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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1 - PUBLIC COMMENT_CITYWIDEFrom:Mitre-Ramirez, Norma To:Bernal, Sarah Cc:Magalona, Jocelyn; Gutierrez, Fatima; Huizar, Maria; Rojano, Michael; Orozco, Norma Subject:FW: Planning Commission Date:Monday, September 24, 2018 8:44:27 AM Attachments:image001.png Good Morning Sarah, The following communication has been received for your review and consideration. Kind Regards, Norma Mitre Assistant Clerk of the Council City of Santa Ana | Clerk of the Council Office 20 Civic Center Plaza | Santa Ana, CA 92701 714-647-6520 | nmitre@santa-ana.org https://www.ocvote.com/ http://www.ci.santa-ana.ca.us/coc/elections.asp This email and any files or attachments transmitted with it may contain privileged or otherwise confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, or believe that you may have received this communication in error, please advise the sender via reply email and immediately delete the email you received. From: ben meekhof <benmeekhof@yahoo.com> Sent: Sunday, September 23, 2018 10:05 PM To: eComment <eComment@santa-ana.org> Subject: Planning Commission To whom it may concern at the Planning & Building Agency: My name is Ben Meekhof. I, with my family, live on Medford Street in one of the homes that Santa Ana is forcefully annexing. We oppose this annexation for several reasons. Received by deadline. Santa Ana is a very large city and our community is at its periphery thus the arrival of service vehicles, such as police will be delayed by the great distance between our neighborhood and central Santa Ana. Additionally, there is a lot of violent and serious crime in the city of Santa Ana. The police are not going to take the minor crimes that occur in our more peaceful neighborhood seriously compared to the homicides, rapes and drug deals that are endemic in central Santa Ana. The CHP/OC Sheriffs that currently respond to us, however, have easy access to our location due to its close proximity to the highways that they routinely traverse. The current situation in our neighborhood is perfect as we have emergency assistance within moments. This response time will be greatly reduced if we are annexed by Santa Ana. I work at Orange County Global Medical Center, in the ER and I can say that when we call for the SAPD we expect the response time to be an hour up to 3 hours. True, this is not for an emergency call, but it shows that SAPD's resources are stretched thin as it is and adding another neighborhood so far from their primary jurisdiction will increase the danger to everyone else in Santa Ana, but will especially increase the danger to our neighborhood, which has been served so well prior to this annexation attempt. Secondly, we purchased a home in this neighborhood because we liked that it was unincorporated. We did not want the micromanaging that city bureaucracies often force on their citizens. We don't want to be forced to use the city's sewage line. We don't want to be told how high our fence can be or what can be put in our back yard. We also payed extra for this home because it wasn't in Santa Ana. You may be unaware of this, but your city has a poor reputation for safety and health. I could have bought a larger home for less money in Santa Ana, but I didn't want to, because Santa Ana is not a nice city. If our neighborhood is annexed, it is quite likely that my house will lose value because Santa Ana is not a nice city and other people don't want to live there either. Finally, we have a connection to Tustin. Our children go to school there. We shop there. My wife works there. We spend most of our time in Tustin. I suspect that this attempted annexation of our community is merely a naked land grab by the city of Santa Ana to provide itself with more tax money from whatever commercial enterprise (In and Out?) is being constructed on the corner of Tustin and 17th Street. It certainly is not for the purpose of improving our little community. It appears to be crass exploitation of our neighborhood to extract tax dollars that will be taken to central Santa Ana to hire more bureaucrats and buy more votes for corrupt Santa Ana politicians. Stay out of our community. We didn't invite you, and we don't want you. Thanks, Ben Meekhof.