The Brief

Young soccer players, coaches, and parents urged the Santa Ana City Council on Tuesday to stop the city from negotiating a contract that would give exclusive access to public soccer fields to the private youth soccer club La Academia.

City officials have said no deal has been reached yet. But residents expressed concerns the negotiations have taken place in private and are driven by a personal relationship between La Academia leadership and City Councilmember David Penaloza. In a city where green space is in short supply, they worry restricting field access to a private group would come at the expense of opportunities for the rest of the city’s youth.

“We learned that there's a specific group that wants to take over synthetic fields at Centennial [Park], and that's very concerning for everybody else,” Joaquín Olvera, owner and president of the Mesa Verde Youth Soccer League, told LAist. “If that happens, then where are the rest of the organizations and kids going to be playing?”

What we know about the deal 

Negotiations for said deal have been happening behind closed doors for at least the past several months, and no information from the city has been shared with the public.

“The city manager told me the intent was to give priority to a league with ties to the professional soccer system, supposedly to provide more opportunities for Santa Ana athletes,” City Councilmember Benjamin Vazquez told LAist. “I am upset this decision did not come before the council, and I want to see a more equitable and democratic process for awarding field use among all soccer leagues.”

City Manager Alvaro Nuñez did not respond to requests for comment but said during Tuesday night’s Council meeting that no deal is set in stone.

“We do not have a contract,” Nuñez said. “If we were to have a contract, we would bring it before the City Council, and at that point, it could be publicly discussed.”

Advocates are concerned that the deal may never reach a public meeting since the city manager is authorized to sign contracts of up to $50,000 without the need for Council approval.

“[Nuñez] has not signed any agreements with La Academia,” city spokesperson Paul Eakins said. “They contacted the city about using fields. If anything moves forward, details will be shared at that time.”

Oscar Reyes, director of La Academia, did not respond to requests for comment.

How it started

Dozens of public speakers Tuesday night pointed their comments at Penaloza, who they say stewarded the ongoing negotiation.

Penaloza refutes playing any active role in the talks, as well as the assertion he is best friends with La Academia’s leaders, whom he says he’s known since elementary school. The council member said all he did was connect the group with the city manager’s office.

“So they told me their idea, and I said great,” Penaloza said during his closing comments Tuesday. “So, like I had done with … hundreds of other residents and business owners and developers that have reached out to my office, I facilitated a meeting.”

Despite sitting in on one of the group’s meetings with the city for “10 minutes, briefly,” he added, he is not pulling any strings for La Academia.

Why it matters 

Santa Ana is a densely populated city in Orange County, and historically, residents have pushed for more open, green spaces.

According to the Public Trust for Land, residents in low-income neighborhoods have access to 47% less park space per person than those in the average Santa Ana neighborhood, and Latino neighborhoods have 55% less access.

Without recreational activities, like soccer, and the space to play, parents and coaches worry more young kids will be drawn to gang violence.

“Here in Santa Ana, everybody knows somebody, or even family members, who are gang-affiliated,” Maria Behana, a soccer mom and coach, said. “[We] want to keep our kids out of the streets because they start at a young age. You clearly can go into one of our schools and see who is already starting to affiliate, and it's really sad, but that is the culture here in Santa Ana. It is gangs and violence.”

Private soccer clubs are pricey, Behana said.

“You have to try out, and then on top of that, the fees start at $500,” Behana said. “And then if you want to travel, it's $2,000 to $7,000. It's very expensive to play soccer, and that's not even including uniforms and cleats.”

Julian Gonzalez joined his mom Maria Behana at the Santa Ana City Council meeting to urge council members to reject a deal that would give exclusive access to publci soccer fields to one private soccer club.

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Destiny Torres

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LAist

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For Behana’s 9-year-old son, Julian Gonzalez, soccer is everything.

“My favorite part about soccer, when you score a goal, you get a part inside of you, you feel motivated and happy and excited,” Gonzalez told LAist. “I started soccer at 8 years old, and if I can't play that much, I can't put my dreams into it. My dream is to go pro in soccer and play for the top leagues.”

Officials say 

City Councilmembers Johnathan Ryan Hernandez and Jessie Lopez told LAist they are concerned about the way this negotiation is being handled.

Lopez said she is “strongly opposed” to the privatization of taxpayer-funded facilities.

“Any attempt to hand out city contracts to friends and political donors behind closed doors is unacceptable,” Lopez said. “These decisions must be part of a public conversation — it’s the ethical thing to do, and it’s what our residents are demanding.”

The process lacks transparency, Hernandez said, adding, “We should not prioritize profit over the needs of our most vulnerable youth.”

California clocked its second-worst snowpack on record Wednesday, a potentially troubling signal ahead for fire season.

It’s an alarming end to a winter that saw abnormally dry conditions briefly wiped from California’s drought map in January, for the first time in a quarter-century.

