know whether that's a good deal for us or not. Generally, in my past, that's not a good deal. If you need expertise, go hire it. Don't keep it on a consultant basis for 12 years. I don't know how many years we've had that. But those are things I don't think... I brought it up to a council person the other day, and he said, well, the expertise is what she brings. Well, I said, yeah, but when are you satisfied you can handle that in-house?

I can say that Since I work for UCI Health, our big house is in Orange. Orange is in a tough spot. But they didn't, they don't have the courage or the guts to do what the city of Santa Ana did, which was spin off the fire department to the fire authority, which saved the city $9, $10 million. If they did that in Orange, they would save them, the budget hole would go away immediately. But they're unwilling to do that. that this city has been willing to make those decisions. We made the tax decision early, knowing that redevelopment went away. So I think that we're kind of the leaders in how you're going to do it going forward. I mean, we have offices and we have stuff in Brea, and Fullerton is looking at a massive deficit with no economic revenue to generate, right? Irvine, they've got some reserves, but they've got issues. So everybody's got the same issues. The question is, we're kind of at the front end of it. where others are like, well, I don't really want to tax people. Well, nobody wants to tax people, but don't have a choice to pay for the services that people need, which are the basic services. And so I think that we've all lived it, paid it, and now we just need to make sure that the public understands. I was looking, I can't remember whose newsletter it was. It may have been Sarmento's or somebody else's. There's like 40 projects going on in the city right now. That's unheard of in this economic environment. So I think the city deserves a lot of credit. I think staff deserves a lot of credit for working through the tough stuff, and now we're actually seeing some light at the end of the tunnel compared to others who are like, oh my gosh, if I don't pass this tax, what do I do?

And the economics is nothing that we created, okay? The cost of money, it's not what we created. There are other folks at other levels that does that. Now, the good news is we ain't got no scandals. There ain't no other underhanded contracting dollars out there, okay? No one's sleeping with someone else's wife, okay? And that's like a million-dollar worth of lawsuits that we have. So the good news is we're not mishandling funds. We're doing the best we can with the money. And if the economics were better, okay, and we're not attacking immigration and our immigrant population and our working-class people, you know, Probably we spend more and our budget would naturally balance. But there are other factors that are playing into that affects us. But the good thing is, going back to the days of Dave Ring, we're managing things well in terms of finance. And a congratulation to the department for doing a good job. I know that within departments, you know, they're fighting over different things. You know, oh, you got some grant here, can I have a piece of that, you know, and all that, but that's good. And I thank the planning staff for relating it to our decisions that we got to make in terms of the general plan and our zoning issue.

Thank you all. Thank you.

Again, thank you for your presentation. I see no other questions here from the commission. So thank you for your presentation. Does the staff have any, because this concludes our study session, does the staff have any comments for us?

Thank you, Vice Chair Benninger. I just want to thank our colleagues from Public Works, Haley Gilbert, for coming out and presenting to the commission tonight, and Assistant Director of Finance, Shannon McCarron, for coming out and providing the study session before the commission. Thank you.

You're good. Does the commissioners have any closing comments or questions for staff? I HAVE JUST ONE THAT'S KIND OF OVERALL, BUT THE OC ORANGE COUNTY SOCCER LEAGUE IS GOING TO COME TO OUR SANTA ANA BOWL ON MAY 23. INTERESTING TIME TO SEE PROFESSIONAL SOCCER IN ONE OF OUR FACILITIES AND VERY EXCITED ABOUT IT BECAUSE WE ONLY HOLD 6,000 IN GREAT PARK AND THIS WILL HOLD 10,000. SO EXPECTING A VERY GOOD TURNOUT AND I CAN TELL YOU FROM THE TIMES I'VE SCORED THEIR GAMES, WHICH IS EVERY GAME, IT'S VERY EXCITING SOCCER. That's my only closing comment. With that, I adjourn this regular meeting and schedule, and I mentioned this next one is scheduled for May 11th at 5.30. Thank you. Good night.