 Mr. Chair, I think we can get going. Good morning, and welcome to the June 8th, 2021 meeting of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. Secretary, please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Here. Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. Caput. Here. MacPherson. Here. Thank you, Chair. You have a quorum. Thank you. Before we go into the moment of silence, our Pledge of Allegiance, there's a comment from Supervisor Ryan Coonerty. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to take a moment. This is our first meeting since the tragic shooting at the Valley Transportation Authority over the hill in San Jose, where one of my constituents was murdered, sorry, was murdered. And this on top of the one-year anniversary of Sergeant Damon Gutswiler's death just reminds us of the need to address the epidemic of gun violence in our community and the tremendous impacts it has on lives and everything that we need, everything that we need to address. And so I just want to take during a moment of silence for us all to recommit ourselves to addressing this epidemic and to keep in mind both the victims and the victims' families and friends as they struggle through this time. Thank you, Supervisor. Anyone else want to make a comment at all? I think we all deeply agree with that and are deeply saddened by the situation and what's going on in our communities. We will now have a moment of silence before the Pledge of Allegiance. OK? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. We have consideration of late additions to the agenda and additions and deletions to the consent and regular agendas. Do we have any items? Yes, Chair McPherson and members of the board, we do have a number of corrections to the agenda. On the regular agenda, item number 14, there's additional materials in the presentation. There's the presentation, which is to be inserted after packet page 451. On item number 15 on the regular agenda, there's the presentation, which is to insert after the packet page 725. On the consent agenda, item 28, staff request that this item be deleted. Item 33, correction, the item should read approve revisions to the county policy and procedures manual and take related actions as recommended by the county administrative office. On item 35, there's additional materials. Attachment M, odd 74. On item 40, there's additional materials. Revised attachment A. On item 53, there's additional materials. Revised attachment B. On item number 78, there's additional materials. Revised attachment C. And on the written correspondence listing, there's additional materials. Revised packet page 20. And that concludes our corrections to the agenda. OK, thank you, Mr. Palacios. Are there any announcement by board members of items removed from the consent to the regular agenda? Seeing none, we will go to item number five for public comment. Stephanie Cabrera, our board secretary, will explain this and then I'll mention the items on the consent agenda for public comment. Stephanie. Thank you. I just wanted to remind folks how to connect. So this message will repeat in Spanish. Now is the time for public comment. If you wish to comment and are joining us through the Zoom link, please find the hand icon at the bottom of your screen and click on the icon to raise your hand. This will place you in the queue to speak. When it's your turn, I will call you by name and you'll see a pop up on your screen asking if you'd like to accept the unmute. Please accept this and start speaking. Once you begin, the timer will start. If you're calling in from a phone, please dial star nine now. This will virtually raise your hand. I'll identify you by your last four numbers of your phone number and please dial star six to unmute yourself to begin speaking. At the end of your two minutes, your microphone will be muted automatically. Ahora es el tiempo que la Junta de Supervisores recibirá comentario del público. Si gustaría dar su comentario en español, tenemos un traductor disponible para asistir. Si deseas comentar y se ha unido a través de Zoom, busque el icono de la mano en el fondo de la pantalla y hazle click para levantar la mano. Esto lo colocará en la fila para hablar. Cuando sea tu turno de hablar, te llamaré por tu nombre y verás una ventana emergente en tu pantalla preguntándote si querés activar tu micrófono. Por favor, accepte y comienza a hablar. Si se ha unido a través del teléfono, por favor, marque star nueve para levantar la mano y estar colocado en la fila para hablar. Cuando sea tu turno de hablar, te llamaré por los últimos cuatro dígitos de tu número de teléfono. Por favor, marque estrellasteis para activar tu micrófono. Al final de tus dos minutos, tu micrófono será desactivado activáticamente. Gracias. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And any person may comment and address the board once during the public comment period, not exceeding two minutes. Comments may be directed to items on today's consent or regular agendas or closed session agendas, yet to be heard items on the regular agenda or a topic not on today's agenda, but within the jurisdiction of the board of supervisors. We'll take public comments now up to 30 minutes, if necessary, additional time for public comments will be allowed after the last item on today's regular agenda, which is going to be a long day for us, I think, here. We're going to be going into the afternoon. Do we have anybody that wants to make a public comment? Yes, Chair, we have several members of the public. Start by calling Collard 1999. Your microphone is available. Good morning. My name is James E. Whitman. It is June 8th, 2021. Can I be heard? Yes. Thank you. How could three subjects describe most of the current and past elected chosen and controlling world foundations as little more than millions of these individuals and their corporate personhoods as mostly being first degree murderers? I will briefly title and support and highly suggest debate in civil and criminal accountability in these three areas related to current and future health of humanities in this county and abroad. Quote, a mistake does not become an error unless you refuse to correct it. Kennedy. And I'll start with number three. Most mammals cannot survive without water for more than three days. As such, the propaganda involving engineered droughts should also be considered first degree murder. Fact, by the end of 2019, 100% of all California reservoirs were at 103 to 147% capacity. 100% capacity is a residential seven year supply of water. As such, why are state reservoirs being deliberately drained into the ocean statewide? 1A, false and criminal information about frequencies with the existing 35 license frequencies of the first through fourth generation technologies critical to worldwide military to control their enemies. Quote, anything that can be done with a pill can be done 1,000 times faster with frequencies, 1B. And now the fifth generation of over 3,000 frequencies that these laser light precise down to the third decimal point through the Harrington effect, affect energies and biologics through aerosols millions of times and cause mineral combination such as steel, aluminum and tempered glass to behave like wet noodles. And becomes foundry dust. I have photos of this in Santa Cruz County from the recent fires. The damage to mammals in specific ways. Caller 8045, your microphone is available. Morning, this is Ellie Black and this is Dr. Byron Bridal, the associate professor on viral immunology at the University of Booth with a peer-reviewed study. This is our photo virus too of the spike protein on the surface of the spike protein as well as the effect of our body. That is why we've been using the spike protein in our vaccine. The vaccines we're using get ourselves in our body to manufacture that protein. If we cannot immune response against that protein and they're moving to prevent this virus from affecting the body, that's the theory behind the vaccine. However, when studying disease, the Viral COVID-19, everything is just right for our problem. Lots of problems with the cardiovascular system. Leading and clotting is associated with the Viral COVID-19. And looking and doing back research what has been discovered by scientific community is the spike protein on its own is almost entirely responsible for damage to the cardiovascular system. If it gets into circulation, indeed, if you inject the purified spike protein into the blood of research animals, they get all kinds of damage to the cardiovascular system that can cross the blood-brain barrier and cause damage to the brain. Now, at first glance, that doesn't seem too concerning because we're injecting these vaccines into the shoulder muscle. The assumption, all that's allowed, has been that these vaccines behave like over-efficient vaccines that they don't go anywhere. Other than the ejection plate, they stay in our shoulder. Some of the protein will go to the local draining once it's over the active immune system. However, this is where the cutting-edge science comes in. This is where it gets buried through our questions for information. From the Japanese regulatory agency, myself and several international collaborators have been able to get access to what's called the bio-distribution study. It's the first time ever that scientists have been privy to getting aware that you must do RNA vaccine flow after vaccination. In other words, is it a safe assumption that it stays in the shoulder muscle? The short answer is absolutely not. It's very disincerting. The spike protein gets into the blood, trickling through the blood of an individual over several days post-vaccination. It accumulates, the blood accumulates in a number of tissues such as the spleen, the bone marrow, the liver, the adrenal glands. One of the particular concerns for me is it accumulates the point of high concentration at the ovaries. And then also a publication that was just accepted for, that's like a favorite to accept for publication that can access up to 13 of the health care workers that received the return of vaccine waivers. I might add that that was very difficult to understand all of that. So if people have a recording, I would advise that they summarize what they wanna say in somebody else's words, I guess. That was very difficult to understand. Go ahead. Color 14-01, your microphone is unmuted. Hi. Hello. Diane Nichol, calling about 5G. Just want everybody to know out there that the county and the state are planning on putting in these little mini cell towers on top of the telephone poles and the electrical poles. They're already going in. If you look at the very tops of the poles on 17th Avenue at the corner of 17th and Brommer, also down C, is that Sebrite Avenue? I believe there's several of them there, right in front of houses. These are emitting high levels of radio frequency radiation. Just to, you know, for years we've known about the dangers of this and the information's simply getting stronger and stronger. Here's information submitted by a prior, the federal agency lead from 1997 to 2014 when he retired from the division of migratory bird management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. His name is Dr. Albert Mansfield, M-A-N-V-I-L-L-E. Look up his paper, comments submitted for the record, studying the impacts of 5G radiation on humans through safety testing, June 3rd, 2020. Bad stuff here, bad stuff. How could our county and our state permit this to be happening? This is just, it's horrendous, it's a disgrace, and we need to do something about it. You guys need to get on it. The board of supervisors needs to pass the resolution, do something about this. This is wrong. It's hazardous, it's got to stop. Thank you. Reverend Beverly Brook, your microphone is available. Good morning, my name is Reverend Beverly Brook. While I wear many hats, this morning I'm here as a concerned community member regarding item 47 on the consent agenda. As part of the juvenile justice realignment, the state has given each county the opportunity to develop a secure rehabilitative facility within the county to house youth convicted of serious offenses, who commonly serve between two and 10 years. Proponents of the realignment feel recognize that youth who are incarcerated within their community have more positive outcomes and lower recidivism rates. Our county's plan caused for our youth to be housed in the Sonoma County juvenile facility in Santa Rosa. A recent tour of the facility revealed it is an updated version of DJJ. We have limited programming and or vocational training, no library, and acknowledge the lack of culturally sensitive programs. I acknowledged the challenges probation faced in order to develop a viable plan. However, while sending our children to Sonoma County may be a viable short-term answer, research reflects we will face serious unintended consequences if this becomes a permanent solution. We previously incarcerated our youth in adult-like prisons far from their community, and it hasn't worked. Our contract with Sonoma County is for one year. I encourage probation and the Board of Supervisors to consider the long-term effects of incarcerating our youth in Sonoma County. I recommend we use this time of an interim fix to explore and develop local solutions and provide our youth who will ultimately return to our community optimum opportunities for transformative, transformative change and healing. Thank you. Elizabeth, your microphone is available. Good morning. Liberty and Justice for All. I appreciate that in our Pledge of Allegiance. What I would like to know from the Board is what is the legal definition of a local health emergency? There is no emergency, and there hasn't been one for a long time. I think that's quite obvious by looking at the health of our citizens and the state of our community. An emergency is sudden, unexpected, a direct threat, great peril. None of these definitions apply. Since there is no emergency, there are no grounds for emergency health orders. Thus, all of these health orders are null and void. We have a large observable percentage of people in our community that are still in fear and for no reason. Citizens with disabilities are unable to wear, who are unable to wear a mask are still not allowed in businesses, many businesses. The Board needs to terminate the health emergency immediately as required by law. Failure to do so puts the Board members at risk, really at risk for fraud, and fraud is when information is misrepresented for gain, in this case, monetary gain from the emergency funds. I call on all of our public officials to do what their oath of office requires them to do, vote to terminate the health orders immediately, be honest with the community, take the fear out of the community and allow people to live freely again in this community. And I myself, who cannot wear a mask comfortably, have been prevented from many places of businesses, and I have lost income and lost my senior discounts in many things. So I encourage you, please, the emergency order needs to be. Kathy F, your microphone is available. This is Catherine Fahl, and I speak to the Consent Agenda Item 47. State realignment for criminal justice is closing the Department of Juvenile Justice in Stockton. So July 1st, this county is sending youth with long sentences to Sonoma County. Our young people will be in an isolated facility, bar from family with few services for enrichment and education. Whose protocols include the use of mace and tear gas. Sonoma County overbuilt their facility. They have only 23 youth, and unless they get our money and youth and our youth, plus that of other counties, they will close. This deal smacks of scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. This plan is wrong. It is regressive and the opposite of our progressive juvenile hall. I have volunteered at our juvenile hall for many years, and I know that family support, good education, and lots of activities are keys to rehabilitation. These kids are our future neighbors. This plan reminds me of the early years of my volunteering when youth were sent directly to adult prison. We have come too far for this regression, this mistake. I admonish each of you to work and find a way to bring these formative youth back to their home county. Don't take the easy way out. Don't throw these young people and their families away. Thank you. Kim Campbell, your microphone is available. As a reminder to star six to unmute yourself if you are on a phone or there is an option to unmute your microphone. Can you hear me now? Yes. Okay, my name is Kim Campbell. I'm speaking on the 12th item on the agenda, number 103-72. I am a volunteer at the Santa Cruz Needle Exchange here in Santa Cruz over at M-Line facility. I've been volunteering over there for some few months now and wanted to give a quick report on what's going on and what I've seen going on over there. We've been able to supply the community out here with clean needles and supplies to help them. Okay, I'm back on. All right, something to interrupt it. Where we are able to supply the community with supplies and stuff to keep the people that are out there in the drug community free of disease and hep C and that. We've been handing out Narcan over there on a regular basis, in which case I've recorded numerous reversals. That means Narcan's being used out there in the community to save lives and the lives have been saved. It's a positive adventure. I'll give you a little background. I'm a participant in the MAT program here, Medicaid and Assisted Therapy in Santa Cruz County. And this is just a positive, positive program and I wanted to get a report out, let the people at the council know that as far as I'm concerned, it's a very positive program that we should keep. And keep here in our county. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Campbell. And that is a scheduled item for 1.30 this afternoon. If people want to comment on it, they can, but they will not be able to comment again when we get into the afternoon discussion on that. Go ahead. Amy Montsier, your microphone is available. Good morning, members of the board in Santa Cruz, Dominating. I am Amy Montsier, program coordinator at the Health Improvement Partnership of Santa Cruz County. On Thursday, May 27th, it presented the Safety Net Clinic Coalition, also known as SNCC, with the Community Impact Award at our annual community forum, Montos y adelante, advancing recovery and equity beyond COVID-19. I want to thank Supervisor Friend for proclaiming SNCC and highlighting their impact on all Santa Cruz County residents. The Safety Net Clinic Coalition comprises Santa Cruz County, Watsonville and Emeline Health Centers, Santa Cruz Community Health, Salupara la Gente, San Pedro Marmonte, Yentes Community Dental, Janice and Compass Community Services, Community Health Trust of Pajaro Valley Diabetes Health Center, and Dignity Health Mobile Van. SNCC members have worked collectively for over a decade to offer care and help address social determinants of health for all patients. In the last five years, visits among the Safety Net have increased by 42%. SNCC members have expanded facilities and services to serve more than one in three Santa Cruz residents. This is a testament to the commitment of the Safety Net. Each day, they are committed to the wellness of all families and advocating for our most vulnerable communities in Santa Cruz County. As Dr. Kerr Carr, Chief Medical Officer at Santa Cruz Community Health, mentioned at the forum, we are the foundation of community health in this county. We are the bedrock of well-being and the champions of caring, compassion and equity. On behalf of the Health Improvement Partnership of Santa Cruz County, I wanna thank all of the Safety Net Coalition partners for their continued efforts to offer affordable and comprehensive care for promoting mental and physical well-being day-by-day, even as we've weathered the COVID-19 pandemic over the last 15 months, the Safety Net did not give up and showed up stronger than ever to fight the pandemic, collectively promoting equity, health and wellness for all. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your service. Thank you. Mary Lou Sims, Wiley, your microphone is available. Good morning. Wanted to address the messes on the road with, I understand that they articulated the mower arm that the county was using to clear out the shrubs and trees along the roadway has now been moved out to a contracted service. My name's been on the list for I believe over three years to get my road done, hasn't happened yet. They said I could go out and do it and leave the shrubs, the mess there for the property owner to clean up. But as difficult as that may be, there's large areas on everybody's road that needs to be cleared and cleaned. I've tried talking to the property owner to have his workers come out and clear it out to make it safe for the pedestrians walking on the road so they can be on their side of the fog line. On the blind turns, they have to walk out into the street and we've had close encounters. And I don't want someone to die because of this either because county can't get out there to take care of business. And the homeowner is not doing it. So I propose that the county clear it up, put the Enos back on the property owner and say, okay, we cleared it one time. Now it's your responsibility, take care of it. Or if we have to come back out and do it again, we're gonna start charging you. People have to be responsible for the property and for the trees that they've allowed to grow near the roadways and such and take care of all of this mess. I understand the county still needs to come in and clear the weeds and such that are growing up in along the edges of the roadways and such, I just wish they would do that. Also to take out the any fines or any other problems for taking out the Eucalyptus trees which is gonna ruin our water resources and having a high source for another fire as again on trading road. Also if they could put a stop sign from the private road of traving onto the public road because people are flying through there still, county says they're not going to put a stop sign up. Thank you, bye-bye. Jane H, your microphone is available. Good morning, this is Jane Heisy. I am addressing number 47 on the consent agenda. I am a part of a faith-based group out of Pesion Audit Church of Christ that has been operating various programs, art and counseling programs at Juvenile Hall. Our, my church group has tried to increase accessibility of families to the juvenile offenders by trying to extend a bus route up to the Juvenile Hall. That ended up not working. But I just, I'm really wanting to emphasize that our youth offenders need more support locally. They need their families to have access. They need programs if we truly care about them and care about their rehabilitation. This short-term plan to send them up to Sonoma sounds like we're going in the opposite direction. Many people in this community recognize, as I'm sure you do, that we need to offer more support, not less. So I urge the county probation and board of supervisors to find a local solution so we can keep our youth offenders here in our county. Thank you. Colored 1965, your microphone is available. Good morning, can you hear me? Yes. Hi, my name is Jeff, in support of the fire victims in our county. I'd like to say I've read so many comments out there that they're struggling right now with dealing with the county and it's mind-blowing to me how much they've already gone through and how much they're still being put through. My comment to the board would be, I urge you, I urge you to support them as much as you can with everything that you can. Thank you. Celeste Gutierrez, your microphone is available. Good morning, everyone, can you hear me? Yes. We have all seen how difficult it was for most of us to condition ourselves to COVID-19 restrictions such as distancing and wearing masks. And now with some of us vaccinated, we're once again learning how to re-socialize and it's only been about a year. Now imagine being 16 and being socialized to live in incarceration more than two hours away from your family. How is this humane? Even with vouchers that allow families to drive up to the proposed location in Sonoma County to visit, that is an entire day. The staff at Sonoma County are not like the staff in Santa Cruz County. They dress in riot gear, anticipating violence. I worked in juvenile hall with what some would consider the most violent people and never once did any of them say or do anything violent towards me. I like to think it's because I treated them as humans with dignity and came to work in regular clothes. I came to work to teach. I didn't come to work fearing for my life thinking someone was going to hurt me. When you go into a situation thinking someone is going to hurt you, it turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy and having staff at Sonoma in riot gear, they are already through their clothes signaling to the youth that they are the enemy and anticipating a riot. Are those the values Santa Cruz County holds? Is that the image we want to show our youth? Is that what the board of supervisors are? Are you really going to force families to drive all the way to Sonoma to visit and remain connected? Santa Cruz County is a model site in juvenile justice and to send youth to Sonoma County is doing the same thing as to send them to safe facilities as they are not a model site with the same values and missions as we have here. I'm here to ask the board of supervisors to rethink the possibility of sending our youth to Sonoma because that means you're more than likely going to be sending our youth far away from their support system and that's inhumane and causing slight lasting impacts. We need to invest in prevention for all youth as this issue does not only pertain to violent offenders but to the way Santa Cruz approaches juvenile justice for the years to come. We need to invest in job readiness, literacy and self-defense when you know how to read, have a job and can defend yourself. You have a strong sense of self-inconfidence and that leads to overall well-being. Thank you. Secretary, how many more do we have? We have about another five or 10 minutes for public comment. We have nine more speakers. Okay, we'll go for another five minutes and then we'll have the remaining speakers we'll have to wait until after we complete our agenda. Go ahead. Whitney Barnes, your microphone is available. Good morning. My name is Whitney Barnes, supervisor with Adult Protective Services of Santa Cruz County. On behalf of the Adult Protective Services Team of Santa Cruz County, I'd like to thank the board of supervisors for proclaiming June as Elder Abuse Awareness Month with June 15th, 2021 known across the globe as World Elder Abuse Awareness Day. Our team responds to allegations of abuse, neglect, self-neglect and exploitation among older and dependent adults throughout the county. We partner with the older adults we serve to offer them support, guidance, advocacy and assistance navigating complex or challenging systems. We endeavor to reduce the risk and enhance the safety for all community dwelling older and dependent adults in Santa Cruz County to ensure that our older residents can safely age in place living in their own homes or any preferred location. The issue of elder abuse is significant, not just in terms of impact, but also scale. And this issue is certainly growing with our ever-increasing aging population. According to the National Council on Aging, roughly 10% of Americans over the age of 60 have experienced some form of elder abuse. Various studies estimate, additionally, that issues of self-neglect adversely affect somewhere between 10 and 21% of American older adults. Please bear in mind that many studies suggest that only four out of every 100 incidences of abuse against elders is reported to authorities, which highlights the importance of events like this. Raising awareness about elder abuse and the programs designed to intervene with elder abuse will increase attention to the realities faced by many older adults. This awareness can also ease fears around seeking help or support and hopefully create a community where we all come together to work toward the elimination of elder abuse. Thank you. Bernie Gomez, your microphone is available. This will be our last public comment and those who wish to comment may do so after we complete our regular agenda, which I don't think is going to be before mid-afternoon, probably three or three, 34, something like that. So this will be our last public comment before we go back to the regular agenda. Thank you. Bernie Gomez, your microphone is available. Yeah, good morning, Chair, Board of Supervisors. Thank you for this opportunity. I'm here to comment on consent items 46 and 47. You know, the State of California enacted as a closure of DJJ, the Division of Juvenile Justice, SBA 23, understanding that youth are better served, are best served when they're closer to their homes, closer to their families. Being in Santa Cruz County as a model site while engaging in juvenile justice issues in the youth, I think having this, you know, right now there's currently, I believe like two youth at the DJJ and for the probation office to not have the vision to support these two youth. And it's only two considering Monterey County has 35 youth out there. And not being able to, you know, develop something for these youth here locally that Santa Cruz County has such a robust, you know, approach, you know, with services, sending these kids out to Sonono County is just, you know, repeating the same process, sending kids away, you know. It's kind of, it's contradicting to the spirit and the law of the law, right, of SBA 23. And I'm just requesting the Board to have this, this in your heart, in your mind. And within the next year, you know, continue to have an open dialogue of what really this bill is meant to do. And, you know, we want to, we really want to stop the receivers array. We really want to, you know, provide, you know, you know, services to stop the root causes of what's going on and affecting the youth and the families and the community at large. Also, you know, if the youth have services, you know, they just, it eliminates crime and all that stuff. Thank you. Okay, now we will move to some, I apologize to those who are waiting in line for public comment. As I mentioned, we have a long agenda today. We have some time specific items, several of those. So we're going to move with the regular agenda now or item number six for action on the consent agenda. Start with Supervisor Koenig. Any comments that you might have? Yes, thank you, Chair. On item 36, accepting unanticipated revenue in the amount of $1 million for public works and approving the realignment of $3.98 million and approving the capital projects policy. I just wanted to say I was very pleased to see $1.1 million for the one-stop permit shop included in this. You know, we have a lot of infrastructure needs in our County. Absolutely, my office hears about them every day. And the best way for County to increase revenues to address those needs is ultimately to grow its tax base, not just increase tax rates. And I truly believe that the one-stop permit shop will be central to helping people to rebuild, expand housing opportunities and grow the property tax rolls with which we can fund essential infrastructure. Item 65, accept and file the report on the home reuse budget and approving realignment of appropriations from the home buyer loan program to tenant-based rental assistance. I just wanted to make sure everyone realized what's going on here is we're realigning funds that were originally used for first-time home buyers and allocating them towards rental assistance. And this report calls out that the need to do that is because the current high market rate for home prices, highly competitive sellers market and limits on maximum sales price, make it virtually impossible to make any first-time home buyer loans at this time. So, again, just to call out that the cost of home ownership is a growing divide within our community here between haves and have-nots. And our board is really gonna have to focus on opportunities to allow first-time home buyers to continue to own a piece of our community and grow with Santa Cruz rather than being pushed out of it. Item 70, accepting the improvements and approving the final cost for Highland Way Storm Damage Repair Project. I just wanted to thank Public Works for their work on this road. It's not the most highly traveled road in the county, but it is a vital access road and potential evacuation route for many who live in the mountains. So thank you. And then on item 74, the Live Oak Branch Library Approval to Bid and Amendment to Agreement. This project will renovate the existing children's area. The Live Oak Branch Library is really a jewel of our library system with the beautiful location on Corcoran Lagoon. And I personally know many people who take their kids here every week. I'm excited to see these improvements moving forward. So thanks as well on that work. Yeah, that's all my comments. Thank you. Go to Supervisor Coonerty. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a couple of comments. First on item number 29, which is the Gross Santa Cruz Loan Fund. I just want to take a moment. As we emerge out of this pandemic, many small businesses were battered over the last 15 months. And this is an important initiative to help those businesses get access to capital they otherwise wouldn't have so that they can grow back and hopefully get back to where they were before the pandemic and grow from beyond, as well as to help new businesses and especially businesses that are women-owned or owned by people of color. It's giving them an opportunity to start and grow a business here in Santa Cruz. And I want to appreciate the efforts to do that. Item number 49, which is the Laura's Law Opt Out. I just want to register that I'm going to be voting no on this. I understand the limits of our mental health funding, but I've also heard from too many people in our community and seen too many challenges where we need to have these kinds of services provided to people who are at risk to themselves and others. Finally, on item number 59, which is the Youth Resource Center, this is a great project that will provide a place to go for homeless youth. I do want to point out that this is again, yet another service cited in the city of Santa Cruz and that we do need to, while we do need to provide these services, we also need to commit ourselves to finding places that are outside of the city of Santa Cruz or Watsonville who already have a majority of the services located in their jurisdictions. Thank you so much. Thank you. Supervisor Friend. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just briefly on item 32, I'd just like to thank staff and works on the redistricting item and also thank those that are participating. I think that we have created a very transparent process and I look forward to Jason Hoppen's work on helping to release this information to the community. On item 49, while I'm supportive of the item, I do hear what Supervisor Coonerty is saying and we've received a letter from our community partners on this that I think should be additional direction to reconsider this next year. I do feel like taking an action to permanently opt out of AB 1976 at this point is premature and I think that it would be wise to at least take a look as a board next year to reconsider it. So I'd be adding that additional direction should, when the time comes for a motion to just take this action for one year and then to reconsider that action next year by the board. On item 68, which is the Aptos Library, similar to Supervisor Koenig, I'm a great appreciation for not just the community on Measure S, but those in the community that have also stepped up to help fund it from a private standpoint. And this was a significant over half a million dollar contribution from the estate of Betty Leonard, which is helping put the Aptos Library over the top. That Aptos Library will start construction in just a few short weeks here. I'm looking forward to having that open once it's done with completion. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you. I think to be making it clear too, I'm gonna go to Supervisor Kaplan in just a moment, but I too, I'm going to already know on Laura's law. Well, I really, we all recognize the limitations with our health services agency at this point with COVID and so forth. We don't wanna, I don't think we wanna have an implication that we don't wanna really address this mental health services item. So I'll entertain that motion. When we get to the consent agenda, somebody can make a motion to that effect. Supervisor Kaplan. Yeah, thank you, Chairman. Two quick comments, one on 32, like Supervisor Friend commented on. This will be redistricting all the districts in the county. The cities will be doing this also. It'll be really good to have a lot of public comment when we go through this redistricting process. We do that every 10 years. And some districts will gain population and some will lose some areas boundaries will either grow or shrink according to population growth. So it's very important to have public input. Item number 53, I'm really happy to see that we're gonna expand funding to support crisis services for children and young adults under the age of 21 with a mobile and emergency response team for youth. And that'll be going into North County and we already have that in South County. So it's good to see that. Thank you. Thank you. I have several items that I'm gonna address. Item number 30, the CZU fire costs. This is an opportunity for once again, for us to thank all the county staff, fire agencies and the nonprofit partners, some of whom were mentioned in our public comments who've been part of the response to the CZU fire. This continues after nine months after the fire. And while we expect to receive support from FEMA and Cal OES Office of Emergency Services reimbursement of our costs, we do have a local match that has grown from $1 million to $7 million. I just have a question. Are we expecting to close that gap so we're with reserves or do we anticipate we can pull from other funds? Mr. Palacios, do you have any, I'm just curious if that's quite a difference. I believe Christina Maui can be elevated and can talk in more detail on this question. I will say that there is funding in our contingencies, our general fund contingencies, which will cover, is intended to cover the gap. And Christina Maui is now available and she can talk in more detail. Yes, good morning, Chair Inferson. Yes, that's correct. We set aside, we had funding set aside in our contingencies. We recognize that we would have additional costs. So the item 30 makes those additional appropriations of the $7 million, $2.8 million was already in our existing appropriations for the permanent staff. So we only needed a transfer. We made a transfer early on upon the immediate needs of protective measures of a million dollars or so. And now we're having to transfer the balance of a little over $3 million. Okay, very well, thank you. And I also wanted to comment on the redistricting committee. I do support the principles of maintaining our districts as much as possible to keep communities together. I look forward to learning more about the census and can support option A and on the scheduling of the public hearings, which get into serious consideration, I think in the fall. So, because we have to wait for some of the census findings, just so people know. Item 35, the capital projects. I wanna thank our staff and the capital projects committee for its work on this plan and I want to express my appreciation for the Highlands Park Roof Placement in particular in my district. Comments were made on the whole person care. Item number 50, I appreciate the work that has been done on the program and similar topic of injection drug use. I think the board needs to spend some time dedicated to discussing this topic more fully. And I'd like to add some additional direction to schedule the item as a regular agenda item when it comes back to us in November, if I could. That's item number 50, the whole person care. And item number 60, the system improvement program or SIP report, I'm chair of that committee. I just wanna offer my congratulations to the team who worked on the SIP report, systems improvement project. This is a significant amount of work and I'm glad that we are ready to submit this to the state at this point. It's taken a lot of work and thank you for everyone who was involved in that. Item 71, the Department of Public Works fire repairs report. I wanted the huge amount of work that our public works team has accomplished following the CCU fire is just amazing. I know that there are much more to do, but they have done a beautiful job in trying to clean it up as quickly as possible. This work requires about $3 million match on a total of nearly $10 million for trim removal, cold roof repairs and other work. And that's a significant impact that we are addressing through general fund contingencies again. So again, thank you to the Public Works Department and for getting too much of that as possible in somewhat of a related item on number 81, the road maintenance. This is another opportunity to highlight the importance of passage, the state passage of Senate bill one to tackle road maintenance. We appreciate the legislature providing these funds and the voters for maintaining that existence of that fund. That was challenged on the ballot, but defeated. And without Senate bill one and measure D that was passed by county voters by two more than two thirds of county voters in 2016, we would not be able to address where near the amount of road work that we have done widespread throughout the county. So again, thanks to our Public Works Department, state legislature and the voters of Santa Cruz County. I would entertain a motion. There is going to be some additional direction that has been mentioned. Mr. Chair, I'll try and do this. So I'll move the recommended actions. And then on item 49, I'd like to add additional direction that this item come back to us in a year. And the reason for this, I actually want to say that I understand what Supervisor Coonerty and Mr. Chair, you're saying. I mean, I have the same reservations. And I feel like this basically maintains the status quo for one additional year by doing this, which is why I'm saying to have it come back in one year. Additionally, to provide the additional direction that the chair provided to have the regular agenda item in November on item 53, I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. Item 50. Okay, item 50. So those are the two additional directions. Moving the recommended actions with the come back next year on 49, and then on the November regular agenda item on 50. Second. Second. Any comments from board members? Okay, call the roll please. