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<br />Orozco, Norma <br />From:Victor Payan <victor@masamedia.org> <br />Sent:Tuesday, May 04, 2021 4:05 PM <br />To:eComment <br />Subject:Fwd: Public comment Save Cypress Fire Station <br /> <br />-------- Original Message -------- <br />Public Comment Save Cypress Fire Station <br />Subject: <br />2021/05/04 3:59 pm <br />Date: <br />Victor Payan <victor@masamedia.org> <br />From: <br />ecomment@santa-ana.org <br />To: <br />vsarmiento@santa-ana.org, dpenaloza@santa-ana.org, TPhan@santa-ana.org, JessieLopez@santa- <br />Cc: <br />ana.org, pbacerra@santa-ana.org, JRyanHernandez@santa-ana.org, nmendoza@santa-ana.org, <br />kridge@santa-ana.org, dgomez@santa-ana.org, cityclerk@santa-ana.org <br /> <br />Dear Mayor, Councilmembers and City Manager, <br />I am writing to join in the chorus of residents, community leaders and neighborhood association leaders <br />who are opposed to the sale of the Cypress Fire Station, located at 625 S Cypress (Closed Session Item <br />3). <br />As a resident of the Pacific Park neighborhood, where the Cypress Fire Station is located, and Director of <br />Media Arts Santa Ana (MASA), I would love to strongly advocate turning the building into a community <br />technology center. The pandemic made plain Santa Ana’s need to address the tremendous digital divide in <br />our city, and currently there is a scarcity of locations where residents can access reliable internet to <br />complete assistance forms, apply for jobs, learn new job skills, pay bills, and other actions necessary for <br />functioning in today’s world. <br />Turning the Cypress Fire Station into a community technology center is in alignment with the South Main <br />Plan, as the building is also located in the footprint of that project. <br />My organization, Media Arts Santa Ana (MASA) would be interested in holding bilingual media arts <br />production and digital literacy classes in the building if it is turned into a community technology center. I <br />am sure there are other organizations that could also fill the space with state-of-the-art programming that <br />serves both the local youth and local adult population. <br />A few years ago, we tried to court the coding organization SABIO to Santa Ana, to provide free coding <br />classes to our underserved community. They searched and were unable find a technically suitable or <br />affordable space in all of Santa Ana, and we lost the opportunity to Irvine. Let’s act today to make sure we <br />st <br />don’t lose more opportunities to provide 21 Century amenities and job training to our residents. <br />We are all too familiar with the doleful regret in which the sale of the Santa Ana Fire Department <br />discussed to this day. Please do not make the same mistake of losing a valuable resource forever, when <br />there is such demand from the community to repurpose the building for modern community use. <br />1 <br /> <br />