General (09)
Susana Barrios
From:Stephanie Mercadante <burglin.stephanie@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, August 11, 2026 5:51 PM
To:Public Comment
Subject:\[EXTERNAL\] On Behalf of Georgia Price, District 6, Councilmember Natalie Meeks
Warning: This email originated from outside the City of Anaheim. Do not click links or open
attachments unless you recognize the sender and are expecting the message.
For public comment on August 11, 2026:
In January 2024, the California State Auditor found that Anaheim “lacked a meaningful contract
monitoring process and did not properly manage the contracts it entered into.”
The Auditor found Anaheim failed to adequately ensure satisfactory deliverables, monitor contractor
quality and performance, conduct compliance reviews, and identify contractor problems.
That finding matters today.
The City is paying Dudek up to $180,000 for this wildfire evacuation study, after Dudek was already paid
to perform the Festival evacuation analysis, and once again, residents appear to be doing the City's
contract oversight. Is the City negligent or incompetent?
Residents identified a potential discrepancy in the evacuation calculations involving 2,393 vehicles.
Dudek's Festival analysis identified approximately 3,014 residential units in Zones 4 and 8. This study
uses 3,619. Which number is correct?
Dudek's Festival analysis used 2.5 vehicles per household. This study uses 3.4. Why did the
methodology change?
Even more troubling, the study contradicts itself.
Scenario 5 says Zones 8 and 9 evacuate immediately, Zone 4 after ten minutes, and Zones 5 and 10 after
an hour.
Another section says Zones 4, 5, 7, 10, 12, 14, and 15 don't evacuate at all.
Those aren't insignificant proofreading errors. They directly affect the number of vehicles entering
evacuation routes and the clearance times being presented to residents.
When Dudek's own studies involving the same area use materially different numbers and assumptions,
the City should reconcile them before residents have to.
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The State Auditor told Anaheim to improve its contract management. Is this your definition of
improvement?
So who reviewed this $180,000 deliverable, verified the calculations, and approved the release of a
study containing these contradictions?
If nobody did, what exactly has changed since the State Auditor found Anaheim had “no meaningful
oversight” of its contracts?
Meanwhile, this City fired Purchasing Agent Kari Bouffard after she repeatedly insisted
that procurement rules and City policy be followed. It seems Anaheim didn’t fix its procurement
problems; you just fired the person who was challenging them.
And this matters. This is wildfire evacuation planning. People's lives depend on the City getting it right.
After the July 28 water pressure failure and ongoing water quality concerns, residents already have
reason to question this City's operational preparedness. If Anaheim can't keep the water on, can't
acknowledge water quality problems, can't fix the contract-management failures identified by the State
Auditor, and can't catch contradictions in a wildfire evacuation study without residents doing the quality
control for them, how are we supposed to trust this City to get us out safely when the hills are
actually on fire?
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