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye, with a no on 49. Correct. McPherson. Aye. Thank you. With a no. Are you also voting no on 49? Yes, but I understand the motion too. Yes, correct. Yes, thank you. Okay. Motion passes with the 10 minutes. I'm just, I'm gonna, by voting no on 49 though, I wanna support the motion that was made. So we can support the motion and still no on it. I think it'd be clear if we just supported the motion. How about this, Mr. Chair? How about we separate out the motion? Madam Clerk, if you're okay with this, I'll just do it. No idea. I'll move, okay. So why don't we, I'll move consent with 49 not included. We'll take a separate motion on item 49 with the additional direction on item 50 to come back in November with a regular agenda item. So I'll withdraw my original motion, please. And I'd like to create a new motion, which is for all the consent items, except for item 49 with additional direction on item 50. That's my motion. Thank you. Very good. Second. Second, okay. Call the roll on that, please. And the seconder remains the same. Supervisor Koenig, thank you. Supervisor Koenig. Hi. Friend. Hi. Coonerty. Hi. Capit. Hi. McPherson. Hi. Thank you. This is for items 23 through 86 with additional direction on 50 and excluding item number 49. Now for the vote on item 49. Supervisor Koenig. Yeah, sure. Let's, I'm sorry to interrupt. We need to have a motion on that item. So I will move item 49 with the additional direction that this item come back next year for reconsideration by the board. Second. Thank you, Supervisor Koenig. Hi. Friend. Hi. Coonerty. So I just want to, I want to appreciate Supervisor Friend's motion and his effort, but I'm still going to vote no, but I appreciate that it's coming back next year. So no. Thank you, Capit. Aye. McPherson. No, same reason as Supervisor Coonerty. Thank you. Thank you, motion passes. Okay. Well, let's do, now to the regular agenda, it being five minutes to 10, consider a presentation on the 2021 California fire season report by chief fire chief Ian Larkin of Cal Fire as outlined in the memorandum of the director of general services. We have a state of the county, state county fire season 2021. And it's been some anxious moments up in the mountains. We've had several spot fires. And thank you in advance for responding to those as quickly as you have Cal Fire and responding to them as quickly as they have. So thank you. Go ahead. Mr. Beaton, are you going to be, or Mr. Larkin, excuse me, Chief Larkin? Yes. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen here if I'm allowed to. Okay. You should see my slide presentation now. Yes. Okay. Good morning, Chair McPherson, members of the board and Mr. Palacios and members of the public. My name is Ian Larkin. I am the unit chief for the San Mateo Santa Cruz unit of Cal Fire and I also serve as your Santa Cruz County fire chief. I'm here today to provide you my annual state of the state address in the state of the county as we move into our fire season. So just a quick agenda for my presentation today. We're going to be discussing a couple of different items here of predictive services and the materials used to help us provide the fire season outlook. We'll be discussing the state of the state and what fire season may provide us in relation to fire activity. We'll talk about fuel reduction efforts and the progress that is being made. And then we'll also talk about information related to water concerns and those impacts that may affect us and overall general consensus as we move into fire season within the coming months. So in predicting the fire season, there are several factors that are used to predict fire season or the potential for that fire season outlook. Some of the big factors that we'll be looking at we'll be looking at the last three years in a consideration of our snowpack and rainfall considerations for the totals that we've received. We'll look at in a comparison to get a better idea of what 2021 has in store for us. We'll look at the snowpack in the Sierras and then we'll look at our rainfall totals in an average. So as we know, 2020 was a historic fire season for the state of California. California experienced its largest fire in the state's history, which was the August complex which charred over a million acres in the Mendocino Humble and Trinity counties of the state. And as we know, and very familiar in our own backyard, we experienced our largest fire in Santa Cruz history with the CZU Lightning Complex which charred 86,509 acres between the two counties of Santa Cruz and San Mateo and it destroyed over 1,490 structures, making the CZU Lightning Complex the 12th most destructive fire in California history. So as we look at the complexities of how we predict fire season and move into our next stage of it, we're not looking any better than we were last year, unfortunately. So as we look at our snowpack, just kind of comparisons of between 2019, 2020. In 2019, we received an average rainfall and snowpack in the Sierras. But in 2020, as you can see, we had very limited snowpacking comparison to the year prior. But as we fast forward to 2021, January was a really wet month. We had potentials for debris flow, we had a good concentration of rain and it brought us a significant amount of snowfall in the Sierras. If you can look at the picture on the left was the 20th of January. The picture in a 10 day period, you can see a significant amount of snow fell in the Sierras. And that was what we thought might be helpful to us but really wasn't enough. So as we kind of continue to look into the currency where we are and what that snowpack brought us, the measurements, snowpack measurements in April only contained about 59% of the April average, which is concerned. So that snow did not last very long and it melted very quickly. And the measurement of that snow and the water content that we rely on for that melting in the late fire season to help replenish our reservoirs just wasn't there. The percentage of water content was very, very low in the snow that remained. And I provide in this next slide, just a comparison of the Yosemite Valley. This is Half Dome, this is a four year comparison. All these pictures are taken relatively around the same time. And in 2018, 19, you can kind of see there's a comparison there and there was snow in 19 but not in 18, similar to 20 and 21. The 21 though, you see a very limited amount of snow that's melting off much faster than it would have in the past. But we did receive a little bit more snow than we did in 2020. So when we look at our comparison, I provide you this slide from 2020 to 2021. Try to get it as close as possible in the averages but the slide on the left is from April 27th of 2020. You can see we have actually pretty much a very moderate snow pack as we look at those percentages. Anywhere from 40 to 52% in that central Sierra area. But you look at 2021, April 1st, significantly less percentages there and that snow pack was melting off very quickly and those averages dropped significantly which there was no new snow to provide any of that additional needed runoff from the snow melt that would help us provide that replenishment to our reservoirs. So as we look at a percent of precipitation that we received, this slide represents the average from October. And as you can see on the slide on the left, that's October to April of 2020. And just to concentrate in the area of the Santa Cruz area, it put us in that anywhere from 50 to 70% of our seasonal average for precipitation for that period of time. And looking at 2021, this carries us out a little bit farther into May, but that average is significantly less. It's more in the 25 to 50% range which is very concerning as we move into the fire season. So when we kind of narrow this down into a little bit of a shorter window, the April, when we talk about late rains, April to, I'm sorry, February to April, you can see in 2020, we received some late rains which put us in a about the 100% or just under 100% of our annual percent of rainfall for that period of time. In looking at our average for 21, going back from December to now, those percentages, even though we got a significant amount of rain for the month of January, it still puts us in a very, very low percentage for Santa Cruz County, as you can see, we're down to that 50 to 70% of what rainfall we would have received in that timeframe. This is very concerning and it's had a lasting effect on our fuel moistures as we, you'll see here in just a few minutes. So when we look at our fuel conditions, we're taking into consideration our continued drought. We're also taking into consideration tree mortality and that lack of late rains. So one of the indicators that we use for this is the drought monitor, the US drought monitor. So I'm providing you a comparison here. So we're gonna look back to April of 2020. And as you can see, the Santa Cruz area was in a, what would they consider an abnormally dry drought for the US drought monitor? But let's fast forward to April 20th of 2021. And as you can see, Santa Cruz County had a significant change. They actually put us in what they considered the severe drought category, which is a significant change for us as we look into the future and what our fuel moistures and what the relative impacts this could have on the fire season. So when we look at the totality of this, the seasonal outlook for the drought from May 20th to August 31st of 2021, as you can see, pretty much the majority of the Western United States is all in a persistent drought. So we're all aware of that. We talk about it, you hear it in the news every day about the lack of rain, but we just wanna make this is gonna have a significant impact across the Western United States as we move into fire season, as we talk about resource allocation between states and also within the state of California. So one of the other things we look at is our tree mortality viewer. As you can see, the state of California on the Eastern Sierra continues to have a significant tree mortality issue. But what we are starting to see, and hopefully you can see it on your slides, is the area of the central coast, you're starting to see a larger impact of what the tree mortality is having. We're starting to see the little dots start to pick up. And we're watching that very, very closely so that we can kind of have a better idea as that starts to increase in our area because that does add to the potential for fire and for fire spread. So some of the tools that we use and when we're looking at our fuel moistures and how we're dealing with fire season, one of our predictive models, we use our thousand hour fuel moistures as one of the indications. And one of the things I wanna point out here is this is for our inland area, which basically is the area of our valleys and our inland ridges where we take our fuel readings for these sampleings. So as you can see, the green line is really the 2021, you'll see a slight uptick right there at the end of April in the beginning of May of our fuel moistures. And that was due to the green up of some of the fuels, the brush that was being sampled and actually had some green up in it. And prior to that, you saw that significant drop and that's because the brush had not received enough moisture to start that green up phase. But I'll show you just in a few slides where that percentages are starting to drop off again. The blue line here that you see at the bottom, those are our minimum fuel moisture. So we had dipped in that little part of April, we had dipped down to what our minimum averages below end of those fuel moistures, which is concerning for the lack of rain. This is a very similar model here, but it's for our coastal region of that for a thousand hour fuels. And just for reference, our thousand hour fuels are those fuels that are three inches to eight inches in diameter that we measure from. So once again, we saw a slight uptick in that fuel moisture, but as you can see heading back into May, we started to see that downward trend of those fuel moistures. And part of that increase that we saw out on the coast was also related to, we had a little bit more coastal fog influence in that period of time, which helped to bring those fuel moistures up. So as we look and we're gonna drop down, these are our hundred hour fuel moistures. And just in comparison, these are fuels that are anywhere from one inch to three inches in diameter. And as you once again see, we had that upward tick and that's that green up, but we're already seeing that downward trend in those fuel moisture. So we're hitting right around that average mark around the first of May, but fast forward a month and you'll see in a few slides what has trended even more of a downward fall there. And then once again, this is the coastal zone and you can see we're also seeing that downward trend. We've hit our average and we're really starting to trend below that average as we move farther into the fire season. So the top graph here that you're looking at, these are our April fuel moisture sampleings and with our fuel moisture sampleings, we go out twice a month and we take fuel sampleings in specific sites in each of our zones. And we bring those back, we run them through the calculations and the drying process to weigh them to get these percentages that we're looking here. But what I wanna just kind of show is this far side shows you the changes that we have the far column on the right of the decrease or the increase in fuel moisture. And a lot of this is that new growth I talked about. So you'll see these percentages change over each of the sampleings. So the difference between May and April, sorry about that, you'll see that we had some significant changes here where we had some green up in some of the brush. And then we had just some of this is just from coastal influence with the fog where the fuels are picking up moisture. But we saw we're still seeing a downward trend in that May area. And my next slide here will really kind of give you an indication. So these are our current June sampleings that we had on June 1st. And as you can see, we're seeing pretty much a downward trend with the exception of some of the new growth where we're seeing minimal fuel moisture increases there. But what I really wanna really point out is this bottom graph is from July 10th of 2020. And what I really wanna preface here is that if you take these two columns and you look at the differences in the fuel moistures we're relatively a month ahead of our normal fuel moisture where we're seeing that drying. So we're currently with the exception of a few areas already in our July level of fuel moistures which is concerning that's meaning our fuels are drying much faster and could be receptive to fire spread and fire starts much more readily available. So when we look at what this all kind of equates to is when we look at our energy release component and what energy release component constitutes is the amount of energy or that a fire is gonna exhibit when it does start and it starts to burn. So when we look at this, this green line in the middle here and then once again, this is registering for our inland valleys and ridges. As you can see, we're trending to our maximum level of our energy release component. So the intensity at which a fire is going to burn is a considerable thing that we have to take into consideration with suppression efforts and also life safety concerns. So we're trending in that upwards point now to at our maximum levels where it draws more concern. And then once again in our grass models just because these are finer fuels, we're trending back towards the average, but these are also influenced a lot more by that coastal influence, which this year we're actually seeing a little bit more fog this time of year than we did last year. So that coastal influence is helping in that coastal region for that. But we're still we're trending in that upwards momentum for that energy release component, which is also concerned. So then when we look at our significant wildland fire potential for the US and we'll concentrate a little bit to the West coast here, you can see that the Santa Cruz area, we're expecting based on this predictive model to have pretty much a normal wildland fire potential for this time of year in the month of June. As we look into July, as you're starting to see more of the coastal areas Southern California, but the central coast, we're especially here in San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties, we're still in that normal predictive potential in that how look. As we move into August, they're predicting that we're still going to kind of be in that normal phase. And we'll see how that trends out, but August really is our turning point. So here in Santa Cruz County, historically our burn window has been anywhere from late August to middle of October, but as we look back at last year, anything's possible at this point. I don't think any of us ever thought that we would have seen a fire burn with the intensity and speed in which last year's fire burned. So this is concerning as we move forward, but as we go into September, you can see we are trending into that and the outlook is putting us at that above normal potential for large fires. So we'll look at this model in a little different perspective and kind of concentrate it down into the central coast region. As I said, the June to August, the Santa Cruz area is looking to be in a normal for potential fires, but as we look at the eastern side in those lower elevations, the fine fuel crop is pretty robust. They did receive some rain over there so the grass crop is plentiful and those are gonna continue to burn as they have pretty much annually along the I-5 corridor and into that eastern section of Santa Clara County. But as we move forward into the September, October area, you can see that we trend into that abnormal or I'm sorry, above normal average. So looking at kind of our state of the state outlook, traditionally our fire season is about a month ahead of where we typically would be when we talk about our transition to fire season. Typically our transition does not start until June 1st, but this year we transitioned on April 12th. Typically our aircraft that are based at a Hollister air attack base come online around June 1st. This year they were brought online on May 10th. Let's talk a little bit about our fire crew strength. So our fire crew strength has been reduced significantly. Typically when we were fully staffed with all of our inmate fire crews, we had 152 crews available to us to respond to large fire events. Currently as of today, we have 57 of those crews that are available. A lot of this has to do with the COVID-19 early release, which impacted our institutions and our facilities that feed our Conservation Corps program for our inmate firefighters. And of that 57, four of those crews are in quarantine right now for COVID-19 restrictions. So we have a significant reduction in a resource that provides a vital role in our suppression efforts and containment efforts statewide. So that can have impacts as we move forward. But one of the key elements in the governor's budget this year, he did provide some funding to try to provide some relief for this lack of resource and which brought us our three C crews and some additional firefighting hand crews to this date and addition to that relationship with the California National Guard to bring some additional hand crews on board and have them available to us for response. What does that mean for us here locally? Currently at our Ben Lohman Conservation Camp, we have two crews that are staffed and available for response. And typically we would have five, but we were authorized to enter into a relationship with the California Conservation Corps, Monterey Bay Work Center in Watsonville, and they will be staffing one additional fire crew. We're currently working with them to get all their personnel fire trained to make them available to respond to initial attack incidents and be a resource available to us for that response and provide that vital hand crew work that is needed. Just over the hill in Santa Clara County, they do not have the resource available to them with a conservation camp. So they actually have two California National Guard crews that are based out of the San Jose Armory and they also do have an additional firefighter one hand crew that's based out of the South San Jose area, which could be a relatively available to us if the need arises to bring them over the hill and assist us with that type of work here locally. As I said, early staffing, we are going to peak here. We went to peak on June 7th, but typically our level two staffing is five engines. That's basically one engine per battalion. We went to that on April 12th, typically we wouldn't have went to that until June 1st. Our level three staffing would be 10 engines. We went to that staffing level on May 10th and typically we wouldn't have went to that until June 15th. And then obviously our peak, a level four staffing or peak staffing, typically we would not have went to that until July 1. We went to that on June 7th. So we're well ahead of our normal staffing models and into peak fire season than we would normally would be. So moving on to a few reduction projects. As we look at what was accomplished this year, it was a really busy winter. It was a dry winter. So we had a lot of fire response happening with the CZU lightning complex. And then an anomaly occurred. We had a wind event come through during the dry spell before the rains. And we had several fires that burnt here in Santa Cruz County. And we actually in totality burned over a hundred acres in the month of January with all the fires that occurred throughout the county. So it's very concerning to us to be able to have fuels of relatively available that early in the season. And then with that limited rainfall has just put us in that heightened sense of urgency with our fuels being so dry and so receptive due to this prolonged drought. But moving on to our projects, we were able to move through and get some fuel reduction projects specifically. We were able to do some pile burning up in the Bonnie Dune area where they burnt about 250 burn piles throughout the winter in management of a fuel break up there up in that area. And then we had also some chipping that occurred. Pretty large chipping program up in the community of Pine Ridge and Bonnie Dune to help with fuel reduction after the fire. And then also help some of those folks get some more defensible space around the structures that were destroyed. And then up in the River Ridge area, basically it's West of Highway 17 in the summit area. We had a pretty large scale chipping program that went on in that community to provide important defensible space work around the structures in that community. So in essence of fire prevention and public outreach, this winter we hosted two virtual meetings for the CZU Lighting Complex. We were able to reach out to the public and give them some information and try to help provide some closure in that aspect of the CZU Lighting Complex. We also hosted virtual Ready Set Go webinars in both counties and we did specific ones for Santa Cruz County. We also hosted defensible space and home hardening webinars in both counties. And in essence, we're trying to reach out to the public to give them a better opportunity on a larger scale to get the information they need to be able to start to do that important work around their structures to help us help them in the event of a fire. We continue to work with fire safe councils on fuel reduction projects. And as we move forward, there's a lot of opportunities coming forth with some grant funding that's gonna be made available and we're hoping to be able to secure those funds and be able to move those projects forward in the near future. And then also we did take a concerted effort this year. We did bring some firefighter ones, our seasonal workforce on a couple of weeks early and we were able to, instead of putting them on fire engines, we were able to concentrate them and go out and do defensible space inspections. And just in that small effort, we were able to do over 1,000 defensible space inspections in the Santa Cruz County area in essence to go out and help the public view their properties and find out what work they needed to do to get more compliant with that process and protect their homes. And then a big one is our evacuation management platform from Zone Haven. We've been working really hard with our local partners, both law and fire to move this program forward. We're getting ready to launch this program, hopefully in first of July. It is live now, but we'll have all the edits done to that. And then we'll really start to push your know your zone campaign. One of the things is we have some modifications that are being made to some zones. So we're not pushing it as hard as we normally would, but we will push a campaign out with a media blitz in cooperation with Jason Hoppin and all the fire agencies for know your zone campaign as we move into the fire season. COVID-19, even though it's starting to stabilize, it still has some impacts for us in the fire service and how we do our daily business and how we protect our personnel. It also changes our aspect to our responses to large emergencies and how we deal with large gatherings of people and what protective measures we still need to take to protect everybody at the incident. Our logistical support on large emergencies, this could provide some of those challenges. I know last year in all of our fires, just with feeding folks, we had to minimize the impacts of people sitting around each other or interacting with each other and had to provide food to go and things of that nature. So logistically supporting folks on large scale emergencies could be still a challenge as we move into this fire season. And then our resource allocation and the duration that they're on an assignment may change based on their exposure and how long they've been on an assignment, whether we have to rotate folks in and out more often as we'll keep a very close eye on it as we move into the fire season. So a couple of big things for Cal Fire are new S-70 Blackhawk or what we're calling the Firehawk Helicopters. We have four of those that are in service now, statewide, they are flying in fires and they are having a significant impact on fire suppression efforts. They're a much larger platform that carry more water and more personnel. So instead of our traditional Huey, which carries anywhere from 300 to 360 gallons of water, the new Firehawk carries 1000 gallons of water. So it's a more available resource to us as long as they have water to be able to drop with, which with a reservoirs at the levels they are, could be troublesome, but they do fly twice as fast as our Huey. So their turnaround times from a water resource that may be farther away should, they should have a significant impact on our abilities to suppress fires. The Cal Fire C-130 program, this is a new platform that Cal Fire is getting ready to launch hopefully by fire season 2022. We will have this platform up and available. This can drop anywhere from 3000 to 4000 gallons of retardant. These aircraft were acquired through a federal excess program through the US Forest Service where they could not utilize the aircraft and Cal Fire found an opportunity to grab these aircraft and we're working with the United States Air Force and a contract with getting them tamed and getting them certified to be able to fly on fires hopefully as soon as next fire season. So as we kind of move forward here, and I'll try to close this out here real quick, so I know you guys got a long agenda today. Water concerns, as we're all aware, our reservoirs are well below normal for the most part across the area. And what we're also seeing is not only are the natural reservoirs, but even the stock ponds on private property and that are well below their normal levels, which could be troublesome in the event that we have a large-scale fire because we are gonna have to go farther away to get water and make the resource available to our rotary aircraft, meaning our helicopters. So what does this mean for us here locally in the county? So as I mentioned, all of these elements that are affecting us statewide are affecting us here locally. Our fuel moistures are a big concern for us right now and that receptive fuel bed. We've taken preemptive actions by cutting off our burning early and basically limiting what people can do as far as fuel reduction. And I know a lot of folks need to be able to burn fuel versus a mechanical removal, but we're trying to provide those resources through chipping programs and other avenues in lieu of burning, but we had to reduce that burning capability much earlier than we normally would want to. Our state and local crews will most likely see an above normal fire season as we talk about as the overall state mission for suppression efforts come forward. And God forbid we have another lightning series come through at the level that it did last year and tax our resources to the limit that it did. Our local strike teams will experience more assignments. So working with our local cooperating partners through the state's mutual aid system are most likely gonna see a request for assignments much more often and their assignments could be much longer. And then here locally, we continue to rely on our Santa Cruz County volunteers and our local cooperators to cover our Cal Fire stations in the event that we go below our drawdown until we can get cover from other areas of the state and that's been a reliance that has been needed and it's been used over and over through the years. And we are appreciative of all that cooperative relationship that we've had over the years with all the agencies here in the county. And with that, that concludes my presentation and I'll be more than happy to answer any questions. Yeah, I don't know if Mr. Beaton or anyone would add to that. I think our chair and chair McPherson were very short on the agenda and the presentation went a little longer than we had anticipated. So staff has no more comments. Thank you. Yeah, and I wanna thank Chief Larkin and all the fire districts for the work that they've done in the past and what they're doing now. It is encouraging and you've answered my questions about state federal budgets providing adequate resources. It's good to see that they're providing more resources particularly on the air attacks, so to speak. Well, we just hope they are adequate and that there are other fires going on elsewhere that are bigger and more concerned in the state. But thank you very much for that presentation. It's encouraging to know that the federal and state governments are doing what they can to help us to get more fire retardant efforts going as we move on. Any questions from the board? I'll just start with Supervisor Koenig. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Chief Larkin, for that report. It's obviously extremely concerning that we're at really an unprecedented level of fire risk this year. And also considering that we're so far down in terms of the crews who actually help out in addressing these fires. So two quick questions. If we wanted to staff another hand crew locally, what would be the best way to do that? Would we wanna work with the Monterey Bay Work Center or Conservation Board directly? Yeah, so the Monterey Bay Work Center, they had to dig really deep to find enough folks to staff the one crew that they are providing. So they have upstaffed to a third crew, which is the fire crew. So that would probably be very difficult for them to be able to staff out enough folks to staff another crew. Okay, but if, you know, whatever we were able to manage it, there'd be the best entity to work with to do that. Yeah, they would be the best one to reach out to. But our cooperative effort with them, they are controlled, they are a Cal Fire resource. They are under our direct control during the entire time that we're under agreement with them. So that's something that we could discuss offline and I could provide you with potential information about how to proceed with a request like that. Okay, great, thanks. One other question. You know, in your estimation if the FireSafe Council and FireWise program need to be funded to a greater extent? Well, the FireSafe Councils typically are funded under a grant. They go after grant funding for their potential funding. So the FireWise programs, those are community-based programs, which typically they just require that effort within the community and then the time commitment by the community for that. But the essence of those two programs and funding, you know, that's a long-term equitable issue that needs to be addressed. And grant funding, though it's popular, but you're competing with every other county in the state. So to answer that is they probably should seek out some additional funding from somewhere other than grants. Got it, thanks. That's all my questions. Any questions? Yeah, if it's okay. Yeah, as soon as you can, go ahead. Okay, thank you. A quick question. I want to thank you, Chief Larkin, and all the firefighters for all you guys do, and how important you are in certain years like this that are happening. We've been hit by so many different things. So thank you very much. And I hope all of you are safe in the future. Curious on the who flies the Blackhawks and the C-130 planes, are those actually firemen or are they pilots that you have to hire out? So we hire our own pilots for our Rotary Wing aircraft, which are the helicopters. So they are Cal Fire employees trained to fly those aircraft. Most of them are either commercial type pilots that are trained to do firefighting or they are ex-military type pilots that have experience in flying these aircraft. So our fixed wing aircraft, which are air tankers, we actually have a contract to provide those tanker pilots under Cal Fire's control. Okay, thank you. Take care, man. All right, thank you. Any other questions from the board? Any other questions? No questions? Okay, maybe we'll just, can we could open up to public comment? We have a long agenda everyone. So do we have anybody that wants to have a comment? We do, we currently have three members of the public queued for public comment. Okay, go ahead. Mary Lou Alejandres, your microphone is available. As a reminder to star six to unmute your microphone if you're dialing in or press the microphone icon on your screen app. Hey, we'll go to caller 1999. Good morning, still. This is James Ealing Whitman. I listened to this. I enjoyed all the information. I think I'll just be polite. I'm looking at a book in my hand called Paradise Lost, The Great California Fire Chronicles by James W. Lee. This book is actually available free online. Oh, you know, I'm just gonna keep it to light and not upset anybody more than I probably already have. So thank you very much for your time. If you call us three, your microphone is available. Well, this is, oh, I sent me just, I'm gonna go to my other phone. I have no other callers in the queue chair. Did she say she was gonna go on to another phone? Yeah. 30 seconds and then we'll move on. I think we'll move on. Is there, there are no other public comments? There are no other public comments. Okay. See no other comments for the board out this presentation. I don't know that we have to take a motion to accept this. There's no action on this is just a presentation. Thank you chair. All right. We will move to item number eight. That is to consider accepting resolutions from the cities of Capitol, Santa Cruz and Watsonville granting consent to renew the tourism and marketing district or TMD direct staff to work with the board of the TMD to incorporate a change in to the plan to continue exempting nonprofit businesses and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum the County Administrative Officer is Lisa Brown. Are you going to present here? I'm going to speak with Lisa Benson. Hey chair, right here, Lisa Benson. Yes, I'll be presenting on this item. I'm gonna share my screen at very brief staff report. Can everyone see my screen? Let's see. Now we can. Can you see my screen? Yes. Now we can. All right. Thank you for the record, Lisa Benson, ACAO. I'm going to provide a very brief item or a staff report. We also have representation from Visit Santa Cruz. We have Maggie Ivy, John Bear, Sony here to answer any technical questions as well as Barbara Mason, our economic development coordinator and Jason Heath has been part of the team moving this process forward. Just very quickly for the public as the board is very familiar with what a TMD, a Tourism Marketing District is, this is a special district that hotels can ask to have formed to collect a special assessment that provides funding for ongoing tourism marketing efforts and this is around generating overnight visitation here in the County. The original TMD was started in 2010 and for a five-year term and then renewed in 2015. So this will be the second renewal. The board, go to the next slide. This has been a three-step process. The board took first action on May 11th with a series of actions accepting the resolution of intent. The first set of petitions from the hotel owners indicating a majority support for moving forward with the renewal and really set us into motion for this three-part process that we're literally in the middle of. We're at the second place on the slide. We're in the public meeting, noticed public meeting phase and that's really the main priority of this meeting today. This is an opportunity for the public to provide any testimony around the renewal as well as for the board to receive any protests around the renewal from members within the assessment district. We'll have a final action on June 29th where we would be actually having the board considering the resolution of formation and that final public hearing around the opportunity for any notice of protest for a renewal of the TMD. So we're halfway through. I'm gonna go to the next slide. Today, the staff recommendation was to accept the resolutions of consent from the cities of Watsonville, Capitola and Santa Cruz. As I mentioned, the most important aspect of this is going to be around providing the opportunity for public comment on the proposed renewal. And then this other piece really is around what went on with the council from city of Scotts Valley last week. They indicated that they would only move forward with a consent for the renewal pending a change in the plan around the inclusion of not-for-profit hospitality organizations. The direction from that council was they would like the not-for-profit exemption to be continued and that their ask was for the board to direct staff to work with Visit Santa Cruz around this request to continue that exemption. And then they would consider moving forward with a resolution of consent that we could then accept at the June 29th meeting. So that's another piece of our recommendation today. And then the final recommendation is that we, of course, come back on the 29th to conclude this process based on the final public hearing. We, as I mentioned, have members, we have Maggie and John from Visit Santa Cruz if there's any questions. And I think if we do have time, Maggie would appreciate the opportunity to at least provide a moment, a minute or two of their perspective on the process so far. But that would conclude my staff report. I'm happy to address any questions and I'm going to stop sharing my screen. Very good. I will ask Maggie, the Executive Director of Visit Santa Cruz County, a very successful and robust organization and we thank you for your efforts. Thank you, Chair McPherson and board members. Thank you for bringing this issue forward today. I just want to confirm a few of the updates in terms of the process. There have been no protests to date regarding the renewal of the district. We have unanimous votes for inclusion from city councils of Capitola, Santa Cruz and Watsonville to be part of the renewal. The vast majority of the lodging partners in the county have petitioned in favor of renewing the district. And in their capacity as the owner's association Visit Santa Cruz County's board of directors has also unanimously voted to move forward. We concur with the request from Scotts Valley. We have no problem with continuing the nonprofit exclusion. The process has been driven by members of the TMD task force meaning the lodging industry itself. We are ready to move forward with the approval through the identified process. And again, I just want to thank the board of supervisors. As you know, we've had a devastating year in terms of the impacts to the travel industry as well as our community as a whole. This continued funding is imperative for the recovery from these impacts, not only to overnight visitation but our local economy and the tax base. So we are anxious to get this process concluded on the 29th. Thank you. Thank you and congratulations on the success stories of your industry throughout the years. It's been terrific. Who knew that something like COVID or the fires would happen, but you've carried on your stable organization and we appreciate that very much. Is there any questions from the board? I want to visit Santa Cruz County for all its work on the item. We do benefit a great deal in Santa Cruz County from the agency that promotes travel in our region. And I support this next step including the nonprofit exemption but I want to ask our assistant CAO, Lisa Benson, whether we could, we can, you're recommended we postpone this and accept the resolutions from postpone the acceptance of the resolutions of the cities until the 29th and by which time Scott's Valley will have rescheduled the vote on whether to accept, is that correct? We can, if it's the direction of the board to postpone accepting the resolutions of consent of the three cities that have already taken action, that is perfectly fine for us to pick that up as part of the final actions on the 29th. It does not in any way impede our process. So, but we, I would need clear direction saying we would not be accepting recommend the action number one and that we would just, we would roll that into the final action on the 29th. Okay, any other questions from the board before I ask the public? Any questions from the public? I have one caller, call in user three, your microphone is available. This is Marilyn Garrett and the words sound good but what has just happened in the last year, I'm gonna read a little quote from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s forward to the vote the truth about COVID-19. In America, the quarantine predictably shattered the nation's once booming economic engine, putting 58 million Americans out of work and permanently bankrupting over 100,000 small businesses, including 41,000 black owned businesses, some of which took three generations of investment to build. These policies have also set into motion the inevitable dismantling of the social safety net that nurtured America's envied middle class, while obliterating the American middle class and dropping an additional 8% of America. Ms. Garrett, could you please focus on the question? Let me finish. These are all the poverty lines. 