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Salas, Diana From: Maria De Jesus Zacarias Torres <mdzacari@uci.edu> Sent: Tuesday, June 02, 2020 4:54 PM To: eComment Subject: Part-time lay offs June 2nd, 2020 Good evening city council, My name is Maria Zacarias. I have worked for the city in the Parks & Rec department since 2015. 1 was part of the staff that opened and coordinated the city's community gardens. I was with the community garden program since we started with one garden and now we have five community gardens. While I was working at the community gardens, I was able to create relationships with thousands of residents where youth were able to ask me questions about the college experience, youth were able to have a safe space, and adults were able to share the knowledge of growing food from their homeland to their kids and community. Over hundreds of families were able to help grow organic produce and take it home for free after volunteering. This provided families free, organic produce in a city where we have food deserts and organic food is not always the most affordable. Luckily, I was able to get the job at the community garden when I had just gone back to Santa Ana College. With the help of the part-time job at the city, I was able to transfer to the University of California in Irvine in 2018. 1 am majoring in Social Ecology and double minoring in Conflict Resolution & Urban Planning and planning to graduate in 2021. The job has been able to be flexible for me since my schedule changes every quarter while also letting me work in my community. I have been able to grow personally and professionally while working for the city part-time. As a Santa Ana resident, I was proud to work for the city while working for a program that had such a big impact on the community. Community services and programs are really important especially for the youth. Youth need somewhere to go and things to do. I have been getting texts and calls from youth and senior citizen community garden volunteers asking when the gardens were going to open again. I am going to have to tell them that I do not know when they will open again and that I won't be going back to the community garden.