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February 6, 2023 <br />Via Hand Delivery <br />Hon. Valerie Amezcua, Mayor <br />Hon. Members of City Council <br />Ms. Normal Orozco, City Clerk <br />City of Santa Ana <br />20 Civic Center Plaza <br />Santa Ana, CA 92701 <br />Re: Proposed Ordinance 2022-03 <br />Dear Mayor, Members of the Council, and Ms. Clerk, <br />Share <br />Our <br />Selves <br />I currently serve as the chairperson of the board of directors of Share Our Selves <br />("SOS"). On behalf of SOS, and medical providers impacted by this matter, I would <br />respectfully request that the City Council not proceed today to provide final approval of <br />Ordinance 2022-03 (the "Ordinance"). <br />For the reasons stated below, we at SOS believe that the Ordinance is flawed and <br />needs to be sent back to staff for further review and revision to eliminate its unfair and <br />discriminatory treatment of federally funded, non-profit community health centers, such <br />as SOS and the predominantly Hispanic and Latino individuals it serves in Santa Ana. <br />In this regard, I would kindly ask that the public hearing on the Ordinance be reopened <br />so that I and others supporting SOS be allowed a meaningful opportunity to present our <br />concerns regarding the Ordinance to the Council. As explained below, SOS does not <br />believe that the public notice for the Ordinance was adequate because, among other <br />things, the notice did not alert either non-profit or for -profit medical offices in the City's <br />Professional district that they might be considered to be "government -subsidized" <br />entities that would be subject to the new CUP requirement in the Ordinance if they <br />accepted any federal funds for treating patients on Medicare, for example. <br />We believe that, if that message had been communicated to the public at large, there <br />would have been a lot more people speaking in opposition to the Ordinance on January <br />17, 2023. As it was, not a single person from the public spoke either in favor of or in <br />opposition to the Ordinance on January 17. That underscores the fact the notice was <br />deficient and helps to explain why representatives of SOS were not in attendance at the <br />hearing on the 17th. <br />Although we believe that the Ordinance should be reworked to eliminate the <br />deficiencies listed below, it should, at a minimum, be clarified to provide that it will not <br />