Mayor Aitken and City Councilmembers,

I urge you to motion and vote for a continuance on agenda item 14 on Disneyland Forward this evening. This is a monumental decision for the City of Anaheim, its businesses and residents. It is clear from public displays of concern that there are substantive items still to be understood, and with the continuing cloud of corruption that has plagued our City over the past several years, it behooves the Council to slow down. Below are essential elements that are not quite clear and need greater exploration and time:

  1. The importance of publicly engaging with residents on what a substantive and meaningful community benefits package should consist of. The $30 million in affordable housing fund seems substantial but as calculated by city staff this amounts to approximately 60 housing units–in our city wherein there over 15,000 households living with rent burden and one or two paychecks away from homelessness per the City’s Housing Element. While the $30 million can be leveraged to attract state and federal dollars, it is important to note these are still public dollars having to be utilized to house a private workforce that is not likely not be paid wages that they can afford to live on in Anaheim. As it does not appear that any of you have hosted or participated in community forums specifically on this generational decision within your respective districts I urge you to pause and host community conversations with your constituents–a practice Denis Barnes and I found especially helpful in the now infamous Stadium negotiations of 2019 and Mayor Tait conducted in 2013.

  2. The City should expect and receive a commitment from Disney that new temporary and permanent jobs, which seem to be in the thousands, will not incur or contribute further to the City’s poverty rates thus requiring greater City, School and public dollars to mitigate. While Disney’s projections, and repeated over and over by the City PIO, that millions of dollars in additional revenues are expected from Disneyland Forward expansion, there is no analysis yet or at least not made public, of what the costs are for our City, County, and Schools to provide additional services and supports for a workforce/jobs that do not pay liveable wages in Anaheim and surrounding cities. As a reference, while we point to the millions in revenue the City has receives due to the 1996 Disney expansion, few mention that poverty rates in Anaheim overall and for Children in Anaheim are in fact higher today than they were in 1996. So while revenues certainly increased in the millions, so did the poverty of our City thus requiring more from our budgets. So I urge you to commission a cost/benefit analysis of projected new jobs, revenues and the wages and housing needs of the projected workforce including social services, school supports and health conditions.

  3. Despite your work over this past year to tackle the culture of corruption documented in the FBI investigations and ensuing JPL report, there is still a dark cloud that hovers over these proceedings. There has not been any meaningful actions of accountability taken by the Council as it relates to the behavior of executive leadership in the corruption scandal. Lastly, the applicant this evening, Disney Corp, was named in the JPL report as a meaningful contributor to the culture of corruption in our City, and refused to participate in the $1.5 million

City investigation or offer any of its staff to respond to the role they played in the workings of the self- proclaimed “cabal”. It is imperative that this matter be addressed as the City moves to build trust as well as for the Disney Corp. to be trusted in its representations of what is good for our City and residents.

To close, for many of us the process and now proposal put forth for Disneyland Forward feels eerily similar to past experiences with large corporate interests in our City. As a Mayor and Council, you are our only line of protection from being taking advantage of as a City, you are the negotiators trusted to look after the welfare of our City and residents. Disney will do what’s best, first and foremost for their shareholders, that is their priority- -we ask you to prioritize fully the residents of Anaheim who’ve entrusted you to clean up City Hall, assure transparency and full community engagement, and to provide the balance we so need from the greed that has too often consumed our City’s politics and priorities.

Please do discuss the proposal tonite, take in ideas, propose stronger benefits, but please do not vote on this item tonite. A public hearing is to hear the public, take time to consider the full input and come back to then vote. Please continue this item and host forums in your respective districts to allow substantive input from your constituents.

With appreciation,

 Jose M.

 Resident, District 3 Anaheim