Orange County elected officials looking to support families impacted by sweeps are wrestling with where exactly to pull the money from, how much to spend and whether they should dip in their rainy day funds.
It comes as many cities across the county grapple with tight budgets – often using a mix of one-time funding and reserves to patch budget holes.
[Read: Orange County Cities Scramble to Patch Budget Gaps]
Leaders in Anaheim and Santa Ana – cities with roughly $150 million in reserves combined – have rolled out hundreds of thousands of dollars in financial assistance programs to immigrant families whose lives have been upended by recent widespread ICE sweeps.
Anaheim city council members have created a $250,000 fund for immigrants that is also being supported by community donations while Santa Ana has launched a $100,000 fund.
So far, those are only two cities in the county to offer such support.
Residents across OC are increasingly calling on their elected officials to step up and support their immigrant communities with resources, information and funding at a time when many household breadwinners are staying home due to the widespread raids.
[Read: ICE Raids Spur Calls for Community Aid in Another Orange County City]
This month, city council members in Anaheim and Santa Ana each spent more than an hour debating where to pull money to help residents in need – with a couple of elected officials pushing back against dipping into their reserves.
At the same time, leaders in both cities agree the widespread immigration sweeps – temporarily put on hold by a federal judge – create a crisis situation impacting local businesses and residents, with some making comparisons to the COVID-19 pandemic but without the federal bailout dollars that came with it.
Money For Santa Ana’s Immigrant Aid Fund
Santa Ana City Councilman David Penaloza asked about the city’s $74.4 million in reserves – a pot of rainy day money intended to help cities in case of an emergency – when the council discussed creating their immigrant aid fund earlier this month.
“It’s not something that I would even want to touch but I mean when I don’t see an effort or a willingness – a real willingness – from anybody on this council to fund this aside from the mayor because of the funding sources, then this conversation is pointless,” Penaloza said at the July 1 city council meeting.
Under a city policy, Santa Ana’s reserves have to be at least 18% of annual revenue and anytime officials dip into the reserve they have to create a documented plan on how to replenish the reserve which could include making cuts or finding new revenue.
The $74.4 million in reserves is currently about 18% of the city’s roughly $413.79 million in general fund revenue.
That night, officials approved a $100,000 immigrant aid program instead of an initial proposed $1 million program after spending over an hour debating where exactly to pull the money from police vacancies, city reserves or the council’s travel budget.
The council also directed staff to come back within three months with a progress report about the fund and to discuss other possible funding.
[Read: As ICE Raids Continue in OC, Santa Ana Creates $100,000 Aid Fund for Impacted]
While Santa Ana elected officials say the raids are creating a crisis situation, not everyone thinks the city’s over $74 million in reserves should be in play yet to boost their newly created aid fund.
“This is an emergency. People are not working. People are being kidnapped. People are being brutalized,” said Councilwoman Jessie Lopez in a phone interview earlier this month.
“We are seeing our own laws used against us to oppress First Amendment rights, to oppress the different constitutional rights, and so this is a crisis as it has been stated by so many people on the dais and people on the dais need to start acting like it’s a crisis.”
Lopez said that she is open to using the city’s reserves to bolster the fund but it’s unnecessary.
Instead, she said all city departments – including the police – need to step up and sacrifice a portion of their budgets to the fund.
“All of the departments need to be invested in supporting our constituents and supporting our families and making sure that they are able to stay in the city and have basic resources to provide for the everyday needs and that includes PD,” Lopez said
She’s not the only one eyeing the police department’s budget in a city where the police union has become one of the city’s largest spenders on campaigns.
Earlier this month, City Councilman Johnathan Hernandez suggested using money budgeted for police vacancies towards the fund – a proposal that police union-backed Mayor Valerie Amezcua criticized as an attempt to defund the police.
Hernandez doubled down on his proposal in a phone interview arguing that money allocated to fill police vacancies is just “sitting there.”
