Correspondence- #26 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Downtown Inc 201 E 4th St. Santa Ana, CA 92701 November 10, 2022 Mayor, City Council and Staff City of Santa Ana 20 Civic Center Plaza Santa Ana, CA 92701 RE: SUPPORT THE DOWNTOWN BID Dear Mayor, City Council and Staff, I am excited to write on behalf of all of our Downtown Inc board members, a dozen stakeholders who make up a diverse representation of those to be levied, in support to move forward with the processes to renew the business improvement district. The Downtown Santa Ana business improvement district has been around for nearly 40 years and it proved itself once again during the toughest year downtown has probably ever seen. We started the year off by writing a DTSA 2022 Marketing Plan that covers 10 areas of activity and 35 supporting strategies to be executed. We shared this plan with elected officials, City staff, our downtown boards, online via our newsletter and we walked copies of it down the street for feedback and additional ideas. After 6 months of implementation, we distributed a point -by -point, mid -year progress report. Attached you will find our 2022 annual report which serves as an overview of accomplishments across our many areas of focus. We continue to work well with our partners, the Santa Ana Business Council and we seek more support and connection with the City of Santa Ana as we hope for downtown to recover stronger than it was before the double hit of the pandemic and constriction. This will require us being able to raise support from mechanisms like the business assessment, find solutions for the dip in parking revenue that has crushed our Downtown Merchant Fund, and we need the City to initiate a professional, consultant -led path forward to make a visionary plan for downtown, its management stricture and its funding mechanisms. We recognize that several businesses showed up to the Community Redevelopment Commission this year and expressed their frustration with the BID. We listened carefully to what they and the Commission said and have worked with SABC to provide a fact sheet to help clarify many misunderstandings that they expressed about how our budget works and what we do. We also are working with SABC and grassroots merchant organizers and are holding a town hall this Friday to clear the air and correct misinformation which has spread around downtown.