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Flores, Dora <br />From: Alta Baja Market <altabajamarket@gmail.com> <br />Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2025 2:56 PM <br />To: eComment <br />Subject: public comment regarding events and parking in downtown <br />Attention: This email originated from outside of City of Santa Ana. Use caution when opening attachments or links. <br />Wity of Santa Ana, Mayor Amezcua and City Council Members - <br />My name is Delilah Snell. I am the owner of Alta Baja Market and have had a professional event business in <br />downtown for several years. I love and care for my customers, my community and of course, this city. <br />I love events for this city. I love Fiestas Patrias and as a business owner and resident, I want the best for this <br />city. However, the way last weekend's event and events in general have been mismanaged, poorly executed and <br />created further harm for downtown businesses. On top of that, the parking situation is worse than ever. It has <br />been literally heartbreaking to see and my employees and customers feel the same way (and MANY business <br />owners) This is not how I would like our downtown to be perceived, yet this continues to happen. <br />Let me start with parking. <br />This city wants to help and be business friendly to downtown??? Then WHY on earth would you DOUBLE <br />monthly parking??? This impacts business owners and their employees. They are already hurting so why hurt <br />them more? They need to thrive, not be burdened by expenses that do not reflect a downtown that still is quite <br />frankly dead. If you have to increase the parking fee, be fair and just and do an amount that will reflect the <br />business that is coming into the district -- which you all know is slow. There are places in downtown LA where <br />it's cheaper to park than downtown Santa Ana -- and downtown LA attracts people from around the world. <br />Santa Ana is nowhere near that level of fame, yet we think we can charge LA prices? It's ridiculous. <br />By the way, the structures still look like 04t. I am so exhausted of ABM in charge of parking in downtown <br />with little to no care and now we get to pay more for it -- it is an embarrassment and you all should be ashamed <br />of how much it is costing this city and how little we receive in return. Raise the fees monthly, but we still get <br />the same urine smelling, ill -looking, poorly managed structures... what does this say? Your clean and safe <br />program cleans downtown streets so much better and consistently -- maybe they should manage the structures <br />because this company should be removed NOW. <br />Now, Fiestas Patrias. This past weekend was another reflection of poor management from the city: <br />- closing the streets for 4 days for a 2 day event. How can Noche de Altares -- which draws way more people - <br />- open and close the streets for a major event in a single day but this city cannot do the same? <br />- why can't business owners use impacted use streets to do business (deliveries, pickups, employee needs)? I <br />was turned away from a delivery on Monday when there wasn't a SINGLE car on the street. <br />- what happened to no events allowed without 80% approval for impacted businesses?? Many of us have not <br />approved of street closures so why did this happen without our approval? Are you going to pay for our business <br />loss?? impacted businesses need to approve if they will be impacted. <br />- better layout: this past event was so poorly laid out. Most of 3rd street was empty and there were several areas <br />that could have been used for activity but were just empty. Also booths blocked the businesses that support the <br />city all year. And very few brick -and -mortar shops, if any, saw an increase in sales. If anything, most LOST <br />sales because of the bad planning. <br />20 <br />