Voice of OC (https://voiceofoc.org/tag/vicente-sarmiento/)
Santa Ana City Council members late Thursday night approved a $9 million police spending increase for the next fiscal year along with the rest of the city budget in an initial vote.
Hundreds of public comments on spending pushed the Tuesday meeting into Wednesday.
Public speakers were unanimous in their calls to move money away from police and reinvest in youth, park and community programs.
Santa Ana residents — responding to social media posts calling on the community to help clean up — appeared at the sites of the protest the night before.
What happens today could set the stage for the November general election, and impact the future of Santa Ana politics. If voters want Iglesias out, they’ll have three different replacement candidates, all backed by different people, to choose from.
The potential repeal of the rent freeze — which lasts through May 31 — prompted uproar across Santa Ana as soon as it was scheduled for a discussion.
City Council members on Tuesday night voted to repeal their initial approval of 2525, a much-contested apartments project in north Santa Ana, and authorized a request by developer Mike Harrah to add up to 415 apartments to his tower at One Broadway Plaza, which has been in development for at least 15 years.
Council members Vicente Sarmiento and David Penaloza have flipped on the project, forming a clear majority against the controversial apartments as a decision makes its way to council members’ desks on whether or not to turn the project over to voters – or rescind their original vote entirely.
It is time for the Orange County Board of Supervisors to recognize that homelessness is a countywide problem and that the City of Santa Ana has gone above and beyond to do its part. Other cities must share the responsibility, and the County should not build its proposed replacement shelter on Yale Street in Santa Ana.
Residents of both the Santa Anita neighborhood and Park Santiago neighborhood agree the Council has ignored their opposition to development near their homes — but residents of Santa Anita, a lower-income and predominantly Latino area, say they weren’t listened to as much as residents of Park Santiago, which has more white and higher-income residents.