“That would be the more responsible thing for us to do, is to take from those reserves, rather than our rainy day fund,” he said. “Those resources should either immediately be considered as a funding source, and the fact that they’re not tells me the stranglehold the police have on our electeds.”
The police union spent over $50,000 against Hernandez’s reelection campaign last year.
Hernandez said the deportation sweeps are creating a crisis in Santa Ana and if there is no support for pulling money from police vacancies then he would support using money from the reserves to help families.
“We’re seeing families being torn apart and destabilized. We’re seeing children left without parents. These families aren’t indivisible,” he said.
Lopez, who faced an unsuccessful recall effort by the police union in 2023, said anyone that thinks using some police department dollars to help immigrant families amid the sweeps is an effort to defund the police is purposely trying to create a wedge in the conversation.
“The question is why should one department not support our families? Why should one department continue to be treated with special treatment?” she said.
City Councilman Ben Vazquez said using reserve dollars to help fund immigrant aid is a great proposal, but too many of his colleagues are against the idea.
“This is an emergency. Our families are in an emergency. Our families are hurting,” Vazquez said in a phone interview.
The rest of the city council did not respond to a request for comment.
It comes as city staff warned officials are staring down the barrel of an estimated $30 million budget deficit in four years when Measure X, a 1.5% sales tax measure approved in 2018, starts to sunset in 2029.
City staff warn that, if left unchecked, the deficit will widen and could reach around $124 million by the 2034-35 fiscal year.
[Read: Santa Ana Approves ‘Last Big Budget’ Ahead of Larger Deficits]
Balancing Housing Needs & Support in Anaheim
In Anaheim, city council members voted earlier this month to give their immigrant aid fund a $250,000 boost – eyeing using money initially allocated for housing and then looking into pulling money allocated from different departments.
[Read: Anaheim Gives Immigrant Aid Fund a $250K Boost]
During the debate, Deputy City Manager Greg Garcia said city staff could potentially pull a quarter of million of dollars from the reserves to help bolster the aid fund.
Councilwoman Natalie Rubalcava warned against using the reserves and instead suggested the money be pulled from millions of dollars Disney has committed to give the city to support affordable housing needs.
“We definitely never want to go into reserves, because that impacts our bond rating, and we don’t want to give our labor unions the idea that that’s a potential opportunity, because it’s really not a solution,” Rubalcava said at the July 15 meeting.
Anaheim has $76.3 million in reserves – roughly 14% of their general fund spending.
On July 15, City Councilwoman Natalie Meeks said the city had to rely in part on reserves to balance their budget.
The majority of officials settled on first using money intended for housing needs to bolster their immigrant fund meant to support immigrant families impacted by the raids to pay their rent and their utility bills.
Mayor Ashleigh Aitken and the rest of city council did not respond to a request for comment.
It comes on the heels of officials approving a plan to allocate millions of dollars from Disney towards a first-time homeowner buyer program, an eviction protection program and an initiative to create more affordable homes in a city where more than half of residents are renters.
[Read: Anaheim Leans on Disneyland Resort Interests to Boost Affordable Housing]
The money is part of an agreement to expand the entertainment conglomerate’s iconic theme park that was approved last summer.
Under the plan, $5 million to increase the city’s affordable housing by using the money for gap financing for affordable homes, buying sites for future development and preparing sites for future development.
Another $5 million will be allocated to downpayment assistance for homebuyers, $4.5 million will be set aside to be allocated at a later time and $1 million will be for eviction prevention grants.
Esther Kwon, a city spokeswoman, said in a Thursday email that Disney “indicated support for the city using their committed housing dollars as needed for the benefit of our community.”
More money could be going to the immigrant aid fund in Anaheim down the road.
Councilwoman Rubalcava asked at the July 15 meeting what the long term strategy would be to fund immigrant aid.
“$250,000 is going to not go very far.”
Editor’s note: Ashleigh Aitken’s father, Wylie Aitken, chairs Voice of OC’s board of directors.
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.