Though precipitation to date has been near average, much of it fell as rain rather than snow. Then March’s record-breaking heat melted most of the snow that remains. The state’s major reservoirs are nevertheless brimming above historic averages and are flirting with capacity, and a smattering of snow, rain and thunderstorms are dousing last month’s heat wave.

But experts now warn that California’s case of the missing snowpack could herald an early fire season in the mountains.

On Wednesday, state engineers conducting the symbolic April 1 snowpack measurement at Phillips Station south of Lake Tahoe found no measurable snow in patches of white dotting the grassy field.

“I want to welcome you call to probably one of the quickest snow surveys we’ve had — maybe one where people could actually use an umbrella,” joked Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources. “We’re getting a lot of questions about are we heading into a hydrologic drought? The answer is, I don’t know.”

State data reports that California’s snowpack is closing out the season at an alarming 18% of average statewide, and an even more abysmal 6% of average in the northern mountains that feed California’s major reservoirs.

Only the extreme drought year of 2015 beat this year’s snowpack for the worst on record, measuring in at just 5% of average on April 1st, when the snow historically is at its deepest.

“I think everyone's anticipating that it will be a long, busy fire season,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network.

“Without a snowpack, and with an early spring, it just means that there’s much more time for something like that to happen.”

‘It’s pretty bizarre up here’ 

In the city of South Lake Tahoe, which survived the massive Caldor Fire in the fall of 2021 without losing any structures, fire chief Jim Drennan said his department is already ramping up prevention efforts.

“It's pretty bizarre up here right now. It really seems like June conditions more than March,” Drennan said. “People are already turning the sprinklers on for their lawns.”

Without more precipitation, an early spring may complicate prescribed burning efforts. But Drennan said fire agencies in the Tahoe basin can start mechanically clearing fuels from forest areas earlier than usual.

“That means we can get more work done,” he said.

It also means homeowners need to start hardening their homes now, said Martin Goldberg, battalion chief and fuels management officer for the Lake Valley Fire Protection District, which protects unincorporated communities in the Lake Tahoe Basin’s south shore.

Goldberg urges residents to scour their yards for burnable materials, create defensible space and reach out to local fire departments with questions. The risks are widespread — from firewood, wooden fences, gas cans, plants, pine needles — even lawn furniture stacked against a house.

“In years past, I wouldn't even think of raking and clearing until May,” Goldberg said. “But my yard's completely cleared of snowpack, and it has been for a couple weeks now.”

‘A haystack fire’

Battalion chief David Acuña, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, said fire season is shaped by more than just one year’s snowpack.

Climate change has been remaking California’s fire seasons into fire years. And California’s recent average to abundant water years have fueled what Acuña called “bumper crops of vegetation and brush.”

“Most of California is like a haystack. And if you’ve ever seen a haystack fire, they burn very intensely because there's layers of fuel,” Acuña said.

Like Quinn-Davidson, Acuña wasn’t ready to make specific predictions about fires to come.

But John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced, said the temperatures and snowpack conditions this year offer a glimpse of California in the latter decades of this century, as fossil fuel use continues to drive global temperatures higher.

How this year’s fires will play out will depend on when, where and how wind, heat, fuel and ignitions combine. But it foreshadows the consequences of a warmer California for water and fire under climate change.

“This,” Abatzoglou said, “is yet another stress test for the future in the state.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Thousands of immigrants who are lawfully in California are set to lose their food assistance benefits, known as CalFresh, starting this month.

The new restrictions stem from H.R. 1 — also known as the “Big Beautiful Bill” — which Congress passed last year.

The changes remove eligibility for certain noncitizens, including people with refugee status and victims of trafficking. It also applies to immigrants from Iraq and Afghanistan who have special immigrant visas for helping the U.S. government overseas.

 ”These are folks … many of whom have large families that we have a commitment to as a country because we welcomed them and invited them here to find a place of refuge,” said Cambria Tortorelli, president of the International Institute of Los Angeles, a refugee resettlement agency. “They’re authorized to work and they’ve been brought here by the U.S. government.”

The federal spending bill, H.R. 1, made sweeping cuts to social safety net programs, including food assistance and Medicaid. In signing the bill, President Donald Trump said the changes were delivering on his campaign promises of “America first.”

Officials estimate 23,000 people in Los Angeles County will be affected. The state estimates about 72,000 immigrants with lawful presence will be affected across California.

CalFresh is the state’s version of the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Undocumented immigrants have not been eligible to receive CalFresh benefits.

State officials say noncitizens who are currently receiving benefits will continue to get them until it’s time to renew their benefits — adding that people might be able to receive benefits again if their legal status changes to lawful permanent residents.