2020 COVID coup transferred a trillion dollars of wealth to big technology, big data, big telecom, big finance, big media, big hemis, and they're making a lot of money out of this COVID coup. My question is, is the tourism and marketing district to promote these giants since small businesses have been destroyed under the COVID lockdowns? Thank you. As a matter of fact, there's a lot of small businesses in the hotel motel industry that benefit us in the county and a lot of people who are employed by them. Are there any questions from the public? There are no other speakers to this item, Chair. I would entertain a motion. Maybe you want the direction from Lisa to begin with or maybe you understood what she was asking for. Mr. Chair, Ms. Benson, do you just, if you'll just reiterate the item that the site changed from the recommended actions and I'll be prepared to make that motion. Absolutely, thank you. We basically would like to, the direction number two, direct staff to work with VSC on making those changes to the TMD plan and those would come back to the board for the 29th action. Direct the staff to return on June 29th for the final public hearing to complete the process. And the third action would be to bring back the resolutions of consent from the cities for board consideration at the June 29th. So it's all recommended actions, except for the first one. Exactly. Then Mr. Chair, let me just first by saying I appreciate Ms. Ivy's work, all the great outreach she's done both to myself and to the cities. I did speak to some local hotel owners within my district. They're very supportive of this. In fact, if you look at the numbers they're overwhelmingly supportive of this throughout the entire county. So I would like to move the recommended actions, absent item number one on the recommended action list. Second. I'll check it. Second by Coonerty. Okay, please call the roll. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Koenig. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. Okay, now we have two scheduled items, 10 and 11 for 1045. The first is zone five flood control and water conservation district board director's meeting. And I'll mention it and then deliver to chairman Caput of zone five. The board of supervisors shall recess in order to permit the board of directors of the Santa Cruz County flood control and water conservation district zone five to convene and carry out a regularly scheduled meeting. Zone five regular meeting agenda June 8th, 2021. Mr. Caput, Supervisor Caput, do you have any comments? It's pretty straightforward. I, we're on item number nine, right? 10. Or 10. 10. Zone five. We're, this, you're throwing me off a little bit here. Oh, it's just a risk. We, we've, yes, item 10, we skip nine. We're going to go back to it. We have these two items, number 10 and 11. One is zone five flood control. There is a agenda that there's not much to it. But you, you were the one we should call that to order. Okay. That'll be fine. Okay. And if the chair of zone five of Supervisor Caput doesn't mind, I can read off the items on the agenda. Very good. Item one is the call to order and roll call. Please do so. Thank you. Supervisor Koenig. President. Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. McPherson. Here. Caput. Here. Thank you. You have a quorum. And it's Jave and Bertrand are excused. Okay. You have, I don't know if Supervisor Caput has the agenda in front of him, Mr. Kerber. Do you have that? Could you? I can read the item number two is consideration of additions and deletions to the consent and regular agendas. Yeah. I guess what's throwing me off here is we're talking about zone five, right? Correct. Uh, okay. Chair Caput, no additions or deletions to the agenda today. And Ms. Cabrera, can you elevate Rachel Fatui if she's not already elevated? She'll be managing staff items. Thank you. She has been elevated. Item three is oral communications. Oral communications, yeah. Are there any oral communications? There are no speakers. You are the vice chair, Supervisor McPherson. Okay. There are no speakers to this item. Madam clerk, if I may, just as a point of order, it's my understanding and just looking at the meeting minutes, I believe we actually did approve Supervisor McPherson as the chair of zone five at our last meeting, which is the standard process that the chair of the Board of Supervisors would be the chair. So I think that he's the lucky winner here to continue the meeting actually as the continued chair now is going fine. Thank you very much. Thank you. We'll update that. I'm more focused on the zone seven, so. Okay. All right. So for item three, there are no speakers for oral communication. The next item is the approval of the zone five meeting minutes, the flood control and water conservation district zone five, March 23rd, 2021 minutes. I have a motion to approve. Move approval. I'll second. Call the roll, please. Supervisor Koenig? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Caput? Aye. McPherson? Aye. Friend? Aye, and Madam Clerk, just confirming that there's nobody from the public that wanted to speak on this action item. There are no members from the public that would like to speak to this item. Thank you. Thank you, motion passes. Next item is item five, action on the consent agenda, which is item six on this agenda. Would you like me to read it into the record? Sure. As board of directors of the Santa Cruz County Flood Control and Water Conservation District zone five, accept and file the third quarter report of fiscal year 2020 through 2021, zone five expansion construction revenue as recommended by the district engineer. Any comments from the board on the fiscal year report? I don't, and assuming nobody from the community is interested in this item, speaking of this item, I'll move the recommended actions or the consent agenda. Thank you. Call the roll, please. Supervisor Koenig? Aye. Friend? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Caput? Aye. McPherson? Aye. Thank you, motion passes. Now for regular agenda, there is one item on the regular agenda. As board of directors of the Santa Cruz County Flood Control and Water Conservation District zone five, consider and approve the proposed 2021 through 22 zone five and zone five expansion construction budgets as outlined in the memorandum of the district attorney or the district engineer. Okay. Any comments from the board members? I'm approving the year's budget. Any comments from the public? There are no members for the public that would like to speak to this item. Just confirming that Ms. Fatui did not have any presentation on behalf of staff for this item. You did, Rachel. You're muted. I do not have an extra presentation, but I was just gonna read the numbers in the budget and what's the revenues and the allocations, but I do not have any extra presentation. Okay. Except for that. So for zone five, this is the budget for zone five and zone five expansion. Zone five revenues are in the amount of, $1,553, $453 all allocated for expenditures for the next fiscal year. And for zone five expansion construction, the revenues are 721,263 all allocated for expenditures for zone, for the next fiscal year. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Masala, did you have any comments? I didn't know. Thank you, Chair. Nothing to add. Okay. I'll move the recommended actions, Chair. No assertion. All the roll, please. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Supervisor Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Friend. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. I think, is that the last item on the agenda? Yes, that is the last item on the agenda. Okay. I'll move to formally adjourn. Or would somebody formally move to adjourn? Well, we will adjourn zone five and we will now move to the next item on our 1045 agenda, which is the, as the Santa Cruz County Board of Directors for Flood Control and Water Conservation District or zone seven, we'll move into zone seven. So we'll begin with a roll call, Madam Clerk. I don't know if you need additional time to elevate anybody and if not. We will just need just a moment. Thank you. Okay. Who knows everyone? I'll call the roll call now. Supervisor Koenig or Director Koenig. Here. Billusich. Here. Caput. Here. Coonerty. Here. Friend. Here. McPherson. Here. Violet. Lucas. I'm here. Thank you. Director Kuzbushan is excused. Very good. Chairman Friend. Thank you. All right. So we'll now move on to item two of the agenda, which is the consideration of any additions or deletions to the agenda. I don't know, Mr. Machado, if you were the one that'll be addressing that on behalf, I understand Dr. Strudley is out of town today. Yes. Are there any changes to today's agenda? Thank you, Chair. No additions or deletions to the agenda today. Thank you. I will now move on to oral communications and opportunity for members of the community to address us on items within, not on today's agenda, but within the purview of zone seven. Madam Clerk, is there anybody that would like to address us on oral communications? There are no members of the public for oral communication. Thank you. Move on to item four, which is the approval of the zone seven board meeting minutes. Does any director have a question on the minutes? Is there anybody in the community that would like to address us regarding the meeting minutes? There are no members of the public. Thank you. I'll entertain a motion, please. I'll make a move. I'll move to approve. All right. So we have a motion from Director Bilicic. Director Caput, are you okay being a second on that motion? That's fine. All right, with a second from Director Caput, we'll have a roll call, please. Director Koenig. Right. Bilicic. Yes. Caput. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Friend. Aye. Thank you. Motion passes with the tendons. Thank you. We'll move on to item five, which is an action on the consent agenda, which are items six through 10. Are there any members of the community that would like to address this on the consent agenda before we take action? There are no speakers to this item. Are there any comments from any board members on the consent agenda? Seeing none, I would like to entertain a motion. I'll make a motion to approve consent agenda. Second. All right, we have a motion from Director Bilicic and a second from Director Koenig. We'll move to a roll call vote, please. Director Koenig. Aye. Bilicic. Yes. Caput. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Friend. Aye. Thank you. Motion passes with the tendons. Thank you. We're gonna move on to item seven, which is the first item, excuse me, item 11, which is the first item of the regular agenda, zone seven, which is to consider the 2122 proposed budget for zone seven is outlined in the memo of the district engineer, Mr. Machado. Thank you, chair and directors, Matt Machado, your district engineer and his chair friend mentioned a bit ago that Mark Strudley is on some much deserved vacations. So he is out this week. The item before you is our zone seven budget. Per our rules and regulations, your board is here to consider this budget today. Additionally, the city of Watsonville will consider the same budget also today. And then wrapping that up, we will be back in front of the board of supervisors as part of their standard budget procedures on June 21st through the 24th for budget hearings for final approval of said budget. Just quickly, the budget today includes total expenditures of $4,169,609. These expenditures include the following. They include a fund balance of $476,000, $559. They also include grant revenues of $1,530,458. And they include assessment revenue of $2,162,592. The action recommended today is first to consider approval of the fiscal year 2122 proposed budget for zone seven, flood control water conservation district. And secondly, to accept and file this semi-annual levy inspection report which is attached to the board item. I and staff are available to answer any questions you may have. Thank you, Mr. Machado. Are there any questions? Dr. Bilsich, please. Yes, I wanted to look on 11A. It talks about the intergovernmental and that the recommended amount is for 2122 is down. Can you explain why or who that is or what happened there? Just so I'm clear on it, can you repeat the segment that you're interested in? 11A, the budget details zone seven-foot control district. And which part of that budget detail are you interested in? Intergovernmental where it goes over recommended 2122 and it's a reduction. You see that? Oh, yes. Thank you. Let me just give me one second, please. I mean, it's not a big deal. I just wondered if there was some and who is intergovernmental? So intergovernmental could be, would be revenues from our partners such as Army Corps or the state. And so it's just an adjustment there in the sense that, compared to last year's approved budget. So this is just an adjustment with revenues from those other partner funding agencies is what this is. So they're not contributing as much. Well, interestingly, that's correct compared to last year, but as you'll hear today in my other report that we are securing some significant funds from our partners. This is just a budget adjustment from last year to this year. Okay, thank you. And then also on page 11C, it talks about the Martin Ditch and it says that the pipe needs work. How do we address that? Or how does that take place or when? That's a good question. And if, if allowable, I'd love to research that a bit more and get back to you on that Martin Ditch question. Great, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Doctor. Are there any other directors that had questions on the budget? I'm not seeing any. Are there any members of the community that'd like to address us on this item? There are no speakers to this item. Thank you, Madam Clerk. We'll move back to the board for action. Dr. Bilsich, you would like to make a motion. Yes, I'd like to make a motion to approve the budget. Second. Thanks, Director Koenig. All right, we have a motion from Director Bilsich and a second from Director Koenig. We could have a roll call, please. Director Koenig. All right. Bilsich. All right. Caput. All right. Coonerty. All right. McPherson. All right. Friend. All right. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. All right, thank you. We'll move on to item 12, which is a public hearing on zone seven assessment rates for the 21-22 fiscal year. We're here to, we are here to hear any objections or protests, if any, and to consider adoption of the resolution confirming the rate report as outlined in the memo of the district engineer, Mr. Machado. Thank you, Chair and directors. So on March 9th of this year, the board adopted a resolution confirming previously approved increases and assessment rates for zone seven for fiscal year 21-22. Those summary of rates are attached, and I would comment that the increase is based upon the current CPI, the consumer price index, further, the board set today is the public hearing date on the 21-22 assessment rate for zone seven. The recommended action before you today is first to open the public hearing and hear objections and protests, if any, to the proposed 21-22 assessment rate report for zone seven, and secondly, to close the public hearing upon conclusion of the hearing and consider adoption of the resolution confirming the written report on assessment rates for the 21-22 fiscal year. Staff is available to answer any questions you may have. Thank you, Mr. Machado. Are there any questions on the assessment rates from any director? Okay, seeing none, is there any member of the community that would like to address us on this item? There are no speakers to this item, Chair. Thank you. We didn't receive any written item on this either, I assume that we're aware of. We'll now move for a motion. Is there any director that would like to make motion on this item? I think it's Greg Chappett. Second. All right, so Supervisor Caput, I imagine that's for the recommended actions, correct? Yes. Thank you. And second from Director Koenig, if we could have a roll call, please. Director Koenig. Aye. Billusich. Aye. Caput. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Friend. Aye. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. Thank you. We'll move on to the last item of the agenda, which is item 13 to consider a status report on the Pajaro River Flood Risk Management Project as outlined in the memo of district engineer. We've had some exciting things happen lately on this and I'll hand it over to you, Mr. Machado. Thank you, Chair and Directors. This is a good news report. So I'm just gonna provide a few of the highlights. So to begin with the design agreement with the US Army Corps was fully executed on May 21st. Many thanks to you all for your support and to Chair Friend for being such a vocal and hardworking champion of our efforts. Also, I'd like to thank our state and federal partners, especially Congressman Panetta for his perseverance, his focus and continued support. This design agreement secures federal money to complete design of our project's first phase, which is very exciting news. We do expect 100% design plans in calendar year 22. We further expect construction to begin in approximately two years. So some very good news and great strides forward. An update on our state subventions authorization. There is great progress in the state legislation, which would further increase the state's ability to provide a larger local match to our federal funds. SB 496, authored by Senator John Laird and Assembly members Robert Rivas and Mark Stone is making his way through the state legislative process. Recently, actually on June 1st, it actually made it all the way through the Senate. And it's now at the Assembly's role and they will be selecting a committee that will hear it and then it'll go through appropriations and hopefully short after on the governor's desk for a major victory for our local communities. And so this is great news. Lastly, I would share that our CEQA environmental process and review for our large project is moving well forward. A draft EIR is expected to be available for public review later this calendar year. So all really good news and happy to end on such a high note for today's agenda and I will stop there and answer any questions you may have. Thank you, Mr. Machado. It is great news, SB 496. I don't want to understate its importance, this body has obviously been supportive of it. First, thanks to the work of Assembly Member Stone, originally authored actually by then Assembly Member Laird but then Assembly Member Stone to get the 70% authorization. Now we're working for 100% on the cap to eliminate the 70% arbitrary cap so the state can provide more funding toward the local match, which would mean that for our local community or disadvantaged communities, the burden is significantly reduced as it should be. This is an ideal project that meets all that criteria. So great appreciation to our state delegation. It passed unanimously out of the state senate, which is pretty unheard of on these kinds of legislation so it may now move over to the assembly and feel free to, if you know members outside of Rivas and Stone, feel free to make sure that they support this item. Are there any directors I would like to comment on the recent update? Director Kulicic, and then I'll go to Director Caput. Start with Director Kulicic, please. I'm just so excited and so proud of all the people that have been involved in this that we have made it this far. I remember as a city council member long ago, it was like, well, we can't do anything. We can't get it done. It's not going to happen. And all of a sudden, people stepped up. Our board of supervisors, you director friend and chair friend and also director Caput and Congressman Panetta has been phenomenal, the Army Corps. And I can't say enough about Dr. Strudley and you, Matt. I mean, it's just been great work all the way around and great progress. So thank you to everybody that's been so much involved in this. Thank you. And now Senator Laird, that's wonderful news. Director Caput, do we have any numbers on what they're considering as far as the match here in South County? It could be anywhere from zero to 100%. Yeah, so just real quickly, our current agreement with the state would be up to 70% match and this special legislation potentially could take us to 100% match. And so it's really a great opportunity. The state's already been a great partner and this would make it even a stronger partnership from our perspective and it would then reflect upon what the community share would be, which would be greatly diminished. Thank you. Yeah, when we say 100% match, how significant is that as far as residential property here in South County? So I'll step in then for you, Mr. Machado on this. So right now it's just an estimate, director Caput, part of it is that it's unclear what would be available still in the Subventions Fund at the time of accessing it, but we believe that it would reduce at least the residential share by half. It could be a little bit more, but that's the estimate that we have is that we believe that it would cut the current proposals that we've been doing by half. Now, that also sets a new groundwork for us to try and find a way to get to the other half of what the residential share is, but again, the greater investment by state or federal government makes it easier on grants and other things to try and come through, but reducing the burden by half is quite a statement of investment by the state from what they've already done. And I agree, I would make it of course much easier when it goes to the public for voting to actually vote to approve the assessment. And I guess the figure that was thrown around before was about $500 per residential property in South. In Harbour Road Village and Bay Village. So if we're talking half and we knocked it down to 250, I mean, that'd be wonderful. If we can get even lower, that'd be great. Thank you, are there any other directors with comments on this update? I just want to say congratulations to all and repeat Dr. Bilicic's comment. This has gone on for what, 40 years? And we're getting to the finish line. Congratulations to all of you. Well, Director McPherson, to put it in perspective, I appreciate your vote as a state senator on behalf of the initial authorizing legislation on this. So yes, everything comes full circle. Hey, you're aging me, man. No, I wasn't trying to age you. I was just trying to show that you've been there since the beginning, the original. All right, so there we go. All right, is there any other member of the community I'd like to address is just on the program update. There are no speakers to this item. All right, thank you. I didn't actually see, Madam Clerk, is this an action item on this update? Is it an acceptance file? This is an acceptance file. Thank you, Mr. Machado. So I'd like to entertain a motion for accepting and filing the report. So, Director Bilicic? Yes, I'll make a motion to accept this wonderful report. And then I'll second, though. Thank you, Director Cabin. Thank you both to your backdrop, showing different parts of the Papua River. We have a motion and a second from Director Bilicic and Director Caput. A roll call, please. Director Koenig. Aye. Bilicic. Aye. Caput. Aye. Coonerty. Yes. McPherson. Yes. Friend. Aye. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. Thank you, and that'll adjourn the Zone 7 meeting. I'll turn it back to Chair Bruce McPherson for the regular Board of Supervisors. Thank you. Congratulations again. We will return now to item number nine on the regular agenda of the County Board of Supervisors. Public hearing to consider application 191157, a proposal to amend the Dominican Hospital Master Plan 88-0065 and for a commercial development permit, sign exception and planned unit development to facilitate construction of an approximately 85,000-square-foot hospital addition and three-story parking garage adopt resolution accepting the CEQA mitigated negative declaration and mitigation monitoring and reporting program adopt the planned unit development ordinance and approve application 191157 as outlined in the memorandum of the planning director. We have a series of items resolution, ordinance PUD, Planning Commission Resolution Number 2021-04, revised conditions of approval 191157, findings for approval of 191157, revised page 89, Planning Commission Report, staff report to the Planning Commission on May 12th, 2021, initial study of 191157 and a letter from the applicant, 191157. We have a series of people who probably will address us. I'm not sure who from, I think Nathan Macbeth is going to address his first day development review planner, this item. Nathan. Thank you. Nathan Macbeth, Planning Department. This is application 191157, it's located just on the north side of Soquel Drive, approximately 1,000 feet north of the intersection with Highway 1. The applicant is Hamilton Land Planning and the owner is Dignity Health. This is the location of the project, consists of three parcels outlined in blue here, Soquel Drive to the south and frontage on Mission Drive as well. This is kind of a zoom of the existing site improvements, the large white structure here is the existing hospital. There are approximately 20 acres in total. The hospital consists of an emergency room, pre-op and pre- and post-op, multiple medical facilities, offices, surface parking for approximately 1,000 vehicles and labor and delivery. The project's located in the Santa Cruz County plan, sustainable Santa Cruz County plan identified as a medical district and flea market area. The subject parcels are shown here in blue and here in purple. The project before you today would not propose any changes to the zoning district or general plan designations outlined in the sustainable Santa Cruz County plan is the proposed hospital addition here shown in orange, the proposed parking garage and the project includes a service yard that straddles the property boundaries here. Site improvements include a 85,000 square foot addition to the hospital, a three story parking garage. There's landscaping proposed throughout the site which consists of some replacement trees at a two to one ratio. There'll be a new parking garage of 409 parking spaces, approximately 60 net new spaces. 40 new bicycle spaces, some ADA compliant parking, electric vehicle charging stations and an overall enhanced path of travel throughout the site. The project requires a planned unit development, a master plan amendment, commercial development permit, sign exception and over height fence approval. The sign exception and over height fence approval included in the commercial development permit. The planned unit development is a request for relief or increase to height for the proposed hospital addition. The zone district allows for up to 35 foot maximum height and the proposed hospital addition would be up to 60 feet. Same to for the parking garage, except their request for this is just to 40 feet. Additionally, they would allow for structures located within the service yard to straddle property lines. Minor variations to the site design would be allowed, provided they're consistent with the overall design and concept of the PD, PD. This is a elevation of the hospital, the north and south elevations. Most of us that have ever been to the hospital will come in through the south entrance and this would be the view we would see. These are the east and west elevations. The east elevation shown here with the sign emergency, that is a relocation of the existing emergency room reconfiguring of it, if you will. Probably the most prominent view of the addition. This is the parking garage, the height of the parking garage tower, or the elevator shaft maxes out at 40 feet. The overall height of the railing would be closer to 20, 22 feet. This is a planned view of the service yard. The blue lines by secting this service area show the parcel boundaries. Two of the parcels will be developed with the parking garage. These parcels will be required as a condition of approval to be combined. Those two parcels are not conditioned to be combined with the greater campus. This is a side view of the elevation, rather of the proposed over height wall. This is surrounding the service area and intended to provide security for those critical facilities within that service yard. This is adjacent to the parking garage. The height and location design of the wall would not impede sight distance for vehicles entering or exiting the garage and certainly not for pedestrians or other modes of transportation. A new sign plan is being proposed. Our code allows for up to 50 square feet of signage. And this proposal would include roughly, as what's shown here is roughly 85 square feet of signage. Directional signage would also be included as shown. That is not included in the overall square footage allotment. I go back in addition to this, there's an additional 25 square feet of signage proposed on the parking garage. You may have seen in an earlier slide. This is a landscape plan for surrounding the proposed addition to the hospital, consisting of two main courtyards surrounding the site. These courtyards are a little bit enhanced here. This is a landscape plan, not as colorful as the previous slide, but it shows the extent of landscaping surrounding the proposed parking garage. The project went through environmental review. Conducted, prepared an initial study and determined and mitigated negative declaration. Mitigation monitoring and reporting program was required for transportation impacts. And those impacts were as a result of increase in vehicle miles traveled. And we worked with the applicant to develop a set of mitigations that were enforceable and that is to develop an employer-based travel demand program, such as cruise 511. Contract with a transportation coordinator to manage their employer-based program, provide emergency care and feed ride home for folks that are carpooling and to establish some success criteria to show that employee participation. Additionally, we identified an operational deficiency at the intersection of Soquel Ave and Soquel Drive. Transportation improvement fees will be required for the project. Contained in your packet, the applicant has requested a reduction in TIA fees. The project has been conditioned in accordance with our practice and we're not recommending any reduction to TIA fees. This is the East elevation. Again, probably the most prominent of the emergency room. Getting back out onto Soquel Drive at the corner emission drive. This is existing condition. See the parking garage proposed probably behind this tree here in the middle of the frame. I can kind of see the difference here. This photo is with the vegetation fully established. This is Mission Drive looking directly into the site with a hospital in the background and with the proposed parking garage here. This is a bird's eye view of the project. As proposed and conditioned, the project complies with all applicable codes and policies including the general plan County code. This item was heard by the planning commission on May 12th, 2020. The planning commission unanimously adopted the attached resolution recommending that your board adopt the resolution adopting the mitigated negative declaration and mitigation monitoring and reporting program for the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act. Adopt the planned unit development ordinance and to approve application 191-157, master plan amendment, commercial development permit, sign exception, over height wall based on the attached findings and conditions. That concludes my staff presentation. I'm available for any questions. Thank you. Pardon me, Chair McPherson, your microphone is muted. I think that the complete presentation by any County staff at this point, is there any comments for the boards before we go to the public? I'll just say real quick, I think this is a wonderful project. It'll be a great asset to all the people of the entire County assembly group. Thank you. Supervisor Koenig? I'll just add as well that, I think this is a great project. The two new operating rooms are fantastic. The reconfiguration of the emergency room will help a lot. Overall, I think that it's a beautiful building and very proposed landscaping. It also does a good job of shielding the impacts of the new building from the surrounding neighborhood. Personally, I have no problem with the height because the increased height areas are sufficiently set back from the edge of the property. And I really appreciate that the project or that the Dominican will also be working on travel demand management program, including joining Cruise 511. Very well. Any other comments from the board? I'll just briefly, Mr. Chattis, like to say that any kind of investment in improved health delivery services in our communities is definitely needed. And this is an important investment right now. There are other projects that are planned in the future. And I'm glad to see this level of investment. I'm fully supportive of the project. I'm also supportive of the recommended actions. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Mr. Vice-Chair, did you have any comments you wanted to make? No, Mr. Chair, I'll wait for the public, but I'll share my colleagues enthusiasm for what this will do for our community. I'm with you. Okay, is there anybody from the public that would like to address us? Yes, we have three speakers. First speaker is Jeanette Angel Ramirez. Your microphone is available. This is Jeanette Angel Ramirez. I'm the Chief Operating Officer at Dominican Hospital. And I just want to state that we've really been excited about the Cruise 511 program. Our staff is very excited about it. And there's a lot of interest in the electric bike. So we appreciate it and are monitoring it. And we'll share those as we move forward. Thank you. Thank you. Color 2915, your microphone is available. Good morning, this is Becky Steinbruner. