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Mitre -Ramirez, Norma From: Concerned Citizen <concernedcitizensa@zoho.com> Sent: Sunday, February 19, 2017 8:25 PM To: eComment Cc: donpalabraz; chezvern; ngerda Subject: February 21st Council Item 80A - Loan Agreement with AMCAL Categories: Correspondence Hello, What a long strange trip it has been for the City's efforts to fund the AMCAL Affordable Housing development at 1440 E. First St. But before I give the history to the new Council members, let me just say that after 2 + years of dragging this tired carcass across the finish line, the most professional thing the City could do would be to take the Inclusionary Funds, and the Successor Agency funds, and issue a Request For Proposal (RFP) so that the City can get the best deal possible. $8.7 million for just 69 affordable units is irresponsible. But first the history for the new Council members. This project originally came to the City's attention at the end of 2014/beginning of 2015. At the same time, at the January 27th FedTech Council Committee meeting, new Community Development Agency Executive Director Kelly Reenders and new Housing Division Manager Sidney Stone received approval by the Council committee members to implementa process to RFP the City's new Inclusionary Funds to interested affordable developers. The new employees came from more professional agencies and were used to negotiating with firms to get the best deals for taxpayers. But Vince Sarmiento really did not want that. He wanted his former Planning Commissioner buddy Mario Turner to get a $2 million developer fee payday. So in spite of the FedTech decision to institute an RFP process for Inclusionary Housing Funds, behind the scenes he ordered staff to give the money to AMCAL. He strong armed Kelly in his office, after a Council Meeting, and on a Saturday after a Chamber evening function. When staff attempted negotiating with AMCAL, AMCAL ignored staff and complained to Sarmiento. When Mr. Stone correctly observed in a meeting that AMCAL had hijacked the system, after just 90 days in his position he was shown the door by Sarmiento and his lackey City Manager. At the time, David was not going to upset his $500,000 a year payday especially since he was sleeping with employees. Kelly Reenders left a few months later for the saner city of Dana Point. However, since Sarmiento is not exactly the brightest tool in the shed, all of this came out on Social Media, particularly through the Orange Juice blog. Since there were Federal Vouchers involved at the time, and not wanting to risk a Federal whistleblower lawsuit, the City backtracked and issued an RFP which another developer, Meta Housing, ended up winning for a more needed artist development downtown. But Sarmiento was not done yet trying to get his boy that $2 million developer fee payday. He helped lead the approval for the I