Who the changes apply to:

• Asylees
• Refugees
• Parolees (unless they are Cuban and Haitian entrants)
• Individuals with deportation or removal withheld
• Conditional entrants
• Victims of trafficking
• Battered noncitizens
• Iraqi or Afghan with special immigrant visas (SIV) who are not lawful permanent residents (LPR)
• Certain Afghan Nationals granted parole between July 31, 2021, and Sept. 30, 2023
• Certain Ukrainian Nationals granted parole between Feb. 24, 2022, and Sep. 30, 2024

Nearly every student in the California State University system has used artificial intelligence tools, but most don’t trust the results, are worried about how AI will affect their future job security and want more say in systemwide AI policy.

That’s according to results of a 2025 survey of more than 80,000 students enrolled at CSU’s 22 campuses, plus faculty and staff — the largest and most comprehensive study of how higher education students and instructors perceive artificial intelligence.

Nationwide, university faculty struggle to reconcile the learning benefits of AI — hailed as a “transformative tool” for providing tutoring and personalized support to students — and the risks that students will depend on AI agents to do their thinking for them and, very possibly, get the wrong information. Educators want a say in how and which AI tools are used. Students across the CSU system want to be included in those discussions.

Some professors teach students how to use AI and encourage students to use it, while others forbid its use in the classroom, said Katie Karroum, vice president of systemwide affairs for the Cal State Student Association, representing more than 470,000 students.

“Both of these things are allowed to coexist right now without a policy,” she said.

Karroum said that faculty practices are too varied and that what students need are consistent and transparent rules developed in collaboration with students. “There are going to be students who are graduating with AI literacy and some that graduate without AI literacy.”

In February 2025, the CSU system announced an initiative to adopt AI technologies and an agreement with OpenAI to make ChatGPT available throughout the system. The system-wide survey released Wednesday confirms that ChatGPT is the most used AI tool across CSUs. The system will also work with Adobe, Google, IBM, Intel, LinkedIn, Microsoft and NVIDIA.

Campus leaders say the survey and accompanying dashboard provide much needed data on how the system continues to integrate AI into instruction and assessment.

“We need to have data to make data-informed decisions instead of just going by anecdote,” said Elisa Sobo, a professor of anthropology at San Diego State who was involved in interpreting the survey’s findings. “We have data that show high use, but we also have high levels of concern, very valid concern, to help people be responsible when they use it.”

Faculty at San Diego State designed the survey, which received more than 94,000 responses from students, faculty and staff. Among all responding CSU students, 95% reported using an AI tool; 84% said they used ChatGPT and 82% worry that AI will negatively impact their future job security. Others worry that they won’t be competitive if they don’t understand AI well enough.

“Even though I don’t want to use it, I HAVE TO!” wrote a computer science major. “Because if I don’t, then I’ll be left behind, and that is the last thing someone would want in this stupid job market.”

Faculty are divided about the impact of AI on teaching and research. Just over 55% reported a positive benefit, while 52% said AI has had a negative impact so far.

San Diego State conducted its first campuswide survey in 2023 in response to complaints from students about inconsistent rules about AI use in courses, said James Frazee, vice president for information technology at the campus.

“Students are facing this patchwork of expectations even within the same course taught by different instructors,” Frazee said. In one introductory course, the professor might encourage students to use AI, but another professor teaching the same course might forbid it, he said. “It was a hot mess.”

In that 2023 survey, one student made this request: “Please just tell us what to do and be clear about it.”

Following that survey, the San Diego State Academic Senate approved guidelines for the use of generative AI in instruction and assessments. In 2025, the Senate made it mandatory that faculty include language about AI use in course syllabi.

“It doesn’t say what your disposition has to be, whether it’s pro or con,” Frazee said. “It just says you have to be clear about your expectations. Without the 2023 survey data, that never would have happened.”

According to the 2025 systemwide survey, only 68% of teaching faculty include language about AI use in their syllabi.

Sobo and other faculty who helped develop the 2025 survey hope other CSU campuses will find the data helpful in informing policies about AI use. The dashboard allows users to search for specific campus and discipline data and view student responses by demographic group.

The 2025 survey shows that first-generation students are more interested in formal AI training and that Black, Hispanic and Latino students are more interested than white students. At San Diego State, students are required to earn a micro-credential in AI use during their first year — another change that was made after the 2023 survey.

Students in this year’s survey said they want training that will be relevant to their careers. “I want to learn AI tools that are actually used in my industry, not just generic chatbots,” a mechanical engineering student responded. “Show me what engineers are actually doing with AI on the job.”

The California Faculty Association, which represents about 29,000 educators in the CSU system, said in a February statement that faculty should be included in future systemwide decisions about AI, including whether the contract with OpenAI should be renewed in July.

“CFA members continue to advocate for ethical and enforceable safeguards governing the use of artificial intelligence,” the CFA said in the statement, asking for “protections for using or refusing to use the technology, professional development resources to adapt pedagogy to incorporate the technology, and further protections for faculty intellectual property.”