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To our surprise, on November 19, we received a third contract, again requiring: • new signatures, and • a full VARA waiver, identical to the one already acknowledged by staff as incorrect. This demonstrates a concerning lack of review, accuracy, and understanding of VARA rights within the Arts & Culture Office. Historical Evidence of the City's Pattern We are also attaching the Orange County Register article "The Art of Neglect" (August 26, 1999), featuring artist Sergio O'Cadiz standing before his partially destroyed civic art mural at Santa Ana City Hall. The article shows how major portions of his concrete relief mural were demolished during City construction without his knowledge, without notification, and without consent—a direct violation of the moral rights later codified in VARA. (Reference: article images, pages 1-2) In addition, as widely reported by Voice of OC in 2024, Santa Ana nearly lost another important cultural artwork: the Chicano Gothic mural at Memorial Park. The City moved forward with construction plans that placed the mural at risk of demolition, and only community outcry prevented its destruction. This controversy highlights exactly why VARA exists and why federal protections should never be waived in a City-led restoration program. Additional Santa Ana Mural Losses Across the Decades Many murals from the 1970s and 1980s—including several created by Orange County and Santanera artist Marina Aguilera, along with other young muralists of that era—have been whitewashed, sandblasted, or destroyed over the years. For example: • Marina Aguilera's 1976 mural at the Salvador Park handball courts, the very mural she won the RestoreART grant to restore, was sandblasted by the City in the early 1980s. • Another of Marina's murals, painted in 1974 outside the Salvador Park community center in the pool area, was painted over with beige paint around the early 1980s. The original artwork is still under all the many layers of paint that have been applied throughout the years. These losses further underscore the historic pattern of public art destruction in Santa Ana and the critical need for the City to protect, rather than erase, the rights of its artists. Our Request We ask City Council to please direct the City Manager and City Attorney to issue a new contract that: 1. Removes the VARA waiver entirely,