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. I don't have the slide presentation that you folks have seen available to me, but in looking at the plans that are part of the Planning Commission's packet, I have just questions. I support this, but I have questions. Will there be any use of recycled water for the landscape plan? We do have that ability perhaps coming up in the horizon in our community. And I would hope that there would be at least the plumbing put in to be able to use recycled water at some point in the future. I also see in the revised pages eight and nine from the Planning Commission, it says the project engineer evaluated the downstream system from the project site to the open conveyance on Caltrans property in the landscaped area between Commercial Way and Highway One for the stormwater management report. The analysis determined that existing storm drain facilities are not adequate to make current county flood control standards. I would like to know how that issue will be addressed there will be some additional stormwater runoff, perhaps not a lot because most of these surfaces are already impervious, but I would like to hear staff address that issue. And I'm curious about the impacts on Pulse Suite Road if that was analyzed in the traffic circulation. I did hear there were some problems with the Soquel Drive, Soquel Avenue interchange area that involves Pulse Suite, which also includes the park and ride area for commuters. So I would like to know how that issue will be resolved other than just paying TIA fees. And just a final comment is I like the design. I think this is. That's good. Let her continue that. That's okay. Becky, your microphone is available again. Thank you very much. I appreciate the extra time. I like this project. I think it looks wonderful. And I think it's going to be a great addition to our community. I will be curious to see how the pedestrian flow goes from the parking structure to the actual facility. But I think it's a great project. Thank you very much. And thanks for the extra time. Colin, user three, your microphone is available. This is Marilyn Garrett. And this seems like a huge project. It seems too big to me. And I wonder how much of this is really needed. And the increase in traffic is also worrisome. And I personally try to stay away from hospitals because of someone who's already injured by radio frequency microwave radiation sources. The use of Wi-Fi, the antennas there, the Dominican Oaks shell tower are very problematic and very, very unhealthy. Documented to be very unhealthy, this kind of radiation exposure. I also am worried about the number of trees that will be cut down, even though you say they'll plant other ones. And I also wonder how many small offices of healthcare providers like chiropractors, acupuncturists went out of business due to the destruction of livelihoods and the lockdowns during these last 15 months to be replaced by a huge increased development at Dominican. So I'd like Becky Steinburner's questions responded to. They were very pertinent, thank you. There are no other speakers to this item, Chair. Okay, when we turn it to the board for consideration, I really support this project. I'm glad that Dominican continues to invest in serving the needs of our community. They've been great partners, especially since the pandemic. The patient privacy improvements are going to be especially appreciated given the distancing that we've had to become accustomed to during this pandemic. Dominican's been a phenomenal partner with us and for us for the people of Santa Cruz County. This is going to be a tremendous addition to provide medical care to those who need it in our community. I don't know if anybody else has any basic comments or wants to answer any questions. Mr. Chair, it looks like Dieter Hamilton has her hand raised. Oh, excuse me. I'm sorry. Hi, I'm sorry, excuse me. I didn't see that. That's okay. I wanted to know if we were going to have time to present our presentation on the project. Sure, what? It will be myself as the applicant. It would be Dudley Campbell as the project architect and Dr. Mann, Nan Mekowitz. Sure, I think that'd be appropriate. I'm sorry, I had to return it to the board, but under the circumstances, I think that'd be fine. Go ahead. Okay, thank you very much, Chair. So I wanted to address some of the items that came up as questions for the public, some of which I think staff will be able to respond to, but I did want to mention in terms of the stormwater runoff question, we are contributing over $600,000 to the improvement of that storm drain runoff system. And I know that public works does have plans to make those improvements in the near future. And in terms of the Paul Sweep Road impacts, we did assess impacts at all of the intersection, including there at Paul Sweep Road. I want to mention that all of the intersection analysis that was done did come within the county's consideration in terms of what their level of service that they find adequate, which is level D, but understanding that their preferred level is C or better, that was a concern that was identified in the environmental review process. Actually, when staff mentioned that there was impacts, our impacts are actually seven daily VMT trip increase as a result of the project. And with the cruise 511 program, which by the way, we have already implemented, that would eliminate that 70 daily VMTs down to zero. So the impact that was discussed in that particular aspect has been addressed. I want to back up and say that I do appreciate staff's hard work on this, this has been a monumental project and it took a lot of work to get this before you today. And I'm sure I speak on behalf of everybody on our team, when I say we do really appreciate all of the effort. We also are appreciative of staff's recommendation and we support the recommendations with one exception and that is the exception to condition Roman numeral 2J, which is found on your page 81. That is the TIA fee request from public works of $540,000. We are requesting that that fee be reduced to $88,800. And we have submitted a letter from our traffic engineer, which supports and explains our position on this. If you look at that report, which is dated April 14, 2021, we believe that the impacts from this development is actually 148 trips, not 901 trips as identified in public works fee calculation. Public works fee calculation is based strictly on square footage. And we believe that the square footage calculation is an unjust and very poor way of analyzing impacts. And if you look at the county code, the purpose of the TIA fee is to address project impacts, not project square footage. So when you look at what the square footage is, which I won't get into that because the architect will explain this, we are not increasing the number of beds. We are only increasing the number of employees by 39. And we anticipate, although I think the number is zero, but we anticipate at most, there will be 31 new visitors to the site as a result of this expansion. This is a renovation, a modernization and a seismic upgrade. It is not trying to increase the impacts. It is not trying to increase the intensity of the use of the hospital. And those are the things that we need to look at when we consider these TIA fees. I want to mention that the staff report also says that we have very minimal impacts on transportation. And I do understand that now we are looking at VMTs, the vehicle miles traveled versus LOCs, which is level of service. That was the only way of looking at things. Our traffic engineer submitted reports that were accepted by the county, looking at both of these scenarios. And under both scenarios, we were not having any significant impact on traffic in that area with this proposal. I would also like to call your attention to the county code, which says in section 15-120-4-0-C, a developer of, I'm sorry, a developer of any project subject to the fee described in this chapter may apply for a reduction, our adjustment to that fee, our waiver of that fee based upon the absence of any reasonable relationship between transportation and roadside impacts of that development and the amount of the fee charge. I would say that that justifies us, one, asking for the reduction. And two, I think that we have proven that what is being asked is not even close to being proportional to those impacts. As I've stated, our impact would be 148 new daily trips. That's based on the engineer's reports that have been approved. That does not equate to $600 per trip. That equates to more like $3,600 per trip, which is way above and beyond what we should be charged for mitigation. I wanna wrap it up and I have just a couple of other things I want to point out to you. Dominican is a hospital. It's not a commercial use. It's not a residential use. It's not even a medical office building. It is a hospital. So looking at applying square footage analysis in order to maximize the amount of fee that the hospital pays, I think is unfair. Dominican is the only hospital in the county. It's a unique use. And I think it should be treated as such. I don't think that lumping us in with a office building are as was stated at the planning commission here in a residential project, even comes close to looking at what the true impacts are. As the only hospital, I think that it is fair for us to ask and fair for you to consider and hopefully approve this way of looking at the actual impacts. We're not asking for change in the regulations. We're not asking for special consideration. We are looking at the code that I just read to you and asking you to apply it to this project, to this hospital. We have 222 bed facility that the hospital is licensed for. At the end of the project, we will continue to have 222 bed facility. We are not increasing that. And we will be accepting of a condition if the board so chose to, if we did apply to the state to increase the number of licensed beds that we currently have, we would be willing to redo the traffic study to look at the increase in the traffic impact of that increased number of beds and certainly pay whatever the appropriate fee was at that time. And lastly, let me just say that it's been several years since the county has looked at the fees that it collects and how it collects it and why it collects it. I think this is a perfect opportunity with the state changing the way that impacts are calculated for the county to consider moving into the 21st century with the way that they look at impacts in the collection of these fees. We've looked at other projects that the architectural firm worked on in Los Angeles County and Ventura County because these sorts of modernization projects are happening all over the state. Los Angeles County and Ventura County charged zero impact fees. The reasoning was there was no increase in the number of beds and there was no increase in the parking that was being proposed. There was also a project that Bear and Pierce worked on a little closer to home that was the Sequoia Hospital. There they did have to do a traffic study but the traffic study again said that because this was a modernization and not an expansion of the licensed beds that was the reason that no impact fee was charged in that particular situation either. So those were just a couple of examples to say that this isn't something that's unique to Santa Cruz County. This is happening in all over the state but I feel that we are being punitively impacted by the large amount of the fee and would ask that that condition be changed to reduce the fee to $88,800. And with that, I'd like to have deadly Campbell's, I don't know what you call it, upgrade it. Yeah, I think this probably will probably have a response from our public works department but I think to Mr. Campbell, and then I don't know if it's, Mikowitz, excuse me, will respond. I think there's going to be, you're going to be giving presentations similar on some of the subject similar to what you just said or mentioned about the traffic impact fee. So I think Mr. Campbell, would you like to address this place? Is he on mute? Lovely Campbell, can we get it? It appears he has two users. So I'm elevating the second user. Okay, all right. He's saying that he's not able to be heard. I think he needs to be unmuted. There you go. Can you hear me now? Yes. I apologize. Just again, to reiterate what Deidre said, thank you both the board as well as the entire county staff that we've been working with over the past several, several months to get to this point. We've appreciated all everybody's efforts and time spent on this. The one main thing just to get across to here what Deidre said, I'll keep it very short is again, this is a modernization program. This is not adding any additional capacity to the hospital with regards to beds. Commissioner Koenig mentioned additional two operating rooms, which is correct. But again, the number of licensed bed count, which is what the state provides the operational use of the facility are not changing. So a couple of slides I'll go through here quickly is the new building you see here were, I'm not sure if you can see my cursor moving around. You can't see the screen. Did I not show my screen? Thought I showed my screen. There you go, sorry, there you go. Okay, can you see it now? Apologize. Where my cursor is moving right now, this is the new addition that will be constructed. The entire ground floor will be the new surgical department, which again is providing more modern ORs. And what I mean by more modern ORs is the size of the operating rooms will be increased to provide additional staff to be in the operating room, helping with the procedures, as well as all the new technology with equipment, robotics, et cetera, that when the original operating rooms were built, which is in this red outlined area here, they did not have. So those operating rooms are much smaller as well as all the support space. So what you see in the new building here is the new larger operating rooms with the required support spaces. We will also be going back in this existing surgical area and actually renovating that to accommodate a pre-op where people come to get ready and prepared before surgery, as well as come back and provide recovery. So that will be renovated once this is complete to be able to operate as a complete surgical unit. Again, no additional types of procedures are being brought into there, no new service lines, anything like that. It's again, it's just modernizing the existing. When you look at the patient floors, which are two floors above that first floor and they're comprised of two 30-bed units, so there'll be 60 beds total, they're essentially taking the area that you see outlined here in red, which are current semi-private rooms, which means there's two patients per each room and we're actually making those rooms private and then taking those, I'll say, by making them private, you take those existing users and put them in the new rooms, which will all be private. So again, right now the current facility sits at 222 licensed beds and then what we will do after we convert the existing rooms from semi-private to private, there will still be 222 licensed beds. So again, there are no additional capacities with regards to patients or patient beds in this facility. And again, it's due to, again, taking the semi-private, making private. The square footage of the semi-private rooms right now is right around 280 to 290 square feet and that's again, two patients in that room. When we're done and with the new rooms, the private rooms will be approximately the same square footage. Again, that's current, I don't want to say requirements, but healthcare trends and the way to provide good patient care is again, a private room environment. So again, as Deidre said, that is the driver behind not adding any additional capacity and I believe our traffic studies and our VMTs have proven that we are not increasing the capacity. That's all that I have. If you can advance Dr. McWits. Yes. Good afternoon. Can you hear me? Yes. Great, thank you. Well, first I want to thank you all for your very kind words and your support of the hospital and all the work that we've done. It's been a really interesting last couple of years and we're 80 years strong here at Dominican and we're very proud of the breadth and depth of services that we've provided. Bruce, you mentioned the partnership that we've had and how it's grown over the years and I would just comment that, last year during the wildfires and of course the pandemic, the outreach and support in the way that we worked as a hospital together with you and county leadership was really important to the well-being of the community. So I'm thrilled that we have a chance to make these changes that are frankly slightly overdue to make sure that we have services and a facility that is up to speed and allows us to build on all the already excellent work we do. I strongly hope that you consider the request to make the adjustment on the fee. I think that would be very helpful. You know, we are a nonprofit hospital. This is an investment that common spirits making in the community. And you know, this request is more than just for the hospital, it is for the entire community. As we serve everyone and continue to serve everyone, including and especially those who are unable to pay. So I just thank you for your time and your support. And I look forward to a continued collaboration as we go forward with this project. Thank you. Okay, thank you for those comments. And I think I'll have our public works director, Deputy CEO, make some response, have a response to that. Thank you, Chair and Board of Supervisors, Matt Machado, Deputy CEO and Director of Public Works. I'll just try to keep my comments brief. I know we've heard a lot of good comments on this one. So to begin, you know, this is a large project. It's important project. It's adding more than 84,000 square feet of building space and significant new parking. So it is crucial that we apply good planning and policy to make this a successful project for the entire community. Regarding transportation impact fees, we have applied our standard approach, the same approach we applied to all other projects in the County. We use industry standards to ensure we can mitigate the impacts of the project. Development is a partnership with some partnerships being more critical than others. Hospital services are not optional and therefore this partnership is very critical. This partnership means the hospital provides the needed service and we, the County provide the connectivity to the community. One does not work without the other. The hospital paying its fair share per staff recommendation and then the County implementing transportation projects to serve the hospital is imperative. Any gaps in funding for projects that serve the hospital will need to be funded from another source. This will most likely impact other County services unfairly. I'm asking that you support staff's recommendation. I want to thank you for your support and I am available to answer any questions that you may have. I might just have one that, what will the fee pay for and will it stay on Soquel Avenue Drive? I just want to make sure that's where it's going to be staying all these. It's not the surrounding areas or it's just focused on Soquel Avenue Drive. That is correct. The timing is right to where we can improve that corridor that serves the hospital directly and that is Soquel Drive. And so we do have projects in the queue to help promote all modes of transportation into the hospital. And so these impact fees will, we actually plan to leverage these fees up to get even more improvements for the hospital. And so it's a, we're in a good spot today to dramatically improve Soquel Drive for this purpose and for other purposes, of course, but yes, to answer your question, Soquel Drive is our focal point. Yeah, Soquel Drive is at point north from Highway 1 overpass. So it confuses people all the time why Soquel Avenue Drive. But go ahead, any other comments from the Board, Supervisor Coonerty? Yeah, thank you. And yeah, I mean, I think Director Machado makes an important point, which is that, there are improvements that need to be made and without funding and the County doesn't have adequate funding. Those improvements are at risk. I guess my question is based on Ms. Hamilton's reading of the code, the code seems to contemplate that people can submit their own traffic impact studies and then that the fee would be changed. And so for County Council, can you talk about what our obligation is under the code for accepting people's traffic impact studies? I would have to look more deeply at the specific code provision that's at Issue Supervisor Coonerty, but I would be very surprised if your Board was limited and that it was demanded that you accept a traffic impact study that was provided by an applicant over staff's recommendation. I believe that you would have the opportunity to accept it, but not the obligation. But I would need to have more time to look specifically if you want an answer to that question. Okay. Supervisor, if I may weigh in if that's appropriate. Sure, go ahead. I do want to share that their traffic report analysis, which covers VMT as well, did include both methodologies equally. It showed our methodology, our recommended methodology and they're recommended. It actually does not state that one is greater than the other or better than the other. It just states a matter of factly that they're both applicable standards and our standard is based upon an industry standard. And so that is why we made the recommendation we made. Okay. Supervisor Coonerty. Yes, thank you, Chair. You know, I want to thank Dr. Mikowitz, Ms. Hamilton and Mr. Campbell for the great presentation, particularly Ms. Hamilton, your understanding of County code is masterful and I think you make certainly a very compelling argument that the board may consider the traffic study as an alternative way to calculate fees. You know, my understanding is as staff has said and as County Council has suggested that we are also fully within our right to use a by square foot model to calculate the traffic impact fees. You know, I just want to return to some of the things Director Machado said. I mean, the SoCal multimodal improvement project was on our agenda today, you know, to accept a consultant to begin doing that planning work. And if I understand the numbers correctly, we're looking at a $16 million grant from the state and need a $9 million match, which means that if Dominican paid the $540,000 of transportation improvement fees, that that would basically be matched by the state up to $1.5 million, all money that would be again, spent on SoCal Drive. And because we're looking at one of the Lena's general fund budgets in our history and coming out of the pandemic, juggling a lot of different expenses, my understanding is there's a real risk that we could not get all of that $9 million match without important contributions like this one from the Dominican Hospital project. You know, I think we could get into the sort of various arguments over how much the traffic impact would actually be, considering that there's no new beds added, but at the same time, there's two new operational rooms, potentially the throughput could improve, potentially visitors, I think it could be more visitors. I think at the end of the day, what stands out to me is that the service level of the intersections is at today. And you know, I would just question for the folks here from Dominican, would it really be a desirable outcome of this project to undertake a modernization of the hospital without a similar modernization of the road to get to the hospital? Really the only primary route to get to the hospital would it really be desirable to pay less in fees but have worse public infrastructure to access the hospital? Is that a question to us? It is. I would say it's not an either or situation. I think that first of all, yes, I understand that Public Works is looking for the matching funds for the federal grant, but I don't think you get it. Robin Peter to pay Paul. And I think the fact that actually earlier in this meeting, when you were considering exempting nonprofits from certain fees, I think this would be an ideal one, especially given your statement about Dominican being a great healthcare provider, this money is coming from providing healthcare in order to fund traffic improvements. At the expense of what? I'm really not in agreement with your statement that Dominican should pay $540,000 in order for this whole Soquel Avenue project to move forward. I just don't, I don't see it. And Dominican is willing to pay its fair share. We paid our fair share when it came to the drainage improvements, to the childcare fees. This is above and beyond what should be asked of Dominican to pay. And I would also disagree because in the letter, Mr. Machado said that it was equal. It was not equal. It actually said the VMT assessment described in the Dominican hospital, the vehicle mouse travel assessment memorandum shows that the VMTs on the Soquel, sorry, Santa Cruz County roadway system only increases by 70 daily VMTs with a 148 daily trip estimate. That is a .0009% increase in VMTs. Given that, I don't think that Dominican paying $540,000 is fair. And yes, I do wanna see the improvements done at the intersection, but I don't wanna see it done on the back of the hospital. What's the total cost of the project? You mean the construction cost we estimate at 630,000. No, no, I mean for, I mean truly it's more than $630,000. I mean, I'm starting $630 million. Right. I've relapsed on some zeros. Got it. So that by my calculations, transportation improvement would be about what, 0.5% of the overall cost of the project. I mean, again, I'll put the question to you again, would you really wanna make this kind of significant investment close to getting close to a billion dollars and not improve the road to get to the hospital? It's not- I think the road should be improved. I absolutely think it should be improved. I applaud DPW for going out and getting the grant. What I don't agree with is Dominican's fair share of that. If we wanted to look at the percentage of the budget, then let's look at the 0.0009% increase in the traffic. That would be more fair than saying, let's look at your construction budget. And since this is only gonna be a fraction of that, then you should just give us this money. I don't think that's fair. Okay. All right. My question. Good. So what about your priority? Can I submit the following concept to see if my fellow board members might be interested, which is, look, I think I don't wanna get into sort of what services are provided because there's lots of people who'll make lots of arguments that they need to be accepted from fees because they're doing a good thing for the community. However, I do think there's just a basic level of fairness here that if you're not, if we have a traffic impact fee and you're not increasing traffic, it's hard for me to justify how we can get there. I would be open if assuming it works for County Council and my other board members to say that Dominican has to pay their, whatever that number was, $88,000 in traffic impact fees. And then there's another $250,000 contribution that they'll make as part of a public benefit of this project to public works, to traffic improvement in the area. So it's sort of, it's an attempt to get there. I recognize that doesn't get the full amount of money, but as a condition of approval, whether we could look at that as an approach. But why don't I first ask County Council and then I'll see if there's support among the board. From a legal perspective, I would wanna know what the applicant thinks of the suggestion and whether or not the applicant approves of the, would approve of the motion because the $250,000 that you're proposing sounds like it's not connected to a study per se or to an analysis of the vehicle miles traveled. And so you've got two studies before you right now, one presented by the applicant, which proposes $88,000 and one proposed by the department, which presents a significantly larger amount. So if we could find out from the applicant whether they would be interested in your proposal, that would help a lot. So I would say that I would be interested in it for the sake of moving this project through. I don't want something like this to tender the approval of the project. I would say there's no proportionality argument that I could see that the County could make that 540,000 is proportional to the impacts. So if you're asking if we would be willing to contribute $250,000 in addition to the $88,800, I think that the hospital would be amenable to something like that as a contribution. But again, the 540, there's no proportionality argument to that, so yes, we would be willing to compromise and take the 250. Okay, now let's see the Director of Public Works, I'm sure has an opinion about this, so I wonder. Thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. I did want to add some more information into this conversation. So I'm just going to read a short segment out of the Fair Empires, April 14th traffic memo, which is what we've been talking about and what Deirdre recited a paragraph from. So Fair Empires also stated that the daily trip generation is based on the average vehicle trip rates per 1,000 square foot, published in the IT manual. Based on the increase in square footers, the project is estimated to generate 901 daily trips. The VMT assessment described in the Dominican Hospital Vehicle Miles Traveled Assessment Memorandum shows that the VMT on the Santa Cruz County roadway system only increases by 1,680 daily VMT with the 901 daily trip estimate. This is a 0.02% increase in the VMT. Now, the point of that is they're describing both methodologies equally, but their point is, is they're trying to show a rather insignificant increase with the 900 trips or with the other methodology of 148 trips. And so my point is that they validate our 901 trip analysis. They also validate the increased VMT. Now, they try to make the argument that it's insignificant, which that's a fair argument to make, but the reality is that the 901 trips generated is also a fair analysis created by fair and peers, they're traffic consultants, and that's our recommendation basis. And if you just look at that, whether it's a significant amount or insignificant amount, it equals to the TIA fee that we're recommending. And you could probably even make an argument that $500,000 is rather insignificant when you look at transportation improvements and needs and all that. I mean, it just gets monumental when you look at the cost of doing projects that would serve this development. So I just want to add that the traffic report clearly defines both methodologies equally. And so just wanted to share that, Supervisor. Yeah. Let me ask that. I mean, I want to recognize that your department is underfunded and you're doing your best to piece together funding to make really necessary improvements. If you got the $80,000 in traffic impact studies plus another $250,000 in a project public benefit contribution from Dominican, that leaves you $200,000 short. Is there what impact would that have on the potential projects that you're looking at on the Soquel quarter? It would, I mean, just to be honest, it's a dramatic impact. I strongly believe, I mean, this is a policy decision today. We'll support whatever the board decides, but it's a dramatic impact. It's $200,000, $300,000 is significant and will have significant effect. But that said, the board's direction is the direction we go. And so, but it's significant, of course. Can I ask, will this have, if we reduce this or if C8 and 250, will that have any impact on the grant that we can get will that reduce the amount we can get in a grant? Well, as I mentioned earlier, any gaps that this creates would have to be filled from other sources. And so that reallocation of funds would certainly impact other services. And from my perspective, unfairly, but that's the decision of the board today. But yes, we'd have to backfill that from other sources and it's significant. I understand fully that you have a countywide 600 mile consideration to address on our road conditions throughout the county. So I appreciate that as well. Did surprise or funny, did you wanna make another comment? Sure, thank you, Chair. I just wanna reiterate that we are a poor county. We get one of the least, like only 13% of our property taxes back. We have nearly 50% of the population living in the unincorporated area. We chronically underfund roads to the tune of $24 million a year. And I know it seems like a cut here, cut there. We can still make it happen. But I mean, I think that this $250,000 or $200,000, I mean, as our director of public work said, is critical to having functioning transportation infrastructure. And I just, with a two-third of a billion dollar project, I don't see how it's actually in Dominican's best interest to threaten that in any way. As your first district supervisor are looking up and down the SoCal corridor, I do not see another 85,000 square foot project in this area coming along anytime soon that's can somehow backfill these funds. And so I just think that in order to ensure a modern hospital experience, one that you are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in, I think it's vital that we also have a functioning SoCal corridor where the intersection quality is greater than a D. And so I totally, again, I appreciate Ms. Hamilton's reading of the regulations and the county code. And I think there's certainly good arguments on both sides. But at the end of the day, I think really it's in Dominican's best interest as well to have an up-to-date and modern SoCal drive corridor and people to be able to easily access the hospital. Mr. Chair, I'll try and move this then forward. I appreciate Supervisor Coonerty's comments. And I understand what he's trying to do is reach a compromise. And Ms. Hamilton is very well respected in our community for her understanding of these issues. I just, where I land on this is that I think that it also creates a dangerous precedent of sort of that level of deference to an applicant's analysis of these kinds of traffic related studies. This is a significant project and we're actually talking about a very de minimis amount of money in the grand scope of what this project is. I mean, we've just now spent more time talking about a few hundred thousand dollars than a two-thirds of a billion dollar project. So I'm prepared to move the recommended actions. Second. Move by a friend, seconded by Coonerty. Any other comments from the board? No, I mean, I look, I get, I could see where the board's majority is. And so I'm not gonna, I'll support the recommended action. I, you know, to some extent, I am not as worried about this project. This is a large project. I am worried I have, you know, had the experience in the city of Santa Cruz, small restaurants, small new businesses trying to start up and being hit with these large impact fees where you have one new applicant trying to fix a system-wide problem that there's a lot of people on SoCal who benefit from changes and so putting it all on one applicant to try to fix what has been under investment over a long period of time is my sort of a fundamental problem with traffic impact fees from that perspective. But I do think this is an exciting project that moves forward and there is a benefit on traffic and most importantly on health for moving forward. And so I'll support the motion. Okay. You know, the comments from the board members, none. Please call the roll. Thank you. And just from there, no other speakers. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. Okay. Yeah, that's a tough one. Okay. We're going to take a break now. We're going to close session. There's one item we're going to be discussing. Mr. Heath, is there any reportable, is that a reportable action? No, no reportable items today. Okay. It is now 1220. We give ourselves a 10 minute break and then go back and we'll go into the closed session. And then we'll come back. I don't know. Would you anticipate our closed session is going to take more than an hour? Can we come back with 130 as scheduled? Yes, I believe we can, yeah, we can start closed session at 1230 and we'll have more than enough time to finish well before 130. And we'll start with the scheduled item number 12 on the Serend Services Program. Okay, so recess right now, going to closed session at 1230. It's now 1220. And then return to our regular scheduled items at 130. So we'll see you then. We have a separate link too to get to, right? For the closed session. Yes, a separate link, it's on Teams. Yeah, got it, yes. Okay, we'll see you in 10 minutes. June 8th, 2021 meeting of the County Board of Supervisors of Santa Cruz to order at 1.30 PM. We are going to open with item number 12. I think we ought to call the roll please first. Thank you. Supervisor Koenig? Here. Friend? Here. Coonerty? Here. Caput? Here. McPherson? Here. Thank you, Chair, you have a quorum. All right. We are on item number 12, scheduled item for 130 is to consider the 2019-2020 biennial report and presentation on the Syringe Services Program, or SSP. Accept and file report with recommendations to improve syringe litter reporting through a centralized system across all partners and direct the Health Services Agency to collaborate on improving litter efforts and leveraging resources and report back by December 7th, 2021, as outlined in the memorandum of the Director of the Health Services. We have the report of 2019-20, Attachment A recommendations for consolidated syringe litter reporting and response attachment B and public comments from May 25th, 2021 to the Board of Supervisors, number eight. I think that we will have Dr. Newell make his presentation. Our Health Officer, Dr. Newell, or is there going to be Jen? Jen, are you going to be making the presentation? It will be both of us. And I'm just looking to see if Mimi Hall, Agency Director Mimi Hall, will be opening up with some comments and then the presentation will be from Dr. Newell and myself. Okay. Let me see if she's, I don't see her here yet. Okay, I've just been elevated to panelist. Okay, got it. Thank you. Good afternoon, Honorable Board of Supervisors. As Supervisor McPherson noted, I'm Mimi Hall, Health Services Agency Director and I'm pleased to introduce Chief of Public Health, Jen Herrera and Health Officer, Dr. Newell to present today's item, which is the biannual syringe services report for the Syringe Services Program. Could you speak a little more directly into it or turn your volume up a little something? Sure. That'd be good. I'm going to change my audio settings. Is this better? Yeah, that's better, thank you. Okay, great. And so today, Dr. Newell and Chief Herrera will present today's this year's biannual syringe services report and our recommended actions before you are to accept and file the report, accept and file the syringe letter reporting response report that we were previously directed by your Board to conduct and then also direct the Health Services Agency to work with our community partners and jointly report back on progress on leveraging syringe litter cleanup efforts by December 7th, 2021. And with that, I will go ahead and turn it over to Chief Herrera and Dr. Newell. Thank you, Director Hall. Good afternoon, supervisors. Thank you for this opportunity to bring our biannual SSP report to you, to County staff, our community partners and the public. At this historic moment in time, a year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic, we are enjoying a healthy and happy summer, a result of our success as a community in controlling this devastating virus. Although the pandemic is not yet over, we are enjoying the success because our community came together for the greater good, willing to think beyond ourselves and to consider those among us who are more vulnerable. We followed the science, exercise best practices guided by experts at the California Department of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control. Along the way, we have treated each other with respect, kindness and compassion. I implore our community and our elected leaders to take the same approach to the public health problems associated with intravenous drug use. Just as during the COVID pandemic, my recommendations related to the County Syringe Services Program are evidence-based and rooted in scientific fact in alignment with guidance from the California Department of Public Health and best practices defined by the Centers for Disease Control. I want to be absolutely clear that I believe that Santa Cruz County has a drug problem. I say this as a professional looking at the evidence such as our opioid overdose death rates, which are some of the highest in the state, far exceeding the state average. I also say this from a personal point of view as a mother who lost her oldest child to a fentanyl overdose here in Santa Cruz County in 2016. I also want to clearly acknowledge that we have a needle-litter problem. Any amount of needle-litter is unacceptable, but needle-litter is not a public health crisis. It's not a contributor to early death or increasing disease rates in our County. Needle-litter is a reminder to us that we have a drug problem here that some of the most vulnerable among us continue to use intravenous drugs and we have not adequately served them. We can do better approaching this problem together in the same way that we have battled COVID, using evidence-based practices, following the science and treating each other with respect, kindness, and compassion. Next slide, please. Here's the agenda for today's report out. I'll give a brief overview of Syringe Services Program in general and in our community. Chief of Public Health, Jen Herrera, will highlight some program successes over the past two years and there are many. Our tireless staff, along with many volunteers, have kept our program running throughout the pandemic. Among these volunteers are the members of our advisory commission, each of them appointed by you as supervisors. These commission members have worked hard to educate themselves about the issues involved in our SSP program, as well as the public health issues arising from intravenous drug use. Next, we'll offer some summary findings from our detailed report, which is attached to this presentation. And lastly, we'll offer our recommendations for Syringe-Litter Reporting. And next slide. What is an SSP or Syringe Services Program? Sometimes these programs are referred to as a Syringe Exchange Program, but this would indicate a program simply limited to the collection and distribution of syringes and needles. A Syringe Services Program is much broader, offering a range of services in a harm reduction approach. What's harm reduction? Although you might not be familiar with the term, harm reduction practices are all around us. An example is wearing seat belts when in a car or a helmet when riding a motorcycle. There's an inherent risk, as we all know, in being in a car or on a motorcycle, but we reduce the potential harm with seat belts and helmets. Ideally, SSPs meet people where they are at both literally and figuratively. Reducing harm in people who use drugs also reduces harm for the rest of us. By providing a clean needle and syringe for each injection, for example, we