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<br /> <br />Orozco, Norma <br />From:Ivan Enriquez <ivan.enriq@icloud.com> <br />Sent:Thursday, June 18, 2020 4:00 PM <br />To:eComment <br />Subject:Public Comment <br /> As a former chair of the youth commission, helping restart the commission after <br />prolonged inactivity, it is in my view that the city and the city manager must draw down the <br />Santa Ana Police Department and initiate an immediate redistribution of funding towards <br />residents and community services. <br /> No amount of goodwill will change our world view on police brutality. Unless we take <br />action swiftly, providing equity and programming to our young people mu become a priority <br />before we get stuck in a decades long cycle of economic recession. The city must move to <br />defund the Santa Ana Police Department in any situation because of the economic recovery <br />we need to initiate. Any budget taking action to boost funding to the community must be <br />done as a draw down. <br /> <br /> <br /> It was frustrating to find as a high school student that the Youth Commission had <br />access to funding that sat unused because of vacancies and a lack of quorum after the last <br />economic recession. We are now making the same mistake again. <br /> <br /> <br />The city must also take into consideration our responsibility to educate our community. It is <br />time to increase degree attainment in our disenfranchised community by working to form a 4 <br />year public university at the ????????? site and become “Education First” again. But <br />such proposals will never come close to fruition as we continue to obscenely fund PD while <br />starving residents of resources when they pay our city so much considering their limited <br />income. The gas tax is paying for half our public works projects at times but would a gas tax <br />really be needed if we defunded the police? <br /> <br /> We have pension responsibilities. At the time, former Councilwoman Michele <br />Martinez decried the approval of a pay raise at a city council meeting because a subsequent <br />allocation of dollars from that same pay raise towards pension contributions wiped any pay <br />raise approved effectively. <br /> <br /> It is time to shift the conversation from what we can’t do to the police department <br />budget and instead talk about what we can do with that money and where it will go. Our <br />young people are missing important milestones in their life and while you sit in a position of <br />power, the future generations of our community are suffering. <br />1 <br /> <br />