CORRESPONDENCE - 75A-1 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Orozco, Norma From: Diana Castro <dcastro@berkeley.edu> Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2020 3:41 PM To: eComment Subject: SA City Council Meeting 6/16 Hello Santa Ana City Council Members, I wanted to send an email regarding the SA City Council Meeting that is scheduled for this evening. I am writing to voice my frustration and disproval of the proposed budget for fiscal year 2020-2021, agenda item 75A. The "recommendations" provided by the Citizen Oversight Committee are incredibly pointless and should be more specific than only recommending that items should be "reassessed". The Citizen Oversight Committee "was not able to make any recommendations" for the FY-20-21 budget, how? The budget is incredibly important and should receive the most recommendations. So how can we trust that our City Council fight for the best interests of Santa Ana residents, when they can not even be held accountable? There is no reason why the revenue from property taxes, which helps fund our school district, be lower than what is spent by the city on police. It is appalling that an already underfunded city would choose to prioritize the funding of the police department instead of investing in education and other community development programs. Some of the money that is divested from the police can better fund other programs or better yet create more spaces for our community members, such as building another library. It is frustrating to see that a great city like Santa Ana only has 1 public library, for its population of over 330,000. When in comparison, our neighboring city Costa Mesa has 2 public libraries for the cities population of about 100,000. I have personally needed to call the police because I needed to have someone to write an incident report. It took two calls to SAPD and a 40-minute wait, for someone to arrive at my residence. Thank goodness it wasn't a more severe situation, because even when resorting to having to call the SAPD, it doesn't mean that you will be assisted in a timely manner. On a more recent occasion, when the SAPD was called for an incident that occurred on my street. Only one police officer was needed for this, but 2 separate vehicles showed up. Then in a few minutes, all of them left the scene. When 1 definitely should have stayed, the assessment used by officers when they choose to actually do their job is disappointing. The proposed city budget needs to be completely reassessed. Placing the needs of the community higher than the pay of the police department and their pensions. There also needs to be more transparency in the lobbying that is done by the police department union. Since this, unfortunately, affects how our city council members vote regarding matters that affect Santa Ana residents. It seems that many of our council members that claim to have love and a passion to foster intergenerational growth for our city have completely forgotten what it feels like to be a resident that is underserved due to these voting practices. Best, Diana Castro