reduce the risk of transmission of hepatitis, HIV and other infections. That reduces the risk of these diseases spreading throughout our community, not just among the people who inject drugs. In addition, SSPs provide an opportunity to develop relationships with people who inject drugs, creating a bridge for treatment and recovery, medical and social services. Next slide. There are two syringe services programs in Santa Cruz County, both fully authorized to offer a complete range of harm reduction services. Our report today only covers the County Syringe Services Program, operated by the Health Services Agency's Public Health Division. We look forward to a time in the future when we can work collaboratively with the Harm Reduction Coalition of Santa Cruz County, including oversight and best practices review of the Harm Reduction Coalition. This would greatly improve our County's overall approach to this issue, but due to pending litigation, we have been directed not to coordinate program activities with the Harm Reduction Coalition at this time. Next slide. Our County Syringe Services Program uses a three-pronged approach, syringe distribution, syringe collection and enhanced linkages and referrals. Each prong has a set of outcomes and an overall goal by which to measure our success. These are examples of an evidence-based approach tracked with data over time. Each benefits the greater community in addition to serving the population of people who use drugs. It's important to note that there are many routes by which syringes can be obtained besides from a syringe services program. Syringes with needles can be dispensed without a prescription by physicians and pharmacists. Insurance, including MediCal, covers the cost under most circumstances. If paying in cash, syringes with needles are inexpensive, especially when purchased in bulk. They can also be purchased online from Amazon and other retailers without a prescription and without restriction other than an age of 18. It's also important to note that syringe disposal is a challenge for many kinds of people, including diabetics who use insulin and many others who use legally prescribed injectable medications. Some of the needle litter that ends up on our beaches in our parking lots and filling our collection sites is from folks other than people who inject drugs. At this time, I'd like to turn the presentation over to Chief Herrera to give you some highlights of our last two years. Thank you, Dr. Newell. The following slides I will report back on the operation of the county SSP program from January, 2019 through December, 2020. I will review the status of the board directive provided to the program during this timeframe and the program operations. And afterwards, Dr. Newell will review relevant public health and program data. First, I am pleased to review program highlights from this 24 month period. During between 2019 and 2020, the county SSP was able to maintain core services even during the pandemic. There have not been any significant outbreak of diseases associated with injection drug use. And we found that greater intelligence through community listening sessions and the syringe access and disposal assessment which was presented to the board in December of 2019. We've increased our partnerships during this timeframe with the SSP advisory commission and with the state authorized exchange to harm reduction coalition of Santa Cruz County once they became authorized. We strengthened partnerships with the county map program and our peer mentors. And we collaborated with Santa Cruz City for additional syringe chaos deployment. We've also increased our capacity for the county SSP. We hired a full-time program coordinator. We were awarded funding to improve our program. We installed three additional syringe chaos and we contracted with organizations for additional syringe litter cleanup. In addition to the program highlights, we also address all of the board directives from the past 24 months. This is an abbreviated list of the directives. Most have either been met or are ongoing tasks. Of note, we did increase the exchange hours in Santa Cruz and are in process of increasing hours in Watsonville. The county SSP's operation is shaped by specific board directives including having specified locations or fixed locations at the Emeline campus in Santa Cruz and the Freedom Campus in Watsonville. We have specified hours at Emeline. We are authorized to operate 12 hours per week and at the Freedom Campus up to five hours per week. Our distribution practices are also directed by the board. We have a one-for-one exchange. We have a maximum of 100 syringes for primary exchange and we have the allowance to exchange on behalf of up to two people which is called secondary exchange. For our collection practices, we coordinate with other jurisdictions to install public syringe chaos and pay for the ongoing servicing of those chaos. As I mentioned before, we have deployed and installed syringe chaos within the city of Santa Cruz and we were hoping to expand that service to other jurisdictions as well. And we've contracted for enhanced syringe collection in hot spot areas. In terms of oversight, we have oversight from the County Board of Supervisors as a locally authorized exchange. We also have the new SSP advisory commission which provides guidance to our program. And I first neglected to add this to the slide that we also follow direction from the California Department of Public Health as we receive some in-kind allocation for supplies from them. As Dr. Newell noted, syringe service programs are evidence-based interventions. Referencing 30 plus years of research, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has developed a technical package of evidence-based strategies and approaches to implement an SSP. This package was developed to highlight strategies with SSP implementation and service delivery that are known to be effective to help users avoid the tendency of many public health programs to adapt a scatter shot of intervention, some of which might only have a small impact. This table notes the County SSP status with meeting those CDC best practice strategies. The County SSP is following best practice in regards to providing core services, which is distribution and disposal syringes and expanded services, which are the referrals to social, medical and behavioral services. Besides syringes, the County SSP provides an array of referrals and harm reduction supports, such as naloxone for overdose reversals, safer injection equipment and wound kits. We are also continuously collecting baseline data and assess our data collection practices to ensure that it's not a burden for our participants to access the program. The County SSP partially needs the rest of the categories. We are working to improve meaningful engagement of people with people who inject drugs into the programs, planning, development and implementation. This includes working with peer mentors from the County MAP Program. As for the program design, the County SSP has specific directives that hinder its ability to adhere to the evidence-based strategies. This includes a directive to be a one-for-one exchange with limited opportunities for secondary exchange. Research supports a needs-based distribution strategy as the most effective for disease prevention and ensuring adequate syringe distribution. Furthermore, research has associated one-for-one exchanges with increased syringe sharing and increased risk of infections among people who inject drugs. Lastly, HSA's Public Health Division has reorganized the County SSP, excuse me, to support its sustainability, including moving it to the oversight of the County's HIV care team and adding new staff. We have started to apply for competitive grants to support sustainability of the program and were recently awarded multi-year funding from the California Harm Reduction Initiative. We have also continued to foster relationships with a variety of stakeholders, including the County's SSP Advisory Commission. However, there's still much opportunity to ensure program sustainability. Currently, the program accounts for over 20% of the Public Health Division's general fund allocation. However, over half of the program's actual expenses are captured through in-kind contributions. Program-related expenses include extra help staffing, medical supplies and office supplies. Liter-related expenses include the syringe collection contacts with community organizations and the management of public syringe chaos throughout the County. In-kind expenses include the in-kind allocation from the California Department of Public Health for SSP supplies. It is primarily, and it also includes the permanent HSA staff who have been rerouted to support the core activities of the program. The County syringe exchange is primarily supported by in-kind HSA staff, volunteers and extra help staff. In-kind HSA staffing includes Matt counselors, care team case managers and other public health and HSA staff rerouted from other programs. In 2020, we did hire a program coordinator in the HIV care team whose primary duty has been to coordinate the County's SSP activities. Powering permanent staff has provided capacity to ensure adherence of the Board's directives and quality improvement of overall County SSP activities, the three-pronged approach that Dr. Newell mentioned, syringe distribution, syringe collection and enhanced linkages and referrals. So for the next few slides, I'll turn it back to Dr. Newell to review relevant program and public health data. Thank you, Chief Herrera. I want to first of all draw to your attention that we have moved to a calendar year reporting. Period. And so you can see in the red box there that we are reporting from January 2019 to December 2020, but the other columns are a March to February based on when the program first began, the first year being May 2013 to February 2014. So not a perfect comparison, but very close. And you will notice that in the current reporting period we've had a definite decrease in the number of visits and the number of syringes dispensed, especially in the year 2020. And this can likely be attributed to the impact of the approval authorization of the Harm Reduction Coalition of Santa Cruz County to work in our County. And they are addressing the needs of many of our population of persons who inject drugs. So that is the likely reason for the decrease in participants as well as the number of syringes dispensed. Irregardless, we continued to collect significantly more syringes than were dispensed. And you can see the data there to support that. I want to draw your attention to syringes collected by on-site exchange are as close as we can get to a one-for-one exchange with a visualization of syringes in their containers at the on-site exchange. But we don't remove every syringe to count each one individually because that would be a dangerous practice for our staff and those who participate in that. So we do it by visualization within the container. And then the syringes collected by kiosk, we estimate the number of syringes based on weight. And we do not are unable to visualize every container depending on what kinds of containers they are. And so this is an imperfect measure. And so when we say total syringe is collected, that's an estimate based on both visualization and weight. And we do collect though in a large amount of estimated syringes, far more than are dispensed by our program. Next slide. So these are the kinds of trends that we follow to see the success in our programs. And so we're tracking blood-borne diseases here with HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C and hepatitis A. The top line is where the most progress is visible. That's hepatitis C. And we have some special funding grant to work with hepatitis C. And hepatitis C treatment is very exciting now because hepatitis C was once a chronic lifetime disease. And due to the miracles of modern science, we now have a treatment and people can be actually cured of hepatitis C. So it's an exciting time and a very important time to be working with this population as we work to cure our patients of hepatitis C. And you can see there that our hepatitis C rates are falling and with the most notable decline during the current reporting period. I'd like to take this opportunity to note that all of our blood-borne and sexually transmitted disease rates have increased significantly in 2021. This is true not only here in Santa Cruz County but also throughout the state and the nation and is thought to be the fallout of the pandemic with fewer people seeking medical services or having access to medical services and routine healthcare during the pandemic itself. So we're working hard to address those issues. Next slide. This is the graph to which I referred to in my opening comments. These are opioid-related overdose deaths. So they are not only among injection drug users but also people who use opioids that are not injecting those. Although non-injectors are less likely to suffer an opioid overdose or overdose death than others. So it's a good proxy for what kind of drug problem we have here in Santa Cruz County. So the red bar is the average rate of opioid-related overdose deaths in a given year. On the left is the 2013 data. On the right is 2019 data. Santa Cruz is highlighted in yellow and you can see that both in 2013 and 2019 we have a significantly higher opioid-related overdose death rate than does the state. And one of the highest in the state and this can change. And I want to note that Monterey County which you can see if you look at this slide in detail you can see Monterey County was above state average for their opioid-related overdose deaths in 2013. And through a very aggressive campaign in Monterey County they have lowered their death rate to one of the lowest in the state over time. We can do that too. It will take resources and effort but it's possible for us to do that as well. So next slide. This slide gives us a comparison to some of our neighboring counties and it deserves some explanation here. I wish we could get some comparison of apples to apples but we're really doing apples to oranges in this chart. For example, in Monterey there is only one small syringe services program in the county. It's limited to Salinas only very restricted hours in one fixed location and a one-to-one exchange. So not best practices by any means. It served only 168 participants but distributed close to the same number of syringes as our program did in 2020, 313,000 plus. And then compare that to Santa Cruz on the far right with far more hours, two fixed sites, still a one-for-one exchange. So not best practices as defined by CDC and limited syringes. We were able to serve 482 participants so significantly more than Monterey distributing about the same number of syringes. It's notable that Monterey has about 50% more population than does Santa Cruz. So per capita we are serving far more participants through RSSP and per capita distributing fewer syringes. Compare that however to Santa Clara County their county public health has 10 hours per week, two hours per location at five to seven locations through the county needs-based exchange which means no one-for-one. So they are aligned with best practices but they do limit to 40 syringes without an exchange. Despite having a population close to 2 million so about eight times our population they served 687 participants and distributed about the same number of syringes. We did ask San Mateo for their numbers and we did not get their response in time to respond but it's notable that there are three different authorized syringe exchange programs in San Mateo and our remaining neighboring county San Benito does not have a syringe exchange program at all. We were asked just prior to this present or submitting this presentation to acquire some or to add some blood-borne data, blood-borne disease data to this slide and for comparison between counties and that would only be useful if we were able to compare blood-borne disease rates among persons who inject drugs county to county and that data is not available. So with this time I'm gonna turn the slides back over to Chief Herrera. Thank you, Dr. Newell and that concludes the biennial report portion of this presentation. We're going to pivot now to recommendations for syringe litter reporting. On December 10th of 2019 the board directed HSA to return with recommendations to improve syringe litter reporting and response through a centralized system across all partners. To develop the recommendations we started with the basic question how do we manage syringe litter in the community? We also started with assumptions on where syringe litter comes from. Reiterating some of what Dr. Newell mentioned earlier syringes can be purchased, prescribed or obtained through an authorized syringe exchange program and people who inject drugs whether listed or prescribed are encouraged to use a new clean syringe for every injection. Keeping these assumptions in mind again we asked how do we manage syringe litter? Surely there are multiple ways to manage syringe litter and to help organize our recommendations for your board's directive we utilize the upstream downstream framework which is common in public health programming. Upstream interventions are tactics to prevent a health issue from happening in the first place. In other words preventing syringe litter. Upstream interventions tackle the root cause of a health issue. Downstream interventions are tactics to address a health issue as it's happening to lessen the impact. In other words syringe litter is occurring so how do we lessen its impact in the community? Downstream interventions address immediate needs reactive to a health issue. The specific directive from the board is to provide recommendations to improve syringe litter reporting and response to a centralized system across all partners. By the time syringe litter is reported and responded to it has already occurred. Therefore this is inherently a downstream intervention that is responsive to the immediate need to remove syringe litter. Activities to support syringe reporting include the development of a centralized system to report litter. We found that the city of Santa Cruz has an excellent system and the county has a system that we could leverage for that purpose. It also includes having an infrastructure to clean up syringes by providing resources and education for people who are injecting drugs or medications providing resources for safe disposal and partnering with community groups and public works departments on litter cleanup. These activities are helpful for our community but it doesn't necessarily prevent syringe litter from occurring. So taking a step back how do we prevent syringe litter from happening? Some midstream strategies include ensuring that people who use syringes have easy access to safe disposal options. It can also include some nudging of individual behavior to ensure one is capable and motivated to dispose of syringes safely. This may include one-on-one counseling and positive reinforcement for safe disposal. Though these strategies help prevent syringe litter it doesn't actually get to the root cause of why syringe litter is happening in the first place. For that, we look at the social determinants of health for upstream strategies. These are the social conditions that influence the health and well-being of individuals and communities. We know that big societal issues such as poverty, accessibility of opioids, and adverse childhood experiences have a major downstream effect on one's coping mechanism and susceptibility to substance use disorder. By addressing these social factors we would be addressing the root cause of syringe litter. So the continuum of syringe litter abatement is complex requiring a multifaceted approach for prevention and response. And for the findings from our assessment which is included in detail in exhibit B to this board memo, we found the following. A consolidated syringe reporting system will not prevent syringe litter but it will help mitigate the issue. There is no centralized county-wide system to track syringe collection. It is most practical and cost-effective to leverage existing systems for litter control and existing local efforts to address syringe litter should be sustained such as the public kiosk that we have partnered with other jurisdictions, syringe cleanup with organizations who are already conducting other types of litter cleanup and distribution of personal sharps containers for people who are utilizing syringes. So our recommendations to improve syringe litter reporting and response through a centralized system include the following. Relevant county departments such as HSA and Department of Public Works should continue to collaborate on county-wide strategies to reduce syringe litter. Maintain existing disposal strategies such as the kiosk program across all jurisdictions. Leverage existing litter cleanup infrastructure for syringe litter response, including expansion of contracts with litter cleanup organizations to support syringe cleanup efforts. And lastly, utilize the My Santa Cruz County mobile application for easier reporting and response in the unincorporated county regions. And with that, I will turn it over to HSA Director Mimi Hall for final remarks. Thank you Chief Herrera and thank you Dr. Newell for your excellent and overall broad coverage of the update on our syringe services program. So today we asked that your board accept and file the health services agency 2019-2020 biannual report for the syringe services program as well as accept and file the report to improve syringe litter reporting and response through a centralized system across all partners. Additionally, we ask that your board direct the health services agency, Department of Public Works and Information Services Department, all departments that we have been collaborating with to continue to collaborate on implementing the My Santa Cruz County app as a tool to address syringe litter reporting in the unincorporated areas of our county to continue the work that we've started in leveraging existing solid waste disposal resources to improve overall coordinated efforts across the county of Santa Cruz and the cities of Santa Cruz and Watsonville and to jointly come back to your board to report on our progress by December 7th, 2021. Okay, thank you for that report. I don't know if there's any initial questions from the board, members of the board before we might go to the public. No one have any, is there any questions from the public? Yes, I do have speakers that would like to address the board. Okay, did anybody, I didn't see anybody wanting to speak initially from the board, want to hear from the public first? That's funny. Oh, did you want to say, Supervisor Cronin, did you want to say something first? I've got a few questions, but I'm happy to let the public go first. Okay, we'll go to the public. Thank you, Selena Lopez, your microphone is available. Hi, yes, my name is Selena Lopez and I am a peer mentor and part of the MAP program. I also volunteer at the needle, or the syringe program in Santa Cruz, Amaline. I wanted to touch base on the importance of the syringe program. We have clients come in to turn and use and injected needles properly. I feel this program is important because not only do we provide clean syringes, but we offer medical supplies, sanitation kits, Narcan. And I feel the purpose is to minimize or prevent harm, such as the hepatitis, AIDS, STDs and any other transferable diseases. We also are able to offer referrals, resources to our clients. Me personally, I am a recovering addict with almost four years clean and I currently work for a drug rehab and I'm working towards my STD certificate. I feel when clients come in, I can relate and if I can be helpful to other addicts, that's just my passion. Also the Narcan, I feel just the other day we had a client come in and said he did two reversals within a couple of hours and just to know that the Narcan is available can help save lives out there. And I just think it's a great program and I believe it's just to help prevent and keep the community safe. And yeah, that's all I have, thank you. Thank you and good luck and thank you for your success so far. Any other questions from the public? That was our only public commenters. Oh, I'm sorry, another hand just went up. Dani Contreras, your microphone is available and it's a reminder to this before he speaks. Dani, if you could please use the star nine to raise your hand or use the hand icon with Faurosa Estrella Nueve para levantar su mano y estar en la fila para hablar. Okay. Okay, can you guys hear me? Yes. Okay, so my name's Dani Contreras, I'm the health service manager for the county of Santa Cruz. I manage the medication assisted treatment program at all our county clinics. And I just wanna say that I think the syringe service program is a great program for us to connect with patients and clients on the streets. You know that sometimes nobody can connect with. And as you heard somebody shared right before me, we have a good handful of peer mentors that have went through our program. Some that have come straight from needle exchange being homeless and have lost everything and have gotten everything back and are giving back to the community through the syringe service program. So it's pretty awesome to see people that have been there and now they're in there helping people out and they're saying, hey, I was underneath the bridge with you or I remember using with you and look, man, you're doing so great. And so that's a pretty inspiring thing to do but we're also giving them tools. There's a curriculum they go through and the person that before me said that she's now working towards becoming a drug and alcohol counselor. I just got a call a couple of weeks back, same thing, somebody who came through the syringe service program is now living in Colorado or some other state. And she went through our program, came through syringe service, got connected to Matt and she got her family back, her husband back. And now she's working towards becoming a drug and alcohol counselor. And I think she had like six or eight years sobriety within the Matt program and coming through SSB. So it works, you know? And we need to keep using these evidence-based practices whatever they are, whatever's been recommended, it's been recommended for a reason and then we should use those because that's the way we're gonna be able to reach and connect with these people. You know, when COVID hit, we kind of got hit in the mouth and everything kind of stopped but we're starting to pick up again and I'm hoping to get more people because there's a lot of success stories out here that people don't know, all they hear is all the negative stuff. And so I'm hoping through the syringe service program and the Matt program that they'll be able to start hearing more stories like that and more inspiration and more hope and more people to be able to get that hope to turn it around. Thank you. Thank you. And the last caller is eight, nine, four, two is the last speaker to this item chair. Good afternoon supervisors and public health staff. My name is Damon and I'm a concerned citizen. A couple of things I noticed is that we have diminishing number of clientele and pretty much the same amount of needles given out and we do not have any data for Hep C or HIV testing because they are not offering HIV and Hep C testing since COVID had started. So with all of that combined and with it coming to light that the collected needles from heat kiosks is verified as just a guess, where is the data that says our program is successful? Are we doing enough? Can we do more? Of course we can do more. I feel that we need more funding, more man hours to be able to throw at this problem. We need to be able to help more clients not keep watching our numbers dwindle and have improper data come in trying to bolster the program. I would like you to take it into consideration. Thank you. Thank you. There are no other speakers, Chair. Okay, I return it to the board. I think Supervisor Koenig, you had a question? Yeah, a couple of questions. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, HSA team for a great presentation. To the last speaker's point about having more funding and more man hours just being looking at the budget it seemed that the grand total was actually being reduced this year compared to last year and the year before and it was just, if you could have a little overview of what explains that decrease and why you think that that's going in the right direction as opposed to the wrong as the last speaker asked about. I don't know. I can take that question. Do you want to answer that? Yes, yes. Thank you Supervisor Koenig for that question. So just to reiterate the budget numbers so much of the program's operations is through in-kind support but the actual budget has stayed pretty constant. So our revenue from the past, from this biennial period so for fiscal year 1920 it was 223,916 and then for 2021 it was 268,918. What is pending approval is for next fiscal year's budget we're planning to see 265,840 for the revenue of the program which is significantly offset through the new grant that we recently received which is partially funding this fiscal year. So I think if you'd like more clarification on the specifics of that I'm happy to provide that but for the most part the program budget has been pretty consistent with the exception that we're now able to offset some of the net county costs with the new grant that we were awarded. Thanks, I'm looking at this closer. I'm seeing that the requirement is just that part there's the TBD in this year's budget as well so that maybe that'll look more like last year's budget. All right and then as far as the total number of syringes collected it went down from about a million to 850,000. So I'm assuming that doesn't include any of like the contract for syringe collection hotspot areas, right? That's correct. So for this chart it's specific to the syringes collected through the kiosk as well as through exchange through the county's exchange specifically. So we recognize that there are a number of community-based organizations and the other jurisdictions, the other public work departments that do syringe collection as well and that's not currently included in here. And so with the transition to the My Santa Cruz County and with all of those additional contractors and other departments all be using the same data input method then? For the unincorporated areas, yes. I think that is something that we want to explore further. We don't want to recreate the wheel of something that's working really well. So for example, in the city of Santa Cruz they have their system, their database of syringe reporting and collection. And what we'd like to do is just continue to build and strengthen partnerships with the other jurisdictions to see what works for them. What would be ideal just sort of visioning out to the future is that we would be able to have a consolidated database to have a clear understanding of what's being collected not just through the community-based organizations and the programs, but also the specific public works departments as well. We know that there's a lot of syringe collection happening. Great, thank you. And then does the following hep C rates, does that reflect patients actually being cured or is that something else? And it's fantastic, we can actually cure hep C now. And so with those dropping rates, are people just getting better or is there a collection of something else we're doing? I'll start to answer this question that definitely defer to our County Health Officer for any additional input. Yeah, I think it's hard to tell the specific cause of why we have a drop. It could also be a reflection of not having a lot of screening happening in 2020. As Dr. Newell mentioned earlier in the presentation, as people are starting to get more re-engaged with care, we're starting to see an increase in some of these diseases and these infections. So that could contribute to the drop as well as the fact that we now have a cure for hep C. Okay, right, you did mention we are seeing a spike in 2021. Last question, we talked a little bit about the comparison between counties and how we're giving out roughly the same number of syringes even though Santa Clara County is eight times the population of ours. You mentioned that in San Mateo, they have three other syringe service programs. Do you know how many alternatives exist in Santa Clara County? How many syringe service programs exist in Santa Clara County? Yeah, exactly. In addition to the county-run program. You know, that's a good question. I don't have that information on hand right now. I do know that when we talk with the county of Santa Clara, they have a system where they collaborate pretty closely with other healthcare partners. So their infrastructure of syringe services looks different. And also if you reference the PowerPoint slide with the horizontal bar graphs of opioid-related deaths, the impact of opioids looks very different in Santa Clara than how it looks in Santa Cruz. So in short, I don't have that answer, but I do know that their infrastructure and how they address the issue because the issue is different. It just, it looks different in Santa Clara. Okay, that's all my questions. Thank you. Okay. Any other comments from board members? Is your right security? Sure. So thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for the presentation. We have a long day ahead, so I'm gonna keep it short because I think we've had some discussion and we'll probably have more on this, but I'd like to make a few brief comments and then additional direction that Supervisor McPherson and I have worked on to sort of address outstanding issues going forward in our, that we see in our community. The first is I wanna acknowledge the progress and I think it was on a number of the slides, but the reality is we have more kiosks and we have more streets teams doing cleanups now than we did a couple of years ago, and that is a good thing. And even better thing is we have Danny Contreras and much more MAT treatment available and then overall more treatment available and certainly when the COVID restrictions are lifted and we can increase a capacity at some of our service providers, we'll be able to offer even more treatment and that's just so incredibly important. And while we acknowledge that progress, I think we also have to acknowledge how far we have to go. There are, and as Dr. Newell sort of talked about both these things, one is there's just simply too much needle litter, especially Supervisor McPherson and now I'm hearing more in Watsonville and South County. People are finding too many needles on the ground as Jen Rarer pointed out, we have a downstream approach where we pick up needles, but often those needles have had a health or mental and mental health impact on kids, especially low-income kids and especially kids of color who live adjacent to the parts and areas where most of the needle hotspots are are no longer able to exercise or use our outdoor spaces in the same way they would because their families simply don't feel comfortable. And so there's a big equity issue in the way that needle litter impacts the entire community but specifically low-income communities of color and especially kids in those low-income communities. And then as Dr. Newell said, we have simply far too much injection drug use. And as Jen Rarer just pointed out, the amount of opioid deaths that we're seeing in Santa Clara County, which is only 40 miles away, then we see in Santa Cruz County is significant and it's a crisis that needs to be addressed. I'm gonna ask the clerk of the board to put up our additional direction. If you don't mind, we prepared a slide so people could read it, but I will read it into the record. So this is what's supervisor McPherson and I have worked on next slide. So I would move to accept the recommended action with the added direction on litter to direct the county ministry of office to work with the appropriate departments to draft an RFP not to exceed $100,000 to develop an on-demand syringe litter pickup program that would concentrate services in the cities of Santa Cruz and Watsonville, focusing on identified hotspots and bring this back to the board during budget hearings later this month. Next slide. And then on data and in future reports, we would direct HSA to obtain data from state or locally from our state licensed local harm reduction coalition syringe services program and report the following data twice a year to the SSP commission. This data should include the number of syringes dispensed and collected, the number of clients served, the number of clients connected to treatment, disease rates for blood-borne disease and any complaints that we get from the public. This information shall also be included in our biannual SSP reports. In future bino reports, in addition to the data collected in this bino report include the number of syringes collected by our contractors. And then in future bino reports include per capita analysis of making comparisons with other counties. I appreciate Dr. Newell's mention of the differences in populations with our adjacent counties. And then in future bino reports include the number of needle sticks by community members or staff or other jurisdictions and contractors. The status should be collected on a quarterly basis from agencies and groups that pick up syringes and staff shall report at HSSP commission meeting the number of needle sticks. Staff will need to reach out to the cities, the downtown streets teams, county contractors who collect needles, save our shores and others to obtain this data in the absence of a central reporting system that tallies it. And then the next slide. And then this is really, I think people can disagree on, I think very few people disagree that we should have a needle exchange and at all, and there may be some differences in operational approach, but I think what we all can agree on is we're facing a public health crisis of injection drug use in Santa Cruz County that needs a comprehensive approach. So the other one is in response to our county's epidemic of injection drug use under the direction of the CAO, HSA staff shall convene a task force, similar task force that convened by Dr. Newell and Fresno County to develop a comprehensive recommendations for the Board of Supervisors and the Sheriff to consider implementing. The goal of the task force would be to reduce the number of individuals who inject drugs. The recommendation should be crafted to meet the goals of reducing the number of individuals who inject drugs. Areas of focus and inquiry for the task force should be education campaigns to discourage injection drug use among youth and adults similar to the anti-tobacco campaigns, treatment, expanding MAT treatment programs and drug enforcement at minimum. And then the county staff should return to the Board in December with a report on the task force and return to the Board with recommendations to be implemented no later than March 2022 to advance so that it can be, any recommendations can be included in the 22-23 proposed budget. I know it's a lot. Basically, what we wanna do is improve our needle collection program, especially in the cities of Watsonville and the cities of Santa Cruz, include more data so that we can get a better sense to the SSP commission and then also in our biennial report and then really realize that as we are dealing with one health impact, we are now, or one health crisis, we now have another health crisis of injection drug use as a way to, as something that we need to address comprehensively as a community. Thank you, Supervisor. I'll second that motion as Chair. I wanna thank the Health Services Agency for this report. It's startling to me and many others to see how many stringes are exchanged and it's important reminder of the work we need to do to reduce the IV drug use. We've struggled with this question for many years and how much our exchange program is contributing to the discarded stringes that we see in the streets and parks. But now I think we need to stop debating that and address the two main issues at hand and what do we need to do to have a successful SSP program and what do we need to do to reduce or eliminate litter? The report indicates the board has limited the SSP program from achieving the best practices and covering costs. But I don't know the exact recommendations and how much additional funding do we need for the program to be successful that has been just described and how many more hours would it take to provide that and do we still wanna provide mobile services? So as in making that second, I just it's kind of repetitive but based on the comments that we've heard earlier, I don't know if it's exactly amendment I think it's almost inclusive to