Voice of OC (https://voiceofoc.org/tag/juan-villegas/)
After city staff said the council didn’t have the legal authority to rescind or suspend the sales tax increase, which voters approved in 2018, council members David Penaloza and Phil Bacerra criticized Iglesias for bringing up the issue.
In-person voting has been cancelled for a special recall election in Westminster. It’s still up in the air whether Santa Ana’s special recall election will follow suit. Meanwhile, county elections officials will proceed to review a referendum movement against a controversial Santa Ana apartments project and a ballot initiative to relocate a planned Veteran’s Cemetery in Irvine.
The union in a memo to the council last month criticized Villegas and Iglesias and requested their removal from the public safety board, questioning their commitment to the city’s police officers and their ability to make key public safety policy decisions.
The recall campaign was largely funded by the city’s police union after Iglesias opposed controversial pay raises for police officers last year. It’s one of the city’s first recall campaigns in years that’s been successful enough to go forward with an election.
Santa Ana’s police union has backed recall efforts against two council members: Juan Villegas and Ceci Iglesias, who vocally opposed the scale of $23 million in controversial raises granted to police officers last February. Now the union wants both off a public safety board, which could be disbanded or restructured by council members today.
Council members initially approved the project last year, despite a push by some against the much-disputed 2525 N. Main St. apartments in the city’s north-end Park Santiago neighborhood.
Two recall movements in two neighboring cities are on the move against elected officials this year – one in Westminster that’s guaranteed a recall election and another in Santa Ana that has gathered the signatures but won’t find out until next month from county officials whether it can move forward.
Councilman Juan Villegas, who also works as a special officer at the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, is publicly alleging that one the key people behind the controversial 2525 N. Main St. project admitted to him their involvement in a dark money campaign to influence the 2018 Santa Ana city council elections – which involved hiding $320,000 in campaign money through a shell company.
Santa Ana housing advocates say local landlords are rushing to evict tenants or raising rents to get ahead of a new California rent control law, and calling on the City Council to follow other cities across the state in enacting protections for tenants until the state law takes effect.
Voters are deciding on a council member who will potentially impact key decisions on local issues like the ongoing homelessness crisis and complaints about slow 9-1-1 response times.