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Orozco, Norma From:Manuel Escamilla <manueljescamilla@gmail.com> Sent:Tuesday, May 18, 2021 1:47 PM To:eComment Subject:Item 24. Fiscal Year 2021-22 Budget Workshop Session Dear Mayor and Council, Regarding tonight's budget discussion. The American Rescue Plan is an opportunity for transformative investments that will help the City reach the long term goal of efficiently delivering services within a sustainable budget. The language of the American Rescue Plan’s Interim Final Rule indicates that “\[T\]hese resources lay the foundation for a strong, equitable economic recovery...by addressing the systemic public health and economic challenges that may have contributed to more severe impacts of the pandemic among low-income communities and people of color.” To this end I have listed below 6 items that I believe are worth considering. 1. Public Banking Study & Seed Funding The City should conduct a feasibility study to identify ways in which Santa Ana might benefit from the creation of or joining with a publicly owned municipal bank. Potential benefits include the elimination of existing bank fees, increased local access to start-up capital, the ability to loan funding gaps for development proposals that meet local public benefit thresholds, and other targeted investments reflecting the City’s priorities. 2. Communication infrastructure - Constituent Management Service or other equivalent software to CRM programs used in the private sector to centralize communication across the agency. Contact information, language preference, and record of contact among specific groups remains scattered and unorganized. Each time a staff member leaves or retires, their network of contacts is effectively lost to the City and must be rebuilt. https://civicrm.org/cs/new-york-state-senates-bluebird Project Blue Bird from the NY Senate is an open source example of this type of software. 3. Per acre parcel analysis of tax revenue. The City should invest in a more detailed understanding of how much different properties bring in revenues and incur costs to the budget. This analysis can be done by adding the locally allocated portion of local property taxes divided by sq footage of each parcel to individualized sales tax data available from CDA. Additional analysis would look for correlations between land use types, allowable density, tenure type, and other factors to identify any statistical patterns that the City may be able to address using its land use authority. 4. Beginning effort to revise the Midtown Specific Plan (North Main) and potential Civic Center revitalization efforts. The Midtown Plan remains the most difficult to read, inflexible, and out of date area plan within the City. It does not accurately reflect the Council's current support for adaptive reuse, supporting an active street life, and serving as a connection between Downtown and Main Place. 1