have the HSA return to the board during the first meeting in August with a proposed funding and programmatic adjustments to improve our county syringe program. I'd just like to see what a plan of attack would be in essence that how we can get to where Supervisor Coonerty just described. It's frustrating and I know that Health Services said this is an all of their problem and we know that that we have to have departmental and community support as we're getting but I do think we really need to take another look at this and how to address it in the future as Supervisor Coonerty had mentioned. Yeah, I have some comments. This is a pretty significant amendment to the proposed recommendations that we're trying to digest here and I think it would be reasonable. Also pretty massive increase in cost potentially of $100,000 ongoing cost and some indeterminate number on a task force. So I would appreciate a little bit of feedback in the CAO about the viability of that as I mean if we're going to have an RFP it strikes me that the city of Watsonville and Seneca you should consider contributing to that. This isn't a county exclusive generated issue by the way nor should be a county exclusive generated cost that would just be fiscally responsible. But the other thing is that on the task force requirement I mean, ultimately if we're asking the health staff to come back with their expert opinion which they've already given us repeatedly but we don't as a board accept it when it comes forward. I'm not really sure what the value of a task force is I mean, at the end of the day they're going to come forward with a set of recommendations that we're going to have to seriously consider and I don't know that it's going to be a set of considerations that a board majority are necessarily going to support but I would like to hear and recognizing the hour right now very briefly from the CAO about the viability of that $100,000 and from maybe Dr. Newell on what's being proposed and what it actually means operationally. I'm supportive of just the recommended actions if it seems as though this is a pretty significant movement away from the direction that we're going and I'll just introduce a counter motion so let me just introduce that idea. Recognize there may not be three votes for it but just this is a pretty significant thing to just sort of drop right now. I understand under the Brown Act there was no ability for the entire board to be but it's important for us to have a discussion now with county staff about what this actually would look like. So Dr. Newell if you could at least on the one side address briefly some of the items that aren't in regards to the $100,000 RFP and then Mr. Palacios on the $100,000 RFP. Well, thank you for the opportunity and the first thing I wanna do is correct the county in which I started an opioid task force and that was in San Benito County. So I wish I'd had the opportunity to do so in Fresno but it was in my previous role as a health officer in San Benito and we made incredible strides there. Much of the similar work is already being done in this community with our SAFAREX coalition which is organized through our health improvement partnership. Excuse me, but additional resources and funding for continued work and analysis would of course be appreciated. So just from a point of clarification are you saying that it's to create the task force that would be duplicative of the work that's already being done with SAFAREX? That's true, yes. I mean, okay. So it would, I mean, what would be the difference between although I suppose the structure is in formulated here based on the motion that's being created but I mean realistically am I hearing that in November or December you'd be coming back saying that these things are basically already included in an organization that's already in existence and that maybe there would be a small change in how the outlook of that would go? I think it would be a worthwhile exercise to do a cross comparison of our local work in SAFAREX with those in our neighboring counties, for example, Monterey who's had great success with decreasing their opioid problem in Monterey County through a very aggressive program and looking back at San Benito as well and some of the approaches that have worked there. Can I just offer, I think SAFAREX is a component certainly that we wanna look at but I mean I think if the reality is and again we don't know and we had a study session and it's not entirely clear but if we really have an injection drug use problem that's several times the size per capita of our neighbors with similar poverty rates, similar cost of housing rates, similar everything else rates, then SAFAREX is a component to that. We may need to double the size of our drug enforcement team. We may need to have more mat on demand in different venues in our community and reduce some of the other barriers around that and I know SAFAREX is working on that but we may need to do more youth education programs where Dr. Newell has tremendous credibility with the county now and us as political leaders are visiting churches and schools and telling the community that we have a significant drug abuse problem that is completely different than our neighboring communities and is in fact causing a public health crisis and deaths in opioid overdoses and in homelessness that we're seeing on our streets and in people's lives and families that have been impacted. So that's certainly a component and I don't think I'm not looking for a formalized structure but I am saying maybe this is the numbers of needles distributed, maybe an indicator of a massive public health crisis that we as community leaders need to go out and actively engage on and look at and so that's what I'm hoping we do with this task force. I don't know that there's the formalized staff work as much as starting to figure out, pull together the different components and making sure that we have best practices, making sure that we are taking a public stance on this crisis in our community. And Dr. Newell just operationally, what would this motion, how would this play out? I mean, I'm trying to, it is our job to set the general policy perspective in this regard but also realistically we should have deference to those that work in this at every day. So I'm just trying to be sure. I'm just, this feels like a significant ask and I don't know if it is or isn't. I mean, so if it is then I'm gonna, I'm uncomfortable with moving forward with it today and it's not that I'm necessarily opposed to even what Supervisor Coonerty McPherson is bringing forward. I just feel like maybe this isn't the right time or venue to have this quick of a conversation about it. If it's something that can be integrated into what we're currently doing and as an expansion of our current programs and as just deals with programmatic review, which is what we're trying to do in general, I'm much more open to that. So what is your take on what's being proposed or how would it play out operationally? You're on mute too. Thank you. I think I saw Mimi wanting to chime in here. Yeah, I would like to chime in. Thank you, Dr. Newell. And thank you for the question, Supervisor Friend. I'd like to note that in one of my previous jobs, I worked over two decades in a county that in 2014 was called out by the Centers for Disease Control as one of the worst counties in the nation in terms of opioid overdose death. And so in 2014, we started a coalition similar to the SafeRx Coalition. And in a number of years, we were able to dramatically reduce us. If you go back to the slide that Chief Herrera said, you'll see that Plumas County was number one in 2013. And so there are ways to reduce opioid overdose. And I do wanna say that the number of needles distributed is not a proxy for the size of the drug problem. Many other pieces of data can be put together, but it really isn't, it's really hard to separate out injection drug use from the overall drug problems. So there's a lot of information in the additional directives that are out today. And my comments regarding that is that a lot of the directors are only specific to injection drug use. So I'd like the board to consider the fact that we have an opioid problem, we have an addiction problem and it's not, you can't parse out those who only inject drugs as a problem to focus on. We're never gonna be able to get far enough upstream or broad enough to actually make a difference. The other thing that I'll note is even just the addition of the Syringe Services Advisory Commission has created a lot of additional work for our staff at all different levels with no additional dollars. And that's just a very small commission. And so it's really hard for us because we didn't have any insight into these directives prior to today. And I think that this is a lot for us to consider. And although for the rest of the world in the County COVID is improving, we have a ton of work. We are going to be in recovery mode for COVID with a lot of stress on our staff for the next two years. And I will say with the HEPA outbreak, six months after the HEPA outbreak was over, we were still experiencing the impacts on our epidemiology team and our contact tracers. And the pandemic is even gonna be more so. So I encourage the board to think about providing directives that are in line with the magnitude of the health priorities that we must respond to with limited resources. All right, well, Mr. Chair, I think what I'll do here is I mean, with a great amount of respect for Supervisor Coonerty and you and your approach on this, I'm going to introduce a counter motion that is just to move to approve the recommended actions. Let's see if there's a second for that. I'd be willing to second, Supervisor Friend, but do you have some contemplated time that the proposal we're seeing from Coonerty and McPherson would come back to us for further consideration? I mean, as you said, I'm sympathetic to the recommendations, but it's fairly large proposal here and take some time to digest, so. Yeah, I mean, I didn't. So they supported, they had the recommended actions within their motion and then this was just additional direction. I just think that this should be a standalone, I mean, not that we're looking to make these meetings longer, but this should be a standalone conversation because I think the magnitude of it, and out in the open so that we can get a better response from public health staff about and the CAO about what this actually means. That's all this is, because it could be something I could actually support. It's just hard to support something that I don't know what the impacts will be positive or negative on. Can I just briefly make a comment? I just want to make one point, too, that that's what I want to be told. What is the amount that would help us improve the program that we're having? I think there's a lot of credit, there's some improvements that have been made, but we need to do more. And I just want to know, we've thrown out the issue with $100,000 and that's a big amount of money and I get the staff limitations under the health crises we're having today, but I just want to get a sense of how much, if we gave $100,000, how much could that help? I think that's what we're trying to get to, because we need to do more, but it's going to take more money and it's going to take more staff, which is already overloaded. So I think what I'm asking for is if we pay, if the county gave an extra amount of funding, what would be the best way to put it in the budget for today? And I guess I'd add just briefly the following, which is we can continue this to the 29th and there were 10,000 people who signed petitions against needle distribution and we can mobilize the community and have a much broader discussion about all this. And I think that's fine. To go to the specific recommendations, the first one on needle litter was the direction that we actually made in June of 2019, which was that to have a needle litter, effective needle litter program. And right now having a program where people report litter and then the needles may be picked up within 24 hours will not win any support for any of our efforts at any level going forward. If I have a business owner or a school who sees a needle in front of their business or in front of their school and it's 24 hours, they have to report it and it's 24 hours before it's picked up, it simply will not, it will not be seen as a success by county or city government or the health department or anyone else. And I think in our meetings with the health department, they've made clear that this is not their business, this is not what they wanna do. And so what we're trying to do is say, and they don't have the resources to do it. So what we're trying to do is say, here's money available, contract. Let's see if there's somebody in the community, whether it's people who are already providing existing services or those who are interested in this contract of who will be more effective and more efficient picking up litter. The second bulk of the things are around data collection and I don't think are, and they has to do with the biennial reports and including the full of a more complete picture of the amount of needles that are distributed and other counties populations, which is a biennial report. And the third piece is this idea of having a task force that looks at what we can do. And I take the point is maybe it's not around purely injection, but between methamphetamine and heroin use in our community and how do we address it and prevent it in a more effective way. If it seems to be the crisis that anecdotally, I believe it to be and from a data point of view seems to indicate that we are in a different category than other communities, how do we address it? So the first recommendation was something that we talked about more than two years ago and it hasn't happened. The second one is data and the third one is to sort of start to address what is a public health crisis. But again, we can continue this to 29th and have a broader discussion with the community if that's what we wanna do. And I'll just say and I recognize that I had a motion out there that suffrage or conic may or may not actually be seconding, but so there's a point of order issue here. But with that said, I don't have no issue with the RFP. This was discussed to your correct two years ago and there was concerns at the time. I think that the RFP shouldn't just be limited to the two cities. I think that there should be cost sharing with the two cities though. I think that the first and second district do sometimes also encounter this. And if we're doing a county wide thing, there should be a county wide thing. But I also think that we should make a commitment that that funding whatever county contribution shouldn't come from the health services agency budget then. I mean, I think that we should, if we're sitting here talking about them having limited resources, we shouldn't make them, the payment shouldn't be on their backs. But so I would be, I'm comfortable moving forward with an RFP with those other elements. I mean, I'd rather have Mr. Plosio's work with the two cities about some sort of cost share to recognizing the majority of the work would be done within their jurisdictions but not incurring a $100,000 ongoing. And the other two issues, again, I'm not opposed to the concept of it. I just don't know what additional burden we're putting on an overtaxed health services agency. That's what I meant about a broader conversation about it. I recognize where the community is on this because we've all heard from them over the last decade on this issue. And what I'm hearing from the health services agency is pause, also not aware of how much additional burden this will put on them. And I'm trying to give them the time to figure out whether this, how this can improve what they're doing or not improve what they're doing or we'll create additional burdens or not. That's the feedback actually I would want at a future meeting is some sort of response from them about what this would mean. That's what would get me to support the entire thing. Otherwise, I was just going to move this item forward. As I said, the recommended actions, if you're comfortable with moving the recommended actions with this additional first part of the RFP with Mr. Plosios working with those jurisdictions and then bringing back part two and three with some feedback from health services than I think that we could plan somewhere. I mean, I think Survisor Caput has his hand up, but I think just so we're clear in the motion we make clear that the money was not, it wasn't, we didn't set where the money was going to come from because we know that there are and it's not limited to the cities and so with the focus on those cities. So my expectation was they were going to go out and say, we can get some money from here and some money from there. And so it's not meant to come out of HSAs. It was specifically left open to be determined where the money would come from and then what the program would look like. Survisor Caput, you're welcome. There you go, thank you. Maybe you can help me out on this. What is better, the staff recommendation or what is going to help you more and you and Dr. Newell and the Jennifer, I believe, get to where you want to be. The regular staff recommendation are the one by Supervisor Coonerty and McPherson. Yeah, I just, I have the amendment out. I just want them to tell the board what they want for the program overall. I'd just like to get an idea of what they would like for the program to be more successful. Right. Yeah, I'll try to answer both of those questions. We made the recommendations that we believe we have the capacity to do. In terms of program success, there are many, many different definitions of program success. And much like the pandemic, when it comes to syringe services, the science-based best practices, public health definition of success does not always match what the community wants or what our elected officials want. So the definition of success, it depends on who you ask. From a public health perspective, we don't have a fully successful program from my perspective. And the reason is we're not following best practices. I mentioned before that I worked for a county that had the highest rate of opioid overdose deaths. And four or five years later, we're able to have zero deaths with a lot of hard work. And that was through widespread Narcan distribution, not having one-on-one and having the needs-based exchange. Many of the things that are difficult in Santa Cruz County, because as elected, give the very difficult job of balancing community feedback and needs with public health and science and medicine best practices. And so we provided the recommendations that we are prepared as a staff to have the capacity to address at this time. And so our recommendation standard as is, I'm very respectful to Supervisor Coonerty and McPherson's directives. I know that their intent is the same as ours, which is to have a safer community. Totally, totally have the same vision as you. But at this time, at the place where our staff is, the amount of pressures on us from all sides and the huge public health needs that we have to address because of the pandemic, from healthcare to access to children's mental health, to other communicable diseases and sexually transmitted infections and preventative work. There are many, many things that we need to focus our time on. So to answer your question, Supervisor Caput, we provided the recommended actions that we feel that we have the bandwidth to address at this time. And I'll let my statements about the definition of success stand. And then we have a possible recommendation from Supervisor Friend. It's just gonna be helpful also. I'm trying to figure out where to go here. Yeah. As I mentioned before, we're all, yeah, it's very, we're struggling with our own capacity, but if the board, we serve at the pleasure of the board. So if the board should decide that they would like to have us address additional things, I mean, I'm open, I would just like to have a chance to provide additional feedback as Supervisor Friend has suggested and have an opportunity for the CEO's office and the health services agency to provide a little bit more information about how that would impact us. Okay. And can I just say, I respect the pressure that the health services agency has been under this year. And, but I do wanna make clear, right? Like it's sort of been set up as this dichotomy of that there's best practices and then there's what the board and the community will want. Santa Cruz County is handing out more needles than any other county per capita except, other than San Francisco. Well, I assume we're handing out more Narcan than anybody else other than San Francisco. We are, and then you have Supervisor McPherson myself saying actually have a task force or bring forward to us what we need to do to provide more services. We're not, no one's saying here provide less services. We're actually challenging you to provide more services and come to us and ask for more money to address what we see as a crisis. So there's a question of best practices but the best practices are about you have two supervisors here saying we're seeing a health crisis in needles in our public spaces and more importantly with drug use in our community and we are prepared to be asked for more and to spend more of our budget to provide better services. And so I don't know, I think this is not a dichotomy as we see in other communities between people who don't wanna do harm reduction and people who do, you actually have the board here asking for more harm reduction and more action to be taken to reduce disease. We don't wanna narrow it to one specific the number of needles exchanged. We wanna have a broader discussion but we're asking to do more, spend more, invest more, take a leadership role on what we see as a crisis. And Mr. Chair, the second part of my ask was that Mr. Plos is just have a brief opportunity to speak about the there's a financial ask here. I would appreciate his input. Yeah, I just wanted to clarify. I understand the litter issue is very serious in our communities. And as I understand the motion it's to provide $100,000 in the budget for litter, syringe litter cleanup that would be an on-demand new service. And so I'm trying to understand is that a total budget for that? And does that mean that the cities would participate? I fully anticipate asking the cities to fully participate because I think this is a community wide issue. It's not just a county issue. The syringe litter would be there whether we had an SSP program or not. If we were to shut down our SSP program tomorrow we'd still have lots of litter. And so I think the cities need to participate. And so I'm trying to figure out is the ask that we include that in the budget and that the cities equally participate or is anticipation that the county provide 100,000 and then we try and get equal participation from the cities. I think it depends on what we, the problem is we don't know, we don't know who can provide this service and how much it costs, right? And so this is the information we asked for back in two years ago. And it may be that there's a contractor out there and they're already out there and this is a small incremental cost that they can add on. It may be that there are no contractors out there and it takes a lot more, it'll take more money to do it, but we sort of, we didn't, we wanted to make a commitment but not have a serious commitment to our, not have a large commitment from our budget. So we set this do not exceed number forward. And so of $100,000 because we thought it's a pretty big geographic area but we can hopefully have it covered. And so like we don't know because we haven't asked. So we thought- So the motion as I understand it is to include $100,000 in the budget when we come back with this and then do an RFP for this service. And it's up to the CAO to negotiate with the cities about their participation with whatever program is viable based on them. Yeah, maybe what is it the nine C funds in the county that could be used? There may be clean water funds that can be used. We want to leave it open to what funding sources and streams you may find. Okay. This is a point of order. I believe Supervisor Friend made a substitute motion for the recommended actions. I would like to second that. I believe that is what makes sense to me to approve today as our HSA staff recommended that's what they have the capacity to do with today's resources. And I would very much like to hear more information about some of the proposals that my colleagues have brought forward at the meeting on the 29th. Chair McPherson, you are muted. Any other comments from board members? Okay. How do we want to clarify the motion? I think everybody would like to have that. So the motion is just for the recommended action since it's a substitute motion, that would be the motion we'd vote on first. If that motion doesn't approve, then we would go to the original motion, which was your motion for the recommended actions plus the additional direction. Right. So functionally what it sounds like is I guess I'll be voting to support it. And then Supervisor McPherson, I will put a board letter on an item on the 29th that outlines these actions and possibly more for us to consider with community input on the 29th. Okay. So the motion is to support the recommended actions and then have us come back with a letter to explain what further actions might be taken in the future. Is that correct? Well, yeah, I mean, it's really just to come back with what you just proposed. And I would recommend, my suggestion would be to meet with health staff and the CAO in advance of that so that we can have a more robust conversation about what the trade-offs would or wouldn't be. Again, I'm not opposed to it on its face, but I could be opposed to it if it becomes a problematic issue on the health side. So it just was really a lack of information. It's not a judgment on what you were proposing on an additional direction, at least at this point. Can I just ask a question to County Council, which is if we vote on this today, Supervisor McPherson and I's additional direction could all be brought back as in a traditional board letter on the 29th? Yes. Okay. If you approve the recommended action today, nothing prevents Supervisor McPherson and yourself from bringing this proposal forward on the 29th. Correct. Okay, now, so we're gonna be going on the recommended action. That's not the substitute motion by Supervisor Friend. No, we're just going with the recommended actions. Same thing. It is the substitute motion because your motion had more than that. So I just substituted in just the same. Substitute motion is the original motion in essence. Okay, so. Not the original motion, but the original recommended action. So that's the difference. And that's what Supervisor Coonerty was clarifying because we're not actually voting on your item. It's not. There's no issue with bringing it back. We're just voting on the substitute motion, which is for the original recommended actions from the health department. Okay. Okay. That's clear. All right. Are we going with the recommended actions is what we're voting on? Okay, not yours then. No, we might discuss that on the 29th, but the recommended actions that we're voting on now. Yeah. How strong do you feel on your motion on your proposal with Ryan right now? Well, I'm fine to go ahead with what we have now and we might have further discussion on the 29th. So I'm fine with that. Is that okay with you, Ryan? Yeah, I mean, I... Okay. Because I'm ready to vote. Sure. So I'll just say I don't see our recommended actions as very different from what the Board either has approved or seeks additional direction as we do all the time. And or is talking about asking the health director to do what she did in another county as done before. So it seems this feels to me like we're gonna spend an hours and hours and hours more time to do something that's not substantively different than what we end up doing today. But if that's the way the Board wants to go, I understand it. Yeah, but what I like about your proposal is the litter cleanup. I mean, that's a big problem. It's not a huge problem down here in South County, but it's getting worse. So, yeah. Okay. We have a motion and a second on the floor. I think it's called the roll. Supervisor Koenig? Aye. Friend? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Caput? Aye. McPherson? Aye. Thank you. The recommended actions approved as, sorry, it's... The approved is recommended actions. Okay. We will go now to items. Well, actually 13, 14 and 15, I don't think we can do them all together, but they are on the same subject. Item number 13, consider terms set forth for the purchase and sale agreement related to acquisition of real property located at 500 and 355 West Ridge Drive, authorize the deputy CEO, director of public works to execute the purchase and sale agreement, authorize the auto controller tax collector to make payment for the real property acquisition and related escrow fees. Leon, are you home? What? Oh, no. Supervisor Ken, yeah, there you go. He's on mute. Southeast Act was the tax collector to make payment for the real property acquisition and related escrow fees and take related actions that's outlined in the memorandum of the deputy CEO, director of public works. We have a purchase and sale agreement. I think we have to take these items one at a time. Thank you, chair. This is Carlos Palacio, so I'm just gonna introduce this item very briefly. Thank you. You're okay, good. We'll take them one at a time and I'd like to introduce Travis Kerry, who's going to be doing the presentation along with Kimberly Binley on this item. It's a very exciting item because this is one of the goals that I've had since I've come to the county and had the privilege of serving as your county administrative officer is how can we improve our services to the entire county and how can we specifically improve services to South County? And so this project is very exciting and that it gives us the opportunity to really reach all of our goals that we've had for South County, including improving services to the community, providing more services, providing more environmental benefit by reducing car trips, both for people in South County and from our employees and also saving the county money and being an efficient use of funds. So it really is a great project and I'll thank Travis Kerry and Kimberly Binley, Matt Machado for their work that they've done on this. It's a great project and this is a culmination of many, many, many months of hard work and it's really an example of our county staff and their ability. So I'll turn it over to you now, Travis. Thank you very much. Thank you, CAO Palacios and good afternoon, Chair and members of the board. As Carlos Minzen and Travis Kerry, Director of Capital Projects in the Department of Public Works and our project team also includes Kimberly Finley, our chief real property agent and Nicole Steele, our project manager, both in the Department of Public Works and I also wanted to think, in addition to Kimberly and Nicole Steele has just been an excellent resource for us to keep us on track with this project from the project management side. So I really appreciate her work on this. As Carlos mentioned, we're really excited to present the South County Service Center project. It offers a truly unique opportunity to enhance our access to county services in South County and it also implements numerous recommendations from the Long Range Facilities Plan and also the County Strategic Plan and we are hearing before you today to make specific recommendations regarding the acquisition of real property located at 500 and 355 Westbridge Drive in Watsonville to serve as the South County Service Center. Next slide, please. So I just wanted to provide a little bit of background that kind of sets the stage for this project. Your board accepted the Long Range Capital Facilities Plan from February 2nd to 2021 and it developed numerous recommendations around capital facilities. And for this project, it's really focused on strategic acquisition was one of the recommendations and looking at service enhancements, especially in South County and consolidating services as well. And also very specific recommendations about eliminating leases, where that's possible to do and making improvements to our workplaces and supporting remote work. Next slide. So here's some of the, we're demonstrating how we're actually meeting the recommendations in the Long Range Facilities Plan. So looking at strategic action, this property is a very prime location for us and the cost of that position is significantly less than our cost of construction with the current market. And we're also consolidating five existing leases that the county currently has. So that's with three with Human Services Department, the Agricultural Commissioner and also the Child Support Services Lead, lease in North County. And again, looking at significant opportunity to increase our service, providing service county services in South County. And one of the ways we're going to do that in addition to the departments is to create a interdepartmental public service counter and so to be able to offer additional services that are currently only available at 701 in North County and to be able to offer those in South County as well. I wanted to point out too that this project also implements the County Strategic Plan, mainly in the area of operational excellence, which talks about customer experience, county infrastructure improvements, supporting the county workforce and always looking for continuous improvement. And this is specifically in the areas of capital facilities. So that kind of sets the stage and I wanted to turn over at this time to Kimberly Finley, our chief property agent. And Kimberly will provide an overview of the property and talk about the proposed purchase and sale agreement today. Thank you. Thank you, Travis. Good afternoon, Chair and members of the board. As Travis mentioned, we are here today to recommend acquisition of real property located at 500 and 355 Westridge to serve as a South County service center. 500 Westridge is a 7.77 acres improved with a 121,491 square foot building comprised of approximately 95,000 square feet of office space and 26,000 square feet of warehouse space. The property includes approximately 461 parking spaces. The adjacent parcel 355 Westridge is approximately 1.1 acres and includes an additional 79 parking spaces to support the 500 Westridge facility. The Westridge properties are located in the Westridge business park immediately off of highway one between highways 129 and 152. The county intends to consolidate five existing county leases into the proposed South County service center including the HSD West Beach, the HSD Call Center, the HSD Training Center, the Child Support Services Center lease currently located in North County and the Agricultural Commissioner lease. These leases combined have an annual rent of approximately $1.7 million. Additionally, the adult and juvenile probation departments currently located at the county owned Freedom Boulevard campus in Watsonville have been identified for consolidation. Additionally, we're looking in, we're in the conceptual phases of space planning regarding the inclusion of a generously sized public facing lobby, enhanced public meeting spaces and a shared service counter. A purchase and sale agreement has been negotiated and is now provided to your board for approval. The Westridge properties were originally listed for sale at 19.4 million. The listing price was subsequently reduced to 16,910,000 and we have negotiated the final purchase price of 16,425,000. This price is based on 15,615,000 for the 500 Westridge property, which equates to $120 approximately per square foot of gross building area and $810,000 for the adjacent 355 Westridge parcel. Additional terms include a 90 day feasibility period which will allow for continued physical, financial and title investigation. This purchase is intended to be financed via lease revenue bonds, which bond financing detail will be provided subsequent to this agenda item. The Department of Public Works has also contracted with the strategic design firm, Gensler, to provide conceptual space planning models for the property that are modern, strategic and client focused. We have been working in collaboration with the auditor, controller, tax collector, CAO and administrative analyst, the county's cost plan management firm, county's financial advisor and county bond council to review the fiscal feasibility of this potential purchase. Based on our review, we have prepared a preliminary financial analysis. This analysis is based on several assumptions and is subject to change. These assumptions include the leases that we intend to consolidate, the additional users that we've identified, a double carry cost through 2023 that we would maintain the two existing private warehouse tenants that are currently located in the building. Our total overall project budget is approximated at 27 million 640,000 with 8,500,000 identified for TI's and a $1 million contingency. We've also included in our financial analysis an annual operation and maintenance costs at approximately $586,000 per year at a 3% acceleration. Based on these assumptions, the preliminary results of our lease versus on analysis show a five-year investment of approximately $1.3 million with the overall 30-year life of the bond showing a $5.4 million savings. Based on the preliminary financial projections and the public interest that would be served by acquiring a South County Service Center, we now recommend the following, approve and accept the terms and conditions of the purchase and sale agreement dated April 27th, 2021 to acquire will property located at 500 and 355 Westridge Drive, APNs 018-451-01, 018-451-07 and 018-401-21. Authorize the Deputy CAO Director of Public Works to execute said agreement on behalf of the County. Authorize the Department of Public Works to complete the feasibility studies required to waive the contingencies set forth in the purchase and sale agreement. Authorize the Auditor and Controller Tax Collector to make payment for the real property acquisition and related escrow fees pursuant to the purchase and sale agreement. Authorize the close of escrow if and when all contingencies are met. And authorize the Chair of the Board to execute the certificate of acceptance for the associated deed and escrow documents as required to effectuate the transfer of the property to the County. That concludes our presentation and we would now like to offer the Board a chance to have any questions or recommendations. Okay, thank you very much. Very exciting prospect. Any questions from the Board? Mr. Chair, I don't have a question. I just have a significant amount of praise here. This is the most significant investment in the South County that's been made in a couple of generations in terms of equity and access to services unquestionably, in terms of environmental improvements because of how many vehicles will be taken off the road that would normally have to do that commute up to 701 for both employees and residents of South County. And from an economic perspective, having employees down there, there will be supporting local businesses in the area. I mean, this really does from an equity environment and an economic standpoint, the largest investment that the County has made in South County. I'm very proud of our CAO for his leadership on this and this Board for requesting this very early on and to see this come to fruition so quickly. Mr. Kerry, Ms. Finley, thank you very much. And it'll really make a very large difference. Also for Mid County, my constituents and Supervisor Koenig's constituents to be able to head toward the South County for some of these resources as well for planning services or other services will be very important. Thank you very much. You're correct. The three is equity, economy, environmental quality. It's just this is an excellent opportunity for the County to improve our service to the community in the South County and saving millions on multiple leases in the future. The central location really will kind of allow us to consolidate many of those essential services for the people in the South County. I just want to praise the Carlos Palacios, our CAO, our Public Works, Mr. Kerry. And Mr. Finley, for your dedicated efforts to make this become a reality. This is a very exciting, shall we say, purchase for the County. I think the most exciting is in generations that we've had. So congratulations to all. This is going to be terrific. Any other comments from the Board members? Mr. Koenig? Yeah, thank you, Chair and thank you staff for the report. Again, just want to heat praise on this project. This is so smart. This is a win-win-win. It's a win for the County. It's a win for our employees and it's a win for the citizens. We're going to be accessing services in this new South County service hub. And I think this project really demonstrates a new kind of thinking. The old mentality was if we wanted to do something big, we had to build something big or that's a new freeway or a new building or a new program. And I think this really shows that we could do something big by radically reimagining the way we do things and the way we deliver services. In this case, we're taking a bunch of existing County departments and putting them into an empty building that already exists and combining them in a place where people really need those services. Thank you. Supervisor Caput. You bet. Thank you. This is a wonderful opportunity and it may never come if we don't take this and purchase this facility. We may never get an opportunity like this again for South County. I think it's wonderful and Supervisor Friend pretty much summed up what I was going to say. He said it much better than I'm going to say it. So it's a great opportunity for South County. It's going to help everybody down here. It's going to take cars off the road. And I have one question and I probably should keep my mouth shut because there's an old saying, don't kill the lily when you have the vote, keep your mouth shut, right? So my only question is on the concrete slab, is the plumbing all in underneath the concrete slab or is it accessible or is that going to be a problem in the future? Maybe you can answer that and try to sort of Kimberly. Sure, real briefly, it is a concrete slab, Port Foundation. There are many, many plumbing facilities on the site. We are doing a full physical building assessment. Now we have that draft report in and we're reviewing that. So we will be looking for any of those types of issues including a full inspection of the plumbing and mechanical systems. So it's possible we could add some more facilities if we need to. We are going to have the sewer line inspected as well as part of our inspection. So. And they haven't had a major problem with some of the past, I guess. We don't know of any at this point. The building has been fairly well maintained from our initial look at it. And there have been some new facilities added as well to provide additional restrooms. Yeah, because years ago when they had the old hospital, the heart before the one we have now, and there was a big problem with the plumbing in the concrete slabs when they built the one on Green Valley Road. So that's it. I'm ready to vote on this. And I want to thank all of you for seeing this great opportunity for South County and also for pursuing it and putting this whole project together. Thank you very much. Supervisor Coonerty, I think everybody wants to sing. Is there anything to this? I just want to, I'm just adding my voice to the choir here, this great project. It's incredible what it does for the provision of services to the community for really thinking in new ways about how to deploy a county workforce to serve all parts of our community in a environmentally, economically and sort of culturally efficient and effective way. It's an exciting project that I'm very supportive. Very good. Louis, oh, do I have any comments from the public? Yes, I have one speaker to this item. Caller 2915, your microphone is available. Hello, this is Becky Steinbruner. