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Middleton, Samuel From: Ginette Sanchez <ginettesanchez@yahoo.com> Sent: Monday, November 14, 2022 3:18 PM To: eComment Subject: Hello Mayor Sarmiento, Council Members and City Manager: Attachments: DOCUMENT013.pdf, DOCUMENT012.pdf Hello Mayor Sarmiento, Council Members and City Manager: Reference: Support of Dissolving of BID Downtown request to have this document entered into your records for City Council meeting 11/15/2022 We are the Latino Merchant Group here of Calle 4 in Downtown. We are a group of hard working people, many of us come from different parts of the world to build our American Dream. We have built our business from the ground up with blood sweat and tears to provide for our families. The majority of merchants have been here for over 10,20,30 years. We are asking please for your listening ear to hear us on why we need your vote to CANCEL THE BID. Why did it take a massive construction here on 4th for people to realize they are paying into the BID? It is SAD that many businesses realized they are paying into the BID when we got together to fight for assistance after the construction started. The City of Santa Ana has failed and neglected to educate and inform merchants when they started to impose this extra useless tax on all merchants in the BID District. The Brown Act requires public advance notice of meetings and that public is invited to attend and can speak. Why have we not been treated with respect when we attend this meetings? By putting on social media last minute is not proper notice. Not everyone is on Social media. We should have had a say on how we wanted our money to be spent. How are these board members being elected? Why 2 of this associations are taking almost all the money into the budget? Why were we never notified as business owners that OCTA gave these associations 400,000 dollars? And still to this day we do not know how that 400,000 was spent. Has anyone properly evaluated this events if they have really benefited us? Why do they keep paying with our money this events that do not benefit us at all. Where are the Latino events? If they have a list of all the businesses why don't they go to each one to ask for our opinions? They have events and closed down the street without our consenment. They say they gather signatures but no one is able to show proof they gathered those signatures. It just shows that these people do as they please and want without any merchants input. If we are paying we should have a right to know how our money is being spent. But at this point it is too late we do not trust anyone anymore, and canceling the BID will let our downtown heal. Money has been wasted and abused,and we are sick and tired of it. We are tired of this people taking advantage of us thinking we are naive, we will not longer sit quiet. BID represents Business Improvement District. Where are the Improvements? Downtown has become a ghost own as all of you are witnessing. Where are all the Latino businesses and Latino families? Where is the crowd that use to fill the downtown ? The only fact about the BID that everyone is trying to forget and ignore is that even based on the grand jury verdict, it is unlawful and illegal. You can find that in the grand jury report, we will attach it to this email. After canceling PBID, that nobody knows what happened to those millions of dollars that disappeared, the City of Santa Ana got sued for the bridge of contract and at that time city council decided one more time to side with the same investor and instead of paying the lawsuit that was city responsibility to pay, charging innocent merchants for 3 years and hand the money to him. Unfortunately after even 3 years city not only made no attempt to reach out to merchants wether they want to continue to pay for this extra tax, but continued to charge the merchants for over 10 years now and continue to hand out our hard earned money to go to waist to this abuse. We would like to remind you in the United States the burden of proof is only on the shoulders of the government. So again it is your responsibility to provide 5 1 % vote of people who want to pay for the BID not other way around. We hope as a new council members you decide to side with the people who elected you and stop this corrupt tax and stop this corruption! Best regards ,