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. I think this is an amazing project too. And I'm very happy to see something being done in the South County. And hopefully that will relieve congestion for all of the highways and things in that people who live in Watsonville can now work in Watsonville. I want to make sure that the people served by the amenities put in here will be able to access it. To my knowledge, there is no bus service to this area of Watsonville. I would appreciate if there could be some clarification on that. And if the county is working with Metro, if there's not to make sure that that is provided that'll be a critical link. I am aware of the congestion on that road with the Pajaro Valley High School students. Lots of kids walk there. And so if there could be bus service provided to also serve Pajaro Valley High School students that would really be a win-win. So I guess my last question is this is gonna be a real reduction in income for the city of Watsonville because government owned properties do not pay property tax. What does the city of Watsonville think about this? How much would that affect the city of Watsonville? I know that it will support the businesses in the, excuse me, in the area but what about the loss in tax revenue to the city of Watsonville? And my absolute last question is I haven't heard yet exactly how much money this consolidation and purchase will save the taxpayers by consolidating five leases. It's also... I, there's a member of the, along with Supervisor Koenig Metro, a director. First things first here. This is gonna take some time to put all together but I can guarantee you that Metro will keep a keen eye on this and how it can serve in the community of Watsonville or Mid County or anywhere to get people there to work. Ms. Palacios, I think that you've had conversations with Watsonville, they're very enthusiastic about this in spite of the tax implications and I can't remember the other point. Yeah, I have had conversations with city staff about this project. It will be taking one property off property tax rolls but on the other hand, we will be vacating other properties that are currently privately owned and returning them to private businesses. So it's kind of, in my view, awash in terms of us consolidating other buildings and they will go back to the private sector. So, and the other thing is that it is overall a benefit to South County and to the city because of the services we're gonna be providing. So I think it's a very positive project and then Mr. Carey did lay out the savings or Ms. Finley did that are in excess of, I believe that $5 million in lease payments. Or over 30 years, I believe it was. Yeah, right, okay. All right, any other comments from the public? There are no other speakers to this item, Chair. Okay, I would put up for a motion, probably have our South County as representatives get on this. I'll move to approve this project. I'll second the recommended actions. Please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. Okay, we will go to items 14 and 15 that are related to this. Number 14 is a public hearing to consider resolution authorizing the issuance of Santa Cruz County capital financing authority. Lease revenue bonds 2021 series A and 2021 series B and a not to exceed amount of $26 million for series A and $4 million for series B and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the county administrative officer. We have resolutions on lease revenue bonds, preliminary official statement, site lease, attachment three, lease attachment four, bond purchase agreement to attachment five, indenture attachment six, assignment agreement attachment seven. I believe, let's see, who is going to be, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Vlasov, are you going to be presenting this or Mr. Riscoll? Yes, we have Christina Maori, our county budget manager, I believe, and we also have, yes, the Mr. Riscoll from Audit-Controlled Treasure Tax Collector are available as well. So I'll turn it over to Ms. Maori. Yes, good afternoon. So Christina Maori, county budget manager, Marcus Pimentel's going to be providing a brief overview of this item. We also have Suzanne Harrell on the line, our financial advisor and our bond counsel, Scott Ferguson. So if they could be elevated, that would be great. And we'll go ahead and make a very brief presentation to outline for them, for the financial investment and how that will work. Marcus, there. It'll be just a moment. Okay, great. I'm working on it. I see Suzanne. Hello. Hi Suzanne. Hi everyone. Hi Suzanne, thank you for your help on this project. All right. You're welcome. My part by keeping interest rates really, really low. Okay. Good work. It's a good time to finance for sure. Okay, looks like Marcus is just going to need a moment. So we do have a financial team made up of the Audit-Controller, our financial advisor and bond counsel. And we have been working in coordination with the public works department on the purchase of the Westridge facility. So we are, and as Suzanne said, the rates are very good right now. So we will be in good position. And I think he'll be here shortly. He has the presentation. Let's see, what else could I tell you? It's going to cover the project costs to be financed, our lease revenue bonds and the actual debt service, our leased asset, the actual bond sale and the approvals that will be required and the recommended actions. You still want to wait for Mr. Pimentel? I do. Okay. Okay. So I will actually be advancing the slides for you. Marcus is on his way. Okay. I apologize for the delay. It's been a long day. Yes, it is. Nobody knew exactly when they were going to be called upon. So. Yeah. Hey. Can I talk to you? Yeah, yeah. Come on in. Here he is. Good afternoon, Chair McPherson, Board of Supervisors, Honorable Board of Supervisors. I assume you can hear me. Yes. Great. So before you today, we have combining actions for items 14 and 15 to be taken by the County Board of Supervisors as well as the directors of the Santa Cruz County for capital financing authority. Because these items are essentially similar, we've combined the two together. And before I get too far into the presentation, I want to pause for a second and offer a sincere gratitude and thanks to the team to allow me to be participating in this item. That's native of Watsonville. I'm very excited about this project, but also our team is incredible in being led by our County Budget Manager, Christina Mowry, our County Financial Advisors, Suzanne Harold, our Bound Council, Scott Ferguson, and as well as our County Senior Administrative Analyst, Trish Daniels. We've done a wonderful job pulling the financing together for this project that you just heard about. So move on to the next slide. Thank you, Stephanie. Thank you for including those people and even then they've been a phenomenal job. So we really appreciate it. Thank you. You're welcome. Before you, the few items will quickly go through. The staff reports and attachments are very detailed, very much like you saw a different on presentation last month, May 11th. These things are very lengthy in their nature. There's a lot of details in the staff report. There are a lot of attachments, but we'll try to summarize them now and certainly be available for questions. We'll be reviewing the project current projected costs, our bond financing details, as well as the timing. And then we'll finish with summarizing the approvals that are required today and conclude with the recommended actions. Again, there are two separate actions here today. One to be taken by the County Board of Supervisors and then a second action to be taken as the Board of Directors of the Santa Cruz County Capital Financing Authority. Next slide, Stephanie. Thank you. This slide here illustrates the projected costs as they stand now. You just approved the purchasing and acquisition costs to $16.4 million. Currently, we are projecting at a total cost of about $27.6 million to required in financing. If that were to be the final price, we would issue bonds the same size to make sure the financing is fully covered. Move on to the next slide, Stephanie. The details of the bonds at that sizing include a very favorable 2.5% average interest rate. As you heard last month, rates are still at a really great place and we're projecting to close quickly. So we want to lock that in as fast as we can. These would be a 30 year term and due to the nature of this project where we will be conducting improvements on site and then relocating staff operations. There'll be a little bit of a delay before we occupy the building. So we've timed the debt service to allow us and cushion in the first year, we would not have any debt service payment. And then we would go to the full debt service payment in year three, allowing a little bit of a step up in year two. That's just to match the nature and the timing of the project. Next slide, please. What this asset requires to get that favorable interest rate is a lease financing agreement. The County of Santa Cruz will be entering into the lease agreement and a lease back agreement with the County of Santa Cruz Capital Financing Authority. And we will be securing the Center for Public Safety on Soquel Avenue as the least asset. As soon as title is cleared and the county obtains full title of the property in Watsonville, we will switch the least asset to the new acquisition site in Watsonville. So for a very, very short period of time, the least asset will be public safety center and they don't convert to this asset. Next slide, please. Our bond cell, as I mentioned, we are moving quickly. And if we were able to conclude all of the contingencies on the project, we will try to close the bond in early August and close escrow in middle of August, just about two months from now. And the final slide, please. The final, our approval is required for you today as detailed in the staff reports and including all attachments include the following approvals that authorize the issue to the sale of bonds. It includes establishing the team that will conclude the issuance of these bonds. It sets the maximum parameters for these bonds, both the interest rate and the maximum issuance of up to $30 million. That will be capped based on any variability in interest rates or any gaps we need in project costs. And we'll have a lot of financing documents, including a very lengthy but very detailed preliminary offering statement. And they will all be included in the packet and have been available for the whole public to review as well as yourselves. Finally, the underwriters will issue the preliminary offering statement. So those are the actions that will be required and we'll now move to the final slide. Again, this is a joint presentation for two items. So the first item that will be conducted by the County Board of Supervisors is to open the public hearing, allow for comments and then close the public hearing and take action to adopt a resolution authorizing the issuance of bonds and all the related actions. We will then convene as the County, Santa Cruz County Capital Authority Bond Board of Directors and move forward with adoption of resolution for the authorizing the issuance of the bonds and directing the city clerk to take on the County Clerk to take on the actions required. That includes our staff presentation and we are available for questions. And mute, Bruce. Oh, mercy. Yeah, it's a long day. Scott, thank you. Any questions from members of the board just on the financing aspects of this great project? They don't see that anybody's raising their hands, so to speak. Any questions from the public? Yes, I have one speaker, caller 2915. Your microphone is available. Hello, this is Becky Steinbruner. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. First of all, I really wanna thank the presenter for putting the slide presentation available to the public on the Board of Supervisors Agenda Portal. Thank you very much. I am able to look at this as you've gone through it and I appreciate it very much. I do have a question on slide number five and the speaker touched on it briefly, but I am curious about why initially the least asset will be the Center for Public Safety at SoCal in Chanticleer. Why do you have to do that when it looks like the payments annual debt service would not begin until year two? I would very much appreciate that explained. Thank you. That's the only public comment, is that correct? That is correct. Can you briefly answer that? Absolutely. So required for the lease, this is in essence a lease transaction. There has to be an asset behind it because we do not have title yet of the new asset in Watsonville. We currently will have a substitute asset for our SoCal's Public Safety Center. Very quickly, as soon as the bond closes within about two months, it'll switch from the public safety center to the new asset in Watsonville. So it's just the nature of this is backed by a lease to back the bonds. We need a leased asset. We don't have title yet on the Watsonville property. So as soon as we do have title, we'll substitute it very quickly. Very good. Thank you for that explanation. Thank you. I'll close the public hearing. Any comments from the board? Entertain a motion. Unlive the recommended actions. I'll second. Okay, call the roll please. Sorry for clarity, was that Supervisor Caput seconded the motion? Correct. Thank you. Supervisor Koenig. Hi. Friend. Hi. Caput. Hi. McPherson. Hi. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. Okay, the third item on this measure as a board of directors of the Santa Cruz County Capital Finance Authority authorize the issuance sale and delivery of lease revenue bonds in the not to exceed amount of $30 million and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the County Administrative Officer Resolution to authorize the lease revenue bonds, preliminary official statement, attachment two, site lease attachment three, lease attachment four, bond purchase agreement attachment five, indenture attachment six and assignment agreement attachment seven. I think we have the same presenters in this. Ms. Mowry, are you going to lead off in this or who's on first? Actually, we covered that item already. It was included in the previous presentation. So your board just needs to take action on the item 15, adopt the resolution. Okay, I'll see if there's any questions from the board first. Any public comment? There are no speakers to this item. Okay, I entertain a motion on item 15. I'll move to approve. Second. Move by Caput, second by Friend. Please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. And again, congratulations to everybody for a mammoth project and a great accomplishment. I will move to item number 16 now to consider approval and concept of an ordinance adding chapter 5.53 to the Santa Cruz County Code regarding regulations for shared mobility device services and schedule the ordinance for a second reading and final adoption on June 29th, 2021 as outlined in the memorandum of Supervisor Mono Koenig. We have an ordinance adding chapter 5.53 shared mobility device services. I think to the rest of Koenig, we're going to address this issue. Yes, thank you, Chair. I have a brief presentation. I will just share my screen here. Great. Are you all able to see my screen? Yes. Why? Yeah, I can. Yeah. All right. So I'll talk a little bit about why shared mobility, some of the good and bad things about it, the status of policy around shared mobility in our county, the nature of the proposed ordinance comparison to some of the other ordinances that the other cities in our county have the risk of not taking action today and finally review the recommended actions and address some questions and concerns. So the reason why we need a shared mobility program really is that mode shift out of single occupancy vehicles and into transportation alternatives like small electric vehicles that are provided by shared mobility services is essential to rolling back the climate crisis. I mean, you can see from our own County of Santa Cruz Climate Action Strategy that transportation accounts for 61% of our local emissions. It's by far the biggest chunk and we have to create transportation alternatives for people if we're gonna do anything about that. The other big thing here is housing. We will never be able to build enough affordable housing unless we reduce single occupancy vehicle use. You know, ask any developer, they have to park a project before they plant anything else about it and often it can consume, you know, as much as 50% of the parcel or more and really limit the amount of housing that we can build. Finally, shared mobility services provide a great way to the connections to transit for that last mile service as people arrive at their destination and then just need to get from the bus stop to a place of work. And, you know, they can also reduce competition for vehicle parking and spaces in high-impact areas. So we've, of course, the City of Santa Cruz already had a shared mobility program for a while with the jump bikes. We saw just how well-used they were in our area. They averaged four trips per bike per day. They provide a healthy and fun transportation option. And I think what's most important is they really provide an easy way for people to test out this new technology. I know personally, the first time I ever rode an electric bike was a jump bike and the first time that I ever rode an electric scooter was also a shared scooter. And so it's a way for people to realize just how fun and convenient this technology is and maybe even be inclined to purchase one themselves. Of course, with a robust enough shared mobility network, they won't have to and will always be able to enjoy the most up-to-date technology. Some of the challenges we know both from the jump bikes within the City of Santa Cruz as well as hearing stories from other locations that have rolled out these programs is people will ride on the sidewalks and that can cause conflicts. People will park the vehicles on the sidewalks, as you can see in this picture of the jump bikes blocking the middle of the sidewalks. Pedestrians have been injured because of this unsafe riding on sidewalks. The equipment can be vandalized. So it's really important to have a good local ordinance and program to manage the use of this technology. So the status of a rollout for shared mobility in the County today, so we may know or remember that the County was actually moving towards signing a deal with jump bikes in early of 2020. However, jump was basically pulled out in the City of Santa Cruz during the pandemic and then was purchased by Lyme, which was purchased by Uber. So jump no longer exists as an entity. A coalition of partners, all of the cities in the County, the County itself and UCSC have been moving forward towards a regional program. And this is fantastic. We released a request for information on April 21st. We recently received those applications back and I expect that soon, I believe in this month will be asked by staff to proceed with the next step and to release an RFP. So a more formal process there for folks to apply to be a shared mobility provider in Santa Cruz County. The challenge is that we're still months out from actually getting that done and that we're not likely to see a program that can be rolled out uniformly across all the cities, the County UCSC until early 2022. The other challenge is that it seems likely that having one operator for all the cities, the County UCSC would basically be a monopoly provider. If we only have one shared mobility provider through the whole County, where basically the network is riskier. We've already seen this as a problem in the city of Santa Cruz. I mean, we had just one provider, Jump Bikes, and their company basically failed. It was absorbed and they pulled out. Other jurisdictions that had multiple micro mobility providers or shared mobility providers were able to maintain shared mobility service throughout the pandemic. So I just really want to reiterate that because a lot of these companies are fairly new and the market is changing, that it wasn't the pandemic that killed Jump Bikes and killed micro mobility in Santa Cruz County. It was the fact that we were reliant on one provider and other areas that had multiple providers and did not see that drop in service. I also think there was an opportunity to help establish a fee schedule for all the partners. And finally, today the County has no laws preventing rogue operators within our jurisdiction. So the proposed ordinance is really very simple. It's based on the city of Santa Barbara's ordinance and it primarily does one thing, which is prevent shared mobility operators from using our streets without a permit. In the same way that you need a license to drive a car, you'd need a permit from the County to operate a shared mobility service within our jurisdiction. Now, just to clarify that today, certainly we do have control over our own right of way and the public streets and sidewalks, but a shared mobility operator, if they wanted, could make an agreement with O'Neill or Penny Ice Creamery or other local businesses to park those shared mobility devices and then really operate it well because we have no ordinance or no laws governing shared mobility devices in the County today. So that's the primary thing that this ordinance would do. It would also establish a way to charge permit fees and the use of those fees, which is primarily to recover costs from operating and managing this program. And it would define a process for removal and impoundment of shared mobility devices that are improperly parked or used improperly. And then while it's not within the ordinance itself, the permit application could include a map of slow or no go zones as well to ensure, for example, that people do not ride a shared bike too quickly on East Cliff Drive on the sidewalk or mixed use area there. For example, we could cap the speed limit there at five miles per hour or we could make sidewalks no go zones. So the ordinance really is pretty minimal and then additional provisions of operating can be included in a permit application agreement. So just to compare this proposal to proposed ordinance to other ordinances that regionally and within the County itself, as I said, this ordinance is modeled very closely on the city of Santa Barbara's ordinance. Both the city of Santa Cruz and city of Capitola have ordinances already. And they, oops, sorry, they basically describe the same thing that this one describes it. If you're going to operate a shared mobility service within the city limits, you've got to have a permit and also establish some safety and operating guidelines. And finally the city of Santa Monica, as I mentioned, they launched a pilot program with four companies, two went out of business or ceased operations during COVID and the pandemic, but they were able to maintain service throughout that period. And then their latest recommendation is to expand that to allow up to three companies to deploy electric scooters and bikes in the area. So what are the risks of not taking action? So if we don't create an ordinance, there is still the opportunity that a rogue operator could come in. We have no laws regulating operation of shared mobility devices in the unincorporated areas of the county. The second risk is that, if we simply only choose to move forward with the group action, the regional approach that we really could see, probably won't see a program till early 2022. And then even when we do, there could very well be increased risks. And that's because number three here, as I said, having a sole contract means that if we have a failed operator, we could then go again a period with no shared mobility service within the county. And that kind of on again, off again approach could really impact uptake and use of these devices within the county. So the recommended actions are to prove a proven concept and ordinance adding chapter 5.53 to the Santa Cruz County Code regarding regulations for shared mobility devices and schedule the ordinance for final adoption on June 29th. And then of course, some additional work that needs to be done is to actually write the permit or operating agreement that a shared mobility provider would sign with the county, establish a permit fee and the unified fee schedule, which could be updated, of course, regularly based on the actual cost of the program. And then to begin design a potential pilot program after the ordinance goes into effect on July 29th. I do want to take an opportunity just to address some questions and concerns that came in from some of the folks who are participating in the regional program that exists today. And I also want to reiterate that, the intention of implementing this ordinance or bringing forward this ordinance now is very much to continue to stay in the regional and collaborative process. Really, we're just catching up by creating an ordinance very similar to two other cities that are already within the county and creating a framework by which we can also work with other mobility providers if we so choose. But again, to address the primary concerns of folks who are participating in the regional program, we received a letter from the city of Santa Cruz and the same letter essentially, carbon copy was submitted also by Cabrillo and the city of Watsonville. And the central tenant of that letter was this statement, which was bolded in the letter that says, if approved, this ordinance will eliminate the county from the regional system and create a hole in the regional mobility framework. So actually, if county council's there, I just wanted to address a, have him address a couple of questions. So the first is related to this statement. Council, do you see that this ordinance would prevent us from signing on to a regional RFP? No, nothing from a legal perspective would prevent us from doing that. Okay, and would this ordinance prevent us from supporting a single county wide bike operator if that's what the working regional group recommended? It would not. Okay. From a legal perspective, there's nothing in this ordinance that would prevent that. All right. And are we at risk of a rogue operator coming in today if we don't pass an ordinance like this? We do not have anything on the books that would prevent jump or any other agency from starting in our, in the unincorporated area, it would be on code enforcement in the Department of Public Works to pursue folks for encroachments and the like if they put them in the right-of-way. Got it. And then also in the letter there was a suggestion that somehow this would create a county program that prioritizes companies that can make the most profit. Council, can the county excessively profit from permit fees? No, we can't, we can recover our costs for programs but we're not permitted to use something like this as a revenue generator. I don't understand the argument, frankly, but I haven't had a chance to talk with folks about what they're basing that on. And then additionally, the suggestion was made that we rewrite the ordinance so that only applies to scooters and therefore wouldn't interfere with any kind of regional bike share program. Would it make sense to do that? Well, that's a policy question. From a legal perspective, there would be nothing preventing that from happening if you want me to actually weigh in on the policy question. Are you inviting me to do that? I am inviting you to do that. Okay, okay. Yeah, no, I don't think it would make sense to have a scooter ordinance basically or that's something that's limited to scooters if you're trying to do a shared mobility services ordinance that applies to all multimodal transportation facilities other than cars. Right. Did I understand correctly that mean that we would basically only disallow scooters in the county if a scooter operator that doesn't have a permit whereas a bike operator didn't have a permit permit could still come in because they're not covered by the ordinance. Correct. And so I think those are all the major concerns that were raised by some of the folks in the regional discussions. Again, I wanna reiterate that the goal is in no means to challenge that work or to divert that work. It's absolutely to do that and more. So in summary, this proposed ordinance would provide us the same basic protections that the cities of Capitola and Santa Cruz already have. It will create a simple and flexible framework for moving forward, including potentially bringing back shared mobility to the county this year. It will not interfere with our ability to join a regional program. In fact, the regional working group intends to bring forward an RFP for approval at the second meeting this month, concurrent with the final read of this ordinance. And I'll say I'd be the first that if there were any legal conflicts between the regional program and this ordinance I'd be the first to withdraw this ordinance or vote against it on the final read. So I've not been able to identify any conflict between the regional program and this proposal. And with that, I turn it over for any questions. Okay, any questions, comments from the board? Supervisor Friend. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Ms. Supervisor Koenig for bringing this forward. I'm not supportive of the item today. I mean, I think that the board has already been through a pretty extensive discussion in advance of you joining the board. Obviously COVID gotten away a bit of that where we made direction to the Department of Public Works on things we wanted. We had a pretty robust community discussion. The community at the time had said, and I agreed with them that they had concerns about scooters and the safety of scooters both for pedestrians and seniors walking as well as for those that were actually using it. I'd actually attended a CSAC conference with Chair McPherson pre-COVID where one of the transportation presentations was on these scooters and the amount of traumatic brain injuries associated with them in San Diego had exploded as a result of the introduction of them. So I have concerns about the broadness of it. I do think, I honestly believe that it is in no way your intention to get out in front of the work that Public Works has been doing, but I do think just based on the letters we receive, I'm like, it's pretty rare to get a letter from basically every city in the county opposing something that we're proposing, including Cabrillo College. They view it as such that they would interfere with the discussions and get out ahead and create a narrative and expectation. And so I want to, I do want to honor that because I feel like the board had already provided this direction and empowered Director Machado to do the work. He was working on it obviously as you noted, COVID delayed that. I don't think scooters in particular do anything from an environmental perspective like the bikes do. I think that'd be a tough argument to make that the CO2 reduction would be caused by the introduction of the scooter ordinance. I don't see a significant community clamoring for this right now. I mean, just speaking candidly, the only thing I've ever heard in regards to shared mobility was people that were opposed to it, at least within my district, but I was still in support of creating a construct, at least on the bike side. So I just don't see that the need is now to get out in front of it. And that's where this is for me as a timing perspective. I'd like to see the work that's currently being done come out. If we feel unsatisfied with what gets negotiated at least on the bike side in regards to that working group, then I think we have a secondary policy discussion on whether we should expand it to additional things. And I appreciate it that you brought it forward and tried to address those questions, but that's where I am today. So I won't be supporting the item today. Thank you, Mr. Koenig. Thanks, Mr. Chair. Any other comments from the board members? Yeah, I appreciate you bringing this forward. I think it's valuable to the community to provide additional sustainable transportation opportunities. But I too am concerned to receive the correspondence from the cities and Carrillo. And they've been working on a cooperative effort with the county to implement a countywide shared mobility service focused initially on bike sharing. I think the cities are supportive of finishing that work and cooperating before the county considers, I think, putting a formal ordinance on the book. So while I'm inclined to agree with where I'm not going to be supporting this item at this time, but I do appreciate you're bringing it forward. I think it's part of our future, that is for sure. And maybe the jump bikes could be that they were well used, but maybe not that successful, but I think that I'd like to see this other work its way out first before we get into something of this nature at this point. Any other comments from the board? You know, I'll just to respond again, I feel like I've laid out a pretty clear argument. I understand the, you know, really emotional response from our partners. There's no reason why this conflicts with any of the work that we're doing with our partners. And, you know, again, the challenge if we only pursue that route, you know, we could see nothing until the beginning of 2022, COVID pandemic, of course, has impacted supply chains. If we only choose one provider, because we want to, you know, basically add a bunch of requirements that, you know, we'll really make it could make it more difficult to operate and honestly increase the risk of them being able to come into our county with a bunch of expectations to do so successfully. You know, I guess the question is for me is at what point do we consider that we need to do something differently? I mean, you know, essentially at this point we're probably not going to consider this again until early 2022? Well, I could raise one, if I, Mr. Heath and I apologize to put you on the spot on this from a county council perspective, but could we not just bring forward an emergency ordinance prohibiting these from occurring within the unincorporated area and doing an outright ban that we could bring forward as an urgency ordinance that our next meeting that would at least address this? I mean, I consider it to be a little bit of a false argument, but this construct that we don't have anything built around the protections of our right-of-way. I mean, somebody can't just build something on a right-of-way. We obviously have code enforcement capabilities of that, but if this is a real and legitimate concern that in the coming seven months something's gonna occur, could we not just bring forward a brief ordinance that just prohibits this kind of activity pending an upcoming ordinance? One could do that. I would not recommend it be done on an urgency or emergency basis unless you could make the findings that an emergency exists associated with the item. You could definitely, one could definitely put forth a moratorium though on these in some kind of an ordinance fashion. Okay, yeah, I apologize. I'd use it in an artful language on that. No, no. I just meant, no, I appreciate the clarity. My sense is just that if there's a problem, we can address it with an ordinance. I mean, this isn't a problem right now. And I don't, nobody anticipates it being a problem. Well, I shouldn't say nobody anticipates it being a problem. It hasn't been shown that it is. So, but we do have a tool at our disposal of a pretty quick turnaround. A, we have the code enforcement mechanism in the intervening time should somebody try to block our right of way in an unpermitted fashion. And if that is deemed inadequate in the course of not a lot of time, we could, well, actually at that point, you could actually have an urgency ordinance because you would have something that would be showcasing that this is something that may justify. But either way, we could have a secondary tool if needed in that intervening time. I just think that that I would rather wait for this process to put that the board had already voted unanimously to direct GPW to do, let it play out. And if we deem that, and ideally to have a countywide policy, meaning not just the unincorporated, but the cities as well, if we deem that to be inadequate, then we come back and do something just the unincorporated areas if need be. But that's where I am on this. But I truly do believe, supervisor Koenig, that you, I mean, I appreciate you pushing this and also responding to those concerns that our partners in the cities brought forward. I just, you know, maybe at a point in the future, I'm still gonna be very skeptical of the scooter component. I think it's a safety issue legitimately. And I just don't think it brings forward a significant public benefit for the public risk that it poses. But at least on the bike side, I do see a real value. Any other comments from board members? This is Ryan. I think, look, I think we're ready for a vote. I think for the reasons outlined, I can't support this initiative when we have so much concern being raised by our partners. Go meet with the partners. If you wanna, if after meeting with them, we can craft this effort in such a way that it doesn't raise their concerns. And if you wanna try a pilot program in mid-county, if it's gonna take too long to get it to get a, you know, the overall county-wide approval, the reality is having been through this, the community is gonna demand a lot of conditions on these. And so just sort of allowing them without the sort of, it takes longer, but these conditions are important, otherwise we lose public support. And you end up losing this, what is I think an important component of a mobility plan. So I think just go have a conversation, see what we can do that doesn't interfere with their effort or raise concerns and we can come back and do something. I think you have a point of order. I think we need to go to the public on this as you have a couple of hands. Sure. Any other comments from the board? I got a surprise. Let me just make one statement. Could we pass it as a pilot program, try it out for, you know, six months for a year? I don't know. I don't know if that's workable or not, could we? I'll try to field that question, Supervisor Caput. That wasn't what was agendized today. And so I would recommend against adopting something as a pilot program. What's before you as the ordinance to either adopt it on First Street or not? Well, I just to clarify, I mean, couldn't it affect the ordinance be adopted with additional direction that, you know, initial permits would only be considered pilots, for example, not to last more than 90 days or three months? No, essentially what you would be doing is you would be sending me back to recraft the ordinance to insert provisions to that effect into the ordinance and then it would come back to your board for First Street. Okay. Do we have any comments from the public? Yes, I have two speakers from the public. Claire G, your microphone is available. Good afternoon, Chair and Supervisors. This is Claire Glogley, the City of Santa Cruz Transportation Planner and the former Jump Program Manager. Thank you for bringing this up in the discussion today. As you know, we are working on a current collaborative effort to secure a regional system of a bike-only system between all of the four cities, the county, UCSC, and Cabrillo. You've received a letter from us, Outlining Concerns, which we had expressed, and many of them have been spoken to today, but they do not allay the express concerns that we had that we had originally expressed to Supervisor Koenig and they still stand today. So today we have two asks. The first is to table this item until after the RFP process has been complete, as direction has been given by the county and by our council and other decision-making bodies within our region. The second ask is simply that, when and if you do move forward with this ordinance to remove bikes and e-bikes from the permitted vehicle types of a permitted program that the county would run, this would ensure that the market's available for a regional vendor and that we could pursue our approach to issue an RFP and enter into a contract with a bike share vendor in order to secure public benefit. A single vendor secured these public benefits, things such as geographic equity and fair programs that benefit low income members of our community, not just those who could afford the higher prices. Of note, a few corrections. Bike Share did not fail because we relied on one provider. It ended because a provider that we had was assumed by another vendor who had a sharply different offering and we could not, through public contracting, just let them assume that contract. The ordinance in front of you is a departure from the work that we're doing. If the concerns rogue operators, I would encourage you to simply look to the city of Santa Cruz, existing moratorium on shared mobility where we do permit our contracted vendor that we had. And finally, I know that what is in front of you is a fast path forward to some type of system. And I also know that if you wanna go fast, you go alone, but if you wanna go far, you go together and I hope that we can continue our regional work to secure a bike share system for Santa Cruz County. Thank you so much. Thank you. Robert Singleton, your microphone is available. Good afternoon, Chair McPherson, board. So I really want to just wanna make a couple points, namely because I kind of see where this ordinance is headed. And even though I would have been super excited to work with you all on a kind of short-term pilot program this summer in the unincorporated area, I understand and I understand the concerns made by some of the community partners. I do wanna speak to some of the concerns voiced by our board that I think may have been, well relevant, have been certainly improved upon within the industry of micro-mobility. Just for reference, I'm the government partnerships manager for the Pacific Northwest for Bird. So we do bike and scooter share as well as adaptable vehicles and over 170 cities across three continents. We've learned a lot from our experience in the micro-mobility industry. We've greatly improved upon our practices with regard to safety as well as the technology and capabilities of our vehicles. I would actually love and revel in the opportunity to demo some of these new vehicles to you members of the board as well as county staff. Again, we've made a lot of strides in combating concerns about safety, making sure that we have slow zones, no ride zones, better park zones, equity zones. And unlike bike share programs, scooters do offer a very unique demographic appeal. Scooters in places based upon 2019 data and places where you had bike and scooter share programs. Scooters are written about five times more often as bikes, roughly over one third of those scooter trips directly replace car trips. So the impact on carbon emissions is quite clear and is well backed by research. But scooters are also easier to deploy, they're cheaper, and they also help share revenue with communities. So for instance, Bird in partnership with the city of San Jose was able to sponsor 16 miles of new bike lanes over the course of two years through revenue sharing. So there's a lot of opportunities and benefits for scooter share. And I do hope to work with jurisdictions in the future to allay concerns and build a robust and meaningful program that can reduce car emissions while also being safe and addressing community concerns. So thanks for your time today. Thank you, Mr. Singleton. Thank you. Any other comments? There are no other speakers to decide them. Okay, I'll bring it back to the board. Chair, I don't think I have the votes to get this ordinance passed today. Am I able to withdraw it until such time is I'm able to review this? Any ordinance that can be implemented with regional partners and bring it forward in a future date? Fine, that's certainly acceptable. Okay, so there will not be a motion on the floor then. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. All right, then we will just move on to item number 16, or excuse me, 17, 17. Consider, or excuse me, it's a public hearing to consider approval and concept of an ordinance amending Santa Cruz County Code Chapter 1501 and sections 1303.050 and 13.10.418A, 13.10.352B and 14.01.411 regarding park, parkland dedication and in lieu fees and the additions of section 15.03 regarding parking back fees and section 15.05 regarding trail and coastal access. Adopt resolution to improving the sequence notice of exemption and schedule the ordinance for secondary reading the final adoption on June 29th, 2021 as outlined in the memorandum of director of parks, open space and coastal services. We have several ordinances of exhibit A, B, A, B, C, D, A, B, F, G, H, I, J. There's about the fees reviewed, the fee study, the plan commission resolution and the parks commission minutes and staff report from the parks as well. Thank you. Who is going to be presenting on this as Mr. Gaffney? Is Mr. Gaffney going to be able to, is he here? Yes, he is promoted now. He should be rejoining. There he is. Okay. Thank you for bringing me on. And we saved the best for the last of the day or getting towards the end of the day. We wanted to make it really complex and complicated, but I don't want to take up too much of your time. Obviously, let's try to move this along quickly. Thank you, Chair McPherson and fellow board members. I'm going to turn it over to Will Fort, who's much more succinct and thorough than I am. I am seeing him come up right now. So if you have any questions, we'll both be available at the end of the presentation. Thank you. We can see your screen well and I haven't heard you yet though. Okay, there we go. I'm sorry, I was muted. Good afternoon. Can you hear me now? Yeah. Thank you, Jeff. So I see you can see my screen. Yes, we can. And great. So thank you for your consideration. I will go through the proposed updates to the park dedication fee program. And these are fees that apply to new development to provide the funds needed to expand the park facilities to meet the new demand created by that development. So for today's consideration, I will go through three sections of this presentation. First, some background information on the program and the issues to be addressed. Next, the required board actions. These include first, the ordinance amendments and second, the unified fee schedule amendments. Today's hearing is about the ordinance amendments. I will also cover the fee schedule which will be considered at the June 29th budget hearing. But since these updates go hand in hand, it would be appropriate to discuss the fee schedule amendments at this hearing today as well. And this information was reviewed by the Parks Commission, Parks and Recreation Commission on February 8th and they recommended that the board take these actions. And the Planning Commission reviewed on April 28th and approved a resolution recommending the adoption of the portion of the ordinance in their purview as well. So let me start with some background information. The goals of this program update are to comply with the current state law to align the county code with the general plan standards for parks, to increase equity and how fees are applied, to institute an incremental fee increase and a new fee structure to provide for more effective use of limited funds from this program and to incorporate fees for non-residential development including commercial and visitor serving impacts on the park system. To understand these goals, here are some context California code require or includes the possibility of levying two types of fees related to this program. First, the Quimby Act allows fees for residential subdivisions. They are in lieu of dedicating park land with that subdivision. Second, the Mitigation Fee Act allows impact fees for parks that developers pay for the expansion of the park system. These two types of fees have similar goals but have some differences in their requirements and how they are set up. There is some room to improve the clarity between Quimby and Mitigation Fee Act fees to be consistent with state law with our current program. This table shows the existing fee rates for the county as well as all the cities within county for comparison and the fees for the county are considerably lower than the neighboring jurisdictions and they have not been updated for over 20 years. They would need to be increased to keep pace with the increased cost of acquiring and developing park lands. Currently, there are 19 park dedication districts shown in the black outlines. Fees collected in a district currently are held and spent only within that district. And there are three fee zones shown in the three colors. These zones have differing fee rates. To look at the district boundaries, Park Staff completed a series of park user surveys in the fall of 2018. More than two thirds of user survey did not live, work or stay in the same district as the park they were visiting. And because of this, we can say that the current districts are not an effective boundary for determining which park serves which neighborhood and rather people use parks throughout the county. Additionally, when you look at the fee zones with the differing fee rates and summarized by median income in each zone, it's clear that the areas in the county with the lowest income are paying the highest park dedication fees. So that is a summary of some of the background and issues we're trying to address so I can now go through the specific ordinance amendments. Currently County Code chapter 1501 has policies related to Quimby fees and trail and beach access dedication. The proposed update includes moving the trail and beach access policies to a different chapter to allow this chapter to be solely about park dedication. There are also some other revisions to chapter 1501 that are proposed in this revision, including separating and clarifying these fees as separate from impact fees, establishing the park acreage standard that is consistent with the county's general plan, which is five acres per 1,000 people, revising the formula for calculating park land dedication to match this standard, adjusting the reporting and trust administration requirements and making miscellaneous changes to the organization and wording of chapter 1501. The new chapter 1503 creates a new park impact fee chapter which will provide for fees distinct from the in-loop fees. It will also adjust the reporting and trust administration requirements to make these fees consistent with the mitigation fee act. It will require regular review of the fee rates. It will allow creation of fees for new visitors serving and commercial development. It will change the fee structure from per bedroom to per square foot, which is a recommendation by the Housing Advisory Commission, and it will expand exemptions for affordable housing and accessory dwelling units. So the next section is chapter 1501. The portions of the existing chapter 1501 that are related to Trail and Beach Access will be moved to this new chapter 1501. There will also be minor changes included such to make it work as a standalone chapter. The word beach will be changed to coastal access throughout in the minimum public shoreline access. With easement would be increased from five feet to 10 feet to new current development standards. Additionally, there are other small changes. Portions of chapters 13 and 14 of the County Code will be amended to reference these new changes to chapter 15. As 1505 will be referenced as part of the local coastal program and the cross-referencing in 13 and 14 will be updated to the new scheme of 1501. So that concludes the ordinance amendments. We'll go through the unified fee schedule amendments that will be considered at the June 29th budget hearing. These are the five main changes which are to separate and clarify the in lieu fees from park impact fees, including the trust administration requirements and exemptions and how they're applied to change the park impact fee structure from per bedroom to per square foot to include the non-residential park impact fees to eliminate the three zones of different fee rates and the separation of fees into 19 funds for the 19 park districts and lastly to include an incremental fee increase as compared to the existing fees. There are also two accounting changes that go along with this. One is to consolidate future fees and current funds into one account. And second is to clean up some previous loans that have been made between park dedication districts. So this chart shows the proposed fees to be considered at that June 29th hearing. The first category is for park land in lieu fees or the Quimby fees. There is a fee per residential unit for residential subdivisions. The proposed single family rate is 4,200 and for multifamily is 3,125. And the next set of categories is for park impact fees to be applied by square foot of new development. For projects that do not pay that in lieu fee at the time of subdivision, the proposed fee for residential is $2 for single family and $1.50 for multifamily. This is per square foot. For projects that did dedicate land or paying in lieu fee at that time of subdivision, this recommended fee is only 23 cents for single family or 17 cents for multifamily. It's just the cost of developing park land, not acquiring it. Then there are the three proposed fee categories for commercial development, including $2 for retail, restaurant and office, $3 for hotel and motel and $1 for industrial and research and development. And all these fees are less than 25% of the maximum fee which was recommended in the NEXA study. So these are still quite a bit lower than those recommended fees. And I have one table here that shows some examples of scenarios of new development of different sizes and location in the existing and proposed fees. But because currently fees are done by bedroom, new fees and they're different by zone, it's not possible to directly compare all of them. So you have to look at different scenarios. In the interest of time, I won't go through all of these, but I will say while the proposed fees are generally an increase as compared to existing rates, they are still quite low when considering the recommended fees in the NEXA study and the fees in surrounding neighboring jurisdictions in the cities. And when you consider the large capital need associated with expanding the park system. So that's all I have today. Thank you. Thank you for that presentation. I'd like to make a few comments. I especially wanna thank our parks director, Jeff Gaffney and the parks department and commission as well as the planning commission for all their work and input at this has taken a long time to get here. It's well needed. I do support the clarity that we can manage the funds on a countywide basis as it was showed how people who attend the parks where they do live or where they go to enjoy those parks. And I do think that we should apply these to commercial properties because it's not just residential users that create the need for parks in an open space. I also really appreciate the affordable housing exemption that's being extended to mixed use projects as well. And even though we're not in approving fee increases literally today, I'm just concerned that we're too low that we're too low, it was mentioned. I'm not gonna ask that, well, we'll get to that later, but we haven't, it's been more than 20 years, 1998 since we increased these fees for parks. And when I was a member of the committee to put the parcel tax for parks, they said we should limit that to $8.50 per parcel. And we were saying, no, it should be up to 20 and people approve it anyway. Well, the voters approved that parcel tax, but we should have had it higher. And the pandemic showed us how important these parks are and our open spaces. And I think we should not set them so low that they aren't a significant component, but that's to be discussed a little later. So when there is a motion that does come which I will support this proposal, I'd like to ask for additional direction to have our parks director or parks department return to the board on June 29th with the options that are available about increasing fees at higher levels. I'm not gonna be asking for it. It appears the chair is having technical difficulties. One moment, please. Supervisor Koenig, would you like to continue the meeting? I'm happy to step in as vice chair. Are there any additional comments by my colleagues? Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. And I don't have much to add other than I'll be supporting this when it comes once we've gone out to the public on this. I appreciate the work Mr. Gaffney, Mr. Ford on this. I think this is an important modernization of the work we're doing. Thank you. I think my internet connection was off. Any comments from other board members? Yeah, I'll make your comment. I don't know where I was cut off exactly but it's been a long time since fees have been increased for parks. And when we did increase them in a separate parcel tax, it wasn't nearly enough. But so I'd like to get an indication of what are the needs that our parks system is going to create when we come back on the 29th. If you would, please, Mr. Gaffney. Go ahead, Mr. Chairman, Supervisor Caput. Thank you. Yeah, thanks a lot, Jeff. How are you doing? Good, thank you. Good. Yeah, then everybody I think, well, most people agree that beautiful places to live, the beautiful places to visit all have parks. They have neighborhood parks. They have bigger parks for the whole community. And we are on the coast and coastal trails and access is a must. And it's something that we need to not only take care of but actually expand. And South County, when we're talking about five acres per 1,000 residents, is that only in the unincorporated area or does that include the city? That's us as an unincorporated county parks. That's what we're looking to try to do. I actually believe the city is not doing well in that regard either. I don't have their numbers off the top. They're behind also. Yeah. And just so the rest of the board knows, what is the acreage in District 4? You have a total of one and a half acres of County Park. Yeah, I know. And part of that's because we have a large population in Watsonville and when they do the redistricting, it goes by population rather than a geographic, you know, a geographic map. So anyway, I'm just, I'm all for trying to get more parks, especially for South County. It's a disadvantaged community. And they have to have access also to beautiful places to visit. So anyway, thanks. And we're gonna be working on that. Okay, we'll be talking soon. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Any other comments from the board? I'm not sure where I was cut off. Somebody probably wanted to cut me off when I was talking about the need for additional funding for parks. Supervisor Koenig, go ahead. Just a few quick comments. Thank you, Director Gaffney for the presentation today and for speaking with me ahead of this item as well as my planning commissioner who does work in design and construction. And, you know, we had expressed some initial concerns about the impact of these kinds of fees on development and ultimately making housing less affordable. You know, I think that you've made it pretty clear that ultimately, you know, these fees are pretty minimal. You don't have a lot of funds to work with in parks. And it's really even with the modest increase probably won't be enough. Parks are one of those issues that it didn't rise to people's minds a whole lot during the campaign. But now that I'm in office, I hear about them all the time because it is just one of those areas of county services that people use every day and love very much and are very involved with. So, you know, again, thank you for this work to ultimately make the way that we collect and manage fees more efficient and right size the amount that we collect and support for the actions. So thank you. Thank you. Any other questions for the board? Any input from the public? Yes, we have one speaker, Color 2915. Your microphone is available. Thank you. This is Becky Steinbruner. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. I'm very supportive of the park system. And I understand that the per bedroom assessment rate is a little challenging. I'm interested in hearing more about the differences that have been taking place between the three zones in the county for park in lieu fees. I'd like to hear more about that disparity, how big is it? In the staff report under item D fee rates, I'm a bit surprised to see that it would indeed really increase the construction cost for single family homes. It says, for example, the maximum fee supported fee according to the fee study for a new three bedroom residence of the average size, $2,375 square feet would be $8.96 per square foot or a total of $21,280. While the current fee if located in zone one, and there we are alluding to the differences in the three zones would be $3,000. This would be an increase of over $18,000 or over seven times the existing rates, end quote. And then just right below that, it has a table of the proposed Parkland in lieu fee categories. I'm confused because it says the proposed fees per unit for a single family project would be $4,200. And for a residential subdivision project multi-family, $3,150. Me, I do not have access to CTV, could please allow the speaker. Thank you very much. It's been a long day for me too. Thank you for giving me a little more time. So I would like a bit of clarification and I also want to make it clear to the board and to the park staff that Quimby Act funds can be used for community gardens, which may have less need for maintenance because the people who use them would be in fact doing the maintenance. And I would like to see that considered more for Parklands to be incorporated to serve people. It brings people together. They learn how to grow food and it is an acceptable use under the Quimby Act. Thank you very much for the extra time. There are no other speakers to this item. I'm prepared to remove the recommended actions. Okay, and I think I wasn't sure if they said again with the additional comments, I'd like to have the parks director come back to the board on June 29th with several options to consider about increasing the fee at higher levels or what are the needs in the parks today and how much would that take to upgrade them to the level that they should be? Sure, I'll include that as a friendly amendment. And the seconder signed with that as well. Thank you. Yeah, Supervisor Koenig, do you have a comment? No additional comments, thank you. Okay, any board member have additional, I'll close the public hearing. Excuse me, back to the board, any additional comments? Okay, please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig? Aye. Friend? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Caput? Aye. McPherson? Aye. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. Thank you, congratulations Mr. Gaffney and Dan. We will move to item number 18. We're closing in on it, we have to go to 21. This is to consider adopting an ordinance repealing ordinance 3678 uncodified which established the findings of fact fee for proceedings related to assessment appeals, a doubt resolution on authorizing the establishment of the findings of the fact fee as part of the United Fees Schedule and direct the clerk of the board to take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the County Administrative Officer. We have an ordinance to repeal, ordinance 3678 uncodified, ordinance 3678 uncodified resolution findings of fact fee. Excuse me. I think, is this, who's going to be presenting this? I will be presenting the item chair. Okay, Stephanie, go ahead. So this is a fee associated with our assessment appeals board. The finding of facts fee ordinance was approved in 1985, setting our fee at $60 flat based on the Board of Equalizations assessment appeals board rule 308. The County may impose a reasonable fee determined by the Board of Supervisors to cover the expense of preparing the findings and conclusions and may require a deposit to be paid prior to the end of the hearing. We are asking to update this fee to better match what is actually costing the County to provide this service. We did seek counsel from our County Council and they recommended $250 based on what we are charging our internal departments to provide the same fee. This record or this report, the finding of facts fee is usually used when an appellant is going to contest the decision of the assessment appeals board, which leads to further litigation. At this point, the County is subsidizing the cost of this fee at $190 per hour. So we're seeking to remove it from the ordinance and set it by the unified fee schedule as well so that we have more flexibility to maintain the accurate pricing and better recuperate the cost to the County to provide this service. Recording in progress. So the request is to seek adoption of an ordinance to repeal ordinance 3678, which is uncodified that established the finding of facts fee relating to the assessment appeals board actions and to adopt a resolution setting the assessment appeals finding a fact fee at $250 per hour with an initial deposit of $500. This was reached by the reports generally taking two to four hours to create. And we're asking that the board direct staff to add the fee to the unified fee schedule to allow for flexibility and maintaining accurate pricing for this service. Okay, thank you. Any questions from the board? Mr. Chair, I don't have any questions. I think this is very reasonable. I just think that in general, this is also a good lesson that we always need to make sure that we keep these fees as updated as possible so we don't see these large jumps, which I know is never the intention, but we also shouldn't be subsidizing public tax dollars, shouldn't be subsidizing these kinds of situations. There should be a cost recovery situation as proposed. So I will be supporting it once we receive public input. Thank you. Very good. Any other comments from the board? Do we have any public comments? Yes, caller 2915. Your microphone is available. Hello, this is Becky Steinbruner. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. I would like to, I appreciate that legal costs are high, but I think I have been to some of the assessment appeals hearings. And what I have seen is that these are mostly, this is the property owner's only ability to go before a quasi-judicial tribunal to settle a dispute when they couldn't get help any other way. Many of these people represent themselves because they can't afford legal fees. If a finding of fact is required for this, in essence, civil due process, I think there needs to be some method that indigent people bringing their cases to the assessment appeals board are able to file for a fee waiver or a fee reduction. Because otherwise this is cost prohibitive. You're saying that most findings of fact take four hours. That's a lot of money, $250 times four is $1,000. That will prohibit people who cannot afford it from taking any action and they are stuck. And in some cases, this is the only method they have to try to get relief. I've seen it happen in some of these appeals. So I urge your board to consider that there is some method for indigent people to be able to apply for a fee waiver and have the same civil due process as those who can afford it coming before this board. Thank you very much. Any other public comments? There are no other speakers to this item chair. I return to the board, any comments? I move the recommended actions. I'll second. Community and friend, please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig? Aye. Friend? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Caput? Aye. McPherson? Aye. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. Item number 19, public hearing to consider the 2021-22 benefit assessment service charge reports for Sanitation County Service Areas 257-10 and 20 and adopt resolution confirming that 2021-22 benefit assessment service charge reports is outlined in the memorandum of the deputy CEO director of public works. We have Sanitation County Service Area area electronic charge reports, summer report of 2021-22 service charge, sewer service charges for various county service areas and a resolution for all CSA charges 2021-22. I think our department of public works deputy CEO, Madam Shado is going to be presenting or is it still Ashley? Yes, I'll be presenting. Okay, good. Thank you. Thank you. So on April 13th, 2021, the board approved the 2021-22 benefit assessment service charge reports for County Service Areas 257-20 and set today as the date of the public hearing on the 2021-22 benefit assessment service charge reports that have been posted public review. Therefore, it is recommended that the board open the public hearing and hear the objections or protests, if any, to the proposed 2021-2022 benefit assessment service charge reports for the Sanitation County Service Areas 257-10 and 20 close the public hearing and adopt the resolution confirming the 2021-22 benefit assessment service charge reports for the various Sanitation County Service Areas. Thank you. Thank you, Ashley. Any comments from the board, board members? Comments from the general public? There are no speakers to this item. Okay, we'll close the public hearing and return it to the board for action. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. Seconded by Grant, seconded by Coonerty. Please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ashley. Will you be, go to a public hearing to consider resolution confirming proposed fiscal year 2021-22 assessment service charge reports for the County Service Area 12, wastewater management as outlined in the memorandum of the Director of Health Services. We have resolution County Service Area 12 service area charge reports, fiscal year 2021-22. I notice a public hearing 2021 CSA 12 annual charges. Is Ms. Hall going to be presenting this or? I am promoting her and also Marilyn Underwood will be joining her. Okay. Good afternoon. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. I believe Dr. Marilyn Underwood, Director of Environmental Health is here to walk the Board of Supervisors through this item. Good evening. I say that because I'm calling from the East Coast here. I wanted to say that the item before you right now is something that you took up on May 11th of this year that the Board adopted resolutions confirming the established benefit assessment and service charges for CSA 12 and set this date of Tuesday, June 8th as the time for the public hearing. These are the rates and charges are described in that report. This is for the on-site sewage disposal service systems in the County, both education, covering the lamp and other activities. We are proposing to remain, choose the rates to remain the same as in previous, the previous year. We asked you to open the public hearing. Here's the Board objections or protest to then close the public hearing and adopt the resolution confirming these rates, service assessments and service charge reports for the coming year. Thank you. Thank you. Well, there's the weather back there. Do we have any comments from the Board of Supervisors? Seeing none, do we have any comments from the public? Yes, caller 2915, your microphone is available. Hello, this is Becky Steinbruner. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. I am curious about the status of the lamp and how that will affect these rates and vice versa. I'm very concerned about this issue because I think it will make rebuilding in many areas of our rural area affected by the CZU fire, financially impossible. So I would like some discussion about that status and how these fees are linked with that. Thank you very much. Ms. Underwood, I don't know if you could comment on that very briefly or comment on that. Yes, I could definitely. They are definitely not connected at this point. Just for the public's benefit, we did release a public comment on the lamp yesterday and we will be holding a public meeting on that on June 23rd. But I think the cost that I believe that Becky, Ms. Steinbruner is referring to may be the cost of implementing the outcomes of the lamp which is different really than what we're talking about here, our service assessment charges which are related to educating people, actually getting the lamp completed and other activities related to overall our program for overseeing the on-site septic sewage program in our county. So they really are not necessarily directly related. Okay, thank you, that brief explanation. Thank you very much. Are there any other public members of the public who want to speak? There are no other speakers to this item. Okay, we will close the public hearing. I'll entertain a motion. I'll move the recommended actions. I'll second. Moved by Koenig, seconded by Friend. Please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, the motion passes unanimously. Okay, we'll go to item 21, a public hearing to consider County Service Area 48 and County Service Area 4. As far as protecting the test and service, charge reports for fiscal 2021-22 and adopt resolution to the service charge reports for CSA 48 and County Service Area 4 as outlined in the memorandum of the Director of General Services. We have resolution CSA 48 to confirm assessment, resolution CSA 4 to confirm assessment and a script for the CSA fee hearing 2021. Is Michael Beaton going to be presenting this? And he should be joining. Okay. This is our Director of General Services, Michael Beaton. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Board. Michael Beaton, Director of General Services for the County of Santa Cruz. This item is being brought to your Board on May 25th, 2021. The Board adopted resolution to set today's date as a public hearing for the benefit assessment increase for CSA 48 and CSA 4. The recommended increase for the assessments is identified as 1.7% utilizing the CPI index. We are available for any questions that the Board may have. Thank you. Any comments from the Board? Comments from the public? Currently have two speakers. Charlie Eadie, your microphone is available. Thank you. I just wanted to chime in on behalf of the Power O'Doom's Homeowners Association for whom I work. They are very thorough and pay a lot of attention to detail and did in fact review this proposed fee increase and got information from Cal Fire who works well with us in providing what we need. So I just wanted to let you know that the Power O'Doom's people are aware and support this increase as it's consistent with the way it should be done. I'd also like to recommend that when you have short items like this, you put them at the beginning of the day instead of the end. Thank you. Becky Steinbruner, your microphone is available. This is Becky Steinbruner. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. I heartily second Mr. Eadie's comment. This is at the very end of your agenda today. It should have been at the beginning or at least scheduled for a time like you did other things. So please don't do that to the public in the future. It's really wrong, especially on this issue. You heard a big report by Ian Larkin this morning about fire season coming up. This should have followed on its heels. I sent you all a letter and got no response and I have copied that letter and a subsequent comment here on the website portal. I have a lot of questions about how this is being done, this adjustment. I'm very, very glad that those who lost their homes in the CZU fire are not having to pay the extra benefit assessment fee to protect them. Thank you for doing that. They should have been done last fall, but thank you for doing it now. I have a lot of questions having looked through the binder at the clerk of the board's office about how these adjustments are in fact being made. It says in the binder that the calculations are not being shown because there are errors. But how can we find what those errors are? How can we find the calculations that is all not transparent at all to the public? How was this hearing noticed? I didn't receive anything in the mail. I didn't see anything in the paper. So this is all not transparent at all. But again, I wanna thank you for reducing the CZU fire people assessments to recognize that they have no special benefit at all in this protection assessment. In looking at the... There are no other speakers to this item, Chair. Okay, I don't know, Mr. Beaton, if you have any comments, brief comments on that? Thank you, Board Chair. Reviewing the email that we did receive from Becky Stein-Brunner, looks like that we received it on June 3rd. We currently have it sent over to our county or to our engineer that was identified over our CSA-48 and we're currently still reviewing. We don't believe there's any significant issues or items related to the issues that she's raised in the email. Okay. I'll move the recommended action. The public hearing recommended action moved by Coonerty. Second. Second by Koenig. Please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, Motion passes unanimously. Okay, that completes our regular agenda. Now we did shorten the, or cut off the public comment period after 30 minutes. Is there anybody that wants to comment to us now? Becky is available to speak. Okay, two minutes. Thank you. I've waited all day to be able to speak on item 21 and to only get two minutes. When you have given me other time earlier, it's an insult and I'm sorry. I want to continue because Nicene Mark State Park land is now assessed at zero. State Park government land is not exempt from special benefits for these sites sorts of actions. So you haven't addressed my questions at all and you cut me off after two minutes and I've waited all day. You've had a long day and so have I. So I just want to say that this really needs further examination and more transparency for the CSA 48 special benefit assessment. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments from the public? There are no other speakers to this item chair. The hour of five o'clock haven't been reached. That concludes our meeting of June 8th, 2021 of the County Board of Supervisors. We made it by five o'clock. That was the target. With that, this meeting is adjourned and we will see you next during budget hearings. Have a good evening and we'll see you later. Bye-bye.